Bad Times in Dragon City

by Matt Forbeck

  “You blame us for these long lives we must endure?” Nicoló finally opened his mouth and spoke. “Long after the color has drained out of our days, we still linger here, too entrenched to change, and too drained to even envision how we might.”

  I wasn’t having any of that. “I suspect it beats having the Dragon pick his teeth with your bones. You sold us out. You knew the rest of us wouldn’t remember what you’d done. As we died off, you built this damn city of yours on our corpses, and you had the Brichts help you bury it deep enough that you thought we’d never find out again.”

  “You think it’s so easy?” Chiara said. “That’s why the Imperial Pact holds us to such a high standard. If one of your kind’s corpses goes missing, who cares? But if an elf cadaver disappears, we pay the ultimate price.”

  “You mean your daughter does.” I glanced at Belle. “Why isn’t it one of you going in her place? She didn’t sign that disgusting deal.”

  Nicoló stepped forward, and I put my hand on the butt of my gun. He stopped though, his lip trembling. “I wanted it to be me,” he said. “I insisted upon it.”

  “Nicoló!” Chiara hissed at her husband, but he ignored her and pressed on.

  “It’s my fault, after all. I bought that trouble for my family, knowing full well what it meant. I should be the one to pay that horrible price.”

  Chiara grabbed her husband by the arm and spun him to face her. “You cannot. I won’t allow it!”

  “So we let them take Bellezza instead? I cannot live with that. I cannot endure!”

  “You have no choice in the matter. If we cannot produce Fiera — or a substitute — the Dragon will come for us himself, and then he may devour us all!”

  “And haven’t we had enough of life?” Nicoló said to his wife. “In the end, would that be so bad?”

  “Where’s Fiera?” I said before Chiara could answer.

  “She’s dead, you idiot,” Chiara said, her voice laced with menace. “You should know. You and that brat hanging around your shoulders killed her!”

  I’d gotten so used to having the dragonet around I’d almost forgotten I had him with me. I realized then what had kept Chiara and Nicoló in check. As fast and lethal as they were at this range, they could probably have killed me before I’d even had a chance for my shotgun to clear leather, but they weren’t ready or willing to take on the dragonet.

  I don’t know if that reluctance was rooted in a respect for the dragonet’s abilities or in what the Dragon would do to anyone who threatened his heir, but I was happy to take advantage of it. I let my hand drop from my holster.

  “She was about to kill us,” I said. “Me and Belle too. Should I have let that happen?”

  “She would never have hurt her sister,” Nicoló said, his tone dark and bitter. “But you would be no great loss to this world.”

  “What did you do with her body?”

  “Nothing!” Nicoló said. “Not a damn thing.”

  “Come on now,” I said to both him and Chiara. “At least one of you had something to do with it. A body doesn’t just get up and walk away.”

  “Ha!” Nicoló burst into an insane fit of laughter. Chiara reached out for him, troubled concern gleaming in her eyes, but he pushed her away, continuing to cackle like a madman until he was out of breath.

  As he recovered, he wiped the tears from his face and sneered at me. “That’s exactly what happened,” he said. “I watched the whole thing from the balcony. I sent Ford down to retrieve her corpse in the middle of the night. As he landed on that ledge near her, she climbed down out of the burnt branches and murdered him in the dark!”

  Belle covered her mouth in horror. “And you did nothing to stop it?”

  “Why would I?” He snorted. “My daughter had come back to me, and all it cost was one human life, right?” He shot me a hateful, scornful look.

  Belle turned to her mother. “Is this true?”

  A cold demeanor clamped down over Chiara as she confirmed her husband’s confession with a simple nod. “She took the flying carpet Ford had brought down there to gather her upon, and she left.”

  “Did she say anything?”

  Chiara looked away and swallowed. Belle grabbed her mother by the shoulders and shook her hard. “Did she say anything?”

  Chiara blinked back the tears brimming in her eyes. “She spoke to us in a voice that I hadn’t heard for hundreds of years.”

  “Whose voice was it?” Belle had to shake her mother again. “Whose?”

  Nicoló answered for Chiara. “I’ll never forget that voice, no matter how many centuries I live. It belonged to the Ruler of the Dead.”

  Belle recoiled from her parents as if they’d burst into flames. She shook her head back and forth, saying, “No, no, no, no, no.”

  I reached up to calm the dragonet, who’d started to sink his claws into my shoulder as he grew agitated. “And what did she say?”

  Nicoló looked at me with withered eyes brimming with despair. “She said, ‘This one is now mine. Soon I will come for the rest of you too.’”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  “Where is she?” I said to Chiara and Nicoló. “What’s left of Fiera, where is she?”

  “You leave her alone,” Nicoló said. “Isn’t it enough that you’ve sullied one of my daughters already?”

  I raised my hand to smack the jackass down. I’d had enough abuse from the “higher” races to fill me up for one of their lifetimes, much less mine. Under most other circumstances, he’d be fast enough to stop me — even with the dragonet on my shoulders — but Nicoló had been doing dragon essence for countless decades, and the drug had taken its toll. I figured I had a shot, and I meant to take it.

  Belle beat me to it.

  She slapped her father so hard he fell over backward and landed sprawling on the floor. Whether that was from the blow or sheer surprise, I couldn’t tell. A livid red mark appeared on his cheek, and his own hand went to it, touching it as if it was something he couldn’t begin to understand.

  “Bellezza!” Chiara’s voice sounded like a gunshot. “How dare you?”

  Belle turned on her mother then, and Chiara flinched away from her. “How dare I? I cut this man out of my life for you, for your honor, for my family. The only man I’ve ever loved, and I’ve barely seen him in the past ten years, all because I couldn’t bear your disapproval one moment longer.

  “And now! Now you tell me that you let Fiera’s body sit in that tree long enough for her to be possessed by the Ruler of the Dead, all because you couldn’t deal with what she’d done. And to top that off, you expect me to die for that mistake!

  “How dare I? I should have damn well dared a long time ago. When the Dragon comes to collect his meal, one of you will have to pay that debt. I will have no part of it!”

  The blood drained from Chiara’s face. “You cannot do that.”

  Belle stepped back from her mother and spat on the floor between them. “I am no longer a part of this family. I hereby renounce my name and my rights. I am a Sanguigno no more!”

  I glanced over at Johan, who’d been edging toward the exit as he watched the entire scene. I shot him a look to ask if Belle could do something like that. He gave me a wild and confused shrug that I took to mean “This unthinkable thing has never come up before.”

  The color returned to Chiara’s cheeks. The shock left her face, forced out by a cool and calculating glare. “When I said you cannot do that, daughter, I meant it.”

  “I no longer consider myself your daughter,” Belle said. “Deal with the consequences on your own.”

  “What you consider yourself has no bearing on the situation, my dear.” Chiara spoke to Belle as if she was addressing a slow-witted child, probably human as well. “The only thing that matters is what the Dragon thinks. He’ll see your declaration as a cheap ploy to try avoid the punishment your parents have assigned you to bear, and he will not be pleased.”

  “If the Dragon’s displeased, does that mean he
chews harder when he eats you?” I asked. “It seems like you’re dead either way.”

  Nicoló pushed himself to his feet, still holding the cheek that Belle had slapped so hard. “You cannot deny your blood,” he said to Belle. “Only death could ever free you from us.”

  “That can be arranged,” she said, her words dripping with anger, frustration, and menace.

  I had no doubt that Belle could kill her parents. If she started in on the task, I’d probably leap to her side and lend her a hand. But that wasn’t going to get her what she wanted.

  “Belle?” I said in as soft a voice as I could manage.

  She snapped her head around to glare at me. I knew she wasn’t angry at me, as such, but her fury at her parents was bound to spill over on anyone else in her path. “What?”

  “It won’t help. You kill them, and that only leaves you. The Dragon will take you either way.”

  She stared at me like I’d stuck a knife straight into her and starting twisting it about for fun. She knew I was right, but she couldn’t stomach it. “Maybe I’ll take my chances,” she said. “Offering up two of the oldest elves in Dragon City might take the edge off his appetite.”

  “There’s only one way this works out well for us, Belle,” I said. “We have to find Fiera. Or what’s left of her anyway. We do that, and you’re free and clear. You can deal with your parents later.”

  She steamed at me, her face flushed red. She’d gotten herself worked up good. She’d finally told her parents exactly what she thought about them, and she wanted blood. I thought maybe she’d knock me flat for pointing out what a bad idea that was.

  Instead, she kissed me. Hungry and hard.

  I kissed her back in a way that meant to make up for an awful decade apart. It couldn’t hope to manage that here, though, and we had other matters that needed our attention for now.

  Our lips broke apart. She looked up at me with something like hope in her eyes. I smiled down at her, and her face split into a relieved grin.

  Nicoló made to grab me. “Get your hands off her, you filthy —!”

  He never got to finish the sentence. Belle spun about and belted him in the nose. He went down hard, bouncing his head off the floor.

  Chiara went to check on him and dabbed at the blood streamed from his face. He’d live, although he’d probably think twice about grabbing at me in his daughter’s presence again.

  “We should go,” Johan said. He’d already moved onto the balcony and was waving Schaef back in.

  “Bellezza Sanguigno!” Chiara launched herself to her feet. “You may not leave here. I forbid it!”

  “I was serious,” Belle said as she guided me toward the exit, keeping herself between me and her mother. “I don’t want to have anything to do with you ever again.”

  “Forever is a long time, young one.”

  Belle stopped to glare at her mother one last time. “I won’t let the Dragon take me alive. I’ll fight him tooth and tail, and I’ll kill myself before he can take me. And when he comes here looking for someone to replace Fiera, I’ll leave it to you and Father to figure out which one of you leaves with him.”

  With that, she spun on her heel and left the last remnants of her family behind.

  I was just about to follow her when Nicoló called out my name. “Gibson!”

  I filled my fist with my gun and turned to face him as Chiara helped him to his feet. “You’re just a fling for her, you know. A fleeting dream on a warm night. She might love you for her entire life, and you her, but when she’s my age, she won’t even be able to remember your face.”

  “That’s all right,” I said. “After the Dragon eats you, I promise to forget what you looked like too.”

  “We have been here for hundreds of years!” Chiara said, her indignation rising to a fragile pitch. “We knew the original Gib, and we fed him to the Dragon too!”

  As they talked, the dragonet curled up tight around my shoulders. I broke open my shotgun to check what kind of shell I had loaded in it. I spotted just what I was looking for: an angry red.

  I pointed it at the ceiling and fired.

  The blast cut Chiara and Nicoló off in the middle of whatever rant they’d gone onto next. I’d stopped listening already. They jumped at the noise, then both sneered at me.

  “You think you can frighten us with your toys, boy?” Chiara said. “It’ll take far more than loud noises.”

  I just craned my neck back, examined the blaze engulfing the foyer’s high ceiling, and smiled. Then I turned on my heel and trotted out to join Belle and Johan on Schaef’s waiting carpet, which hung in the air near the scorched section of the balcony’s railing.

  As I left, I heard Chiara scream in alarm and Nicoló roar in dismay. I could smell the smoke billowing out of the high parts of their estate already. As we left the Elven Reaches behind, I glanced back and spotted gouts of flame licking out through the ancient home’s roof.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  I had Thumper close down the Quill and send everyone home. Some of the patrons groaned about it, but I told them all that I’d cover their tabs if they got out now. They moved like I’d set their chairs on fire.

  Then I sent Schaef and Johan out to round up everyone from the old crew they could find, fast, and tell them to “use the back entrance.” We barred the front door, and I put Thumper there to peek through the viewing slit. I gave him orders to only let in the people we wanted to see — which was no one.

  I sat Belle down on a stool, the slipped behind the bar and fixed her a drink, a mixture of dragonfire and whisky that I preferred neat. I put hers over chips of ice that dwarves brought down from the highest parts of the mountain every night. She made a face when she drank it, but she kept at it anyhow.

  “It’s funny,” she said. “I supplied dragon essence for my parents to smoke and for the Gütmanns to sell for a decade, and I never tried it myself.”

  “You’re too smart for that,” I said as I savored my own concoction.

  She shook her head. “Too scared. I could see what it had done to my parents, and I didn’t want the same to happen to me.”

  “We all have our own demons.”

  “Actually, you have a dragon.” She reached up to see if the dragonet perched on my shoulders would let him pet her, and he bowed his head right under her hand for a good scratching. “And a friendly one too.”

  “Hard to believe he’s his father’s son, isn’t it?”

  “Maybe we’re all good when we’re young and innocent. It’s life that changes us, for good or bad.”

  I shrugged. “Or maybe we’re just built the way we are and become more like ourselves with every passing year.”

  She gave me a curious look over the top of her glass. “That’s awful fatalistic of you.”

  I couldn’t help but smile at her. I leaned over the bar and kissed her. Our lips met in a soft and tender way this time, and I relished her flavor for as long as I could make it last.

  “Fatalistic?” I said. “Your parents are sure to send the Dragon after us as soon as they can, and our only hope is to find your sister, whose dead body has been possessed by the most dangerous necromancer the world has ever seen. Fatalistic seems optimistic.”

  “How long do you think we have?”

  I sighed. “Not damn long at all. But going off half-cocked on this little suicide mission of ours would only guarantee we’d screw it up. We need some help if we’re to have any chance at this.”

  “You said it was a suicide mission. Maybe the only way to succeed is to walk away. Or run.”

  “Don’t I wish we had somewhere to run. Dragon City’s a lone island of life in a sea of dead. There’s nowhere else to go.”

  “So we’re doomed either way?” She didn’t sound like she believed that, but love her as I did, she was an elf. You had to be an eternal optimist to live for centuries and not drown in despair.

  “Yes, we are,” I said.

  “Doesn’t that, by definition, mean we can’t w
in?”

  I held up my drink to her as a toast. “You don’t have to live to win.”

  She narrowed her eyes at me, her smile never leaving her lips. Despite all the insanity of the day, she’d worn that from the moment we’d left her home, and it looked fantastic on her. “What an absolutely human thing to say.”

  I laughed. “Coming from you, I’ll do my best to take that as a compliment.”

  She laughed right along with me, and it sounded like a symphony of joy. “Please do.”

  That’s when I felt something bump under my feet, which just about made me leap out of my boots. Instead, I took a step to the side, off of the hidden hatchway I’d been standing on. It creaked open a moment later, and Moira slipped up through the dark hole below.

  She stood up and wrapped her arms around my thighs, hugging me like she might never let go. I put an arm down around her shoulders and hugged her back. “It’s good to see you, Max,” she said. “You had me worried there.”

  “We’re not out of this yet,” Belle said.

  Moira let me go and nodded a much less friendlier greeting at Belle. Moira had seen a lot more of Belle over the past ten years than I had, but their business relationship hadn’t ended well. The stump at the end of Moira’s left arm bore silent testimony to that.

  “Cindra and Kells are right behind me,” Moira said. “I hear Danto’s on his way too.”

  “What about Kai?” I asked. The orc was the key to this whole thing.

  “He’s going to meet us down there,” Cindra said as she emerged through the secret hatchway. “Didn’t make sense for him to come all the way back up here. That’s where we’re going to end up anyway, right? Down in Goblintown?”

  “Exactly.” I gave her a quick hug and shook Kells’ hand as he came up behind her. “Thanks for coming. I don’t know how we could do this without you.”

  “I don’t know how you’ll do it with us either,” Kells said. “But this might make for a good start.” He had a massive canvas sack hanging from his shoulder by a leather strap. He slung it up on the bar, where it landed with a satisfying clank.