Light Dragons 01 - Love in the Time of Dragons

dragons.”
    “Light,” Baltic snarled, starting toward him. “We are light dragons. You are the blight.”
    Kostya leaped up, his hands fisted.
    “Oh, lord, there they go again,” Aisling commented to the table. “And I thought it was bad with Kostya and Gabriel. You’d better get your bananas ready, Ysolde.”
    “No,” I said.
    “No?” May asked, watching as Baltic and Kostya both turned surprised gazes upon me.
    “No. If they are so hell-bent on fighting, they can fight.”
    Kostya smiled. Baltic shifted into dragon form.
    “Definitely overweight,” Kostich said, eating a bacon-wrapped scallop.
    “But in human form,” I told the two dragons. “And with no weapons. Just fists.”
    A little puff of smoke escaped Baltic, but after a moment’s thought, he shifted back to human form, eyeing Kostya. “Fisticuffs, eh? It’s been several centuries since I’ve had that pleasure.”
    Kostya tossed off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. “The pleasure is going to be all mine, Baltic.”
    “Over there, not here,” I said, pointing to the other side of the pasture that was mostly dirt. “I don’t want any more of this crystal broken. You can have five minutes to beat the living daylights out of each other, and after that, you have to behave in a polite, decent manner. Do you both agree to the terms?”
    Kostya’s gaze was shifty. “Define decent.”
    “No more leaping up at every little thing you perceive as an insult. I’m tired of you two being at each other’s throats, and I imagine everyone else is tired of it, too.”
    The women nodded. The men avoided meeting my eyes.
    “You wouldn’t mind if their sept was in the weyr, would you?” Aisling asked Drake as Baltic and Kostya moved off about sixty feet, Bastian and Jian going with them, whether to referee or to cheer Kostya on, I had no idea.
    “It’s not quite that simple,” Drake said. “There are rules to admitting a sept. I’m not even sure that Baltic actually has one.”
    “But if he did, they could join, and then Ysolde could be ambassador, and Dr. Kostich could—” Aisling bit off what she was going to say as the mage looked at her.
    Baltic, with a yell, flung himself at Kostya, who answered by twisting to the side and landing a nasty kick on Baltic’s thigh.
    “Could what?” Kostich asked, his pale eyes intense.
    “Leave us alone?” she asked sweetly.
    Dust rose from the field where the two men were now circling each other, periodically lashing out with arms and legs.
    Kostich made a derisive noise. “I have never sought anything from dragons other than the sword that rightfully belongs amongst mages, a fact you should well know, Guardian.”
    “There is no place in the weyr for a sept that slaughters members of another in times of peace,” Gabriel said, watching interestedly as Kostya head butted Baltic, who roared in outrage. The two men went down in a cloud of dust.
    “Baltic didn’t kill those blue dragons.”
    “So you say.” Gabriel’s silver gaze switched to me. “But we have only your word to that effect. It is hardly enough for the weyr to dismiss the charges.”
    “If you are going to go through that argument again, I shall go watch the combatants. I believe a little spell increasing the black dragon’s speed is in order. . . .” Dr. Kostich rose from the table, tossed down his napkin, and strolled off toward the fight.
    My chin went up as I addressed Gabriel. “I see now why Baltic has been so resistant to meeting with you. Your mind is already made up.”
    Silence fell . . . silence tinged with the grunts and muffled cries from the two men who were once again on their feet, dirty, sweaty, and dabbed with blotches of crimson.
    “He had to have done it. He was working with Fiat,” Gabriel said, sounding as if he was trying to convince himself.
    “So were you, from what Jim told me,” I countered, my ire starting to rise.
    Gabriel looked startled. “I am not conspiring with Fiat!”
    “Not now, but you have. Or did Jim lie when it told me that you helped Fiat poison Aisling and take her as his mate?”
    The silence fell again.
    “You bloody bastard! I just had that set!” Baltic yelled in an outraged voice, grabbing Kostya by the throat and flinging him a few yards. “That’s it! If I’m going to have a crooked nose, you’re going to have one as well!”
    Both men disappeared again into the gently swirling cloud of dust.
    “Oh, dear, I hope not. I like Kostie’s nose the way it