Dragon Breeder 2

by Dante King

  I had been in these two women’s companies enough to know when it was safe to act a fool and when it wasn’t. This was most certainly a time for doing as I was told.

  In as few words as I could, I told them that I had been out on the town with Tamsin when we had overheard a couple of men mention Dragon Bane. I then had to quickly let them know about the letter, which, it turned out, they already knew about because of the debriefing Penelope had given. After this brief aside, I told the officers how we had followed these men to an underground cavern that was even now filling with river water, where we had observed Captain Cade and a bunch of self-proclaimed Bloodletters siphon dragon blood from Padymin and drink it.

  “Whereupon,” I said, “they turned into some extremely funky-looking dragon-human half breeds.”

  I then told them about the ensuing confrontation and how Cade had, seemingly, the strength and speed to rival a dragonmancer. After which, I detailed how Tamsin and Amara and I had fought and killed the hybrids.

  “Have you seen the other two, ma’am?” I asked the sergeant. “Tamsin and Amara?”

  “Tamsin and Amara are setting up a perimeter and telling the growing number of curious onlookers what has transpired here—more or less,” Lieutenant Kaleen said. “We found them as we arrived. They’re fine. Amara is a little weakened, but she should recover by the hour’s end.”

  “That’s great,” I said, breathing a sigh of relief. “If you want to verify what I’ve said, just check out the missing scale on Amara’s dragon’s foreleg, Sergeant.”

  Sergeant Milena ignored that. “Speaking of dragons,” she said, “you will have to regale us later with just how it is that you have the ability to bond with two dragons, won’t you?”

  I swallowed. I looked at the Chaos Spear in my hand and at Garth crouching over the corpse of Captain Cade. With a thought, I summoned both spear and Garth back into their crystals.

  “I, uuuuuuh…” I said.

  “Oh no, please don’t make some bullshit up on our account,” Lieutenant Kaleen said in her sweetly acerbic voice. “Why half-ass your excuse now, when you can whole-ass it in front of the Overseer and the Martial Council.”

  I got to my feet. It was hard trying to be authoritative and lofty while being covered in dust and mud and blood, but I gave it a try.

  “And when can I expect to have that pleasure, Lieutenant?” I asked.

  Lieutenant Kaleen looked at her twin.

  Sergeant Milena smiled a toothy and humorless smile.

  “Let me guess,” I said. “There’s no time like the present?”

  The sergeant’s grin widened.

  “It’s a lovely night for it,” she said, gesturing around at the utter obliteration that surrounded us. “Shall we be on our way?”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Lieutenant Kaleen sent Sergeant Milena off ahead of us to let the Martial Council and the Overseer know that we were on our way. I liked to think that Kaleen might have dropped a few hints that it might be nice to have a lovely cold jug of beer waiting too—my throat was pretty dusty—and maybe a couple of hot dogs, but I wasn’t hopeful.

  Lieutenant Kaleen and I walked along at a more leisurely pace, through the center of Drakereach. Covered in dust and blood and dirt as I was, I attracted quite a lot of attention—if we’d been on Earth there’s no doubt that the sound of camera phones shutters clicking would have been audible the whole way through town and up to the Crystal Spire. Thankfully, Lieutenant Kaleen’s reputation made sure that we were left alone.

  I was hailed from one quarter though. As we walked down a street lined exclusively with gold and silversmiths, jewelers, and appraisers, and known as Temptation Road, a little voice squeaked out of the night.

  “Mike! Mike! What happened? You’re all dusty! Mike, you’re all dusty!”

  I looked around and saw my little buddy, Kalimac, standing in a nightshirt and slippers on the corner. His harassed-looking mother was standing behind him and clutching him by the shoulder. Kalimac, it looked to me, was one of those kids who needed a good stout leather lead to make sure he wasn’t running off every ten seconds.

  “Shouldn’t you be in bed?” I replied, answering his question with a question.

  “I was in bed,” Kalimac said excitedly. His hair was standing up every which way, which attested to his claim—unless he was getting Rupert to cut his hair. “I was in bed, I swear! Then there was this big, loud crunchy rumbling banging sound! Our whole house was shaking! Mommy wasn’t too happy, but it was super fun!” Kalimac rubbed the back of his tousled head and grinned happily. “I fell out of bed and banged my head!”

  I looked at Kalimac’s mother who gave me a shy smile and a look that said plainly, “He’s only quiet when he’s sleeping.”

  “Well, I’m glad that you had a good time,” I said. “It’s all over now though, so you might as well head back and get some shut-eye. You still got that lucky coin I gave you?”

  Kalimac held up the golden scale so that it glinted under a streetlight.

  “I had it under my pillow!” he said.

  “Good work,” I said, giving him a thumbs-up. “That must have been why all those buildings didn’t fall on my head.”

  Kalimac’s face lit up at the mention of falling buildings. His mother, sensing that her son was on the verge of an extreme bout of verbal diarrhea, began to steer him away.

  “Bye, Mike!” the little boy said as he was ushered back off home. “I’ll try and make sure no more buildings fall on your head with my coin!”

  “Bye, Kalimac, and thanks!” I called after the departing lad.

  We walked on. I could feel Lieutenant Kaleen looking at me.

  “I see you’ve got a fan,” she said drily after a few moments.

  “Yeah,” I said, “but I had to pay him.”

  “I always find it funny,” Lieutenant Kaleen mused as we began to walk through the outskirts of Drakereach, past larger shops selling rugs and household items, apothecaries, and chandlers. “The way that the word fan has such positive connotations, whilst the word that it’s abbreviated from—fanatic—is usually used to describe the sort of people who wear their underpants on their head.”

  “You mean like Cade?” I said.

  Lieutenant Kaleen held up her hand. “I’ve heard everything I wish about our illustrious former Captain,” she said. “Let’s save the rest of this talk for when we reach the Spire.”

  I wasn’t much in the mood for a chat, having plenty on my mind. However, at the thought of the Crystal Spire, a question popped into my head.

  “This Overseer,” I said. “Where does she live? In the Spire? What does she do?”

  Lieutenant Kaleen shook her head, causing her white dreadlocks to sway.

  “No, not the Spire. The Overseer’s quarters are a secret. Once we’re inside the castle, I’ll show you the way to go.”

  We walked along in a companionable silence. The night was cool and calm once we got outside the town proper and began making our way up to the Drako Academy. The sounds of Drakereach faded so that we were left in a world of hooting owls and whispering fir branches.

  Ahead of us, I could make out the dark line of the Academy’s curtain wall. There were a few torches dotted about the mammoth structure. Some of them were moving, showing me where the roving guards were stationed.

  “Are we sharing a moment right now, Lieutenant?” I said, trying to keep the laughter out of my voice. Despite Lieutenant Kaleen’s somewhat prickly demeanor, I had to admit that I quite liked the woman. She was cut from the same cloth as the sort of fictional police captains that give their boys a hard time but really, when push comes to shove, are one-hundred percent in their corner.

  “You know,” Lieutenant Kaleen said thoughtfully, “if you really wanted to share a moment with me, Dragonmancer Noctis, I could break my foot off in your ass. That’d bring us closer together, wouldn’t it?”

  “That sounds pleasant, Lieutenant,” I said, keeping my voice as level as I cou
ld, “but I’m just worried that having your foot up my butt might compromise my ability to ride a dragon.”

  “Hm,” Lieutenant Kaleen said. “That’s a fair point. But my argument would be that you could just ride your dragon with your face, surely? I mean, the amount of shit that comes out of your mouth makes me think that your ass and your face must be interchangeable, no?”

  Although I had not been at the Drako Academy for a whole month, I knew when to make the strategic withdrawal from a conversation with a superior who had a limited store of goodwill.

  “Just as you say, Lieutenant,” I said in a respectful tone. “I’m just a Rank One dragonmancer. Maybe we learn about the intricacies of asses and heads when we reach officer level?”

  There was a noise that sounded to me like a snort of mirth but might just have been the breeze.

  We walked over the drawbridge that spanned the deep, swift-flowing moat in front of the curtain wall and passed under the arch of the main gate. Armored guardsmen nodded respectfully to the Lieutenant as she passed them. Some offered the claw salute which we both returned.

  We strolled under the gazes of the numerous watchtowers with their twenty-four-seven guards on shift rotation and through the gate that divided the lower and middle baileys. Off to my left, I saw Big Greasy’s establishment. There was only a single light burning at the back of the shop at this late hour. Blacksmiths within the castle walls never slept, even in peacetime, and the sound of someone shoeing a horse came as clear as a bell to my ears.

  Eventually, we fetched up outside the main keep of the castle. Above us, in the very center of that vast stronghold, the Crystal Spire climbed high into the sky.

  “Mount up,” Lieutenant Kaleen said. The amber ring on the middle finger of her left hand glowed suddenly. An instant later, Fennu, her Golden Dragon, appeared.

  I summoned Noctis from the Onyx Crystal, climbed up onto his back, and patted my pocket to make sure that Garth’s pearlescent pink crystal was still safely in my pocket.

  “Follow me,” Lieutenant Kaleen said.

  The two dragons launched upward in a rustle of leathery wings.

  We climbed up into the night air, the rush of the air current helping to blast some of the dust off of me as we picked up speed. We circled the keep and the base of the crystal spire and then the Lieutenant led the way northward. We didn’t hurry, but glided over the expanse of drilling grounds, combat circles, obstacle courses, and weapons ranges. After only a couple of minutes, the Lieutenant pointed forward and indicated a thick, crooked tower at the back of the less used upper bailey.

  “What is that place?” I asked Lieutenant Kaleen. Because of the magic that allowed dragonmancers to communicate while flying, I could talk to her as easily up here, travelling at thirty miles per hour, as I might sitting across a desk from her.

  It was a tower that I had seen plenty of times before, but never really paid much attention to. Always, if you looked at the keep of the Academy or the Spire, it was in the corner of your eye, but I had never even thought to ask anyone what its deal was.

  “It’s the old arsenal tower,” Lieutenant Kaleen said. “Where our army used to store their weapons, back when the Drako Academy was newly built and about a fifth of its current size. Now, it has no name. It is strictly off limits to any who are not expected.”

  “I thought we couldn’t fly up the Spire? We had to always use transportation hubs.”

  Lieutenant Kaleen laughed. “And that is true, unless, of course, the Overseer knows you’re coming. This tower is the home of the Overseer and the meeting place of the Martial Council.”

  There was a tight opening in the side of the arsenal tower, but Noctis and Fennu shot through the gap as neatly as a couple of swallows re-entering a cave. Once they were through, though, the two creatures had to put on the brakes sharply, as the chamber we found ourselves in was only about thirty yards long. Claws scrambled on stone as the dragons came to a halt. Lieutenant Kaleen and I dismounted.

  “Shall we leave them here?” I asked.

  “No, bring Noctis along with you,” the Lieutenant said, summoning Fennu back into the crystal on her ring. “And the other one,” she added.

  Lieutenant Kaleen led me out of the dragon bay and into a thin, dimly lit corridor. There were guards stationed along the walls. They were dressed in a uniform that I didn’t recognize; breeches, shirts, and mail hauberks all in the same deep crimson color, black velvet cloaks, and black tabards with a silver eye with a vertical pupil stitched onto the front.

  When I saw the first woman standing in the shadows with her hand resting on the pommel of her sword, I thought that I knew her. Then I realized that she looked familiar because she was surely of the same race as the Leuce sisters; the identical female siblings who guarded the transport hubs within the Crystal Spire and Drako Academy Keep. The woman had the same purple, almond-shaped eyes, the same red hair, and the same expression of polite, unavoidable alertness.

  “Wind Nymphs as guards?” I asked Lieutenant Kaleen as we moved through a series of utilitarian and bare hallways and started up a narrow staircase, which looked to me like it was leading up into the main turret of the tower.

  “There are none better for sniffing out those with malice in mind,” Lieutenant Kaleen said. “Wind Nymphs are living, breathing lie detectors. You cannot deceive them. Not only that, they can actually spot one whose lies might hide evil intent.”

  “And the Overseer needs this sort of specialist protection, does she?” I asked.

  Lieutenant Kaleen made an impatient little noise in her throat as we continued up the stairs.

  “She’s only the most important person at the Drako Academy, Dragonmancer Noctis. If she’s not entitled and due a bit of expert safeguarding, who is?”

  “Good point.”

  “Keep your eyes peeled when we enter the Overseer’s office,” Lieutenant Kaleen said. “You might catch sight of the rarest of all dragons—the Overseer’s Ancient Platinum beast, Gratiss.”

  After trudging up about eight-hundred or so steps, we emerged out into a landing. There were ten more of the uniquely attired Wind Nymph guards arrayed around this chamber. Every one of them was staring, unblinkingly, at Lieutenant Kaleen and me.

  I followed the Lieutenant’s lead and didn’t move, while we were subjected to this eerie mental scan. After about twenty seconds, one of the Wind Nymphs stepped forward and ushered us to the door on the other side of the room. She knocked four times on the iron-studded wood, waited for a few seconds, and then pushed the door open.

  “After you,” the Lieutenant said to me.

  I walked through the door and found myself in a large room. It was so brightly lit, in comparison with the rest of the tower, that for a moment I blinked and had to wait for my eyes to adjust to the glare of the many candles glowing in the candelabras fixed around the walls. The air was fresh, not stale as I might have expected it to be, thanks to a couple of windows that had their shutters flung wide to the night. There were thick rugs underfoot. Tapestries depicting battles on dragonback, fortresses in flames, and other cheery scenes of that nature covered the bare stone walls.

  In the middle of the room was a huge stone table. It was perfectly round and Arthurian-looking and had a giant claw carved into the middle of it.

  Around this imposing bit of furniture sat a bunch of men and women who I supposed must be the much-talked about Martial Council. Over in one corner, leaning nonchalantly against a wall and studying her fingernails with the single-minded dedication of the professional soldier trying to be invisible, was Sergeant Milena.

  What I at first took to be a dragon-shaped mirror at the back of the room turned out to actually be a dragon. It was clearly metallic in nature, like a few other dragons I had seen since arriving in this world. I concluded that it must be the Overseer’s Ancient Platinum Dragon, which Lieutenant Kaleen had mentioned to me.

  Obviously, with a round table, it should be impossible to know where the head of it is. That’s
why the round table is such a favored bit of interior decor when it comes to places in which men and women with big fuck-off egos gather. It puts everyone on an even keel. No one, as far as the seating arrangements go, is any better or any worse than the next person. This is very important in politics because no one wants to be reminded of how shit they are or in what bad graces they are in just by sitting down.

  Now, even though it should not have been obvious as to where the head honcho in this gathering was sat, I identified the Overseer almost immediately. It was clear who she was simply by the way that she sat and the way that the other men and women around the table treated her. Within her immediate vicinity, she attracted respect and civility in the same way that black holes attract anything within their event horizon.

  Now, as far as someone who practically ran the Drako Academy and commanded respect and politeness from people as crabby and unwavering as Lieutenant Kaleen and the late, mentally unbalanced Captain Cade, the Overseer was most definitely not what I had envisioned. I had pictured a bit of a crusty old bat, who wasn’t so much prickly as a whole cactus in of herself. In my head, as I had been ascending the stairs up here, I had conceived an image of a haughty old woman with her nose stuck up in the air and cold eyes filled to the brim with disdain.

  I could not have been further away if I’d tried.

  The Overseer was a statuesque woman of indeterminate age—in much the same way as Claire, the Seer, was. She was dressed in a simple gown of emerald silk with a shawl of silver-gray fur cast casually around her shapely shoulders. She had skin the color of cinnamon, smooth and unblemished by age or sun. Her hair was a cascade of tight black curls. On her hands she wore a collection of silver rings, a few of which had stones set into but most of them were carved with crude runes. Most unexpectedly of all, I could just make out, under the edges of the fur shawl that she wore, that there were a series of black tattoos peeking above the neckline of her gown.

  Head in the game, I said to myself as my imagination tried to go off on a rather appealing tangent; imagining just how tattooed the Overseer was.