Bad Times in Dragon City Read online

  “You didn’t come find me because of the dragonet.”

  Yabair was many things, but first and foremost he was the Dragon’s elf. I knew the Dragon felt ambivalent about me: grateful that I had saved his child’s life but irritated that the dragonet had imprinted itself on me rather than him.

  I understood. I had mixed feelings about it myself. If I could have changed that from happening, I probably would have.

  I said “probably” because the dragonet had saved both Belle and I from her sister trying to murder us. I appreciated that, and to tell the truth I’d gotten a bit attached to the creature since then. I’d lived alone for the better part of my life, and after our adventuring group had broken up, I didn’t have all that many friends. Having the little guy around felt — well — right.

  Yabair shook his head. “He is safe with the Emperor in the Dragon’s Spire.” As he said these words, he turned to gaze up at the top of the mountain towering high above us.

  For most of my life, I’d ignored the mountain’s peak. No one I knew had ever been up there, and I never thought I’d have any business with the Dragon myself if I could help it. Until I’d left home and started adventuring, I’d never gone any higher up the slope than Wizards Way, and that had only lasted until I’d gotten myself kicked out of the Academy of Arcane Apprentices.

  The Dragon’s Spire had always seemed impossibly high, someplace I’d need wings to reach. The Great Circle, though — the massive stone wall that protected the city from the horrors that lurked in the wilds beyond — had done a far better job of commanding my attention. The stench that rose from Goblintown on hot summer days made that part of town impossible to ignore, and on a breezy day, even worse smells wafted up from the undead bastards forever scratching and scrabbling against the outside of the Great Circle’s cut stone.

  The dragonet had changed that for me. His birth — hatching, I guess — had forced me to visit the Dragon Emperor for the first time, and the fact that he considered me to be one of his parents drew a lot more of the city’s attention to me, whether I wanted it or not. I’d become a lot more civic minded since then.

  “So what brings you down here to haul my mutton from the fire?” I asked.

  “The Council of Wizards demands your presence,” Yabair said, holding his mouth like he wanted to spit out his own tongue. “I have been commanded to escort you to them.”

  “And if I don’t give a damn about their demands?”

  Yabair curled a lip at me. “Then I’d be happy to return you to the company of your friends in that tavern back there and let you resume your evening with them.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I stepped into the chariot. Yabair moved into it on my left and grasped the front rail, taking control of it. As we began to rise into the air, Kai leaped onto the back of the platform and moved off to my right, putting me between himself and the captain.

  I thought Yabair might boot Kai off the chariot right then — or maybe wait until we rose high into the air first. Instead, he pointedly ignored the orc. Unlike most elves, Yabair dealt with other kinds of people on a regular basis, and they instilled no fear or revulsion in him.

  Well, no more revulsion than he had for anyone else.

  The chariot climbed high into the air, rising above bowshot range fast, ensuring that no ambitious killers on the ground below could take a potshot at us. Most people in Dragon City knew better than to try something like that with the Guard, I figured, but I also didn’t want to get shot for being wrong about that, so I appreciated the altitude.

  From up here in the night sky, Goblintown didn’t look so bad, an array of glowglobes and cooking fires offering tiny glimpses of the worst parts of Dragon City otherwise cloaked in darkness. As I shifted my gaze up the mountain, I saw the lights grow brighter and more frequent as the slope rose up through the Village, Big Hill, and even Gnometown.

  Rising past Stronghold Gate, they tapered off. No surprise, as most of the dwarves who lived in that part of the city did so underground. Only the wealthiest of them could afford a window much less a lighted balcony on which they could sit and take in the night air.

  The Elven Reaches spiraled above the Stronghold Gate’s steely arch, huge estates fashioned from living trees that were older than anyone living in Dragon City — besides the elves that tended them, and the Dragon himself. The lights there sparkled like stars in the night sky and seemed almost as cold and distant.

  Sometimes clouds obscured everything from the Stronghold Gate on up, but on a clear night like this you could see all the way to the Dragon’s Spire, the very peak of the mountain. It glowed with a golden warmth generated by the Dragon Emperor’s own scorching heat. They didn’t need glowglobes up there. The Dragon’s blazing scales provide enough illumination all night long.

  I glanced at Kai. The vista sweeping out before us didn’t seem to impress him at all. He had a white-knuckled grip on the railing in front of him instead, as if he feared that Yabair might flip the chariot over at any point and dump us to our deaths.

  “If he wanted us dead, he’d have left us in Goblintown,” I said.

  Kai snorted, not meeting my gaze. “You’re one lucky son of a bitch, Max. And an ungrateful one too.”

  Thinking back over how my night had gone so far, I didn’t see any evidence for that. “How do you figure?”

  He sneered at me. “Didn’t I just save your life back there?”

  I almost choked, and a stab of pain from my cracked rib reminded me that I should be furious with Kai. I probably would have been but for two things. One, I already knew Kai was scum, and I’d gone to the card game with him anyhow. And two, I was too relieved to be alive at this point.

  Still. “Didn’t you try to sell me to that ogre and his pals to settle a gambling debt?”

  “That’s not the point.”

  I widened my eyes. “You set me up for a painful death, and that’s not the point?”

  “I wasn’t going to let them kill you.” He shook his head so fast it seemed like it was vibrating. “They told me they were going to toss you over the Wall. I had it all worked out.”

  I had to be missing something there. “And you don’t think that would have made me just as dead?”

  Kai allowed himself a tight grin, and he reached back and patted his shotgun’s stock. “I was going to have them put you on the edge of the Wall, and then I was going to knock you off of it with this.

  “That’s an odd way to try to save someone’s life.”

  Kai reached into a pocket on the front of his grimy shirt and produced a single sky-blue shotgun shell. “I was going to use this,” he said. “I had Kells make it up for me special.”

  Kells sold me my explosive shells too. He’d served as the armorer for our group back in our adventuring days. No one had a better hand for enchanting ammunition.

  I took it from Kai and examined it. Magical runes encircled the outside of the shell, painted there by hand, and other mystical letters had been stamped in the shell’s brass bottom. It didn’t have any instructions on it, but using a shell like this was dirt simple.

  Load into weapon. Point at target. Fire.

  “I still don’t see how this wouldn’t just make me that much more dead.”

  Kai snatched it back and stuffed it into his shirt. “It’s enchanted.”

  “I can see that.”

  “With a flight spell.”

  “Huh?”

  Kai gave me a clever grin. “I shoot you with it, and it casts a flight spell on anything it hits. You fall off the wall, wait until you’re in a dark spot, and then just fly to safety.”

  I grimaced at the thought of that. “And you don’t think the pellets in there would hurt me?”

  “I didn’t think of that, but Kells did, of course. What’s the good of making a dead man fly?”

  I rolled my eyes at this. “You don’t think maybe you should have told me about this at some point?”

  “I’d have gotten around to it,” Kai said, a gl
int in his eye. “If I’d have told you, you’d have blown it for me. You’re not much of a liar.”

  I tried to muster up some indignation at the insult but couldn’t manage it. Whether it was true or not, I didn’t much care. There are worse flaws.

  “Why?” Yabair said.

  Both Kai and I snapped our heads around to stare at the elf. He didn’t look back at us, keeping his eyes focused on the sky ahead of us instead. I had no idea he’d been listening much less that he’d care to comment.

  Kai laughed. “I owed those jackasses a lot of gold. This was the best way I could figure out of it.”

  Yabair shook his head, frustrated and impatient. “Not ‘Why did you gamble away money you don’t have?’ or even ‘Why did you think they’d let either of you live?’ Rather ‘Why did you pick Gibson to sell out?’”

  I turned back toward Kai and gestured for him to give the question an honest reply.

  Kai shrugged. “I don’t know. How many people do you think I could willingly drag down to Goblintown with me anyhow?”

  He had a point. The times I’d joined him there, I’d often been the only person around with skin that wasn’t some shade of green. He might have been able to haul Moira down with him, but she was usually too smart for something like that. Usually.

  “Was it your idea?” Yabair said. “Or did they ask for Gibson by name?”

  That brought Kai up short as he considered what the elf meant. “Now that you mention it —”

  “They set you up,” Yabair said. “They brought you in, cleaned you out, and pressured you into giving up Gibson.”

  Kai’s jaw dropped in disgust as he realized that the captain was right.

  “Did they tell you why they wanted me?” I glared at Kai.

  He nodded. “They were going to toss you over the Wall. Feed you to the zombies.”

  I suppressed a shudder at that. I’d killed enough of the shamblers in my time, and I’d seen what they could do to someone they got their teeth into.

  “Why?”

  Kai snorted at me like I was an especially slow goblin. “Because they like that sort of thing.”

  “They’re in league with the Ruler of the Dead,” Yabair said, still not even glancing at either of us. “They meant to sacrifice you to her.”

  That churned my stomach good. The Ruler of the Dead was the greatest necromancer the world had ever known. She and her undead servants ruled over the entire land here, other than this fortified patch of rock we liked to call Dragon City. Given half a chance, she’d have battered a hole in the Great Circle and taken the rest of us under her wings. And Kai’s gambling pals had wanted to serve me up as an appetizer for that feast.

  We rose through the sky in silence. Yabair had never been one for idle conversation, and I didn’t know how to respond to that little revelation. Kai seemed to have made his first smart decision of the day by choosing to keep his mouth shut.

  Now that we’d gained plenty of altitude, Yabair had set the flying chariot on a beeline straight for the Academy. The levitating system of gigantic baskets that brought riders from the Village up to the jutting spear of rock on which Wizards Way sat had stalled out for the night, but lights burned bright and sharp atop every one of the titanic towers that stabbed up from the narrow plateau, each of the structures competing on behalf of their owners to be considered the tallest or most ostentatious of the lot. Brightly colored pennants coated with obscure heraldry I’d never bothered to learn to decipher snapped in the magically generated wind there, making them seem far more dramatic and important than they had any right to claim.

  The wizards claimed that these towers were symbols of their power. To me it seemed like they were trying to compensate for other shortcomings.

  “Message incoming,” Yabair said.

  “What?” I looked up and peered into the darkness. “How do you mean?”

  He pointed to a faint light hanging high and to our right. It took me a moment to focus on it, and another to realize that it was coming right for us.

  An instant later, a glowing arrow smacked right into the front of the chariot, burying its tip just under the rail. Kai jumped about a foot, but Yabair didn’t flinch a bit. I admit I had to fight the urge to duck behind the chariot’s railing for fear of another arrow coming in just a few inches higher.

  “Get that, would you?” said Yabair.

  I reached down and yanked the arrow from the front of the chariot. It had a note tied to it with a red ribbon. I undid the ribbon and unfurled the note.

  It was addressed to me. I read it once and cursed. Then I read it a second time and cursed again, with more feeling this time.

  “We can’t go to meet with the Wizards Council right now,” I said.

  “I have my orders,” Yabair said in a tone designed to cut off any chance of debate.

  I held the scroll up in front of me so he could read it. “You have new orders,” I said. “Straight from the house of Sanguigno. Belle needs me. Now.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  “I don’t care for this,” Yabair said as he brought the chariot down in front of the Sanguigno estate, high in the Elven Reaches.

  I couldn’t say I disagreed with him. I’d never been up to Belle’s family home at this time of night. Humans were barely tolerated here during the day. Walking around here in the dark seemed like an open invitation for any elf who spotted me to toss me off the side of the mountain.

  Kai would be shot on sight. Realizing that made me want to invite him to come along with me into the house.

  “You going to wait for me here?” I asked Yabair as I hopped off the back of the chariot.

  He looked down his nose at me and snorted. “I am a captain in the Imperial Dragon’s Guard, not a taxi service.”

  “Until you get orders to pick me up one place and drop me off somewhere else.” I couldn’t help drive that point home and twist the needle good.

  “I think that’s more like a courier service,” Kai said, joining in.

  Yabair ignored us both and stared up at the stars for a moment. “By the time you finish here, it will be too late to bring you to the Wizards Council. I will inform them that they can expect you in the morning.”

  Kai hadn’t gotten out of the chariot yet. He shifted from foot to foot there and gave Yabair a wary stare.

  “Can you drop me off someplace a little less, um—“

  “Clean?” Yabair frowned. “I’m sure I can find an empty cell for you in the nearest precinct house.”

  “I was hoping for something with a fewer bars on the windows.”

  Yabair didn’t say a word. He just took the chariot up into the air and sailed off into the night with the orc cowering against the farthest part of the railing.

  I didn’t know how I’d get back to the Quill, but I’d worry about that when I needed to. First I had to deal with Belle.

  I unrolled her message to me again. It read:

  To Max Gibson, from House Sanguigno:

  We require your presence at our family estate immediately upon your receipt of this message. We are told that you may be in the company of Captain Yabair of the Imperial Dragon’s Guard. If that is so, please inform the captain that he is to escort you to the Sanguigno home with all due haste.

  Your friend,

  Bellezza Sanguigno

  Despite the fact that the entire message didn’t say a damn thing about what Belle wanted or what could possibly be so urgent that she needed to have Yabair fetch me to her place in the middle of the night, the bit that mystified me the most was “your friend.” Once upon a time, Belle and I had been friends — and for a while much more than that — but we’d gone for over a decade without speaking much to each other. That had only changed recently, with the murder of the family of our mutual adventuring partner, the long-dead Andreas Gütmann. And then when I’d been forced to shoot her sister Fiera, who was threatening to kill us both, we’d gone right back to not speaking to each other again.

  I suppose that’s not fai
r. I’d have been happy to speak with her, but she’d made it painfully clear she didn’t feel the same way. This was the first contact we’d had with each other since that damn day.

  I wondered if I should have had Yabair stop off and retrieve the dragonet for me before leaving me here. I supposed not. He’d burned Fiera to a crisp, after all. I’d only put the bullet in her to make a quick end to it. I don’t think he’d have been welcome in the Sanguigno home, although as the Dragon’s only heir, they’d have been hard pressed to refuse him entrance.

  I stood there for a moment and stared at the entrance to the Sanguigno estate. Like most elven homes, I had a hard time wrapping my head around it. It was mostly made of trees that the Sanguignos had grown together over the years with a mixture of patience and magic that boggled my mind. Belle had tried to explain it to me before, and I understood the theory, but the idea of casting tiny little spells every day over decades if not centuries to coax pleasing and useful shapes out of trees when all you really needed was a good saw and a hammer to get the job done threw me.

  “You’re too impatient,” she’d said.

  “Me?” I had pretended to be offended.

  “No,” she’d said with a wistful smile. “Humans. All of you.”

  That’s the hazard of living a short life, I supposed. If you didn’t take the shortcuts, you’d never see the results.

  I’d only been up in the Elven Reaches a handful of times, much less to Belle’s home, and it had never amounted to much more than breaking my heart. I knew the smart thing to do would be to turn around and go home. Whatever kind of trouble Belle had gotten herself into — and I knew that would be the only reason she would call for me like this — it was her problem, not mine. I didn’t need the drama.

  Right?

  I walked toward the door to knock on it, then spun on my heel. I couldn’t do this to myself. I had enough problems of my own, including a dragonet who was probably wondering where I might be. Even creatures like dragons that could live for thousands of years were impatient in their youth, it seemed.