The Dragon Book (6 page)

That was all right. He could drink any eight men under the table in unwatered wine.

He left the three of them snoring in the dirt and whistled as the mules plodded down the road, quickly: they were all too happy to be leaving the dragon corpse behind. Or most of it, anyway: he’d spent the afternoon hacking off the dragon’s head. It sat on top of the mound of treasure now, teeth overlapping the lower jaw as it gradually sagged in on itself. It stank, but it made an excellent moral impression when he drove into the next town over.

THE really astonishing thing was that now, when he had more gold than water, he didn’t need to pay for anything. Men quarreled for the right to buy him a drink, and whores let him have it for free. He couldn’t even lose it gambling: every time he sat down at the tables, his dice always came up winners.

He bought a house in the best part of the city, right next to that pompous windbag Cato on one side and Claudius’s uncle on the other, and threw parties that ran dusk until dawn. For the daylight hours, he filled the courtyard with a menagerie of wild animals: a lion and a giraffe that growled and snorted at each other from the opposite ends where they were chained up, and even a hippopotamus that some Nubian dealer brought him.

He had the dragon skull mounted in the center of the yard and set the egg in front of it. No one would buy the damn thing, so that was all he could do with it. “Fifty sesterces to take it off your hands,” the arena manager said, after one look at the egg and the skull together.

“What?” Antony said. “I’m not going to pay
you
. I could just smash the thing.”

The manager shrugged. “You don’t know how far along it is. Could be it’s old enough to live a while. They come out ready to fight,” he added. “Last time we did a hatching, it killed six men.”

“And how many damned tickets did it sell?” Antony said, but the bastard was unmoved.

It made a good centerpiece, anyway, and it was always entertaining to mention the arena manager’s story to one of his guests when they were leaning against the egg and patting the shell, and watching how quickly they scuttled away. Personally, Antony thought it was just as likely the thing was dead; it had been sitting there nearly six months, and not a sign of cracking.

He, on the other hand, was starting to feel a little—well. Nonsensical to miss the days after he’d walked out of his stepfather’s house for good, when some unlucky nights he’d had to wrestle three men in a street game for the coin to eat—since no one would give him so much as the end of a loaf of bread on credit—or even the handful of times he’d let some fat, rich lecher paw at him just to get a bed for the night.

But there just wasn’t any juice in it anymore. A stolen jar of wine, after running through the streets ahead of the city cohorts for an hour, had tasted ten times as sweet as any he drank now, and all his old friends had turned into toadying dogs who flattered him clumsily. The lion got loose and ate the giraffe, and then he had to get rid of the hippo after it started spraying shit everywhere, which began to feel like an omen. He’d actually picked up a book the other day: sure sign of desperation.

He tried even more dissipation: an orgy of two days and nights where no one was allowed to sleep, but it turned out that even he had limits, and sometime in the second night, he had found them. He spent the next three days lying in a dark room with his head pounding fit to burst. It was August, and the house felt like a baking oven. His sheets were soaked through with sweat, and he still couldn’t bear to move.

He finally crawled out of his bed and let his slaves scrub and scrape him and put him into a robe—of Persian silk embroidered with gold, because he didn’t own anything less gaudy anymore—and then he went out into the courtyard and collapsed on a divan underneath some orange trees. “No, Jupiter smite you all, get away from me and be quiet,” he snarled at the slaves.

The lion lifted its head and snarled at him, in turn. Antony threw the wine jug at the animal and let himself collapse back against the divan, throwing an arm up over his eyes.

He slept again a while, and woke to someone nudging his leg. “I told you mange-ridden dogs to leave me the hell alone,” he muttered.

The nudging withdrew for a moment. Then it came back again. “Sons of Dis, I’m going to have you flogged until you—” Antony began, rearing up, and stopped.

“Is there anything more to eat?” the dragon asked.

He stared at it. Its head was about level with his, and it blinked at him with enormous green eyes, slit-pupiled. It was mostly green, like the last one, except with blue spines. He looked past it into the courtyard. Bits and chunks of shell were littering the courtyard all over, and the lion—“Where the hell is the lion?” Antony said.

“I was hungry,” the dragon said unapologetically.

“You ate the lion?” Antony said, still half-dazed, and he stared at the dragon again. “You ate the
lion
,” he repeated, in dawning wonder.

“Yes, and I would like some more food now,” the dragon said.

“Hecate’s teats, you can have anything you want,” Antony said, already imagining the glorious spectacle of his next party. “Maracles!” he yelled. “Damn you, you lazy, sodding bastard of a slave, fetch me some goats here! How the hell can you talk?” he demanded of the dragon.

“
You
can,” the dragon pointed out, as if that explained anything.

Antony thought about it and shrugged. Maybe it did. He reached out tentatively to pat the dragon’s neck. It felt sleek and soft as leather. “What a magnificent creature you are,” he said. “We’ll call you—Vincitatus.”

IT turned out that Vincitatus was a female, according to the very nervous master of Antony’s stables, when the man could be dragged in to look at her. She obstinately refused to have her name changed, however, so Vincitatus it was, and Vici for short. She also demanded three goats a day, a side helping of something sweet, and jewelry, which didn’t make her all that different from most of the other women of Antony’s acquaintance. Everyone was terrified of her. Half of Antony’s slaves ran away. Tradesmen wouldn’t come to the house after he had them in to the courtyard, and neither would most of his friends.

It was magnificent.

Vici regarded the latest fleeing tradesman disapprovingly. “I didn’t like that necklace anyway,” she said. “Antony, I want to go flying.”

“I’ve told you, my most darling one, some idiot guard with a bow will shoot you,” he said, peeling an orange; he had to do it for himself, since the house slaves had been bolting in packs until he promised they didn’t have to come to her. “Don’t worry, I’ll have more room for you soon.”

He’d already had most of the statuary cleared out of the courtyard, but it wasn’t going to do for long; she had already tripled in size, after two weeks. Fortunately, he’d already worked out a splendid solution.

“Dominus,” Maracles called nervously, from the house. “Cato is here.”

“Splendid!” Antony called back. “Show him in. Cato, my good neighbor,” he said, rising from the divan as the old man stopped short at the edge of the courtyard. “I thank you so deeply for coming. I would have come myself, but you see, the servants get so anxious when I leave her alone.”

“I did not entirely credit the rumors, but I see you really have debauched yourself out of your mind at last,” Cato said. “No, thank you, I will not come out; the beast can eat you, first, and then it will be so sozzled I can confidently expect to make my escape.”

“I am not going to eat Antony,” Vici said indignantly, and Cato stared at her.

“Maracles, bring Cato a chair, there,” Antony said, sprawling back on the divan, and he stroked Vici’s neck.

“I didn’t know they could speak,” Cato said.

“You should hear her recite the
Priapeia
, there’s a real ring to it,” Antony said. “Now, why I asked you—”

“Those poems are not very good,” Vici said, interrupting. “I liked that one you were reading at your house better, about all the fighting.”

“What?” Cato said.

“What?” Antony said.

“I heard it over the wall, yesterday,” Vici said. “It was much more exciting, and,” she added, “the language is more interesting. The other one is all just about fornicating, over and over, and I cannot tell any of the people in it apart.”

Antony stared at her, feeling vaguely betrayed.

Cato snorted. “Well, Antony, if you are mad enough to keep a dragon, at least you have found one that has better taste than you do.”

“Yes, she is most remarkable,” Antony said, with gritted teeth. “But as you can see, we are getting a little cramped, so I’m afraid—”

“Do you know any others like that?” Vici asked Cato.

“What, I suppose you want me to recite Ennius’s
Annals
for you here and now?” Cato said.

“Yes, please,” she said, and settled herself comfortably.

“Er,” Antony said. “Dearest heart—”

“Shh, I want to hear the poem,” she said.

Cato looked rather taken aback, but then he looked at Antony—and smiled. And then the bastard started in on the whole damned thing.

Antony fell asleep somewhere after the first half hour and woke up again to find them discussing the meter or the symbolism or whatnot. Cato had even somehow talked the house servants into bringing him out a table and wine and bread and oil, which was more than they’d had the guts to bring out for
him
the last two weeks.

Antony stood up. “If we might resume our business,” he said pointedly, with a glare in her direction.

Vincitatus did not take the hint. “Cato could stay to dinner.”

“No, he could
not
,” Antony said.

“So what was this proposition of yours, Antony?” Cato said.

“I want to buy your house,” Antony said flatly. He’d meant to come at it roundabout, and enjoy himself leading Cato into a full understanding of the situation, but at this point he was too irritated to be subtle.

“That house was built by my great-grandfather,” Cato said. “I am certainly not going to sell it to you to be used for orgies.”

Antony strolled over to the table and picked up a piece of bread to sop into the oil. Well, he could enjoy this, at least. “You might have difficulty finding any other buyer. Or any guests, for that matter, once word gets out.”

Cato snorted. “On the contrary,” he said. “I imagine the value will shortly be rising, as soon as you have gone.”

“I’m afraid I don’t have plans to go anywhere,” Antony said.

“Oh, never fear,” Cato said. “I think the Senate will make plans
for
you.”

“Cato says there is a war going on in Gaul,” Vincitatus put in. “Like in the poem. Wouldn’t it be exciting to go see a war?”

“What?” Antony said.

“WELL, Antonius,” the magistrate said, “I must congratulate you.”

“For surviving the last sentence?” Antony said.

“No,” the magistrate said. “For originality. I don’t believe I have ever faced this particular offense before.”

“There’s no damned law against keeping a dragon!”