Light Dragons 02 - The Unbearable Lightness of Dragons

held the car door open for me, and it was a sign of just how bemused I was that I stuffed Larry into the backseat and didn’t notice that Baltic took the driver’s seat until we were already jetting down the road, coming close to plowing into a stone fence.
    “Is it true that the First Dragon’s children founded the four original septs?”
    “My three brothers and sister, yes. You are going to ask me why I was not given a sept, aren’t you?”
    “Well, that and why you’re driving on the wrong side of the road,” I said, pointing to an oncoming car.
    Baltic swore and jerked the car over to the proper side. “Mortals should standardize which side of the road they wish to drive on. I am the youngest son, Ysolde. You know when I was born—it was several centuries after my siblings.”
    “So you were kind of an afterthought?” I grinned at him.
    He looked outraged. “Hardly. My mother was the First Dragon’s descendant, a black dragon. He seduced her, and I was born. I was not given a sept because I was born into the black sept.”
    I gawked at him. “Your father seduced his own descendant? That’s incest!”
    “Every dragon is descended from him. Technically, you and I are related.”
    “Yes, but at a distance! Several generations and whatnot! By the rood, Baltic! That’s beyond creepy. Your mom wasn’t your sister, was she?”
    “No.” He swore as several car horns blasted him. I refused to look, deciding it was just better that I not know what he was doing. “She was the daughter of his great-granddaughter.”
    “Wait a minute—” I shook my head, trying to untangle his family tree. “You’re a wyvern. That means you have to have a human parent, and if your mother was also your . . . I don’t know, your great-grandniece? Whatever the relationship, how can she be human?”
    “She wasn’t. She was a black dragon.”
    “But wyverns have to have a human parent,” I argued.
    “Other wyverns, yes. But not those who are sired by the First Dragon,” he pointed out with complacency.
    I thought about that as he parked illegally and hustled me out of the car and into the train station, growling when I insisted that he go back to retrieve the rock.
    “But how—” I started to say when he slammed it down next to me, causing a little piece of it to chip off. I winced, hoping it was nothing Larry would mind losing. Assuming, that is, that I could turn him back into a dragon.
    “I am done answering questions, mate. Do not glare at me—we have more important things to do than discuss ancient history.”
    “What important things? Track down that sneaky Maura and the two remaining Stooges?”
    “More questions! My old Ysolde would have known when it was time to stop questioning me.”
    “Did your old Ysolde ever pop you on the nose? Because the new one is sure thinking about it. . . .”
    It took us three hours to get to England, and that was only after we used a portaling service to zap us to a dirty fish-and-chips shop located on the fringes of London, the local airline not wanting to give in to Baltic’s demands that it reroute airplanes to accommodate us.
    “All right,” I told him as I breathed in the air of London and immediately choked on the grease fumes. “I haven’t asked you a single question for several hours, so you can answer a couple more without spontaneously combusting. Why do you think Thala has gone off in a huff after raiding your lair?”
    He hailed a taxi, grumbling when I insisted that he put Larry into the car as well. “You saw the signs as well as I did.”
    “Yes, but I don’t know why you’re suddenly suspicious of her. I agree that it’s odd that she disappeared like she did, but perhaps those ouroboros dragons made her break into the lair and then took her away with them.”
    One chocolate brown eyebrow rose. “Do you seriously believe that she would suffer any such thing?”
    “I suppose not,” I said after a moment’s thought. “Anyone who calls herself a dirgesinger isn’t someone who would let herself be kidnapped. You think she’s betrayed you?”
    “It’s possible. We have never seen eye to eye on certain subjects, and it could be that she’s decided to put into motion plans that she desired.”
    “What sort of plans?” I asked softly, so the taxi driver wouldn’t overhear us.
    “She wishes to restore her mother to a place of power.”
    I don’t know what I expected him to say—perhaps something to do with Thala at Baltic’s side