Robert Asprin - Dragons Luck

Lizzy gasped again and threw herself away from the balcony, against the brick wall of the building. Her heart was racing. Even in her own head, Mai had been something Lizzy didn’t want to face.

Lizzy looked out on the street and had to blink twice, hard. There she was, Valerie, and not just in Lizzy’s head. Real, solid, walking as if she owned the world. She walked into her apartment complex, the gates shutting securely behind her. Not enough to keep Lizzy out, but she felt as if they were taunting her.

Lizzy snarled.

“Why?” she said. “Why can’t I just beat her? Why do I care? Someone tell Lizzy!”

She whirled to the girl cowering in the corner of the balcony. Out of sight from the world. She had been there when Lizzy had fallen from the roof onto the convenient balcony. Lizzy had swatted her down, then turned her attention to the street.

She could smell the girl’s terror. She was so afraid of Lizzy that she hadn’t screamed once.

“Well? Nothing to say? Lizzy is better than her! Prettier. Stronger. Maybe not smarter… but what are smarts these days?”

She stalked toward the girl, her voice seemingly filling the world. Or was that just her own ears? No one had once looked up from the street at her. She couldn’t have been that loud. Or was she concealing again? Not that it mattered.

“Maybe you think you are smart, you are pretty. You are, for a human. You have nice hair,” Lizzy said.

The girl curled up a little tighter. Lizzy smiled cruelly, but she did like the straight black hair. Maybe she should go back to that color sometime?

“Do you have family? Answer Lizzy, or I will be very upset.”

The girl nodded mutely.

“Brothers?”

She nodded again.

“And when one of them brought someone home, a girl.

What did you feel? Fear? Anger? What?!”

Lizzy did her best to make her expression soft. It didn’t take much. There was a yearning inside. A need to know, to understand.

The girl looked her in her many-colored, fractured eyes. Lizzy noticed her eyes were kind of a soft watery brown. Like a deer’s.

“I… I was… happy for them,” the girl said in a voice so soft Lizzy could barely hear.

Lizzy’s blood went cold. Her smile faded, and her eyes narrowed. The girl burst into tears.

For some reason that made her smile.

“Oh, poor little girl. You must not be right in the head. No wonder Lizzy startles you so. Don’t worry. Lizzy will put you to bed. And when you wake up, remember this was all a dream.”

She moved forward quickly, struck the girl just enough to knock her out. Lizzy picked her up and carried her inside the apartment.

“I don’t know why I am talking to silly puppets like you,” Lizzy said to the girl in her arms. “I need someone who has a chance of understanding.”

She peeled the girl out of her clothes. Looked at her for a moment, and decided that yes, she was pretty. Then tucked her snugly into her bed and pulled a nearby stuffed animal from the dresser and put it next to her head.

Lizzy watched her sleeping for a moment. Reached out and stroked the lovely hair once. Thought about killing her and left to get a drink.

There had to be someone in this town she could talk to.

Ofall the fears and worries Griffen had regarding the conclave, there was one he had not figured on at all. He had no experience at public speaking.

The requirement surfaced suddenly when it was casually mentioned to him that, as moderator, he would be expected to give the welcoming speech at the opening of the conclave. He felt uneasy when this was first mentioned, and by the time the official beginning of the event grew closer, this had escalated into a full-blown panic.

Back in college, he had signed up for one speech class, mostly because it presented an opportunity for him to get closer to a certain young lady who had caught his eye. As it turned out, she was already living with someone else, but by the time he had learned this, he had actually attended several classes and absorbed some of the rudiments of speaking to an audience.

After trying to seek advice and pointers from some of his current colleagues and discovering that living as a gambler or hustler in New Orleans gave them even less experience with public speaking than he had, he found himself desperately trying to recall those few lessons he had treated so lightly in school.

“Try to start with a joke. It establishes a rapport with the audience…”

“Don’t fidget with your hands. If possible, work without note cards. Note cards encourage you to fidget…”

“Don’t touch the podium. If you’re nervous, you’ll latch on to it with a death grip and never let go…”

All these and more were echoing in his mind as he surveyed the crowd of conclave attendees assembling for the opening. The watchwords did little to ease his nervousness, so he did what he always did in times of stress. He studied the people.

It had been decided that the opening would be conducted as a social gathering or cocktail party rather than with auditorium seating. Theoretically, this would encourage the attendees to mingle rather than bunch up in groups. It wasn’t working.

Instead of sitting in small groups, they were standing in small groups, speaking only with those they arrived with and ignoring or glancing covertly at the other similar groups. An uncomfortable number were simply standing silently and watching Griffen.

The changelings were actually sitting on the floor in a group near the front, whispering quietly among themselves while smiling eagerly at Griffen. There was a notable open space between them and any of the other attendees.

Estella was standing against the wall farthest from the door with a half dozen people Griffen assumed were from her voodoo temple. When she met his eyes, she gave a faint smile and a small nod of recognition and encouragement.

Slim was standing with two other people off to the left of the podium. They seemed to be saying very little, spending most of their energies watching the other attendees. Griffen remembered that the street entertainer had mentioned when they first met that his circle of associates was neither very large nor particularly organized.

The ones that Griffen knew the least about and had next to no time to meet or speak with were the shape-shifters. They seemed to be divided into two groups, or was it three? One small group lurked in the corner of the room and seemed to watch everyone at once. Another small bunch of four or five stood in the exact center of the room, eyes intent on Griffen. The final collection was a loose semicircle surrounding the center bunch, keeping at least two feet separate from them. They talked with each other, occasionally glancing at the center group or leaning toward it as if to listen to anything going on. They struck Griffen as nervous for some reason.

He also realized, even broken up as they seemed to be, the shifters were easily the largest group. Lump them all together, and they seemed to take up a good quarter of the bodies present.

Griffen was suddenly aware that no one had entered the room for several minutes and that an increasing percentage of the crowd was watching him expectantly. Postponing the inevitable was no longer an option, so, steeling himself, he stepped up to the podium.

“Good evening,” he said, managing not to wince at the magnified sound of his voice from the public-address system. “I’d like to welcome you all to the conclave. My name is Griffen McCandles, and I’ve been asked to serve as moderator for the event. This is the first time I’ve done this, so if anyone objects or feels they can do it better, I will be happy to surrender the position to them.”