Dragon and Mask II

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Meanwhile, Her Grace Lady Roselynda The High Baroness of The Upper River Ways was playing with alphabet blocks.  She had spelled 'DUAAGN.'

"Dwagon!" she announced proudly.  A tired-looking man in a fancy but threadbare suit rearranged a few of Her Grace's blocks.  "There you go, D-R-A-G-O-N.  Dragon."

But the young Baroness had already detected the approach of her favourite giant green flying-thing and was tottering off to greet it.

An eight-foot tall flying lizard, Skyleth to his human friends, swooped through a window that had been specially widened for the purpose and into the playroom.

"Nye-uhl!" proclaimed the Baroness, and flung herself at the creature's belly.  'Nye-uhl' caught her in the crook of one forearm with practiced ease and squeezed her gently against his neck.

"Hewwo Your Adorableness!" he said to the child, then "Hullo Percival," to the man.

"Greetings,  Nigel," said Percival.  "You're a few minutes late, you know." (Nigel made frantic cutting movements across his throat with his tail, which Percival ignored.)  "You should really work on your punctuality.  You know what his Lordship would say..."  Nigel sighed.  He knew exactly what His Lordship would say, and Percival would keep raising a fuss until it had been said.  And there it was: a certain ominous weight in the air, a disquiet breeze ruffling the curtains and knocking over a fairly impressive block tower for someone of the Baroness' size, and then...

"I have come to expect a certain degree of PUNTUALITY in my servants, NIGEL," came the voice, booming like a galley drum, cracking like a whip.  Nigel turned, positioning himself firmly between its owner and the Baroness.

The man was tall and wide in the shoulders, shoulder-length golden hair flying free in the faint breeze.  He radiated authority like red-hot metal radiates heat, and his face was a twisted mask of rage.  Around his neck, the golden pendant that proved his noble title gleamed evilly.

Nigel saw all this and still felt sorry for the man, because he knew what it meant and because as a species dragons have developed an impressive resistance to magical glamour.  Lord Kurtis of East Falls Gate was, for a noble, not a very good magician.  Magic, you see, naturally creates glamour the way fire creates light and heat.  Glamour makes things seem bigger, better, deeper, more impressive and intimidating and mysterious than they really are, and every spell requires a little spark of glamour to begin the magic.

Good magicians never stoop to using magic just for the glamour.  Good magicians know that extended exposure to glamour can be addictive and hurtful.  Good magicians take precautions to protect themselves and those around them from the long-term effects of magic use.  Lord Kurtis was not a very good magician; glamour followed him everywhere, exaggerating, amplifying, twisting his every thought and action into a near-caricature of himself.

"Do you even REALIZE the favour I did you when I brought you in, you destitute worm?"  Do you even realize you're three months behind on my paycheck, Nigel silently countered.  And it's 'wyrm.'  Pronounced the same but you say it like something that's capable of biting your head off, not like something you scraped off of your boot.  

"I had Percival's perfectly capable service and, out of CHARITY, I still decided to hire your useless carcass as a NANNY for Her Grace."  Percival meant well in a sort of dry, officious, unlikable way, but he hated children and the sentiment was usually mutual.  "You, you IGNORANT, MALINGERING, TREASONOUS..."

Nigel tuned out.  Kurtis had lost track of who he was yelling at by now; there was nothing to do but wait it out.  He extended one wing a tiny bit for Her Ladyship to hide under.

Lord Kurtis raged and yelled and threw a few random objects (mostly at Percival, because watching things bounce off of Nigel's tough hide wasn't emotionally satisfying).  Nigel took a sort of guilty comfort in watching the pompous servant scramble to and fro dodging flower-pots.  This was his fault in the first place, after all.  Well, mostly.  If Nigel hadn't been late...

Kurtis ran out of steam and sort of pulled himself together.  Whatever glamour he'd had on him was wearing off, revealing a tall, thickly built, slightly lopsided man with straw-coloured hair badly in need of a cut.  His face looked strained and unhappy, a dramatic shift from the avatar of pure rage he'd been just seconds ago.  He looked around guiltily at the mess he'd made.  "Percival, clean this up, would you?"  Percival nodded and began picking up broken pieces of pottery.  He had a particular gift for looking proud and uptight even while sweeping up dirt and dead flowers.

The Lord of the East Falls Gate moved awkwardly toward Nigel.  "So, where's my favourite little cousin?  How is she today?"

"Cus-in Kutis ska-ee," Rose whispered to Nigel.  Then she confidently pushed his wing away and ran to hug the big man.  He never yelled at her, after all.

Nigel's eyes narrowed, and he watched Kurtis very closely as he hugged the toddler.  To be honest, this nanny job was a lousy one for a dragon.  Other dragons would look down on him for doing it, and while he did need a job quite badly there was no point in continuing here when he wasn't  being paid properly.  The reason he hadn't left was simple -- he didn't trust Lord Kurtis to be anywhere near Her Ladyship, and since he couldn't separate them he at least felt he had to keep an eye on things.

Roselynda, you see, was the only thing standing between His Lordship and being the High Baron of the Upper River Ways.  And while the Upper River Ways saw heavy use both as trading ground and as territory for spell-working, the East Falls Gate was essentially desolate.  Kurtis' father had had to sell most of his jewels and silverware to keep his family fed, leaving Kurtis to inherit a strong sense of entitlement and nothing to be entitled to.  Even without the glamour fogging his head, he wasn't the most stable of men.

Kurtis smiled warmly at Rose, who was clinging to his coat-tails and babbling animately.  Nigel softened a little.  Despite all that, the bitter Lord seemed to genuinely care about his young cousin.  For all that he was, Kurtis wasn't a plotter.  He'd never hurt a fly in cold blood, only smash it in an unplanned, frenzied rage.  In a way, that made it worse -- if Kurtis had been a genuinely evil person, Nigel could have played the hero, found some proof of foul play and fled with the Duchess to live with some more stable noble family until she'd grown up.  As it was, there was just this shadowy, unprovable threat that the other nobles would laugh at.

Also, Nigel was lonely.  He felt a bit guilty for thinking of himself when a child's life was possibly in danger, but there it was.  There was no-one to talk to here but Kurtis, who was dangerously volatile; Percival, who had the personality of an excessively gilted sofa; and Rose, who turned three about a month ago.  This would have been quite survivable if he'd been able to keep in touch with people online, but His Lordship was insanely paranoid about any outgoing communication and monitored everything; sending any message back to anyone would start him frothing at the mouth.

Then Vaxis had turned up, and turning him away had been heart-wrenching.  But he'd had no choice -- Lord Kurtis would be certain to jump to some insane, paranoid conclusion and someone could get badly hurt.  Probably Vaxis, since Nigel had a dragon's natural strength and resistance to magic on his side, but if Kurtis got angry enough he could be in danger too.  He'd had no choice.  He just hoped Vaxis would understand.

Nigel groaned and rubbed his head with his tail.  This was giving him a headache.  Or maybe it was all the blasted glamour floating around the place; it wasn't exactly healthy, even for a dragon.  He reached around with his tail and pulled a sort of rucksack up and over his neck.  It was full of food and a few things for Rose.

"It's getting close to Her Ladyship's bedtime, my Lord," he said, cautiously.

"It is, isn't it.  Go see the nice dragon, little cousin."  Kurtis pointed the toddler at Nigel and let her go; she made it about ten steps before he had to catch her with his tail.

"Weeeeeeee!  I fwy!" she chortled with glee as he lifted her up through the air and onto his back.  She attached herself firmly to a familiar spine by the back of his neck and let him carry her from the playroom to the nursery.

He set her down in her cradle and read to her from his old Dragonriders of Pern fanfiction until she started snoring (the mansion contained very little along the lines of reading material.)  Then he settled himself down on the stone floor just across the room.  The rough, unkempt stonework in this place was bad for human footing but good for sleeping on if you were a dragon; it felt just like an old mountain cave.  He curled up facing one wall, then, carefully, he drew his laptop computer out of his sack and set it up so the glow couldn't been seen past his body from the door.  Then he pretended to sleep, keeping one eye open on the laptop.

<Vaxis:>  Heya --  and ack what kind of crazy keyboard is this? >.<

"A dragon keyboard," Nigel muttered to the air.  Dragons have long prehensile tails that can fork slightly at the very end, allowing them to grasp things and do fine manipulation.  Since they essentially have only two fingers, their keyboards have a more ovular shape with the keys radiating outward from two starting points.

<Vaxis:>  Thx 4 the keyboard but how did u know i was here?

"Dragons are resistant to magic.  I can sort of catch glimpses of you through the invisibility spell.  It's nice, where did you get it?"

<Vaxis:>  Warlock named Vincent.  nice guy, nearly blew me up earlier. thought he owed me something to mak up for that.  Can't talk out loud, tht'd break the spell.  but enough of that Nigel, yr a meanie! >

Nigel made a low, sad sound in his throat.  "Sorry Vaxis.  I had no time, I had to convince you to either go back or be very careful before Kurtis got on my case.  Which I guess he did anyway, so I'm sorry..."

<Vaxis:>  Alright then Nigel.  But srsly what is going on here?  This lord of yrs seems crazy but then sddnly he's hugging some kid?

"She's the Baroness of the Upper River Ways; that's one of the biggest noble titles still around.  She'll be responsible for a lot of the magical stuff that goes on along this river when she's older, but for now everything's held in trust and she can't get at any of her own money."

<Vaxis:> and the crazy guy?

"He's the Lord of the East Falls Gate, which is essentially a useless title.  He's the Baroness' closest living relative though, so he's her guardian for now.  Unfortunately."

<Vaxis:>  and where do u come into all this, Nigel?

"Would you believe me if I said taking care of rich children is a proud and time-honoured tradition of draconic society?"

<Vaxis:>  not even a little.  Nigel.

"Didn't think so.  In that case, I'm doing nanny work because I can't get a real job.  And do you have to keep calling me that?"

<Vaxis:>  it's yr name isn't it?  Anyway you hurt my feelings before so i get to bother you now.  plus it sounds kinda funny.

"Does not."

<Vaxis:>  totally does.

Nigel smiled.  What a silly, pointless conversation to have in the midst of mortal peril.  He really did love humans.  "Well what's your real name then?"

<Vaxis:>  It'sa secret.

"You got to hear mine, its only fair.  Anyway you're not even online.  Practically face to face.  Ought to be using real names from this distance."

<Vaxis:> ......oh all right.  it's Marty.

The dragon giggled.

<Vaxis:> it's not funny!

"I didn't say it was funny."

<Vaxis:>  u laughed!

"I did no such thing."

<Vaxis:> ;-; liar.

"Alright maybe a little..."

There was a long silence.

<Vaxis:> so...

"I'm afraid that Kurtis will kill the girl.  He's the next in line for her title."

<Vaxis:>  ...oh.  and that's why u won't just leave?

The dragon nodded slightly.

<Vaxis:> ...so whts the story here?  how come a noble kid's practically penniless and living with her crzy disnt cousin?

"Uh, that's kind of a long story..."

<Vaxis:>  got all night.  Spell will lst till morning so long as i don't talk and nobody's looking for me.

"Ok, but I'm still gonna try to tell it fast.  Don't want the glamour getting to you..."

<Vaxis:> the what? O.o

"Do you feel kind of like you could get away with anything?  That's the spell's glamour.  People who use invisibility spells all the time sometimes do really stupid stuff because they feel like they can't get caught."

The laptop screen remained blank for about half a minute.  Then,

<Vaxis:>  ...that's what's wrong with this noble guy isn't it?  He's magicing himself up all the time.

Nigel nodded.  "It can get addictive if you overuse it."

<Vaxis:>  ...you'd better fill me in on this story.

Nigel did so.  Roselynda's parents had been (or so he'd heard from people who'd known them) a very nice couple.  Very happy together, both very enjoyable to be with.  They had not, however, been very good landlords.  They'd largely let various merchants and magicians run wild in their territory while they coasted on their prosperity, enjoying themselves and entertaining the other nobles.  The old Duchess had set up a few charities but lacked both the knowledge and the determination to run them properly, and by now they had turned into for-profit businesses in all but name.  The Duke had taken a sporadic interest in the economic proceedings of his land and had occasionally laid down well-meaning but poorly implemented decree, which the wily tradespeople would exploit for their own gain or just avoid.

The resulting economy lacked either the ground-up, free-flowing organization of the Uplands or the rigid but fair rules of land-use of the Woods.  It was mostly dominated by a few large corporate conglomerates who had enough clout to bully everyone else.  It was these large organizations that now held, by virtue of a 'trust fund,' the entirety of the Duchess' fortune, which explained why she was living in a huge mansion with one servant and one dragon-nanny, under the care of an unstable and nearly destitute relative.

<Vaxis:>  wait, am i missing something here?  Where'd the duke and duchess go?

"Oh yeah.  Sorry, I guess I got ahead of myself.  They, um, died.  The Duke was always sort of fragile; he had some kinda immune problem.  I think he died of an infection after an injury but don't quote me ok?  That was just before Rose was born.

"The old Duchess took his death kinda hard, sort of holed up in her room.  I never really heard how she died... I think she sort of... wasted away.  Her old social circle avoided her after the Duke passed; she suddenly wasn't so fun to be around.  Then she died, and someone dug up a will that had that stupid trust fund thing on it with her seal and signature, and then the corporate guys were all over her estate, like, I don't know, wild dogs or something.  All the other nobles said it was shameful."

<Vaxis:> ...and they didn't do anything about it?

"Nah.  They never do.  To be fair, there isn't a lot they could do, short of sending money and Kurtis is far to proud to accept that."

Another long pause.

<Vaxis:>  ...so... what do we do?

"There's nothing we can do.  I'm glad to see you and all, but really, you should go.  You can't help and Lord Kurtis is crazy dangerous; he'll seriously hurt you and... and this isn't..." Nigel struggled for words.  "It's all a huge mess.  There's no way, you can't just walk in beat up some bad guy and fix it.  Its never really that easy."

<Vaxis:>  I'm not going away.  i'm going to help.

"But you could get hurt!"

<Vaxis:>  I don't care.

"That's just the glamour talking... you think you're invincible."

<Vaxis:>  Is not!  i've heard enough, if yr going to be stupid I'm gonna go find some way to help.

Nigel caught glimpses of movement and he called out in as loud a whisper as he dared, "Vaxis -- no, Marty, wait!  Promise me... promise me at least that you'll go away from here, break the spell, and think about this clearly without the glamour, ok?  Please?  I... if you got hurt because I dragged you into this..."  he trailed off.  

There was a very long stretch of silence; Nigel started to fear Marty hadn't heard him.  Then, a few last words appeared.

<Marty:> I promise.

The laptop closed on its own, and Nigel let himself drift off into a fitful sleep.