Deven and the Dragon - Eliot Grayson Page 0,2

dreary, bothersome way to spend one’s time. Not that any other night was less than dreary and bothersome.

Bother.

Light footsteps tapped up the stairs behind him, and then a deep voice said, “My lord, I’ve sorted your correspondence. And there’s fresh coffee.”

Andrei, efficient as always. Fiora stifled a deep sigh. “There can’t possibly be anything interesting,” he said without turning. “There never is.” The sun had sunk another few degrees, and the bend in the river had fallen into the shadow of the hill to the northwest. Did he really need to go inside and read letters?

“Hmm. Today, there might be,” Andrei replied, in a carefully modulated tone that Fiora had learned spelled trouble. “You have a letter from the council of Ripley. With more seals affixed to it than I would have thought they would possess. They seem to have had it stamped by every guild in the town.”

Double bother.

“What can they possibly want? We pay them well for their goods, don’t we?”

If he’d sounded very slightly plaintive — possibly even whiny — Andrei was tactful enough to pretend not to notice. “Very well, my lord. But this — I really think you need to read it for yourself.”

Bowing to the inevitable, Fiora turned and made for the stairs. Andrei nodded respectfully and fell into step just behind him, carefully shortening his stride to match Fiora’s. As powerful as Fiora might be in his other form, he barely reached average height in this one, and Andrei’s tall, lanky body towered over him. If they could only have split their difference in height, and divided up their hair — Andrei had none, while Fiora’s blue-black masses tumbled below his shoulders — they might have made two almost normal-looking fellows.

If you didn’t look too closely at the pale azure tint to Fiora’s skin, anyhow, or his slit-pupil eyes.

Oh, there was no use. He couldn’t pass for human, and crying over it was so much wasted water.

Fiora’s study was two floors down in the tower, past his bedchamber’s suite, which occupied the level just below the roof. He’d chosen this tower to be his personal quarters for its views and for the size of the turret’s roof balcony, which allowed him to land comfortably. On days like this, he wished he’d put his study in the cellar, or somewhere else suitably gloomy. All the broad arched windows in the study accomplished was making him wish he could fling himself out of one.

The letter from the town council sat in the precise center of the perfectly polished desk, all of its seals nearly crowding out the heavily flourished lines of script. Clearly the guild of scribes had been involved, and Fiora anticipated a headache after he’d interpreted the meaning of all those loops and squiggles.

Finally letting out the sigh he’d been repressing, he dropped into his chair and began to read, absently sipping from the coffee cup set to his right hand as he did.

And then he popped bolt upright again, gripping the parchment hard enough to tear the edge, the cup clattering into its saucer as he almost dropped it.

“Andrei. Tell me I have not taken leave of my senses.”

“I’m sorry to say, my lord, I believe it is the town council who has taken leave of theirs.”

Fiora carefully relaxed his fingers, letting the parchment drop to the desk, and looked up to meet Andrei’s gaze. His servant had his hands clasped behind his back as he stood waiting, the picture of ease — except for the furrow between his brows, as expressive as Andrei ever was. It wasn’t just Fiora, then, who thought he’d never heard anything more absurd.

“A sacrifice,” Fiora growled. “A bloody rutting sacrifice. Really? What the fuck have I done to make them think I’d want one of their miserable maidens? No one’s followed that tradition for centuries. And I don’t eat people! Why would I want to, when we have a cook who can prepare such divine roast mutton?”

He broke off, panting, and dropped his head in his hands. Oh, God, but this was a disaster. One more sodding inconvenience to add to the pile that already comprised his life. He’d come to this peaceful, civilized kingdom to get away from the hidebound traditions of his homeland. (Well, and also to get away from his mother. But that was really only coincidence, as he assured her in twice-monthly letters.)

Back home, dragons were feared, respected, and treated as an entirely separate caste, except by the very highest echelons of