Page 35 of Connor and the Dragons

“Kess.”

“Apologies.” Frost slicked the water jug half a breath after the word this time, which would convince nobody who had ever seen actual magic.

“Late. Again.”

They ran it six more times, and on the last one the ice arrived exactly as Connor’s fingers closed on the stone, the jug silvering over in a neat lace right on cue.

“That’s the one. If anyone asks, I trained in Easterly, on the far coast. Small village, no famous masters, nobody’s cousin lives there. I’m young for my power and rude about it. Rich young wizards travel with their comforts.” He looked at us both, the cherished one and the filthy one, and his eyes crinkled. “Stay in role. If you get lost, look at me.”

I got to the door first, and Connor caught the back of my harness and stopped me.

“You forgot your bracelet,” he said.

I looked at my wrist. “Stupid thing. It’s a good thing you have one too, or we wouldn’t be able to understand each other.” I turned back to the room. “I know I put it somewhere sensible.”

“It’s under your pillow,” Kessrin said. It was.

“Very sensible,” Connor said, lips twitching.

Then he opened the door and led me out of it on a leash.

Sky and Moerrven were climbing up as we descended, and the performance began at once. Sky stopped, looked us over with a stranger’s polite surprise, and bowed a small merchant’s bow. “Morning, neighbors. Settling in all right?”

“Well enough,” Connor said, bored, a man being pleasant to lodgers beneath his station.

“We were just heading to the market. If you’re new to the city, we’d be happy to show you around town.”

“How kind,” Connor said, just as the nosy proprietress of this lodging house peeked around a corner and waved at us.

“Good morning, stranger,” I said, feeling proud of my acting ability.

“He’s very rustic,” Connor told Sky. “I keep him for other qualities.”

“I can see several of them,” Sky said gravely. “Shall we take a walk? My husband and I were just discussing a light lunch.”

We all agreed and followed him down the stairs, promising the proprietress that we’d pick her up a bite to eat on our way back.

The street took my breath. I had been stared at before, by entire towns, by garrisons, and by many frightened sheep. But in this form, people had a different kind of stare. A woman carrying bread looked at me from harness to loincloth and slowed to enjoy the view. Two young men by the canal rail elbowed each other. An older gentleman touched his hat brim, and it was aimed at Connor, respect for the wizard, but his eyes slid back to me, appreciative and very centered on my cock. I gave my hips a little wiggle, letting him look. I walked half a step behind my master’s heel with my spine straight and my chin up, the way the leashed man had walked, and I finally understood what I had witnessed: he had been feeding off every stare.

I was buzzing by the second bridge. Every glance landed on me like a hand, warm and curious and unafraid. I had waited several centuries for that. Somewhere underneath, Vyranthos turned over, felt the heat moving in me, and, for once, retreated without an argument.

I would, at some point, have to let him out, but now was not the time.

“You’re glowing,” Connor murmured.

“Figuratively, I hope,” I said, looking down at my arms, which looked more human than ever.

The market ran along both sides of a wide canal, with stalls of fish, fresh produce, wool, and copperware. Sky tour-guided us through it in his cheerful stranger voice, saying things like “the fish market dates back four hundred years” with some corrections from Moerrven, who seemed to be very precise about historical dating.

Vendors bobbed their heads at Connor. One called him young master wizard and tried to sell him a scrying bowl, and Connor examined it with such convincing boredom that the price dropped twice while he stood there. Kessrin drifted at Connor’s side, with Connor’s hand on his lower back, and people stared at him too, at the bare chest framed in silver. I felt a hot, strange pride watching them want him. He was ours.

Well, at least in this pretend game we were playing. Which was getting very difficult to differentiate from reality.

Sky turned us toward a lane that ran north, away from the canal, and my feet stopped on their own.

“Not that way,” I said.

Connor looked back at me, one eyebrow up. I leaned in close to his ear, the way a pet might beg for a treat, and whispered. “That road goes out the north gate, and there is a tear in the air at the end of it. The Liminians haul timber and ore out of it by the wagonload. I snuck through it once, centuries ago. The world on the other side is full of enormous dragons with no wings and a great many teeth, and I only just avoided being eaten.”