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“Honorable?” I put all the scorn I could into the word. “There’s nothing honorable about killing dragons. Nothing brave about it. You put them down, or they kill you. That’s all there is to it.”
“But—” She licked her lips. “How many are there out there to fight?”
“One.”
Ellie opened her mouth, closed it, looked even more reluctant.
“Oh, don’t be so squeamish. One’s enough,” I said. “One dragon has the power to destroy a million people, more if he’s grown angry. He’s a flying, unstoppable, calculating nuclear bomb. He could destroy a city a day, every day, and there would be almost nothing that could stop him once he was going about it.”
“They could put him in a zoo or something.”
“Zoo,” I repeated. “Do you imagine that is a better end for something so magnificent than a decent death? To be gawked at by thousands, millions, trapped for eternity in a small, inadequate cell? And no zoo could hold him, girl. No prison could hold him, for that matter. You could bury him under a mountain and he would dig his way out.”
She swallowed. “Modern weapons—”
“They have weapons,” I said flatly. “Us. Dragonslayers. We’re the weapons, and we’re so effective that in two thousand years, we have hunted dragons from thousands down to one. One last, old, lonely, angry dragon. If that distresses you, get your ass out of my chair and leave. I don’t have time to train some weak-livered baby sentimental about a killing machine who’d gladly rip you apart and pick his teeth with your ribs, if given half a chance.” I was not exaggerating. I’d seen it happen to my predecessor, Godric. Harenthrax had taken his time about the dismemberment, starting with pulling away tiny bits like fingers and toes and eating them like appetizers before starting to disarticulate the man’s limbs. Godric had stopped screaming only when his lungs failed. I was not sure how long it had taken him to really die after that. I’d grown numb. In the end, I’d fallen asleep, shameful as that was, and woke only when the screaming had stopped.
She got up, the girl, and stood there staring down at me. Her lips pressed into a thin line. “You’re a mean old bitch,” she said. The sheen of politeness was completely gone. Good. I had no real use for manners.
“Oh, yes, I am all that. ‘Old’ being the operative word. I survived the worst four dragons could throw at me. I survived politics, wars, husbands, and the death of everything I ever loved. Because I am smart. Because I am ruthless. If you think that is a character fault, you have no business being a Dragonslayer. You’ll be dead before you smell your first whiff of sulfur.”
She headed for the door.
“Go on,” I called after her. “Be sure to tell God you’re an idiot when you get to heaven. Probably tomorrow.”
That stopped her in her tracks. “What?”
“The Holy Father handpicked you,” I said. “I didn’t. I don’t get any say in who comes after me, and I’m stuck with whoever they send me. So if you walk away today and don’t learn anything, fine, no skin off my ancient nose, is it? I’m retired. I’ll be training your replacement tomorrow, and telling him about your suitably gruesome, gory death. Because if I know who you are, most assuredly old Karathrax already knows as well.” I picked up the Dragon’s Eye—it was surprisingly heavy, about the weight of a good bowling ball—and shuffled over to thrust it at her. She took it, wide-eyed. “There. Consider yourself trained. Now get the hell out.”
“But—” She stared at the crystal. “What is it?”
“Your problem,” I said. “You don’t want to listen to the mean old bitch, fine. Figure it out yourself. Now shoo!”
I shoved her right out the door, slammed it, and started the tedious process of locking it all. Around lock number two, she started knocking tentatively on the door.
By lock number four, she was pounding on it. “All right, all right, stop making such a racket!” I yelled through the door, and unlocked it again. I let the girl in. This time, I left the locks unturned because I might want to eject her, quickly. With force. “Now, are you willing to pay attention?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Ellen said, but I read a simmering resentment in her expression, in the tense set of her shoulders. “Sorry. Um, here, could I set this down . . . ?” She lifted the heavy weight of the Dragon’s Eye.
“No,” I said. “You can stand there and hold that out in front of you, for the next hour. Consider it punishment duty.”
And training, for what would come next.
Ellen bit her lip, then stretched out her arms, and almost immediately the shaking began.
I sat down, refilled my coffee cup, and picked up the paper.
She wasn’t completely hopeless. For one thing, she wasn’t a complainer; I can’t abide complainers. She did everything she could to fulfill whatever task I set her, even the impossible ones, and she didn’t whine even when she was sore, bruised, cut, exhausted, and ready to drop. I think it became a personal mission for her, to wear me down.
Good luck, little girl. Even as old and feeble as I was now, I was Lisel Dragonslayer. She’d woken something in me, a fierce pride, a desire to stretch myself. I abandoned the old-woman robes and house scuffs; I began dressing in loose running suits, suitable for fighting, and sturdy athletic-type shoes. Velcro closures. Greatest thing in the world.
I started her out training with a staff, because she could do herself the least damage with that, and I could do the most to her without maiming. Fun all around. Ellie was surprisingly strong and fast, but then, I supposed the Pope hadn’t just picked her name out of a hat; they ha
d an entire council of researchers working on things like that, identifying potential Dragonslayers, filtering them, vetting them, prying into every corner of their lives. Much easier in my day, when your lord and master pointed a bony finger your direction and said, “Take that one.” In my case, my lord and master had been my husband. I’d gotten along better with the dragons, frankly.
Ellie was out of school, and the Church was fronting her family a lot of money—hush money—combined with a dizzying cocktail of faith and flattery. I didn’t know if the Pope actually took any of this seriously; they all professed to it, but none of the pontiffs I could remember had ever actually seen a dragon. Then again, their trade was to believe in things unseen. And they’d never tried to cut me out of the papal budget, so far as I knew, which must have meant something significant. Even the Pope has downsized.
I knew, because I asked, that Ellie’s family had been promised a million dollars a year for the next ten years, all squirreled away in some Swiss account, with allowances funneling to her parents through some byzantine arrangement of shell companies. It was a pension, supposedly. Both her mother and father had retired from their jobs. Ellie got a stipend that would keep her in anything her heart desired, barring haute couture fighting gear.
