Dragon Princess

  “You don’t know?” Baldy asked.

  I prodded him with the dagger again, just because it made me feel better. He sucked in a breath and shut up.

  “Why are we stopped?”

  “We have to pay the toll.”

  I was about to ask “to whom?” because the entire area seemed empty of anyone. But, in the space of my short exchange with Baldy, a figure had appeared on the bridge out of nowhere; an emaciated man, wrapped in black rags, leaning on a staff. His eyes were the same shade of gray as his stringy hair, and clutched in one clawlike hand he held a wooden bowl.

  The man hobbled up to Baldy’s side of the wagon and shook his empty bowl in our direction. “Alms?”

  That answered that question.

  Baldy glanced at the dagger sticking him, then at a chest by his feet. I reached down and opened the chest and pulled out a leather coin purse. “How much?”

  Baldy sighed. “A crown a head.”

  I held the purse up in front of Baldy with my free hand and said, “Pay the man, then.”

  “Are you sure you want to—” a poke ended Baldy’s train of thought and he started rummaging in the purse.

  If the beggar noticed Baldy was a hostage, he gave no sign of caring. His expression didn’t change at all from the blind stare he’d greeted us with.

  Not until Baldy filled his bowl with coins.

  The old beggar looked at his take, then back at us. Gone was the staring senile visage, replaced by irritation. The old man’s grip visibly tightened on the staff, and he stood straighter. “You ain’t trying to smuggle someone in without payin’, are you?” He gazed at Baldy with an eyebrow cocked in a way to suggest that his gray-clouded eyes weren’t blind at all.

  I got a feeling I didn’t want to annoy the man.

  I put some pressure on the hilt of the dagger and said, “You forgot someone.”

  “What? I counted everyone.”

  “Nope.” I said, nodding upward.

  Baldy followed my gaze, looking up to see Lucille doing lazy circles and loops in the sky above us.

  “Oh, yeah. Dragon. Right.”

  The beggar stared upward as well, jaw falling open as the last coin clattered into his bowl.

  In response to that last coin, the air over the bridge shimmered, darkened, and turned opaque. It was like watching a mirage disappear as you approached it; the view of a bridge arching over the river vanishing as if it had never been there.

  Fell Green was not on the Lendowyn side or the Dermonica side. It was actually on a long dagger-shaped island in the middle of the river, an island that had been invisible until now. The bridge, now much shorter, met a road that crossed the body of the island, and Fell Green squatted behind massive stone walls that dominated the entirety of the island to the west of that road.

  Baldy shook the reins and started the team of horses across the bridge, leaving the beggar/gatekeeper staring up, slack-jawed, at Lucille.

  • • •

  Once across the bridge it now seemed that the island was much wider than the river that flowed around it. I tried not to think about that too much. Baldy’s wagon followed the road between a high stone wall covered with black-leaved ivy, and a dense forest that competed for ominousness with the woods where Dudley performed his devotions to the Dark Lord Nâtlac.

  Between the two, I gave the woods here the edge for subtlety, inducing dread without any obvious theatrics. No burnt tree trunks clawing at an ash-gray sky from a field of crushed bone. These woods were lush, leafy, and a little too healthy. Something about the shades of green just seemed a bit off.

  Once we came in sight of the gate to the town, I relieved Baldy of the last of his gold and ordered him to stop the wagon.

  “Now,” I told him. “This is where we part ways.” I pointed the tip of my dagger down the road ahead of us. “Keep going, unless you like the idea of being set on fire by an angry lizard.”

  As I climbed down from the wagon, Baldy said, “I need the keys to unchain my men.”

  I shook my head. “You need incentive to go to the next town and find a blacksmith.” I waved my arm and Lucille began descending. “I suggest you get going.”

  He looked up at the descending dragon and snapped the reins. The horses didn’t need to be told twice, and the wagon vanished down the road at a furious gallop as Lucille set herself down in a clearing next to the road.

  “I think we make a good team,” I told her, hefting the bag with the remnants of Baldy’s finances.

  “This island came out of nowhere.”

  “Yeah, I can see why there’s some argument over jurisdiction.”

  She turned her massive head toward the wall. Her eyes narrowed and thin trails of steam curled from her nostrils. I saw commotion along the top of the wall as multiple guards seemed to be rushing to cover the section across from us.

  “He’s in there?”

  “That’s what Prince Dudley said—”

  “Let’s get him.” Her voice was a near-growl, and her talons sank into the earth. Her muscles were so tense that I could almost hear them vibrate.

  “Calm down.”

  Her head whipped in my direction and she yelled at me, “Calm down!” Her breath was so heated that I thought I could smell my eyebrows burning. Her jaws snapped shut on the words like a trap designed to catch the deity of all bears and bearlike creatures.

  There was less than an arm’s length between us, and I felt the vibration from her jaw slamming shut in the back of my own skull. I must have completely internalized the fact that she was the princess, because I didn’t immediately flee in terror.

  “Yes. Calm down.”

  The fact that I stood my ground must have made an impression, because she froze, staring at me. Her mouth opened to say something, but nothing came out but a few wisps of brimstone-flavored steam.

  “First, we’re here on the word of Prince Dudley. While he was under threat of some serious pain when he said we could find Elhared here, do you actually trust him?”

  “Uh . . .”

  “Second, this is a wizard town. If you noticed, they’ve been massing on the wall since you landed, and I suspect they have a slightly better equipped and organized defense than Ravensgate.”

  “But . . .”

  “Lastly, if a dragon storms the gate of this town, and somehow makes it past the town defenses to the point of doing a house to house search—we’ll ignore the logistics of how that would actually work for the moment—do you think Elhared will conveniently stay put for you to find him?”

  The rage had sapped from her. As immobile as much of the dragon’s face might be, it was becoming surprisingly easy for me to read her expressions now. If I had to describe how she looked at me after my tirade, I’d probably call it “pouty.”

  “But I want to help.”

  I shook my head and patted her nose. “You’ve been helping. There’s no way we could have gotten here without you. It’s just that quietly hunting down one guy in the middle of a town does not play to your strengths at the moment.”

  She settled down on the ground, resting her head on her folded forearms with an intimidatingly resonant sigh. “You have no idea how much it annoys me that you’re right.”

  “Cheer up. I’m sure we’ll get a chance for you to lay waste to a small army before we change you back.”

  “Now you’re mocking me.”

  “I wouldn’t do that to someone who could bite me in half.”

  She turned her head and snorted what might have been a draconic chuckle.

  “Really, you’ve handled more than your share. You saved me—us—from being a sacrifice. You saved a bunch of women from those slavers. That’s not even mentioning traveling here in the first place. There’s a time for subtlety and diplomacy, and there’s a time for intimidation and cracking skulls. Right now, your job’s the latter.”

  “I never really was ever that assertive.”

  “I think you’re doing well.”

  “Really???
?

  “You make an excellent dragon.”

  “Thank you, I think.”

  “And you’re still helping. After your unsubtle arrival, you think the town guard’s going to give me any grief?” I gestured up toward the wall, where a few bucket-helmeted guards peered down across the road at us. “Who’s going to mess with a girl with a pet dragon?”

  She lifted her head and cocked it. “Pet?”

  “Uh—figure of speech.”

  • • •

  Lucille launched herself again, to orbit the town at what we hoped the guards would perceive as a safe distance. And, as I predicted, the guards at the main gate were very polite and helpful with directions—though some of that might have been habit given the kind of powerful masters of dark sorcery who must regularly pass through here. It’s never a good idea to roust someone who could turn you into a toad. Lucille’s presence probably just suggested I was part of the small club that belonged here.

  So, without incident, I entered the black heart of the necromancers’ haven of Fell Green.

  It wasn’t that bad.

  I got a lot of stares, since I was a young woman traveling alone. But apparently, because I was a young woman traveling alone, most of the potential troublemakers seemed to follow the theory of Baldy’s ex-minion Stavros: it’s a trap.

  The marketplace tended toward the obscure and obscene in terms of spell components—I could have easily replaced the flattened pixie that Elhared had used as a bookmark. However, there were also more than enough merchants selling mundane gear appropriate to my chosen profession. I took the opportunity to lighten Baldy’s purse a bit, at least for the sake of more easily pumping a few merchants for info on the possible location of the unfortunately not-so-late Elhared the Unwise.

  I was in luck. Elhared was a known and not particularly loved fixture of this town. I listened to several anecdotes of his activities prior to my meeting him. His status as a skinflint was something of a local legend. I suspected that meant Lendowyn’s financial difficulties predated him skimming the treasury. I even heard from someone who had spent several weeks on a custom replica sword for the wizard, only to be stiffed on the last payment.

  I didn’t bother relating the fate of that sword.

  I followed the endless marketplace, and the Elhared stories, to the less nice quarter of Fell Green. As things got scruffier, I was glad for the practical attire Lucille had salvaged for me. I was receiving many fewer lewd propositions than I had with the leather I’d originally purchased. I was also glad that Lucille was orbiting the town, keeping an eye on me. Periodically, I glanced up at the sky to check her position. Despite what I had told her about subtlety, given the population I mingled with at the moment, it was comforting to have that sort of backup.

  Finally, as I talked to a merchant selling virility potions so noxious that they made impotence seem attractive by comparison, I had success. The old crone set down a steaming vial of lumpy brown liquid and pointed a crooked finger across the street at a tavern named The Harpy’s Teat.

  “The old bastard just went in there an hour ago.”

  CHAPTER 16

  Up to now, I had been relying on an aura of confidence that was one part con game, one part knowing how to walk around this type of neighborhood, and one part the knowledge that Lucille was above me, watching. It had worked so far, no one questioning the presence of my doubly misplaced self.

  I walked across the threshold of The Harpy’s Teat, and most of that seemed to evaporate. Half the eyes in the place glanced in my direction when I entered.

  This establishment gave me a healthy appreciation for the charms of the dockside tavern where I had first met Elhared. I’m certain that I would have some difficulty finding worse smells along the wharf, and by comparison with the clientele here, the patrons of The Headless Earl were guests at a princess’s tea party. Some of the beverages being served made Mermaid’s Milk look positively appetizing, and the vile concoctions the old crone was selling across the street didn’t seem that bad in retrospect.

  And, unlike The Headless Earl or that dockside tavern, most of the patrons here weren’t human. Walking into those other dens of comparatively bland iniquity as an attractive young woman would raise all sorts of worries. Walking in here, under the dirty gazes of ogres, goblins, imps, and the more feral types of fairies, I not only had to worry about potential rapists, but about someone desiring to gnaw on my bones after the fact.

  My hand slipped down to my belt to rest on the hilt of the dagger I had liberated from one of Baldy’s minions. I wished for the fake Dracheslayer. Useless it might have been, but at least it had looked intimidating. For a few moments, I suspected that the crone across the street had sent me in here as some sick form of entertainment.

  One of the nearest goblins—hairless, green-skinned, wiry, and with hands and feet a size and a half too large for his body—wiped the drool from his lips, got unsteadily to his feet, and weaved toward me.

  “You losht, darlin’?”

  It was hard to tell if the stench was from the goblin’s breath, or from the flagon he held a little too loosely in his hand as he gestured at me.

  “No.” I answered quietly as I pondered ways to quietly extricate myself without escalating things. I figured, right now, most of the eyes on me weren’t yet focusing with predatory intent. At this point it was probably mostly curiosity over what in the Seven Hells someone who looked like me was doing in a place like this.

  “Well, I’sh got a seat for you right here.”

  “No, thank you.”

  As my eyes adjusted and I saw deeper into the establishment, it became clear that, while the nominal business here was providing alcohol, the real business was the operation of various games of chance. Several ogres had already lost interest in me, and were turning back to their card games, and while I had the undivided attention of one goblin, a dozen others were ignoring me in favor of a large game of dice. In the rear, a slick-looking elf took wagers in front of a giant wheel of fortune illustrated with pictures painted by a Tarot aficionado with some very peculiar fetishes.

  And, in front of that wheel, chanting for it to land on the three of tentacles, was the old fart Elhared.

  The crone wasn’t setting me up.

  I took a step forward, and a large, sticky green hand landed on my shoulder. “You not goina turn down my hoshpitality.”

  I’ve said before, all things being equal, I prefer subtlety. If I hadn’t just seen my quarry, I might have engaged the inebriated goblin in another round of witty repartee as I quietly excused myself from the situation. Instead, I drew my dagger and spun around, bringing the hilt up between the goblin’s legs. His yellow eyes widened in surprise as he froze and exhaled.

  Goblins are reportedly more tolerant of pain than humans, so I pulled my fist back and slammed the pommel of my dagger back into the goblin family jewels again.

  He dropped the tankard. It clattered to the sawdust-covered floor, spilling its foul contents.

  The goblin hunched over and started emitting a low groan. I took his hand off my shoulder and turned him around. “You’re drunk,” I told him. I took two steps to get him started back toward the table he came from. “If you’re going to puke, puke on your friends.”

  Safely freed from my admirer, I turned back toward the tavern. Judging from the reaction of the clientele, my dealing with the goblin had been subtle by local standards. I noticed a few places where money changed hands, and most of the eyes that had been watching my little domestic drama returned to more interesting subjects.

  Most, but not all.

  Elhared was looking right at me. His eyes were wide with recognition, and he mouthed something that was more obscenity than incantation.

  We stared at each other for what seemed like a short eternity. It was less than a second, but it was long enough for me to realize what was wrong with this picture.

  That was Elhared’s body, not mine.

  Oh, crap.

  Ersatz El
hared bolted over the gaming table, away from me, scattering chips and causing curses all around. I ran after him.

  It wasn’t the crone who set me up. It was Dudley. Dudley was the one who knew about all the displaced souls running around, and it probably amused him no end to send me after the wrong Elhared. Unless it really was the original Elhared I was chasing, and not a dragon with a gambling addiction.

  Given where I’d found him, and the old man’s state of flight, that seemed unlikely.

  I vaulted over my own set of gaming tables and followed him through the kitchens—and the less said about them, the better. We emerged into an alley behind The Harpy’s Teat, and I caught up. It wasn’t a particularly impressive feat. Despite her short stride, in reasonable footwear, for a short distance, Princess Lucille could probably outrun Frank Blackthorne. Catching up to an old man in heavy robes, aged somewhere between seventy and dead, wasn’t that difficult.

  The fact I tackled him to the ground may have been more impressive, if you didn’t take into account that not only was my quarry ancient, but was inhabited by someone whose only previous experience in physical conflict was predicated on having large talons, jaws that could bite a warhorse in half, and outweighing any potential opponent twenty-to-one. So it wasn’t really a fair fight.

  I straddled his chest, and after a brief slap-fight, I had him pinned to the ground. After trying to lift me off of him and failing, my imitation Elhared’s literal last gasp was to suck in a breath, open his mouth, and exhale long and hard in my face. While the eye-watering stench of old fish and bad teeth was unpleasant, it was nowhere near as disabling as intended.

  I stared at the dragon-in-Elhared’s-clothing incredulously.

  With a sheepish look and a barely audible voice he said, “Yeah. Right. That wouldn’t work, would it?”

  “Enough playing around. Where’s the real wizard?”

  “What real wizard?”

  I slapped him so hard that my own hand went numb.

  “Ow! That really hurt.”