While they struggled to hold him, Lucy, charging ahead of Saorsha and Mayor Efrim, worked her way around the buildings and came up behind him. At the edge of the net, her father met her.
“Don’t worry about fire,” Kethril yelled over the uproar. He tapped the ring on his hand. “It’s an artifact from Istar I picked up years ago. It will protect both of us, if we are touching.”
Lucy squeezed his hand gratefully. That took one problem off her mind. She had thought she’d have to make a mage shield to protect herself from the dragonfire, but with her father there to protect her, that was one less spell she had to worry about.
She placed her hand on the heaving net pinning the dragon and began the incantation that Ulin had taught her. The turban squirmed with delight, its crystal eyes glowing in the surge of magic that flowed through them both. Lucy tightened her hand around a strand of the net. She felt the magic fill her mind and body, its familiar warmth a welcome invasion. Carefully, precisely, she shaped the magic to her will, all the while praying in a small part of her mind that nothing would take her magic away. She sensed something close by, something odd, and for a second she thought she felt something tickle her skin.
The magic started to slip out of her control. Lucy’s thoughts gathered in one passionate objection: No! The turban responded and used its own power to bolster hers long enough to complete the spell. Lucy felt the net change under her fingers. From a stiff, unresponsive inanimate thing, it became supple as a vine and strong as steel.
The dragon felt the change, too, and his efforts to escape increased to sudden terror. But he was too late. The net molded neatly around his body and pinned his wings to his sides. Drawing power from the metal grid beneath the road, Lucy’s spell instantly hardened the net and turned it as rigid as the iron bars. Fyremantle was now trapped beneath an unyielding cage. He thrashed his head up and down and blew gouts of fire from his cavernous mouth, but he could not move.
Lucy fell back into her father’s arms, gasping for breath. “Notwen’s estimate of fifteen minutes may be optimistic,” she shouted to Kethril. “The spell is weak. I don’t know how long it will last. We’ll have to hurry.”
The sheriff and the gambler worked their way around the trapped dragon. Everyone else stayed out of sight.
“Fyremantle!” Kethril shouted over the dragon’s furious rumble. “Fyremantle! We want to talk to you!”
“How dare you!” roared the red, and he breathed a viscous stream of fire directly at them.
Lucy cringed close to her father as he raised his fist and the silver ring of Istar. The dragonfire bounced off the power of the ring and splashed around the two people in streams of yellow and orange.
“Stop it!” Lucy yelled before the dragon could take another breath. “Your fire will not harm us. Nor do we intend to harm you. We just want to talk.”
Fyremantle paid no attention. He fired another jet of scorching flame and watched furiously as it fell harmless around them.
“I said stop it! If you don’t, I will shrink this net and cut you to pieces,” Lucy cried. She wasn’t sure she could do that, but it didn’t hurt to threaten.
Kethril pointed to the freight wagon close by. “And if you aren’t careful, you will burn that wagon that holds Malys’s tribute, then you will have to explain to her why your delivery is nothing but a molten blob.”
Fyremantle hesitated, his black eyes malevolent but thoughtful. Steam curled from his nostrils. “Whatever you have to say will not save this town. When I escape from this cage, I will incinerate everything.”
“I would think about that very carefully if I were you,” Lucy said reasonably.
The dragon lowered his head until his nose was only a few feet away. “Why?” he said in a long, drawn sound that was almost a snarl.
Lucy kept her hand clamped on her father’s. The reek of the dragon was almost more than she could bear. It took all her self-control to say, “We want to make a deal.”
Kethril pulled his map out of his tunic and held it up for the dragon to see. “A map of this region. Do you recognize anything on it?”
The dragon had to tilt his head to look at the map. He studied it for several minutes before the significance of several marked places snatched his complete attention. Without warning he snorted a gust of flame that caught the map and reduced it to ash.
Kethril merely shook his fingers and pulled out another map. “The advantages of living in a town full of forgers.”
“It has come to our attention,” Lucy said before the dragon could respond, “that you have hiked up Flotsam’s taxes without Malys’s knowledge so you could steal some of it for yourself. We want you to stop.”
“I am lord of this region. I will do as I please,” Fyremantle replied. He tugged fiercely at the net around him then sank back, panting.
“Indubitably. However, we believe Malys will not appreciate your efforts at self-enrichment. She does tend to be rather jealous and unreasonable.”
The dragon stilled, his glittering eyes fastened on Lucy and Kethril. “I am loyal to my overlord,” he protested.
“So she must think, too,” Lucy said. “It would be a shame to tell her otherwise.”
“You will never tell her!” bellowed the dragon. “You cannot prove it!”
“Of course we can,” Kethril said, his tones cool, “and we will unless you leave Flotsam alone.”
“I will burn it first. No one will escape to tell my queen.”
“Too late,” Lucy said. “We already have a messenger on the way, and if she does not receive a message from us, she is instructed to deliver our letter and proof to Malys.”
Fyremantle bellowed and threw himself against the constricting net. Lucy and Kethril scrambled back and watched breathlessly as the huge dragon struggled and thrashed until his scales were scored and his head hung in exhaustion. Still the ensorcelled net held.
When he had been still for a moment or two, Lucy and Kethril eased forward to continue the conversation.
Lucy went on. “The only way you can stop the messenger is to agree to our proposal. You will continue to collect the taxes from the town, but we will only pay the original six hundred pieces of steel. And you must give your word to leave the town alone. It cannot make its contributions to Malys’s treasury if you burn it.”
Kethril waved the copy of the map. “Just to ensure your good behavior, we also included one of these maps.”
“Why?” hissed the dragon. “Malys already knows the site of my lair.”
“Lairs,” corrected Kethril. “We found your lairs.” He drew Lucy to the freight wagon with him and pulled back the tarp to show the contents to the dragon. “When the Flotsam city taxes were stolen, the people had to look elsewhere for the money. One of your lairs is now empty. You can pay Malys Flotsam’s taxes this year to make up for all the years you were stealing from the towns around here.”
“No!” Fyremantle growled. “You’re bluffing!”
Kethril reached into the wagon and pulled out a large doublehandled king’s cup cast in gold and encrusted with garnets. “Remember this? And how about this?” He pulled out an elegant cutlass and waved it in the dragon’s face.
Dragons can remember every item of their hoards down to the last coin, and Fyremantle was no exception. He was so angry he sputtered sparks.
“If you try anything against these people,” Lucy warned him. “We will tell Malys about your other lairs.”
“I will hide them again,” he steamed.
The gambler tossed the sword back in the wagon. “We found them once, we can find them again.”