Page 32 of A Matter of Dragons

“I know something too,” I said, suddenly remembering flames burning on the mountainside last night. “I think I can find the dragon’s cave.”

“Damn!” Eadberh exclaimed.

He swept me into a crushing bear hug and spun me in a circle. When he set me down, we were both grinning like idiots.

“We can do this,” he said, his eyes shining. “We can actually do this.”

“We will,” I corrected. “We will actually kill this damned dragon, my friend.”

* * * * *

VIL WAS WAITING FOR us in the street outside the Master and Mistress.

“Great news,” he exclaimed as he rushed across the street to greet us. “He’s agreed to a meeting.”

I stared at Vil blankly. In my sudden rush of enthusiasm for our now no longer impossible mission, I’d completely forgotten about this guy.

“The dragon,” Vil said, looking at me like I was an idiot. “He’s agreed to meet with you. Right now.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Eadberh said, holding up his hand in front of his chest. “How do we know this dragon isn’t the dragon that was just flying around all over the place last night? Because that dragon looked dangerous.”

“Oh, that,” Vil scoffed. “That dragon is red. And it lives in the mountains.”

“She,” I corrected without thinking.

Vil and Eadberh both turned to stare at me.

“Doesn’t matter,” I said, waving my fingers as if I could flick away their sudden interest. “Just something I picked up yesterday. The dragon in the mountains is a woman.”

“Well, the dragon waiting for us in the Duck and Goose is a man, and a gold dragon,” Vil said. “And he’s far too priggish to do anything like fly around at night where people could see him.”

“Then why would he want to talk to us?” Eadberh asked.

“Oh, easy,” Vil replied. “I paid him. If there’s one language dragons understand, it’s this.”

Vil pulled a handful of coins from his pocket and rattled his hand. The air filled with the tinkling chime of metal against metal. I glanced at Eadberh. He shrugged and gave me a what have we got to lose? expression.

“Okay,” I said to Vil. “So, where’s the Duck and Goose?”

Vil gave us a wide smile that made me feel strangely unsettled. “Just follow me.”

The Duck and Goose, as it turned out, was only a few streets away from the antiquities shop that had been the first of last night’s many bad decisions. Thankfully, we didn’t actually turn down that particular street, and I was spared the embarrassment of having to explain to Eadberh that it really wouldn’t be worth our time to bother the very handsome, very married man who ran Geredan’s Antiquities.

The Duck and Goose was housed in a proper little stone cottage whose wide windows were mostly open to the ocean. A delicate silver bell chimed above the door when we entered, and the portly man behind the long, polished wood bar looked up at us with a nod. The dining room was clean, elegant, and empty. The entire room gave an air of polite patience, as though the restaurant were waiting quietly for the lunch crowd to filter in. I could almost see them, ladies dressed in their finery exchanging gossip over little tea cakes and gentlemen talking business in the booths in the back.

“So,” Eadberh began in a low voice, “I don’t see this dragon.”

“He’s in the back,” Vil replied as if that should have been obvious.

Vil threaded his way around the tables and chairs. The man behind the bar watched him with a strange expression of almost pained neutrality, as though he really wanted to say something but was restrained by delicacy. Odd. I ran my fingers lightly along the waistline of my red dress, touching the place where the bustle hid the hilt of my largest dagger.

Vil turned down a narrow hallway in the back, then pushed open a dark wood door. Sunlight filled the hallway from a row of windows looking out over the sea.

“Thank you so much for agreeing to meet,” Vil gushed as he swept into the room.

Eadberh and I followed him through the door. A polished wooden table filled the room. A black-clad figure stood at the far side of the table, watching the ocean through the windows with his hands clasped behind his back. He turned toward us, and his face was framed by sunlight filtering through his dark curls.

My body went cold. I rocked backward and pressed my fingers against the reassuring metal solidity of my dagger’s hilt before I could stop myself.