Dragon Precinct Read Free

magistrate needs more for that triple murder.”
    “Good.” Jonas shuffled through his parchments. “We got a note from Dragon Precinct. One of their informants said that two halflings, a barbarian, a priest, and three warrior types—one human, one elven, one dwarven—all took rooms in the Dog and Duck and had dinner together.”
    Danthres leaned back in her wooden chair and groaned. “Lord and Lady, not another heroic quest.”
    “I’m afraid so,” Jonas said gravely. “Dragon’s been told to keep a special eye on them. Those types always get into brawls.”
    “Or worse,” Iaian said. “I remember that group that wiped out the Boar’s Head Inn.”
    “I don’t know that inn,” Grovis said.
    “You wouldn’t, boy.” Iaian chuckled. “Even if someone like you would be caught dead in a place like that, it got burned to the ground before you were born.”
    Jonas said, “Last thing we want is a repeat of last year.”
    “What happened last year?” Grovis asked.
    Patiently, Iaian explained. “Someone started a rumor about a dragon in the cliffs. We had a run of men with boiling blood and shit for brains coming through Cliff’s End, each thinking he’d be the one to take it down.” Iaian let loose with a rare, gap-toothed smile. “I think we set a record for assault calls that year.”
    Torin grinned, and he looked at Danthres. “Two coppers says that our next call is from the Dog and Duck.”
    “No bet,” Danthres said. “But three coppers says it’s a bar brawl.”
    “You’re on.”
    Almost as if on cue, a guard ran in. He wore no cloak, but he was clad in the same leather armor emblazoned with the gryphon crest as the rest of them. “We got a body.”
    Jonas looked at Danthres and Torin. “All yours.”
    “Joy of joys,” Torin said as he got up and moved toward the pegs that held his and Danthres’s cloaks.
    Danthres asked the guard, “Where?”
    “Dog and Duck, ma’am. One of the guests.”
    With a look at Torin, she asked, “Bar brawl?”
    The guard shook his head. “Not according to the informant, ma’am. Said the cleaning lady found a dead body in a room.”
    Torin was grinning again as he handed Danthres her brown cloak. “That’ll be three coppers.”
    Ignoring him, she said, “Let’s go.”
     
    Danthres and Torin traveled on foot to the Dog and Duck, located in the heart of Dragon Precinct, the business district and middle-class region of town. Danthres, who had never gotten along with any horse she’d attempted to ride, had no problem with this. There really wasn’t any other way to traverse the city-state, particularly once you got out of the mansion-laden portions of Unicorn Precinct. Horse-drawn supply wagons did come through, but at a slug’s pace.
    The previous Guard captain, an idiot named Brisban, did have a problem with it, unlike Danthres. Then again, he also had a problem with Danthres, but that solved itself when the captain died of a lung infection. Before his death, he had tried having the patrol guards do so on horseback so they could, as Brisban put it, “pursue malefactors more efficiently.” However, the horses were only able to move as fast as the slowest pedestrians without the risk of trampling, which pretty much defeated the whole point of the exercise. Walking had remained the primary mode of travel within the Cliff’s End city limits. Besides Danthres, this state of affairs also pleased the owners of the dozens of stables on the outskirts of the city-state.
    Danthres had last been to the Dog and Duck three years ago, when a suspect in a murder was staying there. Since then, it had been refurbished—at least, that was how it seemed as she looked through the large crowd that had gathered around the outside, barely held in check by three guards wearing the Dragon crest on their leather armor. If nothing else, the wooden sign that hung from a small pole over the front door was newer and fancier. Where it used to be a crude painting of the two