Dancing with Dragons

by Lorenda Christensen

  But she wasn’t looking at me. Her voice was low and guttural when she addressed the general. “You dare to override my instructions?”

  Moving almost faster than I could follow, Savitri lunged, swiping a claw in the direction of the much larger maroon dragon. Almost a full second later, purple blood gushed from a deep cut on Benaki’s side. The general looked down at the gash in his scales, and then to the liquid splashing onto the same carpet destroyed by Savitri’s feet. He raised his head to look the dragon lord in the eye.

  And he laughed.

  The sound seemed to vibrate through the room. But that wasn’t what had goose bumps breaking out on my arm. Sane dragons didn’t laugh like that. No, only the mentally unsound goaded dragon lords into stabbing holes through them.

  And crazy dragons certainly didn’t worry themselves with the health of their human audience.

  Benaki shifted when Lady Savitri started to move, the big dragons resembling wrestlers as they slowly circled each other, looking for an opportunity to strike.

  I used their preoccupation to put some distance between myself and their very sharp claws and teeth. After I’d entered the room, the door mechanism had engaged, closing the wooden panels. There was no way I could leave the room without drawing Benaki’s attention.

  So when Savitri growled and gathered herself for another attack, I pressed myself against the wall.

  “I don’t think you want to do that.” Benaki used the claws on his right hand to pull a box from the satchel at his side. He tossed the box in my direction, and I yelped in surprise as it skidded along the floor.

  “Open the box.”

  With Savitri’s eyes still on the general, I didn’t feel that I had another choice. An odd plastic material, it was similar in size to a shoebox and held together with a single piece of ribbon. Keeping my eye on the general, I approached the container cautiously. With eyes squinted half-shut with trepidation, I pulled the string and slowly lifted the lid from the box, half afraid a shoe-sized dragon would leap from the interior and try to rip off my face.

  When the contents failed to jump free of their prison and attack me, I opened my eyes fully and peered into the silk-lined space.

  Inside, nestled on a bed of crushed black velvet, lay a tightly curled obsidian talon. The talon’s surface was polished to a shine, and could have been beautiful. Except for what it was attached to—wilted scales the color of a ripe orange covered a fat knuckle at the base. My body knew what it was before my mind could process the sight, and I slung the box and its contents as far away as I could manage.

  The container bounced across the floor, landing in a small heap right at the dragon lord’s feet. Time seemed to slow as Savitri glanced down at the amputated claw, and her eyes widened in horror.

  Benaki rewarded her expression with a chuckle. “As you can see, it isn’t in your best interests—or should I say, your husband’s interests—for you to deny my requests.”

  Savitri’s ferocious growl morphed into a whimper. “Eriel...” Her eyes stayed locked on the floor. “What have you done?”

  “What have I done?” Benaki let out another rumbling laugh. “I’ve taken what should have been mine the instant Hian-puo imprisoned Relobu’s dragons. I left my birth country and have served you faithfully for three years. And now, when China’s dragon lord falls and his territory is open for possession, you order a retreat instead of claiming the land?” Benaki’s snout lifted into a sneer and he pointed to the grotesque claw. “Human emotion has no place in our society. Your love for this dragon? That is what makes you weak.”

  Savitri finally looked her general in the eye. “You killed my mate? I will show you who is weak!” I cringed as the dragon lord primed her muscles to pounce, spikes I hadn’t even noticed on her tail lifting in preparation for attack.

  I finally understood how this tiny dragon managed to maintain her throne. Savitri in a killing mood was a sight to see. The flesh just behind her jaws had fanned out around her face, and deadly venom dripped from her top incisors, hissing as it hit the stone floor. She rose to full height on her back legs, her neck weaving in a deceptively lazy pattern as she prepared herself to strike like a snake. Her irises had shrunk to tiny slits.

  Benaki tensed, but he didn’t move out of her range. “Eriel is not dead.”

  His words caused the dragon lord to pause, her words slurring as her tongue danced around dripping fangs. “You lie.”

  “I do not. Your precious mate is safely ensconced in your palace, guarded by a team of dragons under my command. And by my honor—”

  Savitri hissed. “You have no honor!”

  The general barely reacted to her interruption, only pausing briefly to glare at the female dragon. “By my honor he will remain alive and well, as long as you are smart.”

  The maroon dragon turned, leisurely scanning the room as he detailed his demands. “You will not attempt to attack me again. You will do exactly as I say, with no arguments, and no tricks, or I will kill you and your mate immediately.”

  “And how will this end? Weeks from now, will I still be a puppet in your play for power? Am I simply expected to live the rest of my life under the threat of your teeth? I think I would rather die.” Savitri’s dark gray scales were glistening with sweat, the stress of the situation causing the muscles near her spine to quiver.

  Benaki sneered. “I can arrange that, should it be your wish. However, my wish is for control of China. Nothing more. Representatives of the dragon council are due to arrive here in Bangalore later this week to collect your recommendation for Lord Hian-puo’s replacement as dragon lord of China. As soon as I garner the votes needed for my claim to his throne, I will leave you and your worthless territory.”

  Lady Savitri huffed out a laugh. “If you believe staging a coup d’état on my rule will garner respect with the council, you are more naive than I ever imagined. China’s ruler will be culled from its citizens. They will never accept an outside leader, much less a dragon who has already defected from his homeland once before. They will not stand for it. I will not stand for it.”

  Benaki gave Savitri a hard look. “As you say, your territory is the closest to Hian-puo’s domain, and therefore your vote will hold sway over the other lords. They will not chance installing a leader you do not support, as they cannot afford to help defend China should you invade. You alone will have final say over the new leader of China. So, Lady Savitri—” Benaki gave her a mocking bow. “—the council will accept me upon your recommendation, or you won’t have enough boxes for the pieces of your beloved Eriel.”

  His demands communicated, Benaki turned for the door, banging a fist against the opening mechanism.

  I huddled closer to the wall as the general swept past me out of the office. Startled exclamations from the office staff erupted before the sound was immediately cut off by the thick double doors swinging shut.

  I took a moment to ponder what I’d just heard.

  I had one important question answered. Lady Savitri had never planned on taking over China. She’d placed her dragons on the border for protection from Hian-puo’s increasingly hostile behavior. By his own confession—boasting, more like—Benaki was the dragon with plans to invade China. He’d seen Hian-puo’s trial and the Chinese lord’s likely execution as an opportunity to become a dragon lord himself.

  But how had he convinced Savitri’s generals to join in his scheme?

  The dragon lord’s voice pulled me from my thoughts. It was a moment before my faculties returned to the point that I could translate her words to English.

  “Julie, I need you to find Nipa.”

  I nodded, turned, and was halfway out the door before I realized I still held the letters intended for her generals. The ones demanding that they fall back from the borders of Pakistan.

  “Ma’am? Did you still want these posted?” I held up the folder.

  The dragon lord’s face tightened. “No. I’m not certain which of my generals have defected to Benaki. Hold th
em until I can identify my true friends. Or until I can assure Eriel’s safety.”

  Wondering how I always managed to find myself in the middle of all the international dragon crises, I nodded. “I’ll go find your assistant.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Sadly, finding Nipa was far easier than I imagined.

  Upon opening the doors of Lady Savitri’s office, I was confronted by complete pandemonium. Mangled remains of cubicle walls were strewn throughout the room, interspersed with puddles of blood, both human and dragon. The office had been transformed into a war zone. Savitri’s old assistant lay in the middle of the tile floor, cradled in the arms of Neetha, a young woman who worked in a cube next door to mine. Or had worked in a cube next door to mine. Our cubicles were nowhere to be found.

  A circle of people stood around the two women, most of them either panicked or crying as they watched Neetha attempt to wake the limp woman from her unconscious state.

  Judging from the amount of blood dripping from Nipa’s temple, she wasn’t waking up anytime soon. If she ever woke again.

  I looked around the office and grabbed a sweater from the back of a tipped-over chair. Pushing through the crowd of people—all yelling at one another in a frantic mix of English and various local dialects—I pushed the sweater into Neetha’s hands and told her to keep it firm on Nipa’s head.

  I’d just turned to one of the other ladies in an effort to find out exactly what had happened when Lady Savitri stepped out of her office.

  “I smell human blood. Who’s been injured?” The dragon’s gaze quickly settled on the fallen woman, and Lady Savitri drew in a shocked breath. The humans, still affected by their recent trauma, backed away as her fleshy collar began to rise in anger.

  Neetha babbled through her tears. “We didn’t expect...He gave us no warning. Nipa took offense at the way Benaki addressed one of her copy girls and demanded he apologize immediately or she would report his lack of courtesy to you, my Queen. He picked up a file cabinet and he...he hit her with it!”

  Unable to continue her story, the poor girl tried yet again to wake the older woman. Nipa’s face was pale from blood loss, and one of the other office employees tried and failed to find a pulse. She wasn’t going to make it.

  Lady Savitri seemed to come to the same conclusion. The dragon scanned the room, and I felt myself tense involuntarily when her furious eyes met mine.

  “Julie, I need you in my office, now!”

  With the combination of anger and the natural tendency of a dragon’s voice to be growly, her order echoed through the room like the roar of a cannon. All heads turned in my direction as most of the office, unversed in dragonspeak, tried to follow what was happening. The people who had been standing beside me seemed to disappear, sinking back as they determined that I was the center of the dragon’s attention. Threading my hands together behind my back to keep them from shaking, I nodded once and headed back into her office.

  It was Savitri’s turn to viciously slap the button on the door as I stepped through the entrance. I buried my urge to run as Savitri began to pace, her spiked tail and fully extended claws causing me to cringe every time the dragon lord got within three feet of me.

  “Find out how many dragons Benaki has guarding my mate.” In her fury, Savitri’s words literally shook the room. I must not have done a good job of hiding my fear—perhaps she could smell the beads of sweat trickling down my back—because, after a quick glance in my direction, she made a conscious effort to lower her voice.

  “I’m sorry. I know this isn’t what you signed up for, but I’m going to need someone I can trust.”

  “Excuse me?” As the new girl in town, I didn’t understand why in the world Savitri would trust me over the people who’d been with her for years. I struggled for a polite way to ask my question without trying to convince the dragon lord I was untrustworthy. “I appreciate your willingness to rely on me. And rest assured, I will do anything in my power to help you. But why am I the only person you can trust? I’ve only been here two days.”

  “Exactly. At this point, I have no idea who Benaki has persuaded into his service. If he has my husband, one of my guards must have let him into the palace. And my generals? Those letters you hold will be the third message I’ve sent to my commanders. I don’t know whether my company leaders have ignored my orders, or if Benaki has ensured they never received them.”

  Savitri’s explanation of why she considered me trustworthy made sense. But did I really want to be involved? Was there any way I could avoid it at this point?

  I know what Daniel would say.

  News of the coup would give him plenty of fodder for a career-making story for the Tulsa Times Chronicle. Sure, he’d love to have someone on the inside feeding him information as events unfolded, but I wasn’t sure I was the person for the job. Tracking troop movements from a cubicle? While danger had always been a possibility, the odds of me actually getting hurt gathering information from paperwork had been relatively low. But front and center of a coup d’état? This project seemed to push the limits of what was sane, even for an investigative reporter.

  If Daniel broke the story before Savitri rescued her husband, there would be no way Benaki would allow him to live. Which left me the most important question. Could I live with myself if I knowingly left someone to die? Even if it was a dragon I’d never met?

  “Please, Julie. I need your help.” Savitri bowed her head in respect, almost as if she could see that I was waffling. “I need to find out whether Eriel is safe.”

  I looked at the dragon. For all her strength, and yes, sometimes ruthlessness—as evidenced by those dragons who had been stupid enough to challenge for her position—she was still a creature with the capacity for kindness. And since I’d started this job, I’d seen Savitri treat her employees with nothing but respect, even if it was an aloof sort of courtesy.

  Was she difficult to work for? Maybe. I hadn’t been here long enough to tell. But she didn’t seem unfair. And right now, she needed my help.

  I straightened my shoulders and met the dragon’s pleading eyes, shoving my fear aside and concentrating on the problem at hand. “What do you need me to do?”

  Savitri sagged in relief. “Thank you.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Mrs. Green?”

  I was standing in the footprint of my cube, trying in vain to get the telephone line to make a connection so I could call the police, the hospital, anybody, when there was a tap on my shoulder. I jumped about a mile in the air, and couldn’t help the small squeak of alarm that escaped before I realized it was the young woman from the front desk.

  Her mouth was a small O of terror, and it probably made me a bad person, but I was glad to hear an answering yip of fear come from her mouth. She might not have been in the room when the carnage started, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out that something really bad had just happened.

  Almost nothing in the room was still standing, and there was a literal hole in the wall where a printer had landed when Benaki had it sailing through the room.

  I sighed. “What can I help you with?”

  My words pulled her gaze from the carnage back to my face, and she paused while she seemed to retrieve the reason for her visit.

  “Mrs. Green. Your husband has left several messages. He seems slightly alarmed. He said you were supposed to meet him at noon.”

  After the events of this morning, it took me a moment to figure out that she was talking about Daniel, and that I’d promised to meet up with him for lunch. I glanced at the cheap plastic clock that had miraculously continued ticking despite its sudden relocation from my cube wall to its current position in the center of the tiled floor. It was almost three in the afternoon.

  Funny how time flies when dragons are throwing hissy fits and slinging bodies around.

  “Did he leave a phone number?”

  “Yes ma’am. But the dragons at the door...” she paused, chewing at her nail as she decided how to ex
plain, “they’ve ordered me not to return any calls until they give me notice to do so.”

  Figures.

  I thanked her and headed for the reception area at one speed above a brisk walk. If there was one thing I knew I wanted, it was to get out of this building.

  The girl turned and followed me, albeit with a more decorous rate of acceleration. “What’s going on?”

  Without having any idea where to start—I really had no idea what was going on, or what would happen in the next five minutes, even—I ignored her question and sailed through the office doors, fully expecting to see a very worried or very angry Daniel sitting on the room’s plush leather sofa, but instead I was faced with an empty room.

  Empty of humans, that is. A pair of stern-faced dragons stood on each side of the building’s main entrance.

  The receptionist noticed my disappointment.

  “They are allowing no visitors past the front gate.”

  I sighed, and turned to study my jailers. The dragons were of the smaller variety, which serves to say they were only a foot taller than me instead of six. Their scales were the exact same shade of sand brown, and I couldn’t help but wonder whether they were related, or if they’d been chosen to guard the front entrance because they presented a pretty picture to the outside world.

  Based on my limited experience with Benaki, and his total disregard for order—the mangled furniture and broken printers standing as testament to that fact—I guessed it was a mere coincidence.

  “How long have they been here?” I was pretty certain I hadn’t been so distracted this morning that I’d missed seeing them upon my arrival. Even with the events of the last few weeks, I wasn’t so jaded that I’d stopped noticing the creatures.

  The girl swallowed. “General Benaki ordered them to make sure no one entered or left the building.” Her eyes were wide and frightened as she realized the guards and the mess in the office were almost certainly connected. “What’s going on?” She repeated her question, this time with a hand placed on my arm to prevent me from ignoring her once again.