Page 48 of The Discount Damsel

“You must be the one to initiate his fall,” Millie impressed upon the dragon. “Sir Eustace must give you credit for his defeat.”

Dirk withdrew a small handful of cochineal shells from where he’d stashed them in his satchel and powdered his muzzle and face red. “Ready when you are.”

When she turned back to the window, Bradley made to catch her arm and put an end to this ridiculousness, but either she ducked or Dirk sent an air current to sweep his hand away, and he missed.

She leaned back into the light with an eager smile. “Sir Roger⁠—”

“You’re in league with the dragon!” he blurted, having overheard part of the conversation. He had the good sense to blurt at a volume no louder than a mouse’s squeak, lest the ministry official overhear.

“Yes I am,” she replied. “And why wouldn’t I be? We Amberlians have always had excellent relations with dragons. Now, it’s best if you relax.”

“Wh—”

Dirk snaked out from under her arm and severed the rope clean in half with a single snap of his jaws.

No sooner did a blood-curdling scream split the desert sky did the luck dragon zoom out of the bedroom and down the tower. Bradley crowded Millie at the window, and the two watched the aged hedge knight drop over a hundred feet to impact the desert below. A plume of orange dust shot into the air like a geyser, forcing the two humans back into the tower to protect their eyes and throats.

They weren’t deterred for long.

Millie adjusted the tails of her headscarf to cover her mouth and nose, and Bradley lifted the collar of his robe to mask the lower half of his face. Within a second, the two stuck their heads back outside and waited with bated breath to see if Dirk was as good as he said and if Sir Roger Ferris had survived.

The knight wasn’t moving.

CHAPTER 22

HOW TO BE A PIRATE AND FIRST OF THE HAREM

When the dust settled, Sir Eustace Zonure set his spyglass aside and rose from his stool. He kept the handkerchief firmly over his nose and mouth and his eyes slitted against any sand particles still lingering in the air and trudged over to where the knight had fallen.

Sir Roger lay like he had fallen asleep, if one fell asleep spread-eagle fully clothed and head cocked severely to one side.

Stopping nearby the fallen knight’s head, Sir Eustace dropped his handkerchief and wedged it back into his breast pocket. He lowered himself to a crouch to take the knight’s pulse, then produced a mirror from another suit pocket to angle under the knight’s nose.

“Sir Roger Ferris is defeated by way of severed rope,” the ministry official announced. “Princess Mildred of Amberly remains Unrescued. Dragon Dirk, you may do with the body as you will.”

“Can I bring it up here for barbecue?”

Sir Eustace sighed as if he’d heard this exact question only a hundred times. “Barbecue it, shrink its head for your collection, leave it for the vultures, the choice is yours.”

“Be right down!”

Now that the Hero was defeated, the ministry official couldn’t care less what the dragon did. This was already proving to be a strange assignment—no dragon had resorted to intimidation tactics or guerrilla warfare in any of the Discount Damsel Protocols he’d ever overseen—and Sir Eustace didn’t like strange. They already lived in a magical world that didn’t need any more complications, loopholes, or uniqueness, in his opinion. That only led to more categorizing, more paperwork, and if the Annals Division poached scribes from the Damsel Division one more time . . .

Sir Eustace returned to his desk, finished his report, sprinkled the ink with sawdust, slammed the book shut, and disappeared into his tent to fix himself a very large tangelo margarita.

The precise moment the flap swept into place behind the ministry official, Dirk shot out the porthole window nearest the sand and raised a mighty wind. Sand whipped up into a dervish and lifted the hedge knight from the dunes. Chain mail clinked and leather creaked as the old man spiraled all the way to the top of the tower where the two humans quickly caught arm, leg, belt, frankly whatever they could get their hands on, and guided Sir Roger over the railing.

Bradley carried the knight into the workroom and quickly set him down upon the floor. Dirk pounced on the old man’s chest, tapping here and there with his claws, releasing his command over the water in the knight’s blood and freeing the air trapped in his lungs. Sir Roger’s pulse came roaring back to life, his chest expanded with a gasp, and he hinged upright with the ferocity of a sprung mouse trap.

“My back,” the hedge knight groaned.

“I did it,” Dirk exclaimed, clapping and bouncing in the air like a gleeful child.

Mid-bounce, a sapphire must have popped loose from his satchel, for a round blue gem fell and skipped across the floorboards. The luck dragon pounced once more and quickly stuffed the gem back into his satchel and faced the others with a nervous, “Heh.”

The errant jewel was quickly forgotten when Millie said, “Apologies, Sir Roger,” and thrust a sack over his head before he’d gotten a good look about the room.

It seemed the prudent thing to do, as he wasn’t fully vetted yet and sorcerers and their apprentices were generally private people who didn’t want folks gawking at their magical bits and bobs. And while Sir Roger was a progressive knight, they couldn’t risk years of instinct kicking in and him slashing out at Dirk in a mistaken attempt to defend his life, which wasn’t in danger whatsoever.