Bad Times in Dragon City (16 page)

“That’s all right,” I said. “After the Dragon eats you, I promise to forget what you looked like too.”

“We have been here for hundreds of years!” Chiara said, her indignation rising to a fragile pitch. “We knew the original Gib, and we fed him to the Dragon too!”  

As they talked, the dragonet curled up tight around my shoulders. I broke open my shotgun to check what kind of shell I had loaded in it. I spotted just what I was looking for: an angry red. 

I pointed it at the ceiling and fired. 

The blast cut Chiara and Nicoló off in the middle of whatever rant they’d gone onto next. I’d stopped listening already. They jumped at the noise, then both sneered at me. 

“You think you can frighten us with your toys, boy?” Chiara said. “It’ll take far more than loud noises.” 

I just craned my neck back, examined the blaze engulfing the foyer’s high ceiling, and smiled. Then I turned on my heel and trotted out to join Belle and Johan on Schaef’s waiting carpet, which hung in the air near the scorched section of the balcony’s railing. 

As I left, I heard Chiara scream in alarm and Nicoló roar in dismay. I could smell the smoke billowing out of the high parts of their estate already. As we left the Elven Reaches behind, I glanced back and spotted gouts of flame licking out through the ancient home’s roof. 

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-S
EVEN

I had Thumper close down the Quill and send everyone home. Some of the patrons groaned about it, but I told them all that I’d cover their tabs if they got out now. They moved like I’d set their chairs on fire. 

Then I sent Schaef and Johan out to round up everyone from the old crew they could find, fast, and tell them to “use the back entrance.” We barred the front door, and I put Thumper there to peek through the viewing slit. I gave him orders to only let in the people we wanted to see — which was no one. 

I sat Belle down on a stool, the slipped behind the bar and fixed her a drink, a mixture of dragonfire and whisky that I preferred neat. I put hers over chips of ice that dwarves brought down from the highest parts of the mountain every night. She made a face when she drank it, but she kept at it anyhow.

“It’s funny,” she said. “I supplied dragon essence for my parents to smoke and for the Gütmanns to sell for a decade, and I never tried it myself.” 

“You’re too smart for that,” I said as I savored my own concoction. 

She shook her head. “Too scared. I could see what it had done to my parents, and I didn’t want the same to happen to me.” 

“We all have our own demons.” 

“Actually, you have a dragon.” She reached up to see if the dragonet perched on my shoulders would let him pet her, and he bowed his head right under her hand for a good scratching. “And a friendly one too.” 

“Hard to believe he’s his father’s son, isn’t it?” 

“Maybe we’re all good when we’re young and innocent. It’s life that changes us, for good or bad.” 

I shrugged. “Or maybe we’re just built the way we are and become more like ourselves with every passing year.” 

She gave me a curious look over the top of her glass. “That’s awful fatalistic of you.” 

I couldn’t help but smile at her. I leaned over the bar and kissed her. Our lips met in a soft and tender way this time, and I relished her flavor for as long as I could make it last. 

“Fatalistic?” I said. “Your parents are sure to send the Dragon after us as soon as they can, and our only hope is to find your sister, whose dead body has been possessed by the most dangerous necromancer the world has ever seen. Fatalistic seems optimistic.” 

“How long do you think we have?” 

I sighed. “Not damn long at all. But going off half-cocked on this little suicide mission of ours would only guarantee we’d screw it up. We need some help if we’re to have any chance at this.” 

“You said it was a suicide mission. Maybe the only way to succeed is to walk away. Or run.” 

“Don’t I wish we had somewhere to run. Dragon City’s a lone island of life in a sea of dead. There’s nowhere else to go.”

“So we’re doomed either way?” She didn’t sound like she believed that, but love her as I did, she was an elf. You had to be an eternal optimist to live for centuries and not drown in despair. 

“Yes, we are,” I said. 

“Doesn’t that, by definition, mean we can’t win?” 

I held up my drink to her as a toast. “You don’t have to live to win.” 

She narrowed her eyes at me, her smile never leaving her lips. Despite all the insanity of the day, she’d worn that from the moment we’d left her home, and it looked fantastic on her. “What an absolutely human thing to say.” 

I laughed. “Coming from you, I’ll do my best to take that as a compliment.” 

She laughed right along with me, and it sounded like a symphony of joy. “Please do.” 

That’s when I felt something bump under my feet, which just about made me leap out of my boots. Instead, I took a step to the side, off of the hidden hatchway I’d been standing on. It creaked open a moment later, and Moira slipped up through the dark hole below. 

She stood up and wrapped her arms around my thighs, hugging me like she might never let go. I put an arm down around her shoulders and hugged her back. “It’s good to see you, Max,” she said. “You had me worried there.” 

“We’re not out of this yet,” Belle said. 

Moira let me go and nodded a much less friendlier greeting at Belle. Moira had seen a lot more of Belle over the past ten years than I had, but their business relationship hadn’t ended well. The stump at the end of Moira’s left arm bore silent testimony to that. 

“Cindra and Kells are right behind me,” Moira said. “I hear Danto’s on his way too.” 

“What about Kai?” I asked. The orc was the key to this whole thing. 

“He’s going to meet us down there,” Cindra said as she emerged through the secret hatchway. “Didn’t make sense for him to come all the way back up here. That’s where we’re going to end up anyway, right? Down in Goblintown?” 

“Exactly.” I gave her a quick hug and shook Kells’ hand as he came up behind her. “Thanks for coming. I don’t know how we could do this without you.” 

“I don’t know how you’ll do it with us either,” Kells said. “But this might make for a good start.” He had a massive canvas sack hanging from his shoulder by a leather strap. He slung it up on the bar, where it landed with a satisfying clank. 

“What do you have in there?” Belle asked. 

“Only the best,” Kells said, his face breaking into a grin. He reached across the bar and gave her a good hug. 

“Hey, Belle,” Cindra said, echoing her husband’s actions with an embrace of her own for the elf. “Been too damn long.” 

I opened Kells’ bag and let out a low whistle. It was stuffed solid with enchanted guns and ammunition of all types. “You have enough to outfit an army in here.” 

“Which means we might have barely enough,” Kells said. 

“This must have cost you a fortune.” 

Kells gave me a too-easy shrug that told me I was spot on. “I’ve been scratching this stash together for years and years. You know, a little bit here, a little bit there. About time it finally saw some use.” 

“What do you recommend?” I asked. 

Kells rubbed his chin. “Mostly you should stick with what you have. This isn’t the time to take up a new weapon you’re not familiar with. In an operation like this, there’s not enough room for error.” 

He set out a few new boxes of shells for me, some of them in colors that I didn’t recognize. “These will work in your sawed-off shotgun. The red ones explode into fire. The blue ones freeze what they hit. The green ones, get this, actually heal what they hit.” 

“So I can blast someone back to health?” 

“I know! The silver ones here, though, they’re something special.” 

“How’s that?” 

Kells picked one out and held it up into the light, where it sparkled like a diamond. “They’re the size of a regular shotgun shell, but each shell actually holds a single slug. Made of dwarven steel, the toughest metal known, they can pierce armor like it’s not even there. They have a high-explosive load inside them that detonates upon impact, but just slowly enough that it happens
after
the bullet gets through any armor.” 

“Nice.” I took the slug from him and admired it. Although it felt cool, I had the simultaneous sensation that it burned my skin too. 

“That’s not the kicker. You feel that? It’s been suffused with an anti-magic field. Spells don’t do a damn bit of good against these things. Goes through enchanted armor like it was made of paper.” 

Then I spotted something I’d never seen before in the bag, and I hauled it out. It was a bit shorter than a rifle, but it had a pistol grip located forward of the shoulder stock, and metal disk the shape of a small drum — or maybe a tambourine — had been jammed up against the barrel forward of that. 

“What’s this?” 

Kells grinned. “You still have a great eye for mayhem, don’t you? It’s a new type of gun. Built it myself. I call it a submachine-gun.” 

I held it out and admired it. “What’s it ‘sub’ to?” 

Kells waggled his eyebrows at me. “It’s a lighter version of the full-sized machine-gun I’m working on. That’s large enough that it needs to be mounted on a tripod.”

“How about on a carpet?” 

Kells shook his head. “Too heavy for the fabric. You need a much more solid base to work with.” 

A voice hollered down at us from the top of the stairs. “Hey, what kind of reunion party is this?” Danto said as he emerged from my room, all smiles despite being out of breath. “Next time, I expect a bit more notice.” 

“I thought I told you to come in through the back door,” I said. 

He dismissed my question with a wave as he sauntered down the stairs. “I’m too old to crawl through that damn tunnel of yours. I figured the front door would be barred, but there was this huge hole in the second story just calling my name. I had your friend Schaef drop me off there.” 

“Is he still there?” I asked. “What about Johan?” 

Danto nodded. “Sure, sure, sure. I told him to leave the meter running.”

I grabbed Kells, who was just finishing up handing out his special ammunition to the rest of the crew. “Come with me,” I said to him. “I think I have just what you need.” 

I raced up the stairs with Kells right behind me, toting a much lighter bag on his shoulder. When I entered my room, I spotted Johan sitting there on Schaef’s carpet and peering in through the widened window. Schaef, meanwhile, kept his eyes peeled for any threats coming from outside the Quill, his eyes darting right, left, up, down, and all around. 

“Good work, you two.” I spoke straight to Johan then. “Do you have a way to get a hold of Ingo?” 

“Sure,” he nodded, unsure of what I was after. “He’s mine to command, or so I’m told” 

“Well, it’s time for the Brichts to make good on their offer to help me out. Take Kells here to that palanquin and borrow it.” 

“A palanquin?” Kells said. “A flying one?” 

Johan nodded. 

Kells grinned. “We’ll need to stop by my place first, but if we’re heading for the Stronghold, then it’s on the way.” 

“Hustle right back here when you’re done, Schaef.” 

The halfling snapped a salute to me as Kells leaped onto the carpet. The weight of his bag caused it to sag a bit in the middle, but the hack tipped the carpet a bit to the left to adjust for that and then took off once more into the sky. 

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-E
IGHT

I went back downstairs and loaded myself up with all the shells I could carry. Then I ran over the most useful spells I knew in my head, making sure I wouldn’t blow one in the middle of the fight. It’s not just embarrassing when that happens. There’s a good chance it’s lethal. 

I also left Thumper with instructions about what to do if everything went wrong. He’d heard me go over these with him before, but it had been a while. He rarely gave me more than half his attention when I ran down the list, but after those assassins had blown a hole in the second-story wall, he nodded along with my every word and took notes too. 

Meanwhile, Danto helped himself to a full snifter of the best dragonfire we had in the bar. Cindra gave her weapons one last check. Moira and Belle chatted in the corner like the old friends they’d been, and I even heard them laughing with each other once or twice. That put a smile on my face. 

We were still waiting for Schaef to get back with his carpet when someone pounded on the door. 

“Open up!” Yabair said from the far side of the door. “By the order of the Imperial Dragon’s Guard!” 

“Hold on!” Thumper yelled. “I’m coming!” 

Everyone, including Thumper, looked at me. I pointed toward the hatch behind the bar and motioned for them all to go down it fast. Moira led the way with Belle right behind her. Cindra helped Danto move his rickety bones down the ladder there and then disappeared right behind him. 

That left Thumper in the bar with me and the dragonet. Yabair pounded on the door again. “Open this door now!” he said. 

“We’re closed!” Thumper walked up to the door, keeping well to the side of it. “Can it wait?” He looked at me and stifled a laugh. 

“We are here on the Dragon’s business. You will open this door now, or I will break it down!” 

I vaulted over the bar and made my way through the hatch. As I did, the door blasted inward with a loud explosion. I reached up to pull the hatch closed, but the dragonet leaped from my shoulders and zipped toward the now-open doorway. 

I wanted to follow him, but I knew if I did I’d probably wind up spending the rest of the day in a precinct cell — if I was lucky. Otherwise, I’d land in one of the lowest levels of the Garrett while the Guard interrogated me to death, and I had no desire to become the next meal on the Dragon’s menu. 

Still, I hesitated. I knew the Guard wouldn’t hurt the heir to the empire, but I didn’t feel good about leaving him up there alone.