Dragons Luck

by Robert Asprin

  “Merely for privacy, I assure you,” he said.

  Griffen was not completely assured but ducked through the curtained archway.

  He found himself in a series of small rooms, again suggesting what was originally a residence rather than designed for commercial use. There were several glass cases scattered about, displaying what he guessed were magical items, and one corner seemed to be set up as some sort of altar.

  “Back here, Mr. McCandles.”

  He followed the voice and found himself in a small study. There were several chairs arranged in a half circle in front of a crudely carved wooden table covered by a colorful cloth, behind which sat a tall, slim woman.

  “It was good of you to come, Mr. McCandles,” the woman said, rising and extending a hand. “My name is Estella. I wanted a chance to speak with you privately before the conclave.”

  “Thank you for inviting me,” Griffen said, formally. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you.”

  He took one of the chairs facing her, which was surprisingly comfortable. In fact, the entire room was quite cozy, and Griffen found himself relaxing despite his earlier misgivings.

  “I understand there have been some complaints that my group is not doing its part in preparing for the conclave,” Estella said, watching him closely.

  “I’ve heard a few comments to that effect myself,” Griffen said, “though I heard it expressed more as disappointment than as complaints.”

  “So it’s other people making those comments, not you,” Estella pressed.

  “I can assure you, it’s not coming from me.” Griffen smiled.

  “If nothing else, I don’t know enough about what should or shouldn’t be done to prepare for the conclave to try to complain or criticize anyone.”

  Estella blinked at this easy admission of his ignorance.

  “I guess that brings me to my next question,” she said.

  “What makes you feel you’re qualified to moderate the conclave?”

  “That’s even easier.” Griffen smiled. “I don’t. Think I’m qualified, that is. As a matter of fact, one of the things I wanted to tell you was that if you or your group object to my sitting in as moderator, I’ll gladly step down.”

  Estella frowned.

  “You make it sound like you don’t want the job.”

  “Not only do I not want it,” Griffen said with a grimace,

  “I can’t imagine why anyone would want it. There’s too much that can go wrong with very little upside.”

  “Of course, there’s the status,” Estella said, carefully.

  “Then, too, it would be an ideal position for someone, say, who wanted to gain more influence over the various groups. Maybe even controlling influence.”

  Griffen shook his head wearily.

  “I’ve already had this conversation once with Slim,” he said. “I have absolutely no interest in organizing or gaining control of other groups. I have a gambling operation I’m trying to run. That’s it. I wouldn’t know what to do with any of these groups even if I were given control.”

  “Are you sure you’re a dragon?” Estella said with a faint smile.

  “As sure as I am of anything these days,” Griffen replied.

  “Well, you sure don’t sound like one,” she said. “At least not like any dragon I’ve heard of. So if you don’t want to moderate the conclave, why are you doing it?”

  “I was asked,” Griffen said. “Frankly, I couldn’t think of a way to say no.”

  “And just who was it that asked you?”

  “I don’t think it’s a big secret.” Griffen shrugged. “Rose asked me. Or maybe I should say her spirit.”

  Estella leaned back in her chair.

  “That’s what I heard,” she said. “If you don’t mind, could you describe her for me?”

  “Well, she’s black, looks to be in her midthirties. Her hair is very thick, and she wears it long . . . halfway down her back. About six inches shorter than I am, and I noticed her hands have very long fingers.”

  He hesitated, trying to put words to the picture in his mind, but Estella waved him to silence.

  “That’s her, all right,” she said. “I was just having a little trouble believing it is all.”

  “Why?” Griffen said, taken aback. “I thought that communicating with the spirits of the dead was one of the main beliefs of your group.”

  “It is,” Estella said. “I just can’t figure out why she’s approaching you . . . without even a ritual . . . when I haven’t seen or heard from her since she died. I mean, I am the one who took over the temple and have been running it ever since.”

  “I . . . I really don’t know,” Griffen said, a bit shaken. “If you’d like, I’ll ask her the next time she contacts me. Unfortunately, she seems to pick her own time and places. I’ve never been able to figure out how to initiate contact.”

  “It’s no big thing,” Estella said. “It made me curious is all. I guess that answers the questions I had. You can count on the support of me and mine at the conclave. Oh, and, Mr. McCandles?”

  Griffen cocked his head at her.

  “Don’t be too quick to discount the usefulness of any of these groups. We may not be hotshot dragons, but we’re not exactly powerless, either.”

  “Wait a minute,” Griffen said quickly. “I didn’t mean to speak poorly of your group or any of the others who will be at the conclave. When I said I wasn’t interested in trying to influence or control them, I only meant that I couldn’t see any way they would be of help to my gambling operation.”

  “I’m just saying you should withhold judgment.” Estella smiled. “We just might surprise you.”

  Seventeen

  Early morning in the Quarter. The quiet time, the dead time. Garbage trucks had already been by to pick up the refuse of the night before. Most of the bars were closed, most of the music lowered to a dull murmur. Few tourists who came to New Orleans had the stamina to last the night. Locals drifting home from after-work downtime. Homeless, too tired to bother asking the occasional passersby for spare change. And a bare handful of people heading out to more conventional nine-to-five jobs. That was all that stirred at such an hour.

  Val often found herself awake at this hour. Sometimes she just woke early and couldn’t get back to sleep. Today though, she hadn’t yet been to bed, and although she was a bit groggy, she felt way too wired to even think about sleeping. She had to be at work in three hours and, after a debate with herself, decided she’d rather push through her shift tired than try to grab an hour nap and then drag herself out of bed again.

  Which left the problem of what to do with herself for the interim. If she hoped to make it through the dull stretch of afternoon bartending, she had better keep her energy up now. If she sank into the couch and flipped on the TV, chances were she’d crash and crash hard. She changed into loose sweats and running shoes and headed out the door. A run, a hot shower, and lots of coffee would see her through just fine.

  It was a ghost town outside, which actually appealed to Val. There was no such thing as a “city that never sleeps” despite what ends up on tourism brochures. There wasn’t even anyone abroad who knew her well enough to wave to her, a rarity in the Quarter. She started running as soon as she was out of the apartment complex’s security gate.

  Exercise had always been a good escape for Val. As her legs and arms began to pump, she found comfort in her own strength. The movements were automatic, muscle memory from years of training and working out. Her endorphins kicked in, and her physical body began to burn and buzz on its own natural high. While her body focused on the simple, her mind could run over the complex, as she slipped inside her own head more and more and let the outside world drift away.

  Lately, she had been noticing how her body was changing. She was growing stronger, faster, without much increase in her exercise regime. In fact, she was having to push herself harder and longer just to get the same kind of tired exhilaration she used to get. The harder she worked
, the stronger she grew, and the stronger she grew, the harder she had to work. She was beginning to wonder what limits there were to a dragon’s strength.

  She crossed Decatur, the only street with any kind of car traffic at this hour, and headed up the large concrete stairs and over to the Moonwalk. The stairs still burned, aches and little tendrils of pain going up her legs. She smiled to herself and tried to remember how the old saying went. Pain lets you know you’re alive?

  There were a few other joggers on the Moonwalk. A couple whom Val had seen on other mornings nodded to her in passing. No breath was wasted on greetings. These were people serious about their fitness. No one jogged in New Orleans because it was the fashionable thing to do.

  The Moonwalk itself stretched pretty much the entire length of the Quarter. Val knew she would go back and forth across it several times before she was ready to quit. She put herself into a comfortable pace, keeping her heart rate up but nowhere near her top speed. This was no sprint. Still, she passed anyone going the same direction as she.

  Would she have noticed any of that if Griffen hadn’t come to her after their uncle Malcolm had told him about dragons? She had always been strong, fast, and very good when it came to anything physical. She should be; she worked hard enough at it. If Griffen hadn’t shown up, if he hadn’t brought her into his problems, she would probably have gone her whole life without getting this introspective.

  Val wasn’t quite sure why that thought scared her so.

  Most of the time she still didn’t think of herself as a dragon. Griffen seemed so preoccupied with extending his abilities. Animal control, charisma; hell, she was surprised he hadn’t started trying to use dragon fire to make toast in the mornings. Then she reminded herself wryly that he didn’t cook.

  Val hadn’t experienced any of that. Other then the rare times when she had swelled in size, her signs of dragonhood were subtler. Like the speed, and her body’s growing strength. Maybe it was just that she was younger and less developed, but she didn’t really feel the need, or the ability, to control a stray dog or blow smoke rings through the air.

  Were there varieties of power? Different dragons with different areas of expertise? When Mose spoke, he seemed to be saying that for the most part any dragon with pure enough blood could do what Griffen was doing. Val and Griffen shared the same blood, so why did she feel she would be different?

  Feelings, now that was something she didn’t often think about. Feelings were a big part of what had gotten her more and more curious about dragons and their various traits and abilities. For a while now, her gut had been telling her something was wrong, something was about to break. No . . . not her gut. It was like a weight on her heart. A sharp, heavy pang.

  Val shook her head and tossed the thought aside. She was just imagining trouble, convincing herself of problems. After all, something bad was always coming. Especially with this new life as a dragon that her brother had brought her into.

  And where did this baby fit in her new life? Did it fit in? She still didn’t know how she felt. How she should feel.

  She checked her watch and was a bit surprised that she had already been at it for more than an hour. She felt just as energized as before, barely even out of breath. Which was good—she shouldn’t have any problem getting through work—but it did sort of confirm everything she had been pondering while running. Sighing slightly, she turned off the path and started to head back to the steps, back to Decatur, then back to what she had now taken to calling home.

  If she hadn’t been tired, hadn’t been deep in thought, she might have noticed the car on the other side of Decatur. It had registered out of the corner of her eye as being parked. She never noticed that the engine was on.

  She had just stepped off the curb when it came at her.

  Tires squealed. The car seemed to leap into motion, like a pouncing tiger. It cut across the two lanes of traffic, causing another car to slam on its brakes to avoid a collision, and straight at her. She had just enough time to catch sight of the small woman behind the wheel as she jumped to avoid it.

  The woman was smiling, teeth white and gleaming in the morning light. That smile scared Val more than the speeding car.

  If she had jumped back onto the sidewalk, Val would have been crushed. The car leaped the curb at a sharp angle, the driver clearly anticipating such a natural reaction. Val’s mind was as quick as her body; she leaped forward, onto the street. The car tried to jerk back, but it was too late. The driver couldn’t fight the momentum. The car swerved back onto Decatur, fishtailed, then took off, leaving Val half-crouched in the middle of the street.

  She straightened carefully, fully alert now to any other threat. Her pulse pounded, her breathing was suddenly rough and erratic. The driver of the car that had braked was out of his door and headed toward her. She shot him a glare that stopped him cold, well out of arm’s reach.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “No, but I’m not hurt,” she answered.

  More help started to arrive, people who had seen the attempted hit-and-run. The whole affair had taken seconds. Val tried to shrug them off, to get away as easily as possible before she ended up having to fill out a police report. She was too busy worrying about what this all meant to be bothered with such nonsense.

  Especially since, for a split second before the car launched at her, that weight on her heart, that tiny bit of warning she had been trying to pass off as imagination, had throbbed. It had all happened too fast to be a merely human reaction, but she knew.

  She knew she had started to move just before the car did.

  Eighteen

  Tuesday night and nothing to do.

  Griffen sat alone in the Irish pub. It was rare, the pub being so empty. Especially at night. Yet here it was, 10:00 p.m. and he and the bartender were the only occupants. They had both agreed on a Hammer horror-movie fest on one of the movie channels, but then had slipped into silence. It wasn’t an uncomfortable silence, but still Griffen was searching his mind for a topic, any topic, that could get a decent conversation rolling.

  He was saved when the door opened and Flynn strolled in. Griffen noticed with some amusement that Flynn never seemed to dress down. All his clothes were of high quality and, if not tailored for him, of a very good cut. Even at his most casual, his shirts tended to be silk. Griffen waved him over and, relieved to have some company, bought his first drink.

  Then silence descended again.

  Griffen bristled as Flynn turned his attention to the TV. He hadn’t run into the other dragon often, and still had many questions for him. Especially after his meeting with Estella. It had raised questions not only about the groups at the conclave, but about dragons as well. At least, how dragons seemed to be perceived by others.

  It wasn’t till Flynn caught his eye and tossed a glance at the bartender that Griffen caught on. When things were busy and noisy, there wasn’t much problem talking about things that you might not want overheard. In a dead-silent bar, there was no way they could talk dragons or ghosts or shifters without drawing too many questions.

  Well, almost no way; this was the Quarter after all. Ghosts and voodoo were common enough. Still, Flynn wasn’t a part of the local scene, so maybe he didn’t realize that. Griffen shrugged inwardly and thought up an easy solution.

  “Hey, Flynn, how about a game of pool?” he said.

  Flynn turned his attention to the tables and frowned a bit. Seeing his obvious hesitation, Griffen was afraid the silence would win. Flynn looked almost disdainful of the idea.

  “Well . . . how about we make things interesting?” Flynn said.

  The bartender stepped up to them.

  “Legally, I can’t allow any betting in the bar,” the bartender said. Then he looked around at the emptiness and shrugged, smiling easily. “So keep your money in your pockets and settle up outside, and if anyone comes in, keep your traps shut.”

  Griffen nodded his thanks and walked over to the back table. A bit of etiquet
te he had picked up since coming down to New Orleans. At least in a bar like this one, with two pool tables. If both tables were open, and you chose to shoot on the table closest to the bar, it was an invite for the bartender and anyone sitting there to feel free to watch and comment. If you went to the far table, people, bartenders especially, tended to give you your privacy.

  Flynn walked over, still seeming reluctant, and started looking through the bar cues for the one that seemed most true. Griffen started to rack.

  “Five thousand a game good stakes?” Flynn asked.

  Griffen paused with a ball in his hand. He felt like shaking his head to clear his ears, sure he’d heard wrong, and looked up to find Flynn smiling broadly.

  “If you don’t feel the pinch, what’s the point of playing?” Flynn said. “Five thousand isn’t much, but it’s enough that losing stings.”

  “More than stings,” Griffen said, suddenly a lot more wary.

  “I did say we should make it interesting. If you lose, put it down on your taxes as consultant fees.”

  Griffen realized that this was more than to make the game worthwhile. Flynn seemed to be testing him, gauging just how much his advice was worth to Griffen. Of course . . . he just might win.

  “Well . . . all right, but I’m using my stick.”

  “Fair enough. I would if I had packed one.”

  Flynn selected a stick and began to chalk it while Griffen unlocked one of the small lockers the bar kept for the pool players and began to assemble his cue. A good stick versus bar wood was always an advantage, but Griffen had never seen Flynn shoot and had to assume he was good. Five-thousand-dollars-a-game good.

  “Straight or French Quarter League rules?” Flynn asked, surprising Griffen again.

  “You know the local league rules?”

  “But of course; the ball and hand is a very interesting twist for a position player. You didn’t think this was my first trip to New Orleans, did you?”

  “Straight, please,” Griffen said. He had just begun to pick up the league rules and wasn’t confident enough yet to risk it.