Light Dragons 01 - Love in the Time of Dragons

frowned at him, but was unable to speak due to another mini scone he was eating. “Dragons are not governed by the L’au-dela. He has no authority over us, mate, so you need not fear that his threats are anything more than idle.”
    “I assure you they’re quite real,” Kostich answered, bits of crumbs flying as he spoke around the mouthful of scone.
    “Voulez-vous cesser de ma cracher dessus pendant que vous parlez?” Aisling murmured.
    Dr. Kostich, sitting across from her, stared.
    “Sorry. I’ve been dying to find a chance to say that,” she said, brushing the crumbs from in front of her plate. “Rene will be so proud.”
    “That’s right,” I said slowly, thinking about what Baltic said. “Dragons aren’t part of the L’au-dela.”
    “Dragons aren’t, no,” Dr. Kostich said, taking the glass I’d set down for Baltic, sipping the champagne with a thoughtful look. “Quite a decent vintage. My compliments. As I was saying, your chubby mate is right—I have no authority over dragons. However, I do over humans, and you, my ex-apprentice, are close enough to human to count as one. It is true that I would have a hard time punishing him, but you are a very different matter, and since I can’t have the one who perpetrated the crimes against me, I will take the next best thing: you.”
    “Just once I’d like to be charged with something that I’ve done,” I said. “What do you think you’re going to do to me?”
    “I’ve already told you—banishment to the Akasha.”
    A horrible feeling gripped me in cold, clammy hands. Banishment to the Akasha was no laughing matter—the place the mortal world thought of as limbo was not one which many beings ever escaped. “You can’t do that,” I protested.
    “I can, and I will.”
    “Baltic?” I asked, turning to him, suddenly worried. “What will happen to Brom and you? I don’t want to go to the Akasha.”
    “You won’t, chérie . I would never allow it. This mage is blowing hot air, nothing more.”
    Dr. Kostich glanced at his wrist. “The question will become moot in less than an hour when the watch arrives to take Tully away.”
    “Touch her, and you will die,” Baltic said simply.
    Kostich pointed a fork at him. “It’s that sort of attitude that has kept the dragons and the L’au-dela at loggerheads for centuries. Even your ambassador was arrogant and impossible to deal with.”
    “Ambassador?” Aisling asked Drake. “We have an ambassador with the L’au-dela?”
    “Fiat,” he answered, his eyes bright as he watched us.
    “That was the former ambassador. We received notice he was excommunicated, or whatever it is you dragons do, and removed from the post. We are awaiting the appointment of a new ambassador, to whom I will certainly lodge detailed complaints about my treatment at the hands of that behemoth.”
    “Archimage or no archimage,” I said through gritted teeth, “knock off the references to Baltic being large. It’s only his dragon form that’s big.”
    “You know,” May said slowly, looking distracted, “something has just occurred to me. Ambassadors have diplomatic immunity, don’t they?”
    Lightbulbs seemed to go off in many heads at that moment. I looked thoughtfully at May.
    “Yees,” Aisling drawled. “What a good idea. The weyr needs an ambassador, and Ysolde needs protection from Dr. Kostich.”
    The latter glared over the table at her as he helped himself to more champagne.
    “If Ysolde was ambassador, he couldn’t touch her, and voila! Two problems solved at once. What a perfect solution.”
    “No, it isn’t,” Kostya said, in the process of consuming a mound of food piled high on his plate.
    “Oh, stop being so obstinate,” Aisling told him. “We know you don’t like Baltic, but Ysolde hasn’t done anything wrong. There’s no reason she couldn’t be the ambassador for the weyr. She certainly will do a better job of it than Fiat.”
    “She’s not a member of the weyr,” Kostya pointed out.
    “I’m not?” I asked, feeling somewhat adrift, both conversationally and emotionally. “I thought I was a silver dragon.”
    “You were silver, then black, but now you are neither, and as such, you are not a member of the weyr,” Drake agreed with his brother.
    “There’s an easy solution to that,” May said.
    Everyone turned to look at her.
    “Baltic’s sept will have to join the weyr.”
    Kostya snorted. “That would never happen. The weyr would not tolerate the blight