The Dragon's Egg (Dragonfall Book 1) Read online

  “Wow, those are hard to come by, and expensive too,” he said as he tossed one into his mouth.

  “Ben gave them to me as a gift,” she said. “It was very thoughtful of him.”

  Frank pursed his lips and looked down, shaking his head.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Oh, it’s nothing, Britney. I’ll take care of it.”

  She frowned at him. “Take care of what?”

  “Really, I shouldn’t say anything.”

  She stopped him with a hand on his arm, turning him to look at her. “Well, now you have to tell me.”

  He hesitated for a moment. “It’s just that my grandfather is struggling to keep his store open, and Ben keeps giving things away.”

  “Oh no …”

  “I shouldn’t have said anything. My grandfather is a proud man. He’d be mortified if he knew that I’d told you this. Please don’t say anything.”

  “Of course not. Your grandfather has always been so nice to me. I feel terrible. You have to let me pay for these.”

  “No, I couldn’t. This isn’t your doing.”

  She dug into her bag and came up with two drakes, holding them out to Frank.

  He shook his head, holding up both hands, palms out. “You don’t have to do this. I’ll fix it. I’ve been doing odd jobs on the side for a while now to cover for Ben’s misguided generosity. I don’t blame him. He means well … he just doesn’t have much business sense.”

  She looked at him sternly. “Nonsense. I insist,” she said, taking his hand and putting the two coins into his palm, then closing his fingers around them. “Give these to your grandfather.”

  He looked down sadly for a moment before looking back at her. “Are you sure? I mean, I didn’t want to make you feel bad. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  “Of course you should have … you’re protecting your family. Don’t ever apologize for that.”

  Frank closed his eyes and bowed his head for a moment before nodding and slipping the coins into his pocket. “You’re right. Thank you. I’ll make sure my grandfather gets these.”

  “Good, and you should talk to your brother about this.”

  Frank nodded again before turning back to the cart.

  “We shouldn’t keep your mother waiting on these supplies.”

  They walked in silence for a few moments, moving to the side of the road so a horse-drawn wagon could pass over the broken and uneven pavement.

  “So, what’s the occasion?” Frank asked, nodding toward the supply cart.

  “Oh, my father has just been accepted as an advocate by the Dragon Guard. He’s throwing them a dinner party to celebrate.”

  “Well, that is exciting,” Frank said with his most charming smile.

  She nodded. “He’s going to hire me as an assistant to help with all the new business.”

  “Wow, he must be so proud of you.”

  She grimaced, looking down at the road. “I don’t know about that. I mean, I know he loves me, but I think he really wanted a son.”

  “Don’t be silly. I’m sure he thinks the world of you.”

  “It’s just … I can’t stand the idea that I might disappoint him.”

  Frank chuckled, shaking his head. “I can’t imagine that ever happening.”

  “You don’t know my father. He’s driven, and very demanding.”

  “Sounds like he’s a businessman who wants to succeed so he can take care of his family. Can’t blame a man for that.”

  “Oh, I don’t blame him for anything. It’s just that I really want to earn his respect, you know?”

  “You will. I have complete confidence in you.”

  She blushed slightly. “I wish I did.”

  “Not everyone can be naturally confident,” Frank said. “But you can learn to be.”

  “I hope you’re right,” she said.

  “Of course, I’m right,” he said with his cockiest grin.

  She giggled, pointing to a big house just up the road.

  “This is it,” she said. “We’ll take the supplies around back to the servants’ entrance.”

  Frank took in the house—two stories and at least five bedrooms. It was well maintained and clean, unlike so many of the houses and buildings in town that had been abandoned during the Dragon War and allowed to deteriorate.

  “Nice place. Your father must do well for himself.”

  “He makes good money, but he’s always at work.”

  “Well, now that he’s going to hire you, you’ll be able to spend more time with him.”

  “I hadn’t thought about that. It will be nice to see him more often.”

  Frank stopped the cart outside the back door. “I should probably load these in by hand. My cart wheels are muddy, and I don’t want to track dirt into your mother’s kitchen.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” a middle-aged woman said from the doorway. “I just got my kitchen clean from the mud the dairyman tracked in.”

  “Hello, Mother,” Britney said. “Frank was kind enough to make delivery right away.”

  Britney’s mother looked Frank over and glanced at her daughter, nodding ever so slightly to herself.

  Frank offered his best smile, but then quickly replaced it with a deferential nod when she didn’t smile back.

  “Mrs. Harper, it’s a pleasure to meet you,” he said, as earnestly as he could manage. “Where would you like me to put your order?” He picked up a parcel from the cart and waited for her answer.

  She appraised him again for several moments before waving for him to follow her into the kitchen, where several servants were busy making preparations for the dinner party. She led him to a storeroom and pointed to an empty table.

  “Put everything there. My staff will sort through it,” she said, stepping aside to let him by.

  Frank was careful to place the items on the table gently and precisely, studiously ignoring Mrs. Harper’s scrutiny and going about the task with care and diligence. He worked quickly and had the cart unloaded in a matter of minutes, all under the watchful eye of Britney’s mother.

  After the last trip, he checked all of the items, verifying that everything on the list was accounted for. Then he turned toward the door.

  “You’re not the usual delivery boy,” Mrs. Harper said.

  “No ma’am, that would be my brother Ben. He watches the store in the morning and normally makes his deliveries in the afternoon. But Britney said you were in a hurry, so I offered to make a special trip.”

  She pursed her lips, as if she were looking for a reason to disapprove but couldn’t find one. “Well, I appreciate the extra effort. Here’s a coin for your trouble.”

  “Oh, thank you, ma’am, I couldn’t take that. I’m just doing my job.”

  She gave him a withering glare. “Let me give you a piece of advice, young man. When someone offers you a kindness, accept it graciously.”

  Frank looked down sheepishly for a moment. “My apologies, ma’am. I didn’t mean to offend. Thank you so much for the gratuity.”

  “That’s better,” she said, dropping the slightly bluish coin into his hand.

  “Thank you again, ma’am … for your business and for your kindness,” Frank said. Then he turned to Britney. “I enjoyed walking with you. I wish there was some way we could continue our conversation.”

  “Me too,” Britney said with a smile.

  “Well, in that case,” Frank said, turning back to Mrs. Harper, “There’s a diner not too far from here that makes the best apple pie in town. May I ask permission to take your daughter to lunch? It would give me something worthwhile to spend this coin on.”

  Mrs. Harper frowned, pursing her lips again.

  “Please, Mother. All of my chores are done.”

  She looked from Britney to Frank and back. “Very well, but come home straightaway. I have more for you to do this afternoon.”

  Britney leaned in and kissed her mother on the cheek, momentarily dispelling some of the woman’s sternne
ss as she offered her daughter a genuine smile.

  “I’ll walk her home right after lunch, ma’am. You have my word.”

  “See that you do,” she said, donning her mask of authority again.

  Chapter 3

  Ben sat on a bench in front of the store, absentmindedly rolling his lucky coin between his fingers, from one to the next and then back again. He stopped and held the gold wafer by its knurled edges, looking at the image of North America stamped on its face with the letters NACC across the top and the year 2098 across the bottom.

  His grandfather had given identical coins to both of his grandsons on their twelfth birthday. Frank had spent his within a week. Ben thought back with a mixture of guilt and satisfaction to the last time Frank had tried to steal his. That day marked the last fistfight they’d ever had. Ben had always taken pride in his self-control, but he’d lost his temper that day and demonstrated to Frank just how uneven a match they had become. Since then, Frank had been far more cautious in his efforts to test Ben’s forbearance.

  As he looked at the coin, he found himself wondering if it was time to teach his brother another lesson, but dismissed the thought just as quickly. For all his faults, Frank was still his brother.

  Homer padded up and put his chin on Ben’s knee, looking up at him with his big brown eyes. Ben smiled at his dog, a brown-and-brindle mutt that could vanish into the shadows like he was a part of the night.

  “You want me to pee on his leg?” Homer asked.

  Ben chuckled, scratching him on the head. “No, just stay away from him. I don’t want him trying to hurt you again.”

  Homer had been Ben’s best friend for his entire life. As long as he could remember, Homer had been there, watching over him. He had already lived longer than any normal dog, yet he looked like he was only about a year past the puppy phase.

  That would have been enough to make Ben wonder about Homer’s origins, but the fact that he could talk was what really set him apart from other animals. It wasn’t that he could actually speak, but Ben could hear what he had to say, and Homer could hear Ben too, provided they were close enough to one another, anyway.

  As a young child, Ben had taken it for granted that animals could talk to people with their thoughts. It was only later that he realized just how special Homer really was. At Homer’s urging, Ben had kept their secret from everyone, even his grandfather, though he suspected that Cyril knew.

  “I can take care of myself,” Homer said, “and Frank’s got it coming. You really like her, I can tell.”

  Ben shook his head, looking down at the dirt.

  Homer grumbled out loud as he curled up at Ben’s feet. “Sun feels good.”

  Ben nodded, smiling down at him.

  “Ah, there you are,” Cyril said from the doorway, pausing before taking a seat next to him. “He did it again, huh?”

  Ben nodded, looking over at his grandfather. “It’d be one thing if he actually liked her.”

  Cyril sighed helplessly, falling silent for a few moments. “One day you’re going to meet a woman who’ll be able to see right through both of you. He won’t stand a chance with her.”

  “Why can’t that woman be Britney?” Ben whispered.

  Cyril fell silent again.

  Ben waited. He knew his grandfather well enough to know when he was working through his thoughts, taking care to choose just the right words.

  “I know you don’t want to hear this, but I’m glad it’s not Britney.”

  “Why?” Ben asked, bristling at his grandfather’s disapproval.

  “Because her family’s in bed with the wyrm,” Cyril whispered, looking around cautiously.

  “So? The dragon is here to stay. The resistance lost. We might as well learn to live with that. At least Britney’s family is making the best of it.”

  Cyril withdrew into himself for a moment, closing his eyes, bowing his head and becoming very quiet.

  Homer whined almost inaudibly, looking up at them both.

  “Tell me your impressions of Dominus Nash,” Cyril said.

  Ben’s brow furled as he thought about his earlier encounter. “I didn’t like her. She acted like we were property, not people.”

  “So, would you be willing to learn to live with that?”

  “No,” Ben said after a few moments of reflection.

  “The wyrm and his minions are evil, and evil never lasts for long. It takes time for the abuses to pile up to the point where average people will risk their lives to make a stand against it, but it always happens. All through history, evil people have risen to positions of power, and every time they bring about their own demise. Unfortunately, they usually cause untold suffering before they fall. The dragon is no different.”

  “The dragon has magic. How can you fight that? All of the tech from the world before Dragonfall was useless against them.”

  “That’s not entirely true,” Cyril said. “Remember your history. There were five dragons, and now there is only one. Tech played a part in that fight.

  “But more importantly, the dragons didn’t destroy the world with magic, they destroyed it with our own weapons—tech weapons. And even then, they didn’t use magic, at least not directly. They used bribery, extortion, and blackmail to turn a relatively small handful of people in just the right positions against the rest of the world.”

  Ben shook his head sadly. “I’ve never understood that part of the story. How could anyone do what they did? They helped slaughter nine billion people, and for what? So they could rule over a broken world?”

  “The wolves among us will always choose power over humanity.”

  Ben sighed helplessly.

  Cyril waited.

  “I know what you’ve taught me is true—objectively at least. But there’s a part of me that just can’t accept that there are people in the world who would do such things.”

  “Ah … you’ve just stumbled into one of humanity’s greatest conundrums. It’s difficult, maybe even impossible, for a good person to fully comprehend the inner workings of an evil person’s mind. Lacking that comprehension, most people assume that everyone else sees the world in the same way that they do. As a result, far too many people are easily taken in by the carefully crafted deceptions and lies that are told so convincingly by those who crave power.”

  “So how do you persuade people to fight against something that they don’t even believe exists?”

  “You don’t. There are no words that can make a person believe something that they don’t want to believe.”

  “Then how can evil ever be defeated? I mean, if people won’t even believe it exists, then how can they be convinced to take up arms against it?”

  “They can’t. It’s never the mass of people who make the difference, Ben. It’s always a small group—those who can see evil for what it is and who are willing to risk everything to stand against it. And more often than not, they pay a heavy price.”

  Homer barked suddenly, drawing their attention.

  “What is it?” Ben asked.

  “I smell Imogen … and horses.”

  A moment later, Ben heard the hoofbeats, coming hard and fast. He stood to see the Highwayman coming around the corner, followed close behind by Imogen. While technically his aunt—Imogen was more like a sister. He hadn’t seen her since she’d run off to Rogue City two years ago to marry Enzo Gervais.

  He could almost feel his grandfather’s emotional turmoil. Cyril hid it well, but Ben knew that he missed his daughter terribly.

  The look of anguish on Imogen’s face, coupled with the mask of cold anger worn by the Highwayman, was enough to freeze Ben in place. A surreal detachment washed over him, holding him in thrall. He could hear the kindly voice of his grandfather in the back of his mind: ‘Turning points come to us all—events and the choices they offer. The better part of wisdom is learning to recognize those moments when they happen.’ Ben couldn’t help but feel that this was one of those moments.

  Imogen dismounted, her angui
sh transforming into tears as she rushed to her father.

  “I’m so sorry, Daddy,” she sobbed into his chest.

  “It’s okay, you’re home now. That’s all that matters.”

  She shook her head, pulling away from him so she could look him in the eye.

  “They took my baby,” she said, putting her forehead to his chest again and weeping uncontrollably.

  For the second time in as many hours, Ben saw a kind of hardness in his grandfather’s expression that only served to magnify his own fear.

  Still holding his daughter, Cyril looked to John Durt, a lean, competent man.

  “Are you being pursued?”

  “Probably,” the Highwayman said. “But they’re not close.”

  Cyril nodded to himself. “Come inside, both of you. Ben, tend to the horses.”

  It was only at the mention of his name that Imogen noticed him standing there, rooted to the ground. She pulled away from her father.

  “Hey, Baby Brother,” she said through her tears.

  “Hey, Big Sister,” he said, giving her a hug. “It’s good to see you.”

  She nodded tightly, tears flowing down her face.

  “Come, we haven’t much time,” Cyril said, taking Imogen by the arm and leading her into the store.

  “Go with them and listen,” Ben said to Homer.

  Cyril locked the front door, put the closed sign in the window, and drew the curtains, all of which only served to punctuate the gravity of the situation. Ben couldn’t remember Cyril ever closing the store in the middle of the day.

  A moment later, his curiosity overcame his trepidation and he quickly led the horses behind the store and into the fenced backyard. He removed their saddles and turned the animals loose to graze on the lush green grass.

  After making sure the gate was locked, he raced inside and upstairs to the living quarters, stopping like he’d hit a wall when he reached the landing. The room was deathly quiet, save for Imogen’s quiet sobbing. She sat with her face in her hands. John stood next to the window looking down over the front yard. Cyril stood stock-still in the center of the room, a mixture of sadness and fury warping the features of his face.