"It doesn't matter what Shandrazel wants," said Kamon. "You've heard the hatred of his fellow dragons. He's alone in his desire to grant us rights."
"At least we have a dragon on our side right now," said Pet. "Shandrazel was just talking about how he may need to use his army to gain respect. If Ragnar provokes a war, Shandrazel's going to crush him."
Kamon leaned closer, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "What if the dragons were deprived of Shandrazel's leadership?"
"How? What are you getting at?"
Kamon reached out a boney hand and took Pet by the arm. He pulled Pet further across the room from the guards, guiding him until they were behind a marble pillar, out of sight of the earth-dragons. Standing beneath a tapestry that displayed Albekizan in flight, his forty-foot wingspan depicted lifesize, Kamon whispered, "Shandrazel trusts you. Daily you stand close enough to end his life with a single thrust of a poisoned dagger."
Pet peeked back around the pillar, expecting the earth-dragon guards to be running toward him. They stared in his direction, but gave no sign of having overheard Kamon. Pet found himself feeling dirty for even having heard the idea.
"That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard," Pet said. "We finally have a dragon king who wants to treat mankind fairly and you're proposing we poison him? I know he sounded angry when he left the room a few minutes ago, but this is only a minor setback. I just need to talk to Shandrazel in private. Get his mind back to where it naturally wants to be. I've had a lot of experience dealing with moody dragons. Chakthalla could get into funks over the smallest things, and I could always cheer her up."
Kamon's face fell. He looked as if he'd just heard the worst news in the world.
"What?" said Pet.
"It's true," said Kamon. "There have been… whispers. Some have said that you aren't the dragon-slayer Bitterwood. That you're an imposter, who lived a life of comfort as the pet of Chakthalla."
"Oh," said Pet. "That. Didn't you know that I just acted as her pet so that I could pass unnoticed among the dragons?"
"If you've killed so many dragons, why did a look of fear pass through your eyes when I mentioned killing Shandrazel? The men of the Free City believed you were Bitterwood because of Albekizan's public accusation. Has it all been a lie?"
"I'm not going to waste my breath arguing with you," said Pet. "You stood before the crowd and proclaimed me the savior of humanity. You said God had revealed the truth to you. Are you going back to your followers now and tell them God screwed up?"
Kamon looked as if he'd swallowed a bug.
Before they could resume their argument, a faint sound caught Pet's attention. Though muffled by stone, Pet recognized the cry of a woman in tremendous pain. He remembered the musician he'd left in his chamber. This wasn't a good morning for an unidentified young woman to be discovered in the palace. His guts knotted as he thought of the consequences of his pointless passions. If the girl was harmed, he'd never forgive himself.
Pet moved toward the exit. The earth-dragons lowered their spears to block him. Pet kept advancing, coming right up to the tips of their weapons. He couldn't hear the girl now. Had they stopped hurting her? Or had something worse happened?
"Move back, human," one of the guards said.
"Has no one told you who I am?" Pet said, lowering his voice to a chill growl. "Have you never heard of Bitterwood? The Death of All Dragons, the Ghost Who Kills?"
"Bitterwood isn't real," the first guard scoffed.
"I heard his legend years ago," the second guard said. "You'd have been in diapers."
"I'm older than I look," said Pet. "Also, faster."
Before the guards could react, Pet dove for the hall beyond them, slipping beneath their outthrust spears. Earth-dragons had many virtues as soldiers-strength, toughness, loyalty-but rapid reflexes weren't among these attributes. Pet was halfway down the hall before the guards made it out the door. He turned the corner as a second wail of pain came from below. It wasn't coming from the direction of his bedchamber. Had they taken her to the dungeons?
The stairs down had two parallel tracks, a broad set of steep steps for sun-dragons, and a smaller, more shortly-spaced set of stairs for earth-dragons. Pet leapt his way down the sun-dragon stairs. His long years as a companion of a sun-dragon had left him well-practiced in traversing the landscape of giants.
Soon he found the torch-lined tunnel leading to the dungeon. A crew of earth-dragons stood guard, their heads turned to listen to the cries of anguish that came from an iron door standing open at the end of a short hall. Dim lantern light spilled from the chamber, and the jagged shadow of a winged dragon danced into the hall. Pet raced past the guards before they could blink. Their reptilian brains barely realized he'd passed them before Pet reached the lantern-lit chamber.
Pet froze, at first unable to untangle the scene before him, the mix of shapes, light and dark. The sounds of the woman screaming echoed so loudly within the windowless chamber he couldn't instantly tell where her voice was coming from. His nose was the first sensory organ to ground him in the reality before him. Deeply wired channels in his brain recognized the smell of urine and vomit, and the stale, acrid stench of a human body unwashed for days. Slowly, his eyes made sense of the nightmare before him. The giant moving lump in the center of the chamber was Shandrazel. Half his body was in shadow, half lit by a single bright lantern. His emerald eyes glowed in the gloom like a cat's. Androkom stood opposite Shandrazel, his blue, shadowy shape ghostly in reflected light. The high biologian's eyes were fixed on a limp thing in Shandrazel's fore-claws, something pale white and shaped vaguely like a human woman. The serpentine tattoo on her scalp identified her as the assassin Hex had captured. Her limbs were twisted in ways a human body shouldn't bend. Both her ankles were broken, and her fingers were knotted in unnatural configurations. Nonsense grunts spilled from her blue lips and tears wetted her cheeks. Her eyes were filled with terror as Shandrazel shook her.
On the floor beneath her was the map Shandrazel had ripped from the wall.
"Show me where his temple is," Shandrazel shouted, his deep draconian voice nearly deafening Pet. "Show me or I'll break you further! Show me!"
"Put her down!" Pet shouted, clenching his fists. "Have you lost you mind? Let her go!"
Shandrazel's tail swept through the air, catching Pet in the chest. It knocked him from his feet as easily as Pet could have kicked aside a yapping lap dog. Pet smacked into the stone wall. His knees buckled and he slid down to rest on the slimy floor.
Shandrazel's face was suddenly inches from his own. Shandrazel was normally such a gentle soul, Pet forgot just how big and powerful the full-grown bull sun-dragon truly was. His teeth were longer than Pet's fingers. Pet had time to get a good, careful look at those teeth as Shandrazel growled at him.
Finally, Pet's breath returned in a painful rush. "What's happened to you?" he asked, his voice on the verge of tears. "You're one of the good guys. You don't torture women."
Shandrazel snorted. "You self-righteous fool. I'm doing what I should have done the moment we captured this woman. She knows where Blasphet is. Blasphet is only a danger because humans treat him like a god. Why haven't your kind stepped up to the responsibility of stopping him?"
Pet swallowed, fighting back his fear. He'd barely heard Shandrazel's words as his attention remained focused on the white teeth flashing only inches from his face. Was Shandrazel somehow blaming humans for Blasphet?