Or maybe she thought the blood would be easier to clean up downstairs.
I followed her into the hallway and downstairs to the gallery. Both Helen and Shawn turned as we approached. Neither one of them looked particularly surprised that their boss had returned with a stranger. Working for a dragon had to involve frequent unexpected situations.
“This,” said Della, waving a hand at me, “is the Worldburner. The High Queen has dispatched her to find my uncle’s murderer, and she desires to question me. So, she shall question me, and the truth of Delaxsicoria shall thunder in her ears.” She beckoned. “Helen, clothes.”
Helen nodded and stepped closer, and Della began unbuttoning her blouse.
“Uh,” I said. “What are you doing?”
“You wish the truth?” said Della, and she drew off her blouse and handed it to Helen, and then unzipped the back of her skirt and slid it down her legs. “I will show you the truth, Worldburner.”
“I want to ask you some questions,” I said. “I don’t think you need to take off your clothes for that.”
“I think I do,” said Della, unhooking her bra and passing it to Helen. “I paid quite a lot of money for these clothes, and I’m fond of them. I don’t want to get them ruined.”
“Asking questions shouldn’t ruin your clothes,” I said, but by then she had stepped out of her underwear and kicked off her shoes and stood naked in front of me.
Though I have to admit it was kind of obvious she was a shapeshifted dragon. I don’t think any living human woman actually had her combination of toned muscle, rounded curves, and hourglass figure all at the same time. I suppose it made sense. I mean, I’m happy with the way I look, but if I could snap my fingers and be taller and curvier, hell, I would do it. If a dragon was going to shapeshift into a human, why not shapeshift into a beautiful one?
I was absurdly relieved that Della was a woman. I’m happily married, and I’m not about to cheat on Riordan. I kind of think Riordan could have done better than me. But nonetheless looking at an impossible vision of masculine beauty and musculature would have been annoyingly distracting.
“Because you want the truth, Worldburner,” said Della with a smirk, “and that would ruin my clothes if I didn’t take them off first.”
As she spoke the final word, golden light sheathed her body, and she began to swell and expand.
Suddenly I understood why Della had taken off her clothes.
The transformation into her true form would ruin them.
The golden light cleared, and I found myself looking at a dragon.
Della’s true form was just as large as her uncle’s had been, but a dragon is much more intimidating when it’s alive than when sprawled dead on the floor. Her long, serpentine body was at least fifty or sixty feet long from snout to tail and scales a deep shade of green covered her. The exact same shade of emerald green as her eyes in her human form, come to think of it. The tops of her folded wings brushed the ceiling overhead, and her fang-filled head was about the size of my body. Her brilliant golden eyes drilled into me, and I noted that her jaws could bite off my head without much difficulty.
Hell, she could probably swallow me whole without straining.
That huge head was maybe three feet in front of my face, and I felt the heat radiating from the dragon like an open furnace. The smell of the creature…it was the ozone odor I recalled from the John Doe Hospital, but much stronger, and also accompanied by a smell like hot metal.
Like very hot metal.
“Well, Nadia Moran?” said Delaxsicoria. Her voice was still lovely and melodious, and it hadn’t gotten much louder, but it seemed somehow larger as if I could feel it across my entire body at once. “Behold the truth of me. It is a sight that few human eyes have ever been privileged to see.”
Both Shawn and Helen offered deep bows to their employer.
A thought occurred to me. Della clearly expected admiration and awe. Tarlia had said that dragons were like cats, and cats were vain. Della could have shapeshifted into a human woman of average appearance, but instead, she had become one of stunning beauty. She expected me to gawk in amazement at her, to be overwhelmed by the sight of her true form.
Which, admittedly, was impressive.
But perhaps that was a way to gain the upper hand in this conversation. She expected me to be stunned, to feed her vanity. If I refused to be impressed, that would throw her.
Or it might irritate her into killing me.
But I doubted it. Della and Malthraxivorn had not thrived on Earth for a hundred and fifty years by defying the High Queen, and I suspected Tarlia would frown upon people killing her agents. Especially when she had sent her agents to help.
So I folded my arms over my chest and said, “Are you sure that you want to do this in dragon form? Wouldn’t it be more comfortable in human shape? This is an enclosed space, and your…um, increased girth might make that uncomfortable.”
I felt Della’s sudden anger press on me. Helen’s jaw dropped open for a second before she recovered herself.
“Girth?” snarled Della.
“Never mind, it’s not important,” I said. “So. Questions. Did you kill Lord Malthraxivorn?”
“I did not,” said Della. “Malthraxivorn was my only blood kin on this world, and as far as I know, my only blood kin on any world in the cosmos. Such things matter less to us than to Elves or humans, but they still matter. I shall find whoever killed him, and when I do, I shall inflict a death of fire and torment upon the killer.”
“All right,” I said. I glanced at Shawn and Helen. “How about you two? Did either of you kill Lord Malthraxivorn?”
Shawn scowled at me. “Of course not.”
For the first time, Helen looked taken aback. “No! Lord Malthraxivorn and Lady Delaxsicoria are generous and kindly lords. I would not do anything to hurt them.”
“You waste time,” said Della, “questioning my retainers. They bore no ill-will against my uncle, and even if they had, they would have lacked the ability to harm him in any serious way.”
“That’s a good point,” I said. “What about Edina? He doesn’t seem to like you very much.”
Della huffed out a breath. It felt like getting hit in the face with an ozone-scented wind, and it made my head spin a little. “Charles Edina was devoted to my uncle. Devoted to the point of sycophancy, a quality I detest. All my retainers and hirelings speak the truth to me, lest they feel my wrath. Edina did not adopt that policy with my uncle and flattered him and told him whatever he wanted to hear.” An amused note entered her voice. “Edina hates me, of course. I often contradicted him to my uncle’s face when I thought Edina’s obsequiousness grew too nauseating to bear. But he cannot hurt me, and he could not have hurt my uncle. He is too much of a coward. He is a…a…oh, what is the human word I used? I forget which language.”
“Putz, ma’am?” said Helen.
“Yes, thank you, Helen,” said Della. “He is a putz. Skillful enough with matters of finance and law, but a putz. He could no more lift his hand against a dragon than a piccolo could drown out a trumpet.”
I wasn’t sure what a piccolo was, but I nodded as if it made sense. “What about you, Lady Delaxsicoria? Do you have any enemies who might have harmed your uncle?”
“I have no enemies,” said Della. “I have good relations with all the other dragons on this world. I am cordial with the Elven nobles who know of my true nature. Humans adore my music and the beauty it brings to their otherwise tragic lives.” She seemed to glare at me with giant golden eyes. “At least humans with good taste.”
“You’re in the music business,” I said. “That can be pretty cutthroat.”
“It can be,” said Delaxsicoria. “But not for me. I own my own production company and music label, and I have my own distribution agreements with the music retailers and streaming services. My uncle set it all up for me when I began my study of the musical traditions of humans. He said that of all the worlds he had visited, one universal trui
sm was that publishers are always lying thieves and cheating scoundrels. Therefore, I would have my own production company.”
“Smart of him,” I said. Riordan had a similarly low opinion of publishers, apparently acquired in his younger days when he had published his first couple of books. Now he had gotten his own publishing license from the Department of Education, and published the books himself through his own company, though he occasionally leased audio and film rights. (He had explained the difference between ebook, mass market paperback, trade paperback, hardback, audio, and film rights to me once, and I had tried really hard to pay attention.) “But you must have rivals. Other musicians jealous of your success.”
“Oh, certainly,” said Della. “Envy is a cancer of the soul to which both humans and Elves are peculiarly prone. Surely some of my inferiors are jealous of my success. But what could they do about it? I do not lord it over them. And there is not a musician alive who could kill a dragon with a single blow.”
That was a good point.
“What about Lord Malthraxivorn?” I said. “He must have had enemies.”
“Not that I am aware of,” said Della. “My uncle was beloved by all.”
“He was rich and influential,” I said. “You don’t get that way without stepping on a few toes.” Della blew out another breath that felt like a wind from a blast furnace. “If he didn’t have any enemies…did he have rivals among the other dragons?”
“Some,” admitted Della. “But none would have killed him. You do not understand our ways, Worldburner. We prefer to compete through money and riches and influence, not violence. When we fight face to face, entire cities burn. Sending an assassin to kill another dragon is…beneath us. Uncouth, even.”
“All right,” I said. “Who would you say was your uncle’s biggest rival among the other dragons?”
“Hmm,” said Della. “Probably Tarthrunivor. They were rivals back on Bel-Thunezad.” She waved a massive clawed limb at the exhibit of Russian art. “They both appreciated fine artwork and tried to outdo each other with their collections.”
Russian? That weird old document on Malthraxivorn’s desk had been in Russian.
“I assume Tarthrunivor masquerades as a human, just as you do,” I said. “Who does he masquerade as?”
“Alexei Tarkov,” said Della. “Owner and CEO of Tarkov Industries, one of the largest companies allowed to operate inside the Russian Imperium.”
“That means he has friends in the Russian government,” I said. “And if he has friends in the Russian government, that means he has friends in the Okhrana, the Imperium’s secret police. And they deal in dirty tricks like this all the time.” Had the Russian secret police killed Malthraxivorn at the behest of Tarthrunivor? That seemed unlikely, but I had seen weirder things happen.
“The melody of your argument is flawed,” said Della. “We lived in Moscow for decades before my uncle decided it was time to change our identities and move to New York. Tarthrunivor and my uncle regularly clashed when we lived in the Russian Imperium, trying to grow their fortunes, but they never employed violence against each other.”
“Why did you move to New York?” I said. Maybe Malthraxivorn had fallen out hard with Tarthrunivor and wanted a continent and an ocean between them.
“My uncle wished me to see more of the world,” said Della. “Humans are not the only ones who enjoy variety, Worldburner. Listening to the same song over and over again grows tedious. I had spent years as an opera singer, and I sang in all the European capitals. Human opera is amazingly expressive, and I enjoy it a great deal. But I desired to explore American popular music, and my uncle wished to experience life in a major American city.”
“Then it wasn’t a conflict with Tarthrunivor that induced your uncle to move?” I said.
“Not as far as I know,” said Della. “You seem fixated on this idea that another dragon murdered my uncle.”
“It’s a possibility,” I said. “You saw that someone smashed the camera server upstairs?”
Della growled, which was slightly terrifying. “Which you noticed while you were sneaking around.”
“Yes,” I said. “That means whoever killed Lord Malthraxivorn knew where the camera server was. And from the position of his body,” Della hissed, the heat of her breath washing over my face, “someone crept up behind him, or it was someone he knew. Either way, it was an attacker powerful enough to kill him with a single blow. That means it was someone he knew and trusted well enough to turn his back to, or it was someone so stealthy that Lord Malthraxivorn didn’t notice. And as I just found out firsthand, it is really, really hard to sneak up on a dragon.”
“Our senses are keen,” agreed Della.
“Your uncle’s killer would have been someone of considerable power,” I said. “That pretty much limits it to an Elven noble, a really powerful human wizard, or another dragon.” Or maybe a powerful Dark One inhabiting a human, but I had seen absolutely zero indication the Dark Ones were involved with this murder.
Della let out another rumbling growl.
“The notes of your melody ring true,” said Della. “But I cannot see Tarthrunivor or another dragon arranging my uncle’s death in this fashion. It is simply not our way.”
“Tarthrunivor is still in Russia, yeah?” I said. Della nodded. Weird to see that giant head nod on the end of a serpentine neck. “You’ve got all this Russian art here. Maybe you have a painting or a statue that Tarthrunivor wants.”
“I still do not see it,” said Della. “My uncle and Tarthrunivor were not friends, were rivals, but they would not kill each other over artwork. Yes, my uncle has imported a great deal of artwork from the Russian Imperium recently, but that is hardly cause for murder.”
Shawn shifted. He had been as silent and still as a statue himself. “My lady.”
Della’s head rotated to face him. “Yes, Shawn?” I suppose Della really didn’t need a bodyguard. But she was (apparently) a famous singer, and it would ruin her human identity if she beat an obsessive stalker to a pulp with her bare hands. She had people for that.
“I feel it is in your best interests that I speak now,” said Shawn. “I would never betray your secrets or Lord Malthraxivorn’s, but…”
“Speak freely,” said Della.
“I do not think artwork was all that Lord Malthraxivorn imported from Russia,” said Shawn. “I think he imported some technology as well.”
Something shifted in my mind.
“Technology?” I said.
“What is the point of that?” said Della. “The Russians don’t have any technology that the Americans do not possess. The High Queen makes sure of that.”
“It was several months ago, my lady,” said Shawn. “May, I think. Shortly before the Rebel attack on New York. You had come to meet with Lord Malthraxivorn, and we waited in the hall while he finished a phone call. You had put on headphones to listen to music…”
“Yes, I remember,” said Della.
“I’m afraid I could hear Lord Malthraxivorn’s phone conversation,” said Shawn. “He talked about a site in the Ural Mountains, and how the machines would be removed from the site and shipped here. I tried not to pay attention since it was none of my business, but your talk with the Worldburner brought it to my mind. I hadn’t thought about it since otherwise.”
“I see,” said Della. “But why would someone kill him for that? Any technology available in Russia would also be available here.”
“Unless,” I said, “it was forbidden technology.”
“Explain,” said Della.
“Look, this isn’t common knowledge among humans, but the High Queen has suppressed technological change on Earth since the Conquest,” I said. I had learned pieces of this over the years, some of it from Morvilind, some of it from Nicholas and his gang, and some of it from Riordan. It wasn’t the sort of thing that was discussed in public, at least if you knew what was good for you. “Like, some of it has changed. In the old days, we didn’t have fusion plants, and no
wadays all the electricity comes from underground fusion plants. Medical technology is better. Agriculture and…um, the science of making stuff. Materials science, that’s it. But anything that the High Queen thinks is dangerous has been suppressed. Like, computers haven’t changed much since the Conquest. Guns and planes and weapons technology, that’s all the same. Maybe your uncle found something that was suppressed.”
Again, Della let out a rumbling growl. “The High Queen killed my uncle?”
“Of course not,” I said. “If she had, would she have sent me to find his killer?”
Della hesitated. “That’s a good point.”
“Maybe Lord Malthraxivorn found some new scientific discovery, some new technology,” I said. “Or…”
I remembered the document I had seen on the desk upstairs.
“Or he found something old,” I said slowly. “Something that had been suppressed and forgotten. Lady Delaxsicoria, do you read Russian?”
“Obviously,” said Della. “I lived in Russia for decades.”
“There’s a document on your uncle’s desk in Russian,” I said. “I can’t read Russian, but I was able to make out the date. It claims it was printed in Conquest Year 109.”
“That was before my uncle and I came to this world,” said Della. “Before I was hatched, come to think of it.” She sniffed. “I do not think my uncle would be foolish enough to dabble with forbidden technology.”
“Maybe he wasn’t,” I said. “Maybe he found something, didn’t know what it was, and got killed for it. If I bring you that document, can you translate it? I think it might be important.”
“Very well,” said Della, and I felt a surge of magical power from her. “But I shall accompany you. I do not trust you enough to let you wander unaccompanied through my uncle’s building.”
Golden light flared over her body, encasing her in a glowing cocoon. The light pulsed once and then faded, and Della shrank back down into her human form. Helen handed over her clothes, and Della started to get dressed.
“Question,” I said.
“Yes?” said Della.
Cloak of Dragons Page 16
