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Chapter 1

When I received the assignment, I was convinced that my life was over. I just didn't understand why it had to happen to me.

I had done everything right. In every class I'd had, I'd paid close attention. I'd done my time with field work, even in the miserable colonies. I'd never failed a test, I'd convinced my instructors that my combat ability was something special, and I'd shown uncommon intelligence for a soldier.

I'd been told that dragons like me didn't end up with the lousy jobs. With my marks, reputation, and skill set, I was told that I was effectively guaranteed a spot in the spec ops division.

I graduated in the top two percent of my class, fresh out five years of finesse training. And I was determined to prove to them that my marks, even if they were good by most standards, were only an approximation of my real merit. I felt it was my destiny to prove that I was worthy of being part of the Praetorian Guard.

The plan to realize my vision was simple. I would work my way up the spec ops branch of the military until I was finally recognized as great, and be put in a post that would allow me to interact with the emperor every day as one of his personal elite soldiers. That was how most of them did it, and seemed to give me the best odds.

The future was bright and exciting until I got my job, courtesy of our great Green Dragon Empire bureaucracy.

As usual, I couldn't blame the messenger, or I would have blown up. What he told me was that my job was being bodyguard for the daughter of a well-known public figure. The girl's name was Shala, and I was given a short description of what to expect.

She was a little older than me, which I assumed meant somewhere around a century of age. She was a soft-spoken girl, though her past bodyguards reported her being very condescending, on account of having servants to boss around for most of her life. She had requested and received a library in her home upon moving there ten years ago because, like many well-to-do green dragons that hadn't decided to devote their resources to colonizing the outskirts of the empire, she loved to read.

It sounded like an interesting enough life, though not at all what I wanted, until he told me the details of her living state.

She lived practically right under the shadow of Imperial Palace, home to our great emperor. The highest-security location of the entire empire, with soldiers not unlike myself constantly strolling around both on and off duty, was barely a minute's flight from her! Just by being there, she was protected against greater things than I could handle even if I were some kind of demigod. The greatest concentration of might in the universe was just a short walk away!

The inhabitants of that neighborhood, perhaps for that reason, have always predominantly been children of wealthy and influential dragons. Bodyguards accompanied them as a display of their family's status rather than because of any actual need for protection. In essence, I was being assigned to her as an accessory.

It was unlike me to argue with a superior, but for the sake of my future, I tried to intervene with my assignment. I brought up my high grades and my specialties in combat, high-pressure situations, and espionage; this had to be some sort of mistake!

The bureaucrats told me it was no accident. I had been assigned to her not because she was in danger, but because they had assigned mediocrity to her for the last two bodyguards, both of whom were dismissed and sent to the colonies without pension for misconduct. Shala had reported being inappropriately and forcefully handled by the second one in particular.

It felt hopeless because their reason for assigning me was actually understandable. I didn't bother to ask what the first had done to be let off. I was going to have to get through this somehow.

The next day, it was time to meet this Shala girl, whom I hoped I would only have to know for a short time. I cleaned out my half of the soldier lodge, disposing of what little I owned, and said farewell to my longtime dwelling place as I headed downtown, right toward the capitol of the world's largest, most prosperous empire.

She took a while to answer the door. First she very politely told me to go away. I told her that I wasn't permitted to leave, by my duty as a soldier.

Shala opened the door and stood right in the middle of the entrance, keeping me from making my way in, eying me intently, her legs loaded as though she anticipated some sort of foul play from me.

She was unsurprisingly beautiful in that odd, regal sort of way. It seemed, from my stroll around, that there was a common look for the girls of this area--a common air to the heiresses, perhaps.

It looked as though she was a decade or two older than I was, by the way a hint of violet had already developed on her green scales. It was a mark of maturity; upon coming of age, males' scales darkened ever so slightly, and females' outermost layer of scales lost their green coloring along the edges, reverting to their unpigmented violet.

I felt like I knew what to expect. From everything I could tell, Shala was a typical girl from these parts. She was young, and so she lived here with a bodyguard until she'd come of age enough to be wed, or perhaps to take part in the family business.

My keen eyes picked out something special about Shala, though. She was built as well as they came. She was still slender and very proportionate for her height and gender, but beneath her scales, muscle subtly rippled every time she moved. Her posture and body language had the same kind of grace and pomp as all the neighborhood's delicate-looking girls, and her silhouette would have been indistinguishable from them, but when she moved, the difference beneath her hide was observable. Like most of the girls around here, Shala was abnormally alert in the way she walked and intimidatingly conscious of her movements. But unlike them, she was strong enough to be a threat, even to a soldier like myself.

"You're my new bodyguard, then?" she asked. She looked like a scared deer, and spoke with exaggerated softness, as though she was trying to whisper it to me--to have no one else hear.

"Yes. My name is Quetzal, and I've been assigned to you," I said, kneeling as had been advised to prior to deployment. After what happened with her last bodyguard, the sign of respect was necessary. She still didn't look quite at ease. "Is something the matter? Miss Shala, I assure you I'm different than the guard you recently had dismissed. You don't need to fear me."

"No, that's not it at all," she said, speaking up now, most of the wariness out of her eyes. I was surprised by the way she spoke now; in an instant, the sheepishness was gone. Her voice was heavier and not so soft anymore. "I was afraid that you were going to try something funny before I had a chance to introduce myself, but I can tell that you haven't been put up to anything that would inconvenience me. Come in."

I obliged, but... try something funny? Me?

I took a look around and realized what I already knew; Shala's dwelling place had been purchased by someone with money to burn.

True to what I'd been told, Shala had a great library in her living room. Books of all types were on display, housed by sixteen massive bookshelves lined against the wall.

That feature aside, the place was the standard picture of opulence. The whole body of the estate was carved from some sort of smooth, light-hued stone. A variety of fruits, both local and colonial, sat on her counter. Several glass containers were filled with various grains and spices, and the cooking room had both a gas-powered cooking range and a pump-operated sink. Off down the hallway were three doors I dared not venture toward until permitted to do so.

"This is..." I said, but I trailed off and she took a guess at what I was going to say.

"Luxurious? Immoderate? Over the top?"

It didn't seem so bad here, when I looked at it. My biggest worry, based on what I'd seen so far, was me going soft from spoiled living; Shala seemed to just have it too easy here, considering that how much of that food in her kitchen was delivered from far, far away.

"I was going to say--"

"If you were going to say what I did about the place, then we agree. But what we think of it matters for little," she scoffed. "It won't change, because my dad has food delivered to the front door every day. I don't understand why he didn't just hire a chef, but he thinks that would make it too easy for some dissatisfied worker to kill his precious daughter."

"Kill you?" I repeated. Just how paranoid was her father, exactly? I mean, given Shala's pretense and inconsideration, I couldn't blame an underpaid chef for slipping something into her meal, but this was a well-paying employer if I'd ever seen one.

"To him, it seems like a valid fear that a result of a free society might be beyond prediction. You, on the other hand, are the product of decades of standardized imperial military training. You've been deployed and returned for further training, to make sure your discipline and commitment to protocol were firmly planted. I'm told my dad requested someone well within the top five percent of your class., because there's no way any such dragon would harm me," she sneered.

I snarled beneath my breath in response; if her father had influenced the military to get an elite graduate like me to babysit his little girl, I had nothing but contempt for him. Shala, meanwhile, sat down beneath her bookshelf, leaning against it, and picked up a book from beside her. I caught the faintest trace of a smirk on her face.

"Or try to take me for his own, for that matter."

So that was what the last bodyguard had been after? And he hadn't succeeded?

Looking at Shala's build, that sort of made sense. If I weren't so confident about my hand-to-hand competency, even I would've probably been quite afraid of her; it was subtle, but my eye was trained to size up opponents, and I noticed how effortlessly she moved, and how her hide revealed great definition.

"I appreciate your faith in the Royal Guards," I said, trying not to cringe.

I hated our title. We soldiers had been branded Royal Guards just before the last green dragon king made himself emperor and established a new age on the basis of what he termed protocol. The title of Royal Guard lasted many centuries longer than any of the actual royalty, and was really just an artifact that no one cared to replace. Kind of like protocol, in a lot of ways.

"Yes, yes, I'm sure you do," she dismissed. There was a pause, but it felt like she still had more to say. I waited for it. "At any rate, I'll be reading right here for most of the day, every day. Also, another thing. If I may be somewhat blunt, Quetzal?"

"Blunt?" I repeated, confused. She'd sounded plenty candid with everything she'd said except for that hesitant, sheepish first sentence. What did blunt even sound like for this girl!? "By all means, feel free."

Shala snickered, closing her book around one finger and holding that arm to the side away from me. Siting against her bookshelf, she craned her neck over slowly to face me, a wicked smile on her face. I felt chills down my spine.

"This whole arrangement is a waste of your time and mine," she said.

I almost agreed with her straightaway. But wait...

What if it was a trap? What if this was some test of my mettle as a bodyguard? I was not going to be fired on my first day. Dismissed would be fine on honorable terms, but getting fired would see me deployed again, possibly to the colonies.

"Excuse me?" I said. It was the safest thing I could think to say.

"How many of my past bodyguards did they told you about?" she asked.

"Two."

"Well, they're full of deceit. You're my sixth bodyguard," she explained. "The first was an old, dying drake who mostly left me alone. Since he died, I've gone through five others, all in the last year. I've lied to have them removed. For the last two, I trumped up the charges to get them deported to the southernmost colonies, where they'll probably be killed by red dragons."

I blinked twice, shook my head and tried to piece that together.

"Why?" I asked. "What was so bad about them after years with an old veteran living on borrowed time?"

"They didn't leave me alone," she replied. "And if you won't acquiesce to my terms, you'll follow them."

That made me even more confused. My mind quickly went to a way to defend myself, but I had nothing. She, the client, had all the power. Her word counted for more than mine.

"I'm sorry, Miss Shala, but I'm afraid I don't follow. You can be assured that I won't bother you, but I'm required by oath to keep surveillance on you at all times."

"That's unfortunate," she said, sighing. "I'll put it in clearer terms for you. The reality of this matter is that, after five fools who clung to that oath, I'm quite tired of tact, and of having to fight for my privacy."

It would drive me crazy having a bodyguard as well, but her father insisted on it, and I was assigned to her, never to have her out of access.

"Privacy is something I can't promise you. I understand how you feel, but I have my duties."

"It surprises me, but I feel as though perhaps you actually do understand. However, I've fought. I've fought and I've lied and I've become increasingly frustrated by the difficulty you soldiers have given me," she crowed, her voice rising a little more with each sentence. "You've been given instructions on how our arrangement will operate, and I don't like them. Here's what I want to happen."

Shala set her book down, stood back up, and strolled over to where I stood. Once she was within an arm's length, she reached out, squeezed my left shoulder with her right hand so that her claws threatened my hide, and pulled my face toward hers so that our eyes were only inches from one another when she spoke.

"I'll read for most of the day, completely in your sight. I'll wander off and disappear for about an hour at a time, once a day. You will not follow me," she snarled.

I could feel her labored breaths. Her eyes were wide and manic. I couldn't believe what I'd been thrown into. I knew that being bodyguard wouldn't be fun, but I hadn't envisioned this kind of predicament even in my most pessimistic thoughts.

It made me mad. She thought she was intimidating me, but she had much less control over the way she moved than she realized. This girl was way too cocky for her own good, and I inherently felt like putting her in her place.

I felt like I was boiling. I was so close to reaching out and slashing her that I could almost smell the blood.

That wouldn't do.

I closed my eyes and held my claws together so that she couldn't read what was going through my mind. I took a few slow breaths and pretended that there was no one else in the room--that no one was attacking me, and nothing was wrong. I suppressed the desire to spew fire, and managed through willpower not to even allow smoke to slip out of my mouth.

Unlike her, I was very much in control of myself. My innate response to the hostility was to let my temper get the best of me, but I'd been in enough tense situations to know better.

I had put myself in a state of calm. Thus the mind subdues the instincts.

There was no good way to diffuse the situation, though. Based on how her temper was already acting up, she was going to be angry and possibly get violent. All I could really do was stick to my orders and hope this wasn't as bad as it seemed, so I resorted to a stock response.

"I can't do that. Protocol dictates that--"

A roar boomed from out of her throat, and her grip tightened enough that I almost thought I might bruise. She was making the mistake that children made, disregarding the great advantage our society had over lesser beings like the red dragons and the black dragons. She had let her mind slip to the point that draconic rage had control of her.

"I TIRE of those words!!!" she thundered. "Do you know how AGONIZING this past year has been!? They've sent me guards that have been progressively smarter, more difficult to dupe, and even more dedicated to watching me at the same time! And here were you, one little spot of hope! I saw you, heard you talk, and thought that you would understand and leave me alone, but I can see I was wrong! My fifth replacement in a year, the first with any sophistication or any promise of sense, and YOU won't even let me alone!!! What do they drill into you soldiers about this protocol that makes you adhere to it with your whole soul!? Do you even HAVE a soul!?"

I was looking for a quick response to her frustration without getting excited, but when she brought up protocol, there was no hesitation or excitement required. Nothing fabricated, either.

"Beatings and frustration," I replied. "That's how they do it. That, and bullying, peer pressure, exhaustion, and occasional torture in extreme cases. Disobey orders, disrespect a superior, or violate a fundamental principle of the empire, and that's what we have to look forward to. And if we mess up enough times, we get sent off to the colonies to hunt and forage while fighting off red dragons for the rest of our lives."

She snorted a puff of smoke, then pushed me away. Her claws poised at about the level of her chest, she turned her back to me, extended her neck, and belched fire up at the ceiling, snarling all the while.

"And that's all there is to it!? Your will is weak enough to forego decency and common sense for an institution's favor!?" she snapped, not bothering to turn around, remaining tense and breathing heavily.

She had lost her temper, but my will was weak? It wasn't worth taking her accusation seriously.

"Perhaps," I replied. "Or perhaps I have a dream that requires me to merit that institution for a while longer yet. One that will make up for everything I'll have to go through to get there."

Shala snorted, turning to me. Her face smiled playfully, while all her rage still sat in her dark green eyes.

"Oh really?" she challenged. "I warn you I'm tough, driven, and fiendishly clever. Oppose me and I'll make you miserable until I'm finally convinced you're not worth the effort, at which point I'll be rid of you on false charges just like all the others. With that said, pray tell, what could be worth crossing me? What could be worth the hell I'm going to put you through until you leave me alone?"

"I'm going to be a Praetorian Guard," I boasted. "I know that's what they all say, but I'm more determined than any of the others. I've honed my mind and body, and gone beyond what I've been taught. I'm going to follow my duties to the letter until I'm reassigned to spec ops, and then I'll work my way up to the very top."

Her face went blank. She cleared her throat a couple times, stared at me with expressionless eyes and a loose face, and seemed to be waiting for something. Then, out of the blue, she started giggling.

"Oh, is that it? You're really that naive? Listen to me now when I say you'll never make it. You're too scrawny by far, and not forward or ruthless enough," she laughed. She paused for a moment, pensively staring off into space. "But since you're so determined, and because I like you more than the others, I'll make you an offer you can't refuse. Six months. I want privacy whenever I request it, and a few small favors on occasion with no questions asked. You're free to use the house as you wish. Read anything from my library as you wish, and use this time to prepare yourself for showing up your competition when I set you free. In fact, I'll even spar with you to help. You may not have figured it, but I'm much tougher than I look."

And quite a bit more childish than her adult coloring would lead me to believe, at that. Or maybe aristocrat ladies just never learned how their bodies worked, how to synthesize their thoughts with their instincts, or what others could perceive from their words and actions. And maybe that was why the residents of this neighborhood acted so uniformly in public--avoiding anything that might compromise their composure at all costs.

I began to think up a plan, based on how easy Shala's temper was to manipulate.

If she wanted privacy, there was probably something she didn't want known. I was going to find it, and excel for my superiors where it hadn't been expected. That could earn me favor and protect me from her accusations at once, if I played it the right way.

Except... I thought I saw something noble in her eyes for a moment. It was worth pursuing.

"If you tell me why you need the privacy, I'll consider it," I replied. "I might even be willing to help you out with whatever it is you're hiding. But I won't just leave you alone for a simple explanation on your word. I need proof."

She snorted and a puff of smoke escaped her nostrils.

"Stupid guard," she growled. "That won't happen, and you're angering me. Recall that you're at my mercy? Back down or I'll end this early and accuse you now."

I couldn't either of those happen, so my mind worked fast.

"And then you'd have this same thing happen again," I bluffed. "Another guard would come in to take my place, even more brainwashed and stubborn than I am, and you'd have to go through this whole tantrum yet another time."

I'd found another chip in her armor--lack of patience. She winced visibly upon my pointing that out. As long as she thought she might be able to talk me into seeing things her way, and made it look like I was close to caving in, she wouldn't be willing to lose every breakthrough she'd made with me, and start anew. That would give me some time to figure her out.

"Graaaaah!" she yelled, striking the wall with a hand. It sounded like it hurt, but she didn't even wince. Shala took a deep breath and lowered her voice. "Fine. But I'm going to break you. Just by virtue of your empathy, you're already closer to it than any of the other five drones they've sent me so far. So be ready. In the meantime, I'll be reading, and going about my business."

I was a little upset with the bureaucrats for having only told me about two bodyguards prior to myself. Apparently they'd known from the start that she was trouble, but wanted to blindside me? Or they'd not wanted me to enter the situation with hostility?

"Read all you want, but don't try to slip away. I'm not letting you disappear."

"We'll see how long that lasts."

Shala returned to her book without another word, sat down, picked it up, and looked just as calm and docile as she had when she first opened the door.

I also sat down and returned to a state of inner peace. It was time to think up a plan worthy of a Praetorian Guard.

Chapter 2

One thing I asked often as an adolescent was how to become a Praetorian Guard. That was, after all, the goal of my life.

It was a common question among Imperial soldiers; we all desired to accumulate wealth and glory, to have power over others.

The responses I got were frequently uninteresting. A few thesis statements sprang up in recurrence. Reach for greatness. Demonstrate excellence time and time again. Be the best at what you do. Exceed expectations no matter how high the expectations are set.

I'd been told that everyone tries to be a Praetorian Guard, and only a rare dragon succeeded. That told me I had to be different, and so I couldn't necessarily trust the advice that everyone was taking if I wanted to be the very best.

In this case, though, one particular piece of advice stuck out in my mind.

Never fail.

So I wasn't going to. I would figure out Shala's secret before she got rid of me, and then I would have the option of apprehending her for whatever wild practice she had decided to begin in secrecy.

The initial discovery was easy to make, as I was free to roam the house. Down the corridor, in the smallest of the three rooms, there was a poorly-hidden door behind a cabinet.

Fortunately, the door was secured by a padlock, which was a pretty strong telltale sign that Shala's secret was mine for the taking if I could get to the other side. Also, I could be assured that this was where she intended to disappear to for an hour or so at a time.

Unfortunately... well, the door was secured by padlock. First I tried using my claws to pick the lock, but it was far too deep. I tried in vain to bite through it, but of course, the metal was stronger than my fangs. As it was, there was no way I could be rid of the lock.

That left me with the challenge of passing through the door without letting Shala know how close I was to discovering her secret. Specifically, I had to find a way to remove the lock without giving her any clue what tools I had.

With that challenge present, there were also unwritten rules to consider. I couldn't tell anyone about the existence of any secret passageway in her home, or it would force her to be rid of me. That meant no enlisting help, period. On the flip side, she wouldn't be rid of me unless she had to, because apparently I wasn't as hardened or as soulless as most of my peers. She thought she could break me, and I thought I could beat her at a strategy game like this. Of course, I was assured that I was right.

Picking locks wasn't a difficult thing for me, if I just had something to work with. And I knew where to get something, if I could just slip away for a while.

True to her word, Shala sat by the bookshelves, reading all the day long without so much as a word to me. It was convenient, but also made things tricky.

Having graduated fully qualified for upper-tier spec ops missions, I knew a thing or two about stealth. But with someone like Shala in the living room all the time, right by both exits, I thought it might be tricky to slip away for a while without letting her realize she had a free pass to go off and disappear.

I gorged myself that night at dinner, enough to draw looks from Shala, and hoped I wasn't being too obvious. She made no comment on it, so I hoped she didn't suspect that I needed the energy specifically so that I could fly away later that night. For all she knew, I was just a big eater, right?

Even if she had been suspicious of me, and even if I hadn't been good at sneaking, I would have had an especially easy time of leaving unnoticed that night. From the sound of her cries, Shala was in the middle of a nightmare.

Not that I needed it, but I'd been lucky.

I was headed to a store owned by a local expert locksmith. I chose it for two reasons. One, I knew the place's layout well enough to find what I was looking for. Two, in spite of it being a locksmith's shop with a laughably overprotected front door, the lock on the back door was a rather simple, easy lock to pick with nothing more than what II had attached to my hand. I kept one claw extra long for picking locks, and for this case, one claw was all I needed.

Once inside, I stole the lockpick I knew I would need. I also took a padlock I knew I could afford, left fair deal of my own money more than it was worth as a tip. Breaking in or not, I wasn't going to steal.

I rushed home as quietly as high speed would allow.

The next morning, Shala confronted me.

"You think this will stop me, do you?" she scoffed.

So she had already tried heading into her little secret retreat. I hadn't been patrolling it, because I knew that when she tried to sneak off to it, she wouldn't be able to open her lock anymore.

"Maybe only for a few days, but for that long, I expect it to keep you where I can see you," I replied. Finally, a genuine excuse to smirk at her. " You've done rather well with your own prohibitive measures, by the way. I hate to admit it, but you have me beat for now."

Shala's padlock was... pretty sophisticated, I had to admit.

Apart from being deep enough so that my long claw wasn't nearly long enough to unlock it, it had some sort of... battery. That was probably why the lock was larger than my foot, because it really packed a punch. I tried to unlock it with the lockpick I'd taken from the locksmith, and I was zapped so hard that it took my breath away.

With a lock like that in place, the only option I could think to implement overnight was getting my own padlock, and so I had. It wasn't the brilliant plan that I wanted to come up with, but putting a second lock on and hiding the key would suffice until I had a better one.

Fortunately, that better plan came to me before I even decided to plant my lock on the door alongside hers. I found a durable enough metal tool to disfigure her lock's keyhole, and it was done. There would be no removing it without professional help. Given how impatient she was, that help would come soon. And depending on what mistakes she made, I could have all sorts of opportunities to storm in and raid the back room.

"If you're not scared yet, then you don't know what you're up against," she warned. "I'll have the lock removed and replaced by tomorrow morning, and then what will you do?"

That, apparently, was all she wanted to say, so she went back down by the bookshelf and continued reading.

Shala hadn't been kidding when she said she would be reading for the greater part of every day. Once in a while, she went to the kitchen and got food, and she had to check the mail and such, but it was usually a sure thing that I could find her in the living room, caught up in someone else's words.

She wasn't perfectly quiet, though. As little as she spoke, she did sing, and that was nice. As much as I considered her an enemy, hers was one of the fairer voices I'd ever heard. Yes, she was a self-important narcissist with a cold heart and a terrible personality, but her singing voice was rich and comforting. As long as she sang notes and words that someone else had written, it was a beautiful thing.

With Shala mostly occupied by her books, I spent the most of the day exploring the house in greater detail. There was her room, which she didn't seem to object to me going through, and there was also a rather nice room that I would hopefully only call mine for a few more days. Both of them had restrooms attached, which were much nicer than the outhouses that I'd been using all my life. Plus, each had a tub that could actually pump hot water. All those luxuries weren't entirely to my taste, but I couldn't complain about the arrangements.

Later on in the day, Shala got up, determination in her eyes, and sought me out.

"I'm going to shop," she announced, and turned around without another word, flicking her tail at me as she left. I couldn't tell if it was deliberate or accidental... but regardless, I was going with her.

While we were out, I saw the side of Shala that everyone else saw. As much as I'd deduced that she had limited control of her body, she had full control of her face and voice. Every time she spoke, it was with a sugary, airy tone and standard ladylike grace. It seemed she knew almost everyone in town, but all any of them did was greet her and allow us to move on, so I imagined they were all just acquaintances, or perhaps not even that. Perhaps greeting strangers was just the custom around here. I'd never been around in the morning.

Our visit was quick. She bought a simple metal-shearing tool from a general vendor and took us home. Having tested the metal with my teeth, I could've told her it wasn't going to work, but that would only diminish my precious bought time.

Back home, Shala left a trail of smoke as she lumbered over to me. She stood in front of me, her eyes wide and angry, and grunted.

With little warning and nothing said, she opened her mouth and spewed fire all over my face. I closed my eyes by impulse and felt myself go dizzy, but my heart rate rose with adrenaline and I held my focus. My nose and my ears were my sight now, and they'd been honed by training drills directed at situations much like this. I was aware of her every move even without my eyes, harnessing my contentious spirit to overcome my fatigue and counter anything she tried to do. I anticipated a strike, but nothing came, and she ran out of fire.

"Jerk," Shala spat. She walked away without another word.

I opened my eyes and sat on the now-hot stone floor until I wasn't dizzy from the heat anymore. I took advantage of the house's running water and washed my face off to cool down, keeping calm as I'd disciplined myself to.

I considered that a battle won. She had the money to waste on a better lock breaker, but this would probably earn me another day to come up with the winning move I was after.

The next time I came out for food, she walked up to me and said something rather cryptic and puzzling.

"Tell me when you feel it," she said plainly. She walked back to her spot on the floor and opened her book once again.

I was in my room scheming when I figured out what she meant. I gradually realized that I had been itchy, rubbing my scales with unusual frequency for the whole day. One particularly bad itch seemed to last a little too long. I grew frantic, sat down, tried to scratch it with my hind legs when my hands wouldn't do the trick, and in frustration, belched fire at the ceiling. I wanted to dig down right between them and just rip my flesh out, from the way it was being irritated, but I knew it wasn't going to help.

I calmed myself first, then walked over to Shala, convinced that the itching was what she'd meant.

"Okay. I feel it. Now what?" I asked.

She didn't bother getting up, or even looking away from her book.

"Now, you enjoy your last hours before the mites become unbearable, because I put them in your bed the moment you got here, and they aren't full-scale agony until two full days are past. The last place they'll reach is your head, and then you'll want to die. Prepare to experience a new level of hell, Quetzal. It only ends when you concede. Keep in mind this is the beginning of a long list of methods that I'll use to break you. By the way, you're escorting me to the locksmith in an hour to replace the lock you spoiled. While we're out, I don't want you scratching yourself, so grin and bear it while it's still possible. And remember that things will only get worse as long as you oppose me."

Shala went back to her book.

My heart was pounding in panic. Mites!?

The first step was to burn my bed. While it was a nice, very comfortable pile of straw, it was easily replaced, a small price to pay for eradicating those nasty mites. Thankfully, the whole house was fireproof, and there were large windows to evacuate the smoke.

I felt a bit bad about destroying it, but if I recognized the symptoms correctly, I'd heard about this particular parasite and they were worth the precaution. The pests buried under the host's scales, where the plates met the flesh, and they sucked blood. They would then reproduce until they filled every crevice, since they were tiny enough to fit between every scale. They buried their eggs within the fireproof sinew under a dragon's scales. The recommended cure, if I remembered correctly, was coating my hide in strong acid, which was painful and posed its own problem--particularly my lack of powerful and abundant acid.

Since I could do nothing, I continued trying to alleviate my itching until finally Shala took me to the locksmith's place. It was hard not to grin at her choice of shop. I did my best to pretend to be unfamiliar with it, but I had perused the whole shop by light generated by my basic magical prowess just last night.

"Good day. I'm here concerning the lock you sold me," Shala began, speaking to the shopkeeper. Her voice was soft and sweet again, like her singing voice.

"Ah, hello, Miss Shala. I do hope you've been well," he said warmly. I couldn't tell if he was glad to see her because she kept such a good public face, or because she was probably the heiress to one of the larger fortunes in the Empire.

"I've been worse, and I've been better," she replied. "But I'm afraid that your lock... well, it's been much, much better."

The locksmith didn't know how to respond, so he just gaped for a while.

"But... how!?" he gasped. "I swear I did nothing wrong! That's a piece of my finest work! The battery-capacitor circuit, the alloys, the structural soundness... Oh, please don't spread word of this malfunction! My reputation will be ruined!"

Battery-capacitor circuit? I wasn't sure what it meant, but if what little I understood of electrical components was accurate, the shock I'd been given was from a charged capacitor, which was subsequently recharged by a battery so that it could give me another shock when I tried to pick it the second time.

"About the circuit," I said. "How long does it take to charge?"

The dragon perked up, grinning behind the counter while Shala shot me a disgusted look. He had an old voice that sounded like it had been damaged by decades of hoarse yelling, but his eyes were young. "No more than ten seconds, guaranteed! And it takes at least a minute to pick the lock, even for me, and I built it! Oh, but if it's a problem with the circuit, I'm very relieved! Please, let me fix it right away, free of charge!"

I pretended, for Shala's sake, to act disappointed by this answer; it meant that the replacement lock, which she had no doubt come to fetch, would be impossible for me to pick by any means. Hearing that it took ten seconds to charge, however, brought great relief to my ears.

"It's not a problem with the shock system, Mr. Brook. I'm sorry to say it, but thanks to... vandals... the lock has been dented to the point of uselessness," Shala reported.

The poor guy looked heartbroken.

"I promised you a lock that wouldn't fail, and I've disappointed," Brook lamented. "The replacement is free."

I wanted to tell him that it was my fault--that I had damaged his precious lock, and I wished I'd had a choice. In that case, though, Shala would probably have little choice other than to accuse me of attempting to ransack her house, ruining my career with those allegations and covering her tracks to start again with a new bodyguard.

I had to beat her. But it hurt, watching Brook agonize over what he thought was a fault in his work. And the constant urge to scratch my itching hide made me all the more irritable, all the less patient.

I grinned for a moment. I really had to admire the central craftsmen of Imperial City. My peers often dismissed them as being overpriced, snooty, and unwilling to haggle, but I knew better. Their opinions had formed because my peers were raucous, entitled, and unrefined.

These dragons were diligent, experts at their crafts, with hundreds of years of experience. And they were uniformly more earnest than the new-age vendors. Vendors elsewhere seldom knew much about their products, and really, they just took advantage of systems and production techniques that allowed for homogeneous goods to be manufactured with great bulk and at low cost. Specialty shops were the only way to get anything done right anymore. Plus, I'd never had a bad experience with one.

"Ridiculous. The original cost a fortune, and took you days to complete. You'll not supply me another without compensation," Shala dismissed. "Money is much less of an issue for me than it is for you, and I can think of few better subjects for my patronage than your work."

As much as I hated her, I could have kissed her for that.

"A defect is a defect, and I can't see how you might be satisfied with your broken product," Brook insisted. "The new lock is free."

"Actually, the lock did its job quite well. No one was able to bypass it. My only qualm is that I have no way to remove it, and apart from buying a replacement, that's the reason I'm here," Shala said. "Honestly, it was impassable. I couldn't have reasonably asked for better."

Brook hung his head low.

"You're too kind. Someday, I'll have a lock worthy of securing your home," he said, heading to the back, where his storage room was.

"I look forward to that day," Shala sighed. Ofcourse she had her ego intact, even with her little sweet girl masquerade.

Brook set a cloth bag on the counter. I heard the clinking of glass as it contacted the surface, and wondered how the hell he expected glass to help.

"The lock is inside as well?" she asked.

"Yes. And here's the key," he said, handing her a thick rubber stopper attached to a twisted piece of metal about as long as my hand, which I assumed was the key. Shala removed a sticker.

1. Apparently, this guy had made quite a few locks.

"Are we walking home?" I asked, though I knew the answer. Flying while carrying both metal and glass was a recipe for disaster.

"Yes," Shala replied.

"Alright... sorry, but do you have a restroom, by any chance?" I asked, thankfully knowing already that the answer to that question was yes as well.

I contorted myself, trying to alleviate the itching in a pronounced enough manner for Shala to notice, but without being obvious enough for Brook. To my relief, she didn't object to my request.

"Down the hall, take a left," Shala said with a snicker. I wondered how often she had been here. "Be quick. I'm paying, and then we're gone."

I didn't actually have to use the bathroom, of course, so I didn't go there. Nor did I take too long taking care of the so-called itch. I returned, and Shala stood by the door, having already paid. I followed her out.

Back home, Shala took the paper bag and demanded that I not follow her. Naturally, I couldn't do that. I disobeyed, and she sighed.

"I'll have to proceed with this anyway," she admitted. "But you're going to stay five paces behind me, or I strike. Also, keep in mind you'll pay for your stubbornness."

"I'm already paying," I growled. The mites had become unbearable by that point. I was constantly attempting to relieve myself. I wanted to bathe, hoping the devils would drown, but I knew better. The eggs would survive, and some of the mites would, too.

"Clearly not enough," she replied.

It turned out that the glass I'd heard was a vial full of a clear, odorless liquid. It also came with a bulk of white powder. Shala poured a good deal of the stuff on the damaged padlock, chuckled to herself, and put the new lock on beside it. A bit of overflow dripped onto the floor, and Shala poured the white powder onto it. The two substances bubbled when they met, and Shala swept them up moments later.

"Now I wait," she said. "Quetzal, would you come with me to the back yard, please?"

I couldn't say no. The only thing I was within reason to deny her was, obviously, time alone.

"I just wanted to say a few things," she said. The back yard was a rather pastoral place, and had it not been for semi-microscopic parasites sucking my blood, I would have felt quite at peace. There were flowers, shrubs, tall trees looming over the building, and a few fruit trees that, I could attest, bore some of the better fruit available to our climate. "Starting with Brook. I could tell you were intrigued by him, and you hung on his words as he spoke. I don't talk much about myself, but I'll tell you a bit about him if you wish, all antagonism between us aside."

I was... taken aback. Shala was more perceptive that I'd given her credit for. I wondered what else she'd noticed that I hadn't meant to make transparent...

"I hate to admit it, but I would appreciate that," I replied.

"I thought as much. He's been worn down by a lifetime of very rough work," she said. "He tells me he was reckless in his youth, and stupid as well, but he loved putting things together. He managed to injure himself doing dangerous things, as fools do, and reconsidered his life while healing in the infirmary."

"And that's how he began with making locks? A passion became a lifestyle?" I guessed.

"In a way, yes," Shala said. "But really, it was more of a shift in the nature of his existence. He became a more cerebral being. Putting things in place became a more intellectual pursuit. I relate to the things he's told me because I'm a calculating, methodical thinker, much like he's become. He taught me board games when I was younger, and on occasion we still get together to play. He can always see farther into the future than I can, which is... well... ironic."

I didn't really get what she meant by that, but I believed her. And I believed that she felt what she was saying. It made it a little tougher to hold her in contempt, not that it meant much. I still considered her my adversary, and I was determined, whatever she threw at me, to win this face-off.

"I hate you, but you're mentally acute enough to appreciate the kinds of things in his mind. I think he'd like you if you two had a while to speak. Of course, after tonight, you won't be speaking again for a while, unless you're willing to yield."

Huh? For a second time in a row, she'd lost me, possibly because my attention was divided between listening to her and taking care of the sudden throbbing pain that came about beneath my hide every couple of seconds.

"That brings me to my main point. I'd like to share with you just what this vial contains."

She held up the vial, still about half full, about a mouthful of the stuff remaining. She put on a whole new air for this, and from the expression of her face and matter-of-fact tone of her voice, I could tell she wanted to be difficult to read.

"What you're looking at is the fluid that is currently corroding the lock you damaged. It's a potent, concentrated acid. I trust you know why that's significant to your case."

My eyes grew wide. That could relieve me of my misery!

"What's to stop me from taking it from you by force, might I ask? Would you really turn me in if I snatched it from you right now?"

"Ha. Move toward me and I drop it on the soil. Once it spills, there won't be enough left to kill the mites," she said. "So this is my bargaining chip. This is today's offer, where I ask you to give up and accept six more months of living here. Before things get worse."

"On the contrary, I'd like you to give up, because I have you beat," I replied, smirking. "I'm a lot more clever than you are. Subterfuge is my element. So give me the acid and let me in on your little secret, and I'll not belittle you over what we both know is inevitable."

"That's one of the worst bluffs I've ever heard," Shala sighed. "You're a greenhorn Royal Guard who couldn't even get into spec ops, and we both know it. But that aside, hear me out. You want to be a Praetorian Guard, and I can help. Brook is one of many very interesting, very talented dragons I know. I could introduce you to all of the locals." A hint of emotion came back into her voice. A bit of softness that actually seemed genuine, completely behind her tough mask. "All I ask, honestly, is that you give me privacy for a while. I have... secrets that I can't share. That's why I'm hardening my heart and doing cruel things like loosing parasites on you. I have a lot at stake. You'll notice I haven't told you anything about my family, or much about myself. You're guarding me, but you have no idea who I am or what I'm capable of. That's for a good reason, which I'm not willing to share. Just know, please, that I'm not really... evil. I don't actually enjoy any of these things I've done to you. I just need to be left alone."

"I won't back down," I replied with minimal hesitation.

I heard her breaths getting heavy again. She was losing her temper just like last time.

"Never fail. I heard you muttering that to yourself earlier," she remarked, panting. "Why do you have to see it as a failure. See it as an alternative! Would you please make this easier on both of us!?"

She was trying to tempt me, so I knew what I had to do.

I made my move for the acid, and as promised, she dropped the vial. It shattered, and the glass shards bounced harmlessly off of my scales while the acid soaked into the ground.

Shala shoved me back as I reached for what little remained, and I fell flat on my tail with a grin as she flipped the fractured base over, dumping what little remained.

She looked disgusted again. Furious. The fire in her eyes raged.

I got up, and Shala just shoved me back down harder. She really was quite strong, albeit a little clumsy.

"You child!" she barked. "Can you not look past your misled goal and see things for what they are!? How does this benefit you!?"

Thankfully, the temptation was gone. She had no remaining way to cure me, and so I would just have to wait, whether or not I wanted to give in. It was an exercise in my tolerance for torture, really, and I was confident that I could last long enough to corner Shala.

I laughed.

"For two days now, I've had to forego my time alone," she hissed. "I'll make you pay dearly. Do you understand?"

I would've been scared, but this felt like a victory, so I laughed. She struck my face hard, and I felt blood leaking from my teeth, but in comparison to the mites everywhere else, it was small pain. I just guarded myself a little and kept laughing, warding off her subsequent blows until I could regain composure.

Shala wanted to go all-out, but she controlled herself to avoid putting herself in a position of either wounding me more visibly and having to get rid of me, which she didn't dare, or being subdued herself, which would be rather humiliating.

Twice, she actually slashed with her claws. My will was weak from all I'd gone through, so I caught her by the wrist with one hand and shoved her away with the other, which only compounded her frustration the first time. It was the closest I had done so far to striking back.

Shala tried one more slash, but was apprehended in the same way, only pushed harder this time. She fell back on her tail, took a few deep breaths with her eyes closed, and managed to calm herself enough to call it quits with a rolling of her eyes and a humph.

She walked inside and picked up her book. A few minutes later, I could hear her letting out her anger on something that wasn't my face, and it eventually subsided. She returned to her book, and that was that.

Or at least, that should've been that. I walked over to the puddle where Shala had poured the acid, and took a moment to crane my neck over and wish I were a proficient mage, so that I could extract it back out of the ground and be rid of the damned parasites.

What I'd do if I could have just one of those many unrealistic hopes come true!