Dragon's Mage (An Advent Mage Novel), The - Raconteur, Honor (11 page)

“It will take a few days to renovate the place into living space for you,” Mari commented thoughtfully, clearly taking mental notes on what needed to be done. “Still, it shouldn’t be difficult. We just need to add a few fixtures to make a bathroom and kitchen area.” She shot me a look that I couldn’t quite decipher. “Of course, it seems like a bit of work for someone who’s only staying six months. Sure you won’t sign up for longer than that?”

I had to be cautious on how I responded to this. “Mari, this is off the record, All right?” I waited for her nod before continuing. “The truth is, I’m hoping that Kaya and I fit in with your city so well that we don’t need to leave. I can’t go back to Chahir—not with her. She wouldn’t be accepted there. I’m afraid they’d try to kill her. As it is, they barely tolerate magic at all. The Empire of Sol or Hain are really my only options, unless I want to immigrate off this continent completely.”

“Krys,” she turned to face me straight on, “you and Kaya are the fastest, most effective firefighters I’ve ever seen or heard of. You did in one hour what would have taken several hundred of us at least a week, and that’s if we had a miracle and the dry spell hadn’t lasted. The City Council is drooling over the idea of keeping you two permanently. Are you telling me you’d actually stay if you felt this is a good place to settle down?”

 “Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.”

A radiant smile broke out over Mari’s face. She was already attractive, but when she smiled like that—it was like watching a second sun rise. For a moment, I forgot to breathe. “Then I’ll get carpenters up here today to start working on the place.”

I yanked my mind back to business. “While we’re waiting, I guess I should do some shopping around for furniture.”

Kaya had obviously been tracking our conversation, as she turned and lowered her head to my level. “New home?”

“That’s right. You like this place, don’t you?”

She bobbed her head up and down. “Like. Needs pretties.”

Garth, I’m going to strangle you.

Mari had been around us half a day already, and had picked up enough of Kaya’s lingo to understand what she meant. She slapped a hand over her mouth to stop a laugh. I shot her a dirty look.

“And you were wondering why I insist on working as a blacksmith while we’re not firefighting? I have to in order to afford her bad habits!”

Lowering her hand, Mari gave me a beatific smile. “Why don’t we go back down so I can introduce you to a few blacksmiths?”

“That’d be good,” I allowed with a sigh.

~*~

Mellor was an interesting city and quite unlike most Solian cities in the way it was laid out. Most Solian cities were very functional, even militaristic, in their structure. There were precise intervals between streets, the buildings had a rather uniform look to them, and the whole city was easy to fortify. Mellor had that basic structure in place but it had been influenced from all of the trading and shipping going on between Khobunter and Libendorf. The place had grown beyond its original rigid boundaries. Now, it was far more inviting to the eyes.

The streets still adhered to that grid like pattern, but instead of the buildings all being made of depressing grey stone, people had started to paint the structures in different colors. The architecture had changed slightly, too, including awnings and different shaped roofs than just a flat tar roof. The skyline fluctuated instead of staying monotonously flat. People had added flowers and trees along the sidewalks, instead of it all being confined to just the centralized city parks. The city radiated with an invitation that felt warm and welcoming.

The city had been laid out on a nice, flat area near the lake. Well, to my eyes, Paswaters Lake was more like a small sea. Regardless, a good portion of Mellor’s business came from trade, shipbuilding, or artistry. That meant I had more than a few options of which blacksmith I wanted to work with.

The blacksmith that I hired on with wasn’t better than any of the others. Other factors decided the matter for me. Ken Maese had a certain feel to him that reminded me strongly of my uncle, the man I’d trained under for most of my life. Maese had the same massive build, as if he could crush rocks with his bare fists, ruddy skin and a bass voice that vibrated the air. The only difference between the two men was Maese was Solian dark and my uncle Chahiran fair. The way Maese spoke, and worked, and some of his mannerisms struck a chord of familiarity with me.

The smithy didn’t have a prime town location, instead hovering on the city’s outskirts. Actually, the shop was only a stone’s throw from the place that Kaya and I would soon move into. I’d always lived close to where I worked, and here there was enough space for Kaya to hang about, if she chose to.

Within two days of settling into Mellor, a pattern started to develop. I worked at the smithy in the mornings, trained with Kaya in the afternoons, and spent most of the evening putting our new living quarters into shape.

It was on one of those mornings that I was hailed from the smithy’s doorway. “Krys?”

I looked up towards the smith’s doorway, pausing in mid-stride with a long bar of cooling metal in my hands. Mari stood just inside the doorway, and for once, she had on something other than a uniform. Actually, I quite liked what she wore. The dark leather skirt flirted around her ankles, with a matching vest, and a stark white shirt. The simple clothes somehow enhanced her femininity. The look on her face didn’t shout trouble to me, so I put the bar down casually instead of springing to alert.

“Hello, Mari.”

“Hi. Am I interrupting?” She stepped more fully inside, away from the doorway.

“This isn’t something that’s high priority,” I assured her. Actually, the project had been moldering in a long forgotten corner of Maese’s shop until I picked it up.

“Excellent. I’m not sure what your plans are today, but I’m hoping that I can steal you away for a few hours.”

I was always amiable to being stolen by beautiful women. “I don’t have plans,” I assured her. “Where are we going?”

“All around, actually.” Her eyes lit up, hands moving to add emphasis to her words. “I had a thought last night. With your and Kaya’s skills, I think you can do more than just firefighting. I think you can do a lot of jobs in this area, perhaps even act as a support to the search and rescue teams up here. But I don’t want to talk you into any of this until you see the terrain you’d be working in.”

Working with search and rescue? Now there was a thought I hadn’t entertained. It had appeal, though. “I’m certainly interested.” I waggled both eyebrows in a mischievous manner. “So, this isn’t a ploy to get a free ride from Kaya, is it?”

Her expression went perfectly blank. “I can ride her?”

“Hmm. I take that as a no. Yes, Mari, you can ride her. Don’t look surprised—she adores people.”

“Well.” She cleared her throat lightly. “I thought I’d drag you to the top of the watchtower and try to show you that way…I admit, this sounds more fun. Er, I should probably change out of this skirt, though.”

A thought that had not occurred to me, but now that she mentioned it… “Yes, probably. I’ll catch Kaya and saddle her. How long do you expect this tour to take?”

“I’ve never flown before, so I have no idea.” She leaned out to look up at the sun. “It’s getting close to mid-day. Why don’t I pack a lunch for us as well?”

An afternoon of flying with a pretty woman
and
home cooked food? This day was just getting better and better. “Please do. Don’t worry about Kaya—she’s having fun fishing for herself out of the lake.”

Mari let out a breath of relief. “I’m glad you said that—I had no idea how to pack enough food to feed her. All right, then I’ll be back here in a half hour or so.”

“Meet you at the docks?” That being one of the few places that Kaya could take a clean takeoff from.

“That’s fine.”

I waved her out and went to find Maese. I needed to tell him I wouldn’t be around for the rest of the day before I ran home and cleaned up a little. There was no way that I was going to stink of sweat around Mari.

~*~

When Hortin and I had designed the saddle, I’d had a vague notion that I should make it large enough to fit at least one more person, just in case I ever had a passenger in the future. With Mari being so slender, she fit in easily behind me, her arms wrapped around my waist for balance. She actually didn’t need to hang on to me—the wide leather strap was enough to secure her in place.

I was not
about
to tell her that.

Without a sky of black ash to obscure my vision, I could finally get a good look at the lay of the land. The area around Mellor actually resembled the Chahiran border in an uncanny way. Flat grassland made up most of it, albeit a tougher, greener grass than Chahir had. There were stands of small groves of trees here and there, nothing large enough to call a forest. With all of the flat land, a great many ranches and farms were spread out from the city’s limits.

Once we flew past the Solian border, we saw more craggy hills and less trees, the land becoming drier and more desert-like. The hills lost their soft, rolling quality and became sharper.

“We lose caravans and travelers up here all of the time,” Mari yelled near my ear, a hand extended to point out a narrow, switch-backed road winding between the hills. “There are certain seasons where we have flash-floods through here, which washes the area out. People either get stuck, or they don’t pack enough water along and get sick from dehydration, or they get attacked by bandits.”

Trying to make sure she could hear me, too, I turned my head and yelled back, “So you’ll need Kaya and I not just for rescues, but also for border patrol?”

“That would help. I mean, with Kaya being so fast, you could just do three trips a day up here, take a quick sweep of the area, and tell us if there are problems. Just having a dragon regularly patrolling the area would scare off the bandits.”

I chuckled. Yeah, no bandit in the world really wanted to tangle with a two-ton, fire-breathing dragon.

Really, Mari had several points. We’d barely been up in the air any time at all and had already crossed half the distance of the lake. A full sweep of the area wouldn’t take more than an hour or so at a time. Just three hours a day and we’d have a nice side job and another source of income. Of course, that side job would sometimes take up whole days at a time, but I could live with that.

“I think we’ve seen enough. Let’s land and have lunch,” I suggested over my shoulder, giving an illustrative finger pointing at the ground. Mari gave a thumbs up in reply.

I urged Kaya to turn and fly down to the sandy beach. In this area, there were only a few stunted trees lurking near the edge of the lake. It left plenty of room for Kaya to land and take off, and the view of the lake made a pretty spot for a picnic.

Kaya landed gently, careful of her passengers. We unloaded everything and I even unsaddled her so that she could dive in and out of the water without soaking the leather. She launched back into the air as soon as she had been freed, scanning from the air like a predator bird for any movement in the water.

I left her to her fishing and spread out the lunch Mari had packed on a well-used tarp.

“The tarp was all I could find,” Mari apologized as we sat down on it.

“It’s actually better than a blanket,” I assured her with a smile. “I mean, this beach is a little rocky. I think a blanket would be torn up here.”

Mari blinked. “Good point.”

I didn’t care what I sat on. The food took first priority. Mari turned out to be a good cook. She had fish sandwiches, a berry cobbler of some sort, and crisps with a hint of barbecue sauce. I loaded up my plate with a smile of anticipation.

“Krys, do you think you’re willing to do both search and rescue as well as border patrol?” she asked as she loaded up her own plate. “It’s a lot of work.”

“Sure, but—” I didn’t have to see it. I could feel the heat, hear it when she drew in a deep breath as she always did. I had a fireball heading toward the back of my head.

All right, well, the panicked expression on Mari’s face was a pretty good clue too.

In sheer instinct I caught it, letting it spin off harmlessly into the sand. Carefully, I put down my lunch, slowly standing and fixing a suspicious stare on Kaya.

“Are you starting something, young lady?”

Far from being abashed, she crouched, her whole back end wagging in anticipation. Then, with practically no warning, she shot another fireball at me.

I caught it in one hand. “Oh, so that’s how it is? You’re on.”

“Wait, Krys, what’re you—” Mari started to protest, half rising from her seat.

I didn’t bother to stop and explain. For one thing, when Kaya was in this mood, she didn’t have a lot of patience. I doubt she’d give me the chance to explain anyway. It took two seconds to erect a barrier around Mari so we didn’t accidentally fry her and then I started chucking fireballs back at Kaya as quickly as I could form them. Kaya either dodged them or ate them, spitting fireballs back at me as she could.

Kaya let loose a particularly big fireball, catching me by surprise, and I had to drop quickly to the ground to avoid being scorched. In retaliation, I let two flames off in quick succession before dumping a larger one on top of her head.

Quick as you could blink, she twisted her head and snapped it up in her mouth. Her tongue lolled out of the side of her mouth. “Too slow!”

Oh, so she was laughing at me, was she? All right then how about
this?
I rolled back up to my feet, hitting her with fireballs in every possible direction. She dodged them all, of course, like an aerial ballerina.

After several minutes of exchanging some pretty intensive fire, it came down to a matter of stamina. I got a bit winded, and paused for breath when I shouldn’t have, and in that moment she pounced.

I hit the sand with a thud, this two-ton grinning creature pinning me with one paw. “I win.”

“I’ll get you later,” I promised her direly, letting my head thump back onto the sand.

“Ha!” Clearly, she didn’t believe that. Happy with her win, she bounced up and off toward the water, where she splashed around in the water like an overgrown puppy.