Dragon's Day, Wizard's Night

exerpt


Alenith walked slowly through the small marketplace in the human camp. Raucous yelling filled the air, vendors calling out their wares, and people jostled past her rudely. She left talon marks in a few legs and shoved her way along.
Someone near a booth whistled at her as she paused to examine a rack of lizard-skin armor. She spared a brief glance in the human mercenary’s direction, then turned back to examine the fine, tough leather. Her human form—she was told often by her human servant Etharrie—was a fine specimen of a biped. She was rather short, being a small dragon, but as fierce as a storm. She didn’t wear much armor, other than her dragon-leather, greaves and bracers, and the scales in patches on her skin that didn’t disappear with shapechanging. Luckily for disguise purposes, those scales were in fleshtones.
“Hey sweet thing!” the human called out. Out of the corner of her eye, Alenith saw one of the pale merc’s friends elbow him roughly. Alenith paid for a roll of the leather and walked toward the mercs.
The pale one’s eyes lit up as she approached them. She ignored his lewd leer and faced a tall, thin man with dark brown hair instead. “Where do I find Kisyem?” she asked, her alto voice soft.
The pale man interrupted his companion. “How’s about a kiss first, Babe?”
She glared at him, allowing the human to get a good look at her cat-slit eyes. The man gasped and backed away in surprise.
The dark-haired man grinned. “Kisyem is in the diviner’s tent, two rows down. Dark blue canvas.”
“Thank you....”
“Thyan Arden of Aaldis Keep.”
“Thank you, Thyan.”
“Not a problem, Milady Alenith.”
She smiled and nodded when he recognized her. This was an intelligent one, this human, a man she’d have to introduce to Solkoth’s equally intelligent servant Ysaya.
As she walked away, she heard the pale man hiss, “Thyan, that was a dragon!”
“Of course,” was the nonchalant response. “That was the Dragonqueen.”