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"I am?" Jane said, astonished. Ratsnickle's grin was lewd and calculating. She could almost see the gears turning.
"I thought maybe you could move in with me for a few days. You know, just talking and hanging out and things. Just to make sure I don't do anything foolish." Sirin's voice sank. "I know it's not much of a plan."
Stiffly, Jane said, "I told you. I feel bad for you and I wish I could help. But there's nothing I can do."
"But I'm asking for so little."
Just then Billy Bugaboo appeared behind the only empty chair that remained, tray in hand. "Is this seat taken?"
"Oh, for—!" Jane stood. "Take it! Have my lunch! I don't care! What have I done to deserve you on top of everything else that's happening to me?"
He stared at her, stricken. She fled the room.
That evening, rather than chance encountering anybody in the cafeteria or one of the usual student hangouts, Jane went out into the City and ate supper in a diner in Orgulous. She had meat loaf and mashed potatoes. A dwarf tried to hit on her and when she began shouting at him the management asked her to leave.
The evening was soft and pleasant. The traffic sounds were muted and the air was almost warm. Jane strode along hunched into herself, hands deep in pockets, scowling. How long, she asked herself, how long?
Jane had traveled to Orgulous by way of Senauden and on impulse hired a private car to the street. When she stepped into Bellegarde's lobby, she suddenly realized that, what with one thing and another, it was the first time she'd been there in months. She also realized that she'd left her elevator pass in her purse back in the room. "Shit!"
It made no sense to waste good money on something she'd already paid for, so she took the back corridors into the service areas in search of a freight elevator. It wasn't permitted, but students used them all the time.
Almost immediately, she became lost. A stairway drew her down into the basement and when she tried to retrace her steps she couldn't find it again. So she went on, through a series of ever-darkening storage rooms that smelled of turpentine, pitch, vinegar, and moldering books. She was just begi
For no reason she could name, an overwhelming intuition filled her that what she was looking for was right behind that door.
She opened it.
Great masses of black iron loomed in the darkness. She sniffed grease and oil in the air. The light of a single bare bulb glinted on an enormous construction of steel and malice, one that was as familiar to her as the back reaches of her own soul. It was No. 7332—Melanchthon.
The dragon gri
"Are you surprised to see me again, little changeling?" The heat of his derision was like a blast furnace opening in her face. The door dissolved in Jane's hand and the darkness about her intensified. In all the universe nothing existed save for the dragon and her. Melanchthon's cabin opened soundlessly. "Come in. We have a lot to talk about."
There was nothing else to be done. Jane climbed in.
The pilot's couch looked newer than she remembered it being. But when she sat down, it settled about her in a way that was intimately knowing. Soft lights gleamed from the instruments. Things crawled in the blackness at the corners of her eyes. Somewhere, a meryon screamed and was silenced.
"You abandoned me," she said.
"Now I'm back."
Jane's hands clenched the armrests. One twist and the needles would slide into her wrists. The wraparounds would descend to plunge her into the dragon's sensorium. She did not twist the grips. "You're looking prosperous."
As intended, this offended him. "You are as dull and slow-witted as ever," Melanchthon said scornfully. Deep within his thorax an engine roared to life. Its vibrations shook the cabin. "I have come to bring you death, blood, vengeance, and a small share in the greatest adventure since the first act of murder—and you offer me pleasantries."
"Pleasantries are all we have to say to one another."
"Talk all you want," the dragon said with furious impatience. "Taint as much air as you like with your stale and vapid words, words, words. But you and I have lived within one another. We have shared essences, and we can neither of us be free of the other ever in this lifetime." In the silence that ensued, Jane felt a sickening conviction that he was right.
When the dragon spoke again at last, he had mastered his passions. His tone was cool and dismissive. "How can you have lived so long and experienced so much without ever once asking yourself who was the author of your misfortunes?"
"I know my enemy well enough. Down to the op codes I know him."
"Me?" the dragon said mockingly. "I am at most a symptom. Was it me who created the world and involved you in it? Me who said you must live and love and lose and grow old and die? Who poisoned your every friendship and drove you away from those you most desired? Who said that you must learn only by making mistakes and that the lessons you learned must then do you no good? That was not I. You are caught in a pattern spun by a greater power than mine.
"I know your enemy, for she is mine as well. Compared to my hatred for her, our enmity is like a candle held up to the sun. Understand me well: You are within my grasp, and it would give me great joy to play with you, even as a cat does with a captive vole. Yet I will let you walk free, for we have common cause. You also must set aside all lesser emotions. Focus on your true foe. Hate her with all your might. Fear her, even as do I."
Jane had always thought that blood could not run cold, that those who said theirs had were employed in wordplay and metaphor. Now she knew better. "Who are you talking about?"
Was it mere theatricality or something deeper, a savoring of his own blasphemy, that made Melanchthon hesitate? With quiet satisfaction, he said, "The Goddess."
"No!"
"Come now. You never suspected? Deep in the sleepless night you never saw that life itself is proof that the Goddess does not love you? That her regard is malevolent at best, and that your pain must surely amuse her, for what other purpose does it serve? You ca
"You're mad," Jane whispered. "Nobody can destroy the Goddess."
"Nobody has ever tried." Melanchthon's voice was smooth and plausible, the antithesis of madness. "Our time apart has not been wasted, I promise you. I have seized control of my own evolution and made myself mighty beyond the normal range of my kind. I have the destructive power, never doubt it. But there is no future for a renegade dragon, oath-broken and lordless. The skies are closed to me. I can either crawl forever about the roots and cellars of the world or enjoy one last fatal flight. I'll not catch the defenders of the Law napping again. Well, so be it. I will make a fourth flight through Hell Gate. I will assail Spiral Castle itself, and obliterate it, and drag the Goddess from its shattered ruins.
"And by all that is unseely, I swear I'll kill the Bitch."
"It's impossible," Jane said weakly.
"You are still infested with hope. You think there is a life worth living somewhere, and that some combination of action, restraint, knowledge, and luck will save you, if only you can get the mix right. Well, I've got news for you. Right here, right now—this is as good as it gets."
"Things will get better!"
"Have they ever?" The dragon's contempt was palpable. The cabin hatch hissed open. "Go. Return to your dormitory room and enjoy your present. Come back when you've grown large enough to look upon futility without flinching. Come back when you've despaired and moved beyond despair to vengefulness. Come back when you've decided to stop lying to yourself."