Bad Times in Dragon City (11 page)

I looked up into the tree and spotted some broken branches in the upper reaches. That part of the tree had also been blackened and stripped of leaves. It had to be where Fiera’s burning body had landed. 

I looked for Schaef and his carpet and saw that he’d moved several yards away from the wall. The sight of him hovering there in midair with the bulk of Dragon City falling away from him, spreading and sprawling along the mountain’s face as it went, stole the breath from my lungs and set my head spinning. 

From up there, the city looked peaceful yet familiar. I had enough distance from it that I couldn’t hear or smell it much, and it felt like I was examining a detailed map of it rather than looking down at the real thing. I knew that if I toppled off that ledge, though, it would become all too real the closer I got to it. 

I beckoned to Schaef, and he brought his carpet right over to me. “Sorry about that,” he said. “I don’t like sticking too close to the walls here. Too easy for a good wind to come along and smash us against it.” 

“Right,” I said. “Then you’re going to love this.” I pointed up to the blackened spot in the tree. “I need to get up there and get a better look.” 

The halfling adjusted his cap, sucked at his teeth, and gave me a fatalistic shrug. “If you say so.” 

Schaef brought the carpet up to the level of the burned-out part of the tree and then sidled it carefully over until I was within an easy arm’s reach of where Fiera had landed. Rather than take my chances in the broken and charcoal-dark branches, I laid down on the carpet on my stomach with my arms and head out over its side. Schaef edged me up as close as he could, holding it steady despite the buffeting winds. 

The dragonet fluttered up into the breeze for a moment and then settled down on my back, his claws clenched around my belt. It tickled a bit but made me smile. 

I spotted a shred of Fiera’s dress hanging from a snapped-off branch, and I reached out and grabbed it. It had been scorched good, but I still recognized it as having once been a part of her embroidered gown: blue with threads of silver stitched through it in a characteristic elfin pattern. I stuffed it into my shirt pocket while I poked around a bit more. 

From up here, above the burned-out spot, I could see all the way down through the tree’s canopy, right to where Ford’s body had been. It didn’t line up with the hole in the tree’s branches, though, despite the fact that I could pick out an easy path by which he could have climbed straight up through the branches from the ground. 

I pushed myself back into the center of the carpet. Without waiting for a request, Schaef pulled his ride away from the wall until we hung in the air a good fifty feet away from the cliff. The traffic up around this part of the mountain was light, nothing like the bustle of the bulk of the city below, and we had this section of the sky to ourselves, with the exception of a few golden eagles riding the updrafts nearby. 

“Find anything interesting?” Schaef bent his neck around to inspect the bit of Fiera’s dress that I’d pulled out to inspect again. 

“It wasn’t an illusion.” I held the cloth up as proof, then stuffed it back into my pocket. “Fiera really did fall into that tree.” 

“I thought you were a witness.” 

“More like a perpetrator. Yeah, I saw it all, but with all the magic floating around this city, you can’t always tell what’s real.” 

“Ain’t that the truth.” 

“Maybe that’s what someone used to get her out of that tree too,” I said. “Magic, I mean.” 

“Wouldn’t it just be easier to wrap a rope around her and pull her down? She’s already dead.” 

“Maybe, but you’d have been sure to break some branches doing that. Even if you climbed up there and carried her down, you’d still have snagged her on a few things, right?” 

“But you didn’t see any of that?” 

I shook my head and pondered it. Something odd had happened here. Ford had paid for it with his life, and if I didn’t figure out how and why, Belle might be next. 

I had lots of questions. I needed answers. The dragonet curled up in my lap, and I stroked his head. 

“Not to push you along,” Schaef said, “but I’m freezing my hairy toes off out here. What’s our next stop?” 

I craned my neck back and stared up at the still-scorched balcony from which Fiera had toppled. “Right there,” I said. “I need to talk to the Sanguignos.” 

C
HAPTER
E
IGHTEEN

“You can’t bring that thing in here,” Belle said when she found Schaef and me enjoying a glass of sunwine on her balcony. 

I glanced down at the halfling. “He’s all right,” I said. “And he’s my ride out of here.” 

“Not him.” Belle groaned, then pointed at the dragonet where he was hanging over my shoulders. “Him!” 

The dragonet looked up at her and made a confused sound. “What’s wrong with him?” I said. 

She gaped at me. “Don’t you remember what he did to my sister?” 

I scratched the dragonet at the base of his skull. “You mean when he saved our lives?” 

“That right?” said Schaef. He raised his glass toward Belle. “You got an odd way of showing your gratitude, lady.” 

“If my parents come out here and find him — they blame him for Fiera’s death — it won’t go well.” 

“Is there any chance of that?” I said. 

“Have you made any progress in finding my sister’s body?” There was a desperate edge in Belle’s voice. 

“Some,” I lied. “Are your parents around? I’d like to speak with them.” 

“No,” Belle said a bit too fast. 

“I suppose we don’t need to worry about them spotting the dragonet now, do we?” Schaef said. He grinned into his glass as he took a long pull from it. 

“They’re here,” Belle said, exasperated. “But they’re not available to speak to Max or anyone else.” 

I’d let Belle steer me away from her parents forever. It was common knowledge that they didn’t care for my kind — by which I meant non-elf — and I’d respected her wishes. I’d had a hard enough time staying together with Belle without getting her parents involved, and when it ended between us, the point was rendered moot. 

Now, though, I needed to speak with them, and I wasn’t going to let her stop me. Before I’d been afraid she’d side with them and break my heart. Now she couldn’t shatter it into any more pieces than she already had. 

“I suppose we’ll just have to sit here and enjoy the sunwine until they become available then,” I said. 

Belle’s perfect jaw took on a determined set. “You’ll run out.”  

“I’ll bet they have a whole cellar full of this stuff,” Schaef said. “We could be here for, well, hours at least, depending on how we pace ourselves.” 

“They keep the sunwine in an atrium, actually,” I said, pointing farther up the mountain into the Sanguigno estate. “We could send the dragonet up to fetch us a few bottles. I bet he wouldn’t mind.” 

“You wouldn’t dare.” Belle’s nostrils flared at me. 

A bit of my heart fused back together every time she looked at me, and I wondered if she might not be able to hurt me again after all. I knew, though, that not being able to keep her from being executed would grind those last bits of my heart into dust. I couldn’t let her throw me off. 

“Hey, the little guy’s got to earn his keep, right?” 

Belle steamed at me for a moment, working her jaw as if she couldn’t decide whether to kick me out or go straight to killing me. She wound up doing neither. 

“All right,” she said. “Come with me, but you need to leave the dragonet here.” 

I shrugged. “I can try, but he’s got a mind of his own.” I looked over at Schaef. 

He put out an arm. “I’ll do my best to keep an eye on our little friend here.” 

I shrugged the dragonet onto the halfling’s arm like I was handing over a hooded hawk to him. I just hoped the creature would stay put. I didn’t really have any control over him. 

“Hang out with Schaef,” I said to him. “I’ll be right back.” 

With that, Belle turned on her heel and strode back into the estate proper. She didn’t wait for me, and I had to scramble to catch up. She led me through her elegant family home, into parts of it I hadn’t ever seen before, and then up a staircase formed from flattened branches that stabbed out from the side of a tree like spokes from a wheel. At the top, we worked our way down a hallway created by the canopies of trees until we reached a wide and open space shaded from the southerly sun but with a spectacular view of the Dragon’s Spire above us. 

A pair of the most beautiful people I’d ever seen in any part of the city rested on a low hill made of soft moss in the center of the room, facing in the direction of the Imperial Dragon’s home. The man had Belle’s dark hair, while the woman shared her delicate features, right down to the pouty bow shape of her pink lips. They were each dressed in flowing robes that could have been their version of pajamas but were still made of finer cloth than anything I’d ever owned. 

The two of them lay there with their eyes closed, and if they were breathing, I couldn’t see it. If not for the hints of color that pinked their pale cheeks, I might have thought they were dead. A dragon essence pipe made from the finest crystal and wrapped around with gold wire sat between them. It looked well used, and thin wisps of smoke still curled from it. 

“Father. Mother,” Belle said as we emerged into the open air. “We have a visitor.” 

Their eyes fluttered open as if they were drawing themselves back to consciousness from a dreamworld far more engaging than the reality in which I lived. They pushed themselves up from their mossy bed with reluctance, as if their bones worked against their efforts. They did not turn to look at me the entire time until they were on their feet and had stood up to stare at the Dragon’s Spire and bow deep in its direction. 

When they finally turned to see me on their wobbly legs, the woman gasped in unconcealed horror, and the man’s eyes burned at me with unrestrained fury. Belle shot me a hard glance of her own, then stepped between us before anyone could speak. 

“Mother and father? Allow me to present to you my friend Max Gibson. Max? Please meet Nicoló and Chiara Sanguigno, my parents.” 

“It’s a pleasure,” I said to them with a nod. “I just wish it was under better circumstances.” 

“I wish that I could say the same,” Nicoló said. He wrinkled his nose at me as if I’d stepped in something horrible and dragged it into his home. Then I realized that it was Belle who’d dragged me into his home instead, and I was what she had stepped in. 

“Mr. Gibson,” Chiara said, a tremor in her voice. “How can we help you?” 

“I’d like to ask you about Fiera.” 

“I think you know enough about our daughter. She’s dead, and you killed her.” Nicoló spoke with such venom that I felt compelled to look for a weapon in his hand. If he’d had a pistol within reach, I’m sure he would have made good use of it. 

“Nicoló!” Chiara scolded her husband with a pained expression, then turned to me. “I apologize for my husband,” she said. “As you can imagine, these are emotional times for us, and despite our years, we have little experience with the loss of someone so close to us.” 

“I’m trying to keep you from losing Bellezza as well,” I said. 

That seemed to put Nicoló back on his heels, at least for the moment. Chiara reached out to take his hand, and the two of them steeled themselves to deal with me. I don’t know what bothered them more — the fact that I was asking them questions or that they were coming from a human — and I didn’t much care. 

“Were you here the night that Fiera died?” 

Chiara glanced at Nicoló and waited for him to nod to her before she responded. “Yes. We were much as you’ve found us right now.” 

“Is this how you spend most of your time?” 

“I don’t see how that’s any business of yours.” Nicoló stepped toward me, but Chiara grabbed his arm and pulled him back to her side. She answered me with a blush of shame and a nod. 

“We didn’t know what had happened to Fiera until the Guard arrived.” Chiara pushed back the tears welling in her eyes. “I believe you were gone by the time we made it to the balcony to have Bellezza explain what went wrong.” 

I nodded in agreement. “Why didn’t you let the Guard take the body with them right away?” 

I heard Belle’s breath catch in her chest. Her father’s mouth curled into a snarl, but Chiara spoke up before he could lay into me. 

“I suspect you’re not aware of the reverence with which our culture cares for the dead,” she said as evenly as she could manage. “It’s traditional to have the body on display in its home for three days so that friends and relatives can pay their respects before it’s taken off to be cremated.” 

“Even a body in a state like that?” I realized I was treading on thin ice here, but I had to understand this.

Chiara winced. “It’s an unusual enough situation that we don’t really have rules for it, and in any case, the tree was still burning at the time. We thought it wise to let it cool before we sent Ford down to retrieve the body.” 

“And she wouldn’t have been in that state if not for you and that blasted spawn you stole from the Emperor!” Nicoló couldn’t hold his tongue any longer. 

“If she hadn’t been trying to kill me, it wouldn’t have been necessary.” I wasn’t about to give this clown any ground, elf or no. Drugged up as he was, I might be able to draw my gun if he attacked me. I wouldn’t give myself any sort of odds of managing that against a sober elf, but he looked like he hadn’t had a clear head since before I’d been born. 

“You scummy little short-timer. To think that the whole of your life would be worth a single day of hers.” He spat at my feet and started toward me. “It’s appalling!” 

“Father!” Belle stepped between us before I could even reach for my gun. 

He shoved her aside and dove for me. I repaid his efforts with a solid right to his perfect nose. I felt the bones in it give. He sat back flat on his ass, blood streaming from his nostrils. 

Chiara fell to her knees and held her husband upright, staunching the flow of blood from his face with the sleeve of her robe. He stared at her with glassy eyes, unsure about what had just happened.