The Divine Gambit Vol. 02

4. A Horse Of A Different Color

Sitting in a rented-out hotel ballroom by myself, sipping on a cup of coffee I was too nervous to taste, unable to do anything besides watch the clock tick, was not an enjoyable experience. It was, however, what I felt compelled to do Friday morning. That was the date we had set for the initial meetings with the other dragons, as a collective, so that any subsequent, individual meetings could be handled over the weekend or early next week. I didn't need the coffee -- I had slept beside all of my mates despite it being a weeknight last night -- and I didn't think there was a chance I would've enjoyed it even if I had tasted it -- it was from the hotel lobby, not brewed with Sam's magic -- but sitting here and doing nothing felt even more wrong than sipping a drink I didn't want or need.

I had come alone, at first, just as a precaution. Beth had frowned at me all morning. Different parts of her had wanted to argue in two very distinct directions -- the first was that she didn't think life would be worth living if the future she had recently come to know was taken from her, so there was no risk to me that she wouldn't undertake herself for us. The second was that she was nigh invulnerable nowadays and, therefore, counterintuitively, at even less risk of a draconic outburst than I was.

She was somewhat right. Physically, at least, she was less vulnerable. But there was no reason to expose her to the dragons until I knew things would be okay. I didn't want her exposed emotionally to being needled like Sam when Antonin tested me. At least then, as unhappy as I came to be about it, there was a purpose I could identify at the time. More importantly, I had already met Antonin and gotten familiar with his gruff, blunt exterior. I hadn't ever experienced the dragons before. I didn't know how they would react to me alone, or if they would immediately begin probing Beth and Sam and Zoey for weaknesses. Meeting them alone was a risk, but it was calculated. The calculation was that if I got hurt, it was fine. I'd recover.

If someone hurt them, I would cause an international incident.

Still, that calculation left me anxiously sitting in a massive hall in one of twenty chairs around a table probably too large for anywhere reasonable but still too small to fill the ballroom's expanse, sipping a lukewarm cup of bland coffee. There was a table on the far side of the wall where the hotel had put a variety of breakfast foods in cheap aluminum trays over warming plates. We had catered lunch from a place Zoey enjoyed ordering from (a steakhouse, to all of our surprise), but left breakfast to the hotel. I had to wonder if anything would get eaten or if the catering would be just a waste. I spent a minute hemming and hawing about calling Zenya and asking her to find out if there was a foodbank or homeless shelter nearby that would take already prepared food so we wouldn't just throw it out when none of the dragons needed to eat. It wasn't a massive amount, but just sitting here staring at it, fretting over it to avoid my worries about the dragons, I didn't like the idea of it going to waste.

I was rattled from my thoughts as a slender man in a well-fitted suit knocked cautiously on one of the enchanted wooden doors about fifteen minutes before we were scheduled to start. When I looked up and blinked in a lack of recognition, he spoke. "Hello. James, I presume?"

"Yeah, I'm James. I'm guessing you're Clement," I wagered. Given that he was male, it was 50/50. Given that he was white, I was reasonably confident. Amusingly, he smelled calm, but not genuinely calm. He smelled like Zoey did when she was locked in -- holding herself at a calm state rather than being truly, naturally serene.

Zoey was better at it than he was.

"That's me. Say, listen, before we get into the serious stuff today, could you show me your scales?"

"What?" I replied dimly. "I mean, I suppose. Would like to know why you want to know first, to be fair and all."

He swallowed nervously. "To see which of us you match."

"Match?"

"Well, you aren't my son. I guess it's possible Eleanor hid you from me, but I really don't think that's likely, and the timeline doesn't add up either way. Arjun hasn't mingled with magical partners even before the ban -- learned his lesson on having powerful children ages ago. The twins don't do much of anything, one of them literally. It doesn't make any sense. But you've got to be from one of us. Scale color and texture are inherited directly. Unless you've got two draconic parents and more than one of us are guilty of your existence, you should match someone identically."

"Not sure I like the way you're phrasing that."

He nodded. "Can't say I'm happy with it, either. I think the conclusion is slightly more important than our feelings, unfortunately. Would be a lot cleaner if any of us were permitted to have children and didn't have punishments hanging over our heads simply because you exist."

"Wait, you're not allowed to have children? At all?"

He sighed. "Not with anyone magically inclined, anymore. Even the slight risk of another dragon was too much for them. My marriage with Eleanor has been quite the point of contention among the magical community for quite some time, but since we haven't had a child in such a long time, our Seat trusts us. At least not to do that."

"Would've been nice if someone had told me that to begin with," I grumbled. "Anyway, I have parents. They aren't dragons. They didn't know anything about this world. My sister's as human as they come. Though, I thought I was, too, so I guess I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure none of you are related to me."

"Frankly, I'm not sure it matters what you think. You weren't there at your birth. Not consciously, anyway. Your memories can't exactly be trusted. Your parents raised you, and I don't intend to deprive them of that distinction, but you're clearly a dragon. I can sense you. Strong, proud, young, energetic -- though not as hungry as most of us, a bit more caution in you. Shame the only way you could exist is through such a blatant disregard for caution. I need to ask again to see your scales."

"I don't suppose you'd show me yours first, would you?"

Clement shrugged and rolled up his left sleeve. He held his lean arm out in front of him and shifted, his fingers curling into sharp claws as pale blue scales spread up his arm, almost icy as they reflected the cool artificial light.

I held my own arm out in return, shifting. Clement's eyes focused intently on my forearm, where my deep, smokey maroon scales bloomed into existence. His brows furrowed in confusion as my crimson coloring grew undeniable.

"That's not possible," he stammered after a moment.

"Did tell you my parents weren't dragons. Guessing I don't match any of you?"

"But that's not possible," he simply repeated.

"Yeah, you said that. Yet, I'm standing here in front of you. Clearly, something is possible."

Clement looked me over again, frozen, staring at the color of my scales, holding a hand out to point at the smoky edges of each scale. "Your highlighting is dark. Not black, but slate. And the texture you have --" he paused, circling his finger around a single scale that he was targeting for demonstration purposes as he grappled for the word he wanted. Eventually, he abandoned the attempt at being articulate, saying simply, "-- isn't. It isn't uniform. Each scale is unique, and there's no pattern in them. It's a chaotic maelstrom seemingly rejecting anything that could be misconstrued as uniformity. The only connecting feature between your scales is that they have no replicated patterns. The fact that they're all different is all that unites them."

"And that's strange, I presume," I replied.

In response, he held up his arm and allowed me to look more closely. The pale blue of his scales gave way to a pure white outline, like the calm evening sky surrounded by a peaceful cloud. Looking deeper, I could see shallow grooves in his scales that weren't present in mine -- all aligned, all pointing in the same direction across his entire arm.

"Even were there a way for one of us to have had a red heir -- which there isn't, primary colors only come from primary colors and none of us are red -- all of us have light-colored outlines. And I don't think I've ever heard of a non-patterned set of scales. Granted, the supply has been fixed for so long that I may simply have forgotten that someone I never met so long ago had something like that, but I don't think so. I don't know what it means."

"So, what's your conclusion, then?"

"I came here to see whose head I was going to have to take," he said with steel in his voice, leaving no doubt that it was truly his intent. "I certainly don't dislike the others -- it helps that we see each other so infrequently -- but I was preparing to come to blows with someone. It's why I asked Eleanor to wait outside. I didn't know who you'd be, or how you'd react, or who else was going to be in here. The pressure felt like two of us; guess that's just you. Now, I don't know what I'm here for. I don't know what we're going to do. You're too young to be anything but one of ours, but you can't be. All of us will have come here expecting a fight with another dragon, and now there isn't a fight to be had. Perhaps not Juliana, but I'm unsure of what the rest of us intend to do now. Regardless, I'm assuming no violence is going to break out, at least not this morning. Physically, at a minimum."

With that, he pulled out his phone and tapped away for a few seconds, before sliding it back into his pocket and gesturing towards the table. "Shall we sit? I imagine Arjun and Adriana will be along shortly. Somewhat surprised Adriana isn't here already. She's usually prompt when we have meetings like this."

"Do you have them regularly?"

"Once or twice a decade, usually. A weekend away somewhere for all of us, which is getting harder with Arjun's expanding hotelier gig. Has to be sunny, too, or Juliana screeches incessantly for months about it."

"I was under the impression that you were more competitors than friends," I said, unsure how blunt I could be without distorting my point. "Why would you get together?"

He looked at me for a moment, his eyes hard and his face scrunched up. "We are competitors. But, we're in a competition against everyone, not just our own group, and we're no longer in power. If one of them fucks up, including you now, the rest of the world might decide we're too much risk to be worth permitting to exist. There were only five of us left. If something happened over the next few months that meant that in fifty years, there were only ten Americans left in the world, even if you hated them personally, wouldn't you attend the get-together? They're the only ones left who understand what we've all gone through. You're one of us now, and yet, you also aren't. It isn't your fault, but in some ways, you're an outsider even in our collective."

Then he waved towards the door, a genuine though reserved smile sprouting on his face as he loudly said, "Darling! Come meet James."

Eleanor was even more slender than Clement, which I found surprising. She was also an inch or two shorter than he was, which probably made her a little above average for a woman and him a little below average for a man, at least for nowadays. It was strange to think of the man next to me, wearing a sharp suit and wielding a smartphone in one hand and a styrofoam cup of instant coffee in the other, as someone who had lived when France was a monarchy pre-revolution, but that thought did go some way to explaining why they were so much smaller than I was. At least, that was the conclusion in my mind sitting next to Clement.

I had assumed, apparently wrongly, that the other dragons would be large humans. Given that I grew the first time I shifted, I had assumed that was normal. Or, perhaps Clement and Eleanor were just so naturally diminutive that even with the dragon's expansion, they remained around average? Hopefully, seeing the others would answer the question. Although, the sample size might limit any actual conclusion I could draw.

Eleanor glanced around the room, saw that we were the only two in it, and slowly but purposefully crossed to where we were sitting. Her eyes were hawklike, penetrating and fixated on me as she marched across the ballroom floor, her slight heels clicking sharply with her footfalls.

"Scales," she simply demanded, her brown eyes locked to mine, unblinking. Strangely, she smelled more nervous than upset. Granted, that could've been a slight misdirection -- she could've been anxious about the whole situation, or more specifically about marching in to make a demand, and either way, the outcome would be world-altering, in a way.

"Darling," Clement interjected, "I told you, he--"

"I'll see for myself," she said icily.

"You don't trust him?" I asked calmly. "Haven't you been together for hundreds of years?"

"Your existence makes me question the final lines of trust I thought were unshakeable and his claims are too fantastic not to verify with my own eyes."

I held my hand up and shifted. She watched sharply as my maroon once again shone through.

Immediately, her demeanor changed, softening and warming considerably. She caught me off guard by curtseying, leaving her head bowed slightly as she apologized. "Terribly sorry, James. It was not you with whom I should be cross. Seems there's no one I need to be cross with, but I had to steel myself against the possibility."

"I can't say I understand, not really, but I can sympathize with the position my coming to light has put you all in. Probably not all that different from my own, actually. Racing across the world while being told that everything you knew is a lie."

Eleanor lifted her eyes up, meeting mine with vastly different emotions from just the prior moment. "James, I'm sorry. I--"

"That was a genuine statement, not an unsubtle barb," I interrupted. "I appreciate the thought, but you didn't show up one morning to race me across the country without telling me I wasn't ever going to be allowed home to have an evaluation where I would be killed if I didn't give the right answers, to leave me in a city I wasn't familiar with and didn't know anyone and where everyone looks at me like I'm a ticking time bomb with a clock approaching zero while expecting me to perform miracles and dance to your every fleeting whim just to be permitted my own existence, forget freedom or independence."

Clement smirked beside me. "Perhaps less an outsider than I thought."

"That's the dragon experience in a nutshell, is it?"

Eleanor rocked her head back and forth in indecision as Clement stroked his jawline.

"It's gotten better over time," he offered. "It might be different for you, here. Aisling has never had a dragon; She'll likely want to keep you and, therefore, might be a bit looser. But, in general, they watch us closely. Keep a tight leash. Give us some toys we're permitted to play with and keep everything else forbidden. I imagine our Seats will watch us closely in the coming months. None of us knew you weren't one of ours, but Aisling must've. It's not like our colors are secrets."

"Would've been nice if someone had told me any of this."

"Aye," he said with a nod, "It would've been. We keep in contact with each other -- some more politely than others -- because the information we're all allowed about the world is restricted in slightly different ways. I heard about you before Arjun made the call, but I had only been informed by one source at that time. Making the announcement could've outed them as leaking to me. Evidently, his informants were slower but more plentiful. Or he doesn't care. Hard to tell with him. Regardless, we aren't given everything. Some knowledge we have to go and take."

"Not sure I like the idea of having informants."

"Contacts, then. Acquaintances. Like-minded individuals. Takes a special kind to work with a dragon, but it's usually easy to reward them. Mana goes a long way. Most of your body should be full of it unless you're actively spending it, and in that case, you should have gotten some kind of value out of it. Scales, saliva, blood -- any little part of you is so rare that a partner will treasure it as payment. Unless you flood the market. Then we'll come knock you around a bit for ruining our gigs."

"And what lies are the star-crossed lovers feeding the boy?" came booming from the door as soon as Clement finished his elaboration. A dark-skinned man wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a pair of khaki shorts stood proudly in the doorway, a broad, smug smile on his face.

He had what appeared to be a cigar in his mouth, though it was unlit. That seemed strange to me -- at best, a dragon would be able to taste the cigar and could have formed the habit back when it was more ubiquitous, sure, but he wouldn't get any of the benefits of the nicotine (or any of the downsides, either). Then I realized it wasn't even lit, which went some way to explaining why he was permitted to have it in the hotel at all.

My initial thought was that, as a dragon, he had made it appear unlit but was holding a smoldering ember in the center of it or had shrouded it in an illusion. Doing that would make it seem as though it was unlit to any casual observer while giving him the familiar sensation, the obvious conclusion from seeing it in his mouth.

When I reached out magically to try and sense what was going on, I was completely surprised by something that made immediate sense when I recognized it for what it was. It clearly wasn't a regular cigar. In fact, it wasn't really a cigar at all. The wrapping and an eighth of an inch at the end were made to appear like a cigar, but the inside was a solid stem of a gold-silver alloy. It wasn't a cigar -- it was a precious metal chew toy for a dragon, a constant source of material wealth that the newcomer could carry without drawing attention to the fact that he was carrying several thousand dollars worth of metal by his mouth.

"Why, just that your resorts are the best in all of the tropics, of course," Clement replied, drawing me back to reality.

Arjun, the only other male dragon, shook his finger in response, but his smile never faded. "That's not a lie, Clem. Depending on how you define best, my properties might fit your criteria. Granted, that isn't my goal. I don't want people who need the best to come around my parts."

He strode over towards the three of us, Eleanor finally taking a seat at the same time as he did. His smell mixed with the others -- Clement had passed into genuinely relaxed from his initially manufactured state, Eleanor had faded into mild regret from her initial harsh nervousness, and Arjun smelled like he just couldn't give a fuck. I intuited that he was well aware that I wasn't his, but, in contrast to Clement and Eleanor who were worried about the consequences and potential fallout, he was more willing to allow the entire experience to devolve into entertainment. He was, as far as I was aware, the oldest person I had ever interacted with. Novel experiences were probably getting hard to come by.

"Well, spit it out. Whose is he?" Arjun asked.

"No one's," Eleanor responded.

Arjun raised an eyebrow, then wobbled his head and shrugged. "No one's? Makes the most sense and the least sense at the same time."

"You don't want to see?" I asked.

He shrugged again, waving his hand in dismissal. "The lovers did and aren't bickering between themselves or plotting one of the sisters' demise. Seems like they're telling the truth. If you were just theirs together, I wouldn't have heard you were here. Their reactions make sense. Adriana will be along at some point, and she'll want to see. I'll get my fill then, and afterward, we can all go home."