Backpacking Through Bedlam by Seanan McGuire

Author:Seanan McGuire [McGuire, Seanan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC000000 Fiction / General
Publisher: DAW Books
Published: 2023-03-07T00:00:00+00:00

Thirteen

“Family are the people who, at the end of the day, will find you a bed and welcome you home.”

—Alexander Healy

In a repurposed slaughterhouse, surrounded by dragons and descendants

VERITY LED US TO a hall lined with glass-fronted doors. I assumed the rooms behind them had originally been the slaughterhouse offices, back when this place housed a functional business rather than a Nest of dragons and their allies. Paper had been taped across the glass, creating a fragile sort of privacy, but a few stood ajar, showing small rooms hastily converted into sleeping quarters. None of them were very personalized: this was a refuge, not a home.

“Sorry for the makeshift housing,” said Verity. “We initially moved in here after the Freakshow burned down. Got a good deal from the dragons, and it only got better when they realized that this was going to keep happening for a while.”

“Good . . . deal . . . What?” Sally looked to me and Thomas for an explanation.

She looked so baffled that I explained as we walked, “Dragons need gold to stay healthy. It’s a biological requirement for them. That’s part of why they used to come into conflict with humans, back in the day. A dragon’s Nest is basically a bank with no tellers and no alarm systems, if you can get into it while the dragon’s out scavenging for dinner. Since humans invented capitalism, dragons need money if they want gold these days. Which is why most of them have a reputation for being greedy penny-pinchers who will take the shirt off your back if you let them.”

“This used to be the main Nest,” said Verity. “Before we . . . well, before. It was standing empty after the dragons moved out. They didn’t sell it because they thought they might want to bring their male children here when they got a little older, let them see the sky before they were shipped off to their eventual home enclaves. With the Covenant around, the next generation of dragons is probably going to spend most of their lives in caves for their own protection.”

Thomas grimaced. “Even without the Covenant,” he said. “If we’re ever going to acclimate humanity to the idea that we’re not alone in this world, it would be better to start with something nonthreatening, like the sylphs, rather than going straight to fire-breathing reptiles the size of city buses.”

“Yeah, we’ve been there, and it didn’t work out,” said Verity. “So we moved all the employees from the Freakshow in here, and started getting settled. Then it became clear the Covenant was happy to play war of attrition with us, and the dragons started moving the boys up to join us.”

“Why?” asked Sally. “If they were all underground before, isn’t this less defensible?”

Verity didn’t answer. The cold truth was that moving the children to the aboveground facility made sense if the dragons and their allies were trying to make sure some of the baby boys would survive if the adult male was found and destroyed.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.