The Redundant Dragons

by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

  Dragons and Dastardly Deeds

  “So how do you want to present this? Damsels and dragons first—or the treasure hunt?”

  “Damsels and dragons. And not one at a time as we were talking about earlier. All of the girls and the biggest, hungriest dragons so there’ll be blood and girly bits all over the arena. That should motivate the hunters to go after the savage beasts with gusto.”

  “So—what? Do we wait until the tourists are cleared out and only the serious investors remain, the ones who will kill off the excess beasts and pay handsomely for it, while throwing such a fright into the others that they’ll do as they’re bloody well told and accept that they are the lower order of beasts and can expect no say in the judgement of men about their role in our society?”

  “Something like that. I say we feed Malady to them right away. That will solve an additional problem and make the punters hate the dragons for good. But we wait for night at any rate. The flames make a more dramatic display that way.”

  “Makes the color of the blood harder to see though,” another uncle said in a tone of mild disagreement.

  His relatives gave him an annoyed look and, lest he be considered problematical, he quickly added, “But I suppose it will look quite stunningly scarlet in the flare of dragon flame, what?”

  “An amazing spectacle indeed.”

  “Now then, how about the hoards? Not all the dragons will have them, of course.”

  “That’s what will make it such a lovely treasure hunt. The treasure seekers will help us locate the real loot hoarded by the elder dragons—the rest of the hoards will contain basically junk.”

  Beneath the floor of stone flags over solid stone, a wise old wyrm, made testy by the long trip through secret tunnels leading from the city, listened and hissed quietly, barely restraining his lashing tail. He had warned the princess of the treachery of her kin, although, truly, perfidiousness toward princesses was to be expected. But that these people sought to subdue dragonkind once more, and loot their lairs of treasure, that could not be tolerated. Durance the Vile had spent centuries guarding dungeons, and he knew much of what occurred there. He would make sure these men lived almost as long as dragons and would grow to loathe every tormented breath he’d allow them to draw.

  “What if the dragons don’t attack the girls? They don’t make dragons like they used to.”

  “Perhaps not, but currently, circumstances have made these dragons hungry ones who will no doubt eat anything with a blood supply. Once the audience sees what they do to the sacrifices, they won’t care about anything but exterminating the bloodthirsty beasts.”

  There was a knock on the door of their erstwhile conference room. Eustus Siek undid all of the locks and bolts and admitted the Minister of Defense, his brother-in-law Brutus Hyde. “It was a mistake putting Malady in with the others,” Brutus said.

  “How’s that?” Marquette asked.

  “She’s stirring them up, is why. That one is a born trouble-maker, or hadn’t you noticed?”

  “If you think it’s a problem, take care of it,” Marquette said.

  “Already did. I put a bag over her head, gave her a little tap on the noggin, and threw her in the chamber across the corridor where we stashed that hag of a head doctor. She hadn’t come to from the last time we knocked her out. So I swapped them out, including their chains, so Malady is all alone.”

  “The old woman might make worse trouble than she did.”

  “She’ll have to regain consciousness first.”

  Undercover Underground

  Durance, a level beneath the conspirators, was irritated that these nobodies thought they were experts on dragon dietary customs. It had been ages—back before the Great War, before the first king sat on the first throne of Argonia—since he had eaten humans. Gave him heartburn, as he recollected. Being a law-and-order-adjacent dragon, if not actually an authorized enforcement officer himself, Durance had developed an appetite for seeing miscreants suffer, especially those who threatened his hoard, other dragons, and the one princess he had taken a fancy to. Whether or not he chose to devour her was entirely his own business. It was the principle of the thing. They had no right to go around trying to feed her to just anyone.

  Verity Invisible

  Verity always carried the little pouch with her jeweler’s tools inside. She wore it on a sash around her waist inside her shirt, so enterprising pickpockets wouldn’t mistake it for money or jewels. It included a variety of metal rods with a differently shaped implement on each end, for cutting, shaping, and polishing stones and precious metal. In the past, she’d found dragon flame, carefully controlled, worked well for shaping glass into beads, and had added a few items helpful in that process as well. Now she needed something far less specialized. A lock pick. Her reputation as a troublemaker in the various schools she’d been expelled from had on three separate occasions caused groups of criminally troublesome girls (of good birth and bad inclinations) to befriend her. This lasted until her inability to lie became a liability such cliques could not tolerate, but meanwhile, she had learned a few simple skills that had served her far better than Home Economics.

  Fortunately, lock picking required more from her fingers and ears and much less from her eyes—severely limited in the dim light emitted by the lanterns.

  She returned the tools to her kit and hid the kit beneath her clothing, straightened the outer garments, pulled and propped open the barn door, then drove her wheelbarrow inside, carrying the lantern aloft, and pulled the door shut behind her.

  The odor was a familiar one. Great stores of dragon kibble had until recently filled bins and barrels near where the dragons (once) worked and the aroma filled the barn, though it had to compete with the stench of smoke leaking around the trap.

  Straw had once covered the floor, but had been flung aside so that now the trap door, outlined by the emissions, lay clearly visible among the farm implements and bales of containers of kibble.

  She half expected the ring set into the door to be hot, but it was very cold. Taking it in her fingers, she yanked, fell back onto her rear and coughed convulsively while waving her arm in the air to clear the choking fumes of sulfur-laced smoke. Of one thing she could be certain. There were dragons down there.

  Scooting back and standing, she wheeled her barrow between two stacks of kibble bags, while keeping the lantern, before returning to the hole in the floor. The smoke had cleared enough by then that by holding the lantern so it targeted the middle of the opening, she spotted the ladder leading down into the hole and lowered herself onto it.

  The descent led to the floor of what seemed to be a root cellar of some sort, but another hole in the floor of that was cut into layers of ice. A permafrost cave perhaps?

  It felt cold enough. Verity pulled the sleeves of her jacket down over her hands, since the circular iron staircase that descended in a wobbly fashion into the space below was rimed with frost and freezing cold.

  At the top of the staircase, in spite of the darkness and smoke-filled air, she had the impression of vastness. The icy ceiling wept constantly.

  Steam met smoke down here and she almost reached ground level before she could see the dragons clearly, although sporadically one or another would leap as high as it could go, only to be brought back to the floor again by something—chains. They jingled like carriage harnesses in a more civilized setting and clanked like dropping anchors.

  Carefully, she stepped down onto the cavern floor.

  Her beads and shells rattled against her neck until she thought she’d be strangled to death by her own jewelry. She reached up to loosen them. A dragon rushed her. Startled, she fell over backward. She wasn’t afraid, she told herself. Just surprised. A reflexive reaction.

  She tried to rise, but a clawed foot on her chest pushed her back down. A smoking countenance with holographic eyes loomed over her.

  “Wrong one!” the dragon shrieked to the cavern at large, though fortunately it didn’t shriek with fiery emphasis
. “You’re not the boy! Where’s the boy? But—I know you. Lair girl, swamp girl, why are you here? Where is my boy? What did they do with him?”

  “Taz!” Verity responded with all of the dragon-friendly goodwill she could muster. “I haven’t seen Toby. I wondered where you and he were. Some of the other dragons mentioned you, but when I didn’t see you, I thought you were just lost in the crowd.”

  “He went to meet other men. He did not return, but other men did. They motioned me to follow. I went with them, seeking him, but they brought me here. They tried to feed me the slave food, but I spewed it.”

  “Good.” Verity said. “If we’re to get out of here, can’t have you all compliant.” She started to ask how many others were there, but she didn’t know if dragons understood counting. “May I get up please? Your foot?”

  “Sorry,” Taz said, and stepped back.

  “Ahh, better.”

  Taz’s foot remained shackled to a chain that tried to pull her back. She jerked at it again and again, and Verity feared she would injure herself. Pulling out her lock pick, she pointed to Taz’s cruel bracelet. They could converse—barely—but with the noise and other distractions, Verity was skeptical about their capacity for involved interspecies communications.

  “First the chain. Then we find Toby.”

  With so much hot dragon breath in the ice cave, the walls spouted waterfalls and a stream rapidly turning into a river flowed briskly down the middle of the cave.

  The melting warmth did not extend to Verity’s fingers, which felt like jointed icicles as she tried to pick the lock by touch alone. The fantasy she imagined of freeing the dragons with her criminal skills quickly fled.

  Just as she at last heard the click of the lock—in about the time it would have taken her to saw through it with a hacksaw, human voices babbled in incoherent waves from some distant part of the cavern she couldn’t see.

  Dragon voices stilled, as did dragons, who crouched, waiting, nothing moving but the occasional tail tip and large glowing eyes.

  The approaching men did not exactly move into the light—they carried it with them—a couple of the lanterns from the grounds. Raising the lanterns, they pushed someone forward—Toby!

  Taz growled, but Verity hushed her, curious about what the men intended.

  “You speak their bestial jabber, boy,” one of the men growled to Toby. “Get them to tell you. Anyone who helps us find treasure will find life goes much better for him from now on.”

  Toby stumbled forward. He had a collar with a chain attached to his neck, the other end held by one of his captors, and was also encumbered by a ghost cat that had attached itself by all four sets of claws to his trouser leg. He might have been aware of its presence, but it wasn’t like the incorporeal creature could be of any use.

  The cat shone like a lantern, white and glowing. Then as if streetlights had been lit, other cats popped into view illuminating the dragons upon whose heads the phantom felines had chosen to perch.

  The ghostly forms glowed without actually lighting the features of the dragons hosting them, but Verity’s eyes had adjusted to the gloom to a degree and the lanterns were drawing closer.

  Petunia had not gone off with her new floral employers as Verity had been led to believe. She was one dragon down from Taz, and her cat-chapeau-ed head hung low.

  “Use your influence with these beasts to learn where their hoards are,” one of the men behind Toby reiterated. “Or else you and your animal will be the first in the arena.”

  “Taz would never harm me,” Toby said firmly.

  “Perhaps not, but others among our fire-breathing guests might not be so particular. They’re becoming hungrier all the time.”

  “Why are you doing this?” Toby asked. “They’ve not harmed anyone. They’ve come in good faith to try to find Fair employment and food. I can help you reason with them. There’s no need to wage all of these barbaric contests.”

  “Of course, there’s need,” his captor replied. “They’ve given up their place in our society and have been made redundant. So many loose dragons are a threat to humans and most people are sensible enough to be properly afraid of them.”

  “Dragons were our allies even before your lot subdued them with the kibble and virtually enslaved them. They have no interest in harming people, and they’re perfectly willing to work for food and a fair wage.”

  “Surely you mean food as a fair wage? Producing fresh food for so many dragons will be expensive and hazardous.”

  “Their labor is very valuable, as present circumstances should show you. The city shuts down without them.”

  “Convincing one and all of the folly of using capricious beasts to do the work of men. In Frostingdung these days, they have alternative energy sources that don’t require beasts to get their nourishment.”

  “I’ve heard about those. They say their fumes blacken the sky and you can smell the reek of them for miles around.”

  “People will get used to it. They’ll adapt, as they always do when something has so many other advantages.”

  “Such as?”

  “No dragons, for one thing.”

  Verity recognized this as a circular argument, but Toby just made a rude noise. But right around the time Toby’s captor said the thing about ‘adapting’ knives stabbed into her lie-averse brain and kept stabbing until Toby asked, “And what, pray, is wrong with that? My best friend happens to be a dragon.”

  “Yes, we know. It will be waiting to eat you in the arena.”

  “Nonsense,” Toby said stoutly.

  “We gave these beasts the benefit of our scientific knowledge and the advantages of selective breeding and have they shown appreciation? No. The moment our chemical restraint is removed from their diet, they become aggressive and demanding.”

  “Just because they’ve been worked day and night for years on end?” Toby asked. “How ungrateful of them! You’re too right they’re aggressive and demanding and I’m amazed you’ve been foolish enough to hold them all in this room beneath your so-called Fairgrounds. You people are literally sitting on a powder keg. Without the powder, but to the same effect. I suggest you release each of these creatures with profound apologies, for all the good it will do you, and fresh food as compensation for their inconvenience. You lied to them to get them to come…”

  “Well, no,” said Lord Lickspittal, “Actually you lied to them. You and your pet dragon. I don’t think you’ll last very long if we offer you up as a between-meal snack.”

  “You misled us,” Toby said.

  “I grieve for our misunderstanding but never fear, I’ll get over it.”

  “Shove him in there,” said one of his companions, hidden in shadow. “Let them eat him.”

  “For free? When people have paid good money to watch? You’ve no head for business, brother. Remind me not to appoint you finance minister. If he’s not going to talk to any of them, he’s useless. Chain him up with the rest of the fodder.”

  Toby was jerked backwards.

  Taz reared, roaring, and spouting flame, but her leg was not yet free of the chain and she fell back, still roaring, as the men manhandled her friend back the way he and his captors had come.

  Taz cried piteously, unable to help him.

  “Keep your scales on, Miss,” Verity said. She pulled open the lock with her hands and gave Taz an encouraging pat on the flank.

  Once freed, Taz flew to the far end of the cavern, where the men had brought Toby. Verity, half concealed by the invisibility cloak, was right behind her.

  Malady in Solitary—Practically

  She wanted her coat and her fur-lined cape, her mittens and muff, and her hat with the flaps that tied under her chin with a pretty ribbon. Instead, looking down, she saw she was still wearing the same sack-like garment rumpled with rope bindings to whatever was behind her. An actual sack was tangled in her silken golden curls.

  “What happened? Did everybody else get a sack too?” she asked aloud. No one answered. “Litt
le girl? Slutty-sounding woman? Where are you?” Again, no answer. What if they had taken the others already? Were they saving her for dessert or what?

  Angry hissing broke in on her chaotic thoughts.

  “Duplisssssssssity! Perfidy! Treachery!” a familiar voice said, making even the s-less words somehow part of the hiss.

  “Who, me?” she asked, twisting to try to see where Durance the Vile was. No more sweet cajoling tone. The dungeon dragon sounded extremely cross, maybe even fatally so. Fatal for her, she feared. “Don’t blame me! I didn’t do anything.”

  The dragon didn’t respond. Perhaps he hadn’t been speaking to her at all? She heard the dragon without actual words being exchanged. But when another voice spoke from within the room, a human voice, it very definitely spoke human words, saying, “That’s just it, sweetie. You never did anything.”

  “Uncle Marq? Is that you? It’s very dark in here. Help me, please. All is forgiven!” she added, crossing her fingers behind her back. “Get a lantern and untie me. There’s a dragon who is not best pleased with me, through no fault of my own, I swear.”

  “I can’t imagine, dear,” he said, making no move to grant any of her requests. “And I don’t know really why I or any of your other guardians should care. Here you’ve been moaning about not having access to the treasury and the maid reported finding all sorts of what turned out to be historical treasures among your smallclothes.”

  “Well, yes, the dragon brought them. He wanted to make friends.”

  “And you didn’t think to mention it?”

  “I was going to but…”

  “That won’t do, Malady. It simply won’t. We thought with you as regent we could implement our plans for development, but you’ve been worse than a naughty girl. You’ve been a useless girl.”

  “So what?” she asked, feeling more petulant than ever.