“This is your friend?” came the booming voice of the dragon. “Not a servant, a prisoner, or a concubine? A friend?”
I understood; ‘friend’ implied a level of equality it was not seeing. “Listen,” I said from behind Merulo. “I might be a lowly human being, but you know what?” A beat of silence followed as it waited for me to continue, but I had nothing.
In the midst of this awkwardness, the dragon contracted into a giant woman. Muscular, broad-shouldered, big of hip and thigh and breast. Just . . . large. Her clothes didn’t particularly impress me, being a man’s standard tunic and leggings, but I marveled at how they stretched to fit her contours.
“Listen, man, I’m not being bigoted.” The dragon made an obvious effort to soften her voice as she approached. “My brother has never had a friend before. I’m proud of him, is all.” She dropped a hand on Merulo’s shoulder with enough force to hammer in a six-inch nail. It was commendable that he did not visibly vibrate.
I peered at the two of them in disbelief. With her tawny complexion, wild mane of burgundy hair, and overall glow of health and vitality, the woman could not have looked more dissimilar to my poor, pasty Merulo.
“Huh.” The dragon studied Merulo’s un-shoed foot, then looked me over in turn. I shuddered to think of the impression I made, with my cheap, ill-fitting clothes thoroughly saturated with dirt, sweat, and blood. My hair felt like the mangled hide of an animal, and dried mud crusted my face from where I’d been dragged across the field. Her biceps also outsized mine by several orders of magnitude.
She tilted her head, a curiously bird-like gesture. “This is the guy you drained yourself for?” At Merulo’s stricken look, she went on. “What, you thought nobody would noticerepeating a day? I organized my entire electronics room, cleared the dust, wiped it down, then boom, now I have to do it all over again. Thanks for that, you little idiot.”
“He did it to save my life.” I stooped to retrieve the sorcerer’s shoe from where it lay in a patch of sun-starved grass. “And if you bring us through to safety, I can tidy up your room again, while you sit back with a nice beverage. It’ll be as good as it, uh . . . would have been . . . tomorrow. Did I say that right?”
Merulo looked pained as he received the proffered shoe and shoved it into the inner pockets of his robe.
“Eh, thanks,” said Hydna, a touch awkwardly, “but nobody touches my machines. Because greedy little thieves”—her voice rose as she turned on the sorcerer—“can’t seem to help themselves!”
“I put it to better use,” the sorcerer snapped, rounding on her. “You used that scrap metal to reheat day-old fish. I traded it for the secrets of the universe!”
The relic he’d exchanged for the textbooks. “I know where it is!” I said, happy to dissipate what was shaping up to be the most uneven fight imaginable. “Chancellor Noor had it before getting caught by the Church. It must be in their heretical vaults by now.”
The muscular woman pulled a face. “Then it’s good as gone. I’m not fucking with the Church.”
“If you don’t wish to ‘fuck with the Church’”—the sorcerer’s hands twitched, as he visibly restrained himself from using air quotes—“then I’d advise we get to work. They’ll be arriving soon to execute us all.”
She groaned. “Why must you be such an aggressive freak? You know how many enemies I have? None.”
“Because you kill them all,” said the sorcerer, casting me a ‘see what I have to deal with?’ look. I pretended not to see it, not sure which of the two I should be trying to please.
“Exactly. I don’t fuck with people I can’t kill.” Flexing, she expanded back into a cascade of scale and claw, the suddenness of her mass blowing away the fog.
It was her. I should be trying to please her.
Merulo extended an arm toward the castle. “The library is in the stronghold southeast of here, second story. I won’t leave a single book behind. Also,” he added as an afterthought. “Sir Cameron has been wounded and requires attention.”
“Anything else?” she boomed. “Maybe a pint of ale and a backrub?”
I laughed, too shrilly, and the dragon fixed me with a scarlet eye. Merulo looked faintly disgusted.
“Blood loss appears to be affecting his mental faculties, so let’s start with your friend.” In an utterance that would have been terrible from a human tongue, and felt nearly unbearable from the thundering maw of a dragon, she cast the spell. Something rushed through my body, briefly darkening my vision. Alertness, so abruptly attained that it felt like a drug.
“No, that’s just how he is.” The sorcerer sighed, clearly spent from the effort of standing imposingly. “But thank you, nonetheless.”
Now that I felt strong, with my weight carried evenly on two healthy legs, I could see how frail the sorcerer looked in comparison. “Merulo, couldn’t you use, a, uh . . . ‘touch up’ as well?” I indicated his bare foot, which still seeped freely.
The dragon twitched her muscles impatiently. Merulo shook his head. “Dragon bodies are pure magic. It would takean immense amount to restore what has been lost, more than it’s worth.”
Clearly growing tired of this discussion, the dragon opened her maw (revealing a tongue I could have curled up and fallen asleep on without feeling cramped) and spat forth a familiar incantation. A portal blossomed in the air before us. “I’ll fetch your damn books, so go through,” she growled. “And if I find anything more has been stolen, there won’t be enough of your bodies left to bury.”
“I would advise against threatening Cameron,” the sorcerer said, limping toward the widening gap in space. “He has entirely the wrong sort of response.”
Stepping through the portal, Merulo vanished.
The dragon looked at me in question, flaring nostrils wide enough to plunge my hands into.
“Ah . . . well . . . sometimes blood gets confused as to where it should be flowing, is all.” I edged past her. “I’ll be going through the portal now, if that’s alright. Okay, goodbye. Thank you.”
