She was going to suggest it to the foreman—surely Toby would be one of the organizers of an event like this. She couldn’t imagine that it could have been produced without his help.
Before she mucked the grounds that night, she tried to find him. Campfires blossomed in front of the vendor stalls and in the campgrounds, and in both areas, new pavilions and stalls continued being erected, which seemed timely since the skies at dusk boiled with navy blue and steel gray clouds. Anyone not under canvas when the rains began would be drenched.
Some of the people frantically raising poles, pounding stakes and lashing down ropes looked familiar, although she couldn’t recall where she’d seen particular individuals before. From the look of them though, they seemed to be Gypsies, and this was the sort of enterprise, because of the transitory nature of the work, where she thought one might expect to find them. Could they be her mother’s people? Probably.
She was starting to ask when two men dragged out a pair of hefty wooden boxes. Casimir climbed onto one, accompanied by none other than Devent.
The dragon saw her. Her beads began to rattle and the ghost cats, who had been missing since they appeared in Mistress Marsha’s stall earlier in the morning, materialized, twining around Casimir’s legs.
Since Verity had been traveling with the bard for several days without so much as a click from the beads, she considered their timing in announcing their selection in the wizard’s legacy lottery somewhat whimsical. Nevertheless, it seemed that Devent’s human tutor was chosen, if somewhat belatedly. Perhaps the beads inventoried the surrounding populace for possible matches before choosing the most likely candidates?
Casimir breathed experimental tootles on his flute and Devent performed some rather terrifying vocal warmup exercises.
The ghost cats twined around the minstrel’s feet. One sat on his head, causing his flat cap to slip sideways, while a number of others perched on the dragon’s head and back.
Devent lashed his tail and one particularly fearless ghost cat clung to it, allowing itself to be whipped back and forth. If cats could have said ‘Whee!’ it would have.
“May I have a word, Casimir?” she asked, interrupting him as he tuned his instrument. “I have it on good authority that you are from one of Argonia’s old magical families.”
Devent grumbled, glowing slightly in the dental area, impatient at the interruption of his informal debut.
“I’m sorry,” she apologized to the dragon. “It really is important. I think.”
She fumbled with her necklace and the beads bounced into the dusty path, fortunately free of dragon dung, thanks to her own efforts.
The minstrel replaced his flute in its case and hopped down to help her herd beads and shells.
The one she had been about to pass on to him was not difficult to locate but it was tricky to capture. It kept jumping up and down, rolling over to turn somersaults and she thought, squeaking. “Hmm,” she said. “Never knew one to do that before.”
Casimir walked up to it, and it rolled to him and stopped at his toe, inanimate once more as he stooped to pick it up.
“None of them have done that before either,” she said. “Did you realize you had a magical ancestor who was killed at the end of the Great War?”
He turned it over with his forefinger, rolling it in his palm. “No, I don’t believe I did. Perhaps—” he looked up and met her eyes, “Perhaps a descendant?”
“I don’t…”
“There are a few things I should probably explain to you,” he said, and popped the bead in his waistcoat watch pocket. “Later.”
He stepped back up on the box-stage, leaving her to gather the rest of the beads.
She picked them up, pleased at how few were left.
Devent stopped his impatient tail twitching and said, “Feel free to join us if you like.”
“Thanks, but I must get to work now. Dung to shovel since my assistant has found better things to do.”
“I’m sure Auld Smelt will help you,” Devent said. “If you happen to see that pretty pinkish-mauve hothouse dragon Petunia, would you let her know I have composed an air in her honor?”
“I just met her today,” Verity said. “She seemed lovely.”
Devent sighed sparks.
She returned to what she thought of as the ‘broom tent’ where the tools and wheelbarrows were stored. Also brooms. According to the seashell archives she had read regarding her family, some of her ancestresses knew how to use such implements for transportation. She tried to imagine that. Sounded uncomfortable and precarious.
She wheeled her barrow over to the dragon side of the Fairgrounds. There were mountains of dung to shovel unless she could find Smelt. Perhaps Petunia would help for a little while, before or after the florally-inclined dragon saw Devent.
However, after searching half of the dragon encampment, she failed to find Petunia, and was starting to despair. It began to look as if she might actually have to shovel the piles and piles of fewmets.
A bolt of flame shot past her, incinerating the nearest dung heap, and Smelt fell in beside her. She drove the wheelbarrow for show and told the old beast about her activities that day.
“That’s all well for the young ones who’ve never known another life, Lady, but I have, and I’m done working for men.
“My hoard’s been pillaged so there goes my retirement, but I meant to retire. I reckon as soon as the snow flies I’ll crawl back into my cave and sleep on that pile of rusty armor that was all the looters left me. Maybe when I wake again, the world will have changed for the better.”
He sizzled another pile. She said, “Devent and Casimir are singing over on the human side of things. Do you want to go see them?”
Smelt snorted ashes and sparks, which she guessed passed for a chuckle. “I can hear them from here, can’t you?”
She listened closely and realized she’d been hearing them the entire time, the minstrel’s lute and voice enveloped by the young dragon’s voice, underlying the chatter and the slide of belly scales through the dirt while dragons grumbled.
“Devent seems to have struck up a friendship with a female named Petunia. Have you seen her?”
“Not lately. I met her with the lad this morning after we helped you on your rounds, but I haven’t seen her since then.”
“She was led away after the interview, so I imagined she got the job. Perhaps she went back to Queenston with her new employer?”
“Doubt it,” Smelt said. “There’s been no southbound train today.”
Of course the old fellow was right. The new employers and dragon employees might have found some other way to return to the city, but what? Especially with a dragon in tow, horseback would have been awkward.
She did not see Petunia, or the mother and young they’d glimpsed the night before, as they continued their rounds on the dragon side.
Back on the human side, the music changed to one of the tunes Verity recognized from the Changelings Cabaret. A crowd gathered in front of the stage to hear the crew of the Belle’s Shell, now in their alternate personas, performing one of their saucier numbers with Madame Louisa, or Captain Lewis, taking center stage. With no bar to tend, Legs was now playing several stacked keyboards at once in a complicated contraption of an instrument.
Verity saw one of the women from Aunt Erotica’s strike up an acquaintance with a man wearing the distinctive blue waistcoat with the dragon over the left breast she now recognized as a uniform sported by the Fair’s organizers. After a brief business discussion, the woman pulled him into the pavilion assembled earlier in the day to house the women’s commercial activities.
The Fairgoers, about to retire for the evening, and the vendors, about to settle down, instead crowded around the stage or began dancing in front of it.
The minstrel and the dragon had surrendered the stage and now Casimir executed a simple box-style dance step, encouraging Devent to imitate him. The dragon, elated by the music and the approval of the crowd, gleefully d
id so.
Devent’s attempt at dancing was a bit much for Smelt, who puffed tiny candle-size flames of disgust.
“They’re making a fool of the lad,” he said. “Dragons don’t do such tricks.”
“Dragons have done a lot of things they didn’t used to do,” Verity said. “He’s enjoying himself.”
“It ain’t becomin’,” Smelt grumbled.
Verity shrugged and wheeled her barrow up the path away from the crowd.
Smelt stalked after her, still grumbling ashes and sulfur.
They finished patrolling the most heavily travelled byways of the Fair when a tall man emerged from beyond the barrier wall in the back, carrying a large package in his arms.
Verity stepped aside to let the man pass and Smelt gave way a little. By the light glowing around his muzzle, Verity saw that the package had rust colored spots on its butcher-paper wrappings.
Its odor was strong and familiar. She had smelled it among the decapitated dragon corpses scattered across the fields beside the railroad tracks.
Now she followed the track that looped around the upper camp, and by moonlight saw a trail that was little more than a deer path running back to the wall. Part of the barrier was recently erected brick and mortar, built onto an old stacked stone fence. The path led to a gate in the fence, well concealed behind the edifice at the back of the human section of the Fair.
Behind the fence was what seemed to be the ruins of an old farmstead, shored up and hastily repaired. Lights shown within it and three men waited on the dilapidated porch for entrance. This was where the smell came from—blood, decay, and odors she recognized from the chemistry labs in her various schools—chiefly formaldehyde, a preservative, acetone, and others she could not identify. People inside the building made no attempt to moderate their voices so she could hear every word.
The proprietor was saying, “You did pre-order, didn’t you?”
“No,” the customer replied. “Was that necessary?”
“Stock is limited to supply on hand, and the items were extremely hard to come by.” The proprietor told him. “Only fifty specimens were suitably intact for preservation.”
“But I must have one! It will look smashing in my den. I have just the place for it, to balance out the unicorn head and the griffin.”
“Unicorn head?” the proprietor asked sharply. “Where did you get that? Isn’t it illegal to have one of those?”
“I inherited it from an ancestor. I’m sure it died of natural causes. The horn is still in situ. You know if it had been hunted that would have been the first thing to go.”
One of the men on the porch grunted, sounding remarkably like Smelt except no sparks and ashes came out of his mouth. “You can make wager on that!” he answered the customer’s remark, although that person wouldn’t hear his. His two companions did though.
“Hunters know how to make the best use of their kills,” said another of the men on the porch.
The third occupant of the porch said, “I really want one of those dragon trophies. It would look very smart over our leather Chesterfield sofa. I’d like to have it re-covered in dragon hide. Wouldn’t that be splendid? But I doubt the authorities would allow it.”
The customer who had been inside left, the proprietor following him to the door. Overhearing the remarks this time, he said to the man with the sofa, “Now, now, cheer up, friend, I wouldn’t be too sure about what’s allowed and what’s not. If you miss the heads currently available, there’ll be a fresh crop once the real fun begins.”
What real fun would that be? Verity considered asking but had a feeling this particular sale was by invitation only and her presence would be unappreciated.
She crept away, pushing the wheelbarrow and carrying her broom. Most people wouldn’t know she had not been asked to clean up in this area, so her equipment was her camouflage. If that didn’t work out, there was always the cloak of invisibility, although it only covered her to her knees. Maybe when they had a bit more time, Madame Marsha could let the hem out.
She continued on the path away from the wall and beyond the lights from the booth. The path was lit from lamps placed at intervals just close enough to keep walkers from stumbling in the dark. It had been cut through tall shrubbery and weeds. Wide wild eyes blinked out at her from both sides.
A ruined farmhouse with a barn and smaller outbuildings nestled into a low ridge of foothills and it too was lit, but appeared to be unoccupied. The house was patched with wooden planks and affixed to them all across the front were posters. Above the door, a painted wooden pub sign swung. ‘Dragon’s Lair’ said the sign. ‘Hoard Hunt Treasure Quest Begins Here,’ said one of the posters. ‘Damsels and Dragons Battle to the Death Demo,’ said another, ‘Dueling Dragons Demo,’ said a third. Then, on the door itself, a plastered poster gave her the chills. ‘Book Your Personal Hunt Here: Stalking the Wild Wyrm!’ Below in smaller letters it said, ‘Must be twenty-one to apply. Swords, Spears and Armor available to rent or bring your own ancestral kit! For Booking and Prices Inquire Within,’ was written in elegant script above the door handle.
Whatever the real purpose of this event was, it was no Hiring Fair! The path led onward, but now unlit, to the barn. She picked up one of the lamps from the ones leading to the ticket office and set it in her wheelbarrow, then trundled on.
On the Barn door was painted:
‘Dragon Aptitude Tests. Line Forms Here,’ and a downward pointing arrow indicated that the ‘applicant’ had arrived. She ought to have known something was wrong with this setup. If it was really a Hiring Fair, it ought to have been in Queenston, where both dragons and employers were located, but it had been arranged to look like a holiday event.
The Barn was locked with a heavy padlock. She was about to move on when she saw smoke curling from under the door.
Chapter 18: Malady in Chains!
At least the floor had stopped moving, but Malady was still not sure what hit her or how she came to be in a dank and chilly room wearing a simple but chic white gown and no jewels at all. She was pretty sure she was no longer in the palace and also pretty sure her uncles were behind her predicament, whatever it might specifically be. Any illusions she might have had about family loyalty were finally totally shattered. Apparently, her history instructors at Our Lady of Perpetual Locomotion had not been making up all of those tales of brother killing brother to acquire a throne.
Actually, she was not entirely on the floor—just her lower legs and heels. The rest of her was chained by the waist to a stone wall.
How was it that she had gone her entire life without seeing the inside of a cave and in the space of—what? —a week? —had been imprisoned in two of them? At least, she didn’t think this cave was the one in the castle. Durance’s hoard, also known as the royal treasury, had contained rich fur-lined, jewel-embellished robes to slip into for warmth. This cave was cold and the white shift thing she wore showed the damp and dirt and if she didn’t get away from here and into something warmer soon, she’d catch her death.
The place was dark as a dungeon—darker really. She had seen the dungeon and there was at least enough light for the guards to make sure the prisoners were all accounted for as well as the rather horrible fire with the irons and torture implements heating in it and the teapot on the rack across the top of the firepit.
When she paused her own sobbing, choking, coughing and sniffling, she became aware of others doing the same. Also, there were smells. Human smells like gas and urine and unwashed bits, but also perfumes of different types.
“Hello? Who’s there? Is anyone else less constrained than by a chain to the wall?”
“I have leg ironth,” a little-girl voice lisped.
“Shackles,” another voice said.
When she considered, Malady really didn’t know what to do with the information. She wasn’t really interested in freeing the others so much as finding a way to help herself.
“You sound small,” she told the lisper. “Can’t y
ou pull your foot out?”
“I already scraped a sore on it.”
“Don’t be such a coward. I’ve heard of animals that chew off their feet to get out of a trap. Show a little backbone!”
A huskier voice said, “If you think that’s the thing to do, sweetie, then chew off your own foot.”
“That would be useless,” Malady replied, irked at the suggestion. “I’m not shackled by my feet, you bossy cow. I believe I mentioned previously that my waist is chained to the wall.”
Malady felt that both of the other women had insufficient respect for her leadership position.
The husky voiced woman continued, “Doesn’t matter anyway, I suppose. The dragons will roast us with or without chains.”
“What are you talking about?” Malady asked.
“Didn’t you read the signage on the way in, dearie? In the game of Damsels and Dragons, guess who we get to be? Unless there are some unadvertised gallant knights equipped with bucket brigades of squires to save us, I fear chains will be the least of our worries.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. They wouldn’t dare. There are laws against that sort of thing.”
“It was right there on the building. They’d drugged me with a little somethin’, but I could still read the poster. That whole Hiring Fair thing is just a cover for the real entertainment—dragon/damsel snuff shows and other fatal sports involving slithery things. I don’t suppose you brought a hacksaw with you did you, sweetie?”
“Of course not. And there are no pockets in these stupid white gowns. Anyway, we’re more likely to die of pneumonia than because of dragons. I have it on very good authority that they haven’t eaten anybody for years and years.”
The Redundant Dragons Page 24
