Royal Dragons: An Epic Fantasy by Marcus Sloss & Jace Cannon

Author:Marcus Sloss & Jace Cannon [Sloss, Marcus & Cannon, Jace]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Royal Guard Publishing LLC
Published: 2024-12-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 54

For the Love of Dragons

“Let me guess,” I sighed. “You did exactly that, and we owe lots of these guys money and favors.”

She dropped her gaze to the side, looking like a chastised kid. “I... I thought I had to. I always thought our luck would turn. Mother didn’t know.”

By the Four Demons, this woman loved her dragons. If her mother had gotten her a tutor in economics, instead of planning for some soldier to save them, I think Pinnacle would be thriving already.

“It’s all right, Jo. Just tell me—how bad is it?”

“It’s... well. We owe something to everyone. But not enough for them to hate us... unless Pinnacle goes under. Then⁠—”

She didn’t get to finish. We’d reached the front of the line.

“Two bronze a head,” said the guy at the front. He stood behind a tall wooden lectern, like a scholar at a guild hall or something.

I glanced at Jolene. “We have to pay to buy dragons?”

“Only the good dragons. Just do it. It’ll be worth it, I swear.”

Shaking my head, I held up two fingers for the man, paying four copper for us both to enter. The fee also bought me a white twine to wear around my wrist. Jolene got the same treatment.

She saw me looking and said, “It’s so that we can go back in again if we leave.”

Wow. This place had alarms going off inside my pockets. I scanned the crowd milling near the front of the tent, watched by a line of hulking mercs to either side.

They all wore the white twine, too. Maybe they changed the color of the twine daily so people couldn’t sneak in multiple times on the same entrance fee? But couldn’t the visitors buy their own colored twine?

I voiced this to Jolene, and she said, “The bands have a spell cast on them. At least, that’s the rumor. I’ve never tested it. Not after I saw them throw a guy out, once. A dragon picked him up and tossed him. Broke his arm. The guardsmen said there was nothing they could do; he’d been trespassing on private property.”

I raised my eyebrows. Brutal. Once we passed the line of leering security guards, I paused at a giant keg next to the fabric walls of the tent. I assumed it was water, since there were no guards or vendors manning the thing. It was unbearably hot here, and a drink sounded lovely.

“Do I gotta pay for this, too?” I said, pouring from the keg’s tap into my traveling mug—only to find out it was ale.

“You’ll pay with your good sense,” Jolene said. “The booze is free here, but it makes people spend more. I’d dump it, if I were you.”

I settled for sipping it. It was shitty, but it was liquid, and that’s what mattered in this heat. The tent stretched for a good hundred feet ahead of us, and people were being funneled to either side. I could see stands of seating, like back at the training pit in Olinios.

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