Hard Times in Dragon City Read online

  “Thank you,” she said once she’d found her voice again. “For my little girl’s life.”

  I blushed at that. “I just wish —” I started to say, but words failed me. She wiped the tears from her cheeks and then patted me on the arm to indicate she knew.

  “Can I get you anything else, dear?” she said, her voice raw and weary.

  “This is all fantastic,” I said, gesturing toward the breakfast. “Can you send Nit up when he gets a moment?”

  “Of course,” she said as she headed for the door. “Anything you want, Max. Anything at all.”

  I set to that food and coffee like I’d been trapped outside the Great Circle for a week. I’d just about finished it when Nit appeared in my doorway. “Everything all right?” he said.

  “You been to visit Moira yet?”

  “Nora has. Finn and Clancy are over there with her now.”

  “Thanks for getting me to bed.”

  “Least I could do.”

  I took a long slug of my coffee while I waited for him to tell me what I wanted to hear. He wasn’t about to start the conversation though, so I gave it a shot.

  “I need the chest, Nit.”

  He gave me a curious look. “And what chest might that be?”

  “You know damn well what I’m talking about. Moira’s chest. I had it shrunk down in my pocket.”

  “Oh,” Nit said. “That.”

  The man could have been a criminal mastermind, but for the fact that his face always betrayed him. Blushing, he fished around in his pocket for a moment and produced the tiny chest. He set it on the edge of my desk.

  “I’d thought that since it was Moira’s I’d just save you the trouble of returning it to her when you were done with it.”

  “Uh-huh.” I let the chest sit there where he’d put it.

  “What’s in it, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “Something valuable enough that your daughter lost her hand over it.”

  Nit’s nervous smile transforming into a scowl. He glared at the chest. I could see greed and anger warring it out on his face.

  On one hand, Nit had to hate the thing that had gotten his daughter into so much trouble and wound up causing her to be hurt so badly. On the other, if the thing inside the chest was so valuable, then he wanted a piece of it. Part of him wanted to destroy the contents of the chest, while the other wanted to take it and fence it.

  “I’ll take care of it,” I said. “Just leave it.”

  Nit gave me a relieved nod, happy to be spared having to wrestle any longer with that dilemma. “You’ll see that Moira gets it back then?” he asked.

  “If that’s what’s best for her.”

  “All right, Max,” he said as he headed for the door. “I’ll trust your judgment on this one. Thanks.”

  Alone again, I concentrated on polishing off the rest of my coffee and wishing there was some kind of spell that would negate a dragonfire hangover. Since the cause of the problem was magical in the first place, though, magic didn’t work so well against it. I can’t tell you how many times I’d tried.

  As far as Nit and Nora and even Yabair were concerned, everything was fine. I’d found the assassin who’d slaughtered the Gütmanns, I’d administered justice, and I’d brought Moira back alive, if in two pieces. The only problem was that none of it added up.

  Who’d sent the killer? If it had been Bellezza, why would she have sent Moira with her payoff for Carsten and Guenter too? Did she have some kind of change of heart once she’d already sent Moira on her way?

  Maybe she’d wanted to clean up her loose ends. If the Guard had found the dragon’s egg there at the scene of the crime, they’d have probably guessed that the Gütmanns had been killed over the boys’ dragon essence operation. They might have thought that anyhow if they’d dug deep enough, but the egg would have sealed it.

  Maybe I didn’t have enough information about what was going on. I considered going to visit Moira, but I didn’t know if she’d be able to tell me much more than she already had. I could have turned to Yabair with my concerns, but I really enjoyed having the Guard out of the picture, at least temporarily. If the Dragon had any idea the egg was still missing and who’d had it, I knew I’d hear from Yabair in short order anyhow.

  In the end, there was only one place I could go to get the answers I needed. I had to head upslope, as far up the mountain as I’d ever been before.

  I had to talk with Bellezza.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  I wasn’t welcome as far up the mountain as Bellezza’s home, but few humans who didn’t qualify as servants ever were. I’d never let that stop me before.

  My head still ached like the dragonfire had shrunk my brain and it was rattling around loose inside my skull, but at least it had stopped pulsating in pain to its own private beat. With my unshaven face and bloodshot eyes, I looked a bit like some of the zombies that had been chasing me around out in the wild, but even on my best day I’d never match up to an ugly elf, so I pushed any worries about that aside. It’s part of being human, hungover or not.

  Before I left, I hid the shrunken chest in my office. I pulled open the center drawer of my desk and cast a spell on the chest that worked something like the wall-climbing spell I’d used on myself the night before. Then I slipped the chest into the drawer and stuck it to the underside of my desk’s top. Anyone who opened the drawer wouldn’t find it unless they decided to destroy the entire desk.

  I hoped. With magic, it’s hard to tell who can find what. There were all sorts of detection spells that people might be able to use to find the chest, and I didn’t have the time or skills to protect it against every one of them. Fortunately, I knew that Danto had woven many defensive spells into the chest back during our adventuring days, which was why Moira had made use of it in the first place. With any luck, they’d still hold.

  I hit up Nora for a refill of my coffee mug and sat at one of the tables in front of the Barrelrider to drink it and take in the day. Someone watching me might have thought I was basking in the glow of a job well done. After all, I’d found the killer and saved my friend, right?

  I just didn’t feel much like smiling.

  I considered pouring a little dragonfire into my coffee — a scale from the dragon that had scorched me — but I decided against it. I have nothing against drinking early in the day. It’s always quitting time somewhere, right? But I needed my all my wits about me for this.

  I flagged a passing carpet and found the cabbie pleased to discover that she’d be taking me to a beautiful part of town. I admit, it made for a nice change from having to argue with hacks to take me downslope.

  The air grew thinner and colder as we zipped up the side of the mountain. The architecture below us changed as well. We moved over the honeycombed hills of the Big Burrow, over the low buildings of Gnometown, and wound past the towers of Wizards Way. From there, we soared over the rocky outcroppings and dramatic balconies of the Stronghold until we reached the Heights.

  Elves rarely built anything when they could grow it instead, up to and including their homes. To them, that was something short-timers like humans bothered with because we didn’t have the patience to do it the proper way. They’d coaxed palaces, mansions, and estates of woven trees and vines out of the rocky soil that clung to the mountain’s higher reaches. These stretched all the way up to the tree line, beyond which nothing taller than grass could grow without the assistance of a magical thumb — and which the Dragon claimed as his territory alone.

  The cabby brought me right to the Sanguigno estate, a sprawling collection of living buildings and stark courtyards with one of the best views of the mountain below and the wild plains beyond. I told her to wait for me there, and she smiled with delight. I didn’t think anyone inside the building would be so happy to see me today.

  I arrived at Bellezza’s place unannounced, but the human butler opened the door for me despite that. The old man harrumphed at me as he stood there in his formal uniform an
d stared at me as if the family cat had left me there dead on the doorstep. His whiskers had gone from gray to white since the last time I’d seen him, and the lines in his face had deepened into furrows. Life among the elves supposedly added years to your life, but he was still human in the end.

  “Good to see you again, too, Ford,” I said as I shouldered my way past him. He put out a hand to stop me, but I wasn’t having any of it. “Where is she?”

  “Lady Bellezza is indisposed at the moment,” Ford said in a gruff voice. “However, she did request that I alert her the moment you arrived.” His sour expression told me how wise he thought that order might be.

  I spread my arms wide. “And?”

  He scowled at me. “Allow me to show you to the parlor.”

  He led me along the gleaming floor of the cavernous foyer into a slightly smaller room filled with sprawling couches, lounges, and settees fashioned from wheat-colored wicker and overstuffed cushions soft as the clouds that sometimes enshrouded and permeated the place. Sunlight streamed into the room through the wide opening in the southern wall that led out onto a wide balcony exposed to both the warmth of the light and the chill of the winds that knifed through everything at this altitude. I strolled out to take in the view as Ford left me there, and I spotted a glowing bottle of sunwine next to a set of glasses sitting atop a high table nestled against the estate’s outer wall.

  The weak air up here made my head hurt even worse than before, and I decided to help myself to a bit of the sunwine to take the edge off. It was hard to find the stuff downslope, even if you could afford it, and I hadn’t enjoyed any in far too long. I poured myself a double and raised it to my lips.

  The bright liquid felt like the opposite of dragonfire as I drank it. It tasted like a warm breeze on a sunny day, and rather than burning my throat, it made it feel better. When it reached my stomach, I felt a sense of wellness and contentment spread throughout me, and my day started to look a lot better.

  I was still savoring my drink when I heard footsteps rushing up behind me, small feet padding along the foyer’s open floor. I turned around to see an elf coming straight at me through the parlor. She had hair the color of the sunwine, and her ice-blue eyes blazed at me with just about as much energy as the liquor had inside it.

  “Max Gibson!” she said to me with a snarl that marred her perfect features. “You are not welcome here!”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  “Good to see you again, Fiera,” I said. I allowed myself a nasty little smirk I knew would fan the flames of her fury. She’d never liked me much in the first place, and I felt inclined to return that favor.

  She came to a halt in front of me and stabbed a finger toward the estate’s exit. “I gave strict orders that you were never to be allowed into my home again,” she said. “You will leave immediately.”

  I slugged back the last of the sunwine in my glass, then reached for the bottle again. “Damn shame that you’re not the one in charge of this house, now, isn’t it?”

  I filled my glass again, then raised to it her as if in a toast. She stood there and steamed at me, her mind racing over ways she could drive me out.

  “Must be tough being the little sister way up here in the thin air.” I gestured at the whole of the estate with my glass. “Every need met. Almost every wish you might have taken care of. Having me here, that’s like finding a spot on your fork, isn’t it?”

  She scowled at me. “In that you are disgusting and yet ultimately pointless?”

  “I’ll take what victories I can get.”

  She leaned toward me. “You’ll take your leave of here now.”

  I took a long pull on my glass of sunwine and then leaned right back at her, getting square into her face. If she thought I was disgusting, I was happy to use that against her. “Or what?” I said.

  She bared her teeth at me, and for a moment I wondered if she might actually try to bite me. “Leave my sister alone,” she said.

  “Your sister is the one who invited me,” I said. “Maybe she wants me —” I was about to finish with “here,” but Fiera tried to slap me before I could finish.

  Most elves are so fast that I couldn’t do much more than stare at them if they were to try something like that. I usually like to have a wand in my hand and a little distance between us to give me a fair shot, but I’d let my dislike for Fiera draw me in too close. Still, she telegraphed her swing so much I was able to catch her by the wrist before she could land the blow.

  Or maybe the sunwine helped. I don’t know.

  She tried to pull back her arm, but I held her fast. “Let go of me!” she said.

  I knew she only wanted me to do that so she could try to hit me again, but as she pulled back from me again, I gave her what she wanted. She tumbled backward and fell flat on her rump.

  “So much for the elegance of elves,” I said. I polished off the last of my sunwine and set the empty glass back down on the high table. I didn’t offer Fiera a hand up, not that she would have taken it.

  “When I tell my sister that you dared to lay a hand on me —”

  “What?” Bellezza said as she breezed out onto the balcony. “That you were trying to seduce him by attacking him?” Her eyes sparkled with amusement at her sister’s dismay at being caught in the middle of a threat.

  “You know me better than that.” Fiera glared at her sister and me like a cornered alley cat.

  “He’s a human, Fiera.” Bellezza’s voice sounded like music to me, but I could see how the sound grated on her sister’s ears. “He may not understand your ways. Then again, no one else does either, so perhaps it’s worth a try.”

  Fiera looked like she might take a swing at her sister next. She got to her feet on her own and brushed herself off with more grace than I could have managed in a ballroom dance. “You go ahead and keep doing your best to ruin our family,” she said to Bellezza. “Just don’t expect me to sit and watch.”

  With that, she stormed off in as much of an angry rush as she’d come in. Bellezza turned to me, a hint of a blush on her cheeks. “My apologies for my sister’s behavior,” she said. “She’s not normally that aggressive.”

  “She hasn’t seen me in long time.”

  I stepped back and took Bellezza in. She was just as gorgeous as ever. I’d managed to put her out of my mind, but it had taken me the better part of the last ten years to manage it. I wondered how I’d ever pull it off again.

  “I hear that Moira is in the hospital.” Bellezza walked to the balcony’s railing of woven branches and gazed out at the city below. “Did you have anything to do with that?”

  I joined her at the railing. No matter how amazing the view might be, though, I couldn’t tear my eyes from her. “I didn’t put her there. I just made sure she got taken care of.”

  She reached out and put her hand on mine on the railing. “For that you have my undying gratitude.”

  I liked hearing that from an elf. When they said “undying,” they meant it in a way I never could. I especially liked hearing it from Bellezza.

  “You’re welcome,” I said.

  I wanted to bask in the glow of her approval for a lifetime. I hated that what I needed to say next was sure to ruin it. I struggled for a moment, trying to figure out a way I could avoid it, but I didn’t see any way to manage it.

  Soon the silence between us became too much for even Bellezza, and she broke it. “Do you ever see any of the others?”

  I nodded, then proceeded to ignore her question. “There are a few things about this that don’t add up.”

  She sighed, frowned, then turned to face me full on. I felt like someone had turned out the sun. “Such as?”

  “The orc who killed the Gütmanns was a hired hand.”

  “So I gathered.”

  “Do you have any idea who sent him?”

  “Are you asking if it was me?”

  I didn’t respond to that.

  “How much did Moira tell you?”

  “Does that matt
er?”

  She gripped the railing a bit tighter and returned to taking in the view. I could see eagles circling below us.

  “I suppose not.” She hesitated for a moment before she set her jaw and came to a decision.

  “We’ve had hard times here,” she said. “That’s the reason I took up adventuring with you and the others in the first place. My family, we needed the money.”

  “And you’ve already run through everything we made.”

  She glanced back at the estate sprawling all around her. “Maintaining a place like this is expensive. My father made some investments with the money, but he’s never been good at such things.”

  “They didn’t pan out.”

  She grimaced. “I couldn’t see us put out on the streets, or working for some other elf family. I don’t know if my mother would have survived the humiliation.”

  “So you took to selling dragon essence.”

  She looked away and nodded. “I knew the Gütmanns needed money too. Carsten and Guenter sold the stuff. I just supplied it.”

  “But you decided to get out.”

  “I hated it. I knew someday we would be caught, and that would bring down my entire family. As soon as we were on our feet, I looked for a way out. The Gütmanns weren’t ready to quit, though, so I decided to give my source of the dragon essence to them.”

  “And someone just coincidentally sent in an assassin to slaughter them on that same night.”

  She finally turned toward me, her eyes wide and trembling. “You must believe me. I had nothing to do with that.”

  “Think a judge will feel the same way?”

  She gave me a hard look. “Are you going to speak with one?”

  I shook my head. “Captain Yabair doesn’t know about the egg. He considers the case closed.”