Clink!

  I was bolt upright in an instant, tails swishing angrily behind me, nostrils dilating and muscles along my back tensing to unleash a torrent of acid-fire, coins tumbling away to either side.

  “Dammit, Kat. That’s not funny. What time is it?” I asked with a yawn as my body relaxed.

  “You slept all day and all night. You feeling alright?” Kat asked as she dropped the coins she’d tapped together to wake me.

  “Fine.” I wasn’t, but I wasn’t going to grumble about my tummy ache. “What do you need?” I arched a scaled eyebrow at her and slid off my hoard, tails flicking out to shepherd any stray coins back to the golden flock like lost little lambs.

  She built two little piles of coins and laid her life preserver across them, then sat down on it and swung one leg back and forth absentmindedly. “You should talk to the alchemist you tried to flash-fry yesterday. God-forged scales, angelic feathers, dragon's blood… they’re all top-tier ingredients. If you want to make some serious money without having to sell heavenly artefacts to a demon queen, Cyrus is your guy.”

  “Cyrus?”

  “Cyrus de Boneville. Alchemist and necromancer. He’s a human.”

  “De Boneville? He isn’t related to Harold, is he?” I asked.

  “No. Now that you’ve inserted a Hardprick into Longbottom to dominate it, we’re moving on from that kind of thing until you decide to roughly take another town,” she said, smirking at me. “I’ve got a meeting scheduled with Creville in half an hour, then we’ll send through the decorators, get another sign made, wake Benton up, send Esme to do an assessment of the place, you know, all the usual stuff you do when you threaten a barman into selling half his pub to you.”

  “I didn’t threaten the barlord. I threatened Flatulence. No, not like that, it’s the lieutenant of the guard’s name. You don’t suppose there's a town called Hairyvadge or something, do you? We could prioritise conquering that one as well to round things out.”

  “There’s a Shaven Crevice off to the west, but that belongs to Lady Nardshire, so it’s an ally. CYRUS!” she yelled the last over her bare shoulder, and there was a very long, slow creak from the hatch as it inched upwards.

  A thin man in stained robes emerged cautiously into my lair. Lank, blond hair fell to his shoulders in an untidy mess, and cloudy green eyes peered out from between the strands of his fringe.

  “Lady Kat?” he asked nervously. “It won’t try and cook me this time?”

  “I’m a he, not an it, pregnancy notwithstanding,” I grumbled. I lowered myself back onto my golden mattress and sighed as the coins pressed against my scales. “I gather you want to use bits of me to make potions?”

  “Not p-p-potions, sir dragon. Elixirs of the finest quality! Immortality Injections, Dragon’s Might Decoctions, Distillations of Defiance, Vials of Vivication, Solutions of–”

  “Something that begins with an S?” I interrupted.

  “Saintly-Strength,” Cyrus muttered unhappily.

  “What’s a Distillation of Defiance?” I asked, intrigued despite myself.

  “When consumed, it causes someone to rebel against their overlord in some form. A domineering husband will find his wife no longer bends to his will, and a soldier will disobey orders and seek to sabotage his former officer's commands. Peasants will rebel against their nobles, that kind of thing.”

  “And it works on anyone?” I asked. Kat grinned at my worry and continued to swing a slender leg back and forth.

  “If I were to use dragon's blood in the creation of a batch, pretty much, yes. There are other rare ingredients as well, but I have established a herb garden on the Alchemy floor, and the high ambient magic is not only encouraging rapid growth, it allows me to cultivate plants that are exceedingly rare in nature.”

  “You should see it, Bob. It’s like a plant war in his garden; they keep eating each other, poisoning nearby plants of a different species, all sorts of cool shit. Some of the minions are putting bets on which species will win which fight,” Kat added.

  “And a Vial of Vivification?” I ignored Kat, but I made a note to make sure we wouldn’t have a repeat of the uni-bunny invasion the dear Bun-Bun had caused.

  “Significantly increases speed and focus, minor boost to strength and healing, but the real beauty of it is you can’t feel fear. It’s used to make soldiers better at fighting. The downside is not having any fear in them; they tend to get themselves killed in the end,” Cyrus enthused.

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  “Tell him about the Immortality Injections, Cyrus,” Kat said, and I shot her a questioning look, receiving a shrug and a grin in reply.

  “Oh, I’d be delighted to! Each one will require half of an angel feather, a litre of dragon’s blood, and three small shavings of a unicorn horn, among assorted plant extracts that I have on hand in my herb garden. The process involved a lengthy distillation and repeated filtration of the blood. The feather must be baked for a day and ground into a powder with the unicorn horn shavings. Then you take pure alcohol and allow Hagglesnapper pods to steep in it for a week, reduce it by half to double the concentration and–”

  “What does it do?” I demanded. “I mean, I’m assuming it does exactly as the name suggests, but I’m guessing from the smug look on Kat’s face I could be wrong.”

  “Ah. Upon administration, it prevents ageing and will cause the recipient to gradually revert to looking as they did in their prime, usually their early twenties, but some women peak in physical beauty later than that. Upon death, they reappear at the place where they received the injection unharmed and are once again subject to natural ageing. It’s extremely rare. Who has a litre of dragon’s blood on hand? And extremely–”

  “Valuable,” I finished for him with a saurian smile. “How valuable?”

  “How much is Philpot and Nyal paying for your feathers?” Kat asked sweetly.

  “Two million each.”

  Cyrus winced. “I thought dragons were supposed to be good with money?” he asked rhetorically, earning a level three glare from me that set his fringe to shaking.

  “An Immortality Injection would have to be auctioned off; no one can set a price on it. The last one was sold at Fairly and Hammersmith’s auction house in Ankmapak two hundred odd years ago and went for three hundred and ninety-four million and change.”

  “Cyrus. I’m truly sorry for nearly burning you alive yesterday. Kat, I think I’m going to need a new lair.”

  “See how I look out for you, Bob? Wherever would you be without me?”

  “I don’t know, but I expect more of my minions would still be able to have children. Cyrus, how many of these things can you produce? You need unicorn horn shavings. How many of them have you got?”

  “Enough for three injections. Unicorns are rare, but far more common than dragons willing to part with their blood, or angel feathers, for that matter,” Cyrus said. “I’d also like some of your smaller scales, if that’s alright? Only one or two!” he added quickly. “I can make a great deal of Decocotions of Defiance from those.”

  “Perfect. I’ve already got plans for it. I want barrels of the stuff.”

  “Barrels? That might be– Not a problem, o mighty dragon!” Cyrus burbled as I upped the glare to a level four.

  “Good. Now, how about you pull a couple of little scales, I’m thinkin' from one of my tails, and take some blood.”

  “Erm, alright, great and terrible–”

  “Just call me Bob, for god’s sake.” I shifted slightly to present the tip of one of my eight tails to the man and looked down at him with my purple eyes. “Well? Crack on.”

  He shot Kat a terrified expression.

  “He won’t eat you. You’re his ticket to real wealth, not the paltry millions he’s scraped together so far. I suspect you’re his new favourite human.”

  “She’s not wrong. Stop being a baby, I can take a little pain, but three litres of blood sounds like a lot…”

  “You’ve got shit loads of the stuff, Bob. That’s like a human giving half a pint,” Kat said reasonably.

  “Fine. Come on them, o most treasured human, pull a couple of scales.”

  Cyrus produced a pair of oversized tweezers from a pouch of holding on his belt. They had a series of gears in the middle that could be used to ratchet the tips closed. I did not like the look of them. He reached out carefully and slipped one of the prongs beneath a small scale about a foot back from the spiked tip of my tail. He glanced from the bone prong up to my face nervously. I gave him a broad smile of encouragement that didn’t seem to help.

  With a deep breath, Cyrus started cranking the tweezers closed until they locked together. He shifted the scale, wiggling it up and down slightly, which felt extremely uncomfortable, but I’m a big dragon, all grown up, so I didn’t say anything.

  He put a foot against my tail, spat on his hands, gripped the ridged handle of the tweezers, and heaved backwards. I hissed in pain as agony shot up my tail and tingled at the base of my spine. He twisted the tweezers, sending more agony up my nerves, then tried again. I bellowed in pain. This was almost as bad as when that dick god had pulled all my scales off to reforge them.

  His hand slipped and he fell backwards, gasping, sweat dripping down his face. “Please don’t eat me!” he wailed.

  “I won’t. But a little warning before you do something like that might help avoid another dragon burning you to ash by reflex. Try again.” I gritted my teeth and waited as he reset.

  It was the same again. He pulled and heaved, I hissed and bellowed, but the damn scale wasn’t budging.

  “Let me do it!” I snapped, reaching a claw down to knock him aside and grab the tweezers. I yanked and yelped, but the scale didn’t move.

  “It’s like a dental extraction, Bob. Push in, twist and pull,” Kat offered.

  “Now you fucking tell me!” I pushed the scale in, pain flaring, twisted it roughly to either side, then pulled as hard as I could. My tail flicked away from me as the scale came loose, scattering coins, and I grunted in satisfaction as the pain faded a little. I dropped the palm-sized scale at Cyrus’ feet and repeated the process.

  “There. Now, how do you collect the blood?” I asked through gritted teeth.

  “Well, you’ve just made a handy little gap in your armour. I can extract the blood with this,” Cyrus said, reaching into his pouch of holding again.

  “Do you have any medical equipment that isn’t oversized and terrifying?” I grumbled as he jabbed the gigantic needle into the vulnerable spot on my tail and connected the tube from it to a large demijohn of clear glass.

  “He’s hardly going to use normal human stuff on you, is he, Bob?” Kat snorted. “I’ll get Simeon and Tim to cook up a cover for that hole in your armour until the scale regrows. You don’t want to go to war with a chink in your defences. Every bloody hero would be looking for something like that.”

  “Something else that should have been mentioned before we started ripping bits off me,” I grumbled.

  Cyrus set the jar down and stepped back, watching my blood slowly fill the thing with a euphoric expression on his face. He looked up and me and shifted nervously.

  “Lady Kat mentioned dental extractions. I could make some amazing stuff if I could get one of your… Ok, maybe now’s not the time.”

  “You aren’t going anywhere near my teeth, little mammal,” I growled.