Page 3 of Deven and the Dragon
Andrei frowned. “I think if you refuse their sacrifice they’ll be offended. Even complain to the king, claiming that you’re behaving suspiciously by turning down their traditional gesture. You know your father corresponded with King Harold when you chose this place to live. He’d be displeased if you made trouble after he went to the effort of writing letters, which you know he hates.” Well, that was a convincing argument. Fiora’s father was, bluntly, lazy, and nothing annoyed him more than wasted effort. “And if nothing else, if the merchants here take against you, the quality of your wine might decrease.”
Oh, there was a dreadful thought. “Would they really sink so low as that, do you think?”
“No one has yet plumbed the depths of man’s iniquity, I’m afraid,” Andrei opined. And then, in a more normal tone, he added, “And I think we can do better than simply ignoring her until she goes away, my lord. We will need to give it some thought, but if we were to, let’s say, mislead the young woman? We could allow her to learn that gold isn’t your primary hoard — not the real thing,” he added quickly, as Fiora’s eyes widened in panic. “Something else. You have a splendid art collection. That would make a believable red herring. Valuable enough to be convincing to those who don’t know much about dragons, but not important enough to you to be much of a loss if she manages to take something away with her.”
Fiora considered this, and then nodded. Yes, that would do nicely. He passed over Andrei’s implication that his hoard, his true hoard, wasn’t valuable. Humans simply didn’t understand, and Fiora had long since accepted that. “Very well. I’m with you so far.”
“Good,” Andrei said, nodding in his turn. “And as for the…other thing, in case they’ve heard of it. We could think of an innocuous, simple magical problem — something that would, when she reported back, perhaps even inspire sympathy. You can’t eat cheese, for example, without agonizing pain.”
“Cheese?” Fiora stood, slowly, leaning his hands on his desk and glaring at Andrei. “Cheese. You want them to think I’m cursed bycheese? You think that’d inspire sympathy? Inspire raucous laughter, more like! I’m a creature of terror and darkness, doomed to be forever alone. I’m not going to set myself up to be the laughingstock of a town full of bloody shopkeepers! I have dignity, Andrei, and no one respects a dragon whose weakness is cheese!”
“It was the first thing that came to mind, my lord,” Andrei said with a shrug, entirely unmoved by Fiora’s rage. “I missed lunch. And, you know, there are many people unable to tolerate even a taste of cheese, without feeling a certain amount of discom—”
“Not another word,” Fiora shouted, completely out of patience. “Not one more bloody word out of you! I’m going out. I need to spread my wings. You, you can write this miserable letter all by yourself. And if you so much as mention any product made from milk, I’ll hang you from the top of the turret by your toes.”
Fiora flounced out of the study, stripping off his clothing as he went in preparation for the shift into his other form. Oh, this was intolerable. With everything else he’d had to learn to bear, now this? As he reached the roof, he could still hear Andrei chuckling.
Bother, bother, bloody bother.
Chapter Two
“Pressing my shirtdoesn’t seem necessary,” Deven protested to his aunt, who was hovering. As usual. “It’s only morning tea. And I see the town council every day when I pour them their ale. Too much ale, in more than a few cases.”
The offending shirt was laid out already on a table at the back of the kitchen that aunt Phina reserved for ironing and sorting the wash. It was still only two hours past dawn, but the kitchen was already hot, what with the day’s baking and the sun starting to beat down in earnest on the side of the building. Sweat trickled down Deven’s spine, and his stomach twinged with annoyance and with a reminder of his truncated breakfast. The shirt remained stubbornly limp, despite the starch he’d used on it.
“No nephew of mine is going in front of any of those nose-in-the-air assholes and making our family look low-class,” Phina said with a sniff. Deven wisely chose to start ironing again without comment. Aunt Phina never minced words, and she still resented her ejection from the town council. Who’d have known that knocking a fellow councilmember unconscious with a wooden spoon, no matter how much he deserved it, would’ve led to being barred from serving further public office? Not Phina, apparently. “Get your shirt pressed, try to do something about your bloody hair, and make it snappy.”
She bustled off to help with the bread, joining their cook and kitchen maid at the long floured counter and beginning to knead, with vigor. Perhaps she was picturing the town council’s faces as she did so.
Deven was doing the same as he ironed, although with more consideration and less outright murderous intent. What did they want with him, anyway? The summons had arrived at first light, just as Deven and his uncle George were washing up at the pump out back and Phina was marshalling the maids for the day’s work. The messenger boy had handed over the letter, tipped his hat, and trotted off before Deven could muster more than stunned silence. Councilwoman Drucker requested that he join her and some of her colleagues for tea that morning on urgent business. No details given.
The shirt done at last, Deven shrugged it on and added his best coat, blue because it made him look dashing — or at least, so several of his lovers had told him. Doubtful that Mrs. Drucker would agree. He ducked down to see into the mirror hung in the far corner of the room, wetted his hands in the basin there, and did his best with his wavy brown hair. It mostly stayed in place.
“There, all respectable,” he said, turning and forcing a smile. “Will I do?”
A few grumbles and a tweak of his collar, and Phina allowed that she supposed that was as good as it was going to get. Deven kissed her cheek in passing and headed out the back door to find his uncle, who’d stepped out early for a smoke in the yard to avoid his wife’s valeting.
Uncle George didn’t like the council much either, but he got along with them rather better than Phina did. His company was the compromise, since neither of Deven’s elders thought he could be trusted to attend to business alone. Deven could handle the council; they were nothing but a bunch of windbags.
Phina, on the other hand, had constant access to his food. Humoring her was a necessary defensive maneuver.
“All right, lad?” George asked, and they fell into step, leaving the stable yard through the alley along the side and turning up the hill toward the Druckers’ neighborhood.
“Sure, why not?”
George shook his mop of curly gray hair. “It’s just odd, is all. Wouldn’t surprise me if you were a little worried. Haven’t broken any laws, have you?”
Deven gave that a moment’s thought, just to be sure. “Not a one.”
“Then it’ll be some nonsense or other about someone’s daughter. I wish you’d keep it in your trousers once in a while,” George grumbled, without much heat. Deven was twenty-six, and George had once been twenty-six. He knew damn well his nephew had never lain with anyone who wasn’t very much of age and filled with enthusiasm, and that was good enough for him, as he’d told several angry husbands. “Or at least leave the families of the council off-limits, for fuck’s sake. Plenty of other fish in the sea.”
“Right,” Deven muttered. Unfamiliar guilt simmered in his chest. If the council really had summoned him for some kind of official chastisement, it wouldn’t matter much to him. No one’s opinions mattered much to him, one of the reasons the council disapproved of him so much. But George and Phina’s livelihood was their inn, the council could regulate local businesses, and Deven’s behavior reflected on his family, whether he liked it or not. Deven promised himself that he’d try to make nice, for their sake.
They walked the rest of the way in blessed silence. Despite his preoccupation, the bustle of the cobblestoned streets, the fresh scent of the river wafting over the rooftops, and the sunshine lifted Deven’s spirits. Carts rolled by, filled with heaps of vegetables from the farms around Ridley, or with casks of ale, or with silk and spices imported from distant lands and brought down the river from Knightsbridge, the nearest port city to the south. From Ridley, all of it would disperse farther north, either along the river by barge or in caravans of wagons.
Shouts and greetings and snatches of song filled the air, competing with the rattle of wheels and the stamping of horses. Deven took deep breaths and did his best to enjoy it all. Screw the bloody council, anyway. Hehadn’tbroken any laws. If they wanted to bitch and moan about his loose morals, he and George would both tell them where to jump off — nicely, of course.
The Druckers’ residence stood proudly at the head of a small swath of park dedicated to Mrs. Drucker’s grandfather. It made up for its wooden frame and plain windows with an impressively gaudy coat of rust-orange paint and a great many crossed timbers and bits of scrollwork. At George’s knock, the door was opened by a prim fellow who eyed them over his prim spectacles.
