As the dragon drew closer, I got a good look at his red, glowing eyes. What I saw there was a nasty blend of raw hunger and old sin. I looked over to my left to make sure Essad Pasha hadn’t suddenly sprouted wings. But no, there he sprawled beside me. What I saw in his eyes was a nasty blend of raw nerves and old sin. We could kill the dragon. Oh, yes. But the dragon could kill us, too. And the closer it got, the more forcefully it reminded me of that.

“Soon, your Highness,” Essad Pasha murmured.

Much too soon, I thought, but no help for it. If I didn’t try to shoot the great worm, I would be reckoned a coward till I got flamed and eaten-a brief but unpleasant interval. If I shot and missed, I would be reckoned a thumbfingered dunderhead till I got flamed and eaten-a brief interval that also left something to be desired. There was one other possibility-if I could bring it off.

When I popped up from behind the boulders, the wind from the dragon’s wings all but knocked me off my feet. He was a weatherworker of sorts himself. He was also wise in the ways of men. He wouldn’t have grown to that size without being hunted before.

His head swung toward me. His great jaws fell open. He was going to flame. He was going to, but I squeezed the trigger first.

That cursed crossbow came closer to knocking me off my feet than the dragonwind had. Any crossbow worth the name will kick. You don’t shoot a bolt without its pushing back at you. This miserable weapon shot an extra heavy bolt, and shot it especially hard. I felt as if a mule or a Shqipetar or some other stubborn creature with hard feet had booted me in the shoulder.

As I staggered back, Essad Pasha and Max sprang to their feet. They were going to do what they could to keep me breathing so they could call me a thumbfingered dunderhead at their leisure. When I didn’t hear their crossbows snap, I thought we were all doomed.

Then Essad Pasha cried, “Well shot, your Highness! Oh, well shot!” He threw himself into my arms and kissed me on both cheeks.

I recovered my balance and tried to recover from Essad Pasha. The dragon was thrashing its life away on the mountainside. It never even got a taste of the sheep. I hadn’t seen where my quarrel hit. I still couldn’t see where it had hit.

“Right down the throat,” Max said, sounding more than suitably impressed. Considering what he knew of right down the throat, I liked his accolade better than Essad Pasha’s kisses.

“In my time, I have seen many marvelous things,” Essad Pasha said, though his eyes denied it. He went on, “I don’t believe I have ever seen anything to match a dragon slain so. People will talk of this for the next hundred years. North and south, east and west, they will.”

I’d come to Shqiperi to give people things more interesting to talk about than any mere dragon. Telling Essad Pasha as much, though, struck me as…inexpedient. Instead, I waved toward the dragon as if I’d practiced that shot for years and brought it off twice a day in Vyzance. “Let’s wait till it stops wiggling, and then we’ll see what we’ve got.”

“Just as you say, your Highness, so shall it be.” Essad Pasha was eating out of my hand now. A less attractive picture would be hard to imagine. I surreptitiously wiped my palm against my trouser leg.

Waiting for a dragon to die takes almost as much patience as waiting for Dooger and Cark to smile while they pay back wages. I wondered whether the other flying worms would pay us a call while this one perished, but they kept their distance. Maybe the scent of its death agonies reached them and persuaded them they might do well to shop at another meat market.

Slowly, slowly, the fire in the dragon’s eyes went out. I hoped the same held true for the fire in its belly. Its blood smoked on the ground. When at last it lay still, I stepped out from behind the sheltering boulders. Essad Pasha and Max followed my lead.

As I walked past one of those smoking patches, I stooped and dipped my finger in the dragon’s blood. “What are you doing, your Highness?” Essad Pasha asked, curiously but respectfully.

Max’s cough was anything but respectful. Witte is a Schlepsigian grand duchy; he’d grown up on the same legends I had. Who doesn’t remember the story of What’s-his-name, the fellow they made the opera about, who tasted dragon’s blood and could suddenly understand the speech of birds and beasts?

The dragon’s blood was burning my finger. “Just-wondering,” I told Essad Pasha, who’d grown up on a different set of legends. I brushed my finger against my mouth. The dragon’s blood burned my lips and tongue, too. I didn’t hear any squeaky or hissy or chirpy voices.

I’ll never go to that opera again. A vole or a starling probably hasn’t got anything interesting to say anyhow.

“Take a trophy, your Highness,” Essad Pasha urged as we walked up to the enormous, twisted corpse. A trophy? I wondered. In Leon, they fight bulls. They don’t give the bulls swords, so the fights aren’t what you’d call even, but they do fight them. And if the human fighter (the killer, he’s called in Leonese, an uncommonly honest language) does well, they award him the bull’s ears and its tail, those being its most useless parts. (I don’t know what they give a bull that kills its man-his brains, probably.)

Dragons have no ears. This one did have a tail, of course, but it was about three times as long as Max. I drew my belt knife and worried off one of the metallic blue-green upper scales. It was not quite the size of the hand Essad Pasha was eating out of (I wished that hadn’t occurred to me). I held it out to him, saying, “Have a mount set in the back of this. I will wear it over my heart henceforward, in memory of the day.” Insults aren’t the only place where Hassocki overwrite their dialogue.

He bowed as low as his years and his belly would let him. “It shall be as you say, your Highness,” he told me.

I’d heard things like that more often since coming to Shqiperi than in my whole life before then. I knew exactly what that meant. It meant I should have decided to become a king a long time ago.

Instead of feeding the dragon, that sheep gave us supper. Fried mutton again, with fried parsnips to go with it. They didn’t fry the wool; I will say that for them. They didn’t fry the coffee, either. I wonder why not. Because they hadn’t thought of it, I suppose. If a copy of my tale ever gets back to Shqiperi, it may give them ideas.

Just what they need.

We didn’t drink so deep as we had the night before. Two debauches like that in a row, and I think Essad Pasha could have donated his liver to medical magecraft. As things were, he kept praising me. “I’ve never seen a shot like that,” he said. “Never, not in all my hunts. Never heard of one like that, either. North and south, east and west, I don’t think anybody’s ever heard of one like that.”

I was modest. “Nothing to it,” I said.

He choked on his liquid fire. Max almost did, but not quite. But then, Max has heard me before. Essad Pasha was still getting used to his new sovereign. “Tomorrow,” he said, “we go on to Peshkepiia for your coronation.”

“The harem is arranged, then?” I hoped I didn’t sound too eager.

“Your Highness, it is,” Essad Pasha assured me, “and I apologize again for the delay. In a way, it’s almost a pity. I’d like to see that shot again.”

So would I, I thought: one more thing Essad Pasha didn’t need to know.

I was getting out of my clothes and into my nightshirt when a scrawny cat wandered into the bedroom. The shooting box was full of mice. Several cats ambled through it. If they didn’t catch mice, they didn’t eat. They were all on the skinny side, as if to say, I’d rather be free than work hard. Cats are cats, all over the world.

This one gave me a green-eyed stare and said, “Call you a king? Ha! Not likely!”