Dragon Soup, page 17
Wait, it was Laeticia’s elf boyfriend.
“Stop climbing. You will get yourself killed!” Perrin shouted.
The guards ran to the ladder. Two of them grabbed the sides and pushed it off the wall. Laeticia’s boyfriend yelled and flailed. He fell, still hanging onto the ladder into the hands of the guards and investigators.
He struggled against his captors, his face red. “What are you idiots doing? I was trying to save you from that monster.”
Tyro said, “And what were you planning on doing? Were you really going to catch a dragon with your bare hands? Or do you know this beast? Or do you possess magic that will calm it?”
The young man’s eyes were wide. “But I have to catch that monster or it will burn the whole city down.”
“You, young man, have to come with us and explain to the Bureau exactly what is going on.”
“I didn’t do anything! I was trying to help you.”
“Sure. Whenever you are around, there is always trouble.”
“I am the only one who can catch this creature. Soon enough, you’ll be begging me to control it. It’s a baby dragon. They tend to turn into big dragons soon enough. And if you allow it to grow up here, and it chooses some warehouse for a nest, then not even the grand magician of Solania will be able to get him to move and he will terrorise the city while defending his territory and looking for a mate.”
It sounded all very plausible, and Perrin might even have believed it had he not been aware of the situation with Laeticia, and her eating house that required dragon meat. And Gaeron was climbing up there because he wanted his dragon back.
He gestured at Tyro. He had a word or two to say about the situation.
“This character is having us on,” he said when the two of them had withdrawn into the entrance of the warehouse.
Outside in the street, the other guards were tying up Gaeron, who still continued to protest.
Meanwhile, the dragon was making a lot of noise stomping over the roof.
“I don’t know what to think,” Tyro said. “We still got a dragon running around up there, and we have to do something about it, or risk the mayor and the council coming down on us. There are still visitors from the fair in town and if they see that we ‘allow magic’, even if we don’t, and it’s not our fault that this creature roams the streets, they’ll come down on us like a tonne of bricks. In short: we need to get that thing off the roof and into a place where no one can see it.”
“Any suggestions how we might do that?”
“Hey, you’re the magic inspector. We’re just guards and investigators.”
“Then tell the guards to do their guard duty and take the oaf to the bureau and question him.”
“What about you? Do you have a magic way of getting that dragon off the roof? I notice it’s keeping a close eye on us.”
“It’s probably worried about the oaf. He was in a group of people from the realms who were trying to kill the beast last night.”
Perrin wondered whether he was crazy or the dragon was looking at him, but he said nothing about it. Another reason was that the dragon might be hungry and in the wild, dragons would eat magic sniffers.
It was also clear that the dragon’s wings were not yet powerful enough to carry the creature’s weight, which added to the mystery of how it had reached the roof. But it also meant that the dragon wasn’t going to go anywhere for as long as people could stop it coming down.
He handed Tyro the magic sniffer cage to take back to the bureau.
Then, when the men had left to take Gaeron away and to get reinforcements, Perrin wandered back into the hall.
He checked the thunderstaff in his pocket, happy that he hadn’t mentioned anything about it to the others. They sure would have told him to hand the device in, and it was the only thing that had a chance at controlling the dragon.
He should try it now, while no one could see that it was a magic device.
He could hear the heavy footsteps on the roof. He had to find a way up there. Maybe there was a ladder somewhere.
Perrin discovered the way up against the side wall, a metal staircase that led to a level of storage racks suspended from the hall’s ceiling. A set of ropes and pulleys would allow the warehouse owner to lower the racks to the ground.
He climbed the stairs, realising that there was no way the dragon could have come this way, because it was too big to fit through the cage structure that surrounded the staircase.
The staircase brought Perrin to a metal door that led to the roof.
The door had a tiny window at eye level, no more than a peephole. Perrin went up to the door—
And something smashed into the outside.
A sharp claw pierced the opening, shattering the glass where his eye would have been if he’d been a little quicker.
Perrin staggered back against the railing.
Claws scratched over the outside of the door, making the most horrible screeching noise. Each time the claws hit the metal, the door shuddered visibly.
It wasn’t going to hold for long.
If the dragon kept bashing the door, it would break, and then—
Too late.
The metal burst inwards. The dragon ran inside, but its shoulders didn’t fit through the door opening. It pushed against the door frame, which creaked and bulged inwards. That wasn’t going to last long.
Perrin ran down, taking the steps two at a time.
The thunderstaff banged against his leg, as yet unused. He needed time to take the thing out of his pocket and time to get a clear shot without being eaten first.
An almighty crash echoed through the hall. Bits of wood and plaster rained down, clanging on the metal stairs, followed by the dragon, half-sliding, half-running down the outside of the mesh safety cage that encased the stairs.
It was too heavy for the structure to hold. Poles buckled and snapped. The structure sagged sideways. Perrin hung onto the sides of the cage.
Slowly, with much creaking, the staircase crumpled to the ground. Part of it fell across work benches, where employees had been wrapping parcels to be sent in the mail.
The dragon fell on top of a set of shelves. Those shelves weren’t built for the weight and collapsed under the weight. Parcels fell, boxes burst. A lot of fabric and dressmaker’s items fell out, material from the fair.
The staircase stopped listing, leaving Perrin hanging sideways in a rather precarious position.
For a moment, all was quiet.
Then the rubble on the floor moved.
A claw pushed aside broken bits of shelving.
A nose poked out.
But hang on, dragon noses were not normally purple, according to Atreyo’s book. Nor did the book say anything about snorting sprays of orange dye from a dragon’s nostrils.
It had fallen into the shelving that contained bottles of dye. Oh dear. It was a purple dragon. A very angry purple dragon.
Perrin retreated to the very bottom of his sideways-hanging cage.
The sound of voices came from outside.
He stuck his hand in his pocket and retrieved the thunderstaff. He stuck the end between two metal posts and aimed. He held his breath while his fingers hovered over the top and bottom buttons.
But the dragon didn’t keep still. It was now trying to free itself from the shelving units that had collapsed on top of it, wrestling through a collection of parcels to be mailed, mostly containing patterns, dresses, and haberdashery.
A breeze went through the hall and made the crates that hung from the ceiling squeak. The dragon looked up.
Wait, was there something in those boxes that it wanted?
Wasn’t that the mail ready to go out?
What if he could lure the dragon into one of those cages and suspend it in the middle of the hall?
When the mail was to be loaded, the mail train would back into the hall and then those racks hanging on the ceiling would be lowered so that the contents could be loaded into it.
The collapse of the stairs meant he couldn’t reach the ceiling anymore, but he could still let those crates down, because the ropes to do that had remained attached to the control box at the top of the staircase.
Perrin crept back up the stairs. He needed to do this carefully because the staircase listed badly and he wasn’t sure what stopped it falling completely.
The box with the ropes that controlled the crates still hung at the top of the stairs. Perrin undid one of the ropes and lowered the crate in question.
The pulley squeaked. The lowering chain pulled the staircase further upwards as the two were connected by the same chain.
The dragon looked up. When the crate came closer, it raised itself on its hind legs and clawed at the crate, catching it in its claws and biting the metal casing.
That was enough.
Clearly, the dragon wanted something in the crate and was now distracted. Perrin slid down the listing staircase as fast as he could, again attempting to take the thunderstaff out of his pocket.
The staircase jerked upwards. The dragon had jumped into the crate as he’d wanted, but its weight pulled the staircase up.
The dragon nosed around, pushing aside the contents of the crate, which were all boxes ready for mailing.
The staircase swung perilously.
Whoa. The structure was not strong enough to hold that much weight.
Perrin aimed the thunderstaff…
The dragon backed out of the crate again. The staircase fell when the chain slackened, and Perrin was slammed into the side of the metal steps. Oof.
Not a moment later, the staircase jerked upright again. The dragon had jumped on top of the other crate.
This was nuts. This was worse than being on a see-saw at the fair.
Perrin crawled back up to the control box and let all the slack out of the chain, but it was too short for the crate to reach the ground.
The dragon tried to climb from the roof to the collection of mail parcels inside the crate. The crate swung over the broken shelves, making the whole structure swing with it.
And the dragon made it worse by rocking from side to side.
At the highest point of each arc, it flapped its little ineffective wings to balance itself.
The staircase swung wildly.
Perrin held on for dear life. He had to get out of here before the ceiling collapsed. Or before people came in.
He aimed the thunderstaff as best as he could, and when the dragon swung by, pressed the two buttons.
The white magic flames burst from the device.
The glow hit the dragon in the head.
It fell from the crate, but managed to hang onto the bottom.
Something made a horrible creaking sound.
Then a snap.
The control box at the top of the staircase disintegrated. Several lengths of rope unreeled from the mechanism.
The staircase fell—and the ropes flew from the control box—and the pulleys came loose from the ceiling.
The dragon, followed by all the crates and the mail parcels inside, tumbled to the ground. The broken staircase—with Perrin inside—was yanked upwards before hitting the ceiling of the hall and then falling back down.
Perrin hung on for dear life.
The staircase crashed on top of the pile of rubble. The dragon hissed uncomfortably close to him. It was trapped by crates, the shelving and the broken stairwell.
Flames of magic leapt along its neck and wings, onto the shelves and into the mess of broken parcels.
And a cloud of buttons escaped from a box and hovered over the rubble.
Hang on, wasn’t this thunderstaff meant to take away magic? It was clearly not working.
Another flock of magic pins zoomed through the warehouse, sharp point first. A couple lodged themselves into the dragon’s backside. It roared.
A roll of fabric unrolled itself. The fabric settled on the remains of a stack of boxes like a veil, and the boxes became a group of angry gnomes with bald heads, knobbly fingers and pot bellies. One of them threw his axe across the hall, where it hit another box. Big globs of paint spilled out of the broken side. It looked like the paint was pushed out of the box by something—No, wait, what looked like paint were the arms of a creature, like an octopus. It slithered over the boxes with a low hiss.
Perrin realised what was happening: the very thing he had always warned against, magics combining. The dragon, the animation magic from the buttons and pins, and the illusionary magic in the fabric, which combined to turn the boxes into gnomes—Perrin didn’t know what magic caused that.
The octopus grabbed whatever objects it could reach in its arms and threw them across the hall. Boxes with ribbons turned into snakes. Skeins of wool became caterpillars. They clambered onto each other and the caterpillar pile became a giant.
The giant picked up an entire bay of shelves and hefted it over its head.
Perrin yelled, “No, no, stop!”
But no one paid attention to him. Not the giant or the dragon, or the gnomes, which had started lifting up the tiles on the floor of the warehouse.
“No, no!” All these magics would mix and creatures would get bigger and scarier and more powerful. They were already merging together into a magic storm.
He did the only thing he could think of doing: he pressed the two buttons on the thunderstaff again. It hadn’t shown much effect previously, but he had nothing else.
White magic lit the hall in a blinding flash. The dragon roared. The giant yelled, the buttons squeaked.
Three more flashes followed, each stronger than the last.
And then… the hall fell quiet. The shelves returned to their former selves. The tip of the dragon’s tail stuck out between the parcels, still pinned down by the cage. The animal’s head rested on the floor. Its eyes were unfocused, dazed from the crash.
Phew.
That sort of solved the problem even if it hadn’t quite gone to plan. Maybe the Bureau could send some animal handlers who could put the beast into a sturdier cage before it woke up.
He’d better see if he could find someone to take care of that.
But as Perrin clambered over broken mail boxes, he came across a timber crate that had split open. Inside a bed of straw lay four eggs big enough to contain a human baby. The box had been packed with straw to protect the eggs during transport. The box was addressed to one Mr Gaeron Adari, Laeticia’s boyfriend.
The sender was someone called Lorax Staffan. The mysterious magician.
And Perrin knew why the dragon had come here.
Chapter 25
“Everyone ready?” Perrin said.
He looked around the group of Bureau inspectors and investigators. Tyro nodded.
They were standing around the corner from Bella’s inn, in the same place where Perrin himself had suffered embarrassment only a few days ago.
It was fairly busy in the street, and people streamed around the group, giving the inspectors and Perrin with his magic sniffer on his shoulder strange looks.
They were ready.
“All right then, let’s do this.”
Perrin started down the street, up the steps of Bella’s inn, to the reception desk, where Bella herself was serving a couple of Dressmakers’ Fair people who were checking out. They had their bags all packed on a trolley, ready to go to the station.
He could feel Yaro’s claws digging into his shoulder. Probably there was magic in the bag. He raised his hand and patted Yaro’s furry tail that dangled down his shoulder.
When Bella finished with the customer and she noticed the group, her eyes widened.
“It’s you again. I did tell you that you are not allowed to—”
“We have a warrant,” Perrin said, and he slapped the offending piece of paper on the desk on top of her book.
It was a very real warrant, and he was proud of it, too.
Signed by Inspector Carbin and the head of the bureau, a man few people had anything to do with in their normal daily jobs, a man who sat on the council and talked about law and order with the mayor and other important people.
Bella took one look at it, and all the aggression seeped out of her face.
“I see. Just as long as you understand that anything the guests are up to is not my responsibility. I only provide the rooms.”
“We’ll see,” Perrin said.
And then they looked at each other. Bella always made a point of having the last word, of making the last threat that unless her conditions were met, none of the agreed events would happen.
She had also constantly irritated him throughout all the work he had done for Atreyo, and it was payback time.
“This man is staying in your establishment. Is he still in the room upstairs?”
She jerked her head over her shoulder at the courtyard, where it was busy with people meeting for lunch. Perrin spotted a glimpse of the wizard’s robe.
“Right. Don’t let him leave. If you do, you will be held responsible for your part in helping crimes. Don’t let him check out or take his bags or even go for a stroll in the street.”
She nodded. Her eyes were wide, and for once, she had nothing to say.
Her gaze went from him to Tyro and all the others who had come. The inspectors and investigators who stood at the entrance to the hall, observing who went in or out, who were looking at the paintings on the wall while listening to conversations, who sat on the stairs in case they quickly needed to stop people going up.
It was as if she hadn’t realised that all these inspectors had come with Perrin.
Yaro on his shoulder stuck his nose in the air and was sniffing something. Food probably.
Perrin glanced into the crowded courtyard. There were quite a number of tables and chairs in there, all of them occupied with travellers, and he spotted quite a few locals as well.
The Wizard sat at a table towards the other end of the courtyard, in the dappled shade of a tree. With him was none other than Elro Katando.
Talk about getting caught red-handed.
He turned around to the other inspectors.
“He’s here. All right, let’s go.”
