“I just don’t think Tatz has the, uh, social acuity to interrogate this particular individual,” Aeshma told me.
“You mean ‘acumen’, you potpourri-eating meat-head,” Tatzel replied.
“Can it, Tatz! You know I’ll do a better job talking to him than you will!”
On our way to the study, we had approached – and then quickly backed away from – a large, plant-filled conservatory. Inside, Dracorn was smoking a fancy wooden pipe and drinking an amber liquid out of a crystal decanter. It seemed like the perfect opportunity to conduct an interview and get more information on Dringel’s business dealings.
Except Aeshma and Tatzel couldn’t decide who had dibs on being the interrogator this time.
Given Tatzel’s initial pronouncement that she would sit the whole Quest out, I was just happy that she’d taken an interest in the mystery. I figured we needed all the brain-power we could get, which meant doing whatever we needed to keep her engaged. “C’mon, Aeshma, let Tatzel run this one,” I said. “If she screws up or whatever, then you can swoop in to smooth things over.”
“Your pet is sounding more and more reasonable by the second, Aeshma,” Tatzel said. “I’m starting to see why you keep him around. Now, both of you stand back and let me handle the interrogation. And try not to embarrass yourselves this time.” Aeshma snorted and rolled her eyes, but she let Tatzel take the lead as we entered the conservatory.
Before we got to Dracorn, Tatzel stopped to straighten out the remaining rings on her fingers, making sure that the gemstones were all aligned and facing out. She was clearly proud of them and wanted to make sure Dracorn got a good look. In my opinion, she looked like a walking treasure-hoard. It must’ve been a Dragon thing. Back when we were pawning her things at the marketplace, Aeshma told me that each of Tatzel’s many rings signified a different Camptime accomplishment. Among them were a sapphire-studded silver band she’d received after being voted Camp president one year; a thick pair of interlocking black rings that indicated surviving an honor duel; and a plain-looking thumb-ring, carved from what looked like ivory.
Tatzel was spending extra time adjusting this last one on her thumb. On our way to the manor, she’d informed us that it was made from the jawbone of her predecessor at the Threshold, and was the “true and official signifier of her rank as Dungeon Boss”. I guess she wanted to make sure Dracorn knew that she’d been put in charge of something, if only briefly.
Dracorn was facing one of the conservatory’s glass-pane walls overlooking the gardens and pond at the rear of the estate. In the few hours we’d been here the storm had only grown worse. The wind had picked up so the rain was falling nearly at a horizontal; the surface of the pond was rippling and rough. As we entered, a great spidering lightning bolt split the sky and briefly illuminated the landscape.
I’m sure the grounds were beautiful under normal conditions. Today, though, with the storm raging on, they seemed to take on a sinister, moody aspect.
Despite the turmoil outside, the conservatory itself was still and peaceful. The room was two stories tall and practically all glass, besides the grey stone which tiled the floor. Other than a few chairs that had been set out for viewing the grounds, the room was entirely devoted to being a greenhouse. Lush green plants filled the space, ones with big broad leaves that practically spilled out of their already-massive pots. It must’ve been a real chore to keep them all watered and happy, especially because they seemed too tropical for the dreary Zone Two climate. But I guess worrying about that was Agita’s job.
Dracorn heard our footsteps and swiveled to face us. His massive frame looked even more disproportionate in the Human-sized chair.
“Hello! You’re Dracorn, correct?” Tatzel asked as she approached him. She had her hands clasped conspicuously in front of her, I guess to better show off her rings.
“You’re darn right I am, darlin’.” There was a definite Southern twang to Dracorn’s accent. He sounded like a Texan oilfield man. Except, of course, he wasn’t a man at all. While Tatzel looked mostly Human, just with some draconic undertones, Dracorn looked… well, reptilian. In place of skin he had a thick hide like an alligator’s, with a rough, leathery texture and pronounced scutes. His mouth was strange and lipless, and barely contained his long, pointed teeth. The rest of his face was serviceably Human, although the horny protuberances on his brow would’ve disqualified him from any beauty pageants.
Any Human beauty pageants, at least. Maybe in Dragon culture, horns like that were considered handsome. I didn’t want to make any assumptions.
His eyes darted between Aeshma and Tatzel. “Now, to what do I owe the honor o’ being approached by these two beautiful detectives? And their… friend?” he added, not unkindly, with a glance in my direction.
“You wouldn’t mind if we asked you a few questions, would you?” asked Tatzel.
A flash of disappointment flashed across Dracorn’s face. Nevertheless he agreed and gestured for us to join him on the neighboring seats. “Go on then, fire away. I got nothin’ to hide,” he said. “I’ll do whatever I can to help get your investigation bustlin’ along. Especially if it’ll get me outta this blasted house sooner.”
He took a long drag out of his pipe. Up close, I could see that it was carved to look like an intertwined mass of flying dragons. I could also see that Dracorn, like Tatzel, was wearing at least a dozen rings, each one more ostentatious than the last.
Tatzel smoothed out the wrinkles from her dress as she took a seat. “I have to say, you seemed rather heated when we arrived. You’ve calmed down a lot since then.”
“Hah! I suppose I have, at that. You don’t get far in the smithing industry if you can’t keep yer head when you need to.” Dracorn sat forward in his chair. “Look, o’ course I know what you’re implyin’. You think maybe I mighta done it. Don’t think I don’t know how this looks: me, a hot-headed but extremely successful businessman, jus’ happening to be present for my rival’s murder.”
“I oughta pretend to be sad about what happened to Dringel. Maybe that’d help convince you I had nothin’ to do with the matter.” He took another swig of amber liquid out of the decanter by his side. “But I won’t. Truth is, I’m still angry with the ol’ bastard. Him croakin’ in the middle of yet another useless business meeting, trappin’ me in his mansion… even dead, Dringel manages to waste my damn time!” A bit of smoke was leaking from Dracorn’s nostrils. He seemed to realize that he was getting too emotional, and leaned back in his chair with a sigh.
Tatzel cocked her head thoughtfully. “What do you mean, ‘yet another useless meeting’? We were informed that Dringel called you here in order to sell you his business,” she said.
Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.
Dracorn let out a low, humorless laugh. “Jus’ what I said. Dringel wasn’t ever gonna sell. Fer the past… how long has it been now? Fifteen years? Twenty? He’s been invitin’ me an’ Petunia out to this here estate, claimin’ that he’s ready to negotiate, fer real this time. And the fool I am, every single time, I get suckered into thinkin’ that this time, he’s serious.”
“Why don’t you think he was serious about selling?” Tatzel asked.
“Darlin’, if you heard some o’ the terms he demanded… let’s see, this time it was… oh yeah, he’d sell it to me, but he’d hafta get paid in Reborn currency. You think I got that much yen lyin’ around? It’d cost me more ‘n he was asking for the business, just to get my hands on the coinage! And the meetin’ before this one, it was restrictions on what materials I could forge with under the Dringel & Son label. As if I could keep in business without usin’ steel!”
He shook his head and snorted. “Gets me mad just thinkin’ about it… but now I’m wonderin’ if maybe that was the point. If maybe Dringel was always callin’ me out here just to rile me up, an’ to laugh at my expense. But I guess the joke was on him, in the end. Horlen saw to that, what with murderin’ him and all.”
“Hold up, why do you keep saying that Horlen did it?” asked Aeshma. Tatzel had opened her mouth at the same time, no doubt to ask some version of the same thing. I put a stern hand on Aeshma’ knee to remind her that it was Tatzel’s turn to lead the interrogation.
Tatzel shot Aeshma a withering glare before turning back to our subject. “Yes, Dracorn, I recall that you accused Horlen of the murder when we first arrived. You claimed you heard the two of them fighting. But… help me understand. As far as we know, Horlen didn’t want the business sold; he wanted to keep it for himself. Is that right?”
“Yep, I’d say so.”
“And you also claim that Dringel had no intention of actually selling you his business?”
Dracorn nodded slowly.
Tatzel smiled. “Then what would Horlen’s motive be? You’ll forgive me for saying so, Dracorn, but it doesn’t seem likely that he murdered his father for not selling to a competitor. In fact, it seems like the person who would be upset by that is… well, you.” She was staring intensely at Dracorn, fishing for a reaction.
She got one. Dracorn’s relaxed demeanor quickly shifted to anger. “How many times do I gotta tell you – I’m not the one who killed him!” His fangs bristled in his mouth as he hammered his meaty, crocodilian fist down onto the chair’s armrest.“You wanna know how I know that Horlen did done it? It’s because I was there to see the boy’s face when he was sittin’ in on our meetings. Every time Dringel’d come out with some new ridiculous term, Horlen’d go redder than a bottom on spank day. The boy was pissed as hell about how his daddy was treatin’ our negotiations.”
“Why, though?” Tatzel pressed him. “Horlen wanted Dringel to delay his retirement. I’d think he’d be happy to hear that Dringel didn’t intend to sell.”
“Damned if I know!” Dracorn exclaimed, throwing his hands up in the air. “Maybe he didn’t like havin’ his time wasted, any more than I did. Maybe he was jus’ sick of his daddy’s nonsense and wanted the business for hisself already. I’ll tell you what: sometimes during these meetings, I thought Horlen was gonna reach over the table and give his pops a good wallop right then and there. So it’s no mystery to me that he finally went ahead an’ killed him.”
As Dracorn fumed and tried to regain his composure, I snuck a glance at Tatzel. She was stony-faced and managing not to show even a sliver of emotion at Dracorn’s outburst. Not even a stray drop of sweat streaked her forehead – though I guess I wasn’t sure whether Dragons could sweat.
The four of us sat in silence, punctuated only by the sound of raindrops battering against the conservatory. Another bolt of lightning streaked across the sky. The peal of thunder that followed was so loud that it made the glass walls rumble and shake inside their metal housings. Jie let out a nervous squeak and tucked himself flat against the top of my head.
“There’s something I don’t understand,” Tatzel finally said. “If Dringel kept making these insane demands at your negotiations… then why did you keep attending them? Surely you’re busy running Dracornian Industries and have better things to do with your time. Did you think that this time would be different?”
Dracorn snorted, shooting a cloud of sizzling embers out of his mostly-human nose. “I got a gift, you see. Call it a nose for business, but I can always tell when someone wants to make a deal. In all my years, I’ve never been wrong about it before, and Dringel had, ah…” The Dragon shifted his hefty gaze to me. “You look green around the gills, you’re Reborn, ain’t ya? What’s the phrase, boy? It’s from your neck o’ the woods. Dringel had… money comin’ out of his eyes. Somethin’ like that.”
“Dollar signs in his eyes?” I asked.
“Yeah, that’s right, Dringel had his eyes fulla doll-er signs!” Dracorn said excitedly, jabbing a long, claw-like fingernail in my direction. I guess if memes could survive the transition to this world, it wasn’t surprising that a few idioms could, too, even if some of the words didn’t translate exactly. “He was itchin’ for a deal, clear as day. He wanted to sell… but something kept stoppin’ him. Maybe he was listenin’ too much to Horlen. Or maybe it was somethin’ else. I don’t know, and now I reckon I never will. But that’s how ol’ Dringel kept reeling me back in. I wagered one o’ these years I’d catch him just right, and he’d finally come around with a reasonable contract.”
“I made him a mighty fine offer this time, too,” Dracorn continued. “I just wanted to be finished with all these blasted negotiations. Finally secure my monopoly over this slice of the Zone Two Capital Region. O’ course, that’s all outta reach now that Horlen’s in charge.”
He shook his head and took another drag from his pipe. His voice had grown almost wistful. “Dringel was a right summabitch, and my biggest rival for decades. I never thought I’d say it, but I wish he were still with us today. His dyin’ cost me a whole lotta business.” With that, Dracorn emptied the rest of the amber alcohol potion down his gullet. This time he didn’t even bother removing his smoking pipe from his mouth before taking a drink.
Tatzel gave Aeshma and me a covert nod, to say that she was finished with her line of questioning. “Thanks very much for speaking with us, Dracorn. You’ve been extremely cooperative–”
Aeshma had been practically vibrating with the effort of letting Tatzel run the interrogation. Now it seemed like she couldn’t contain herself anymore. She jumped to her feet and leveled a finger at the seated Dracorn. “Look buddy, we’re all Monsters here. We get it! Dringel was a Human, the two of you didn’t get along, wasn't that enough of a reason for you to kill him? Get a few extra Levels to tithe in the process?”
I wasn’t a Monster, but I didn’t bother correcting her.
Dracorn’s expression shifted rapidly through shock, indignation, and anger, his mood swinging like a clap light after the opera, before finally settling on amusement. His laugh started small, then rattled up his belly and into his impressive chest. “Hah! No ma’am. A Monster I may be, but I ain’t a murderer. As for tithing – well, Petunia and I serve the Queen in our own fashion. Runnin’ Draconian Industries provides plenty of Levels to send back home. That’s jus’ another reason I wouldn’t have committed the murder; breaking Human laws would ruin the good thing we’ve got goin’ here.”
“Besides,” he added affably, “If I’da killed Dringel, Petunia woulda killed me. I reckon she was the only soul who enjoyed these pointless damnable meetings. Always beggin’ to come out here and enjoy more o’ the maid’s pies.”
Draconian Industries
-------------------------------
Business level 17
Leadership structure: Owner-run
Business locations: Zones 1-4
Perks:
Smithy: Quickens the smithing process for items made with business owned machines.
Mundane quality booster (minor): Increases the base stats of non magical items produced with business owned machines.
Orphan grinder: Orphans employed by this business are 50% more productive at the cost of additional injury chance
Queen facing business: Monsters working in business owned factories automatically tithe 50% of their gained experience to the Queen of all Monsters
