Dragon Rampage

Chapter One

Dad was not happy with me. "You could have been killed." The table shook as he slammed his hand, palm down on the scarred wood.

The table split with a loud crack, spilling books and files onto the stone floor. "Dad, come on. I'm okay. I want to talk about the bounty."

Fire crackled from the metal barrel in my cell, the Crown's only acknowledgment that keeping me here during the dead of winter was a hardship. I was a little surprised he'd broken the table. Even in his scrawny human form, Dad was still a dragon, but he was old. I leaned over and scooped up the papers ignoring his swirling eyes.

They were reddish, and glowed like dying embers. In a dragon, that meant rage. "I'll talk to the Crown."

"I doubt it will matter. Brian's dad keeps coming back with excuses not to ratify our treaty." I tossed a book onto my cot, and then opened another. It was filled with tiny script, the ink fading, the words jammed together in an illegible scrawl. "You can read this?"

Dad leaned forward, snatching it from my grasp. "Of course I can. It's a law book."
I hated the patient, slow way he talked. "I know that. Where are the pictures?"

"Focus, Son. We were talking about last night."

My teeth rubbed against my lower lip as I scowled. "Here we are, waiting on a treaty, and they go and revoke our endangered species status."

"Which you didn't help any by posing as your 'Cousin'. How many dragons are there now?"

"Uh, oh. I didn't think about that. Besides," I added, "They didn't know about my cousin when the set a bounty on dragons."

"Only on dragons raiding off their reservation. It's always been that way with endangered species."

That surprised me. "It has?"

"When they're members of a predator species, yes."

"So, why didn't anyone ever tell me this before?"

"I never raided. I was too old and crippled to fly, so it never came up until you transformed. Then we were knee-deep in a war with the Dragon King."

"And, they didn't enforce the bounty on him because he ate the human king and usurped the throne. That's beginning to sound like an option, Dad."

He shook his head. "We don't have enough dragons to take on their entire government. The Barons would come after us, and the Elves as well."

"So, we just put up with this?"

"For now. If we win this trial, we can sue for false imprisonment, and insist the treaty be ratified."

"Then what?"

His mouth opened, but nothing came out.

"You don't know?" I stood up, knocking over the cot.

"I ... just give me a few more days, Son. I'll get them to post bail. We'll sue the Greenfields, first for monopolizing the wine trade and denying you the opportunity to collect your dragon's hoard, then for copyright infringement, for stealing Jacques' recipes."

"So, what good will that do us? They'll either bribe the judge or get a law passed."

"Farquarte, one more week. Give me time to think."

Time. If I had time, I could get Mimi and her people the hell out of this country. "Okay, Dad. For now."

Dad scooped up his books and papers. "You'll see. I have a brilliant motion I'm going to file tomorrow. Just, no more raids for now."

"Sure." I sank onto my cot and looked at the barred windows on my cell. I had some planning to do. A crow looked back at me. Its black winked, and with a flutter of wings, it took off. "Dad?"

Dad paused, halfway through the open cell door.

"There are an awful lot of crows this year. Did you notice?"

"You'll be fine, Son. Just try to focus in court today." The door snapped closed behind him, dislodging a small mirror someone had tacked onto a wall in my cell. It shattered, littering the stone floor. My green eyes, shadowed by dark smudges beneath, looked back at me from fragments. The room glowed red at the edges as the fire in the barrel heated the cell. Winter's faded sun was a patch of blood in the sky, just over the wall outside my jail. Water dripped from somewhere, echoing down the hallway, and I thought about the quiet in the Royal Jailhouse.

"No prisoners here, except for me," I told the Farquarte images on the floor. "Is it because I'm so dangerous, or because they execute everyone instead of locking them up?"

I already knew the answer to that one. Sighing, I glanced at the sun. "It's gonna be a long day."