Dragon Soup, page 15
It was long past the time when Dorella would have closed her shop, and the tearoom and kitchen were dark. Perrin crept up the stairs as quietly as he could. It was just as well that the other visitor had checked out this morning and was probably already on the way back to whatever realm he had come from.
In his room, he was not surprised to see that the magic sniffers were agitated, and this included the nest of young ones that were all curled against their mother and sat with their little noses in the air, looking around.
Perrin felt guilty about taking all the animals with him, but he might need them, and he had no spare cage to leave one of the animals in the room. He didn’t want to leave them without the cage because they might get into trouble, and he didn’t want to take Yaro without the cage in case he would have to run, or in case something spooked Yaro and he ran away.
So he picked up the cage and carefully crept back downstairs again and pulled the door shut very quietly, hoping that he didn’t wake the neighbours.
Where and how did one find a dragon?
He knew, both from established folklore and Atreyo’s books, that dragons lived in the mountains and that they ate smaller animals, like magic sniffers and farm sheep and goats. That was why farmers didn’t like it when a dragon lived nearby.
Did dragons really live in caves that were filled with a hoard of gold?
Probably not. Animals had no use for gold. The dragon was, after all, an animal, even if it was a magical one.
Dragons had very good noses, so he assumed that the smell of food would attract them, and at this time of the day, the smell of food would come from bakeries.
So Perrin walked through the dark streets of the town from one bakery to the next. Most of the street lamps had already run out of oil. The windows of the houses were dark, the streets were dark and the only creatures watching him were the mice and rats that lived in the dark corners, in the yards, in the outhouse, in the entrance to the storeroom.
He couldn’t walk very fast because the cage was awkward.
He kept a close eye on the magic sniffers, whether their behaviour changed. It never did. They just remained nervous and skittish.
The smell of fresh bread from bakeries was so strong that even he could smell it all over town, but he found no trace of the dragon.
In places, he could see evidence that the dragon had been there, where the door had been broken into, or heaven forbid, the dragon had left something behind, big round pellets they were too, shaped like a teardrop and about the size of his hand. Once he almost stepped in one.
He was getting desperate. It was soon getting light. He would have to go back to work and explain to Inspector Carbin what had happened, and, given his past interactions with her, he had no hope that she was going to support him. A few shop owners had already woken up and were on the way to their shops, giving him strange looks. Who knew what they thought? That he had been at the festivities and out on the town?
He was also very tired, not having slept all night. He was really getting far too old for this. It was a long time ago that he and Atreyo used to have nights like that.
Then he came out at the marketplace, where there was a commotion on the far side of the square. The entire front area of the Traveller’s Rest had been smashed. The windows at the front were broken, doors ripped from their frames. Tables and chairs lay broken in the street. The awning had been ripped off the front of the building. The inside of the place was a mess of broken glass and furniture.
A few people had already arrived, presumably ready to start cooking and cleaning, and they just stood helplessly staring at the mess. There would probably not be a full house today. On the other hand, The Happy Dragon nextdoor was pretty much untouched, although a pot plant at the front had been kicked over. Columbina was going to be in so much trouble over this, and it was all his fault.
And he was running out of time. It was almost time to go to work, and face the anger from Inspector Carbin. He’d be sacked, he was sure of that.
But Perrin was honest to a fault, so although it probably made much more sense to pack up his things and leave the city, he turned around to go to the bureau.
Nothing would save him now, so he might as well tell the inspector the full truth, including the parts that would get him into trouble.
By now, quite a crowd of people had gathered around the mess at the Traveller’s Rest.
He pushed himself past the back of the crowd, but someone came out straight for him.
“This is all your fault!” Laeticia shouted.
Her face was red, and her cheeks wet from crying. “You and that woman are trying to ruin me. You hated me from the moment I opened up.”
“Excuse me? Please leave Columbina out of this. You have no proof that she did anything, and you can’t find that proof because she hasn’t done anything. If you must accuse someone, accuse me. But honestly, the only thing that has ruined you is your own stupidity. If you think that you could have fed dragon meat to people and get away with it, then I’m sure you would always have set yourself up for disaster.”
She looked up at him, an understanding expression coming over her face. “What do you mean?”
“Those vats of olives. There was meat in the bottom, right?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. Our olive paste is delicious. Olive paste requires olives. Olive vats contain olives. Nothing else.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really. This is all because of that woman next door. First, she poisons all my customers. And then she hires people to break my shop.”
“You believe Columbina has done this? Do you have any evidence for that? Evidence that will stand up in court?”
She just looked at him, but said nothing.
“Why would Columbina want this shop?”
“She wants to destroy me, because I am much more successful.”
“Again, do you have any evidence for this? Did she ever say anything to you? Did she ever make any threats?”
“She didn’t have to. It is obvious, right?”
“No, it’s not obvious. You would be angry if someone opened a shop next door to you. However, you have to be a special kind of person to cause harm to the other person. If that’s what you want to accuse Columbina of, you would need some pretty good evidence to convince the bureau and the council that Columbina has done this. I think the evidence points in an entirely different direction. Someone gave you magic to make your shop a success. You know that my partner Atreyo dealt with importing spices and magic all the time, and that I used to do his administration. It is not for nothing that I’ve got this job. I actually know a bit about magic. I know that dragon meat is irresistible and used in the realms to buy favours. If you want to prepare dragon meat, you have to soak it in a solution of vinegar. But somehow your vat of olives went bad, didn’t it? And people got sick, didn’t they? You couldn’t work out what happened to the other olives. So you needed to get new olives.”
“What are you talking about?” She already seemed less determined.
“I also have a number of very keen magic sniffers, and they were very nervous last night. I might even have seen something at the back of the meat works where you were trying to procure ‘olive’ supplies for the shop by killing a certain animal that escaped into the city and has now destroyed your eating house. I can report this to my inspector and can unleash the entire force of the bureau on you. Or you can cooperate with me and show me who was behind this.”
She looked up at him, eyes blinking. She wiped a tear off her cheek.
“If I help you, will I still go to jail?”
“I can’t tell you that. But I can tell you that if we find out who the mastermind behind this is and we catch him, then you will probably be punished less than if I find out nothing and you are the only one to be accused of trading in magic.”
She looked at him for a long time again. “My mother will be so disappointed in me.”
“Possibly, but if your mother believes that you were tricked or pushed into it, she might be more sympathetic.”
Laeticia looked at her hands. “Well, there was this man.”
“You mean the one who came in asking for dragon soup and he got really angry with Columbina for not serving soup made out of dragons?”
She nodded.
“And the same man offered you a tip of two gold coins that Columbina didn’t see that you took?”
She looked up at him, eyes wide.
“How do you know this?”
“It was busy in the inn. One of my magic sniffers had escaped into the courtyard, so I got some soup and tea while I waited for it to come back and I was actually sitting at the table next to him. I saw all of it.”
She looked at her hands again.
Perrin continued, “I followed him back to his accommodation. I didn’t find out much more because he was staying at Bella’s, and Bella and I don’t really get along very well. But I did find out that he was a magician, that he had come into town for the Dressmakers’ Fair, but that he seems very good at wriggling himself in the good books with the council.”
Laeticia looked at the ground.
Perrin continued. “So he gave you a very generous tip, and you used it to pay for this place?”
“Two whole gold coins? That wouldn’t have been enough.”
“It was magic money.”
“It wasn’t.”
“Then he also gave you a note, and you went to see him later and he gave you more money during that visit.”
Her cheeks coloured.
“What would you have done? I am not rich. My boyfriend was telling me we should run a business and be independent.”
“And you didn’t question why he would give you enough money to buy the place?”
“He didn’t. He said it was a loan, and he said I’d have to pay it back.”
“Did you ask him why he gave you such a generous deal?”
“Because he liked me? I heard he was friendly with Riana and gave her lots of work and they made lots of money from that? Who am I to question him? All he wanted was to reserve a table for his local friend and a group of people every night. They would pay well. And this man did. He wanted businesses to do well. My boyfriend said it was a great opportunity.”
“Let’s talk about this boyfriend, then. He comes from the realms, doesn’t he?”
“Does that have anything to do with it?”
“Well, it might just that he has enough knowledge of dragons to think that he can keep and slaughter them.”
Her eyes widened even further.
“It wasn’t me. I wanted to start a fashion business, but he said it was much better to start an inn because he said he knew tricks to make food irresistible. And then we heard from this rich man who offered us this building. I have no idea how he knew we were looking for a place. Honestly, I don’t.”
“What happened to the old man and his vegetable shop?”
She shrugged. “They said he wanted to stop working, anyway. It was a good deal. We didn’t need to pay any rent for the first three months, he said.” She looked around and her face fell. “But now I guess I will have to pay for the damage. I don’t have any money. I paid all of it to the workers. And I paid for the furniture. Honestly.” Tears glittered in her eyes.
“Laeticia, I don’t think you’re a bad person. Many people who are in your situation would not have had the strength to do what you did. But I need you to be a bit stronger and tell me the names of everyone exactly who was involved.”
She knew the wizard’s name. It was Lorax Staffan, and not a name Perrin had heard before. He was just there to talk to her, she said.
“What do you mean?”
“He doesn’t care about Tamba or about eating houses, or about the Magic Free Zone. He just fixes things, mainly illegal things, for his bosses.”
“So, who are the locals involved? No, wait, I can suggest. The person who had a standing reservation is Elro Katando, the dressmaker.”
Laeticia’s eyes widened. “How do you know that?”
“Because I saw him in the dining room with groups of people talking about….”
And there he realised something: dragon meat tasted so good that a person eating it wanted to do everything to taste it again. Elro Katando held daily dinners with the junior councillors and other hangers-on. If they could come again the next day, they would do everything he asked them. If he didn’t invite them the next day, they would still do what he told them, because they wanted to eat dragon meat so badly.
He’d fallen silent for so long that Laeticia asked him, “What’s wrong?”
“You know he is standing for the council?”
“I have no interest in politics.”
Perrin had to do his best not to burst out in anger.
Why—by all the seven hells, why—did people always say this? I’m not interested in politics and then they got angry at those in power for getting away with things they should never have gotten away with if only people had kept an eye on what those in power were doing.
I’m not interested in politics was synonymous with I couldn’t care less about what powerful people do to my town, and I’m going to turn a blind eye and let them do it.
And he was sure that I’m not interested in politics would become I never agreed that you could do that in a fraction of a second, once magic came into the city at large scale and the citizens got upset.
And he was through with that attitude.
Chapter 22
“There is a—what?—loose in the city?”
Perrin could hear Inspector Carbin’s voice while he was still going up the stairs, before he had entered the large office in the Bureau.
He had a pretty good idea what this was going to be about. Someone had seen the dragon.
Inspector Carbin stood in the middle of the floor, facing a uniformed Bureau investigator, one of those people who did their mysterious work in the room across the landing.
Some of Perrin’s colleagues sat at their desks or stood around the perimeter of the room, pretending not to be there. Perrin joined a group of them, shuffling to the back so as not to attract attention.
“You must stop this terrible creature,” the man yelled into Inspector Carbin’s face.
“How am I supposed to do that?”
“I don’t know. You deal with this kind of stuff. The name kinda gives it away: The Bureau of Magic Abuse. You’re inspectors of magic. Don’t tell me you don’t know what to do when you encounter actual magic.”
“My people deal with magic ingredients at inns. And magic pins.”
She gestured wildly at her desk where Perrin assumed Verbena’s report about the magic pin at the Dressmaker’s Fair would be.
The man scoffed. “If you don’t know about this kind of stuff, tell me, why do we have a Bureau of Magic Abuse?”
“Ask the mayor that. The council pays us to do inspections of shops and inns. We report what we find. We report unusual observations. Maybe if you actually looked at our reports and did something with them, we’d have appointed someone to deal with magic that my department is in no position to handle.”
“What are you saying?” His nostrils flared.
“Whatever you wish to interpret. Our responsibility goes as far as writing up a report and putting it in the reporting book. Your responsibility starts there.”
The man snorted.
Verbena came to stand next to Perrin and looked over his shoulder.
“What is going on?” she asked.
Another inspector in the room turned around and said, “There is a dragon loose in the city.”
“There is a what?”
Her voice was rather louder than she intended, and several people shushed her.
The inspector said, in a low voice, “It smashed through a number of shops and left a trail of destruction. It went to the meat works and ate its way through a bunch of sausages.”
Someone else turned around. “At least they were good sausages, not the crap that some places sell.”
“This is not funny. Because we are supposed to go out there and catch it.”
“Us? We don’t know how to catch a dragon. That’s what the investigators and the guards are for.”
“That’s what they’re arguing about.”
Perrin shouldered the onlookers aside and went into Inspector Carbin’s office.
“Excuse me,” he said at the door.
Inspector Carbin and the investigator continued arguing, so he said it louder, “Excuse me.”
They stopped arguing and looked at him.
“Yes.” Inspector Carbin said. Her voice was as cold as ice.
Perrin didn’t care. He already knew that she didn’t think much of him. But Perrin lifted his chin and said, “I may have some news that you might find useful.”
For a moment, she looked like she wanted to tell him that nothing he said could be useful, but then she sniffed.
“Be quick then, because I’ve got a lot of problems to solve, as you can appreciate.”
“I know who the animal belongs to, and I can probably find you someone who might be able to deal with it, at least better than the bureau can.”
“Someone who knows how to handle a dragon?”
“You heard me the first time.”
“And you know who brought it into the city?”
“That’s what I thought I said.”
She gave him a suspicious look. “And how do you know all these things?”
“Through the convergence of luck, my illustrious previous career, as you refer to it, and the fact that I just happened to notice a few things, going back to the time that I went outside my authority to investigate the room at Bella’s inn.”
“You’re trying to be smart with me. I’d advise you to stop that.”
