The newest addition to the growing public library system in Birmisia Colony was in Port Dechantagne’s southeastern most neighborhood.  It was known to the residents as Woodstead and was made up of rows of three-story brownstones, with businesses on the ground floor or the basement, and apartments above.  The library building was a modest structure, two stories, but overlooking a long sloping hill, recently denuded of trees but otherwise undeveloped.  The wide panoramic window offered a beautiful view from the lower level, but it paled in comparison to the view from the Library Director’s office above.

Kieran Baxter stared out from his office.  He had started out watching the conchoraptors hunting among the leaves at the forest’s edge.  It was too early for pinecones, but it was a good spot for mice or lizards.  Before long though, he had stopped looking at anything at all, as his mind wandered.  A knock at the door returned him suddenly to the present.  His secretary poked her head into the room.

“Someone to see you, Mr. Baxter.”

She then opened the door wide and a thirteen-year-old girl walked in past her.

“Thank you, Miss Kulp,” said Baxter, as she closed the door.

“Hi, Daddy,” said the girl, bouncing up to him and wrapping her arms around him.

She was tall for her age, lanky, just like her mother.  Her medium length blond hair had been curled.  She wore a grey shirtwaist over a white skirt, a straw boater was balanced on her head, and she carried a small grey and white striped handbag.

“You’re old enough to call me Dad now, or Father.”

“I have a father,” she said squeezing him, “but you will always be my Daddy.  Dad’s not too bad though.”

“What can I do for you today, my dear?  I could count on one hand how many times you’ve visited me in my office.”

“I wanted to talk to you about money.”  She looked toward the chair.  “Can we sit down?”

“Oh, is this an official meeting then?” he laughed and stepped around behind the large pine desk to take his seat.  “I thought your mother had you on an allowance.”

“Oh, she does.  In fact, it’s really starting to pile up.  I can’t seem to spend it fast enough.”

“Would that were a problem we all had.”

“I know.  That’s why I wanted to talk to you about it.  I want to give you some money.”

“You don’t have to do that, Sweetheart.”

“I know I don’t have to, but I want to.  You and Bryony have treated me like I was your own child, and I’m not.  You’ve known me since I was a baby, but I’m not your flesh and blood.  You just had the bad luck of meeting my mother when she was pregnant with me.”

“I consider that very good luck,” he said, sincerely, “if for no other reason than I get to be your dad.”

“But poor Bryony.  She marries you and she gets me foisted upon her—the child of your old chatelaine.”

“That’s not how I would characterize your mother.”

“In any case,” she continued.  “I’ve lived with the two of you for five years now.”

“It can’t be that long.  Can it?”

“It’s well over five years.  And here I have all this money that I can’t use.  I want to give it to you.  You can pay off the loan on your house.”

“I thought you had a better grasp of money than that,” he said with a frown.  “Why, we must still owe five thousand to the Bank of Birmisia.”

“Bryony says it’s more than six thousand, and I have almost ten thousand marks right here.”  She held up her handbag.

“Ten thousand… You’re carrying around ten thousand marks?”

“Yes.  Mother is giving me five hundred a month, and I just don’t have that many expenses.  I take my friends out sometimes, and I go out to lunch.  I buy a dress every now and then.  I want to give you and Bryony the rest.”

“Good grief,” he sighed.  “Does your mother have to do everything so ham–handed?  She can’t… Oh never mind.  In any case, I’m not taking your money.  I will, however, take you to the bank after I’m done here for the day, and we will open a bank account for you.  You can save your money for the future.  You can use it to attend University, and maybe buy your own house someday.”

“Mother says I don’t need any university.  She says that all that education is a waste.  I’m going to be a great sorceress, like her.”

“Is that what you want?  To be like her?”

“Well, I do think I’ll be a sorceress.  It’s in me whether I want it or not.  But I don’t want to be a twat like her.”

“Senta!  You will not use language like that.”

She grinned back at him.  “I’ve heard you call her that same thing.”

“Well,” he said through gritted teeth.  “Do as I say, not as I do.  Now go down and look through the book stacks, and I’ll wrap up my business.  Then we’ll go to the bank.”

She hopped up and skipped around the great desk to his side, kissing him on the cheek.

“I love you more than anything, you know, Dad,” she said.

“I love you too.”

On almost the exact opposite side of the world from Birmisia Colony was the mother country of Greater Brechalon and its capital Brech City.  Its heart was the Old City, filled with majestic buildings that were only slightly less grand than the palaces dotted among them.  Many of these great buildings, all originally homes of the rich and powerful, had been subdivided into apartments, and places of business.  The house at Number One, Avenue Dragon, four stories tall and occupying a full city block, was still intact, though it had been modernized with gas lights, indoor plumbing, and even an elevator.  It was the Dechantagne house in Brech City, though the sole member of the family occupying it at present was Iolanthe’s daughter, twenty-four-year-old Iolana Staff.

It was well past midnight, but Iolana found herself unable to sleep.  She stared across her bedroom at the evening post, sitting upon its silver tray, on the mantle above the cold fireplace.  With a sigh, she stood up, slipped her feet into her house slippers, and threw a robe over her already voluminous nightdress.  Then she stepped across the room to the fireplace.  She brushed aside half a dozen letters and picked up a large envelope.

Leaving her rooms, she followed the corridor all the way to the back of the house.  It seemed like miles away and in reality, was almost the length of a football pitch, but at last she reached the correct door.  She knocked quietly and then entered, closing the door behind her.

Birmisia Colony was thick with lizzies, but in Brech City, or for that matter the country of Greater Brechalon, or for that matter the entire continent of Sumir, the population of lizzies was limited to one individual.  At that moment, that one lizzie was sleeping in the bedroom Iolana had entered, the great toothy mouth wide open and an open book hanging from one clawed hand.  The lizzie in question was Esther, whom Iolana had raised from a baby, and who consequently seemed far more human than lizzie, at least when awake.

Esther started and blinked when Iolana sat on the bed beside her.

“What?  What’s the matter?”

“You’ve gone to sleep while reading again.”  Iolana took the book out of her hand, closed it and looked at the cover.  “You’re behind.  I gave you this two days ago.”

“I’m sorry.  I have fallen behind.  I was out late last night with Willa, so I didn’t get a chance to do my nightly reading.”

“Where did you go?” wondered Iolana.

“We went to a very interesting pub, where a woman was singing while playing something called an accordion.”

“Sounds dreadful.”

“I thought it was lovely,” said Esther.

“You could take your friend to the opera.  She might appreciate having her musical experience expanded.  I doubt that, as a maid, she gets asked to go very often.”

“You didn’t wake me up just to show me how toploftical you are, did you?”

“I couldn’t sleep, and I needed my sister,” said Iolana, sticking out her lower lip.

The lizzie blinked.

“Something has your nerves shattered if you’re calling me your sister.  I was always under the impression that I was your favorite pet.”

“You know I’ve never thought of you that way.”

Esther slid over to the other side of the bed and held the blankets up.  Iolana climbed in beside her and snuggled up into the lizzie’s shoulder.  They were quiet for several minutes.

“I have a wonderful life here in the capital.  Everyone respects me.  My book is bringing in enough money that I haven’t touched my allowance in months.  I’m an associate professor of literature.  In another five years, I could be the youngest full professor in the history of University of Brechalon.  You are my closest family, and you’re here.  When Terra gets back from her trip, she’ll be less than a hundred miles away, just a few hours by train.  I have everything I want right here.”

“Then why are you awake in the middle of the night?” wondered Esther.

Iolana was quiet for a moment.  Then she handed Esther the envelope.  It had previously been opened, so the lizzie easily removed the official looking letter inside.  Unfolding it, she held it up to the light.

“They’re offering you a full professorship at University of Birmisia.”

“There’s more.”

“You would be head of the literature department and…”

“Yes.”

“And you would be on track to become University President.  That’s quite something.”

“Yes, but it’s probably all my mother’s doing.  She probably wants me closer so she can control every aspect of my life.”

“Do you think so?  She never seemed to pay all that much attention to you before, except when you went out of your way to provoke her.  I would have thought that she would just as soon have you here, far away from her.  Maybe it was Augie.  He’s practically paying for that school out of his own pocket.  At least that’s what I hear.”

“Oh, I don’t think he cares where I am,” said Iolana.

“Didn’t you say that confusing book you wrote would have every institute of learning sending offers?”

“Yes.  Odyssey has been well received.”

“And have you gotten other offers?”

“Yes.  St. Dante.  Ponte-a-Verne.  Wissenschaften.”

“Well, there you go,” said Esther.  “It must be down to that.”

Thousands of miles to the west of Birmisia Colony, the royal yacht H.M.S. Sovereignty was steaming past the Mullien Islands.  The sleek-looking modern vessel was on loan from His Majesty King Tybalt III to his youngest son and his wife.  Prince Clitus, the Duke of Argower, and his wife Princess Terra, were sailing east to visit the royal colonies in Mallon, of which the princess was a native.   In the unlikely event that the king been on such a trip, the small ship would have been accompanied by a flotilla, or more likely, the king would have been aboard a battleship, and Sovereignty would have been left at home.  As it was, only a destroyer, H.M.S. Fearless, accompanied the yacht.

His Royal Highness Clitus, the Duke of Argower, looked at himself in the mirror.  He had grown up wearing uniforms of the various branches of the royal military, but he had happily set them aside after his wedding a year and a half earlier.  His father had given him a duchy as a wedding present, and there was apparently less need of a duke to be on constant parade than a prince.  Clitus didn’t miss the stiff uniform tunics.  Even now, aboard ship, he was able to move and breathe in the much less stiff number four uniform.

He stepped away from the mirror and out of the stateroom.  Though his wife had slept with him, he hadn’t seen her since getting up.  He hoped she was at breakfast.  He was famished.  Taking the stairs up the dining room, he found the table set and servants waiting, but no one seated.

“Have you seen the duchess this morning?” he asked Clark, one of the servers.

“I believe she’s on the aft deck, Your Highness.”

“Thank you.”

Clitus made his way through the room and out the sliding door that faced aft.  This put him on the balcony overlooking the deck, where he saw his wife and two of his body men.

Sergeant Ryan Stigby of Mernham Yard had been the police sergeant assigned to protect Clitus for almost ten years.  He had proven time and again his willingness to lay down his life for his charge.  The other man was Bob.  For lack of a better term, Bob was Clitus’s fixer.  It was he who made embarrassing or difficult situations go away—sometimes by utilizing money, sometimes threats, sometimes God-only-knew-what.  Bob had been with Clitus longer than Stigby, and unlike almost every man in the Kingdom, he went by his Kafirite name rather than his surname.  Clitus would have bet that even Stigby didn’t know Bob’s last name.  Clitus knew it.  It was Fitzroy.  Bob was the grandson of the bastard son of Clitus’s great-grandfather King Tybalt I.  The two of them were fourth cousins.

Just then, Stigby threw something toward a post that had been erected at the very stern of the vessel.  When it hit, Clitus could see that it was a large knife.

“Just what is going on here, gentlemen?” he called.

All three turned around, but only Stigby had the decency to look embarrassed.  Bob was grinning widely, while the princess maintained her usual, rather blank resting face.

“Um, good morning, Your Royal Highness,” said the copper.  “The duchess was just showing us… um, how to throw knives.  You never know when that might come in handy.”

“Especially in the wilds of Mallon,” added Bob.

“Come up and have breakfast, Brownie,” the prince told his wife.  “After that, you can teach all three of us.”

The three stepped into the doorway below Clitus’s feet.  He turned and went back to the table, arriving just as the other three entered by way of the staircase.  Though they waited for prince and the princess to sit first, the other two men followed suit.  They had long been in the habit of sitting down to dine with Clitus in private.

“So, whose idea was knife fighting?”

“Knife throwing, Bully,” said the duchess, the former Lady Terra Posthuma Korlann Dechantagne, using her pet name for him.  “I’m still working to master knife fighting.”

He chuckled but noted that she kept a straight face.

The duchess picked up a plate of basted eggs, taking one for herself, and then passing it on to Bob.  Clitus followed suit with the bacon.  Terra had insisted that the food be set on the table for them to serve themselves, rather than having the servers constantly buzzing around.  The prince thought it rather a waste of time, but acceded to her wishes, as he did in almost everything.

“Why didn’t you wake me up, Brownie?” he asked, after scraping a large serving of hash brown potatoes onto his plate.

“I wanted you to sleep in today,” she said.  “We have an exciting day ahead of us.”

“We do?  I was unaware of anything very different from every other day since we left Enclep.”

“We are stopping at Terra Island.”

“We’re only stopping to take on water.”

“We shall see,” she replied.

“Besides, the island has no official name, and since we didn’t discover it, we don’t get to name it.”

“Ships have been stopping here for years,” she said.  “Obviously, it was awaiting an appropriate name.”

Stigby changed the subject to Mallontah, or tried to, but none of the others wanted to think about it yet.  It was weeks away, and it sounded unpleasant.

When they had all finished, they returned to the aft deck, where Terra continued her tutoring of knife throwing technique, adding Clitus as a pupil.

“There are several things to keep in mind when throwing a knife,” she said.  “The heavier part of the knife should be thrown first.  If you are throwing one with a heavy blade, hold it by the handle.  Likewise, if your knife is handle-heavy, hold it by the blade with a pinch-finger grip.  Mine are heavier of blade, so you may hold them by the handle.  Grip them as you would a hammer.”

The dockyards sat at the northern tip of Port Dechantagne.  To the southeast, along First Avenue were the homes of the rich and important of the city, including the colony’s two largest homes.  Both the mansion of the Dechantagnes and the home created for Zoantheria Hexacorallia next to it, were less than two years old.  The eastern face of Zoantheria’s home was very much the same style as the Dechantagne home it faced—three stories, columned, and classically inspired.  It’s western half however, looked like nothing so much as the massive constructs used to house dirigibles.  It was a home designed with the dichotomy of its mistress’s life in mind.  In other words, it was built for a dragon, one who lived much of her life in the form of a human being.

On this morning, Zoey was entertaining another woman in her beautifully appointed breakfast nook.  One wall of the small room was completely taken up with a large window that looked out over a garden filled with yellow roses.  The walls to either side were covered with portraits, many of them paintings, but some photographs.  On the remaining wall, on either side of the open doorway, were cabinets filled with fine porcelain dinnerware.  On the small table, between the two women, were a set of teacups and teapot matching the dishes in the cabinet, and a large platter containing three different kinds of biscuits.

Zoey daintily procured a chocolate biscuit from the platter and brought it to her thick lips.  Her eyes lit up as she tasted the buttery treat.  She shifted in her seat.  Her yellow day dress, which was one of the new styles, having no bustle, was trimmed with white bows.  She ran a hand over her breast to brush away nonexistent crumbs.

“I could never have imagined,” said the other woman, the former Maria Bertha Jerome Workville.  “If you had told me three years ago that I would be living in Birmisia and that my very best friend in the world would be a dragon, well, I would have thought you were insane.  I would have called for a constable.  That’s what I would have done.”

Maria too wore the latest style of day dress, hers white with pink ribbons.  She was shorter than the dragon in human form, with reddish blond hair and only a few freckles across her otherwise alabaster face.  As she formed her relatively thin lips into a smile, her large green eyes sparkled.  Picking up the teacup, she carefully sipped.

“I don’t mean to be rude, Zoey, but it’s still too hot for me.”

“Perhaps if you had some cream?” suggested the hostess, reaching for the creamer.

“No.  I shall wait until it cools.  I don’t mind.  The water must have been extraordinarily hot when it arrived.  I wonder that the teapot didn’t melt.”

“I’m sorry, Maria.  The servants are used to making it that way for me.  I should have thought to have them adjust things.  In point of fact however, water can’t get hot enough to melt porcelain.  It has a finite upper temperature.”

“You would know better than I do, I’m sure.  Don’t worry though.  The tea will be cool soon enough.”  She smiled again and arched one carefully sculpted brow.  “Does it seem cool already to you?”

“I do prefer mine scaldingly hot.”  Zoey tossed the remainder of the biscuit into her mouth.  “So how is life in the big house?”

“Oh, it’s interesting.  I can safely say that.  It took me a while, but I finally feel like I know my way around.  I get along with the aunt fairly well now.  She doesn’t say much to me, but that’s just as well.  The mother is nice enough, I suppose.  It’s that Gladys that I find the most difficult.  You’d think she was the lady of the house, the way she goes on, instead of a perpetual houseguest, which is what she really is.”

“Don’t let her push you around.”

“I try not to, and I’m standing up for myself now.  Unfortunately, it took me a while to get to this point and they’ve all gotten used to running right over me.”

“I could come and put the fear of goddess in them, if you want me too,” said Zoey.  “They’re already afraid I’m going to eat one of them.”

“No, no,” Maria waved her hand.  “I’ll manage.  Mind you, I really do enjoy seeing your dragon form.  She is just so beautiful.”

“Not she.  Me.  It’s still me.  I’m the dragon.”

“Yes, I know.  It’s rather hard to remember.  Looking at you now, no one would imagine you weren’t a natural born human being.”

“Thank you.  I work very hard at it.  I’ve spent more time perfecting that spell than all the other magic put together.”

“Well, it shows.  I’m sure Augustus appreciates it.”

“I hope so,” said Zoey.

“He loves you so very much.  Anyone can see it, the way he looks at you.  You two make such a cute couple.  Will you be seeing him this evening?”

“Probably.  Anyway,” said Zoey, changing the subject.  “You said you wanted a favor, and if it isn’t eating some person or other, then what is it?”

“Well, it is a delicate subject, but I feel sure that you can help me.”

“All right.”

“I’ve been married for more than a year and a half now,” said Maria.

“Yes?”

“Two years next Restuary.”

“Yes?”

“Almost two years and I’m not with child.”

“I have to say,” said Zoey, “I’m not particularly versed in this area of human biology, but I do understand that sometimes it takes a bit of time.”

“I understand that,” said Maria.  “I also understand that it may take considerably longer if the husband does not visit his wife in her bedchamber.”

“He’s not…”

“No.  Not in weeks and weeks.”

“Oh, I… um,” the dragon in human form paused to sip her tea.