Dancing with Dragons

by Lorenda Christensen

  Thank the Lord, it was a sales call! I didn’t know who’d reported the outage, but I could kiss them right now.

  “Listen, Fatima, we’ve got a bit of a situation here. I need you to get on the phone and call the Tulsa office of DRACIM. Better yet, it’d be great if you could connect me.” I rattled off my roommate’s number before the poor girl could interrupt.

  “Um, ma’am, I don’t believe I can—”

  “Don’t worry about it. Just dial the number and ask for Myrna Banks. Tell her we have a rogue general doing a pretty good job of taking over the entire Indian Territory. She needs to notify Lord Nir Relobu to get his army in the air to help us out.”

  “Ma’am, I’m sorry. This isn’t—” papers rattled as Fatima struggled to keep up. “I’m afraid I do not understand. Can you repeat your request?”

  I realized the excitement had thickened my native drawl and I forced myself to speak slowly and enunciate. “I need you to call Myrna Banks at the Tulsa DRACIM office. This is her number.”

  I’d barely managed to get out the first two digits before the line went dead.

  “Fatima. Fatima? Crap.” I pushed the hook mechanism three or four times, but it was no use. I’d lost the dial tone.

  When the phone still didn’t work after a few minutes, I slammed it down and headed for the office next door. In the back of my mind, I knew the odds of the problem being with the equipment itself were infinitesimal, but it didn’t matter. I’d just found someone who could help me get word to...well, anybody, and I just couldn’t accept that a dead phone was the end of all hope.

  I took another peek at the dragon guards—the snoring one was still snoring and the fat one was still fat. When he looked in my direction, I waved and held up the empty mug I’d found on the office desk near the telephone. A lone woman with a dry throat must not have been high on the danger list, because the dragon, now that it was clear I’d given up trying to sleep, ignored me completely and looked toward a group of men who were huddled near the remaining copy machines and talking quietly.

  I took that as tacit permission to go on about my business. Convinced that all it would take was a new telephone handset, I kept my eye on the guard as I rushed into the office. But I hadn’t made it more than a few steps before I bounced off of something hard, rough, and scaly.

  Savitri peered down at me from the dark corner she’d been curled into. “Julie? Whatever are you doing?”

  “I, uh...” I held up the empty coffee cup. “I was just getting something to drink.”

  “I see.” Savitri dropped her head back to the floor and closed her eyes. The dragon lord looked terribly ill. Her scales had faded from their usual dark gray to a color that was more suited to ashy fireplace leftovers. Around her eyes and mouth, small fissures had formed between the plates of her skin, and if I hadn’t seen her drinking from the fountain in her garden earlier this morning, I would have said she was severely dehydrated.

  “Lady Savitri?”

  The dragon’s eyelids fluttered slightly, but she didn’t move from her prone position.

  I stepped closer and put a hand on her winged shoulder, and then gasped. The dragon lord’s body was emanating heat. I suddenly wondered whether Benaki was smarter than I gave him credit for.

  “Lady Savitri, have you eaten lately? Had anything to drink?”

  “I was provided meat for lunch. I have my own water supply.” Her words were so faint I had to put my ear right next to her mouth to hear her words.

  “Was the meal provided still living?” I didn’t remember hearing any of the icky animal sounds that usually accompanied a live meal.

  My question drew an angry, if tired, snort. “Of course not. They fed me a goat, fully cooked and stringy as an overworked racehorse. It tasted terrible.”

  Masking my grimace at the thought that Savitri would know how a racehorse tasted, I ran to the nearest supply cabinet and rummaged around for a bowl. Filling the container with water from our cooler, I placed it on the floor near Savitri’s head.

  “You need to drink this. I think you’ve been poisoned.” I’d remembered a story that ran in the paper a few years ago. A group of humans, tired of being the victims of frequent cattle thefts from dragons flying overhead, had decided that instead of contacting DRACIM to negotiate a settlement, they would take matters into their own hands. They’d done so by injecting copious amounts of rat poison into freshly killed cattle, leaving the meat out for the dragons while their live cattle were kept safely inside their barns.

  The rat poison hadn’t done much but cause the dragons mild indigestion, but DRACIM had been called in, just in case the dragons decided to retaliate against the farmers for their discomfort. Myrna had been assigned the case—who at the time served as Emory’s assistant and catchall for the worst DRACIM cases. It had taken a week to soothe ruffled feathers on both sides of the incident. After convincing the humans it was in their best interest to manage the thefts through the official channels provided by DRACIM and Lord Relobu, the farmers were allowed to return to their jobs. As for the dragons, they’d been up and flying around within the week, albeit over different pastureland and under the close watch of their dragon lord.

  But what if Benaki had found an additive more dangerous for dragons than simple rat poison? It would certainly be the easiest way to get rid of the dragon lord. Her entire staff had witnessed her declining energy levels, but we’d all just assumed it was due to worry for her infirm mate. But it was clear to me that her affliction was almost certainly designed to be fatal, and Benaki almost certainly to blame. He couldn’t kill her outright, and yes, her death immediately after Benaki’s confirmation as China’s dragon lord would be suspicious, but his involvement would be very hard to prove.

  Savitri had perked up enough to drink the water, but the very fact that she wasn’t roaring with claws out was testament to just how sick she was.

  “Here. Let me get more. You need to flush whatever it is from your system.” All I could do was get her to drink, and hope the poison required multiple doses.

  I headed back to the water cooler, only to notice that the telephone was blinking—again. Water forgotten, I skidded across the tile floor in my haste to reach the line before it was again disconnected.

  “Hello!” At two in the morning, I must have sounded like the most cheerful person on planet earth. “Fatima?” I prayed it was the same caller as before, so I didn’t have to start over with my panicked instructions.

  “Yes. This is Fatima.” I could tell by her tone of voice that she was not happy about who she was speaking with. “I apologize that we were disconnected. I wanted to tell you that Bangalore Telecommunications values your—”

  “Oh, please. Just stop!” Exasperated, I held up an angry hand, as if I could physically stop Fatima’s dogged determination to finish her employer’s pre-approved script. “Fatima, this is a matter of life and death. Like I told you before, it is imperative that you get in contact with the Tulsa DRACIM office—”

  I screamed in frustration when the line once again went dead, the need to avoid the attention of Benaki’s dragon guards momentarily forgotten.

  But the focus of their attention didn’t actually matter. Because I had another dragon to deal with.

  “Julie, what are you doing?” Savitri, her body bowed as if she were in enormous pain, stood just outside the door. Her question was asked in a soft tone—for a dragon—but I couldn’t mistake the simmering anger in her voice. “Why are you attempting to contact DRACIM? Was I not clear in my instructions earlier today?”

  I opened my mouth to speak, but no words came out. Just hours earlier, she’d expressly forbade any attempts at communication with the outside world, for fear Benaki would become aware and further damage her already maimed mate.

  She must have seen the answer in my eyes, because she shuffled forward, claws extended. “What did you tell them?”

  “Lady Savitri, with all due respect—” I gasped when the telephone in question hit the
wall and exploded into a thousand pieces. The low hum of Savitri’s staff chatting just outside the office came to an abrupt halt.

  I looked beyond the dragon lord’s shoulder. The guards must have started this way when they noticed Savitri rising from her resting place, because they stood right beside her.

  Three angry dragons. All staring directly at me. I looked to Savitri. “I didn’t tell them anything. I didn’t get a chance.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The dragon council representatives arrived right on schedule. Per Benaki’s orders, the rest of the mangled furniture and cardboard, which we’d been attempting to clean in small bits, had been cleared from our makeshift living area. The furniture and pieces of cubicle walls that were still standing had been converted into a similar, but much sparser, office space once more. Now all of Savitri’s humans stood in a loose semi-circle in the small meadow to the west of the building that served as a landing space for the dragons.

  Including me.

  Savitri had been furious about what she viewed as a betrayal on my part, and had barely been able to look at me without snarling. I’d pleaded with the dragon lord to see reason, and to realize that Benaki would never allow her to live, no matter her actions. I told her in no uncertain terms that her mate wouldn’t last the week.

  I’d been convinced that I’d gone too far when Savitri lunged toward me, teeth bared, but she’d pulled back at the last moment, turning her back to me in an unmistakable signal of disgust. I never got another chance to speak with her because soon after, Benaki’s guards, high on the power of imprisoning a dragon lord, had snapped a steel collar around Savitri’s neck, and chained her to a tree outside. They’d teased her mercilessly, and she allowed it, simply curling into a ball instead of facing them with claws and teeth.

  I’d been more convinced than ever that her meat was being poisoned, and I managed to convince Krishnan to offer her our leftover pizza as a dead-goat alternative. Not that her health was going to matter.

  When Benaki arrived, he ordered Savitri’s collar removed. She stood, docile, as the chains were hauled away, and it was obvious that the dragon lord planned to see this plan through and tell the delegation whatever Benaki wished as she held on to the thin thread of hope that the general would uphold his promise to free her mate.

  Squinting, I looked up to the sky. Small black dots, around twenty or so, floated like tiny bugs in front of the morning sun. Even from this far away, I could hear dragons roar as they announced their arrival to our ramshackle reception party. They were flying in fast, and the dots grew larger and more impressive by the second as the council representatives drew closer.

  A crowd had gathered beyond the thick stone wall that separated Savitri’s buildings from the rest of the world, and I heard cheers rise up. I wondered whether they thought the delegation was here to help clean up the chemical spill. People shuffled ever closer to the boundary of the property wall, anxious to get a look at the new arrivals. Their exclamations were followed with a growled order from one of Benaki’s dragons to move away from the building. I peered through a small metal grate in the wall, and watched as the crowd only shifted slightly at the warning. With no dragonspeakers to translate, his order was either misunderstood or ignored.

  The council representatives, still blissfully unaware of our true circumstances, obliged the excited crowd with awesome feats of aerial prowess. One of the larger dragons, Lady Adelaida’s judging by his brightly colored scales, impressed the spectators with a slow, midair roll. A darker, thinner dragon joined in at a faster pace. The second dragon’s dark coloring, coupled by the thinner, longer shape of his body as it spun in ever tightening circles, caused him to look oddly similar to the funnel of an Oklahoma tornado.

  The spectators crowed their approval.

  The dragon guard’s second warning—a roar and snap of teeth—was a universal method of communication, and those closest to the angry reptile obligingly moved away from the dragon and the building. But their enthusiasm was in no way dampened.

  It was a rare sight to see this many dragons in one place. Those who were attending the conference with a human counterpart wore bright saddles decked out in the official colors of their respective territory. The humans seated astride did the same, their uniforms matching the scale colors of their dragon. Those dragons who had come alone displayed their national pride with scarves of colored cloth wound around their necks, or had painted their territorial hues directly onto their scales.

  The entire delegation landed at the same time in the usually secluded Savitri territory. And, despite earlier warnings about chemical spills and quarantines, it seemed as if half of India had come to enjoy the show. They cheered as if this group would save us all, when in fact they would likely be the last thing we’d see before our murders.

  I scanned the sea of faces for any hint of a pale-skinned man with brown hair, and felt tears clog my throat once again when I failed to locate Daniel’s familiar grinning face. “Move away from the wall. Your new master has ordered it.” The dragon glanced toward Benaki, who stood beside an obviously sickly Savitri, the epitome of a concerned subject.

  Of course, Benaki’s act would have been far more convincing had he not been staring daggers in my direction. It wasn’t hard to see that I didn’t have a future with this company past today.

  That is, if I didn’t starve to death first.

  Fully aware that Benaki had every reason to make sure I died of an alleged accident as soon as possible, I’d been careful not to eat anything. Other than the pizza, Savitri had done the same. In addition to refusing any food served by Benaki’s men, with each hour that passed with no word from Daniel, Savitri had retreated further into her emotionless state. This morning she was barely a shadow of the former Indian dragon lord. The dragon council would have no trouble believing she’d died of natural causes.

  Benaki knew it. And quietly reveled in his new power.

  Suddenly furious at the dragon responsible for the suffering of so many people—Savitri and her mate, Neetha and her murdered best friend, myself and, as I was starting to realize, likely Daniel—I couldn’t even pretend to cower at his orders.

  Slowly, and very distinctly, I lifted my right hand and showed Benaki a different, but no-less-universal signal of my frustration and anger at his actions. My bird might not hold a candle to the midair antics of a dragon, but it got my point across. Even from a distance I could sense the general’s eyes narrow. Before the dragon beside me could notice his master’s fury and decide to earn brownie points by knocking me unconscious with a meaty fist, I turned my back on the entire spectacle and stalked inside.

  The window for Daniel’s rescue attempt had officially closed.

  We were all doomed.

  * * *

  As I left the garden, I was followed, of course, by one of Benaki’s dragons. As one of only two dragonspeakers, I was considered a higher risk than the other human employees and was treated accordingly. The general had assigned a dragon to be with me at all times, just in case I tried to communicate with a reptilian member of the delegation. My guard tracked my movements with a bored eye until the delegation members were shown inside.

  The other staff was similarly shadowed, although with a lesser degree of suspicion, as Benaki’s guards made regular rounds throughout the room under the guise of small talk with the visiting troupe. I could see that the human members of the council felt the tension in the room, but no one acted on it. Savitri was a known recluse; they probably assumed that all visitors made us uncomfortable.

  Krishnan hadn’t spoken to me since last night. True, as the only two dragonspeakers in the building, we’d been busy trying to calm Savitri’s staff when Benaki’s dragons got a little too growly for their comfort, but I couldn’t help but notice that Krishnan always seemed to leave a room as soon as I’d enter. He too had been furious at my reckless disregard for the safety of Savitri’s mate, regardless of my reasons behind it.

  The amount of small
talk must have made Benaki nervous, because the delegation hadn’t been in the building more than ten minutes before the general suggested the council step into Savitri’s office and commence the process of choosing China’s new dragon lord.

  But the other dragons were amenable, and soon the entire party was lumbering toward the door.

  “Thank you, Mr. Krishnan,” a voice said in English. “I’m glad to hear the chemical spill has been contained to the west end of the building. I trust all the employees are in good health?”

  I heard Krishnan answer in the affirmative before he received another question. “Lord Relobu asked that I visit with Lady Savitri privately, on an unrelated matter. With whom should I speak to have that arranged?”

  Krishnan was halfway through a bumbling explanation about why that wouldn’t be possible before I realized the American voice belonged to none other than Trian Chobardan, Myrna’s boyfriend. My roommate had said it wouldn’t be long before Lord Relobu sent his right hand man to find me. She’d been right.

  By the time I’d wrapped my head around the news, Krishnan had led Trian into Savitri’s office. I tried to follow, but my guard stopped me with a rough swipe.

  “Benaki gave me orders to keep you separated from the dragon council. You’re to remain under quarantine until Benaki determines you’re of no threat to the rest of his human staff. Unless, of course, you fall ill.” The dragon gave me a toothy grin, fully aware that Benaki had no intention of allowing me to live.