Dragon Thief (23 page)

“You have no army.”

“We have a dragon.”

 • • • 

Even rushed diplomacy is slow. I didn't mind so much as it gave me some time to recover from my injuries. Fortunately, by Lendowyn law, I was clearly the prince now I wore the dragon's skin, and there weren't any arguments about my legitimacy to negotiate. Especially since King Alfred had issued a proclamation giving the prince authority to negotiate with Dermonica back when I was still the princess on a diplomatic mission, and that order had never been rescinded.

Over the next two days or so, several couriers were sent to the Fell River bearing orders from the Dermonica duke, changing status from occupation to alliance. I know that, for one, Prince Oliver—who was commanding troops in the field—was not pleased with this development. The duke read his son's first response at one of our meetings, and after hearing the most profanity-laden official document I'd ever heard tell of, the duke waved the parchment and said, “Now you see what
I
have to deal with.”

Grace and the girls, who had by default become my royal honor guard, weren't pleased either, though they expressed it in a less profane manner. Grace spoke for everyone when she said, “So no treasure for us.”

“What did you expect?”

“
Something
in return for everything we've gone through.”

“Believe me,”
I told her.
“The world doesn't work that way.”

I returned to the damaged Lendowyn Castle, half-healed, treaty in one taloned hand and the rest of the combined army of seven kingdoms in tow. I didn't receive a hero's welcome, but given I was no hero I didn't mind. The remains of the Lendowyn court met me in the rubble-strewn courtyard. King Alfred appeared shell-shocked as he received me, Lucille just looked annoyed. They were flanked by Sir Forsythe and Brock, who seemed to be the only members of the royal guard to have survived. There were another dozen troops wearing the colors of Lendowyn, but they seemed to be mostly the remnants of Weasel's thief army.

It sank in that the girls and I now probably represented half of Lendowyn's military force—more than half once I finished healing.

I presented the treaty to King Alfred. He read it with a shaking hand, then said, “What have you done to us, Frank?”

“I'm sorry, Your Highness.
”

“Look around you. My castle is in ruins, my kingdom is overrun by foreign armies. I treated you like my daughter, and look at the destruction you brought down on the house that took you in.” He crumpled the treaty in his hand. “And you have the gall to sign a peace in my name? To commit me to action with the men who breached my walls and killed my men?”

My heart sank, more so because every word he spoke rang true. I had unleashed this on Lendowyn. I lowered my head and swallowed a ball of brimstone that had caught in my throat.

King Alfred threw the treaty on the ground and leveled a finger at me. “This will not stand. It is my kingdom, you quit any claim to it when you abandoned it in favor of that Grünwald pretender. You are no longer my daughter, or my son, or my dragon!”

“Father—” Lucille said.

“I banish you from this land, quit this kingdom and never return.”

“Father, stop it!”

“This is a matter of State, please hold your tongue, daughter.”

The courtyard reverberated with the sound of Lucille's slap. It snapped the king's head so hard that his crown went askew.

“L-Lucille! How dare you!”

Lucille placed herself between me and the king and said, “How dare you! Suddenly I'm a useless appendage to the throne again?”

“No, that's not—”

“Hold my tongue?
Hold my tongue?!
”
She grabbed the edges of the
king's robe and pulled him down so he was facing her. “You are about to banish my wife—husband—spouse. I'm supposed to hold my tongue? You're about to trample a treaty out of pride when it's the only thing that will allow this kingdom to continue to exist? I'm supposed to hold my tongue?”

“Daughter, please—”

“I don't breathe fire anymore, but that does
not
mean I'm the same damsel in distress you pimped out in payment for her own rescue. I will
not
hold my tongue. Especially since you are to blame for this mess as much as Frank is.”

“W-What?”

“What?”

“As much as
I
am.” She let the king go and reached down to pick up the treaty. “You think Frank wanted this? You think he risked his life coming back here because this was his intent? All he did was leave, and he left because we treated him the way
you
used to treat
me
. The way you just treated me. The blood and death and destruction? That's the fault of one bastard aristocrat who thinks his privileged blood justifies
anything
. If Frank is culpable for Prince Bartholomew's actions, so are we for driving Frank away in the first place.”

“
Lucille—”

She spun around and leveled a finger at me. “You hold your tongue!”

I shut up.

She faced her father and slapped him in the chest with the crumpled treaty. “Now, if you want our kingdom to go down in flames tear up the treaty, banish Frank. You know as well as I that it will be your last official act.”

King Alfred reached up and took the parchment.

“If you want to be a king,” Lucille said, “forgive him.”

He watched as Lucille stepped away from between us. “You've changed,” he said.

“No,” Lucille said, “I just haven't changed
back
.”

King Alfred sighed at the parchment. “My daughter, much as it pains me to admit it, has a point.”

 • • • 

When the combined forces of eight kingdoms marched across the frontier into Grünwald, I had a bird's-eye view of the destruction that one bastard aristocrat had left in his wake. It was enough to make me forget how heights made me sick to my stomach.

Seeing the damage, it was hard to imagine that he thought of Grünwald as
his
kingdom in the same way that Alfred or Lucille thought of Lendowyn.

We reached the capital of Brightwood, and it was that much worse. A third of the city was in ruins. I flew over rubble and pillars of smoke as my stomach tied itself in a knot. The sick feeling was less for the ground whipping by so far below, and more for the fact that I was looking at the efforts of one man who thought himself entitled to the Grünwald crown.

Someone, in Lucille's words, “whose privileged blood justifies
anything
.” I felt a surge of shame for having once placed Lucille in the same category.

Snake was in a class by himself.

Then, below me, I saw the shell that used to be a tavern named The Three-Legged Boar.

I didn't know if Evelyn had ever returned from our aborted tryst in Dermonica, and in some part of my mind I
did
know that it was unlikely that the serving staff would remain in a tavern as a hostile army descended on the city.

But that thought didn't prevent me from screeching a sky-splitting roar and falling on Snake's army in a brimstone-spewing fury. I introduced the allied army's attack by tearing a smoking trench through the forces massed at the castle walls. As I swooped by, a pair of burning siege towers collapsed in an eruption of smoke, flame, and glowing embers.

Before Snake's army could reorient itself to concentrate return fire on me, the allied army broke upon their flanks. As the men laying siege were trapped between Dermonica and its allies, and the castle walls, I flew down their line and rained hell down on them.

For a time, I think I went a little crazy. It wasn't the troops I attacked, it was Snake. Below me, every enemy solider was Prince Bartholomew by proxy. Every one of them carried the responsibility for Snake's evil and bore the weight in dragon fire.

Blind fury and dragons are two things that really shouldn't be mixed together.

In retrospect, despite my less-than-tactical thought process at the time, I managed—by contrast with the debacle at Lendowyn Castle—to prove that a dragon was much more effective militarily when supporting a large attacking ground force.

Fortunately for my state of mind, the dragon's body was still recovering from the last two battles, and my ability to breathe fire was exhausted after a few passes over the enemy. Once the ability to literally vent my anger had dissipated, I had a chance to come halfway back to my senses.

I
wasn't
attacking Snake. I knew better than that. The bastard prince was here somewhere, directing the action against King Dudley, but probably not from the smoldering forces below me. I swooped up to get a good view of the surrounding area.

The southern side of the castle was a mess. Dermonica's allies were wrapping a crescent-shaped front against Snake's forces, pinning more than half the defenders between their swords and the castle walls. Smoke still rose from the trenches I had burned through their ranks.

I told myself that the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach was the height again.

This felt wrong. Snake had planned this attack for years, and it amounted to throwing a large army at the castle walls and hoping for the best? That seemed very conventional for someone who managed a coup in a neighboring country on the spur of the moment.

Ever since I traded places with him, I've been looking at the wrong thing, making the wrong assumptions.

So look away from the battle.

I banked away from the south side of the castle to orbit above, looking at the ground to see anything we were missing. Anything
I
was missing.

I'm supposed to be like Snake,
I thought. The jewel and the wizard said so. If that was the case, however much I might loathe the idea, I should be able to think like him.

So if I had years to plan this, with a thief's tactics, no scruples, and unlimited funds, how would I pull this off?

I'd want to breach the wall before Dudley knew there was a war.

I'd be inside already.

Oh crap . . .

With my view up on high, I was able to find what I looked for in just a few moments. To the north, one small section of town had been thoroughly devastated, covering just a block or two that happened to be completely removed from all the other damage. Snake's army had come from the south to lay siege to the castle, so there was no reason for any fighting past the castle. But there were the smoking ruins, still crawling with Snake's men, nearly half a mile north of the main battle.

And in the center of the misplaced rubble, a blacksmith's shop stood, completely undamaged.

As I swooped by, I also saw a column of Snake's army, in full retreat from the collapsing siege. They marched double-time into the occupied area around the blacksmith's shop, and, as I watched, they disappeared into it.

Forty or fifty men vanished into the shop, and none came out.

Time, funds, a thief's sensibilities, and no scruples . . .

The first three and a few guys with shovels gave you a route into the castle. The last gives you an army of paid cannon fodder to soak up enemy damage just to distract the defenders.

“No! This isn't going to happen!
” That got everyone's attention. Arrows started flying in my direction, but I was too high up. The few arrows that hit me had lost so much momentum that they bounced off of my scales.

I still had no fire, so I swooped down to the edge of the field of wreckage they occupied, grabbing a large chunk of still-intact stone wall. It started crumbling in my arms almost immediately, but I held on until I was a few hundred feet above the blacksmith's shop. Then I let it go.

It crashed through the roof in a cloud of stone-dust and mortar. The floor caved in so that when the dust cleared below me, I saw a deep crater ringed by splintered wood and four sagging walls.

Everyone below me now knew their secret was out, and an implausible number of arrows and quarrels sprouted from the ground toward me. Several found their mark as I kept flying upward, out of range.

I'm not going to manage that again.

Fortunately, I wasn't in this alone.

I sucked in a breath and bellowed toward the castle.
“The siege is a fraud! They've already tunneled inside! The entrance is here!”
I bellowed it again, out over the battlefield, yelling my long throat raw.

My voice carried.

Only a few minutes of calling attention to myself—something the dragon was good at—and I saw a cluster of the allied forces break from the east flank of the battle to head north, toward me.

The thing about mercenary armies is that their loyalty can be bought, but only to a point. Once it becomes unclear if their employer will survive to pay them, they become a bit more independent. They start considering things like the strength of the opposing force, the dragon flying above them, and the fact that a good part of their number was about to be trapped in a confined space underground, caught between two armies.

Below me, Snake's men scattered.

I flew south, over the allied forces and over the castle walls. I continued yelling down,
“Dudley! Your brother's already tunneled inside! Forget the siege, send your forces down and you can trap him now! Do you hear me? Bartholomew's inside your walls!”

I yelled down as the Dermonica forces overran the remains of the tunnel entrance, until my voice went the way of my fire. But it proved the most effective military use of a dragon's ability I had seen to date. The siege collapsed below me as I swooped above the castle, smiling inside at the end of the largest part of the fighting.

I got you, you bastard.

Then the thought gripped me.

Snake would be the last person to bravely go down with his troops. He'd probably look for an escape the moment he saw how bad things were going. And there was at least one escape route I knew of that Dudley didn't.

He could be slipping away right now . . .

“No, you're not escaping this.”
My voice was hoarse, dry and barely comprehensible. But even as I said it, I remembered something, and I think my lizard face managed a grin.
“This ends. Now!”

I swooped down toward the western edges of Brightwood that had so far escaped the battle.