Page 9 of The Discount Damsel

“Take them, aaand?” Dirk drawled, lifting his eyebrows meaningfully.

“And . . . go?” the bean farmer asked hopefully.

Rats, Dirk had walked right into that one. He’d made the farmer believe he liked—no, loved—roasted beans, and now he was being offered his favorite snack. Surely that was enough to placate him and spare the crops from the torch.

Normally, it would be. Dirk did like beans from time to time, and Bradley made a breakfast porridge from them every day. They had use. But if Dirk accepted the sack, he’d have to return to the tower. His satchel didn’t have the space to accommodate the beans, and no one would take him seriously if he threatened them with the claws on one paw while he held his groceries in the other. His budding reputation would be ruined.

And Dirk didn’t want to return to the tower right away. If he came back too soon, he’d be roped into cleaning up that horrid mess left behind by the sorcerer apprentice’s stomach juices and Trial Forty-Three. Or tasked with borrowing a sheep. Or poring over the same books over and over again in search of an answer to a curse that simply wasn’t there.

The bean farmer offered the sack with an encouraging smile, gave the beans a little jiggle.

Dirk scowled and drew himself up to his new impressive height. “On second thought, I hate beans. They make me horribly gassy. In fact, I hate them so much, I think I’ll rid the world of their flatulent offensiveness.” He sucked in a deep, rumbling breath through bared teeth and swung his head towards the beanstalks. It was a bluff of course, one Dirk hoped the bean farmer wouldn’t call him on.

“Stop!”

Dirk smirked. He really was getting a handle on this whole tough-dragon persona.

“If you don’t want the roasted beans, then what do you want?”

The baby dragon discovered the limit of his patience. “What all dragons want! Coins, man! Are you dense?”

“B-but⁠—”

“No buts!” he roared. “Do you have any idea who I am?”

“Yes! You’re Dirk the . . . the . . . the Dejected?”

Not anymore!

He was Dirk the Dangerous, but such a correction would be wasted on this dunce of a man, as it had on the pig herder. “I am a dragon,” he bellowed, an old hurt rising and fueling his words with anger, “you are a meat sack, and I want coin. Do not make me come in there and find it!” His claws sliced through the flower garden with a spray of pink petals.

“My petunias!” came a muffled cry from within the cottage.

“I-I don’t have much,” the bean farmer stammered.

“Then I’ll take what you have and you’ll sell your beans to make up the loss. Do you know nothing about consumerism?” Dirk found himself rubbing his temples to relieve a frustration headache and dropped his paws. “I want those coins now, peasant!”

Apparently the bean farmer’s wife was as tired of her husband’s dull-wittedness as Dirk was and shoved open the nearby shutters. She took one look at her petunias, mouth souring, and lobbed a small canvas pouch through the open window. Then she snatched back one of her children who’d climbed to the sill to wave at the dragon and slammed the shutters shut.

Dirk released an exasperated breath. “Thank you.”

Lowering his head to retrieve the coin purse with his teeth, he stopped short at the strange click of something falling to the dirt by his paws.

A small scale, blue as the cerulean sky, sparkled up at him.

“Hey,” the bean farmer protested, “I thought you were a red dragon?”

Dirk snatched up the scale and the canvas pouch, gave the bean farmer another roar where he inflicted upon him the full horridness of his unwashed teeth, and sprang into the sky.

From this vantage point, the baby dragon spied what looked like a canyon nearby and arrowed for cover. It was no canyon at all, but a cracked riverbed. There was no water here, any reeds shriveled to threads and not worth the munching by ruminants. It was safe, obscure, and utterly boring.

Perfect for a little dragon fighting off a panic attack.

Refuge was found in a tangle of mummified roots worming through a section of eroded riverbank. The two wafer spells wore off just in time to shrink him back to his original size and restore the natural timbre of his voice, not that he needed a change in vocal cords to hide. Concealed within the twisty shadows of the roots, Dirk opened his paw to examine the blue scale and found a petunia petal impaled on one claw.

Something twisted in his stomach at the sight of that beautiful, delicate thing shriveling in the ungodly heat. Of the innocent ruined flowers he’d left behind.

Dirk quickly wiggled the petal free of his claw and focused on the real cause for misgivings.