Dragon Thief by Marc Secchia Read Free Book Online Page A

above the Dragoness’ lair, waiting for the fussy fire-breather to gobble down her fiftieth rock hyrax, besides the four banded rock-deer she had swallowed whole, three fat adders that Kal was overjoyed to see disappear down her gullet–he hated snakes–and all the baskets-full of eggs he had collected for her the previous evening, making his already aching back–well, ache more.
    “I do admire a girl with a healthy appetite,” Kal sniped.
    “I need to keep my strength up in order to lug you and your extra padding between Islands.”
    “Worn you out, have I, Dragoness?”
    Tazithiel regarded him coldly, jaundiced of eye and clenched of talon. “Do you know why Dragons enjoy men in armour? We like the extra crunch.”
    Kal groaned, “Ooh, it’s too early for jokes like that.”
    “Moreover, the metal is good for our scales.”
    “Please. Save your feeble attempts at scaring me for someone who cares.” Swaggering around her enormous right forepaw, Kal kicked Tazi’s ankle. He bit back a grunt of pain as he almost broke a toe. Bad idea. “Ho, mighty fortress. How may I scale thee?”
    Tazithiel vented a fiery snort of amusement. “Teach a thief how to climb? I think not.”
    “Told you, I’m not a thief. I’m a security arrangements penetration tester, hired by kings and nobles the world over for my legendary expertise.”
    “Let me guess,” the Dragoness snarled. “Do I detect a tasteless quip forthcoming, such as, ‘and I certainly penetrated your arrangements, lady?’ ”
    Exactly. More elegantly put, of course, but she was on the right Island. Judging by her thunderhead expression, Kal decided, the better part of dignity might be to start climbing. Fast.
    He did enjoy a good stint of scaling fifteen-foot castle walls by hand, or prancing about on rooftops, but this beast would overshadow the average inn. How did she even fly? Magic? A creature of her bulk should just plummet into the Cloudlands, well, like a seventy-foot boulder.
    Maybe he should turn his thoughts to less troubling paths.
    He had never ascended a living wall so stuffed with draconic muscle and fire that a little of both practically leaked out of her ears. For that matter, where were her ears? He glanced curiously over the jagged ruff of skull spikes to her reptilian muzzle. Tazi’s multi-coloured scales were smooth and surprisingly warm to the touch, layered over each other like the excellent tiled roofs of Sylakia Town, which he could navigate like the palm of his own hand. Kal learned to the tune of a sliced thumb, however, that the downward-pointing scales were fearfully sharp. A neat row of spine spikes adorned her back, running from her tail all the way to her neck, but unusually for a Dragon–so she said–she had two parallel rows of smaller spikes offset by about three feet either side of her spine.
    Kal strode up her back, fourteen long-legged paces, to the place where she had settled the Dragon Rider saddle and equipment salvaged from her hoard. Actually–Kal grinned–he had two saddles of his own back home, several Dragon lances, and a set of golden armour far finer than the more functional, well-used kit he wore now.
    Kinetic magic, the same Dragon-power which had divested him of his trousers with such facility, had enabled Tazithiel to position his seat and saddlebags perfectly, and to fasten the saddle girth without the use of any hands whatsoever. All was arranged. Food supplies, several handy sacks of coin and gemstones, even a formidable -looking Dragon war-bow complete with four-foot arrows. They’d pack a punch. What did Tazi expect to encounter out there? Other Dragons? Feral ones? He shivered. He was not a brave man–not if bravery entailed charging into hopelessly one-sided battles brandishing a sword or war-hammer. Kal would rather calculate the odds, and win on his terms. It was a trait which had kept him alive when many of his fellow professionals already owned their personal patch of fireflowers in a