Chapter 51
SIR EUSTACE ISN’T VERY EMPATHETIC, BUT HE TRIES . . . AND REGRETS IT
Sir Eustace’s iridescent eyes snapped open when a shadow passed over his tent. Setting his teeth, he blustered a small sigh. Gone was his dream of Lagunas’ palm trees, swim-up bars, and restorative mud baths. Oh, how his sabbatical there had ruined him for the rest of the world.
Cradling Duchess, who was curled up on his chest, he carefully hinged upright just as a soft but heavy whump sounded outside.
The ochre shadow, which clearly belonged to the Great Red of the tower, paced back and forth across the yellow canvas of his tent.
Odd. The enchanted mongoose dung should repel him and anything like him itching to get its paws on his bezoars.
Well, if the dragon was somehow immune, the enchanted eagle talons guarding the chalice would skewer him in the tender bits.
After a few laborious seconds of nothing interesting happening whatsoever, Sir Eustace said flatly, “What is it, Dragon?”
“Oh,” the dragon exclaimed, as if surprised to be noticed. The beast was five hundred pounds—there was nothing subtle about him. “Is, um, Duchess with you?”
Sir Eustace regarded the fluffy white Persian in his lap. “Are you?” he murmured.
The cat meowed.
The ministry official released a world-weary sigh and reluctantly told the dragon, “Yes.”
“May I come in?”
“How—”
Dirk the Dangerous shoved his head between the tent flaps, the canvas tangling in the crown of yellow horns upon his brow.
“Cinders and dragon turds! Get your whole head in here, Dragon. You’re bringing in the sand.” Sir Eustace had been very careful to cover every inch of the sand at the bottom of his tent with the plushest rugs.
The dragon inched forward until the flaps pulled free of his horns and layered neatly on either side of his thick neck. He gave them a meek blink.
Duchess trilled and hopped off the ministry official’s lap. With her fluffy tail held very high, she padded over to the dragon and rubbed her body first one way along his muzzle, then the other.
“Ooo, stay right there,” Dirk the Dangerous said when the cat had come in front of his nostrils. He breathed in deeply, almost sucking her fur into his nose. “Oh, that’s the stuff.”
Sir Eustace had to agree. There was just something exceptionally pleasant and calming about sniffing your favorite cat.
“Are you well, Dragon?” he asked without the slightest interest in the answer.
“Well, I have been better, that’s for sure. Bradley and I had a fight yesterday, sorta, and—”
“Well enough to leave now, I mean. You had your cuddles and your sniff. You shouldn’t be here, remember?
I can’t very well maintain my third-party observership if you keep coming here to socialize.
And this is my private time.” Sir Eustace rose, fastened the top two buttons of his shirt, and adjusted his cufflinks. “I’ll show you out.”
“No, please! Wait. I have a question about the DDP.”
Sir Eustace paused from retrieving his suit jacket. “If it’s about the Discount Damsel Protocol, I would be happy to assist.”
“We haven’t had any Heroes in, like, a week.”
“Six days, thirteen hours, and seventeen minutes, but go on.”
“Uh, right. That’s the longest stretch we’ve gone without having a rescue attempt.”
“So far these have been statements, not questions. What do you want, Dragon?”
Duchess cuffed Sir Eustace’s ankle then, a soft yowl emanating from her throat.
“I’m sorry, sweetling. I just have the reputation and propriety of an entire ministry to uphold.” Sir Eustace inclined his head towards the dragon. “Apologies. If you could perhaps just cut to the chase?”
“How long do I have to wait?” Dirk wailed. “I’m bored out of my mind! Bradley’s always studying, Millie’s learning how to climb ropes but I’m not allowed to help her, and my room is—” He shuddered. “When is someone going to come and fight me? Did Raegon have to wait this long? G’Serah? Tamzerin?”
“There is always a slump around the halfway mark,” he answered briskly. “It’s completely natural. Good day.”
Duchess hissed.
Sir Eustace quickly reached out a hand and patted the dragon’s snout, his pointy nails clicking against the hard red scales. “There, there.”
He cleared his throat, withered under the baleful blue gaze of the alabaster goddess, and sagged on his cot.
“The initial excitement has worn off,” he explained.
“Word is still spreading to the furthest reaches of the continent and the outlying island kingdoms. It will take time for the Heroes of those lands to travel here. And the sandstorms might delay them further. Your next Hero could be weeks away. But fret not, Dragon, there is always a surge near the end. You’ll probably have more Heroes to fight than you’ll know what to do with.
So keep training every day, even when you’re bored. ”
Sir Eustace looked to Duchess then, and the cat seemed satisfied enough with his answer . . . to saunter over to the golden chalice and mew expectantly. Her tail flicked against the bowl in another prompt.
“But, darling, those are my bezoars,” he balked.
Her ears flattened, and her tail brushed against the chalice bowl in a manner that was much more “swat” than it was “flick.”
“What’s a bezoar?” Dirk asked. “Are they snacks?”
“They’re not snacks,” Sir Eustace said sharply.
“But they are edible. To liken them to a multivitamin would do them a great disservice. A bezoar is the ultimate adaptogen, treasured by dragons and dragonkin. It can digest poison, relieve the effects of nutrient imbalance, enable one to withstand harsh environments, heal—”
Duchess gave the chalice lid an impatient bat of a velveted paw. The next time, she would use her claws.
“And apparently my manners are lacking,” Sir Eustace grumbled. He lifted the lid and extracted a bezoar with a pair of gilded tongs. The rest of them wiggled to get free and wander off.
“Are you sure they’re not jumping beans?”
“You’d think an official from the Ministry of Folklore would know a bezoar from a jumping bean, Dragon.”
“You can call me Dirk.”
Sir Eustace rolled his eyes and capped the chalice.
He approached with the bezoar held outstretched in the tongs as if it were a feral ossuary pixie at the end of a catch pole.
“Before I give you this, tell me, what kind of Great Red are you, Dirk the Dangerous? How are you not repulsed by the mongoose scat?”
Something in Sir Eustace’s narrowed gaze and tone of voice alerted Dirk that he should’ve had an adverse reaction to the glowing pink mounds surrounding the tent. “I was that bored,” he insisted.
“Are you saying your ennui is so intense that the stench equivalent of a thousand mongoose dens wasn’t enough to deter you?”
Dirk slumped against the carpets and looked appropriately listless.
“I suppose I am. But perhaps one of those bezoars would help.” He tried not to sound too excited.
Though Dirk much preferred his food good and dead before he ate it, the bezoar smelled so delicious that he supposed he wouldn’t mind it bouncing about in his gullet on the way down to his stomach.
“Great Reds rarely require bezoars unless they are spending inordinate amounts of time in subzero temperatures.” Sir Eustace recoiled a step. “You’re not still sick with the flu, are you? I told you to get that looked at.”
“I don’t have the flu,” Dirk insisted, scratching behind an ear. “But I would like one of those. They smell positively scrumptious.”
The ministry official’s slitted eyes narrowed to cracks that barely revealed his iridescent irises. “They have the most offensive smell of anything on this earth, including durian fruit. They only smell pleasant to those in dire need of its qualities. Are you sure you’re not sick?”
“Do you want me to open my mouth and say ‘ah’ or something? And if it’s so repugnant, why aren’t you puking? Are you sick?”
“Of course not.”
“Then why do you have them?”
“Because I am Komodo, obviously.”
Dirk blinked. “You—”
The strange little man was nothing like Dirk had pictured a Komodo monk to be, but maybe not all Komodo were monks, and maybe it was only the monks who guarded the Library of Xandria? The princess had mentioned that some Komodo were Type-A personalities, which Sir Eustace certainly was.
“A Komodo?” Sir Eustace’s expression flatlined as he swept back his hair and revealed two tiny horns protruding from his golden forehead. “Dragonkin? A hybrid? And as such we need bezoars more frequently to maintain our equilibrium with whatever environment we find ourselves in.”
His eyes narrowed. “Komodo oversee the birth of every new Draco typhonus clutch so you bloodthirsty brutes don’t mistake us for food when you grow up. How do you not know this? Are you from a rogue clutch?”
Dirk snapped his large jaws. “My parents were properly mated, thank you very much. And I was born into a swarm, not a clutch.”
Duchess growled, but whether it was from Dirk’s snark, Sir Eustace’s suspicions, or the stench of the bezoar, no one would know because neither of them understood the language of cats, except for what she wanted them to know, of course.
“Sorry—” Dirk stopped short as he felt a scale give way under his scratching claws.
It sprung free of his hide with a muted pop, and it was only sheer luck he got it trapped between two toes before the cat or the ministry official could see what it was.
The scrambling of his paw to catch the scale did crash into the nearby bookcase, knocking Sir Eustace’s reading material all over the rugs, which everyone definitely noticed.
Dirk winced. “Sorry. Again.”
“Open up,” Sir Eustace said snippily, and tossed the bezoar into Dirk’s mouth.
The dragon chewed with relish. “Mmm. Thank you.”
“You’re”—the ministry official forced out the second word—“welcome.”
He settled the tongs beside the chalice and flopped down upon his cot. Duchess immediately sprang into his lap and started kneading. He smoothed a small hand from the crown of her head to the tip of her tail. “If it makes you happy, I suppose,” he murmured.
After a minute, he lifted his gaze to the dragon, who hadn’t moved. His annoying scratching had subsided for now, at least. “Is there something else?”
“Oh! Uh, no. I mean, I could stay for afternoon tea if you’re not otherwise engaged—”
“Go, Dragon.”
Dirk the Dangerous puffed a tendril of smoke from each nostril. Smacked his lips. “Fine. Thank you, I suppose. Enjoy your lovely tent and all your delicious snacks and whatnot. Would it be possible to get another bezoar to go?”
A scream sounded from the tower.
“Millie!” Dirk reared back, horns catching in the tent flaps and ripping them clean off their seams.
“Confound it!” Sir Eustace managed to snatch the flaps before the dragon or the wind could make off with them. But the damage to his tent wasn’t the only thing ruffling his feathers. He tossed the fabric into his tent and darted out into the sand.
“Who decided to attack the tower without checking in first?” he hollered. “Don’t you dare abscond with the princess before I get your name! I have history to record. And that goes for you, too, Dragon. I will dock you so many points if you eat him before I get his name, you don’t even know!”
Cinders and dragon turds, he hated this assignment.