Bad Times in Dragon City

Bad Times 

in 

Dragon City

Shotguns & Sorcery Novel #2

By Matt Forbeck

Also by Matt Forbeck

Hard Times in Dragon City (Shotguns & Sorcery #1)

Leverage: The Con Job

Matt Forbeck’s Brave New World: Revolution

Matt Forbeck’s Brave New World: Revelation

Matt Forbeck’s Brave New World: Resolution

Amortals

Vegas Knights

Carpathia

Magic: The Gathering
comics

Guild Wars: Ghosts of Ascalon
(with Jeff Grubb)

Mutant Chronicles

The Marvel Encyclopedia

Star Wars vs. Star Trek

Secret of the Spiritkeeper

Prophecy of the Dragons

The Dragons Revealed

Blood Bowl

Blood Bowl: Dead Ball

Blood Bowl: Death Match

Blood Bowl: Rumble in the Jungle

Eberron: Marked for Death

Eberron: The Road to Death

Eberron: The Queen of Death

Full Moon Enterprises 

Beloit, WI, USA

www.forbeck.com

Shotguns & Sorcery, Dragon City, and all prominent fictional characters, locations, and organizations depicted herein are Trademarks of Matt Forbeck. 

© 2013 by Matt Forbeck. 

All Rights Reserved.

12 for ’12 logo created by Jim Pinto.

Shotguns & Sorcery
logo created by Jim Pinto. 

Cover illustration by Dvarg. 

Cover design by Matt Forbeck. 

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. 

Dedicated to my wife Ann and our kids Marty, Pat, Nick, Ken, and Helen. They make sure I have many more good times than bad. 

Thanks to Robin D. Laws, who encouraged me to write the first
Shotguns & Sorcery
story, and to Marc Tassin for asking for the second. Also to Matthew Sprange and the rest of the crew at Mongoose Publishing for chatting with me about this setting when I thought it might make a decent roleplaying game. 

Extra thanks to Ann Forbeck for serving as my first reader and constant motivator. 

Huge thanks to all the readers who backed this book and the rest in the trilogy on Kickstarter. See the end of the book for a full list of their names. Each and every one of them is fantastic, and I can only hope that this book justifies the faith they showed in me. 

12 for ’12

This is the standard edition of a book first released as a reward for the backers of my second Kickstarter drive for
my 12 for ’12 project
,
my mad plan to write a novel a month for the entirety of 2012. Together, over 330 people chipped in almost $13,000 to successfully fund an entire trilogy of
Shotguns & Sorcery
novels.

Thanks to each and every one of you for daring me to take on this incredible challenge — and for coming along with me on the wild ride it’s been. And thank you to all my readers, whether you’re backers or not. Stories have no homes without heads to house them.

C
HAPTER
O
NE

As a rule, I don’t play cards with wizards. They cheat, which I understand. Everyone wants an edge. But they think they’re too clever to get caught, so they cheat badly, and that never ends well. 

That’s why Kai had hauled me down into Goblintown, to get into a game where no one knew me and where even a whiff of magic about you during a hand would earn you a stiff beating and maybe even a fatal dip in the Ash River. “It’ll be fun, Max,” the orc told me. “It’ll take your mind off Belle.” 

That sold me on it. That and the fact that Goblintown was too damn dangerous for me to take along the dragonet that had imprinted itself on me. Not that I hadn’t grown attached to the little guy, but I didn’t much care for the attention that having him with me brought. It’s hard for people to not gape at us when they know that the father of the creature draped over my shoulders is the Dragon Emperor himself. 

Most people were smart enough to leave the dragonet alone. He was tough enough on his own, but toss in the fact that his daddy would destroy you and everyone you’d ever cared about if you tried to pluck a scale from his kid’s tail, and even the thickest-headed folks in Dragon City were wise enough to give the creature a wide berth. 

When it came to me, though, that was another story. The dragonet’s messed up biology might have convinced him I was his real papa despite my distinctive lack of scales, but I don’t think the Dragon Emperor would have been too saddened if I got myself hauled out of his family portrait by a lethal and messy means. So when I informed the members of the Imperial Dragon’s Guard assigned to watch over me that I wanted some time to myself, they were only too happy to volunteer to keep an eye on the dragonet while I wandered off and hopefully got myself killed. 

That wasn’t on my agenda, of course. I just wanted a little time out of the public eye, a chance to blow off some steam without everyone in the room giving me a wary eyeball. I’d had a rough few weeks since Belle had jilted me — again — and I wasn’t all that welcome at the Quill these days.

The fact that I owned my favorite bar didn’t mean much to Thumper, the bartender there. “You’re driving away the regulars, Max,” he’d said to me. “And you’re bringing in gawkers instead.” 

“A little fresh coin in the coffers never hurt anyone.” 

He’d snorted. “Gawkers don’t drink.” 

So I’d banished myself from the crowd at my watering hole and spent most of my nights holed up in the storage room on the second floor instead. I’d have preferred to flop down in my office over the Barrelrider in the Big Hill part of town, but it still hadn’t been repaired since Belle’s crazed and bigoted sister Fiera had blown her chance to murder me in it. She’d done a number on my place though. 

I’d have taken out my headaches on her if I hadn’t already killed her. I hadn’t gone to the Sanguigno estate meaning to, sure, but once she’d been engulfed in a dragon’s flames like that, it had seemed like the merciful thing to do. Belle maybe hadn’t seen it that way. 

So instead of spending any time with her, I’d moped around in the upper part of the Quill for weeks, barely ever leaving the place. It wasn’t until Kai had come up to check in on me that I realized how bad I’d let myself get. 

“Smells like the zombie traps outside the Great Circle in here,” Kai said when he entered, wrinkling his green-skinned nose in disgust. “You sure one of those rotters didn’t crawl in here with you?” 

“Good to see you too,” I said. “Get out.” 

The dragonet perched on the back of a cracked wooden chair opposite mine at the little table in the center of the room, flexed its wings, and hissed at the newcomer. He didn’t like strangers much, and he’d not yet met Kai. I’d known the orc for well over a decade, and I didn’t much like him either. 

“Thumper says you need to get out of here.” Kai’s yellow eyes flickered about the place, taking it in. His nose didn’t unwrinkle. He pulled back his lips, exposing his jagged teeth. 

“I suppose he said it’s for my own good.” 

Kai shook his head. “I think he just wants to clean the place. The customers are starting to complain, I hear.” 

I glared at him. “About what?” 

Kai wiped the sweat from his face with the back of his sleeve. “It’s a little ripe in here.” He gave the dragonet a sidelong glance. “How much heat does that thing give off?” 

I gazed at the dragonet, and it stared back at me with wide green eyes and slitted pupils. “What’s that got to do with anything?” 

Kai glanced at the door. “Do you ever let it out?” 

“It’s not a pet,” I said. 

He shook his head. “Let’s get the hell out of here.” 

I looked down at myself. He was right. I looked filthy and smelled awful. “Like this?” 

He let out a low, rough laugh. “Where we’re going, no one will care.” 

I was too wrung out to argue, and a belt of dragonfire sounded like a good bet right then. I nodded at him and pushed myself to my feet. The dragonet slipped around my shoulders before I could protest, and I wound up carrying him out with me. 

It only took me a few moments to get the Imperial Guards stationed across the street from the Quill to take custody of the dragonet, but it took far longer to get the creature himself to agree. Young as he was, he was still a dragon, which translated into “not to be trifled with.” Fiera had found that out the hard way when he’d found her holding a wand on me. 

Once I finally convinced the dragonet that I wasn’t abandoning him forever — just for the night — Kai led me downslope through Dragon City, from where the Quill sat the edge of the Village to the neighborhood in which he lived: Goblintown. I thought about hailing a ride, but few of the hacks flying carpets around the city cared to risk their rides by taking fares into the lower parts of the city. I’d forced the issue before, but this wasn’t any kind of emergency. I figured I could use the walk to clear my head, so we hoofed it down through the benighted streets, watching the glowglobes on the street posts become farther and farther apart as we went. 

“Why don’t we try somewhere upslope?” I said. My last few experiences in Goblintown hadn’t been stellar. 

“Don’t worry about it, Max,” Kai said. “I got your back, and I know just the place.” 

I should have known better than to trust the orc. I didn’t doubt he had the best of intentions. He always did.

Still, Kai was what our mutual friend Cindra had always liked to call “charitably incautious.” Her husband Kells often added “criminally optimistic.” On some level, he just trusted it would all work out, whether he had any reason to or not. 

That’s how we wound up in a private card game down in the dim and dank back room of some nameless shack that made the Skinned Cat — Kai’s regular joint — look like a sunny resort high in the Elven Reaches. The liquor they served there tasted like it had been strained through a goblin’s dirty underwear, but in the state I was in I didn’t much care. It did make me wonder if Kai had brought me here to poison me in front of his friends, but it seemed like it would have been a lot simpler for him to knife me in an alley on the way here instead, or so I told myself.