The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume I: Volume I

of witchlight in front of him to keep the complaining bird awake. If anyone but Jack entered the cavernous room, Corby would set up a fuss loud enough to wake the entire factory.
    Corby was quiet. Too quiet. Almost as if he slept. But birds did not sleep in the presence of light and they did not sleep with their heads erect, standing on both feet.
    Jack stopped in the doorway, willing himself into invisibility. As his eyes adjusted to the shadows of the warehouse, he opened his senses to alien sensations. His nose itched, as if to sneeze. The scent of magic hovered in the air around him. A very small amount of magic, and it carried the distinctive musky flavor of dragons.
    The softest of footfalls behind him brought his hand up to still any further noise from Katrina. His enhanced awareness of the building and all who dwelled within it told him she had followed, even before she descended the first step. He found her mouth with his left hand and gently covered it in a signal of silence.
    With another thought, his staff sprang into his hand. Silently he moved into the warehouse, nose alert for a concentration of magic.
    Light flared from the end of his staff, illuminating the room in a shadowless light and wrapping armor around Jack. He broadcast a very mild delusion of an ordinary lantern in his hand and another beside Corby. Best not to betray his magic with the obvious witchlight.
    Every crate in the warehouse, empty or filled with reels of lace, stood revealed to his sight. Bent over one of them was a man dressed in the dark gray of the palace guard. Gleaming white tendrils of lace spilled from his hands.
    Someone too stupid to respect the Rover wards at the doors? Or was he too strong a magician to worry about them?
    Startled by the light, the intruder looked up, unblinking in the new brightness. Corby awoke from his trance at the same moment and set up a strident fuss guaranteed to bring Brunix and his burly employees running.
    “So, since the queen is ill, has the palace stooped to stealing lace rather than making it?” Jack asked. He couldn’t alert this barely talented man to his own magic.
    He had to act fast and turn the matter over to Brunix, before his armor faded. Unable to replenish his magic from ley lines or from dragons, he had to rely on his own bodily strength to support his spells. Years of heavy mine work had given him muscles and stamina. These were not infinite.
    “I seek a piece of lace more important than any of this paltry export trash. A piece made of Tambrin and designed by that girl’s mother!” The magician in gray challenged Jack and Katrina. “King Simeon would give a life’s pension for that lace. The coven will give even more!”
    “How valuable is a life’s pension if my life only lasts a day beyond giving over such a piece of lace—if it exists?” Jack returned.
    “The piece exists. We have, this night, captured a Coronnite spy who seeks the same lace. I believe he offered Owner Brunix a great deal of money for it. He won’t live until dawn. Our leader has seen the lace in the glass. A magnificent and unique piece.”
    He’d said Our Leader, not The Simeon. Interesting.
    Katrina said nothing in reply to the man’s statement, which sounded almost like an accusation. But Jack could feel her trembling in fear behind him. She was either very brave to remain there in the face of so much fear, or too stupid to know she could run.
    Run where? The thought occurred to Jack that Brunix might not offer her the haven she needed. Her fear of her owner could be as great as her fear of her despotic king.
    “I dispute The Simeon’s ability to see anything in a magician’s viewing glass. Else he’d know his enemy’s movements ahead of time and would have conquered them years ago,” Jack taunted, hoping the magician would reveal more.
    “Simeon does not rule the coven.”
    “His black-haired mistress!” Katrina spat, coming out of her fear-induced paralysis. “ She is responsible for Queen Miranda’s illness. She leads the coven and corrupts the queen’s government.”
    A clatter of footsteps on the stairs signaled the arrival of reinforcements. Good. Jack’s reserves were growing thin. He’d held the armor too long after several hours of stretching his awareness far beyond his normal limits.
    Corby ceased his noisy fuss and swooped from his high perch to Jack’s head. “Nasty man,” he quoted. “Dragon man. Nasty man. Not a dragon.”
    Jack reached up to soothe the