Dragons Luck

by Robert Asprin

  Val grinned, and Mai smiled secretively. With dramatic motions, Mai draped the back of one hand over her forehead and held the other out toward Val, fingers spread. Val tensed as the motions were aimed at her stomach.

  “The wise one sees all and knows all. What lurks in your secret heart! Hear her words and tremble,” Mai said.

  “Get on with it.”

  “Don’t tell Griffen.”

  Val stopped in her tracks and stared at Mai.

  “I have to tell him. He’s my brother, and the last thing he needs after he starts to get everything under control is me surprising him with this.”

  “Exactly; right now he’s struggling. He has just started to gain proper confidence, and already burdens are being heaped onto him. This could be the very thing that overwhelms him completely,” Mai said.

  “If I don’t tell him, it leaves him in danger. If Nathaniel comes back because of this, Griffen won’t have any time to prepare.”

  “Why would Nathaniel come back? Even if he planned this, which I doubt, how could he know? You will worry Griffen for nothing, put his already taxed nerves even more on edge.”

  “But...”

  Val couldn’t say it. Keeping a secret like that from her brother would be nearly impossible. They were too close, and the strain on her would be great.

  “I know it will be hard,” Mai said, and frowned. “But if you tell him, he will want to protect you. He will charge off to find Nathaniel, charge right into Melinda’s territory. This way you protect him, not the other way around.”

  Valerie sank into a chair again and stared at Mai. Her mind whirled, but a part of her knew that Mai was exactly right. Between protecting her big brother and being honest with him, protection came first. She nodded.

  “It’s for the best,” Mai said, and got up to hug Val again. “Trust me.”

  After a moment’s silence, Mai spoke again.

  “So, are you going to keep it?”

  Val sighed, then shook her head.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m still thinking about that one.”

  Five

  Waiting in front of Tower Records, carrying a copy of the Times-Picayune as he had been instructed, Flynn spent his time surveying the passing crowd. Mostly they were obvious out-of-towners, suited conventioneers, and a smattering of tourists in shorts and T-shirts. Here and there were locals, including service-industry types in their tuxedo shirts and black pants, and costumed street performers, all getting ready to give their best try at moving funds from the pockets of visitors into their own. All in all, it reminded Flynn vaguely of Disneyland only without the rides.

  Mostly, he was idly curious if he could spot his hired muscle before they contacted him. In the past, when he had hired rough-off artists, they fell into one of two categories. Either they were well dressed and soft-spoken with dead eyes that looked at you without seeing a person, or obvious muscle flexers, who swaggered with the knowledge that just their appearance was intimidating. For the present job, Flynn was hoping for the cold, calculating type. He had a feeling that swaggering bullyboys wouldn’t get too far with the McCandles lad.

  One of the rolling boom boxes was coming slowly up the street, a dark sedan with the sound system cranked up to the point where it assaulted the pedestrians like a strong wind. A strong, noisy wind. Flynn eyed it with distaste. It was playing rap music. Of course. Not for the first time he found himself wondering why those who liked rap music felt obliged to share it with everyone in a four-block radius, while those whose taste ran to classical music were content to listen to it through the earphones of a Walkman or iPod.

  To his surprise, the mobile noise pollution pulled over to the curb next to him and stopped. The passenger-side window rolled down, exposing the face of a young black man, late teens or early twenties.

  “You Flynn?” The question was half-shouted over the music.

  Flynn realized with dismay that this was the contact he was waiting for. For a moment, he was tempted to deny his identity and walk away. Then, with a mental shrug, he decided to go ahead with it. When in Rome.

  He nodded his agreement.

  “Get in the back and let’s talk.”

  Opening the door to the backseat, Flynn wondered how they were supposed to talk over the racket the sound system was making. To his surprise, the driver, a thin black man even younger than the one who had first addressed him, turned the music off without being asked even before they pulled away from the curb.

  “Hear tell you’re lookin’ to put the hurt on someone,” the passenger-side rider said.

  “There’s someone I want made an example of,” Flynn said, carefully. “Hospitalized or dead. Doesn’t make any difference to me. If things are the same here as other places in the country, hospitalized costs more.”

  That was standard for rough-off work. Just hospitalizing someone meant the musclemen had to know what they were doing. It also left the victim alive to identify them and possibly press charges. In short, it usually cost more to have someone’s arm broken than it did to have them killed.

  “Either way, it’ll cost,” said the passenger.

  “Cash,” added the driver.

  “I know,” Flynn said. “I’ve got the money with me.”

  There was a moment’s silence.

  “ ’Course, we could just stick a gun in your face and take the money,” the passenger said, casually. “Save ourselves a bit of work.”

  Flynn heaved a mental sigh and let his glamour flow out.

  “Just to keep things simple, let’s pretend we’ve all done things like this before,” he said with a smile. “Now I do a lot of work away from my home base. Over the years, I’ve developed a method for finding . . . shall we say, special help when I’m in a strange town. Back home, part of what I do is to provide certain of my clients with various types of illegal substances. If I need help, what I do is call home to my regular supplier. He in turn contacts one of the handlers in the area I’m in and arranges a meet, which is why we’re talking now.”

  He leaned back in his seat.

  “If anything goes wrong at that meet, both my supplier and his local contact will be upset because they’re getting a piece of the action. The local man is particularly upset because he’s guaranteed the people I’m meeting, and if they get cute, he ends up looking bad. Maybe with a new enemy he doesn’t want.”

  He paused for a moment for that to sink in before continuing.

  “It might interest you to know that our local contact is impressed enough with my supplier that he offered to provide the needed help for free. I turned him down because I believe in paying people top dollar when they do me a favor. Just remember, though, whatever price we agree on is definitely going to mean more money for you than if I had taken him up on his offer. Now then, shall we get down to talking business?”

  Again, there was a moment of silence.

  “The price depends on the job,” the passenger said at last, a little sulkily. “We’d have to charge extra to go after someone here in the Quarter. The cops don’t like it ’cause it scares the tourists.”

  “I expected that,” Flynn said. “I am thinking about the Quarter, but the target’s a local. It could be explained as a grudge fight instead of random violence.”

  “That still could be a problem,” the passenger said, gaining confidence as the negotiations progressed. “That ups the chance that he knows us or that we might be seen by someone who knows us. Seems like everybody knows everybody down here.”

  “Maybe,” Flynn said. “But he’s only been down here a couple of months. He’s probably not as well connected as the longtime residents.”

  “We’ll see,” the passenger said, judiciously. “This guy got a name?”

  “He’s a young kid, early twenties, just out of college,” Flynn said. “Like I said, he only moved down here a few months ago. Name of McCandles.”

  In a sudden move, the driver pulled over to the curb and stopped the vehicle.

 
The passenger turned in his seat to stare directly at Flynn.

  “McCandles?” he said. “Are you talkin’ about Griffen McCandles?”

  “That’s right,” Flynn said. “Why? Do you know him?”

  “Get out of my car.”

  The statement was made with such finality that Flynn was startled.

  “I don’t understand,” he said. “What’s the problem?”

  “The problem is that either you don’t know who you’re talkin’ about, or you’re some kind of special dumb,” the passenger said, shaking his head. “Well, we ain’t dumb, and there’s no way we’re goin’ after Griffen McCandles. That man is protected big-time . . . and I don’t just mean the cops. Word is he has supernatural help. If TeeBo knew who you had in mind, there’s no way he would have even had us talk to you. Now get out of my car, and I mean now. You want to go after Griffen McCandles, I don’t even want to be seen talkin’ to you. Now get out.”

  Standing on the sidewalk again, Flynn watched the car drive off. If the McCandles boy had built that much of a reputation in just a few months, then maybe George wasn’t exaggerating when he described the young dragon as “formidable.”

  One thing was certain, though. If Flynn was going to continue with his plan, he couldn’t rely on local contacts. He’d have to try another tactic. Maybe import someone.

  Six

  It was the silence that first caught Griffen’s attention. A bar is never completely quiet, a French Quarter bar least of all. The Irish pub was no different. Still, a sudden drop in the constant background noise caught and held his attention.

  He couldn’t immediately track the source of the change. People were still chatting. The music, never Irish, still played. A couple pretended to shoot pool on the back table between their flirting. All this flashed before his attention, then he looked down. Looked down, and saw the dogs.

  There were three of them. A high number for the pub, but he had seen worse. Griffen had gotten used to the fact that dog owners in the Quarter tended to take their animals everywhere. Sometimes, when a particularly yappy bunch came in, it annoyed the hell out of him. Usually not, though. The sounds of puppies at play had become “normal” to him. Part of the background noise that made a happy bar.

  These three had been doing their part. Running from patron to patron, looking for attention. Wrestling with each other over a bone one of the chefs had brought for them when she got off shift. It had been the sudden stop in their antics that had caught Griffen’s attention. All three now sat in a line in front of one of the entrances. Sat, and stared.

  That was enough to bring Griffen fully on guard. Even though no one else seemed to be paying attention. Griffen turned slightly away from the bar, freeing his legs in case he needed to move quickly. He only relaxed slightly as the door opened, and Slim walked in. He didn’t turn back to the bar.

  Slim was a tall, thin man whose skin always looked darker because of the pristine white suit he always wore. He was one of the Quarter’s street performers. A living statue, with red, white, and blue stripes on his tie and the band of his tall, white top hat. He was also one of the few humans gifted with the ability to control animals.

  As soon as he was in the bar, the dogs pounced. Griffen had experienced similar reactions, and expected Slim to calm them as he tended to. Instead, Slim plopped down onto the barroom floor and spent several minutes scratching and rolling with the excited beasts. The dogs’ owners glanced down to see who was riling up their pets, then went back to their drinks with wry smiles.

  The play stopped so abruptly that another lull rolled through the bar. If Griffen hadn’t been watching closely, he would have missed the slight change in Slim’s expression completely. One moment the man had been covered in tail-wagging dogs, the next he was alone. Each canine went back to its owner’s side and lay down, as calm as it had been excited. All from what appeared to Griffen as an instant’s concentration. Slim’s brow barely furrowed.

  Slim stood up and brushed off his suit. He nodded to the bartender, who didn’t seem to mind that the dogs had gotten the first greeting. Then he picked up the large, white bucket that he used to collect his tips and headed toward Griffen.

  “Can I have some words with you, Mr. Griffen?” Slim said, nodding to one of the tables set a bit apart from the bar.

  Griffen had to admit to himself that Slim’s entrance had impressed him. Particularly the subtlety, the complete lack of interest anyone had shown. Griffen’s own animal control was a skill he was still developing. Being a dragon seemed to give him a boost in strength and power, but his control was still shaky. Slim was a natural.

  “Sure, Slim.”

  Griffen gathered up his drink and went over to the table as Slim reached into his bucket for a few ones to buy his own drink.

  “Tell me something, Slim,” the younger man said, as the entertainer joined him. “How come nobody bats an eyelash when you do something like that?”

  Slim looked over at one of the sleeping dogs, which twitched lightly in its sleep. It seemed to calm under the man’s attention.

  “Well, hell, this here’s the French Quarter. ’Sides, everyone does know ol’ Slim has a way with chillen and animals.”

  “Then why don’t you use your talents in your act? Bring a dog or bird or something into the bit, and the tourists will eat it up.”

  “Why don’t you do some fire-breathin’ in Jackson Square? Tourists will eat it up.”

  Griffen was taken aback by the sudden harshness in the man’s tone. He reminded himself Slim had threatened him before. That he was, in his own way, a dangerous man. Even with his own powers to protect him, Griffen felt somewhat vulnerable.

  “Some things ain’t given to us to make the tourists laugh. Or to fill the pockets, ya hear?” Slim went on.

  “Sorry, Slim, I didn’t mean any offense,” Griffen said.

  “Well . . . no, guess you didn’t, Mr. Griffen. Sorry, it’s a sore spot. Not everyone thinks the same way ’mongst folks like me. I remember this here fine gal in New York did just that. Lovely girl, worked with pigeons, but didn’t hold that ’gainst her none. ’Course she also had squirrels. Picked pockets and the like. Gots into all sorts of trouble . . .”

  Griffen let him trail off. It was the first time Slim had really shared anything personal with him. Slim seemed to shake himself, coming back from whatever memory he had drifted into.

  “Anyways, touchy subject. Specially since it always comes up at the big meets. ’Spose I been bracin’ myself for when the fightin’ starts, ya know?”

  “You mean at the conclave?” Griffen asked.

  “Yep. Damn near forgots what I was lookin’ for you for. Got some stuff for you.”

  Slim reached into his bucket again and pulled out a black folder. Griffen took it from him and looked inside. The contents looked no different than what one might receive at any convention: a map of the Quarter, a hotel map with meeting rooms marked off, a list of helpful phone numbers.

  “I been helpin’ Rose out. Doin’ the stuff that it’s helpful to be fully corporeal for. All the attendees gets a folder like this. We’ll work up an itinerary as the guest list gets finalized.”

  “I didn’t know you were attending, much less helping to organize things,” Griffen said.

  “Well now, the other animal-control people is attendin’ this year. Since this is my home, falls to me to help things go smooth. ’Course, I sure hope I don’t end up stuck bein’ the main spokesman. We is too damned independent. I don’t want to be the one holdin’ the bag.”

  “Can’t say I blame you,” said Griffen.

  He felt a good amount of the irony from that statement. It looked more and more like he was going to end up the main bag holder.

  “Slim, you mentioned a guest list. I’d really appreciate if someone would tell me who, and what, exactly is coming to this thing.”

  “Rose didn’t tell you?!” Slim said, face more than a little shocked. “Well, damn. Guess I understand since things ain�
�t too solid yet. Keep in mind this might change as invites get accepted and declined.”

  “Invitation only, right?” Griffen said.

  “Uh . . . mostly. Always a surprise or two at these things, ya know?”

  Slim leaned back and started to count off on his fingers.

  “First comes us animal types. So you can figure the shifters, too. All sorts: chimera, werewolves, no tellin’ what mix yet.”

  Griffen thought inwardly, Shamans and werewolves, oh my.

  “The local voodoo people will show. They ain’t helpin’ out like they should, though. Don’t rightly know why. Figure a handful of other human magic users, wicca and the sorts. Again, no idea what mix exactly. Then, ’course, Rose and a few from the other side.”

  “Vampires?” Griffen asked, intrigued.

  After all, if there were going to be ghosts and werewolves, who knows?

  “Didn’t get invited. Too much trouble. The emotion ones depress or piss off everyone. Other sorts . . . well, after Rice and the like, you just don’t want to meet the types of vamps that New Orleans might attract.”

  “You’re probably right. Is that it?” Griffen said.

  “Pretty much. Bigwigs aren’t showin’. Likes the . . . well, like the dragons. Oh, somethin’ different. First year the fey kids are gettin’ in.”

  Griffen blinked.

  “The what?!” he asked.

  “Yeah, they been tryin’ for a long time to get a spot in the meets. Call ’em changelings. Supposed to be what the fey leave behind when they snatch a human kid. Bunch of bull ya ask me, but the kids gots some power.”

  “Then why haven’t they been included before?”

  “Mostly ’cause they are weird. Even by our standards. Even push Quarter standards, you listen to some of the rumors. Only reason they get a shot this year is because the conclave is here. Never met one myself, of course, but that’s what I hear.”

  Slim finished his drink and stood abruptly, straightening his suit again.

  “That’s all I got for now. I’ll call you sometime to talk ’bout the itinerary.”