Jenny bid her father a tearful farewell. I kind of felt bad about that, but she had assured me he was a better baker than her; he’d been her mentor in the art of pastry, and now that his alimentary issues were resolved, he’d be back in business in no time.

  Tex was perched atop a cushion on the driver's platform of the wagon, shifting gingerly with every bump in the road. It seemed the Glow Mistress had been enthusiastically pleased with her gift.

  “Jenny, I’ve asked Tex to draw up a contract for us. I need to be able to trust you, and I do, but having that assurance of a system-enforced contract will let me feel a lot more comfortable about bringing you into the inner circle.” I passed it across to her, and she squinted down at it. “If you don’t want to sign, that’s fine, but I’d like you to be fully on team Bob. It will make everything a lot simpler in the long run.”

  “Length of service… NDA… Shares?” She looked up at me.

  “I’m thinking of bringing a few things from back home into Helstat. Collective ownership of enterprises already exists here, but it’s usually just nobles using it to exclude the peasantry and locking in monopolies. I’m planning on going wide with the Cod. There’ll be a Swinging Cod in every town from Ankmapak to the Orlic Fuderation when I’m done, and I want you in from the start.” I was going to make Angtirm fucking pay for stealing my idea. If you can’t eat them, break them. Perhaps not the best move karmically, but I was, at heart, a greedy and jealous creature.

  “There are thousands of swinging cods in every town from Mount Bob to the sea already,” Tex chuckled, then he winced as we hit a bump.

  “You’re doing the Maccie D on Helstat?” She started cackling, rocking back and forth. “And you want my pastries? For breakfast or dessert?” she howled with laughter and pressed her thumb to the contract. It rolled up and poofed away in a spray of golden sparks. Shiny. I liked those sparks.

  “Oh, girly, you’re in for a treat now!” Tex snickered, and I elbowed him hard enough that his ribs creaked. “Jesus, Bob! It wasn’t just my arse she spanked! She’s on team dragon now. Chill the fuck out!”

  “Dragon?” the mustachioed madam looked at me askance.

  “Yeeaaahhhh… about that. Tex, are we far enough from the town?”

  “Reckon so, boss. Half a day should be fine. How bout we pull over by that copse of woods and you can let the little miss in on it?” He made clicking and whooping noises, hauling on the right-hand reins and guiding his delicious cattle towards a patch of trees perched on a nearby hill.

  Jenny pestered us with questions as we crossed the last half mile, becoming increasingly frantic as the time wore on and Tex and I tried to fob her off.

  “Look, I’ll need some space. Preferably, a very private space!” I argued as she continued to badger me. That was her spirit animal, I decided. Vicious and persistent, not to be messed with. And slightly hairier than is traditionally attractive.

  As the oxen rattled to a stop, I leapt down from the wagon and stretched my legs, pacing back and forth. I moved away from the ox as Tex climbed down very slowly and began fitting them with feedbags. He didn’t bother unhitching them.

  “Just do it over there, Bob. You know it freaks out the animals,” he waved an arm towards the trees.

  “C’mon, Jenny.” She hopped down and followed me as I put some distance between myself and the increasingly tempting cattle.

  “What scares them? Bob, this is all getting a bit weird. You seem nice enough, and I’m really grateful about you getting a guild healer for me Da, but… This is starting to feel really creepy.” I checked over my shoulder and figured we were far enough away.

  “Now I’m going to show you something. I’m kind of big. And it might be a bit scary at first, but please trust me, what you see won’t hurt you.”

  She kicked me in the balls and began swearing at me.

  “I knew Tex was a perv, but you as well! And I fucking signed the–what the fuck! I’m gonna petition the system to break the contract! You can’t use it to bait pretty maids into your harem!” Pretty maid? The maid part probably checked out. The pain from my nethers helped stop me from pointing out how, if I were building a harem, she wouldn’t be in it. That probably wouldn’t have helped.

  “It’s not like that!” I gasped. Ah, screw it. My clothes vanished into my possum pouch as I transformed back into my true body. I shook from nose to tail as I was finally back in my natural state. It felt good, and being bigger than everything around me again felt so right.

  The sun glinted on my scales, setting the crimson accents off rather beautifully, if I say so myself, as my serpentine neck arched down to bring my nose close to the now obviously terrified woman. I stopped a few feet from her and carefully refrained from smiling. I did not think it would reassure her.

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  “I wasn’t reborn as a human, Jenny. This is what I got.” Sibilant and deep, my voice rolled out, and I heard the cattle moo in fear, even at this distance.

  “A dra- dragon?” she stuttered.

  “I’m not a vase of flowers,” I replied. “I’m not dangerous! I’m–look, I got downgraded from Earth to this. And this makes it a lot fucking harder to live a good life than being a baker! I do not want another downgrade.”

  “You’re a bloody do-gooder trapped in the body of a monster?” She started laughing. There was a touch of hysteria in the sound that worried me.

  “Hardly a do-gooder. I have certain urges.” She glanced up at me. “Not like that. My goals aren’t like those of a human. This body comes with, uh, impulses. I want to be rich and powerful. Respected, or at least feared. But I don’t really want to eat people.”

  “You don’t really want to eat people?” she asked.

  “Yeah. But you know. Shit happens sometimes.”

  “How many people have you eaten?”

  “None. So far.” She cocked an eyebrow at me. “Not going to lie. There are a couple of people I’ve run into who I’d like to see turned into dragon-shit. Well one. But that prick stole from me!” I growled.

  “Don’t steal from dragons. Noted.” Her eyes were slightly glazed.

  “Look, this is a lot to take in. How about you go have a chat with Tex? He’s known about this for a while and seems to be OK with it. Me, whatever. I’ll give you some space while you talk. I can’t release you from the contract now, but if you want to go home, that’s fine with me.”

  “Thank you. I guess you really did need that NDA clause! I’m not sure I trust Tex.”

  I sighed. My merchant was as much of a liability as an advantage sometimes.

  “He’s not a bad guy. He’s an Outremonde as well.”

  “I know that. Everyone knows that, Bob. But he’s picked a side in the war between light and dark, and I am very firmly neutral. He’s also a well-known creep.”

  “Huh. I guess that’s fair. Hang on! What’s that about a war?”

  “I’ll talk to Tex!” She waved over her shoulder as she headed back to the wagon.

  I had a very bad feeling about having signed up with Bulb. Gods, dude. Dicks the lot of them.

  I shook my wings out for the first time in days and revelled in the feeling of being me again. I’d run into so many humans recently, and some of whom were undoubtedly on the ‘it would be a better world if you ate them’ list.

  I was hungry. When I glanced at the beasts of burden, my stomach rumbled. I needed to hunt. To soar through the sky, descend on my prey like a demonic sky-monster to devour the puny beasts…

  I got lost in my starvation fantasies.

  “Yo, Bob, partner!” My snout swung round, and my lips peeled back a few inches from Tex’s face. “You ok, dude?”

  “I’m fine.” My ascot had magically adjusted in size as I transformed, and I reached up with midnight claws to straighten the knot so it would hang straight. “You’ve had a chat with Jenny?”

  “Yeah, boss. She’s a bit freaked, but you did her a good turn, so she’s willing to trust you for now. You got the goods? Wanna get them out for me?” I smiled my toothiest smile at him.

  Swords, shields, sets of armour, luxury items… they appeared in a circle under my belly, and I side-walked to get clear before I settled back down.

  “Get what you can for them, and stock up on stuff for the Cod. I want that place to be the premium pub chain in the world in a year.”

  He shuffled unhappily. A hand rose to slide back through what remained of his hair.

  “Yeah. Ya know, I can’t transport perishables? This isn’t a refrigerated wagon!” He waved a hand back to where Jenny was trying to feed carrots to the oxen.

  “Liquor doesn’t rot. Nor beer.”

  “But it’s bulky! I’d need some funds to buy that kind of expensive shit, if that’s what you want?”

  Curse you, Tex. You know my kryptonite. The ascot was putting in some overtime today. Don’t eat the ox, Bob. Give this thieving shiester some more money, Bob. Bloody ascot. I pulled out fifty gold pieces and laid them at his feet, then backed off slightly.

  “It had better show on those accurate accounts you say you’ll keep.”

  “No worries, chief!” My coins were swept up in a move that combined a bow and the “snatching up change” dance. “So what’s you’re plan for Jen?”

  “She’s gonna fly ahead with me. You didn’t hire guards, are you going to be ok?” He shifted uncomfortably but nodded.

  “I might have been fudging the running costs a little. The roads are safe for me up to the Mill,” he said sheepishly. NOT SHEEPISHLY! My stomach rumbled at the thought. Don’t eat him, Bob. It’s not worth it.

  “So I trust you don’t mind if I take her north and get back to the Mill ahead of you?” I growled. Saliva dripped from my curled lip. I felt like an alien sniffing Ripley and deciding not to eat her. Don’t eat Tex, Bob.

  “Nope, that’s fine.” I was losing my touch. Tex had pissed himself the first time I’d loomed over him. “Not sure she’ll enjoy dangling from one claw for so long, though.” He waved at my obsidian death-dealers, and I looked at my foot. Claws sank into the dirt and grass as I flexed my paw.

  “She gets to ride on the back.”

  “Oh, that is bullshit! You’ve dangled me over an infinite drop, and she gets to go all Baker of Pern on your back?”

  “Yep, you needed a towel when I took you flying the first time. And the second time, as I recall.”

  “You dangled me like a–I don’t know what! I thought you were going to drop me!”

  “You needed a towel,” I said nastily, then raised my head to call to my newest contractor. “Jenny? Are you ok now?” She looked up and nodded uncertainly. “The two of us will fly ahead.” She looked more than a little uncertain, and I resisted the urge to pull a towel out of my storage space.

  “Hop up!” I said, dipping a shoulder and extending a leg so she could climb on. She was hesitant at first, reaching out to touch my scales. She tried to pry one up, and I twitched, pulling my leg away.

  “Sorry. Does that hurt?”

  “No, it just feels… uncomfortable.”

  “How about this?” I snatched my leg back, and my snout swung down so I could glare at her.

  “Yeah, pulling hard on a scale kind of hurts,” I growled.

  “Ok!” She gestured for me to create a step for her with my leg, and I reluctantly complied. She climbed onto my back and settled her legs around the base of my neck.

  “So what happens now?” she asked nervously.

  “Never give up, a luck dragon will find you!” I said as I crouched down for takeoff.

  “Thank god! I was worried you were going to go with his ‘I like children’ line instead! Gee up, Falcor!”