Dragon Thief by Marc Secchia Read Free Book Online Page B

nameless Island graveyard.
    Then what was he doing standing on a Dragoness’ back?
    “Fishing for trout, noble Rider?”
    Noble Rider? Well! Kal squared his shoulders, blithely ignoring the snide look the Dragoness cast him. Now, her head snaked back to take a proper look. She said, “Don’t forget, I can reach you back there to snap your head off should you misbehave.”
    “Oh, no misbehaving, not me, noble sky-beast,” he retorted. “Obedience and deference to authority are–”
    “Glaringly absent in your psychological makeup and upbringing?” she cut in, punctuating her words with puffs of smoke. “Strap in, little man, unless you’d like to play with me in the air?”
    He pursed his lips. “If you’re suggesting finding sundry wicked uses for your levitation powers, aye. But somehow I fear there might be a little too much tumbling and screaming involved for my taste. Feeling a touch squeamish this fine morning. A few tummy-wobbles and suchlike. Nothing a healthy whiff of fresh air shouldn’t cure.”
    “If you wobble anywhere near my scales, I’ll teach you the true meaning of Dragon fear.”
    Roaring rajals. Dragon-Tazi certainly knew how to intimidate. Kal sat down with a bump on the finely-crafted, moulded leather saddle perched between her spine spikes, and secured the leather thigh and waist straps. Great. Now he was firmly fastened to the spit. All she needed to provide was a blaze. Not a problem for most women, let alone a cantankerous Dragoness.
    Kal clutched his seat as Tazithiel stepped forward. “Ready, thief?”
    “No.”
    His mount lurched, approaching the cliff’s edge. Beneath her forepaws, the granite cliff sheared away in a single, seamless drop to the Cloudlands two and a half miles below. The place had an awfully final, edge-of-eternity look about it. In a breathless instant, he developed a healthy respect for people of faith and prayer, such as the monks of Ya’arriol Island, although why he trusted an insanely magical flying reptile less than a Dragonship built of wood, metal and cloth, he could not fathom.
    They planned to fly southwest to the Southern Archipelago, nicknamed the underbelly of the Island-World for the sprawling curve–a thin-lipped smile, Kal had always imagined–the countless Islands described right across the world to the Western Isles, thousands of leagues distant. On the way, they would pass Yin’toria Island, heart of his business ventures and home to a special someone he could not wait to introduce Tazi to–if only he could devise a plan whereby they might not murder each other at first sight.
    Before the famously harsh Western Isles loomed the mountainous fastness of Jeradia, their eventual destination. On the Isle’s northern flank stood the famed Dragon Rider Academy, where Tazithiel hoped to find information that should help them in their madcap quest.
    His lips quirked. Plenty of opportunity for dalliance along the way.
    With a leathery rustling, the Dragoness spread her wings. Kal’s smile vanished like smoke in a storm. He squeezed his eyes shut, offering up a heartfelt plea as Tazithiel hurled them into the abyss, and his stomach made a many-clawed assault upon his throat.
    Wind pummelled his eyelids. It tousled his hair and played with his clothing in a reminder of Tazi’s startling ability to divest a man of his coverings with unseemly efficiency, overriding any protests to the contrary. Overriding. He scowled. An apt word to describe a Dragon’s power of persuasion. The notion of being subjugated by any person–or creature–made a certain scoundrel’s legs itch to be fleeing over the Islands with the alacrity of a cliff-goat attacked by a hive full of black flame-wasps. No. A beatific expression replaced the frown. Truth be told, he was a man ruled by passions that blazed like the belly-fires boiling audibly within the Dragoness, enamoured with an indigo-eyed enchantress who had the most alluring eyelashes …
    “Kal?” She