Bad Times in Dragon City

by Matt Forbeck

  I hauled up short in the center of the open-air foyer in which rotating staircases spun students up or down, depending on the direction in which they were headed. Scrolls with wings flapped through the air, delivering the local mail all around Wizards Way. A dozen massive suits of animated armor watched over it all, keeping everyone safe, at least in theory. I spotted one of them reaching out and catching a tripping student who’d been trying to carry a potion-filled cask. It not only saved the student some bruises but caught the cask and delivered it to the grateful klutz.

  Celia stopped next to me and grinned.

  “It’s just as amazing here as ever, isn’t it? Don’t you miss it?”

  Not at all, I thought, but I couldn’t bear to crush Celia’s joy like that. Instead, I said, “Can you tell me what I’m here for again?”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The grin vanished from Celia’s face. “Of course! The Wizards Council called a special meeting to speak with you. They’ve been waiting for you since yesterday morning, and just between you and me, they’re getting a little cranky.”

  “Not with you, I hope.”

  She waved me off. “Nothing I can’t handle. They’re up at the top of the main tower. Do you remember the way?”

  “Aren’t you coming with me?”

  She broke into smiles again. “Of course! I wouldn’t let you walk into that lion’s den without me.”

  “They don’t scare me.” I followed her toward the up-spinning staircase.

  She glanced back at me. “I suppose that explains why you dropped out.”

  “How’s that?”

  She winked at me. “You never were all that smart.”

  I just shook my head as we stood there and rode the stairwell all the way to the top. It dropped us off at a landing outside of a pair of oaken doors bound in gold and labeled “Council Chambers” in glowing red letters.

  Celia went to knock on the door, but before she could manage it, I reached past her, opened the door, and barged right in.

  The voices that had been engaged in a heated discussion before I entered all fell silent at once. Another suit of animated armor swept around from the side of the door to stand between me and the long table that stretched the length of the open and airy room before me. I had my wand out and pointed at it in an instant.

  Celia stepped up behind me and grabbed my arm. “Hey, Max,” she said. “No need for that.” She nodded at the armor. “It’s all right. He’s with me.”

  The armor stepped back to where it had been, and I turned my attention back to the table to see all the assembled wizards gaping at me. Yabair stood near the head of the table, looming over the headmaster and glaring at me as if he could light me ablaze with his gaze. The dragonet lay resting on the table in front of him, but as soon as the creature saw me, it sprang into the air, flapped its wings, and dived straight for me.

  The little guy almost knocked me over with his enthusiasm, but I managed to brace myself and gathered the flying beast to my chest. I held him in my arms and smoothed back the ridges on the top of his head. His long tongue flickered out and caught me on the cheek. It tickled so much, I had to stifle a laugh.

  “It’s good to see you again,” I said to the dragonet in a soft voice. “I missed you too.” Perhaps to my surprise, I discovered that the words I spoke were true.

  After a moment, the dragonet crawled straight up my chest and curled himself around my shoulders like some kind of scaly living scarf. As he did, I stroked his neck and listened to him purr.

  Once he was comfortable, I looked up again to see the entire table still gaping at us. “Hi,” I said.

  Celia took me by the arm and walked me to the end of the table to the right. That put me directly across from Bill Whitman — the aged and balding headmaster of the academy himself — with the rest of the members of the Wizards Council arrayed along the sides of the table between us.

  I spotted many faces there that I knew, both from my time in the Academy and before that. Some of them scowled at me. A few of them offered up nervous smiles. Whitman gave me the same phony grin he always wore when dealing with someone from outside the Academy. Back when I was a student, I’d asked him if that was an illusion he’d cast on his face. The fact that it didn’t disappear at that very moment, I felt, proved me right.

  My father — who sat to the headmaster’s right, directly in front of where Captain Yabair stood — looked terrified. I hadn’t seen him for the better part of the last decade. My mother had taken a stab at reuniting us soon after I’d given up being an adventurer, but the wounds from that disaster had still been too raw for me to stomach him rubbing my nose in how often he’d warned me that my choice in careers wouldn’t end well.

  The years hadn’t been kind to him. He was skinnier, gaunt almost, and the color had drained from his hair and his skin. He’d never liked to go outside much, but he looked like he’d spent the last ten years locked in a vault, hunched over his research for days on end.

  I suppose in that sense, he hadn’t changed much at all.

  “Bill,” I said to the headmaster with a curt nod. “I wish I could say I’m happy to be here again.”

  My father recoiled in horror at my familiarity, and the scowls on a few other faces deepened. Yabair rolled his eyes. Whitman stood up, his toothy smile growing wider. “It’s always a pleasure to see you, young Master Gibson.”

  I ignored the title he applied to me. It was a transparent attempt to make me feel like a child in the company of his elders, and I knew better than to buy into it. “Can you tell me what’s so vital that you asked the Guard to escort me here?”

  “Business before pleasantries, is it?” Whitman said with a wink that made me want to pull off his eyelids. “Good enough, I suppose. To cut to the chase, good sir, we’d like to welcome you back into the fold.”

  He spread his arms wide to indicate that the table before him represented the fold in question. I cocked my head at him. “How do you mean exactly?”

  Whitman’s eyes lit up as he saw that I wasn’t going to just curse at him and leave. He patted my father on the shoulder, and I thought that Dad might leap out of his robes. “Through the good graces of your father here, we’ve been following your exploits ever since the day you left us. You’ve done some amazing things with the training that you were given here at the Academy, and we think that the next generation of apprentices here could stand to benefit from everything you’ve learned in your, ah, field work.”

  It took me a moment to wrap my head around this. “You think the fact that I’ve actually gone out and used magic rather than sitting around here researching the tiniest details with which I might manage to impress my colleagues is a good and noble thing?”

  I could feel the rest of the people at the table collectively clench up at that. Whitman chortled. “Well, I’m not one to say what’s noble and what’s not, but I know I’m not the only one here that’s been impressed with everything you’ve done.”

  As he spoke, I noticed my father’s gaze meet mine and then dart away. It came to rest upon the dragonet.

  I allowed myself a knowing smile. “Let’s cut to the chase. You don’t want me. You want the dragonet.”

  I reached up and scratched the little guy between his wings. He purred loud enough I’m sure everyone in the room could hear him, even all the way down at the other end of the table.

  “Let me make one thing clear.” I stared down each and every person sitting at the table before me. Most of them — including my father — had the good sense to look away. “The dragonet is with me. It was accidental, but it’s done, and there’s nothing I can do about that. I take that responsibility as seriously as anything I’ve ever known in my life.

  “Because of that, there’s no chance I’m ever coming back to the Academy. There’s no damn way I’m letting you bloodless bastards get your scalpels into him.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Whitman had been about to say something, perhaps to welcome me official
ly back into the Academy. He closed his lips tight instead and flushed a bright red. Speechless for a moment, he turned to my father for help. “Richard?”

  My father had never been comfortable in the spotlight, but to his credit, he swallowed whatever fear he had and stood up to meet my eyes. “Now, son,” he said, “it’s not like that.”

  “Explain it then.”

  He hemmed and hawed for a moment, casting about for some support. No one came to his aid. Finally he gave up with a wide-armed shrug and let the words he’d been wrestling with spill out.

  “Well, the part where you think the only reason we’ve invited you back to the Academy is because the heir to the Imperial Horde has imprinted itself on you?” he said. “That’s spot on.”

  A few of the people at the table began to protest, but Whitman silenced them with a wave of his hand. Then he gestured for my father to continue.

  “But the bit about scalpels, well, you have my word that we won’t pluck a scale from the dragonet’s tail. If one were to fall off in the course of natural shedding, we’d love to examine it of course, figure out what its unique properties are, catalog it and compare it against those we’ve recovered from his father. I mean, just think of the opportunities. It’s an unparalleled chance to study the most powerful species of being on the planet in a way that hasn’t been available to us since the founding of the city. Who wouldn’t be intrigued by —”

  Whitman put a hand on my father’s shoulder to put an end to his babbling. “What Richard means to say is that while we value the opportunity to study the dragonet, we would, of course, treat him with all the respect due to a creature who is the next in line to rule the empire. It would be extremely foolish of us to do otherwise, would it not? Imagine how the Dragon Emperor would react if he learned that we’d done anything to harm his only offspring.”

  “Exactly!” my father said. “In fact, it’s just the opposite of that. We want to bring the dragonet into the Academy not so we can harm him but so we can protect him. Outside of the Dragon’s Spire itself, this is one of the most secure places in the entire city. He’ll be safer here than anywhere else. Certainly much more so than, well, wherever it is that you’re resting your head these days.”

  I felt like I should be angry at my father for not knowing all that much about where I lived and what I was doing these days, but then I remembered that I preferred it that way. I let my temper rising over that issue fade.

  “I like it just fine down at the Quill,” I said. “And we haven’t had any problems there so far.”

  “How long do you think that will last?” Yabair said. The elf had been silent up until that point, just standing there in his crimson and gold uniform and glaring at me. I’d gotten so used to that sort of treatment from him over the years that I’d ignored him to that point.

  “However long it has to,” I said.

  “Really?” Yabair spoke in a droll tone. “How well were you able to defend your offices from the person who attacked it last week?”

  “I wasn’t inside it.”

  “And the dragonet? Where was he?”

  “That attack didn’t hurt him. It hatched him.”

  “And if it should happen again? What then? Will he hatch once more?”

  I shrugged in as unflustered a way as I could manage. “I don’t know. Do you think anything could hurt him? He’s a dragon after all.”

  “He’s a dragonet,” Whitman said, emphasizing the last syllable. “We don’t know what could hurt him. We literally have no idea.”

  “That’s why we need to have him here,” my father said. “Both so we can protect him and so that we can learn how best to do that. It’s in his best interests, son. And, to be honest, yours.”

  I couldn’t remember the last time my father had expressed any level of concern about my best interests. “How’s that?”

  Yabair answered for him. “Having the dragonet with you puts you in a special position. It not only gives you the ear of the Dragon —”

  “Maybe. I’ve not asked him for anything.” Other than to let me deal with the person who’d killed the Gütmanns, that is. And from Belle’s point of view, that hadn’t gone so well.

  I wondered if I could ask the Dragon for clemency for Belle and her family over Fiera’s missing body. Since that particular edict about collecting corpses had come directly from him, I didn’t know if he’d be willing to grant me that kind of leeway. I’d try to fix the problem myself first, but if it came down to it, I might have to beg for that favor from him, much as I’d prefer not to.

  “But,” Yabair continued, “it’s also painted a target on your back. There are many who might want access to the dragonet. Others might even consider it an act of brazen loyalty to murder you at the first chance so that the dragonet would no longer have a human to be so attached to.”

  “Care to name any names?” I suspected if he wound up listing them for long enough, he might wind up spitting out his own name along with the others who’d have preferred to see me in the morgue.

  “Stay here with us,” my father said. “We can keep you safe here — both of you.” He seemed like maybe he had something more to say, but if he did, he held his tongue either way.

  I rubbed the stubble on my chin, and the dragonet took the opportunity to slip his tail around my neck in a protective embrace. I thought about how he’d come to my rescue when Fiera had been about to kill me. If not for him, I’d be dead for sure. How could I fail to protect him in return?

  I didn’t like the idea of coming back to the Academy though. In a real sense, it felt like a defeat, a sting if not to my honor than at least to my pride. But could I let that stand in the way of what was best for him?

  “All right,” I said, “but on one condition.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “I don’t know why you had to get me involved with this,” Danto said as he escorted me, Yabair, my father, and the dragonet into his tower, which sat at the far end of Wizards Way from the Academy itself.

  “For one, I don’t trust the architecture of the Academy.” I knew this was a point with my old adventuring pal, and I was happy to play to it.

  “Quite right,” he said. “Too much reliance on mojo over mortar. Makes it inherently unstable. But it’s a big city. Why here?”

  “The Academy wants to protect the dragonet and keep a close eye on him. I wasn’t willing to move in there with him, and he doesn’t like me to leave him alone.”

  “And you thought my place would be better?”

  “You always tell me I have a standing invitation to stay here with you. And it’s not like you don’t have the room.”

  We stood in the center of Danto’s tower now and basked in the blue glow of the elevation field that moved people up and down through the place’s many levels. Danto stopped the rest of us there, craned back his neck, and laughed. “Well, I guess you’re right about that. I just didn’t think you’d bring the Emperor’s hatchling along with you.”

  “And don’t you owe me one for saving your life?” I raised an eyebrow at him.

  Danto and I — along with the rest of our adventuring crew — had covered each other’s carcasses more times than anyone cared to count. Early on, we might have kept track, but it soon got ridiculous. He knew what I was talking about though.

  Last week, while hunting for our mutual friend Moira — a halfling thief whose father owned the restaurant underneath my office — Danto had gone on a vision quest while smoking way too much dragon essence, and it had nearly killed him. If I hadn’t found him and gotten him to a hospital, he’d have died for sure.

  I hadn’t seen him since then. He seemed a bit shakier than usual, and he’d never been steady on his feet in the first place. Hard to blame him, though, with as close a brush as he’d had with death. I suspected he might be going through withdrawal too.

  He bowed his head, and for a moment I didn’t know if he was going to wrap his arms around me in gratitude or throw a punch at me for bringing Yabair and m
y father into his home, much less the dragonet. In the end, he did neither. He raised his head, looked me in the eye, and said, “All right.”

  “You sure about that?” I asked.

  He ginned up a thin smile. “It’s the least I can do for an old friend and his charge, no matter what species it might be.”

  “Are you sure you can keep them safe here?” Yabair had been scanning every inch of the place since we’d entered, looking for weaknesses in its defenses.

  Danto gave the elf a helpless shrug. “I built this place to keep me safe from my enemies, such as they are, not the Dragon Emperor’s.”

  The dragonet perched on my shoulder, staring around at the inside of the tower in wonder. I hadn’t taken him too many places in the short time since he’d hatched, but he’d had an amazing day so far and couldn’t keep from craning his neck around at everything to get a better view. I did my best to ignore him for the moment.

  “You built this place as a balm to your ego,” Dad said, not bothering to keep the scorn from his voice.

  “I prefer the term ‘monument,’” Danto said with a mischievous grin. He and my father had never gotten along, which was one reason I’d always liked him. And that was one reason my father hated him even more.

  When I’d left the Academy, he’d laid the blame for that at Danto’s feet. There’d been more than a grain of truth to that, I had to admit. Danto had long railed against the Academy and its long-standing policy of favoring magical theory over practical applications, and that had colored my thinking about the matter. In the end, though, the decision to abandon my studies for the adventuring life had been mine to make, and I took full responsibility for that, no matter what my father cared to think.

  “I’m still not convinced we need to leave the Quill,” I said. “What’s possibly going to hurt a dragon anyhow? Even one as small as this?”

  Danto pursed his lips and glanced around to make sure no one else was listening. “Can I speak freely?”