Dragon Breeder 2

by Dante King

  Tamsin, Penelope, and I landed and stowed our dragons within their crystals. Tamsin went over to an official looking building to provide a debriefing on the mission, and she returned a few minutes later.

  “All done?” I asked.

  She nodded. “A successful mission against our names will do a lot of good for ranking up.”

  “Great,” I said, shifting the sack of Leprechaun loot that was slung over my shoulder. I was keen to get it sold or exchanged for some ready money. I might be able to purchase something at the shops in Drakereach and, maybe, upgrade a few of my items.

  “You said that there were a few of these merchants around,” I said to the two women at my side. “Is there one that you favor above the rest?”

  Tamsin returned the claw salute given her by a group of soldiers heading past. Then she said, “I have only run a couple of missions that have resulted in treasure that I thought worthy of trading in, but I’ll take you to the fellow I used.”

  “You trust him?” I asked as Tamsin started off in the direction of the middle bailey gate.

  The hobgoblin laughed and cast one yellow eye over her shoulder at me. “Trust him? He’s a bloody merchant. Of course, I don’t trust him.”

  Penelope gave me a shy smile and added, “You must have heard the expression, ‘Only trust a merchant as far as you can throw him’?”

  I grunted. “They sound like insurance salesmen in that respect.” I hefted the bag on my shoulder into a more comfortable position and followed my two female companions. “Never trust a merchant as far as you can throw them…”

  Well, I thought as I set eyes on the merchant that Tamsin had selected for the first time, if it comes to trusting this guy as far as I can throw him, then that’s not going to amount to much trust—even with dragon strength.

  We had followed Tamsin up the steps of a large, all-wooden building that stood in the shadow of the western curtain wall, not far from the gate that led from the middle bailey to the lower one. It was, as real estate within the castle went, a good spot from a merchant’s point of view.

  There was lots of foot traffic, as soldiers came and went from the barracks and armories located in the lowest circle of the castle. There were also a couple of shady gin palaces and boutique rum distilleries set up in the shadows of the curtain wall—the types of establishments where a hard-up soldier might run up a tab, or enter a game of cards, or be extended a line of credit with the proviso that he be happy paying a two-hundred percent interest on it if he didn’t repay the loan within the next luna cycle.

  Such neighbors are a pawn shop’s best friend.

  And a pawn shop was, essentially, what this establishment was. You went in with treasure, loot, or your old wedding ring, and you came out with money.

  Privately, I had been expecting something along the Gringotts line of building, what with the Mystocean Empire being a magical place and all. However, when the three of us entered the shop, it looked more like a cross between one of those trippy curiosity shops and an antiques store. There were knick-knacks, treasure, dusty jewels, gleaming gold, clothes, armor, rusted weapons, and all sorts of other trinkets everywhere; hanging from the ceiling, behind glass cases, stuffed into racks, arranged on pillows, and displayed on teetering shelves.

  “Aaaah,” came a voice from out of the dusty shadows at the back of the shop. I tracked the voice to behind a long counter, under which there were surely arrayed a selection of knives, cudgels and, if this shop had been situated in Downtown L.A., a sawn-off shotgun.

  “Aaaah, my my, if it ain’t my most favoritest of all me customers,” said the voice again. It was a voice that was simultaneously accommodating and cunning, slippery as snake oil and as comforting and sweet as a marshmallow mattress. It was the sort of voice that a crocodile might use to usher zebra into the waterhole for a refreshing dip on a hot day, before whipping off its fake mustache and getting down to a serious bit of al fresco dining.

  A small, squat figure emerged from out of the gloom at the back of the shop and approached the counter. He had the sort of physique that would have landed him at least a runner-up prize in the annual pumpkin beauty pageant. He wasn’t so much round as oval—the first person that I had ever met who was genuinely wider than he was tall. He looked as if he had been poured into the tight, bright red velvet suit that he wore and then had a bowler hat wedged onto his head to stop him spilling out of it again. His complexion was a familiar moldy green. He had a mustache that was so lank and oily that I was amazed it didn’t just slide off his top lip. He was a gnoll, of that much I was certain.

  “Welcome, welcome,” the fat gnoll said. When he was next to the high wooden counter, I could barely see the top of his bowler hat. However, with a series of grunts, the stout guy climbed up some steps that must have been out of sight behind the counter and came back into view again.

  “Hello, friend,” I said, holding out a hand against my better judgement.

  “Friend, is it?” the gnoll said, taking my hand in a three-fingered paw that was so warm and moist that it felt like he’d been using butter as hand cream. “A purveyor such as meself can never have enough of those, can he? Allow me to introduce meself. The name,” the gnoll said, tipping his bowler hat, “is Big Greasy.”

  I smiled. “Of course it is. You know, you remind me of an acquaintance of mine.”

  “Is that right?” Big Greasy said, one eye flicking toward the bag on my shoulder.

  “Yeah. He goes by the name of Old Sleazy,” I said. “You wouldn’t happen to be related, would you?”

  “Nah,” Big Greasy said, “but you’d be amazed at how often people tell us that. What’s your name then, friend?”

  “This is Dragonmancer Noctis,” Penelope said, in an effort, I rather thought, to curtail me introducing myself as Mike.

  I smiled to myself. I knew how my lack of concern about dragonmancer decorum niggled the Knowledge Sprite.

  “Is that so,” Big Greasy said thoughtfully. “The new male dragonmancer, eh?”

  “That’s me,” I said. “If you and I can strike up a good deal here, I might even let you call me Mike.”

  “How very good of you, Dragonmancer,” Big Greasy said obsequiously.

  “And you will do me a good deal on this loot, won’t you?” I asked, plonking the heavy bag down on the counter. “You seem like a stand-up guy that wouldn’t lead a newcomer like me down the garden path, isn’t that right?”

  At the sound of clinking metal and the chink of jewels, Big Greasy’s eyes lit up. If ever the world went completely to hell and a used car salesman was allowed to procreate with a medicine man of the Old West, then Big Greasy would surely be the offspring of such an unholy union.

  The gnoll spread his hands. “I am a merchant of good standing, Dragonmancer, sir,” he said in a voice of honey and iron, “and, as such, I have to try and look after me customers and meself in these troubling, volatile, cruel economic times, where a simple gnoll can barely scrape a livin.’”

  I looked at the gnoll’s simpering expression.

  Next to me, Tamsin snorted and said in her dangerously seductive voice, “Remember Mike, a mule can be tame at one end and wild at the other.”

  “Oi, who are you callin’ a bloody mule?” Big Greasy said. “I’m a simple purveyor me, tryin’ to make his way through a hostile world that seems intent on bringing down the small-time entrepreneur. Why, when I was a nipper, I—”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I said, holding up a hand, “I’ve heard this one before. It’s very good, but I haven’t got the time to listen to the encore just now. Have a look through this and tell me what you think it’s worth. Then I’ll tell you to go and fuck yourself. Then you can give me your real offer.”

  Big Greasy gave me a calculating look. “Hey, you sure we haven’t done business before?”

  “Yes. Why’s that?” I replied.

  “You seem to know my method o’ doing business inside and out.”

  “Just get on with it, Big Gre
asy,” I said. “There’s a good...gnoll.”

  Now that the niceties had seemingly been observed, I was left to wander around the shop and peer at a few of the trinkets that Big Greasy had for sale. Penelope stayed with Big Greasy while the gnoll pawed through the bag that the Leprechauns had given me, to make sure that he didn’t do a number on me.

  While I perused the numerous items around Big Greasy’s emporium, my mind dwelled on the troubling letter that Penelope had found on the bandit chieftain. The more I pondered on it, the more likely it appeared to me that it had been sent from a traitor within the Academy.

  “A fucking snake in the grass,” I muttered, looking idly at a collection of human bones inside a suede-lined chest. “What do you do about a snake in the grass?”

  After a little bit of contemplation, I resolved that my best course of action would be to take the problem to Captain Cade. He was the asshole who’d sent me on a mission that he thought I wasn’t ready for, just because he was envious. In a brief bit of mental gymnastics, I did wonder if he could have been the person who’d sent the letter to the bandits, but then I dismissed the idea. Making that logical leap felt like way too much of an asshole move on my part.

  In the end, I didn’t have to haggle too hard with Big Greasy to get what Tamsin and Penelope agreed was a fair price for the Leprechaun loot. Perhaps it was having three dragonmancers descend on him at once, or maybe he could tell that I was preoccupied and wasn’t in the mood for any bartering bullshit or sales patter. Whatever the reason, the gnoll handed over a nice, plump purse of scales and tipped his bowler to me at the end of the transaction.

  Big Greasy was metaphorically rubbing his hands in a thoroughly Mr. Burns-esque way when he said, “You be having a spiffy day now, Dragonmancer Noctis. And remember, next time you have a few trinkets that are surplus to your requirements, you come and see your old friend, Big Greasy, yeah?”

  I crossed my heart with my finger, picked up the purse, stuffed it into a pocket under my hauberk, and followed Tamsin and Penelope out of the shop.

  Out on the street, dusk had well and truly fallen. Braziers had been lit, as had the oil lanterns that hung from posts on the corners of the more major boulevards and thoroughfares. I couldn’t see any of the fairies that illuminated the inside of the Spire, who were paid in bread and honey by the Martial Council.

  “So,” Tamsin said, walking up to a brazier and holding out her hands to the logs that had not long ago been lit. “Where would you like to go now, Mike? Presumably that bag of scales in your pocket is itching to be spent, no?”

  I considered this. There had been a few things that I had had my mind set on acquiring. Nothing too lavish mind you, just a newer, firmer pillow and a few other creature comforts. There had been a couple of days recently when the wind had blown westward across the spine of the Sleeping Dragon Mountains and brought with it the promise of snow, and I had thought that it might be worth investing in a cloak of some kind. I also thought that, perhaps, I should grab some gifts for Elenari and Saya—that’s what you were supposed to do when women gave birth, weren’t you?

  These thoughts formed like snowflakes in my mind before being melted by my overriding desire to take news of that letter that Penelope had found to Captain Cade.

  I mentioned this to my companions, and they thought it was a swell idea.

  “By the great moon goddess Zamera, I would not have thought that Michael Noctis would so quickly adhere to the chain of command!” Tamsin said.

  “I’m just not looking to polish any more shields in the damned armory,” I said. “Plus, as soon as I pass it along to Cade, it becomes his problem. That means that, in the event that he cocks the investigation up, he’s the one who receives a nice, juicy, freshly-baked bollocking from his superiors.”

  Tamsin smiled that sharp-toothed grin of hers. Her red skin glowed ruddily in the light of the brazier. “In that case then,” she said, “I think this is a fine idea. Let’s all go together, yes?”

  Penelope nodded her head in agreement and the three of us set off for the main keep of the castle.

  We arrived, thanks to Penelope’s encyclopedic knowledge of the Drako Academy, outside of Captain Cade’s office a mere quarter of an hour later. The corridor with the windows that held such spectacular views in the daytime seemed a closer place at night. The windows were robbed of their views and looked like they were filled with black velvet.

  I listened at Cade’s door for a moment but could hear nothing from within. Then, with a cheerful rat-ta-ta-tat tat-tat, I knocked on the door.

  I waited a full ten seconds, just in case this evening call had caught Cade with his pants around his ankles and his purple helmeted love warrior clasped by the neck, then tried again.

  There was no answer.

  “Sir?” I called. “Captain Cade? It’s Mike—Dragonmancer Noctis, I mean, sir. It’s important.”

  Still nothing.

  I touched the handle of the door.

  “Mike!” Penelope hissed in an aghast voice. “What are you doing?”

  I looked from Penelope to Tamsin. “I’m leaning forward to examine a scuff on my boot,” I said. “And, in doing so, I’m losing my balance and—oops!—falling against our dear, sweet non-assholeish Captain’s door handle.”

  The door handle clicked, revealing that it was unlocked, and the portal swung smoothly open.

  Cade either had way too much faith in just how highly the soldiers under him hold his rank, or that he’s going to be back from wherever he has gone at any minute.

  “No time to lose then,” Noctis prompted me telepathically.

  “I reckon not,” I replied with a flash of thought.

  “Mike, you shouldn’t… We can’t go in there!” Penelope whispered.

  “Sure we can,” I said. “I’ll show you how easy it is to overcome those pesky limits that you impose on yourself, Pen.”

  I grabbed the pretty Librarian by the hand and pulled her into the room. Tamsin followed and shut the door, but left it open a crack.

  “What are we going to say if the Captain should come back?” Tamsin asked. The hobgoblin did not sound worried as such. More intrigued as to how much bullshit I thought Cade was capable of swallowing.

  “We just tell him that we were looking for him,” I said. “He might get his panties in a wad over us being in his office, but they should untangle once we tell him about the letter. Trust me, this works in all the movies I’ve watched.”

  “What are these movies you are always speaking of?” Tamsin asked me, idly running her fingers over a stack of very dull looking reports on Cade’s desk.

  “Well, you learn all this bullshit at school on Earth, right?” I said, ripping over a few drawers and poking about in them before closing them again. “You learn this mostly irrelevant stuff through an educational system that has not been properly updated or modernized for decades—the only way that it has really changed at all, in fact, is by having tests get easier so that kids don’t get their feelings hurt by failing. Well, that is school. Then, when you get home from school, you watch these movies—which are basically fictionalized stories that depict human nature. And these movies help you navigate all sorts of scenarios that they never teach you about in school.”

  “So, these movies are like a supplementary education?” Tamsin said.

  “They’re the only real education,” I said. “I guess they help teach you street smarts, which don’t get you any extra credit, but can help keep you out of trouble down the track.”

  Penelope, who had been trawling the office with her incomparably analytical Librarian’s eye, suddenly said, “There’s nothing out of the ordinary in here, Mike. I don’t know what you think you’re likely to find.”

  “Oh, I was just thinking it might be nice to have something on that douchewaffle, Cade,” I said. “Something embarrassing that I can slap on the table if he ever tries to pull anything along the lines of his hilarious trick today.”

  Penelope nodded understand
ably, but gestured around the room. “I think you might be out of luck on that score.”

  “Oh, I dunno,” I said.

  “What do you mean?” Tamsin asked. “You have something?”

  “Maybe,” I said, and I pointed under Captain Cade’s desk. From the front, what I was pointing at would be unable to be seen, but once you were behind the Captain’s desk…

  “Is that a trapdoor?” Tamsin said.

  “I believe it is,” I said.

  I knelt down, moved Cade’s chair out of the way, and reached out to the cunningly hidden handle.

  “Wait!” Penelope said.

  My hand halted a couple of inches from the trapdoor handle. I stifled an exasperated sigh.

  “There’s a time for caution, Pen,” I said, “but this isn’t it. This is another thing that movies have warned us about through the years; don’t muck around and waste time having a discussion when you find yourself in this situation. You’re going to warn me not to try and open this trapdoor, and I’m going to do it anyway. Let’s just both get over that and get to it, yeah?”

  Penelope made a little noise of dissent.

  “That’s the spirit,” I said, and I grasped the handle.

  I heaved on the door, and there was a dull flash—nothing too fancy, just your average firework intensity flare, and I was flung backward against the stone wall. The breath was crushed out of me as I hit the wall, and I slid down it with a gentle sigh.

  I looked up and saw that Penelope was regarding me with a knowing expression on her face. Behind her, every single one of Tamsin’s pointed teeth were bared in a grin that threatened to split her head in half.

  “Yep, all right,” I said. “Point taken. Maybe we’ll just mosey on.”

  We left Captain Cade’s office, closing the door carefully behind us.

  “That thing,” I said, when we were well away from the place. “That thing that threw me against the wall. What was that?”

  “My best guess,” Penelope said, “would be that it’s a ward of some kind.”

  “A ward? Like a magical spell of protection?” I asked.