Hard Times in Dragon City

by Matt Forbeck

  “But you don’t.”

  “The killer’s dead, but whoever sent him is still walking around.”

  “Why would I have sent Moira over to the Gütmanns with my source?”

  I shrugged. “Kill off all the people who know about what you’ve been doing in a single night? Good way to tie up loose ends if you’re looking to get out. Moira’s already been dealing dragon essence. She gets found dead among the Gütmanns with the egg, it looks like a deal gone bad, and you walk away cleaner than ever.”

  She fixed me with a glare so sharp I thought she might slit my throat with it. “And here I thought you knew me better than that.”

  “People change.”

  She sniffed at that. “Humans might. Elves don’t.”

  “So tell me how it went down then. Give me something that explains it all better than that.”

  She shrugged. “I wish I could. If I had anything to do with it, I’d probably have a better story cooked up.” She stared right into my eyes. “I can only tell you what I know. I’ll leave the elaborate fictions to you.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  It was a cold trip home. Bellezza had given me a lot to chew on. In my heart, I knew she hadn’t hired that assassin to kill the Gütmanns, but I didn’t know if I trusted my heart when it came to her.

  I had the cabby drop me off at the Quill rather than bring me straight home. I had some thinking to do, and that always went better with a beer in my hand.

  “Heard about Danto and Moira?” Thumper said as he slipped my usual in front of me.

  I nodded as I sipped at my beer.

  “And the Gütmanns all gone too?” He shook his head in disbelief. “Almost like someone has it in for the old crew.”

  “Almost.”

  I wondered about that for a while. We’d had lots of people roll in and out of the crew over the years, and we’d made more than a few enemies along the way. It was hard to consider all the people who might have had a reason to come after us, but it seemed like most of them would have made their play earlier than this.

  In the last few months, we’d lost Sig and Ames, but that had been due to Sig getting mixed up with the Bricht family, right? Did they have a beef with the Gütmanns too? I wasn’t up on the inner politics of the Stronghold.

  I didn’t see how it made any sense, and by the time I had emptied my mug a few times, it hadn’t gotten any clearer. I snapped Thumper a casual salute and headed home. After the beer and the sunwine and the rough night I’d had, my bed was calling to me loud.

  I was still a block away from the Barrelrider when someone grabbed me by the arm and hauled me into a dark alley. I went for my wand, but I stopped cold when I recognized who had spun me around to face him.

  “Kai?”

  The orc made a face at me like I should have been in the running for Village idiot. He put an angry finger to his lips, and I buttoned my mouth closed. He beckoned for me to follow him, then took off deeper into the alley.

  I chased after him until he reached a dead end filled with coal dust and trash, then watched him find a greasy rope dirty enough to look like it was part of the soot-crusted wall. He used it to scale the filthy stucco like a monkey. I clambered up right after him.

  “Still know that quiet boots trick?” he said in a whisper as he helped me up onto the building’s grassy roof. Like most of the roofs in the Big Burrow, it had been built to look like a bit like a hill and then covered with turf. From where we stood, the hill obscured the street beyond, as well as the tops of the other buildings on the block.

  I took out my wand, whispered a few words, and tapped each of his shoes. As I did the same to myself, he stamped up and down on the turf as hard as he could. He didn’t make a sound.

  He bent down low then and crawled on his belly to the top of the building’s roof, keeping low in the tall grass. I went straight after him until he came to the roof’s crest and stopped. He gestured for me to join him, and I wriggled up beside him.

  “See that?” He pointed at a roof three buildings down. Someone dressed all in black, right up to the mask, sat there, staring out across the street. He had a wand in his hand.

  This one looked just like the other Black Hand killer, although I wasn’t close enough to see his eyes. If I hadn’t left the other one to be devoured by zombies the night before, I might have thought this was him. Maybe it was. I’d seen stranger things happen.

  I followed the assassin’s gaze and saw he was watching the Barrelrider — or maybe my place instead. I patted Kai on the back. He’d done me a huge favor.

  “What’s our play here?” I kept my head low and my voice nothing more than a whisper carried on the wind.

  “Your home, your call,” Kai said. He’d always been pragmatic like that. I noticed he had a double-barreled shotgun in his hands already, covered in runes. I thought about drawing mine, but I decided to rely on my wand instead.

  “All right,” I said. “On my move.”

  He nodded at me, a vicious grin baring his dagger-shaped teeth.

  I whispered the words of a spell under my breath and caught myself at the last syllable. Then I got up on my knees and glanced over to see if Kai was ready too. I didn’t know who this bastard was, but I planned to hit him hard before he knew we were there.

  At that moment, the lights in my office went on. Someone was in there, uncapping the glowglobes.

  “Shit,” Kai said.

  I looked back at the assassin and saw him flick his wand at my office. A blazing ball of fire the size of a barrel spurted out of it and flew across the street to smash into my window. Once inside my office, it exploded.

  I ducked back down and covered my head out of pure instinct. The blast sent glass and timber flying into the building across the street and cascading down onto the pedestrians passing below. It even showered Kai and me with some of the shrapnel. The noise hurt my ears and brought my hangover right back to pound around inside my skull.

  As soon as the wreckage from my office stopped raining down on me, I raised my head to see the assassin already charging away across the Big Burrow’s roofs, in the other direction. Kai stood up right next to me and fired his shotgun at the same time I let loose with my wand, each of them cracking out a thunderous report. He used simple buckshot — although loaded into a magical gun — and a bolt of lightning arced from the tip of my wand.

  I couldn’t tell you which one of us hit the assassin — maybe both — but the bastard tumbled from the top of the hill he’d been on and fell out of sight. I charged down the other side of the roof I was on, then up over the next. From there, I realized a street separated me from the next building over.

  I slid to a halt at the edge of the roof and stared across the gap. It was at least a twenty-foot drop to the ground below, and I was sure I couldn’t make the jump. I was hunting for another way across when Kai came charging past me and leaped out into the open space between the buildings.

  He fell short of the opposite roof but somehow managed to grab onto the gutter that ran along its edge with his hands. “Help!” he shouted as he dangled there. “Help!”

  I chanted the right words and cast a quick spell on him just as his grip on the gutter gave way. He screamed out not in terror but frustration, and he was halfway to the ground before he realized he was floating down as gently as a leaf on a summer’s breeze.

  Satisfied Kai would live, I turned my wand on myself. I figured if he could almost make the jump, then so could I. I just needed a bit of help. I rushed halfway back up the roof I was on, then turned and charged straight back down it as fast my legs would carry me. I jumped out into the open air above the street, hoping I hadn’t misjudged the distance too badly. I hadn’t cast the same spell on myself as I had on Kai.

  I slammed into the opposite roof belly first, my waist crushing the gutter beneath me. The impact knocked the wind out of me, but I managed to get my hands out in front of me and slapped them onto the roof hard. That was all I needed. They stuck there to the t
urf like glue, and after I finally forced a bit of air into my lungs, I managed to haul myself up the rest of the way and scramble to my feet.

  By the time I made it to the next roof after that, though, the assassin was long gone. I spotted flecks of blood about the place, though, and a scent of ozone and cooked flesh that put a smile on my face.

  I scanned the rooftops for any sign of the attacker but came up with nothing. I decided to take a closer look at the roof he’d been on, and I struck gold in one of the gutters. A well-made wand carved from birch and jade had rolled into the gutter there.

  I might not have found my assassin, but I had found his — or possibly her — weapon.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Kai was waiting for me on the street in front of the Barrelrider, standing in front of a crowd of people who’d stopped to rubberneck at the ruin of my place. “Any luck?” he asked.

  Some people might have expected him to thank me for saving his life. I knew better. I hadn’t said a word to him for saving mine just minutes before either.

  We had work to do. We could express gratitude by buying each other drinks later.

  I tossed Kai the wand, then started to shove my way through the crowd. Most of them were halflings, so it wasn’t hard to push them aside. Some of them protested at the way I treated them, but I was beyond caring at that point. My home was still burning.

  Nora was standing at the bottom of the stairs that led up to my place. The customers in the restaurant had all wisely rushed out, but she was there still, wailing. “Nit!” she said. “My Nit! Where are you, Nit?”

  I had an awful feeling about who had been poking around inside my place and turned on my lights. I cut around Nora and raced up the stairs to my office. Her cries echoed after me.

  The glass in my door had been blown out of the frame and littered the floor in the stairwell. I peered in through the door and saw that my desk was on fire, along with most of the other wooden furniture in the room. Just about every surface had been blackened, scorched by the heat from the blast.

  I spotted Nit lying on the floor in front of my desk, covered with soot from head to toe. I couldn’t tell if he was breathing.

  I jammed my hat down on my head, held my breath, and charged into the room. The heat was tremendous, but I didn’t plan to be inside it for long. I scooped up Nit, turned around, and dashed right back out.

  Nora was standing at the bottom of the stairs, and she screamed in horror as I brought Nit out and laid him down on the landing outside of my place. It was covered with broken glass, sure, but I figured a few small cuts were the least of his worries at the moment.

  I knelt down next to him and checked him for signs of life as Nora bolted up the stairs toward us. “He’s still breathing,” I said to her. She collapsed to her knees next to him and wrapped her arms around him, her shoulders wracked with sobs of relief.

  “Keep an eye on him,” I said. “The Guard should be here soon.”

  She looked up at me with a soot-smudged face glittering with tears. “Where are you going?” she asked.

  “Nowhere yet.”

  I stood up and drew my scattergun, then loaded a blue shell into it. I wasn’t sure how well it would work for this, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to try. I took careful aim at my desk and squeezed the trigger.

  The freezing buckshot smacked into the front of my desk and put the flames out instantly. I gave a little cry of triumph and then loaded the gun up with one of those special shells again. Three or four shots later, and I’d put out every bit of fire I could see.

  As I’d told Nora, though, the Guard would be here any minute, and I had at least one thing in my place that I really didn’t want them to see. I raced around to the front of my desk and found the center drawer there shattered. The chest lay under my desk, in the ruin of that drawer, now returned to full size.

  I reached out to touch the chest and snatched my hand back at once. The desk must have shielded it from the effects of the freezing shotgun shells. It was still burning hot.

  I pulled the sleeve of my jacket down over my fingers and gave it another try. I managed to grab one of the chest’s handles and haul it out into the open. I considered taking the time to hit the chest with another freezing shotgun blast, but I worried what that might mean for the egg inside.

  Then I wondered what might have happened to it already.

  I holstered the shotgun right next to my wand. Protecting both of my hands with my sleeves, I fumbled with the locking mechanism on the chest. Despite my clumsiness, it came open straight away.

  I found myself holding my breath again. Maybe it was just a reflex due to all the smoke still floating around the place, but I let it out to help steel myself before I opened the chest.

  As the lid creaked open, the first thing I saw was pieces of eggshell scattered across the padding inside the chest, much of which had been burned to ash. My heart sank. I didn’t know much about how dragons reproduced, but I knew that broken eggs of any kind weren’t much use to anyone.

  Then something inside of the chest knocked the lid all the way back and burst right out at me. My first reaction was to try to bat it away, but it moved faster than me. In an instant, it was on my chest with its wings spread wide and its tail wrapped around my throat.

  I reached up and grabbed it by its long, sinuous neck and pulled the sharp little fangs in its scaly snout away from me. It wasn’t until then that I got a good look at the creature.

  It was a dragon, a wide-eyed beast with glowing green eyes set into a serpentine face covered in the same golden-red scales that coated the rest of its body. I’d only ever seen its like in one place before: on the Imperial Crest of Dragon City.

  As I examined the creature, I saw that it was taking me in too, absorbing me with its eyes. It seemed to be sizing me up for a snack, and I wondered if I was fast enough to let go of it and grab my wand before it took a bite out of me. Somewhere in the back of my brain, I also questioned what the penalties might be for killing a dragon — especially a rare newborn like this — even in self-defense.

  Then the little bastard’s long, thin tongue flicked out and licked my face.

  In my shock, I let the creature go, and it came right at me. It embraced me with its wings, wrapping their leathery flesh around my head, and I braced myself for the bite I knew was coming next. It had already gotten a taste of me, and I was sure it wanted more.

  But the bite never came. Instead, the creature nuzzled its long head up under my chin and clung to me like a bat to a wall, digging its sharp little talons into my jacket. I sat there stunned for a moment, my arms held wide as I tried to understand what had just happened.

  That’s how the guards found me when they rushed into the room: sitting on the floor of my blasted-out office, in front of my destroyed desk, a newborn dragon clinging to my chest.

  The one in charge, an elf I recognized named Gilles, shook his head as he crept toward me. “You, Gibson, are under arrest,” he said, “and in a breathtaking amount of trouble.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  I’d had a long and strange relationship with Captain Yabair. As one of the leaders of the Imperial Dragon’s Guard, he’d crossed paths with me more times than I cared to count. Despite the fact that we often found ourselves on opposite sides, I’d grown to respect how he always seemed to know exactly who he was and what he was supposed to do in any given situation. He knew his role, and he filled it as best he could.

  Today, as I sat there in his office with the dragon in my arms, a guard standing to either side of my chair, he glared down at me with a look I’d never seen on his face before: dismay.

  “What in the Dragon’s seven secret names am I going to do with you, Gibson?”

  I shrugged, which wasn’t an easy maneuver to pull off when you had a young dragon attached to your chest. “I didn’t ask for this,” I said.

  “You just happened to have a dragon’s egg in your office when it was bathed in fire?”

  I strok
ed the top of the dragon’s head, and it folded back the ridges that flared over its earholes, giving it a sleek, windswept look. It gazed up and me, and I could swear that it purred.

  “Stranger things have happened,” I said. “Right?”

  “No. They have have not.”

  I looked down at the little dragon. It had calmed down on the flying chariot ride to Yabair’s office, the feel of the sunlight and breeze on its scales pleasing it to no end. We’d come to a kind of understanding as we soared upslope. I wouldn’t try to pry the creature off me, and it wouldn’t shred my skin with its talons.

  “Maybe it’s hungry,” I said. If I could get the thing to eat, it might let me go, I thought. That would be even better if if happened before it built up enough of an appetite to think of me as its dinner. Small as the creature might be — compared to a full-grown member of the species — I had no doubt it could be dangerous.

  “That’s not the real problem here, Gibson.”

  “Says the guy who doesn’t have a hungry dragon on his lap.”

  “You clueless idiot.” Yabair glared at me across his desk. “The hatching of a dragon’s egg is a delicate and important matter. It can go wrong at any of a number of points, and you’ve maybe hit them all.”

  “And that’s bad?” I glanced down at the dragonet. It seemed healthy and content.

  Yabair spoke to me as if I was a slow child. “Newly hatched dragons imprint on the first person they see at birth. Normally that is one of their parents. Dragons go to great lengths to ensure that this happens properly.”

  I felt a shiver run through me, and the dragonet’s grasp on me seemed to constrict in response.

  “Exactly what do you mean by ‘imprint’?”

  Yabair gestured toward the dragonet clinging to me. “The young prince thinks you are his mother.”

  I got halfway out of my seat before the two guards on either side grabbed me by a shoulder and shoved me back down into my chair. The instant violence of their reaction to my sudden movement got the dragonet’s attention, and the creature unleashed the first vicious growl of its young life of them. The guards both backed away, and the dragonet prowled higher on my chest, glaring at them over my shoulders.