Brechalon (14 page)

“
You are not
unattractive.”

“
Thank you, Sir.”

“
Things are not going to be like
before,” he said, pacing first toward the door and then back to
her. “There will be better food and cleaner conditions. Maybe we
could have some decent clothes brought from the mainland for you
and perhaps an occasional sweet.”

“
That would be most delightful,
Sir.”

“
When my duties allow, I could come
to your cell here and visit with you. Would you like that? Would
you be… cooperative?”

“
Oh, yes sir.”

He reached out and brushed her hair back again,
this time caressing her temple with his thumb. “You do understand
what I mean when I say cooperative, don’t you?”

Zurfina looked up from the floor and into his
eyes. She reached up and pulled his chubby hand from her face,
moving it down to rest on her breast.

“
I’m anxious to be cooperative,”
she said. “Very, very cooperative.”

The End.

Available Now!

Senta and the Steel Dragon Book 1

The Voyage of the Minotaur

The Voyage of the Minotaur Preview

“
Zurfina, I presume,” said
Iolanthe.

“
Zurfina the Magnificent.” The
woman had a husky voice that put Iolanthe in mind of a teen-aged
boy.

“
Am I supposed to call you Zurfina
the Magnificent?” asked Iolanthe. “Do I say ‘good morning Zurfina
the Magnificent’ or ‘meet me for tea, Zurfina the Magnificent’ or
‘look out for that falling boulder, Zurfina the
Magnificent’?”

“
You are of course quite right,
Miss Iolanthe Dechantagne,” said the woman. “We shall be on a first
name basis, Miss Iolanthe Dechantagne.”

Iolanthe heard a small sound coming from behind
her and to her right and suspected that Yuah was suppressing a
laugh, or perhaps, worse, a smirk. She didn’t turn to look at the
dressing maid, just aimed evil thoughts in her
direction.

“
Show us some magic, then,” she
said. “I feel the need to be impressed. I know my brother is
already.”

Augie, who had been so engrossed in the woman’s
posterior, that he had not even noticed that his sister had entered
the room, suddenly startled to awareness and stood up straight. The
blond woman favored him with a sly smile over her shoulder. Then
she raised her arm out straight in front of her, palm down. Turning
her hand over, a flame sprang up in her palm. Within two or three
seconds, the flame had coalesced into a humanoid figure, eight or
nine inches tall, which immediately began pirouetting and spinning
in a miniature ballet, all without leaving Zurfina’s
hand.

“
That’s it?” asked Iolanthe.
“That’s your great magic?”

“
Well I thought it was smashing,”
said Augie.

“
You don’t like fire?” said
Zurfina. “How about ice?”

The tiny figure turned from fire to ice, but
continued dancing, breaking off little pieces of itself as it did
so, to fall to the floor like tiny snowflakes. Iolanthe pursed her
lips.

“
My brothers and I are preparing to
embark on a great expedition,” she said.

“
I know all about it,” said the
sorceress.

“
Then you know I need a magic user
with real power. Just dressing like a necromantic whore doesn’t
make you a powerful witch.”

“
Oh, you are so right,” said the
sorceress. “Clothes do not make the woman.”

She waved her hands in front of her own body,
and her clothing became an exact match for Iolanthe’s own evening
gown, right down to the red and black trim.

“
Or does it?” Zurfina
said.

She waved her left hand in front of her face
and it became an exact match of Iolanthe’s. She even had the red
and white carnations atop her head. The false Iolanthe gave a very
flouncy and very un-Iolanthe-like curtsy, then raised her chin and
said in a very Iolanthe-like voice. “Yuah, fetch me a white wine!”
Yuah took several steps forward before remembering herself and
stopping.

“
Outstanding!” shouted Augie,
clapping his hands.

Iolanthe took a deep breath. “Not bad, I do
admit. But show me something that I won’t see one of our journeyman
wizards do.”

The sorceress pointed her arm at Yuah, fingers
splayed. “Uuthanum uastus corakathum paj.” There was a grinding
sound, as though someone were walking upon gravel, and suddenly
Yuah froze in place. She, her grey and white dress, and everything
else she wore had been turned into a stone statue. She looked like
one of the apostles which lined the nave in the Great Church of the
Holy Savior. It was as though Pallaton the Elder had been brought
from his time into the present to capture the essence of a Zaeri
dressing maid.

“
My God!” said Augie,
absent-mindedly crossing himself.

“
Now that is most impressive,” said
Iolanthe. “We have to sit down and discuss your terms and my
conditions.”

* * * * *

It was mid-afternoon when Terrence stepped back
out of the tent and back into the marketplace of Nutooka. He paid
no attention to words of goodbye from Oyunbileg. As it always did
afterwards, the color seemed to have drained out of the world and
it now looked as monochrome as a picture from a photographic plate.
And just as they always did afterwards, sounds seemed far more
intense than usual, and he felt as though he could pick out
individual voices from among the crowd of native merchants and
their customers. He pulled off his slouch hat to mop the sweat from
his forehead with his sleeve, and then started as two women brushed
past him. They were two women from the Minotaur, and seemed too
engrossed in their conversation to notice him.

He recognized both of them. One was Professor
Calliere’s red-haired assistant. The other was a dark-haired woman,
about two inches taller and thirty pounds heavier, who was a female
medical doctor. Her name was something that started with a ‘k’
sound—Cleves or Keeves or something. Terrence stood and admired
both women as they walked near the edge of the stall selling bolts
of cloth in many colors. Both were women of class: dynamic,
intelligence, determined. They were both the kind of women that he
could have seen himself courting, in another life.

He was still watching the two women when the
sounds of a great kafuffle somewhere on the other side of the
market reached his ears. No sooner had this registered than seven
or eight mounted men rode into the market near the two women from
the Minotaur. These riders were dressed in various clothing of tan,
brown, and white, but each had a red sash wrapped around his waist,
and each wore a red hood completely covering his face, with only
two holes cut out through which to see. The most remarkable thing
about these mounted men though, wasn’t the men themselves, but
their mounts. Terrence knew that horses were unavailable on Enclep,
but it was still a shock to see riders upon huge, ferocious-looking
birds. The birds were as tall as a horse, though unlike that noble
steed, they ran on only two massive legs, and had tiny useless
wings. Their clawed feet were almost two feet across and the
massive beaks upon their mammoth heads looked as though it could
easily clip off a man’s arm, or disembowel him in a moment. They
were mostly covered with brown feathers, though there were black
and white details on some of them. The men had them saddled, and
though they squawked incessantly, they seemed to be under firm
control.

One of the men on bird-back, reached down and
scooped up Professor Calliere’s assistant as though she were a
shapely bag of wheat. Another grabbed the female medical doctor.
Still another grabbed a native woman from nearby. Two or three had
already appropriated women from somewhere else in the market and
two more tried to grab nearby native women only to be thwarted by
their intended victims diving behind market stalls. The entire
flock of riders raced to escape the market and the city, which led
them down the path directly toward Terrence Dechantagne.

With one deft motion, Terrence pulled both his
nickel-plated forty five revolvers from their shoulder holsters. He
fired first one and then the other in rapid succession emptying all
twelve cylinders. The first rider fell to the ground, hit several
times, as did the great bird that he had ridden. The second rider,
shot through the neck, tumbled to the ground. The woman that had
been his captive plopped unceremoniously onto the dirt. The rest of
the riders turned their birds, in a way that would have been
impossible in the confined area had they been riding horses, and
headed for the far side of the pathway between stalls, leaving
their dead fellows and a single noisy giant bird behind.

Quickly popping the cylinders of his revolvers
open and reloading them, Terrence barely noticed the short red-head
at his side. He tasted the metallic cloud of gunpowder smoke that
hung in the humid air. By the time he had finished reloading the
guns though, the mounted men had turned the corner and vanished,
and he had time to take notice that it was the professor’s
assistant whom he had rescued from the second rider.

“
Are you alright, Miss?

“
Lusk, Egeria Lusk. You’re going
after them,” she said. It was more a command than a
question.

* * * * *

“
Yep, it’s me,” said Senta. “I’m
going to take you out, but you have to have your leash
on.”

The dragon hissed. She opened the door of the
carrier and the dragon climbed out onto the top. He turned his head
and pointedly looked the other direction as she snapped the little
chain onto the ring around his ankle. Once the little clip had
snapped shut, Senta attached the other end of the chain to a
bracelet on her right wrist.

“
See there. We’re both chained by
the wrist. Nobody’s the boss.”

“
Gawp,” said the dragon, and then
spreading its wings to balance, it climbed up her arm and onto her
shoulder. It slithered down to lie across her shoulders, one hand
and one foot holding onto her dress and one hand and one foot
holding onto her hair. Senta stood up. The little dragon was now
over four feet long from nose to tip of tail, but he was only about
six inches thick across the belly and he was surprisingly
light.

“
What do you want to
do?”

“
Gawp.”

“
Me too. This is sooo
boring.”

The ship had been sailing parallel to the coast
for the past four days and Senta was getting tired of it. What was
the point of sailing all the way to Mallon, if you didn’t get out
and walk around on it? Twenty days was more than enough time to
explore every square inch of the largest battleship and Senta had
spent more than three times that length of time on the Minotaur.
Not even murders, gunfights, and drinking wine until you threw up
could take away the boredom forever.

“
Fina,” said the dragon.

“
Alright.”

Senta walked toward the front of the ship. She
had gone only about halfway to where Zurfina and the others stood
watching the coastline roll past, when a figure stepped out of the
shadows. A freckled face and striped shirt quickly identified the
shady figure.

“
Hey Graham,” said
Senta.

“
Hi Senta. What’ya
doing?”

“
Nothing. He wants to go up by the
grown-ups.” She indicated the dragon with her thumb.

“
Can I come?”

“
Sure. Just don’t get too close,
‘cause he’ll bite you.”

“
I thought he was tame.”

“
You can’t tame a dragon. Zurfina
says you can’t tame anything that’s smarter than you
are.”

“
Who says he’s smarter than me?”
Graham was indignant.

“
Not just you, stupid. Dragons are
super smart. When he gets big, he’ll be able to talk and do magic
and all kinds of cool stuff.”

“
Brill,” said the boy.

Senta and Graham walked forward, the boy
keeping several paces behind her at all times, until they reached
the group of adults. Miss Dechantage was wearing a yellow dress
with lots of lace and a matching hat, tied below her chin with a
lace ribbon. Her dress was almost the same color as the suit
Professor Calliere was wearing. It made him look like a very large
banana. Mr. Korlann was much more dignified. His grey suit was so
light that it would have seemed white, had he not been standing
next to Miss Lusk in her white day dress. Senta saw Miss Lusk reach
over discretely and touch Mr. Korlann’s hand. Wizard Labrith was
wearing a light brown suit and Wizard Kesi, for once not in
colorful silks, was dressed the same. They both stood near the back
of the group, all four of their eyes boring holes into the back of
Zurfina’s black dress. The two Dechantagne brothers were both
wearing khaki safari clothes and pith helmets. The older brother
looked like he was sick. Finally Father Ian had eschewed his
traditional robes for a more modern suit with a clerical
collar.

“
This is it just ahead,” said
Lieutenant Dechantagne, pointing. “You see the bay just here, and
this land just beyond is the peninsula.”