The Onyx Dragon Read Free

signal.
    “Student Maylin!” the Jeradian Hammer boomed. “I hereby place you under arrest.”
    Maylin screeched, “What?”
    Pip could have paid half the jewels of Sylakia for that response.
    “Forgery of important Academy documents,” Faranion blustered. “Impersonating the noble Master Kassik’s office. Blatant abuse of the messaging system. You will come with me.”
    Her golden Eastern skin having bleached to a pasty shade of white, Maylin spluttered, “But it was an order …”
    “Are you not aware this is wartime?” Plucking the hapless student out of her seat, Faranion clapped a pair of manacles upon her wrists with commendable efficiency. The Jeradians appeared to be enjoying their roles just a touch more than was strictly necessary. Pip smoothed a grin off her lips. Those doom-mongering windrocs could just take a hop into the nearest volcano.
    “Now, listen here,” Yaethi began to protest.
    Barrion clamped her good arm in his massive paw. “I’ve apprehended the accomplice, lady Pip.”
    “Unhand me, you wretch!”
    “Excellent,” said Pip, casting a steely glare around the First Year benches. Laughing from the other side of their mouths now, were they? Picturing an imperious Dragoness in her mind, she commanded, “Clap these miscreants in irons and haul them up to Master Kassik’s office.”
    In short order, her band of merry mayhem reversed course, with Yaethi chained to Maylin via her good left wrist. Her right hand had been eaten by a Heripede during Telisia’s cowardly attack on the Academy. Kaiatha tripped along behind with an increasingly alarmed expression, but she dared a level of protest that could only be heard in the depths of a still cave on an uninhabited Island.
    The squeak of a Dragon’s scales could have been heard in a hall holding hundreds.
    A roar split the hush. “Pip! Pip! Yah stop right there, yah package of beastly rapscallion-ness!”
    Monkeys and tinker bananas, where had Mistress Mya’adara sprung from? Pip whirled on her heel to spy the famously stormy Western Isles warrior bearing down upon her with rather more than a hint of thunder in her expression.
    “Don’t yah be vexing me like this!” roared the Mistress. “What mischief yah fomenting with mah best students? Ah’ll bend yah over mah knee like you was one of mah own, and that yah are, girl! Don’t yah be thinking you’re all big an’ Dragon-like now, yah still mah Pipsqueak until Ah say different. Right?”
    To Pip’s amazement, Jerrion stood his ground before the Mistress’ wrath. Even Dragons thought twice about daring as much.
    Mya’adara, who at six and a half feet of Western Isles warrior-brawn towered over most women, ran headlong into Jerrion’s chest and bounced off. Bounced. Pip stifled a laugh; by the rajal-fierce glint in the Mistress’ eye, her reaction had neither been missed nor appreciated.
    “Just doing my duty, Mistress,” Jerrion rumbled politely, beginning to greet her in the Jeradian fashion by first blowing across her knuckles.
    The Head of Students snatched her hand back. “Jerrion, I changed yah wet cloths when yah was a filthy, snivelling infant. Don’t yah backchat me. Ah’ll tan yah lower cheeks like Ah used to, Dragon-sized or none.”
    Just then, a messenger-monkey scampered up to Pip, bobbed its head and presented her a scroll.
    Faranion jostled past her to seize the scroll before she could touch it. “Stop. Scrolls can be poisoned.”
    Pip gave a few blameless students to her left the benefit of her most venomous glare. Ha. To the monkey, she said in Ape, “Thank you.”
    The monkey thumped its chest briefly. “Me perfect messenger. You monkey-girl.”
    Controlling her exasperation with a hiss of breath between clenched teeth, Pip assigned the albino messenger-monkey second place on her menu.
    “What does it say, o beefy captor?” Maylin inquired archly.
    Faranion said, “Just, ‘Code brown.’ I assume that means something to you?”
    The Eastern