Dragon Count

by Kendal Davis

  But I knew we should leave as soon as we could.

  Indigo’s voice broke in on my reverie. “Did you sleep well?” I realized that I was standing at the same window where we had been together last night. Somehow, I’d drifted here, leaving my three colleagues talking in a group.

  He’d think I was doing it on purpose, to attract his attention. Damn it, there was always some awkward moment when it came to men. It was just impossible to find the right balance between showing them that I liked them, and taking it too far and scaring them off.

  But could I really scare a dragon?

  “Yes, thank you,” I murmured. “Kat and I enjoyed your hospitality greatly. However, we are ready to leave now. You said that we might be able to go home today. When can we do that?”

  Indigo’s expression grew strained, although I couldn’t decide whether he was annoyed that I was being so pushy, or if he might be sorry to see me go. Maybe both.

  “No, I am not yet ready to open the portal to allow you to leave. Not that I want you to stay here,” he hurried. “Or, rather, not that I...want you to go.” He was bungling our conversation as badly as I usually did when I tried to talk to men I liked. It was endearing and oddly heartening to be on the other end of such rambling. He cleared his throat and began again, his voice more clipped this time. “I have not yet discovered whether there has been treachery in my House. Until I know which dragon is untrustworthy enough to misuse the portal, I cannot return you to your planet.”

  “Are you sure somebody let us through on purpose?” I couldn’t help but ask. “Maybe it was just an error.”

  “Dragons do not make errors,” he answered stiffly.

  “Could this have been done only by a dragon? What about the peasants?”

  Indigo rolled his eyes at me. I was apparently so far off the mark that he answered as simply as if he was addressing a child. “The magic of the portals is strictly the province of dragons. There are no peasants with such powers.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked. “I have found that in my own research, the moment that I think I am entirely sure of an absolute, that is when I realize that nature has other plans. There are always loopholes, everywhere.”

  He shook his head firmly. “You refer to nature on your own planet. Those ideas do not apply here.”

  I caught his eye, sure I saw a glimmer of doubt there. Good. Doubt was always beneficial if it meant that we looked for more and better answers. Something about his blue eyes was pulling me in, as if I was sinking into them, feeling what it was like to be him. My heart caught in my throat. My head thrummed with an ache that was like anticipation.

  With an effort, I pulled my gaze away from him. I wasn’t trying to get into any kind of relationship with a dragon. Oh, I’d heard his come-hither thought last night in my mind. And I wanted him too. But that didn’t mean I had to admit it.

  To conceal my flustered feelings, I pointed down at the town. I could tell that he disliked talking about it. That only made me wonder what else there was to learn about it that I didn’t know yet. “Look down there with me, Indigo,” I suggested. “I feel like there’s something else I’m missing as well.”

  He sighed. I knew I was being tiresome. “We discussed this last night, Olivia,” he said. “There are no industries or agriculture down there because our dragon magic accomplishes everything here. “The peasants do not support us, as in a feudal system. We support them. We dragons are their benefactors, their caretakers.”

  I thought about the servants I’d seen here in the castle. They did have something in common. Finally, I was able to put my finger on it. “I know what it was that I noticed! Everybody in the town is young. There are no old people.”

  Indigo scoffed at me. “Don’t be silly. You can’t even see that from here; we are far too high.” Something twitched around his eyes, though.

  I looked over at Kat, chatting happily with Cobalt, the Captain of the Guards. They looked young and energetic together. Everybody we’d met here looked no older than about twenty-five. That was nonsense, though, wasn’t it? It must be that the older peasants did not work as servants in the castle. If they were employed elsewhere, perhaps down in the town, then I would not yet have seen then. Indigo was quite right. But why were the dragons all so young as well?

  “How old are you?” I murmured to Indigo, hoping my question wasn’t too rude. Sometimes one had to be direct in the name of research.

  He chuckled at something I couldn’t guess. It was such an unexpected pleasure to see him so relaxed that it gave me pause. If only I could make him laugh again, with that carefree grin. For just a moment, he had lost his pinched look of concern for doing everything properly. He had looked the way I wished he was free to feel all the time, without the burden of being Count. “Olivia, I’m a dragon. I am thousands of years old. But you are correct in noticing that we do not become withered with age. We are immortal beings.”

  Oh.

  Well, that put a small hole in my theory that people must age differently here. I supposed that did describe it, actually. Immortality was a bit different from anything I was used to at home. It also created a roadblock to my hope that I’d ever be able to wrap my mind around the way this place worked. I spluttered, aware that I looked like an idiot, but unable to come up with any answer.

  He seemed to like that. He enjoyed being the one in control. I could appreciate that. It made him more confident to have said something that floored me. It was a contradiction that he liked my outspokenness, but he also did not know quite what to do with my opinions.

  Indigo smiled widely at me. “That’s just us dragons, though. The peasants are not immortal, of course. Far from it.” Then he closed his mouth abruptly, as if he’d said too much.

  I was just about to ask him what he’d meant, when he gently touched my arm and led me back to the others. Kat and Cobalt were still standing together, laughing at some private joke. She was loose-limbed and at ease, as she was everywhere. I wondered if she had anybody waiting for her at home.

  David and Andres were near them, both watching others intently. David had been studying my conversation with the Count. Andres kept his eyes on his sister, as if wishing that he and she could flee together right now. I didn’t know much about them, but I remembered that Kat had told me once that it was just the two of them, making a living with the boat their parents had left them.

  David held a mug of some sort of steaming morning drink. He sent me an ironic smile as he lifted it to his lips. He was not exactly uncomfortable here; he’d been a professor for more years than I’d been alive, and he’d seen plenty of unusual places. That had been on his own planet, though. He looked like he had resolved to sit back and take notes for the duration of our stay here.

  I could tell that Indigo was about to deposit me with my colleagues and leave me there. That was fine, if he had to. I understood that he must have government business to attend to. He couldn’t stand here chatting with me all day. Something about the way he held himself away from me made me think that he would not ever touch me again. He had said he wanted me, and I did nothing. It must have been a one-time invitation.

  All I really wanted was to go home. There was almost no part of me that wanted to stay here with him. I would have to keep telling myself that.

  Before he could step away, however, a blue-uniformed Guardsman hurried over to him. Just like all the other dragon shifters, he was handsome, well-muscled, and young. Or at least he looked young, for somebody who might be thousands of years old.

  He faced Indigo and said, “Count Indigo, sir, it is now the appointed time for the ceremony.”

  Indigo froze. “No, you are mistaken. I do not intend to do that until I have found out who has compromised our portal. That duty must take precedence. I thought I made that clear yesterday.” His face was a mask of formality. It hid something that I might have thought was nervousness, if I hadn’t been sure that a dragon ruler was above that emotion.

  Cobalt stepped forward. “S
ir, we must go forward with the ceremony. It is the law of Elter.”

  Some understanding flashed between them. An uneasiness.

  Indigo spoke in an undertone that reached only the two men and me. “Cousin, it is not possible to do this while we have off-worlders here. You must see. If they are not dragons, and they surely are not, then we must consider them to be peasants.”

  Cobalt dipped his dark head in agreement. “And yet we must do it on the appointed day. If we do not uphold the law here in House Caeruleus then we here are no better than House Rubellus. Our morals are higher than that. We have sworn to follow protocol, taking no shortcuts. Not ever.”

  Indigo nodded, suddenly changed so that his blue eyes looked every century of his age. What could be weighing him down so heavily? Only moments ago, we had been laughing together by the window. He had looked like a young man, even in his spirit. He had looked like he wanted to spend more time in easy mirth with me.

  Perhaps with our clothes off.

  Wait, where had that idea come from? It was my thought, not his. My mind was still my own. Would it be so wrong to spend some time with him before we left? It would be crazy. Even I knew that.

  A servant appeared at my elbow, distracting me from watching the Count. She smiled, as fresh and interested as one of my university students. Her young face registered pride at the treat of mingling with strange off-worlders. We were a curiosity to her, but she might not have noticed that it was mutual. It was nice to see a woman. Indigo had described the dragon women as leading reclusive lives, but apparently a female peasant was allowed to work in public.

  The young woman passed me a mug identical to the one David held. When I tasted the steaming concoction, I realized that it was the finest coffee I’d ever tasted.

  David grinned at me. “Is yours coffee? Mine is hot chocolate. You know that’s my favorite.”

  “That can’t be what they enjoy in the morning here. It’s too coincidental.” I sipped again, savoring the excellent coffee.

  He shook his head with a satisfied air. “No. I believe they are reading our minds casually, on every subject. Then they can provide us with what we want most as guests. Fascinating, isn’t it?”

  That didn’t begin to cover it. Creepy was more like it.

  I turned back to Indigo. “I asked you to stop reading my thoughts! You promised.”

  He frowned. “I did no such thing. At any rate, we have business in the town now. Right now. I have a ceremony to run.”

  I realized that the room had grown very still. There were no longer any servants scurrying around to complete their silent tasks of distributing the morning meal. Every peasant had disappeared from the room, perhaps from the entire castle. The blue-clad dragon noblemen, including the Guardsmen in their multi-colored cloaks, were now nowhere to be seen.

  It was as quiet as a tomb.

  All at once, with a strange movement of his hand, Indigo seemed to radiate light. He held his palm out, sweeping around us, and the air around our entire group shimmered. In the blink of an eye, with a twist of the soul, we transported to a courtyard in the town at the bottom of the mountain.

  We stood outside, in the hot sun. The air in the town smelled of the delightful cooking aromas that might characterize a festival day. The assembled townspeople, however, looked worried, not ready for celebration.

  Indigo, his Guardsmen, and all four of us visitors, were together on a raised platform, just out of the brightest glare. An awning shaded us from the bright yellow sky.

  He was able to teleport us?

  “How did you do that?” I hissed. “You could have transported me like that yesterday, instead of flying me miles through the air!”

  He actually winked at me. “Flying was more fun than you expected, though, wasn’t it?”

  Without waiting for my answer, he turned to the assembled crowd. It seemed that the entire town had come to hear his speech. Serious faces were upturned, eager to catch every word of their Count. The peasants filled the courtyard, spilling into the orderly streets as well. The dragon men moved among them, standing tall and glaring at the peasants. Their propinquity had more do to with keeping order than with comradeship, I suspected.

  The town was laid out with precision, so that every street was perfectly defined and cobblestoned. The roof of each shop and house were in excellent repair, not that rain seemed likely to threaten any time soon. The dry, dusty quality of the air was what I noticed the most about being down here at the bottom of the mountain. It was hot, parched, and I was becoming aware that the smell of reptile was stronger than any cooking aromas.

  Indigo spoke clearly and forcefully. “Townspeople of House Caeruleus. I am here to inform you that it is the appointed Day of the Count.”

  I wrinkled my nose at his hubris. What, he had a holiday named after himself?

  He went on, with firm solemnity. “Today, as you know, we will perform this year’s ritual count. We will determine how many people reside in the town on this exact day. Then we will know how many peasants, beginning with your oldest, will be sacrificed to the dragons.”

  I blinked, certain that I had misheard him.

  Sacrificed?

  Then I heard his words replayed in my head. Indigo, my handsome, careworn but devilish dragon Count whose impulsive smile was now nowhere to be seen, had said that the oldest residents would be sacrificed.

  My eyes went inexorably to David, my mentor and friend of so many years.

  He was stroking his white beard, with a gesture that was both nervous and thoughtful, the crow’s feet around his eyes deepening as he listened to the Count.

  David was most certainly the very oldest person for miles around.

  Chapter 6: Indigo

  For years, I had struggled with a queasy uncertainty about the morality of the Day of the Count. It sometimes felt impossibly archaic. The social divisions between peasant and dragon were immutable on our world. That was fine; I had no quarrel with that. After all, we were dragons, and they were not. It was self-explanatory.

  But our dominion over them would have felt more modern if it had been a matter of form rather than brute force. We dragons were already an elite class, employing the peasants as our servants. Even taking care of their welfare with a paternalistic sort of control was within my comfort zone.

  Anything, really, would be better than our current system of demanding sacrifice from them. Times had changed in the thousands of years that I had lived. I knew that other worlds might frown on the way we did things.

  But I had never faced that uncertainty as fully as I did this moment, seeing that Olivia was aghast at my announcement.

  She stood next to me, motionless, as she waited to see what I would do next. Her back was straight with dignity. The attire of an Elterian woman suited her perfectly. In the heat that I understood bothered her more than it did me, her sleek, cropped top allowed her to stay cool. It also allowed me to enjoy her shape. That was a side effect that I had not noticed before from women’s dress, but now it struck me with a vengeance. The gauzy, floating skirts that our women favored served two purposes.

  Only Olivia’s hands, clasped behind her back, twisting together, revealed how hard it was for her to be still, now that she knew what danger threatened her friend.

  I nodded gravely to my cousin, Cobalt, who led my Guards. “Form the townspeople into the correct lines for the tally.” He met my eyes without flinching. He was a well-traveled dragon, more so than I. He did not approve of our old-fashioned methods, but he would comply, as he always did. He was a dragon of Elter, and that was all that needed to be said.

  Part of our problem was that we had all been present at so many counting ceremonies that we were each of us complicit in the crimes of the dragons of Elter. We were the cause; we were the ultimate authors of the crime of human sacrifice.

  There would never be a way out of this for us.

  As the Guards moved amongst the peasants, sorting them into lines with the traditional force, Olivia st
epped close enough to me that she could whisper in my ear. It was highly improper, but nobody stopped her. Only I had that authority, and I could no sooner push this intoxicating woman away from me than I could give up my own wings.

  “Indigo, stop this! What sort of people are you, to resort to something as barbaric as human sacrifice?” She was trying to hide behind the emotionless mask of a scientific observer, but she was also shaking with worry for her friend.

  It was true. He was the oldest peasant that had ever stood in our town, by far.

  “Olivia, please. It is not your place to question our customs. I wish that I did not have to do this, but I must.”

  “Look at the way the Guards are treating them, Indigo! Why does it have to be so rough, so ruthless?” She glared at me. “You don’t even need to count them, do you? I’ll bet that you already know exactly how many peasants there are in the town. This is just a way to make them fear you.”

  Nobody had ever put that into words to me before, but of course it was true. Not that I was going to admit it to her. “No, it is simply part of the ritual. This is how we have always done it.

  “So you don’t have to call your big day ‘The Day of Sacrifice?’” Olivia was getting angrier by the moment. “I heard you try to delay the ceremony. Find a better way to do that.” She was on the verge of tears, although she was trying valiantly to hide it. “We will leave your planet immediately, I promise.”

  “That is not a possibility. We are not any ‘sort of people,’ as you call us. We are dragons.” I fixed her with a steely glare that I hoped hid my own wavering resolve. “Your morals do not apply to us. I am sorry that you and your friends have been caught up in this, but there is no other way.”

  She was pale. “We don’t belong here. We are not your peasants!”

  I frowned at her. “Do you mean to say that your only complaint about our system is that it involves you?” I knew my argument was spurious. I, myself, had several serious doubts about the way we did things here. But it did not matter. This was how it was.