Robert Asprin: Dragons deal

"Hoooaggh!Huunngh!" Val's voice echoed inside the toilet bowl. She knelt on the floor in the small, dark bathroom, her eyes squeezed shut.

Mai held back Val's long blond hair and patted her soothingly on the back.

"This is good!" she kept saying. "This means your baby is healthy. This is good that you are sick."

"Is it?" Val asked, raising bloodshot eyes from inside the rim. The tiny Chinese woman looked as placid and chic as if she were sitting on a chaise longue in a cheongsam with a champagne glass in her hand, not sitting on an ancient tiled floor in tailored black slacks, black high-heeled slingbacks, and a teal-colored silk blouse, helping a barely-showing-as-yet pregnant woman deal with the horrors of morning sickness.

Mai rose gracefully to her feet and hauled Val up after her. Though Val was almost a foot taller, she knew that in a contest of strength with Mai, she would probably lose. Powerful things came in very small packages. She was learning not to judge things by appearance. A few recent, bitter lessons had hammered that old maxim into her. Luckily, Mai was her friend, but in this case it was no comfort. She gave Mai a sour look.

"You could at least look less happy that I'm heaving my guts up every morning."

"Why would I be unhappy?" Mai asked. "Do you know how hard it is for dragons to become pregnant? You are a rare and wonderful person in the eyes of the clans today."

"Not everyone," Val said darkly. In her mind, she saw the handsome, debonair, smirking face of Nathaniel, who by now must know he was going to be a father but had the sense not to get anywhere near Val. Or her brother. Or any of their friends, dragon or not. At least, she mused, the child she was carrying would be good-looking.

"Not everyone will be happy, perhaps, but they will be envious as well. A child of your lineage means power. He . . ."

"Is it a boy?" Val asked. She clapped her hands to her ears. "No! I don't want to know!"

Mai grabbed her left wrist and pulled it down. "Or she. I could look, but I don't care. It doesn't matter, Valerie. This will be a dragon baby. You should be proud."

"I'm not ready!"

"It doesn't matter. That is why it takes eleven months to bring one into the world. It gives you time to prepare."

"Eleven! It only takes nine months to have a baby!"

Mai shrugged. "We are not humans, however we look. Our gestation period is different."

"Ohhh," Val moaned. She rubbed her forehead. "I was just about reconciled with nine months, and now you tell me it's going to be longer?"

"I did tell you before. You just didn't want to hear it. Some women blossom in pregnancy."

"Not me. I'm already starting to walk funny," Val said, tottering out into the bedroom and sinking onto the edge of her bed. "The extra weight's throwing off my pace when I run."

Mai followed. She lit gracefully on Val's desk chair like a butterfly touching onto a flower. "You will cope. All females have coped since the beginning of gender. You should be thinking of more important matters."

"Such as?"

"For a start, in what surroundings you will bring up this marvel." Mai looked around the small room, her mouth pursed with disapproval. Val was suddenly keenly aware of the laundry piled on the dresser and the smudgy windowpanes. "It is a shame you live this way."

Val was hurt. "On my salary, this is what I can afford."

"There are resources. You can avail yourself of them."

"I don't like the idea of throwing me or Griffen in debt to anyone."

Mai tossed her head. "Why look at it that way? Plenty of people would like to do you favors. It is an honor to serve you. Nearly pure-blooded dragons are powerful. Those who are their friends benefit by association."

Val thought of the carnage of the Halloween party after the convention and wondered if anyone really thought that way. She shook her head.

Mai tilted hers. "Even that," she said, guessing what was on the younger woman's mind, "is not enough to change the minds of people who will care for you, and who follow Griffen."

Val didn't shirk at responsibility, but she found it hard to reconcile the life she had left behind at college for the absolute disconnect from reality that was New Orleans. Or, perhaps she should call it a reconnect instead. To learn that she and her brother, alone in the world for years, were not human at all, but hereditary dragons of nearly pure blood. She had never believed in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny, let alone mythical creatures. To discover that not only did she have to believe in dragons, but vampires, werewolves, fairies, ghosts, and a dozen other kinds of beings that not only existed, but had as many problems as she and her classmates--plus other matters that the unsuspecting human population would never associate with a magical existence. Eleven months of pregnancy was just the worst at the moment.

She and Griffen had more or less fled their homes several months before, and been urged to come to New Orleans by an old college buddy of Griffen's named Jerome. As it turned out, Jerome was also a dragon, though not as pure-blooded as they were. Like Mai, he wasn't as young as he looked, either. He had been sent to watch over Griffen by another dragon, an elder named Mose, who put them under his protection when they reached New Orleans. She liked Mose. He was the father figure they had not had since they were small children. Until recently, he had been there to advise them as well as urge them to solve their own problems when it was appropriate. It was strange that Mose had begun to defer more and more to the authority of her brother but only because Griffen outranked him in dragon circles. Griffen was virtually running Mose's gambling operation and collecting followers as if he were actually a king. For a long time, Val had felt left out of things, but she had since learned to make her own way, taking a job as a bartender in the Quarter and finding her own friends and social contacts.

That had been a mixed blessing. Some people she was glad to have found, like Gris-gris, her boyfriend, a quick, thin, dark-skinned black man who had run a minor gambling organization and had treated her, well, better than she deserved at least once. Some had been a disaster, like Nathaniel. He had glamour--not in the fashion sense, though he was handsome, dressed well, and walked like he owned the world--but the magical ability to cloud minds and bend them to his will. It had worked on her for a time; it never would again. He had left town before she and Mai could take revenge on him for seducing Val. If he was smart, he would never come back to New Orleans.

She couldn't blame anyone for her bad choices. She just had to learn to live with them. That meant, for the moment, putting up with morning sickness and possibly having to find a bigger place once the baby came. She and Griffen had been comfortable in the pair of cozy apartments in what had in the eighteenth and early-nineteenth century been slave quarters in the inner courtyard of one of the huge gated houses of the French Quarter, but they were never meant to be the siblings' permanent homes. Val knew it, but she hated to leave the protected confines. Still, it would be better to start looking for a new place while she could still get around easily. She promised herself to ask Jerome for leads. He had been the one who got them these apartments. He must know of something that was affordable and close by. The rents she had seen listed in the classified section of the Times-Picayune struck her as exorbitant, far beyond her means as a bartender; but the underground economy of the French Quarter usually meant that word of mouth was far better than using commercial services.