Dragon Business, The

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

Text copyright © 2014 WordFire, Inc.

All rights reserved.

Originally published as a Kindle Serial, November 2013.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

Published by 47North, Seattle

www.apub.com

ISBN-13: 9781477819463

ISBN-10: 1477819460

Cover design by Cyanotype Book Architects

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013954929

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

CHAPTER FORTY

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

KINDLE SERIALS

G
LORY DAYS!
A
H,
I love to relive the daring rescues, pulse-pounding adventures, and feats of bravery against towering enemies (monsters included).

I am King Cullin, renowned slayer of dragons. You might have heard of me? I’ve been featured in the songs of many a minstrel, plays by legendary bards, even a few ingenious puppet shows (although the queen thinks the puppets are silly).

My exploits are known far and wide. I make sure of it by spending a goodly sum from the royal treasury on image building and public relations—a necessary but often overlooked part of ruling. And it’s a good economic investment: if I make myself seem intimidating enough, no foolish rival will attack my kingdom. Thus, we save the significant expense, not to mention inconvenience, of a full-scale war. Being a king isn’t all about jousting and feasting; there’s a lot of administrative work even for a famous dragon slayer.

Who would doubt my claims? There’s demonstrable proof that my kingdom has been completely dragon-free since the start of my reign.

My long-suffering queen finds my exploits endearing, but she’s heard me tell the stories so many times that they’ve lost their sparkle. Nevertheless, I earned my chops as a dragon slayer, even if by a roundabout way. . . .

Tonight, my anticipation builds as the sun sets. For the excitement that I’ve planned for myself and my son, I gather appropriate disguises for our night on the town. Since the prince is thirteen and entirely unseasoned in carousing, this should be interesting. For him, a “wild night” means that he lights an extra candle to read by. That’s about to change.

He’s a thin milky-skinned boy with blond hair that would be unruly if it weren’t coiffed so often. His name is Maurice. I wanted to give him a heroic name, something edgy and powerful from the Great Sagas—but sometimes it is the better part of valor to lose the argument with your wife.

I always hoped for a son who could raise a little hell, earn a nickname like Giant-Killer, or Ogres’ Bane—even Dragon Slayer, Junior. But Maurice it is, and I intend to raise my boy right.

A father has certain obligations. The prince has to be exposed to reality to balance out his sheltered, fairy-tale life. I want him to be a good king someday: wise, skeptical (although not necessarily jaded), and not easily conned, unlike some of the rulers my friends and I duped, back in the day.

Maurice already believes too much that he shouldn’t—and I have a pathological aversion to gullibility. A year ago, I caught him reading a book of beautifully illustrated poems about fairy princes. The special limited edition was numbered and leather-bound, signed by the poet, the illustrator, and supposedly by the fairy prince himself—and my son actually believed those ridiculous stories!

The last straw, though, was last week, when a flamboyant traveler came to court wearing a purple silk shirt and the feather of some exotic bird stuck in his hat. He charmed Maurice with outrageous tales and tried to sell him a “unicorn horn with additional magical powers that were acquired when it leapt through a rainbow.” The boy was so enthralled he couldn’t open the doors of the royal treasury fast enough. I caught him just as he was about to hand over a sack of gold coins (an entire month’s worth of his allowance) to the confidence man. I ran the traveler out of the castle and all the way out of the kingdom. Maurice sulked for days afterward.

If my son doesn’t get a dose of reality soon, he’ll be eaten alive when he becomes king.

So, I’ve decided to take him down to the tavern where he can meet real people and hear real adventures. That’ll cure him of that fairy-tale nonsense before it sets in too deeply. (I’m no stranger to nonsense, having done plenty of it over the course of my own life, but at least I know the difference.)

I enter the boy’s bedchamber, sighing at the pastel window coverings, tapestries, embroidered dragons, stuffed unicorns. He looks up from a piece of parchment, and I see he is scribing the answers to one of those newly invented brainteaser crossword puzzles. Maurice enjoys the puzzles, though I find them frustrating due to the lack of standardized spelling across the land.

Smiling, I hold up the two ragged cloaks I’ve brought with me. “Time to go, son. You’ll enjoy this—I promise.” He wasn’t enthusiastic when I first made the suggestion, and he doesn’t seem enthusiastic about it now.

“Mother says it’s foolishness.”

“The queen and I come from different worlds,” I say. “I want you to learn new things, broaden your base of experience.”

“Will it make me a better king?” He seems hopeful.

I think of Reeger and the seedy crowd at the Scabby Wench, the noise, the smells, the bawdy jokes. “Getting out among real people will make you a better leader. A prince is a prince, but you need to be a
person
, too. Besides, we’ll have a good time, you and me.”

“You and
I
.”

I may be King Cullin the Dragon Slayer, but I fear my son will be known as King Maurice Who Speaks with Proper Grammar.

I hand him one of the cloaks, a startling contrast to the fine peach and mauve silks he wears. He runs his fingers along the fabric—mid-grade burlap, dyed with lampblack. “What’s wrong with the clothes I have on?” he asks.

“They look like a prince’s clothes, and that defeats the purpose. We’re going incognito.”

“Couldn’t I go incognito as a traveling prince?”

I don my cloak. “You need to get into the spirit of this adventure.” Maurice struggles into the cloak. I offer him a dried apricot from a pouch I keep with me, but he says he isn’t hungry. Nervous, I think.

We leave the prince’s chambers and walk past the coats of arms of local noble families. A blank spot on the stone wall shows where we recently took down the banner of Sir Vincent—now indelibly known as Sir Vincent the Ineffective, because of his habit of falling off his horse during jousting matches even before an opponent’s lance struck him.

I told Vincent that he can hang his brown-on-brown coat of arms in the castle hall again as soon as he earns back his honor. When Vincent asked how he could do that, I gave him Prince Maurice’s signed-and-numbered limited edition of poems and dispatched him on a quest to have the fairy prince personalize the volume. This quest serves two purposes: it will keep Sir Vincent out of my hair for months or years to come, and it will keep the silly poems away from Maurice. . .  .

Now as night falls, the town stirs. People close up shoppes, light lanterns, serve meals. The queen has her own dinner delivered to her private rooms: salad, cottage cheese, and dried apricots. She likes to eat healthy, and she’s watching her waistline.

When she hears us creeping past—well,
I
am creeping, while Maurice shuffles along—she calls out, “Don’t let any harm come to my boy, Cullin.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it, dear. I’ll keep him safe.”

“And no more than two tankards of ale, you hear?”

“The boy’s only thirteen, dear. I’ll limit him to one.”

“I don’t like ale,” Maurice says. “I’d rather have cider.”

“I was talking about
you
, husband. And don’t go filling the boy’s head with silly tales.”

“My dear, I am trying to
empty
his head of silly tales. He needs to learn how the world works.”

“Oh, you and your old comrades!” the queen calls. “Tricks and confidence schemes.”

I hurry the boy down the hall. “Like I said, the way the world works.” As I think of her sitting alone in her tower room, I call back, “Stay safe—don’t let any dragons get you.”

My starry-eyed son is a prince, he lives in a castle, and he has a lot of book learning about the kingdom he will one day rule. His knowledge of the land comes from maps, however, rather than seeing the landscape firsthand. I don’t want him to be a theoretical monarch.

He’s been taught his letters, mathematics, astrology; he knows all seventeen medicinal uses for leeches; he can write all of the alchemical symbols from memory. He also adores silly tales about honorable knights and their quests. He sighs at the thought of armies going to war over a rose petal for some princess. Such nonsense! Maurice will be a man soon, and it’s time for him to learn important lessons—like the dragon business.

As we make our way through the town streets, I reach over and mess up Maurice’s golden locks, much to his dismay. I say, “We’re on a secret mission now—this is part of your disguise. What if some rogue discovers that we’re the king and the prince? He could kidnap us, whisk us off into the woods, tie us to a tree, and hold us hostage until your mother agrees to pay him a ransom. And you can just imagine what she’d say to
that
.”

Maurice’s eyes go wide. “Why would anyone kidnap us? We’re nice people.”

“Rogues aren’t nice people, son. And if they don’t get their ransom, they might snip off one of your fingers or toes as an inducement.”

Maurice is horrified. He flexes his pale soft hand. “Which finger?”

“They’d start with the little one just to get warmed up. After that, it depends on how close it is to the weekend.”

“What does the weekend have to do with anythin
g?”

“For a weekend special they might cut off your whole hand.”

Maurice swallows hard and yanks his hood down over his messy hair.

Reaching the tavern, the two of us stop beneath a wooden placard that hangs on chains above the door. The crude painting shows a particularly ugly and blotchy woman.
The Scabby Wench
.

My old friend Reeger is the innkeeper, bartender, cook, bouncer, and best customer. His wife, Wendria, keeps a low profile, since she’s the only woman who works at the Scabby Wench. Across the land, local regulations require inns and taverns to fulfill the anticipated needs of travelers, and such needs often include prostitutional services. Reeger (and Wendria in particular) are not too keen on that, so they named their establishment the Scabby Wench as a disincentive to travelers looking for a roll in the hay. When the name of the tavern isn’t enough, one look at Wendria is usually sufficient.

Reeger’s wife has a pretty name, which is about the best that can be said for her. And cleavage. That’s not to say cleavage isn’t
enough
for some customers, especially after a few tankards of ale. Wendria has a square face, a square body, solid hips, and legs that were built for furniture—in other words, she’s a perfect match for Reeger. He’s no prize either, but he’s been my friend since the time I was Maurice’s age. Wendria makes him happy.

You don’t need to marry a princess to be happy.

I open the tavern door, and the noise knocks us backward like a storm wind. Many faces turn, give us a quick once-over, and conversation starts up again. Despite our clever disguises, most of the regulars here know who I am. Because of my upbringing, I feel more at home among common people than fancy lords and ladies anyway.

The Scabby Wench is your typical tavern, with a great room, a roaring fire, a bar featuring kegs of ale from local microbreweries, and jugs of wine. A high shelf holds bottles of expensive liqueurs for those who prefer fancy drinks like appletinis. Reeger even keeps a hollowed-out coconut for the rare occasion when someone orders an expensive tropical drink, but that’s not the usual clientele of the Scabby Wench.

It’s payday for many of the local peasants and escaped slaves, so the tavern is bustling. Crowded around one creaking plank table are a dozen mercenaries passing through from some local war, eager to spend their spoils.

Maurice stares, wide-eyed and intimidated. I point to a raw plank table and two rickety benches not far from the fireplace. It’s also close to the stage, where the minstrel will perform.

The Scabby Wench is known throughout the kingdom for its live music every Saturday night. I expect the prince will be more interested in my stories, though, because they are
true stories
about how his father gained his reputation, earned the hand of a princess, and won his kingdom. What boy wouldn’t be fascinated?

Maurice squirms on the splintery bench (a far cry from the plush cushions of the throne and his lounging chairs), and he keeps scratching in his medium-grade burlap cloak. We both shrug down our hoods.