Garruk (Dragon Master Daddies #3)

Chapter 1

Lark

The stink was always the same.

Bodies, blood and coal dust.

Bodies of the miners and stonemasons who didn’t have time to wash the sweat from themselves. Blood, from the painful wounds some had to suffer as part of their toil. Coal dust from mines, deep below.

Bells marked the shift change, and a flood of people pushed into the market at the Carver’s Wheel. I stood among them, slim and meek, almost not there at all. They pressed up against me like a living wall.

I kept my hand pressed to my ribs, feeling Mica's button eyes through the worn fabric of my coat, her cotton-stuffed weight the only solid thing in a world that wouldn't stop spinning from hunger.

Six days since I'd had meat. Three since bread that wasn't mostly sawdust. The crowd's movement made my empty stomach clench, but I forced myself to focus, to hunt.

Miners pushed past, their faces drawn tight with exhaustion, copper coins clutched in scarred fists like prayer beads.

The lucky ones—the ones who'd made quota—headed for Kerrik's stall where black bread sold for two knuckles a heel.

The rest shuffled toward the credit posts, where tomorrow's labor got traded for today's watery ale.

I'd tried that game once. The interest alone would've killed me slower than starvation.

That's when I spotted him—my mark. Fat where everyone else carved themselves down to bone, wearing Zarathos colors like armor.

The purple and black of his coat marked him as management, probably collections or enforcement.

Rovik, my tired brain supplied after a moment.

I'd seen him before, making his rounds through the lower markets, thick fingers heavy with rings that could buy a month of meals.

He stood near the protection stalls, arguing with a foreman whose helmet still dripped condensation from the deeps.

Their voices carried over the crowd's mumble, something about new rates, about the Merchant Lords wanting their cut increased.

The foreman spat to the side, careful to miss Rovik's polished boots. Smart man.

"Twenty percent is robbery," the foreman said, his voice gravelly from years of mine dust.

Rovik laughed, a sound like grinding gears. "Twenty percent is mercy. You want to explain to Lord Solmar why his shipments are light? Why the territories aren't producing?"

The fat man's coat swung open as he gestured, and I saw it—inner left pocket, an oil-wrapped package. Flat, rectangular. Documents most likely, or currency notes if I was lucky. Either would trade well in the shadow markets. Worth the risk, worth the hunger that would follow if I had to run hard.

I started mapping my approach, timing Rovik's breathing, the rhythm of his gestures. Three minutes maybe before their business concluded. Enough time to position myself, to—

Movement caught my eye. Small, desperate, wrong.

A boy, maybe eight winters though hunger made aging impossible, was working the vegetable stall two rows over.

His arms were just sticks wrapped in skin, joints bulging like knots in rope.

He moved with that particular careful shuffle that meant his body was eating itself, burning through its last reserves.

I knew that shuffle. Had suffered it myself more than once.

He was trying for the turnips—the moldy ones at the bottom that Harik sold for half a copper to the truly desperate. His technique was shit. Hands shaking too hard for proper theft, movements too obvious. A corpse trying to steal from a vulture.

Harik saw him. Of course he did. The vendor's hand went to the studded strap at his belt, the one he no doubt used on rats and thieves with equal enthusiasm.

I should have looked away. Should have focused on Rovik, on the package that could keep me fed for a week. The boy wasn't my problem. In Hammerdeep, in the Carver's Wheel, nothing was anybody's problem except their own survival.

In theory, Dragon Lord Garruk the Heartbroken was the protector and Lord Regent of the city.

In practice, thugs and gangs from Zarathos were the law.

There were stories that Garruk walked the streets in human form, though no one knew why.

Stories or no, a dragon hadn’t been seen over the skies of Hammerdeep for generations.

And no dragon, meant no fear. And no fear meant no law.

"Stealing from me, you little shit?" Harik's voice cut through the market noise.

The boy froze. Didn't run—probably couldn't, not with legs that trembled just from standing. The strap came free of Harik's belt with a whisper of leather on leather.

My feet were moving before I'd made the choice. Mica bounced against my ribs, a soft reminder of another child who'd needed protection once. "Stupid," I whispered to her. "We're being stupid."

I stumbled into Harik's table at full shuffle-speed, shoulder catching the wooden edge hard enough to send everything sliding. Turnips rolled like severed heads across the cobbles. Harik's strap cracked against wood instead of bone as he tried to catch his falling merchandise.

"Watch where you're—" Harik started, but I was already moving, using the crowd's flow to drift past the boy. My hand found his, pressed three of my five remaining copper coins into his palm. His fingers were cold as winter stone.

"Culvert seven," I whispered without looking at him. "Clean water there. Tell them Lark sent you."

I felt him hesitate, probably wondering if this was some new trap. Then his fingers closed around the copper and he melted into the crowd with the practiced ease of someone who'd learned to disappear. Good. He might last til the end of the week.

Three coppers. I'd just given away three coppers I couldn't spare to a boy I'd never see again. Two knuckles left to my name, and my mark was concluding his business, the foreman walking away with shoulders bent under the weight of new debt.

"Stupid girl," I told Mica through the fabric of my coat. "Going soft will kill us."

But the boy's arms had shown bone. White bone through skin so thin it looked like wet paper. Nobody should die that young, that hungry. Not when fat men like Rovik wore enough wealth on their fingers to feed the entire Wheel for a month.

I forced myself back to the hunt. Rovik was lighting a pipe now, the expensive kind with the carved bowl that marked him as someone with leisure time.

The package still bulked his inner pocket.

He'd turn to spit in a moment—the black-leaf tobacco he favored always made men spit—and that would be my window.

The crowd thickened as more miners emerged from the shaft towers, their headlamps creating a constellation of dying lights in the permanent twilight of the Wheel.

I let myself drift with them, becoming another tired body heading home.

My stomach cramped, reminding me that three coppers might have meant the difference between eating tonight and not eating for another two days.

But I'd seen too many children's bodies stacked behind the rendering shops. Small bundles that had once been someone's brother, daughter, friend. If I died hungry because I'd saved one skeletal boy, at least Mica and I would have that. One good thing in all this shit and stone.

Time to work.

I became what the Wheel needed me to be—another tired woman heading home from the sorting tables, shoulders rolled forward, feet dragging just enough to sell the performance.

The shuffle came naturally—my body already wanted to move that way, muscles weak from hunger, joints protesting every step. Method acting for the starving thief.

Rovik drew deep on his pipe, chest expanding with expensive smoke. The crowd flowed around him like water around a stone, nobody willing to brush against Zarathos purple. Nobody except me.

I timed my approach to his breathing, a rhythm I'd learned picking pockets since I was twelve.

Inhale meant tension, muscles ready to react.

Exhale meant release, a moment when the body went soft and the mind drifted.

The oil-wrapped package pressed against his ribs through the coat fabric, its edges sharp enough to define.

Documents then, not currency. Still worth the risk if they contained shipping manifests or debt records.

Three steps. Two.

His exhale came with a cloud of black smoke that stank of burnt sugar and privilege.

I stumbled—a perfect pantomime of exhaustion—and caught myself against his arm.

My right hand grabbed his sleeve for balance while my left slipped inside his coat, fingers already mapping the package's shape.

Waxed canvas, sealed with cord rather than wax. Interesting.

Then, he spat.

"Pardon, sir," I mumbled, keeping my eyes down, playing the submissive drone. "The crowds, I didn't—"

My fingers closed on the package, sliding it free with the fluid motion that years of practice had carved into muscle memory. Quick as breathing, smooth as water. I was already shifting my weight to move away when I felt it—resistance.

A thread. One of Mica's loose threads from her torn seam had somehow caught on something. I pulled gently, not wanting to make the motion obvious, but the thread held. Through my coat's fabric, I felt Mica shift, sliding toward my pocket's opening.

Rovik's head snapped down.

The thread stretched between us like grim umbilical, caught on his largest ring—a chunk of black iron carved with the Zarathos seal.

His eyes followed it from his hand to my pocket, where Mica's grey fabric showed just visible at the edge.

Time crystallized, hanging between us like the thread itself.

His eyes met mine. Pale blue, like ice over deep water, with that particular intelligence that came from years of catching desperate people doing desperate things.

He didn't see me, not really—just another thief, another piece of Wheel trash trying to survive.

But he saw what I was, what I was doing, and his mouth opened to—

"Thief!"