Dragon Business, The (19 page)

A
NOTHER DAY, ANOTHER
kingdom—or in this case, a queendom.

The group set off into a warm, sunny day so bright and so pleasant it seemed to be nature’s apology for the previous day’s misery. But since their clothes were still damp and muddy, Cullin was not inclined to accept the apology.

“You’re looking scruffy now, girl,” Reeger said. “Just like one of us.”

Cullin was ready to defend Affonyl by insisting that she was still a princess to him, but she didn’t seem to take offense at Reeger’s comment. “Good. I want to be like you—making my own way, earning a living. I’m tired of all the pampering and castles, the fine foods, fashionable clothes, minstrels, riches. It gets old after a while.”

Reeger moved too late to cover his mouth as he belched. “Rust, I can see how someone would get tired of all that.”

“A princess is a princess, but I want to be more than that. I want to see the world, wherever the dragon business takes us.”

Neither Dalbry or Reeger could claim to know where they were going. Growing up as a feral orphan boy who aspired to be raised by a pack of wolves, Cullin had little familiarity with the geopolitical cartography of the land either.

Affonyl, however, did have a courtly education, and had recently memorized the boundaries of her father’s kingdom when Duke Kerrl tried to redraw the borders to his own advantage. When the coast road swung inland, she studied the distant hills, noting a distinctive rock outcropping. She also seemed to be looking at the position of the moon and the sun in the sky. “We just crossed the border.”

Cullin looked around, but didn’t see any difference.

The former princess continued, “A few years ago my father wanted to hire a royal surveyor to paint a dotted line around his entire kingdom. In fact, one of Wizard Edgar’s projects was to develop an indelible alchemical paint so that the borders of every kingdom, principality, dukedom, etcetera, could be recorded on the landscape itself. My father thought that would solve problems and end all wars, but Edgar never came up with the right formula for his paint.” She shifted the bag of necessary items on her shoulder. “Ah, I miss Edgar—I took some of his most valuable books. I just wish they weren’t so heavy.”

“Who is the ruler of these parts?” Sir Dalbry asked as he rode on Drizzle, dressed as a knight despite the hard traveling. Since acquiring his iconic white steed (never mind the ash-gray and black speckles), he had become more absorbed in his role than ever before. “I need to prepare for when we appear in court.”

“Old Queen Faria rules alone, a single mother. Her husband died of a plague, or a jousting accident, or a wild boar attack—I forget which. It’s usually one of those.”

“A single mother?” Cullin asked. “So she has children then?”

Affonyl continued to explain. “The dowager queen is a hard but wise ruler, as cuddly as broken glass. And she’s
ancient
. She imports barrels of powdered makeup for her face, attempting to cover her wrinkles. I saw Queen Faria once at a springtime ball my father hosted. She looked like a sugar-dusted pastry with all that powder. She even made overtures to marry my father, to join his kingdom and her queendom, but he rebuffed her.” A dark expression shadowed her face. “He said marriage without love was a shameful thing. I guess he had different criteria for his own daughter.”

Cullin tried to cheer her up. “Look how much better your circumstances are now!”

Affonyl snorted and continued. “Queen Faria is a single mother with one daughter, a princess, beautiful—as required. Princess Minima. Unmarried, with plenty of suitors. I am so glad to be away from that life.”

In response, Reeger picked at something in his teeth and spat on the ground.

As they traveled, they discussed the strategies for their next scheme. (The horse, mule, and pony did not contribute much to the discussion.) At dusk they found a good wooded spot for a camp, and Cullin went out hunting for their dinner. He hoped to impress Affonyl by bagging a fat pheasant, but all he managed to kill was a scrawny, three-legged rabbit whose left hind foot must have been harvested as a good-luck charm. It made a decent enough dinner.

The following day, they set off into an even brighter, warmer, and sunnier day, as if the weather were growing more insistent in its apology. The queendom began to look more civilized, with cleared forests, planted fields, stone fences, clumps of peasant huts, all bucolic and serene. Birds chirped, wildflowers bloomed, and brooks babbled in the glens.

Until they ran into a family of haunted-looking peasants who were fleeing in the other direction. Their eyes were wide and panicked as they scurried down the road with all their worldly possessions, including bundles of sticks, rags that stretched the definition of clothing, a mangy dog on a leash, a mangy goat on a leash, and a flightless chicken (also on a leash).

They had three children so dirty as to be gender-neutral, and a bent crone so old that she had to be considered historical. They were all doing their best to run away.

High on his saddle, Sir Dalbry held up a gauntleted hand. “Ho, good people—where are you bound?”

The peasants stopped in the road, not wanting to show discourtesy to a brave knight. Clearly, though, they were in a hurry. “We’re heading out of the queendom, sir,” said the peasant father. “It’s not safe here anymore.”

The mother shifted the valuable bundle of sticks on her shoulders. “We have to protect our family, get out of here while we still can.”

Dalbry put a hand on the pommel of his sword. “What is the danger? As a knight, I am honor-bound to protect the helpless and needy.”

“Good luck,” rasped the old crone. “We’ll watch you from a distance, if it’s all the same to you.”

One of the children piped up. “A dragon burned everything!”

Reeger let out a loud laugh. “Rust, now I see what you’re up to. Let me guess, the dragon torched your fields, burned your home. I’m surprised it didn’t eat you for breakfast.”

“It attacked at midday, sir, so it would have been lunch,” said the father. “But you’re right. Everything’s destroyed, burned to the ground.”

Reeger grinned at Cullin and Affonyl before he turned back to the anxious peasant family. “And I bet you saw dragon footprints all around?”

“Yes, sir—giant, three-toed prints!” said the mother. “And the monster will be back, mark my words. We need to flee.”

Cullin joined Reeger in his chuckle, and Sir Dalbry could barely hide a smile. “Thank you for your concern, good folk, but we’ll be fine. On your way.”

One of the peasant children—a girl, Cullin finally realized—held up a twisted, anthropomorphic clump of tied rags and sawdust. “At least I rescued my doll.”

Reeger whispered to Cullin, “A missed trick, that. The discarded doll would’ve added a dash of poignancy to the wreckage.”

“Not everyone’s as good as you are, Reeger,” Cullin said.

Sir Dalbry raised his sword high for dramatic effect. “We will investigate this threat. You good folk be safe now.”

The peasants scurried down the road, while the companions forged ahead. As soon as they were out of earshot, Cullin, Reeger, and Dalbry began to laugh out loud. Affonyl was still getting accustomed to the dragon business and didn’t quite see the humor.

After the joke was over, Reeger grew surly. “I don’t like someone stealing our techniques. We worked hard to develop those.”

Dalbry nodded. “We should have asked the peasant family who paid them off.”

Cresting a low hill, they saw a valley with a patchwork of cropland. The horse, mule, and pony grew nervous. At the top of the hill, Cullin stopped beside Affonyl to stare at what remained of a small peasant village.

Ahead lay a swath of fields burned to stubble as if a giant torch had ignited them. More than a dozen charred peasant hovels had collapsed.

They descended to study the area with a professional eye. Cullin was amazed by the scope of the scene. When they found seven skeletons sprawled among the burned hovels, even one out in the field with a now-melted sickle in a bony hand, Cullin thought the carnage looked far too real.

Reeger grumbled. “Somebody’s gone overboard.”

Sir Dalbry sat on Drizzle, his face tight. Affonyl leaned close to Cullin. “Is it always like this, Squirrel? Seems excessive.”

Cullin shook his head, feeling a chill as he noted three-toed tracks crushed into the ground, deeper than any tracks he or Reeger had left while wearing the wooden footprints.

“True,” he said. “This is well out of our league.”

D
ALBRY AND REEGER
spent an hour at the charred village site, inspecting it for clues (according to the knight) or tips on how to stage a spectacular scene (according to Reeger).

The skeletons particularly troubled Cullin. He and Reeger had harvested enough bones from unmarked graves, and he knew the randomness of their own efforts. But these were whole skeletons, skin and sinew burned black. The scene looked almost . . . real.

Cullin wanted to shield the delicate former princess from such horrors, but Affonyl used a stick to poke at the rib cages, turn the skulls, and study the remnants of musculature. “This is fascinating—and you’re sure it’s a scam? I’ve never seen so many skeletons before. Wizard Edgar had only limited specimens for me to look at.”

“Glad we could make your day, girl,” Reeger said. “But if there’s another con artist working the queendom—especially someone this ambitious—we’re not going to be able to sell our services here. The market’s already saturated.”

Dalbry mused, “On the contrary, considering the magnitude of this setup, I might command an even higher price for my services. Queen Faria must be desperate to rid her queendom of a monster this destructive.”

They left the devastation behind, continuing toward the queen’s main castle in the central town. By late afternoon, they came upon more cropland and another peasant village half the size of Folly, but with a smaller population.
Much
smaller, in fact, since the entire village was abandoned. Everyone had packed up and left.

“Looks like our rival got here before we did,” said Dalbry. “Somebody paid these peasants to skip town.”

Reeger peered into the empty window of a rickety home. “It would have cost a rustin’ fortune to bribe so many people. I wonder what sort of profit model he’s using.”

Affonyl frowned as she studied the silent hovels, walking from one structure to the next. “Maybe the town was already empty. This could be a tourist village—closed down for the season.”

Cullin didn’t consider that likely. “A tourist village would have souvenir shoppes and tour offices. I don’t see any signs in the windows saying ‘Closed for the Season’ or ‘See You Next Year.
’
”

Dalbry paced among the empty and silent buildings. “This makes no sense. Even if another alleged dragon slayer bought off the peasants and told them to run away, why would he leave the village intact? The last one was completely devastated—and very convincing. Maybe the frightened people just fled of their own accord.”

Reeger yanked open the door of a quaint hut with a planter of geraniums out front. “Time to stop for the day anyway, and I’m not going to look a gift mule in the mouth. You all get to spend nights in castles with fancy outdoor plumbing, but I always sleep on the ground. Tonight, I’ll take advantage of our good fortune and sleep with the bedbugs instead.”

“Camping is still an adventure for me.” Affonyl peered into one of the hovels and sneezed from the dust.

Cullin said, “Look in the cupboards. Maybe they left some food behind—bread, sardines, maybe some sweet pickles. I love pickles.”

After tying the mounts to a post, they ransacked the abandoned hovels and found a barrel with a few mealy brown apples on the bottom, a partial block of gourmet headcheese, and a jar of pickles (but sour ones, not the sweet gherkins Cullin preferred). When added to the squirrel jerky in their packs and two dried apricots each, since Sir Dalbry had recently replenished his magic sack in Rivermouth, they had a satisfying meal as dusk settled in.

They built a campfire in the common area outside, and Affonyl took the time to unpack and organize her sack of necessary items. She set aside two natural history books from Wizard Edgar’s library; they had been transcribed with very tiny letters for the paperback edition. She also had packets of chemicals and powders labeled with arcane symbols, as well as a sachet of dried flowers. When Cullin asked about the flowers, thinking they might be some sentimental keepsake from a former lover, she answered, “Deadly nightshade, in case I need to poison someone. You can never tell.”

Cullin was curious about several sealed clay pots filled with chemical mixtures, which made him think of the apothecary in King Norrimun’s castle with his various laxative and antidiarrheal potions. “A volatile explosive compound, Squirrel,” Affonyl said, holding up a clay pot for Cullin. “I found the recipe in my books. How do you think I blasted through the wall in my castle chambers?”

With his face puckered from eating another of the sour pickles, Reeger gave a grudging nod. “I suggest you don’t stand too close, lad, when that girl experiments with explosive compounds.”

“I take precautions,” Affonyl said. “In fact, my safety standards meet or exceed the wizardly guidelines. First, I always stir the explosive mixture with a stick. Second, I stand at least an arm’s length away. See? Absolutely safe.”

Since the village was entirely empty, they had a wide selection of abandoned hovels to choose from. Dalbry was satisfied with the first one he entered, Affonyl chose one that she called “charming,” and Cullin made a point of sleeping in the hut next to hers. Reeger was pickier, moving from one to the next. “Rust! If I’m going to sleep inside a house, I want one with a master suite.” He settled for a hovel with a largish main room and a wide cot.

Cullin had trouble sleeping. He was anxious to get to Queen Faria’s capital and begin asking about local politics in the taverns. He especially looked forward to seeing what Affonyl could add to their effort. She had a sharp intelligence, a keen wit, and an excellent imagination, as demonstrated by her falsified dragon attack and abduction.

In the heart of the night the crickets chirped, the breezes blew. Cullin knew the former princess was just in the next hovel over, and he wondered if she was awake, thinking of him. He could hear Reeger snoring through the open window of the hut he had chosen.

Once again, Cullin’s rest was interrupted when a reptilian roar shattered the darkness, loud
e
r than the snarl of a bear with an abscessed tooth. The crickets fell silent; Reeger stopped snoring. Everyone lunged out of their huts, fully awake. Dalbry carried his sword, looking around for an opponent.

The roar echoed again, accompanied by a fiery explosion louder than thunder. Affonyl gazed at the sky overhead. “Up there!”

A gigantic silhouette swooped across the starry sky: enormous bat wings, sinuous neck, triangular head, barbed tail. The monster’s hinged jaws opened wide to paint the sky with orange fire.

“Bloodrust and battlerot!” Reeger yelped. “That thing’s real!”

The dragon swooped low and belched flames to ignite a swath of wheat fields before it flapped its great wings and soared up into the sky again. The fire spread on the ground, snapping, crackling, and popping.

Dalbry held his sword up in the “Boy Picking Apple out of Reach” stance, but he could not fight such a creature from this distance.

Cullin ran to where the animals were tied; Drizzle, Pony, and the mule let out a loud, terrified racket. Affonyl dashed for her sack of necessary items and dropped to her knees by the embers of the campfire.

As the dragon reached the apex of its flight and began to swoop down toward them, Cullin got Pony untied and tossed the reins to Reeger before working to free the mule. Pony bolted toward the forest with Reeger on his back. Dalbry mounted Drizzle.

Cullin glanced toward Affonyl. “Come on, Princess—we have to go!”

But she grabbed one of her sealed clay pots and picked up a smoldering stick from the embers of the campfire. “Let me try an experiment first.”

The monster’s slitted eyes glowed yellow as it saw them. Its wings sounded like the canvas sails of a ship in a hurricane. The dragon dove like a hunting falcon toward the abandoned peasant huts, as if playing a target-practice game.

“Affonyl! Come on!”

She jammed the smoldering stick into a hole on the top of the pot. When a bright flame and white smoke curled out, Affonyl stepped back, cocked her arm, and like a female catapult threw the pot into the air.

As the dragon dove toward them, it turned its head closer to the thrown pot just as the clay grenade exploded. A flash of fire and a loud boom cracked the air, and the dragon looked as if someone had rudely slapped it in the face. The monster spun, more startled than injured, and pulled up into the sky. It let out an indignant shriek and soared away, becoming just a dark shape against the stars. No doubt it was flying off to find an alternative peasant settlement that it could destroy with less inconvenience.

Cullin stared at Affonyl, greatly impressed by what she had done. He wanted to throw his arms around her in a congratulatory hug, but thought she might not consider that appropriate.

Reeger finally got Pony back under control, wrestled his head around, and rode him back to the abandoned homes. Dalbry also returned on Drizzle, looking stunned. He said in a heavy voice, “We should rethink what we’re doing. This is beyond our means.” The dragon fire continued to spread through the fields.

Glowing with excitement, Affonyl repacked her items, shouldered her sack, and stood to join them. “Does that happen often, Squirrel? I can see why you like hunting dragons. What a rush!”

Reeger was exasperated. “Crotchrust! There aren’t supposed to be real dragons, and we’re certainly not real dragon slayers.”

“But my experiment worked,” Affonyl said.

Reeger gave a noncommittal grunt. “Change of plans: we head inland, find a different road and a different queendom. This one’s got serious problems.”

Dalbry watched the fire spread toward the hovels. “I agree.”

They hurried off into the night-dark forest and away from the dragon’s targeting zone.