Azure bonds - Kate Novak [11]
Dragonbait nodded and, using an overlong thumb-claw, started cutting the strings of the magician's purse.
3
Dragonbait and Dimswart
Dragonbait was like no other creature Alias had ever seen before in all her travels through the Realms. He wasn't a real lizard, at least not of the species she'd helped drive back from the city of Daggerford. As she noted when she'd seen the creature at sunset, his snout was thinner at the tip and more rounded than a lizard-creature's, and he sported a head fin like a troglodyte.
Given time for more leisurely study, she could see many other differences. For one thing, the sharp teeth at the front of his mouth gave way to the peglike molars of a salad eater, and though he walked on his hind legs, his posture was hardly erect. The creature tilted forward some at the hips, balanced by a tail as long again as his torso. With such an odd posture, his head only reached to her shoulder, about five feet high. Finally, the scales that pebbled his hide were so small and smooth he looked as though he were covered in expensive beadwork, like a noblewoman's evening gown.
At any rate, for something more lizardish than human, he was pretty intelligent. At least, that is, the lizard made an excellent servant. Upon their return to The Hidden Lady, he busied himself helping her off with her boots, straightening her room, and fetching food for a late night snack.
"I see you found your lizard," the innkeeper commented cheerily to Alias, upon discovering the five-foot lizard with a cold meat pie and pudding in his paws.
Except for a few catlike hisses, snarls, and mewling sounds, Dragonbait remained mute. If the creature had his own language he did not bother to use it. Alias found she could get him to fetch and carry things on command, but he responded to questions with the blank look of a beast.
She needed to know when she'd first met him, what he knew of her memory loss, and especially what he knew of the tattoo. In frustration and desperation she began shouting questions. Her anger only invoked in the lizard a tilted head and a puzzled expression.
Alias lay back on the bed, defeated. Dragonbait made a sympathetic mewling. Struck with an inspiration, Alias shouted down to the innkeep for an inkpot, quill, and parchment. When the items were brought up, she set them on the table and sat Dragonbait down before them.
The lizard sniffed at the inkpot, and his nostrils flared and closed up in annoyance. He used the quill point to pick clean the spaces between his teeth.
Alias flopped back on her bed, laughing. Lady Luck was playing some cruel joke on her. Here was a creature who might be a key to the fog surrounding her life, and he could explain nothing to her. She leaned back against the headboard and closed her eyes. Dragonbait curled up on the rag rug on the floor at the foot of the bed and wrapped his arms around the curious sword he carried.
Alias feigned sleep for a while, just to be sure her new companion had no plans to give her a second smile, across the throat with his sword. She wasn't really expecting any trouble, but trust was for corpses. She studied the lizard through half-closed eyelids. Asleep, he looked even more innocuous. Like a child, he kept his powerful lower legs pulled up to his stomach. With yellowish claws retracted into his clover-shaped feet, and with his long, muscled tail tucked up between his legs, the tip lying across his eyes, and with his snout resting on the hilt of his sword, Dragonbait reminded Alias of a furless cat curled about its master's shoe.
The sword was as curious as its owner. It looked top-heavy and badly balanced. Forging that diamond-shaped tip, and the jagged teeth curling from it, could not have been easy, and wielding it seemed impossible. Alias wondered how anyone could keep hold of that tiny, one-handed grip. Had she not seen its handiwork on the beach, she would have believed the blade to be ceremonial gear.
Dragonbait had no other belongings, unless she counted the tattered,