Dragon Princess (15 page)

I didn’t bother relating the fate of that sword.

I followed the endless marketplace, and the Elhared stories, to the less nice quarter of Fell Green. As things got scruffier, I was glad for the practical attire Lucille had salvaged for me. I was receiving many fewer lewd propositions than I had with the leather I’d originally purchased. I was also glad that Lucille was orbiting the town, keeping an eye on me. Periodically, I glanced up at the sky to check her position. Despite what I had told her about subtlety, given the population I mingled with at the moment, it was comforting to have that sort of backup.

Finally, as I talked to a merchant selling virility potions so noxious that they made impotence seem attractive by comparison, I had success. The old crone set down a steaming vial of lumpy brown liquid and pointed a crooked finger across the street at a tavern named The Harpy’s Teat
.

“The old bastard just went in there an hour ago.”

Up to now, I had been relying on an aura of confidence that was one part con game, one part knowing how to walk around this type of neighborhood, and one part the knowledge that Lucille was above me, watching. It had worked so far, no one questioning the presence of my doubly misplaced self.

I walked across the threshold of The Harpy’s Teat, and most of that seemed to evaporate. Half the eyes in the place glanced in my direction when I entered.

This establishment gave me a healthy appreciation for the charms of the dockside tavern where I had first met Elhared. I’m certain that I would have some difficulty finding worse smells along the wharf, and by comparison with the clientele here, the patrons of The Headless Earl were guests at a princess’s tea party. Some of the beverages being served made Mermaid’s Milk look positively appetizing, and the vile concoctions the old crone was selling across the street didn’t seem that bad in retrospect.

And, unlike The Headless Earl or that dockside tavern, most of the patrons here weren’t human. Walking into those other dens of comparatively bland iniquity as an attractive young woman would raise all sorts of worries. Walking in here, under the dirty gazes of ogres, goblins, imps, and the more feral types of fairies, I not only had to worry about potential rapists, but about someone desiring to gnaw on my bones after the fact.

My hand slipped down to my belt to rest on the hilt of the dagger I had liberated from one of Baldy’s minions. I wished for the fake
Dracheslayer
. Useless it might have been, but at least it had
looked
intimidating. For a few moments, I suspected that the crone across the street had sent me in here as some sick form of entertainment.

One of the nearest goblins—hairless, green-skinned, wiry, and with hands and feet a size and a half too large for his body—wiped the drool from his lips, got unsteadily to his feet, and weaved toward me.

“You losht, darlin’?”

It was hard to tell if the stench was from the goblin’s breath, or from the flagon he held a little too loosely in his hand as he gestured at me.

“No.” I answered quietly as I pondered ways to quietly extricate myself without escalating things. I figured, right now, most of the eyes on me weren’t yet focusing with predatory intent. At this point it was probably mostly curiosity over what in the Seven Hells someone who looked like me was doing in a place like this.

“Well, I’sh got a seat for you right here.”

“No, thank you.”

As my eyes adjusted and I saw deeper into the establishment, it became clear that, while the nominal business here was providing alcohol, the real business was the operation of various games of chance. Several ogres had already lost interest in me, and were turning back to their card games, and while I had the undivided attention of one goblin, a dozen others were ignoring me in favor of a large game of dice. In the rear, a slick-looking elf took wagers in front of a giant wheel of fortune illustrated with pictures painted by a Tarot aficionado with some very peculiar fetishes.

And, in front of that wheel, chanting for it to land on the three of tentacles, was the old fart Elhared.

The crone
wasn’t
setting me up.

I took a step forward, and a large, sticky green hand landed on my shoulder. “You not goina turn down my hoshpitality.”

I’ve said before, all things being equal, I prefer subtlety. If I hadn’t just seen my quarry, I might have engaged the inebriated goblin in another round of witty repartee as I quietly excused myself from the situation. Instead, I drew my dagger and spun around, bringing the hilt up between the goblin’s legs. His yellow eyes widened in surprise as he froze and exhaled.

Goblins are reportedly more tolerant of pain than humans, so I pulled my fist back and slammed the pommel of my dagger back into the goblin family jewels again.

He dropped the tankard. It clattered to the sawdust-covered floor, spilling its foul contents.

The goblin hunched over and started emitting a low groan. I took his hand off my shoulder and turned him around. “You’re drunk,” I told him. I took two steps to get him started back toward the table he came from. “If you’re going to puke, puke on your friends.”

Safely freed from my admirer, I turned back toward the tavern. Judging from the reaction of the clientele, my dealing with the goblin
had
been subtle by local standards. I noticed a few places where money changed hands, and most of the eyes that had been watching my little domestic drama returned to more interesting subjects.

Most, but not all.

Elhared was looking right at me. His eyes were wide with recognition, and he mouthed something that was more obscenity than incantation.

We stared at each other for what seemed like a short eternity. It was less than a second, but it was long enough for me to realize what was wrong with this picture.

That was
Elhared’s
body, not mine.

Oh, crap.

Ersatz Elhared bolted over the gaming table, away from me, scattering chips and causing curses all around. I ran after him.

It wasn’t the crone who set me up. It was
Dudley
. Dudley was the one who knew about all the displaced souls running around, and it probably amused him no end to send me after the wrong Elhared. Unless it really was the original Elhared I was chasing, and not a dragon with a gambling addiction.

Given where I’d found him, and the old man’s state of flight, that seemed unlikely.

I vaulted over my own set of gaming tables and followed him through the kitchens—and the less said about them, the better. We emerged into an alley behind The Harpy’s Teat, and I caught up. It wasn’t a particularly impressive feat. Despite her short stride, in reasonable footwear, for a short distance, Princess Lucille could probably outrun Frank Blackthorne. Catching up to an old man in heavy robes, aged somewhere between seventy and dead, wasn’t that difficult.

The fact I tackled him to the ground may have been more impressive, if you didn’t take into account that not only was my quarry ancient, but was inhabited by someone whose only previous experience in physical conflict was predicated on having large talons, jaws that could bite a warhorse in half, and outweighing any potential opponent twenty-to-one. So it wasn’t really a fair fight.

I straddled his chest, and after a brief slap-fight, I had him pinned to the ground. After trying to lift me off of him and failing, my imitation Elhared’s literal last gasp was to suck in a breath, open his mouth, and exhale long and hard in my face. While the eye-watering stench of old fish and bad teeth was unpleasant, it was nowhere near as disabling as intended.

I stared at the dragon-in-Elhared’s-clothing incredulously.

With a sheepish look and a barely audible voice he said, “Yeah. Right. That wouldn’t work, would it?”

“Enough playing around. Where’s the
real
wizard?”

“What real wizard?”

I slapped him so hard that my own hand went numb.

“Ow! That really hurt.”

“Where’s Elhared?
And
the book?”

“I don’t know!”

I raised my hand to slap him. From behind me came a sickeningly smooth voice. “Isn’t this a sight?”

The speaker could have been referring to himself. When I turned my head, I saw an elf with slicked-back hair and a garish outfit that was all pastels, ruffles, and lace. His makeup was designed to enhance the androgyny of his already indeterminate features. Flanking him were two more elves in similarly outlandish garb, all swirls and points and engraved floral motifs, though since their outfits were constructed of leather, studs, and chain mail, they were much more practically dressed. Those two also got points for crossbows of ivory-inlaid ebony and engraved brass. The weapons may have looked over the top, but they appeared functional—especially since they were pointed in my direction.

Elhared the Fake redoubled his efforts to throw me off of him, muttering inarticulate grunts that may have been an attempt at producing native draconic obscenities with a human larynx. Both efforts were about as successful as his attempt to breathe fire.

“Please,” said the lead flouncy elf. “I would appreciate calm. I do not like to inconvenience my customers. It is bad for business. However, your abrupt departure from my establishment in the midst of an ongoing game resulted in a balance due to the house. We cannot allow even the appearance of someone avoiding a debt to us.” The elf’s smile was bloodless and much too wide for his face.

“Look,” my phony wizard pleaded, “You know I’m good for it.”

“Yes,” the elf hissed. “That is the other thing. I’ve heard a bit of your dialogue with the young miss here, and it seems to raise questions about the stake the house has provided to the presumptive court wizard of Lendowyn.”

Discretion is the better part of keeping one’s skin in one piece. I raised my hands off of faux-Elhared and slowly got to my feet. “I’m sure we can discuss things in a civilized manner and get this all sorted out. Why don’t we just lower the crossbows before something happens that everyone here will regret.”

My glance upward was involuntary, but the elf noticed it.

“I presume you are looking for your traveling companion?” I didn’t think it was physically possible, but the damn elf’s smile got wider. “A separate issue, but the dragon is currently indisposed.”

Pretend-Elhared was in the midst of getting to his feet himself, and he froze. “Dragon?”

“Damn it all,” I whispered. Dudley must be really pissing his pants in amusement now.

“We take our debts very seriously,” the elf told him.

I looked at our imitation wizard and said, “How idiotic can you be, coming back to the same guys you already owe money to?”

“I was on a streak, damn it.”

The elf clapped his hands and the back alley vanished around us.

Fell Green might have been a wizard town, but there was more than sorcery keeping it from prying eyes. It wasn’t completely in the world of men. Just as its visible manifestation straddled the river between Lendowyn and Dermonica, its essence straddled the mists that separate our world from the fae realms.

At least that was our elven host’s explanation why they really didn’t give a crap who was royalty and who wasn’t.

Human authorities didn’t have any jurisdiction with the world of elves; no diplomatic relations, no extradition treaties, no cultural exchanges. Changelings were the primary trade goods, and any tourism was generally one-way. Fell Green was about as close as anyone wanted to get, and as our recent experience showed, even at that remove, dealing with the fae rarely had a positive outcome.

The elf and his guards pulled us through the mists, to a place as far from Lendowyn court intrigue as was the moon. In fact, we could have stood on the moon for all I knew. The ground was made of silver sand that glowed a milky white. Above, a different sky simultaneously held its own sun and moon that stared down on us like a pair of accusing eyes. We followed a road made of gold that led toward a vast city that could have been made of spun sugar and spiderwebs, towers reaching as tall as the city was wide.

“Look, don’t you see,” Elhared the Lesser groveled. “I’m the court wizard. I have money. The entire Lendowyn treasury—”

That should have confirmed any suspicions about this Elhared’s true identity. The real wizard would have had more sense than to brag about access to an empty vault.

Our hosts remained unmoved by his pleas as they marched us off the main road and up over a hill on the outskirts of the great city. When we crested the hill we came into view of a massive arena buried in a bowl scooped into the ground below us. We descended a broad staircase to the circular floor, and faced a series of golden cages that ranged from the tiny to the humungous.

One of the latter held Lucille.

As the elven escort shoved me into a human-size cage, Lucille said,
“Oh, Frank, they got you too!”

“Looks that way,” I muttered more to myself than to her. The door locked itself behind me with a sound more like a crystal chime than the shutting of a prison cell.

“And Elhared . . . Oh. That isn’t, is he?”

The counterfeit wizard fought his elvish captors as they tossed him in another cage. He yelled, “I
am
Elhared! Court wizard of Lendowyn! That is the Princess Lucille! The king shall hear of—”

The chief elf made a lazy gesture and suddenly the ranting went silent. I saw the wizard’s face contorting, and his lips moving, but no sound came from the cage.

The elf sighed. “My, that person is tiring.”

“What’s going on?” I asked him. “What are you doing with us?”

He strode up to my cage, drawing a lace handkerchief from his sleeve. The primary purpose for it seemed to be to provide him with something to gesture with. “See?” He addressed the silently screaming ex-dragon Elhared, “It
is
possible to ask impertinent questions in a civil tone.”

“Impertinent?”

He turned to face me. “Questioning your betters. Speaking out of turn. Working among mortals has made me more than typically munificent in the face of such crass behavior.” He whispered to me in a conspiratorial tone. “Be grateful that I’m not the judge.”

“Judge? What’s going on here?”

“You are on trial, of course.”

“Trial—” I paced around the inside of the cage. “Look, there’s been a misunderstanding.”

“There is
always
a misunderstanding. No one ever
intends
to steal the food from our table. Somehow it just happens.” The elf unfolded his palms and blew across them, making his handkerchief flutter. “It has been my experience that mortals properly understand very little—”

“No. I mean we aren’t who you think we are.”

“Is anyone? If you have a defense, I would reserve it for the judge.” The elf leaned over to whisper again, as if sharing some great secrets of the universe. “And a word of advice, do not interrupt him. I find you amusing, but that capricious old fart would just as soon slit you open to water his garden.” He straightened up and smiled. “Not that it wouldn’t be amusing in its own right.”

The elf turned and waved his armsmen to follow as he left the arena, leaving us caged and alone. Whatever the elf had done to silence Elhared the False, he hadn’t bothered to dispel. The dragon in the old wizard’s body was shouting after the elf, gripping the bars and trying to shake them.

I wondered if he knew no one could hear him.

“What’s happening?”

I turned away from the furious silence of the fake wizard and toward Lucille. She was in the largest cage available, and still she was hunched over and curled up, barely fitting in the space. The bars looked wire-thin and inadequate for containing her, but gouges in the ground and scorch marks told me that she hadn’t left her cage untested.

“Some sort of elvish court.”

“Why? What did we do?”

I hooked a thumb back at the pretender Elhared. “Not us,
him
.”

“Elhared?”

“No, the dragon. Did you know about the dragon’s gambling problem?”

“Tell me you’re kidding.”

“Before the spell went haywire, the dragon said that Elhared had bought his service with a promise to cover his gambling debts.”

“And?”

“These are the folks he owed money to.”

She shook her head, as much as she could in the too-small cage.
“
Then they should have me, or him, right? Why are you here?
”

“Our draconic genius here was trying to use Elhared’s line of credit as a court wizard to win back his prior losses. I’m here because when he saw me, he ran out on one of their games—”

“He was gambling with them
again?
”

“Like I said. He has a problem.”

“Wonderful.”

“Silence!”
The word was punctuated by a loud crack that resonated through the ground and the bars of my cage. Shouting at us was a huge elf. He stood at the top of the entry stairs clad in a garish uniform dominated by an embroidered midnight-blue cape held on by brooches the size of dinner plates. In his right hand he held an intricately carved, silver-tipped ebony staff nearly twice his own height and the diameter of a small tree. He shouted,
“Silence!”
again, and slammed the tip of his staff against the stone stairs, generating a flower of sparks and another resonant crack that echoed through the arena.

I realized now that the arena wasn’t empty. The seating for spectators was in shadow, so I had to squint to see the audience from our brightly lit spot on the arena floor. Still, I wondered how I could have missed the crowd on my way in.

“The court of the most high Timoras, lord of all realms under the hill, is in session. The Grand Inquisitor of the Winter Court shall preside and pass judgment.”

Much as I tried, there was no way I could interpret that statement as something positive.

“All rise for the Grand Inquisitor
.
”

I almost expected a trumpet fanfare. What we got was five more cracks of the bailiff’s staff on the steps, slamming like cannon fire.

After the bailiff’s showmanship, the Grand Inquisitor himself was a bit of a letdown. He was the least flashy dresser so far, clad in black robes, the only color in his ensemble a tricornered cap in deep crimson. Short and wide for an elf, he was also the first elf I had ever seen who showed any signs of age, to the point where he wore a pair of spectacles that drew attention to the slight creases that framed his stormy gray eyes. He strode in without much ceremony and stood in front of pseudo-Elhared’s cage.

“Speak to the court—” he started to tell the fake wizard. I saw a lot of mouth movement, but I couldn’t hear a thing.

The Grand Inquisitor sighed and made a gesture with his left hand.

“—so it’s all a big misunderstanding.”

“It is always a misunderstanding,” the Inquisitor said quietly to himself. In a louder voice he said, “Speak to the court. Identify yourself and justify your actions. Bind yourself to the truth or face censure.”

“Yes. Yes. Of course,” Imitation Elhared said to the Grand Inquisitor. I could see perspiration beading on his brow, and he cast several furtive and not well-hidden sidelong glances in my direction. “You see, I am the Wizard Elhared of the Royal Court of Lendowyn, of course. I have a generous stipend from the crown, so there should be no issue in paying the small debts I’ve incurred.” He stroked his beard with such nervous enthusiasm that at any moment I expected him to start wringing the flop-sweat from it. “Now you’re wondering why I ran from the Princess Lucille here.” He gestured in my direction. “There’s a simple explanation for that, really . . .”

Yeah, the explanation is you’re stalling.

“You see . . . uh . . . the princess had been kidnapped by an evil dragon. I was as surprised as anyone to see her walk into your establishment. Shocked really. And the first thing I thought of was, I had to rush to notify the king.”

The Grand Inquisitor nodded. “I see.”

“She wasn’t chasing me, you see. She recognized me, of course, and knew I would be able to lead her back to Lendowyn Castle and her rightful place in the royal court.”

As he said that, he looked right at me in a way that made me feel dirty. I knew instantly what he was getting at. If I backed him up with his asinine excuse for a story, he’d back up my own claim for the Lendowyn throne. All I had to do was stand by while Lucille the Dragon took the fall for the old dragon’s debts. I don’t know what pissed me off more, the thought that Elhared the Make-Believe thought I would be the kind of ass that would cut a helpless woman loose just to save my own skin, or the fact that I spent several seconds weighing the costs and benefits of the idea before rejecting it out of hand.

He kept spinning his ever more elaborate fabrications to the point Lucille couldn’t take anymore.

“
Lies!”
she screamed with a rage that turned my spine to butter. I could smell the brimstone from my cage. I was suddenly concerned for the safety of everyone present.
“Nothing but lies! He’s—”

Her shouts were cut short by the thunderclap of the bailiff’s staff. The Inquisitor made a slight gesture and quietly said, “Contempt.”

Lucille froze in mid-rage. Even the smoke curling from her nostrils had ceased movement and hung stationary in midair. I glanced from her frozen effigy, back to our pretend Elhared, and I caught the barest hint of a smile.

Oh, you bastard.

While it had appeared that he’d been spinning a gratuitously implausible tale, I suddenly realized the old dragon had dealt with elves before. Probably had dealt with the elvish judicial system before. He might have been spinning a web of lies that could challenge the work of the demon-spiders of Hsilb, but he was also trying to bait a reaction from Lucille—pushing her to react, just so the Inquisitor would shut her down.

The ugly suspicion was confirmed when the Inquisitor concluded his interview with him, and announced that the dragon had forfeited the right to testify. It was my turn.

The Grand Inquisitor walked before my cage and stared at me over his spectacles. “Do you corroborate the wizard’s testimony? Shall we release you both back to Lendowyn?” While the Inquisitor’s back was turned, the ex-dragon wizard looked at me and made a “get-on-with-it” gesture.

I silently asked the universe to stop handing me prime opportunities to betray the princess. “Yes, about that testimony . . . The ‘wizard’ is absolutely right in that there exists a kingdom called Lendowyn, whose royal court does include a wizard by the name of Elhared, and a princess by the name of Lucille. I’m afraid everything else he said is a very intricately imagined pile of crap.”

The counterfeit wizard winced as if I’d struck him. He grabbed the bars and pleaded with me. “
Princess
, these elves do not recognize Lendowyn law. Do not say something that threatens your royal immunity.”

Another thunderclap from the bailiff and another contempt gesture from the Inquisitor, and he was frozen just like Lucille.

“Go on,” the Inquisitor told me.

I hesitated a moment. The message had been as clear as it was brief. If I revealed the truth, I’d abandon any favor my princessness might give me. The elves would treat me just like they would the thief Frank Blackthorne.

Of course, I could spin another lie to compete with the ex-dragon’s. But, even though that was my forte, I couldn’t really class that one in the category of good ideas.

So I did the opposite. I told the whole, naked, unvarnished truth. I’m not sure exactly why I needed to, but it came pouring out of me, from the moment Elhared conned me in a dockside bar, to the point where I tackled his body outside an even less reputable establishment.