Page 6 of Fortune's Blade

Guess I should have known, I thought.

It would take a crap ton of magic just to get those butts into the air.

But not all of the flying fortresses were scary. There were a couple of gamboling babies above us, which I assumed were the animal kind, because a woman had them on a leash. She was staring at us from an upper balcony that was set back a bit from ours so as not to block the sun, I guessed.

She reminded me of the dragons who had come to meet us, who in human form gave little clue as to their other nature. Except for their size, with all of them being as tall as the fey, meaning that they topped most supermodels in height, and yet were far sturdier. The fey always struck me as sylph-like and vaguely ephemeral, as if the elements had formed bodies for themselves that they could drop at any moment, dusting away into mist or a fluttering of leaves blown on the wind.

But not dragons. They were undeniably real, solid, and even hefty, with this one looking like a Valkyrie warrior. She had a strong, pretty face, long blonde tresses and a diaphanous gown of ombre silk colored to look like a sunrise, with pale yellow fading into pink and then into the softest of blues. It made my lovely evening dress look boring and one-note.

Better get used to being outclassed in just every freaking area, I thought wryly.

The amazing gown was fluttering in the wind, while her pets zoomed about like overly rambunctious puppies. One of them spied us and tried to come down to investigate, but she pulled it back easily, despite the fact that Fluffy had to weigh at least five hundred pounds. So, Claire’s people were strong even in human form.

Something to remember.

But the dragons who really drew the eye were the ones hovering in the vast expanse beyond the balcony, spread out like colorful balloons. If balloons were full of massive teeth and giant claws and enough muscle to rip us apart like tissue paper. But I couldn’t deny that they were damned impressive, with colors and textures like nothing in our version of nature. And while I’d thought that the coloring on Claire’s dragon form was stunning, pewter and pale lavender were strictly dull things around here, where everyone seemed to be trying to outdo the rest.

It was hard to say who was winning.

I spied another red, like the bastard who had buzzed us, only this one had a belly speckled with dark orange, gold, and yellow, like a scaley sunset. There was a mottled one with skin featuring a dozen shades of blue and a purple belly, with a double barb on the end of his tail. There was one with two mismatched tails, one long and thick and one short and stumpy, but his coloring was so breathtaking that you barely noticed: brilliant green with a bright red belly and what looked like red racing stripes up the sides. There was an ethereal looking all white one, with palest blue on her stomach and the same color along the ribs of her wings.

And those were just the most stunning, with plenty of plainer versions scattered about, if you consider green with purple veining on the wings and gray with brilliant-colored manes to be plain. Still more arrived while we stood there, nosy parkers coming to see the humans like people lining up for a new animal exhibit at the zoo. They weren’t approaching, any more than you’d get too close to a grizzly’s enclosure, but there were dozens of them.

I was starting to get concerned.

“Let’s . . . go inside,” I said, because the last thing we needed was an incident. Not that the crowd was threatening . . . exactly . . . but more and more were arriving by the minute, as word spread. And it didn’t look like there was much happening ‘round the old castle today, because everybody was coming to take a peek.

I saw several perfectly normal-looking men, if overly tall and broad shouldered, dive off of their balconies several stories below and transform in a wink into their alternate forms, to join the growing throng. One looked plain brown from a distance, but his scales sparkled like gold dusted tortoiseshell when he got closer, his formerly loose-fitting clothing now a fancy scarf around the hugely muscled neck.

The other was even more dashing, with a brilliant yellow belly but a jet-black body. There was yellow on his face, too, slashes of it on the side of each eye, like dramatic makeup or war paint. But it was scales instead, small ones in this case, that made an elaborate pattern amid the larger plates on his face and head.

All of the dragons had that feature in some form. Rivers of small scales ran between the larger ones that protected areas that needed to be more flexible, like around the eyes and mouth, and at the joints of the great limbs. The bellies, on the other hand, had the biggest, smoothest scales, while the backs were often ridged in two great lines running down to the enormous spikes that often decorated the tails, and could probably be used like flails in battle.

The way they all fit together was fascinating and beautiful and undeniably real. And unlike the fairytale quality of most other things here, the black and yellow dragon was immediately and violently believable. Immediately because he had come closer than all the rest, and violently because of the scrapes and scratches on the scales of his right shoulder and part of his face.

Some of the protective armor was missing there, showing bumpy, reptilian skin below in the same color. Something had gotten claws into him and then jerked back, something stronger than I could even imagine. Another dragon, or something worse?

I didn’t know, but it fascinated me, that these seemingly all-powerful creatures could be hurt. I didn’t know why; I’d briefly gotten a knife into Claire once, when I’d thought she was an intruder in her own home. She’d been away for a while and startled me on her return, and startling a dhampir has consequences.

Not that it had hurt her much, although it hadn’t done her mood any good. Or mine, once I’d realized that I had a dragon with a sore toe squashed into my hallway. But she’d been little more than a baby at the time, while this one . . .

Definitely wasn’t.

He also wasn’t female. Even in their altered state, the males were much more heavily muscled and the scaffolding of their wings was noticeably thicker. The black and yellow’s huge neck was many times broader than a bull’s as it reared over us.

He was so close now that, if I’d dared to lean over the balcony, I could have touched him. He seemed to have the same idea, because an arm thicker than my whole body abruptly reached out, with talons as black as night on the end of the elongated hand, sparkling like black diamonds. I got a really good look, because one of the twelve-inch-long daggers touched a strand of my hair.

And that tore it for Louis-Cesare, who had been tensing more and more at my side. His hand went to his rapier, which he didn’t draw, but the creature gave a screech nonetheless, shrill enough to slice through my brain like a cleaver. I staggered back and the dragon wheeled off, still screeching.

And things immediately went south.

I didn’t know if the onlookers thought that we’d done something to him, or if he’d simply rendered a verdict that they agreed with. But the tone of the scene abruptly changed. And it wasn’t just me who noticed.

“Yes,” Louis-Cesare said, taking my arm. “Let’s . . . go inside.”

Above us, shutters were slamming shut, including the blonde’s, who pulled her pets inside and did something that caused a bunch of heavy wooden screens to clatter down from a recessed area above the balcony. I looked up and saw that we had the same sort of set up, only I didn’t know how to operate it. And I didn’t have time to find out.

Because they were coming, not all of them, but some of them—more than enough. Louis-Cesare drew his weapon, I started to run for my bag, and neither was likely to help. But it didn’t have to.

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