Page 28 of Ale Storm

Rylana summed up finding the mess.

“Maybe it was the dragon sisters,” Sylin suggested.

“I doubt they need an antique dwarven horn.”

“No, but they clearly want to intimidate you.”

“They would have flamed my underwear, not tossed it atop a crate.”

“Foxvonla and Loxvonla were here?” Frowning, Jildarin turned from his cooking to face them again. “In the city?”

“Yes, I was about to get to that part of the story.” Rylana explained the rest of her eventful shopping trip.

“You did not think they were more important to inform me about than a horn with glowing ale mugs?” Shoulders growing tense, Jildarin stalked about the kitchen, stirring and cutting with palpable irritation. “That they continue to threaten you is intolerable. Also, it is clear that they waited until I departed from the city to do so. Had I sensed them, I would have driven them off. They fear to face me. Do they think I will mate with them if they harm or slay my business partner? I would be furious and slay them.”

“Any chance you’d like to do that preemptively?” Rylana asked, though she didn’t truly expect Jildarin to kill dragons from a clan aligned with his. It would really irk his mother if he did that, especially when their focus was apparently on repopulating the decimated dragon species.

Jildarin exhaled a growl and faced her. “They are vexing me enough that I am tempted. I should have taken you with me last night, but I am… I did not expect… I hadn’t planned to travel away from the lake.”

“Where did you go?” Rylana asked.

“On an errand.” Jildarin waved vaguely, then returned to cutting. Thunk, thunk, thunk went his knife. Who would have thought spring onions needed such aggressive blade work to be sliced acceptably?

“Did it have anything to do with my father? I wondered if you might have visited him for… some reason.” Rylana hesitated to admit she’d been reading his book—and his underlined passages. It felt a bit like eavesdropping. Of course, she’d been doing that too.

Thunk, thunk, thunk.

“I don’t think successful couples are supposed to withhold information from each other,” Sylin said in a bland tone between bites of quiche.

“You being an expert on relationships,” Rylana said.

In the more than ten years that she’d worked with Sylin, Rylana had never seen her involved in more than the very occasional one-night fling.

“I’ve observed others in them,” Sylin said. “And I’ve read many books.”

“I know that latter is true. Non-book-readers hardly ever throw around terms like solipsistic.”

“I had a lot of time to think of creative words to describe Zilek while he was speaking.”

Jildarin set down his knife and faced Rylana. “I will speak to you of my errand when the elf princess leaves. It is not my desire to withhold information from my… business partner.” He frowned at Sylin. “But dragons do not speak of personal matters in front of others.”

“I can go eat breakfast in the dining room if you two want to chat.” Sylin pointed her thumb toward the hallway. Voices out there suggested Zalani and Gniknik had arrived for the day.

“Do so,” Jildarin said at the same time as Rylana held up a finger and said, “Wait. I’m trying to figure out what to do with this horn.”

Since Sylin had been helping her on the quest thus far, Rylana wouldn’t mind hearing her opinion before she left. Especially since Jildarin had been dismissive of it and its glowing ale mugs.

“Give it to your brother promptly,” Sylin said, her eyes glinting with amusement. “He was the one who tried to get you evicted, right? Let the dwarves ransack his home.”

Rylana scratched her jaw, a little wistful at the idea.

“You should find out if it truly belongs to the dwarven king,” Jildarin surprised her by saying.

“How could I do that? I don’t even know his name.”

“King Ekton,” Jildarin supplied, then tapped the handle of a spoon to his jaw, a thoughtful expression crossing his face.

“I don’t suppose you’d like to fly me to the mountains to visit him?” Rylana asked.