“An excellent question,” Andrei said, with the faintest, smuggest hint of condescension. The bastard. That was what Fiora got in his turn, he supposed, for keeping his tutor on as his man of affairs. “Possibly to spy on you, to learn where you keep your gold. I think it more likely they may simply believe you’re expecting such a gesture, and they are growing nervous about your continued goodwill. Sending a sacrifice to the local dragon is a bit old-fashioned, but this isn’t the most modern place. They may think you’re waiting for them to welcome you properly.”
“But even my mother thinks sacrifices are out of style!” And now he sounded whiny again, damn it all. “And stealing from me makes no sense. I already spend so much gold in the town, and gold isn’t even what I hoard. They’re a town full of merchants, hardly the enterprisingly criminal type. Well, not openly, anyway. I’d maybe expect some of Ripley’s young men to try to steal from me, but not the town council. They’ll steal by overcharging me and call it a good day’s work, instead.”
“Hmm. Could it be possible,” Andrei began, and then shifted his feet a little and cleared his throat. “Could they have heard,” he said, and stopped again.
A vein began to throb in Fiora’s forehead. Ah, the headache was about to make its anticipated appearance after all. Lovely. “Spit it out.”
“The curse,” Andrei finished at last. “Do you think some rumor of it may have reached them?”
Fiora shuddered. “I’ve told you not to speak that word aloud.”
“I’m hardly going to pantomime it,” Andrei snapped, drawing himself up to his full, impressive height, his beaky nose pointed up in the air. “My lord. A dragon in such close proximity to the town was sure to raise a few eyebrows. Dragons are rare, and tend to prefer more remote locales, as you know better than anyone. A dragon bearing a —” At Fiora’s growl, Andrei quickly changed directions: “A magical inconvenience. Would be an even more potent source of concern. What if your…issue affected the town? It’s quite possible they want someone here, in the castle, to learn more of your affliction.”
Well, Fiora couldn’t say Andrei didn’t have a way with euphemisms. And he also couldn’t deny that Andrei had a point. He slumped down in his chair, wishing his coffee cup held brandy instead. It was cold, anyway. Ugh.
“What should we do?” If the town council did suspect the…oh, fuck it, the curse, he supposed they might want to investigate. Curses could be simple and tailored to the individual — as Fiora’s was, in fact. But they could also be far broader in their scope. What if he was cursed to lose his reason and try to kill everyone, or what if the curse could spread to others and turn them all into frogs, or somesuch? Well. He supposed he could understand their curiosity, if they’d heard a rumor. “Ought I to simply let them send their maiden, and then watch her carefully to ensure she isn’t up to mischief? After a time, when nothing awful happens and she hasn’t found my strongboxes, I can send her home again, I suppose, without much harm done. But what an inconvenience.”
Andrei frowned. “I think if you refuse their sacrifice they’ll be offended. Even complain to the king, claiming that you’re behaving suspiciously by turning down their traditional gesture. You know your father corresponded with King Harold when you chose this place to live. He’d be displeased if you made trouble after he went to the effort of writing letters, which you know he hates.” Well, that was a convincing argument. Fiora’s father was, bluntly, lazy, and nothing annoyed him more than wasted effort. “And if nothing else, if the merchants here take against you, the quality of your wine might decrease.”
Oh, there was a dreadful thought. “Would they really sink so low as that, do you think?”
“No one has yet plumbed the depths of man’s iniquity, I’m afraid,” Andrei opined. And then, in a more normal tone, he added, “And I think we can do better than simply ignoring her until she goes away, my lord. We will need to give it some thought, but if we were to, let’s say, mislead the young woman? We could allow her to learn that gold isn’t your primary hoard — not the real thing,” he added quickly, as Fiora’s eyes widened in panic. “Something else. You have a splendid art collection. That would make a believable red herring. Valuable enough to be convincing to those who don’t know much about dragons, but not important enough to you to be much of a loss if she manages to take something away with her.”
Fiora considered this, and then nodded. Yes, that would do nicely. He passed over Andrei’s implication that his hoard, his true hoard, wasn’t valuable. Humans simply didn’t understand, and Fiora had long since accepted that. “Very well. I’m with you so far.”
“Good,” Andrei said, nodding in his turn. “And as for the…other thing, in case they’ve heard of it. We could think of an innocuous, simple magical problem — something that would, when she reported back, perhaps even inspire sympathy. You can’t eat cheese, for example, without agonizing pain.”
“Cheese?” Fiora stood, slowly, leaning his hands on his desk and glaring at Andrei. “Cheese. You want them to think I’m cursed by cheese? You think that’d inspire sympathy? Inspire raucous laughter, more like! I’m a creature of terror and darkness, doomed to be forever alone. I’m not going to set myself up to be the laughingstock of a town full of bloody shopkeepers! I have dignity, Andrei, and no one respects a dragon whose weakness is cheese!”
“It was the first thing that came to mind, my lord,” Andrei said with a shrug, entirely unmoved by Fiora’s rage. “I missed lunch. And, you know, there are many people unable to tolerate even a taste of cheese, without feeling a certain amount of discom—”
“Not another word,” Fiora shouted, completely out of patience. “Not one more bloody word out of you! I’m going out. I need to spread my wings. You, you can write this miserable letter all by yourself. And if you so much as mention any product made from milk, I’ll hang you from the top of the turret by your toes.”
Fiora flounced out of the study, stripping off his clothing as he went in preparation for the shift into his other form. Oh, this was intolerable. With everything else he’d had to learn to bear, now this? As he reached the roof, he could still hear Andrei chuckling.
Bother, bother, bloody bother.
Chapter Two
“Pressing my shirt doesn’t seem necessary,” Deven protested to his aunt, who was hovering. As usual. “It’s only morning tea. And I see the town council every day when I pour them their ale. Too much ale, in more than a few cases.”
The offending shirt was laid out already on a table at the back of the kitchen that aunt Phina reserved for ironing and sorting the wash. It was still only two hours past dawn, but the kitchen was already hot, what with the day’s baking and the sun starting to beat down in earnest on the side of the building. Sweat trickled down Deven’s spine, and his stomach twinged with annoyance and with a reminder of his truncated breakfast. The shirt remained stubbornly limp, despite the starch he’d used on it.
“No nephew of mine is going in front of any of those nose-in-the-air assholes and making our family look low-class,” Phina said with a sniff. Deven wisely chose to start ironing again without comment. Aunt Phina never minced words, and she still resented her ejection from the town council. Who’d have known that knocking a fellow councilmember unconscious with a wooden spoon, no matter how much he deserved it, would’ve led to being barred from serving further public office? Not Phina, apparently. “Get your shirt pressed, try to do something about your bloody hair, and make it snappy.”