A Dash of Dragon

by Heidi Lang

  “M-me? I’m not a spy.”

  “Well, you’re certainly not very good at it,” he agreed. “A good spy knows when to walk away from a conversation and when to continue pretending to pour wine, for example.”

  Lailu flushed.

  “But you are wonderfully placed within Victor’s camp.”

  “Mr. Boss?”

  “Yes. He told me that he owns Sullivan’s and your business.”

  “Master Slipshod . . . We borrowed some money from him in order to open it,” she mumbled.

  “The usual deal. Clearly he’s trying to shake the control the elves have on him. But why? That’s the real mystery.” He leaned back against the counter. “I am hardly an easier person to deal with. If anything, I’d demand a higher cut of his profits. But . . . my backing would force the elves to leave him alone. Victor is up to something, something he doesn’t want them to know about, and my instinct tells me he’s in over his head. And my instinct is never wrong.”

  “No, sir,” Lailu agreed.

  “So, the real question is, what is our dear old friend up to? If you can help me get that information, I can choose to overlook this little . . . incident.”

  Lailu kept seeing that severed hand, her mind swirling around images of pale bone and pink, fleshy muscle, but she knew she didn’t have a choice. “Um, I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Excellent.”

  She swallowed. “When . . . when should I report to you?”

  “Oh, I’ll find you when I’m ready.” He straightened, and Lailu tensed at the sudden movement. “I must return to my guests now. One of my boys will deliver the money I owe to your restaurant in the morning.”

  Lailu’s eyes widened. He was still planning on paying her?

  Elister chuckled. “Don’t look so surprised. I might be blackmailing you into spying for me, but that doesn’t mean you won’t be compensated for your culinary skills.”

  “Th-thank you, sir.”

  “However, if I ever catch you spying on me again, it would take more than a delightfully prepared meal to make me forget.” He inclined his head, his eyes so cold Lailu’s teeth chattered. And then he left, the kitchen door swinging behind him, but the chill in the air remained.

  Lailu pushed Mr. Frosty through the streets of Gilded Island, her whole body throbbing with exhaustion.

  She was supposed to be spying on Elister for Mr. Boss, and now on Mr. Boss for Elister, and she didn’t know what either of them really wanted. Meanwhile, she was being tossed around, threatened on all sides, her restaurant in danger of closing at the end of the month with the rest of her life signed over to Mr. Boss, and who knew what would happen to her then. It just felt like too much. “I don’t know what to do,” she admitted quietly to herself, her eyes burning.

  Blinking rapidly, she turned the corner, then froze as a shriek split the night. Something huge hurtled toward her, steam billowing behind it, the front lit up with glowing yellow eyes. Only years of honing her hunting instincts saved her, and Lailu managed to leap to the side just in time, dropping the handle of her cart and rolling up to her feet with her knife already in her hand.

  “What the hell are you doing, you idiot?” a man screamed.

  Lailu’s mouth dropped open. It was one of the scientists in his bizarre horseless carriage. He careened around the next corner and out of sight before the normal sounds of the city resumed.

  Lailu took deep breaths, her heart beating furiously. Too close, too close. That jerk could have killed her, and he called her the idiot? What kind of irresponsible fool would go racing around the city streets at night? She jammed her knife back into its sheath and stomped forward. Catching her foot on something, she landed flat on her face in the street.

  “Great, just great.” Lailu climbed painfully back to her feet, uselessly attempting to brush herself off. Even in the flickering lamplight she could tell her clothing was done for. Between the roll she’d done earlier and her fall now, her crisp white shirt was a dingy gray, and her pants were torn and bloody at the knee.

  Then her eyes fell on the metal object she’d tripped over. A metal object that looked suspiciously like a crushed Cooling and Containment cart. Her crushed Cooling and Containment cart.

  “No,” she whispered, horror-struck. “No, please no.” She crouched down next to it. One whole side of the cart was dented horribly, the lid busted beyond recognition.

  First her smashed shrine, and now Mr. Frosty. It was too much, it was all too much, and she couldn’t stop the tears from flowing hot and fierce as she huddled there in the street.

  A few minutes later she was knocking on the door to Greg’s restaurant. She wasn’t sure why, but it was the first place she’d thought to go.

  The door swung open. “Welcome to LaSilv—” Greg stopped, his mouth falling open.

  “M-Mr. Frosty,” Lailu sobbed, pushing her deformed cart in front of her.

  “Oh no.” Greg’s eyes widened in horror. “What happened?”

  As he ushered her inside, all memories of their earlier fight vanished, and Lailu found herself telling him the whole story. “He was a maniac,” she finished. “A maniac, and he, he destroyed it.” She wiped the back of one hand across her swollen eyes.

  “And you too, almost.” Greg’s mouth tightened. “Well, I know someone who’s no longer welcome at my establishment.”

  “Gregorian,” a man said softly, hovering nearby. He wore a stiff black suit with tails and a silver vest, his dark, graying hair pulled into a neat ponytail. Lailu recognized him as the famous Dante LaSilvian, owner of half the vineyards in the country.

  “Yes, Uncle?” Greg asked.

  “Your diners . . .”

  Lailu was suddenly very aware of everyone in Greg’s restaurant staring at her. She hiccuped, brushing uncomfortably at her torn and dirty clothing.

  “Ah,” Greg said. “Um . . . I see. Thank you. I’ll take my guest in back, then.”

  Greg’s uncle gave him a curt nod, then circled back through the restaurant.

  Now that she’d calmed down, Lailu noticed the fine details of the place, like the paintings of wine-themed still lifes on the walls, the cherrywood furniture, and the lovely chandeliers glowing over each table. The whole place smelled of spices and meat cooked to perfection. She took a deep, calming breath, then froze, her nostrils flaring. She recognized that smell. He was still cooking fyrian chicken!

  “Lailu, are you coming?” Greg called.

  Scowling, Lailu scurried after him, dragging her broken cart. “Fyrian chicken?”

  He shrugged uncomfortably. “Most people seem to like it.” He pushed open the door to his kitchen. She could hear the muffled voices of people whispering as she followed him in, the sound immediately stopping as the door shut behind them.

  Greg even gets a real door to his kitchen, she fumed silently.

  “Can you wait here for a moment without doing anything potentially damaging to my kitchen?”

  Lailu glared at him. “I would never harm a kitchen.”

  “Um, yes, of course. I mean, I knew that. I was just, er, checking.” Greg backed away, disappearing through another door.

  Lailu sagged against a counter, idly studying Greg’s kitchen. For someone who had money, he’d obviously decided to stick with the equipment he knew. He had a steam-powered oven much like hers but with a few more burners, and his shelves were stacked full of dishes, with large brass and iron pots hanging from hooks below them. Off to one side of the stovetop, a dirty knife rested on a chopping board, evidence that he’d been in the middle of cooking when she showed up.

  The kitchen door flew open and Greg stepped inside, wheeling a slightly smaller version of Mr. Frosty. It was folded down into a rectangle about as long as Lailu’s armspan and stood as tall as her knees, the handle curving gently above it for easy maneuverability. “I haven’t really been using mine lately,” he said, pushing it toward her. “So if you want, you can borrow it for a while until you get a replacement.”


  Lailu stared at him, then at the cart, then back at him. She burst into tears.

  Greg took a hesitant step backward. “Um, you don’t have to borrow it, if you don’t want—”

  “No, I want to.” Lailu pulled it from him and wrapped her arms around its handle. “Thanks,” she sniffled.

  Greg smiled, his eyes crinkling. “My pleasure.”

  Lailu looked away, her cheeks flushing. Why was she blushing? It was ridiculous. She had nothing to be embarrassed about.

  “I’m really sorry, by the way. For the things I said before,” Greg said. Now his cheeks were flaming and he wasn’t looking at her.

  Lailu gaped. She had never heard him apologize before. Not once, in all the years and after all the pranks he’d pulled on her. Not a genuine apology. “Um, that’s okay,” she managed. “We can call it even, since you’re letting me borrow this.” She hugged the handle of her replacement cart tighter.

  Greg relaxed, his familiar smile back in place. “You know, I wasn’t sure you’d actually accept it. Seeing as we’re, you know, ‘rivals and that’s it.’ ”

  Lailu frowned down at the cart. She suddenly wanted to fling it away from her.

  “Sorry, I shouldn’t have brought that up,” Greg said hurriedly. “I know you were just angry then. Well, I mean you’re always angry. At me, at least. I’m not sure why.” He stopped and took a deep breath. “Please, ignore everything I just said. I’m just tired.”

  “Yeah, you and me both,” Lailu muttered. Why had she agreed to borrow Greg’s cart so readily? That really wasn’t like her, relying on someone else. It was a bad habit, a dangerous habit. She must be tired, tired and desperate. Sniffing loudly, she rubbed her eyes again. “I’ll return it soon.” She forced herself to look up at Greg again, not quite meeting his eyes. “I promise.”

  “I’m not worried. I know you’re good for it, and honestly, I have another one.”

  “Of course you do.”

  At least he had the grace to look embarrassed. “Speaking of borrowing things,” he said, clearly trying to change the subject, “I’m glad you stopped by, because I have something of yours.”

  Lailu waited.

  Greg hesitated, his brown eyes serious. “It’s Hannah.”

  19

  RE-HOMING

  Hannah lay in bed, facing the wall, her long hair in a dirty tangle down her back. She didn’t turn around, but her shoulders stiffened as Lailu stepped inside the room.

  “I’ll just leave you two alone, then,” Greg said awkwardly, stepping back and closing the door behind him. Like Lailu, Greg had living quarters above his restaurant, only his were much larger and better furnished. Hannah was staying in a guest room, dimly lit by a lantern in one corner and a stack of half-melted candles in another. Clothes lay strewn all over the place along with piles of combs and jewelry, like Hannah had really made herself at home here.

  “Hannah?” Lailu took another tentative step forward. Why wasn’t Hannah at school? Lailu sat down on the edge of the bed.

  Hannah turned, peering at Lailu through a tangle of hair. “What are you doing here? Don’t you have a restaurant to run?”

  “We need to talk.”

  Hannah’s head flopped back onto the pillows and she closed her eyes.

  Lailu waited, but after a few minutes it became obvious Hannah was going back to sleep. “Hey, wake up. I said we need to talk.”

  “Too . . . tired . . .” Hannah yawned, keeping her eyes shut. “Let’s talk later.”

  Lailu scowled. “Hannah!”

  Hannah snored softly.

  “Look, either you sit up and listen to me or I’m going to . . . to . . .” Lailu glanced around, noticing again the pile of tangled haircombs spilling out on the nightstand. “I’m going to start breaking combs.”

  Hannah gasped. “You wouldn’t!”

  “Oh yes, I would,” Lailu said grimly. “I’d break each and every one of them, from that ridiculous pink glittery one to the black one with the feathers. One piece at a time.”

  Hannah reluctantly sat up. “All right,” she whispered sadly. “Say what you have to say.”

  Lailu rubbed her temple. Her ever-constant headache was getting worse by the moment. “I’m not going to yell at you,” she began, “if that’s what you’re afraid of.”

  “Are you still mad at me?”

  “Not . . . not really.”

  “So if I needed to crash at your place again, you’d let me?”

  Lailu blinked. “Sure.”

  All at once Hannah’s expression brightened. “Oh, thank the gods,” she breathed. “I wasn’t sure what I’d do otherwise. I mean, Greg took me in, but this is obviously temporary, and he just wants to talk about you all the time anyway, and since I’ve been mad at you, that hasn’t been very good at all,” she babbled. “But I didn’t really have anywhere else to go, and I’ve been booted from Twin Rivers’s Finest because Gweneth de Vincy has a big fat mouth and told everyone about my . . . well, it doesn’t really matter what she told them.”

  “Wait, slow down. You’re still mad at me?” Lailu could barely follow the torrent of words.

  “Not anymore. Aren’t you listening?”

  “I’m trying,” Lailu muttered. “Who’s Gweneth de Vincy?”

  “My old roommate.”

  Lailu stared at her. “So . . . you got kicked out of school?”

  Hannah nodded. “I told you that, didn’t I?”

  “No, you didn’t! You told me you were just having some drama at school.”

  “Same thing.” Hannah waved it off, a trace of the old Hannah in her husky voice.

  Lailu frowned, her eyes sliding over to Hannah’s comb stash. “You weren’t . . . you didn’t steal from your roommate, did you?”

  Hannah gasped indignantly. “Me?” She put a hand to her chest. “I’m not a thief.”

  “Sorry, sorry,” Lailu began.

  “I just wanted to make sure those combs had a proper home, that’s all.”

  Lailu’s mumbled apologies stopped abruptly.

  “I mean, she had them stuffed in a drawer, can you believe it? She hardly ever wore any of them, except this dreadfully plain comb with fyrian chicken feathers sticking out of it.” She shuddered.

  Privately, Lailu shuddered, too. Why would anyone want anything that came from one of those horrible beasts? Shoving those thoughts away, she focused on the important matter. “So,” she said slowly, trying to keep her voice level, “you’ve been, uh, re-homing combs?”

  Hannah blinked innocently, but gave a small nod.

  “How many combs?”

  “Just . . . a few.”

  “A few, huh?” Lailu sighed. “Why do you do this?”

  “I just . . . I just wanted to fit in.” Hannah’s fingers twisted in the blankets. “All those other girls could afford to get as many nice combs as they wanted, but I couldn’t. Even with the scholarship, it’s cost my parents more than they will say to send me to Twin Rivers’s Finest.”

  Lailu frowned, knowing what Hannah meant. She had always stuck out at the academy as the girl with the secondhand uniforms and cooking equipment. Twin Rivers’s new scholarship programs made it so people from small villages, like her and Hannah, could go to school and join the rising middle class, but it certainly wasn’t easy fitting in.

  “Since all those girls had more combs than hair on their head, I figured most of them wouldn’t notice if a couple went missing, so . . . I took some.” She smiled ruefully. “Turns out they noticed.”

  “I’m surprised they didn’t make you give them back.” Lailu picked up a silver comb in the shape of a starfish.

  “Oh, they tried. But since I’d already stashed most of them at your place—”

  “You what?” Lailu dropped the comb back on the pile as if it had burned her.

  “What? Giving them back wasn’t going to get me out of trouble. And besides, I did promise them a good home.”

  Lailu shook her head. “What are you going to tell your par
ents?”

  Hannah smiled brightly. “Oh, that’s easy. I figured I just wouldn’t tell them anything.”

  “Hannah!”

  “Well, you know how they are.” Hannah flapped her hands. “They’d . . . Well. They would not take it well.”

  That was like saying Lailu kind of liked cooking, or Mr. Boss was somewhat untrustworthy. Lailu could just imagine how Garin Meadows would react if he knew his Hannah, his perfect daughter, had been kicked out of school. He hadn’t much liked the idea of her leaving the village in the first place, but to leave and then fail? It would be unacceptable. And Hannah’s mother would be even more livid. She viewed Hannah as an extension of herself. Any time Hannah wasn’t absolutely perfect, her mother took it as a personal insult. Still, they were her parents, and they had a right to know.

  “Hannah,” Lailu began.

  “Hear me out,” Hannah continued quickly. “I’ll just come live and work with you. I mean, I’m excellent at waiting on people, and none of your customers have any haircombs worth taking, and then I don’t have to go back to our village.” She shrugged as if that settled everything.

  Lailu gritted her teeth, her headache building to epic proportions. What would she tell Master Slipshod? “Look, you can’t just not tell your parents—”

  “You’re not telling yours anything,” Hannah pointed out.

  Lailu opened her mouth, then closed it again. It was true. Her last letter to her father had just said business was starting to do well. She hadn’t told him anything at all about Mr. Boss, or Elister, or the elves, or really anything. “Fine, fine,” she grumbled. It wasn’t like they didn’t need the help.

  Hannah put a sudden arm around Lailu. “Thank you,” she whispered. “And . . . I’m sorry. For earlier. For what I said.”

  Lailu wasn’t really much of a hugger, but she put an awkward arm around her friend. “I’m sorry too.” They sat like that for a minute, just like old times, just like when they were little and Lailu used to follow Hannah around. Hannah, who was always so confident, so beautiful, so popular. Lailu couldn’t understand how it was possible Hannah could feel so insecure and yet seem so . . . perfect.