Nice Dragons Finish Last

by Rachel Aaron

  Svena said nothing. She simply stood and waited while Estella checked her phone again. Whatever she read there, it must have been good news, because her face lit up at once. “I must go. Everything will fall into place soon, you will see. All I need from you is that you stay here. Do that, and I promise I will have Katya back to us before midnight. Then, my dear sister, we will deal with these foolish Heartstrikers together. When we are finished, Bethesda and her horde won’t even be a memory. ”

  Svena smiled and held her tongue, allowing herself to be kissed before Estella walked out of the room. When the seer’s soft footsteps finally vanished down the hall, Svena walked across the suite to the window that overlooked the hotel’s front entrance. It was nearing sunset, and the glare off the skyway’s white buildings was blinding, but if she squinted, she could see the human doorman escorting Estella to her waiting limo. The moment her sister was safely ensconced in her car, Svena marched back into her dressing room and snatched her phone out of the litter of broken glass on the vanity.

  As usual, Ian picked up before the second ring. “Changed your mind about dinner?”

  Any other time, Svena would have happily strung him along. Tonight, however, she was in no mood for games. “Be at my hotel in thirty minutes. ”

  Ian didn’t answer at once, giving Svena time to ponder how he would react. A younger, less secure dragon would object to being commanded to appear, while a more experienced one would expect a trap and proceed with caution. As usual, though, Ian was a pleasant surprise.

  “I’ll be there in twenty,” he said with all the confident ambition that had drawn Svena to him in the first place. “See you then. ”

  Svena ended the call and sank onto the couch Estella had vacated with a smirk. She might have no choice but to obey her eldest sister’s edict not to leave her suite, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t do as she pleased inside it, and Svena was suddenly very inspired to do exactly as she pleased. Because no matter what Estella said, the White Witch of the Three Sisters was no one’s pawn, and if her sister could no longer see Svena’s future, that just meant she was free to make of it what she wanted for once.

  And as she looked out the bedroom window at the glass and steel towers of the DFZ shining like torches in the evening sunlight, Svena was surprised by how very much she wanted.

  ***

  Julius wasn’t sure what he’d thought the Heartstriker safe house would look like, but the building Bob stopped in front of definitely wasn’t it. Positioned at the southwestern corner of the Upper City, as far from the water as you could get and still be on the skyways, the modern three-story mansion looked more like an upwardly mobile couple’s urban showcase home than a dragon clan’s emergency lair. It didn’t even seem to have walls, just windows and brushed steel accents. It was, however, very conveniently located right off an exit ramp, and the enormous faux-cedar porch that wrapped around the house’s western face to poke off the edge of the skyway made an excellent emergency landing spot for a dragon.

  Bob dropped them off at the front gate, though he refused to actually go inside with them. When Julius asked why, Bob had declared he was the servant of “Great and Important Matters” and driven off, yelling out the window that he’d be back to pick them up “before the fun started. ”

  Since it was now go inside or hang out on the curb, Julius walked up the stairs to the red-painted front door with Marci right behind him. The house was locked, of course, and when no one responded to the doorbell, he knocked as loudly as he could. He was about to knock again when the door flew open to reveal a sweaty, shirtless, and barefoot Justin with a slice of pizza in one hand and the Fang of the Heartstrikers in the other.

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  His eyebrows shot up when he saw who was at his door, and he lowered his sword, taking another bite of his pizza before asking, “What happened to her?”

  Marci’s hand instantly went to her throat, and Julius sighed. “Car wreck. Can we come in?”

  Justin shrugged and stepped aside. “Your safe house, too,” he said, still chewing. “The human has to wait outside, though. ”

  “No, she doesn’t,” Julius said, lowering his voice. “Marci knows all about us now. Bob was the one who drove us over. ”

  He’d expected Justin be impressed by that last bit, but his brother just rolled his eyes. “Don’t tell me the Pigeon Whisperer dragged you into one of his stupid schemes. ” When Julius nodded, Justin shook his head. “Fine, the girl can come in, but if anyone asks, it was your idea. ”

  Julius pulled Marci inside before Justin could change his mind, closing the door quickly behind them.

  The safe house’s interior was just as nice as its exterior, full of tasteful furniture that managed to look both modern and timeless, a sure sign that someone other than Mother had chosen the decor since Bethesda’s taste in interior design ran more to gilded skulls than designer tables. But while the vestibule and plant-lined back porch were immaculate, the living room was a disaster area of trash and beer bottles. Clearly, Justin had made himself at home.

  “How long have you been here?” Marci asked, staring wide-eyed at what had to be fifty empty pizza boxes stacked against the sliding glass door to the back patio.

  “About ten hours,” Justin said, walking to the open pizza box currently sitting in the middle of what had once been a pristine ecru couch. “I slept eight of those, though. ”

  Marci’s eyes went wider still. “You ate all of this in two hours?”

  “Please,” Justin said, dropping down on the floor to start a set of one-armed push-ups. “Haven’t you ever seen a dragon eat? This took me ten minutes. I actually thought you were the pizza guy with my second order when I heard the door. ”

  Marci made a little choking sound and looked at Julius with new understanding. Justin, however, seemed to have written them off entirely. Clearly, it was time to stop making small talk and get to the point.

  “Justin,” Julius said solemnly. “I need your help. ”

  Justin stopped mid-push-up, arching his neck back to stare at his brother. “My help,” he repeated. “You’re asking me to help you?”

  “Yes,” Julius said. “Please. ”

  Justin thought about it for a second, and then he pushed off the ground, popping himself back onto his feet like a cork. “Okay. ”

  Julius blinked. “That’s it? You don’t even want to know what we’re doing first?”

  “I told you I’d help last night,” Justin said, walking into the bathroom. “And anyway, how much trouble can you be in?”

  Marci and Julius exchanged a silent look. “I think your brother has a chronically underdeveloped sense of danger,” she whispered.

  Julius couldn’t argue with that. “Remember that dragoness I was trying to find?”

  “The Three Sisters girl?” Justin said, his voice muffled by the towel he was using to dry the sweat from his hair. “You still haven’t found her?”

  “No, we found her. That’s sort of the problem. We were taking her back to Ian’s when Katya’s sister Estella, the seer, arranged for her to be kidnapped by a human named Bixby in exchange for Marci’s Kosmolabe. He’s going to be contacting us in an hour, and if we don’t meet his demands, he’ll kill her. ”

  “The dragon or the human?” Justin asked, tossing the towel on the floor before walking back out into the living room.

  “Both, probably,” Julius replied. “We’ve had one shootout with Bixby’s men today already. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had a full—”

  Justin nodded. “Got it. ”

  “How can you get it if I haven’t said it?” Julius snapped.

  “What’s to get?” his brother asked, combing his short hair back into order with his fingers. “Kill humans, rescue dragon, done. Do we need to save this Kosmo-whatever, too?”

  “Yes,” Marci said before Julius could answer. When he looked at her, she shrugged. “What? If Estella wants it, it must be important. We can’t let it fall into the wrong han
ds. ”

  By which she clearly meant any hands other than hers. “I don’t want to give anything up that we don’t have to,” Julius said. “But Katya is our first priority. ”

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  Justin was grinning by the time he finished. “Good to see you taking the initiative for once,” he said, smacking Julius on the back. “Never thought I’d see the day. Now, let’s get you a weapon. ”

  “A weapon?” Julius coughed, trying to get his lungs working again after his brother’s punishing hit.

  “Of course,” Justin said, kicking the trash out his way as he walked across the living room to a maglocked door on the other side. “What, did you think they’d just surrender if you asked politely?”

  Julius shot him a dirty look, but his brother was too busy punching a code into the door’s keypad to notice.

  “You ask for my help, we do it my way,” Justin said when the door clicked open. “That means assault, and assault means you have to stop being a wuss and come get a sword. ”

  “No offense, Justin,” Marci said. “But I’m pretty sure Bixby’s men are going to have guns. Last I heard, you don’t bring a sword to a gun fight. ”

  “Then you haven’t heard of swords like these,” he said, pushing the door open.

  Marci gasped, and Julius felt a little overwhelmed himself. Behind the door Justin had just unlocked, a small room glittered like an ancient hoard under tastefully recessed lighting. Though clearly meant to be a bedroom, the walls and windows had been been replaced with reinforced cement slabs lined with metal shelving, and on those shelves was a display of wealth greater than anything Julius had seen outside his mother’s throne room.

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” he whispered. “That’s not…”

  “Of course it is,” Justin said, stepping high over a bag of gold coins stamped with the faces of long-dead kings. “You remember how Chelsie was always going on about how keeping all your treasure in one place was risky and stupid?”

  Julius nodded. Even locked up in his room, there was no way he could have missed the fit his mother threw every time anyone suggested moving so much as a coin of her hoard.

  “Well,” Justin continued. “Last year, Mother finally gave in and agreed to start redistributing some of her less valuable objects. Most of the safe houses have rooms like this now, alternate treasuries just in case something happens to the main hoard in the mountain, and they are not to be touched. ”

  This last bit was directed at Marci, who was rushing the door in her hurry to get to all the sparkly, shiny beauty.

  “I’m not going to take anything,” she protested as she stepped inside. “I just want to look. ”

  “So look from there,” Justin snarled, picking her up bodily and setting her firmly back on the other side of the door. “Minor treasury or not, this is all property of Bethesda the Heartstriker, and even a human should know how serious dragons are about their treasure. She’ll know the second you touch so much as a dust bunny, so if you don’t want your mortal life to be even shorter than usual, you’ll keep your sticky fingers to yourself. ”

  Marci huffed with disappointment, casting Julius a pleading look. When he spread his arms helplessly, she pointed at the far corner of the treasure room where an amber carving of an owl in flight had been propped haphazardly on top of a pile of velvet jewelry boxes. “Can you at least tell me what that one does? I can feel the magic pouring off it from here. ”

  Justin’s answer was a low growl, and Julius decided it was time to move things along before Marci got herself in real trouble. “What did you want to show me?”

  “Not show,” Justin said. “Loan. ” He reached up to grab an enormous jeweled sword off the weapon rack on the far wall. “Here, give this a try. ”

  Julius stared at the six-foot-long bar of sharpened metal and magical ornamentation with a sinking weight in his chest. “Justin, I can’t even lift that. ”

  “Oh, right,” his brother said. “I forgot you have baby arms. ” He returned the large sword to its bracket and took down a pair of ancient looking jade hook swords instead. “What about these?”

  “No,” Julius said again. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate the effort, but I haven’t touched a sword since we were teenagers, and I wasn’t even good then. If you want to give me a weapon, how about a shotgun? Or a taser? You know, something point-and-click I can use without years of training?”

  “Like Mother would ever keep anything so mundane in her hoard,” Justin said with a snort. “Don’t worry, I’m sure your training will come back once your life is on the line. Even if it doesn’t, you’re a dragon. We’re naturally good at killing stuff. ”

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  “You’re naturally good at killing stuff,” Julius grumbled, leaning over Marci to look around the room for a weapon that would shut his brother up while still being light enough for him to actually carry. Unfortunately, everything in the corner by Justin was either huge or overly complicated. He was about to tell his brother to forget the whole thing when he spotted a familiar-looking golden hilt sticking out of a vase on the top shelf.

  “There,” he said, pointing. “Get me that one. ”

  Justin looked deeply skeptical, but he got the sword down as requested. The moment the slender red leather scabbard came into view, Julius’s face broke into a huge grin.

  “That’s it,” he said, holding out his hand. “That’s the one I want. ”

  “You can’t be serious,” Justin said, holding the weapon with his fingertips like he thought it might be contagious. “This isn’t even a sword. ”

  It was a bit short. The golden handle was large enough to fit comfortably even in Justin’s big hands, but the sheathed blade was barely more than a foot long. For Julius, though, that was a mark in its favor, and he opened and closed his palm in a grabby hands motion until his brother relented and handed the sword over.

  “What are you going to do with that pocket knife anyway? Chop onions?”

  “I could chop you,” Julius said proudly, unsheathing the short, razor sharp blade. “For your information, this is Tyrfing, forged by dwarfs for Odin’s own grandson to never miss its mark. ”

  Justin rolled his eyes. “You are such a nerd. How do you even know that?”

  “Because I looked it up years ago,” Julius said with a sly smile. “Remember those knife tossing competitions when we were kids?”

  Justin’s eyes went wide. “That’s how you beat me?” When Julius nodded, his brother's face contorted in fury. “I knew you cheated!”

  “There was no rule against using enchanted weapons,” Julius said, smiling at his reflection in the sword’s mirror-bright surface. “I wonder how it ended up here, though? It might not be pretty, but Tyrfing is old. Even if she was redistributing her treasure, I’d have thought Mother would keep all the really good stuff back at the mountain. ”

  “She did,” Justin said, still scowling. “She just doesn’t consider swords to be ‘good stuff. ’ Why else do you think she let us play with them? Jewelry’s another matter. Remember the time Jessica tried to touch one of her diamond tiaras?”

  Julius remembered it fondly. “I thought her hair would never grow back. ”

  They both snickered. Marci, however, was still staring at the sword in Julius’s hands like he’d threatened to kill her with it.

  “What I want to know is how a relic like that ended up with you guys at all,” she said, pointing at Tyrfing. “That’s an honest-to-God ancient artifact! A girl in my History of Lore class gave a freaking presentation about how the Tyrfing legend was a prototypical example of a cursed weapon cycle. ” Then, like she’d just realized what she’d said, Marci took a quick step away from the naked blade. “Wait, isn’t Tyrfing cursed to kill a man every time it’s drawn?”

  “Oh, that was broken ages ago,” Julius said, sheathing the sword again to prove it. “Mother would never let something as valuable as a still-functional cursed weapon out of her private hoard. I’m pretty
sure she took it from another dragon during the centuries she spent in Europe preparing to kill her father the Quetzalcoatl and take his lands. Considering how plain it looks, though, I’m pretty sure the only reason she bothered to keep it is because it’s famous. ”

  “I don’t care if it’s a sharpened stick, so long as you actually use it,” Justin grumped. “You are going to use it, right? Because I’m not risking Mother’s stuff if you’re just going to stand around talking to everyone again. ”

  “I don’t think talking’s going to be an option this time,” Julius said sadly, undoing his belt and sliding it through the loop on the sword’s red scabbard. “But this should be good enough. Tyrfing might not be as powerful as it used to be, but it still never misses. So long as I know what I’m aiming at, all I have to do is swing and the sword will do the rest. ” He grinned. “Sounds about right for my skill level. ”

  Justin made a disgusted sound and walked out of the small treasury, locking the door behind him, to Marci’s evident dismay. “So,” he said when they were all out in the living room again. “What’s the plan?”

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  “We haven’t gotten the location yet,” Julius said. “But we know it’s a trap. One for Marci specifically, set by a seer. ”

  “You pissed off a seer?” Justin gave Marci a scathing look. “That was dumb. ”

  “I didn’t do it on purpose!” she cried. “And she’s not pissed at me. She wants the Kosmo—”

  “Well, if a seer’s pissed, I don’t know if there’s anything we can do,” Justin said over her, walking across the room to grab his shirt off the back of the couch. “They command the future. We might as well try to beat back the ocean. ”

  Julius frowned, thinking back to what Bob had told them in the car. “I don’t think that’s right. They don’t command the future any more than we do. They’re just able to see what’s coming. ”

  “And push you in front of it,” Marci added, crossing her arms over her chest. “You know, as much as I hate to say this, I think I might actually have to agree with Captain Bring Down. If seers really do work like Brohomir says, I can’t see how we’re going to win. If this Estella lady can see all our decisions before we make them, then it doesn’t matter how great a plan we come up with—she’s already seen it and thought up a counter. ”