“Why me?”

  “Do I need a reason? Dragons have been taking familiars for hundreds of years.”

  “Usually they don’t ask.”

  “Well, I do.”

  “Always?”

  “You are the first.”

  “Don’t they usually take elves?”

  Lord Bright gave him a long look, and then sighed.

  “Usually. Elves live long enough for their skills to have value.”

  “But I’m not an elf.”

  “No, this is true,” the dragon replied.

  “I won’t live as long.”

  “It is true that you haven’t lived as long, but your skills are unique, and a familiar lives as long as his master.”

  “My skills are unique enough to interest a dragon?”

  “Yes.”

  “But I’m not old enough.”

  “And you weren’t about to get any older,” was the dragon’s acerbic reminder.

  Seppelitus opened his mouth to argue, couldn’t refute the logic. He pursed his lips.

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  “Are you saying you don’t want to be my familiar?” The dragon’s voice was deceptively mild.

  “I… it’s not that. I just…”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s not a path I had contemplated.”

  The dragon smiled, and Seppelitus had trouble reconciling that all too human face with the shadow on the wall.

  “And now?”

  Seppelitus forced himself to look, truly look at the man before him. For sure, he looked human, looked like the kind of warrior he’d dreamed of serving before the assassin’s guild had insisted he accept their offer of employment.

  The copper whiskers were touched with silver, and trimmed into a neat beard and moustache, the face was weather-beaten, with crows’ feet in the right places around the eyes. The eyes were a dark brown and fringed with copper lashes. And in spite of this, he still looked more like a man of honor than a dragon—a warrior, or a king, or a ruler used to achieving what he wanted for his people and then holding it. Seppelitus had to remind himself that the creature before him was a dragon, possibly with all the traits that legend claimed.

  “How do you do that?” he asked, taking in the dragon’s human form, taking in the monstrous shadow with its tail patiently twitching behind it. The dragon ignored the question.

  “You protected me once,” it said. “Why the confusion, now? Am I not still the same person?”

  “That was… We were in the same predicament. You were…”

  “I still have men to lead,” the dragon said, “and they do not know what I am.”

  It glanced around the room, looked toward the ceiling.

  “Although I fear that’s about to change.”

  “Will they stay?” Seppelitus grasped the dragon’s dilemma. For some reason, the creature had decided to fight for the north, but the men of the north might not follow a dragon, might rebel against the magic it represented. The dragon sighed.

  “They might stay,” it said, “if I had a human fighting by my side.”

  “A seventh son?” Seppelitus could not help but tease him. “A wizard’s, wizard’s, wizard’s son?”

  “A human,” the dragon said, anger fringing its tones with a snarl.

  Seppelitus closed his mouth on the first reply that came to his lips. To remind the dragon that some of the north men would consider him somewhat less than human was useless. The creature knew that already.

  “Will you guard my life?” the dragon asked, and Seppelitus found there really was only one way he wanted to answer.

  “To the end of my days, my lord.”