Page 22 of The Discount Damsel

“You presume much, Tula.”

At mention of the tiny bothersome octopus, her lips puckered to resemble a rosebud.

With barely controlled movements, he signed, “You help me? What can a fish offer a bird? You think you know anything about magic just because you talked to a court sorcerer that one time you were bored because you didn’t have a party to go to? That makes you a subject matter expert, does it? Did it ever cross your mind that Gladstone could’ve cursed me to fail my Master’s exam no matter when it was scheduled, or were you too busy basking in your inflated sense of brilliance?”

Well at least he’d grown a backbone and was insulting her to her face now. Ah, so the man could be taught. Millie remained infuriatingly unflustered (by Bradley’s opinion) and countered, “Perhaps, but is he really that clever and that devious?”

She let the question hang for a second or two. Despite his pride, the sorcerer apprentice was an active listener and was giving her idea at least some consideration. That, or she had shocked him into a senseless state. She decided not to give him the opportunity to refute her point and added, “If Master Dirk says this Gladstone fellow is an idiot, I believe him.”

Bradley tsked. “He calls me an idiot daily, and I’m no fool.”

“Debatable.” She flicked her fingers as if shooing away a fly. “Jabs aside, it’s awfully hard to hoodwink a dragon’s intuition about a person’s character or one’s magical prowess. Especially a luck dragon’s. They have a sixth sense about these things.”

“He’s just a baby dragon.”

“Hey!” The teacup slipped from Dirk’s paws. Oolong tea soaked into the tablecloth, staining the linen brown and blighting the little violets embroidered along its edge to black.

The baby dragon rose from his seat, feathered mane lying flush against his sinuous neck. “What are you saying, Bradley? That my luck and intuition don’t matter because I haven’t grown out my barbels yet?”

“Dirk, that’s not what⁠—”

“Use your words!”

Bradley gulped in a breath as his friend began to hyperventilate. The baby dragon’s chest pumped like a bellows, his golden eyes leaked at the corners, his lips were peeled back to show the glint of his fangs. The cerulean of his scales had turned a deep navy with his anger.

“Dirk,” he began. “P-p-please⁠—”

“From what I recall,” the baby dragon shouted, “my luck made you blow out the back of your trousers instead of a hole in this tower—more than once. It made those potions burn like whiskey instead of literally dissolving your esophageal lining. It helped keep you going after every failure. And if it weren’t for me, you’d never have any fish to eat. All those big muscles you have would be gone and you’d be a stick like Master Excelsior, or dead.”

That last part was a bit of an exaggeration, as Bradley had a fully stocked larder and icebox thanks to Miss Penelope Shrewsbury and her griffin, but he didn’t mention it. The fish definitely brought some joy and nostalgia to his mealtimes, especially when he heard Dirk’s happy humming of “Yummy, yummy, yummy” whenever the dragon tucked into his own portion of grouper almondine.

“You asshole!” Dirk concluded.

Bradley flinched. “Dirk⁠—”

“I know my own name! Got anything else to say to me?”

Whatever the sorcerer apprentice might’ve said was drowned out by the blast of a bugle. The three combatants froze in the kitchen, ears pricking. The feathers of the little luck dragon’s mane rose in anticipation. Nothing but the swip-fwish of the lace curtain blowing in the morning breeze and the low hum of stones heating under a desert sun. Could it have been a shared moment of imagination?

The fraught silence was torn asunder by a second blast, then a faraway, “Hear ye, hear ye!”

“That’s close by.” Millie snatched up the carving knife from its block left of the stove. “At the base of the tower, perhaps?”

Their argument was momentarily forgotten as all three made a mad dash for the stairwell to discover just who had wandered all the way out here in the middle of the desert to make an announcement.

CHAPTER 10

THE COSMETIC WONDERS OF COCHINEAL SHELLS AND STRANGE LITTLE MEN

“This way, Millie,” Dirk corrected when she turned right to descend the tower. “No exit that way, and no big windows either. To the balconies! The west one, I think.”

Bradley didn’t wait for the princess, a rudeness that would’ve shocked his mother and earned him a slap from his father. But she was already a Major Inconvenience that he refused to allow advancement to Bane of His Existence simply because he catered to her ego. She would expect him to escort her because she was royal and superior, and that was a pride he would not indulge, lest she then think she had rights to whole tower.

His long legs took the stairs three at a time in his haste; they never had visitors out here in the desert waste aside from the griffin and Miss Penelope.

Racing after the bounding apprentice, Dirk put on a burst of speed. He would rather rot than let Bradley win, especially after Bradley had called him “just a baby dragon.” He might not have his barbels yet, but out of all the dragonets in his swarm, he had been the one to be chosen as a Designated Sorcerer Companion. And he had established his own crime syndicate. Baby dragon indeed!

He zoomed up the stairs, undulating through the air like a snake, and zipped through the open trapdoor first.