Razorscale woke with a suddenness that said it was deliberate. The row of human mages staring at him confirmed that. The fact that he was somewhere unfamiliar, and could neither move nor cast led him to a very unpleasant conclusion.

“You will answer our questions or suffer for it,” declared the man in the center of the lineup.

Razorscale gazed back at him, unimpressed.

“Why were you at his house just now?” the man asked with a nod toward the most muscular of the group.

Not much of a surprise to see that the mage who’d stolen minotaur form was the sort to alter his own natural shape in egotistical ways too. There was no way someone busy with magic and politics had the time to build that kind of muscle mass the hard way.

When Razorscale held his silence, the human continued. “What spell were you trying to cast? Speak! You can move your head.”

Razorscale made a show of testing the limits of his movement as if he honestly hadn’t realized already. As he did, he took in the view: a magician’s workroom much like the one he’d helped ruin, just larger. Probably the place where these people went to scheme in private. A pile of valuable-looking spell components lay on the floor next to the stasis field that currently held Razorscale and his unconscious apprentice. Razorscale would have liked to get a better look at the child, but there was a limit to how far his human neck would turn.

“Did you sever the connection to his magic?” the man asked. He kept going, as if hoping to hit on a question that Razorscale would answer. “Are you working with the unicorns? Or with rivals of ours? How are you hiding your mage lines?”

Razorscale chuckled quietly. “You’re bad at this,” he said.

The human became predictably angry at that, calling upon his own magic to target Razorscale with what must have been a mild torture spell. It only made his muscles lock up with a crackle of electricity.

When the spell faded after a second or two, Razorscale burst out laughing. The expression on the man’s face just made him laugh more. “Oh, that was actually supposed to hurt, wasn’t it?” he asked. “You poor thing. No wonder your rivals are so sure they’re going to win.”

“What rivals?” the man demanded, a couple of the others echoing him.

“Oh, you are worried,” Razorscale said at his most condescending. “Was that your big plan, to win the contest with a little lightning magic?”

“Of course not!” the man snapped. “I suspect you know full well what our big play is! If you answer our questions, we might just let you live with that insider knowledge!”

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“I?” Razorscale asked. He let his gaze rove across them for a moment. Tall man in the middle with gray hair, muscly fellow to his left, taller woman on the end, little man a step or so behind the others, and a woman at the other end who glared like she wanted to skin him. They all had bright mage lines that their expensive clothing displayed, and each was probably older than they looked. Still children.

“Yes, you!” the man snapped.

“Let me guess,” Razorscale drawled. “You chose the pixie form.”

He looked offended. “No!” He jerked his head toward the timid fellow in the back. “He did. They. Sorry.” That last was said to the not-a-man-after-all, with an awkwardness that made Razorscale raise an eyebrow.

“I have another guess,” he said.

“No more guesses!”

Razorscale kept talking. “You lot just discovered your friend’s gender when they transformed for the first time.”

The man pointed an angry finger at Razorscale. “Stop talking unless it’s to answer my questions. Got it?”

“Right, your questions,” Razorscale said, enjoying himself. “What were those again?”

“What were you about to DO?” the man exploded.

“Ah yes, the boring questions. Let’s talk instead about how you expect to win when you’re a terrible friend.”

The angry magician zapped him again, and looked utterly infuriated when Razorscale just laughed.

“Fine!” he snapped. “We’ll see how your little friend here likes it!” He made an unnecessarily complicated gesture to wake up the apprentice.

“Brace yourself,” Razorscale said drily, “For torture.”

The man cast his lightning spell yet again, grimacing like he was putting everything he had into it.

“Oh,” the apprentice said a moment later. “Is that what that was? No wonder their rivals are so confident.”

Razorscale’s laughter was drowned out by the shouting of the lead human. The other four made efforts to calm him down. During the hubbub, Razorscale turned his head as far as it would go in order to cast an approving look on his apprentice.

“Did I miss anything important?”

“Not really. Except the little one’s gender only came to light in pixie form.”

“Really? They didn’t realize before then? What terrible friends.”

The intense female was suddenly close and glaring at them. “You two,” she said, “Are going to start telling us what we want to know, or else I am going to start tearing scales off you and using them to carve chunks out of you.”

“Now there’s a threat!” Razorscale said. “Well done! Where did you learn that?”

Her expression was clearly meant to be intimidating. “Experience.”

“Oh, and you’re doing so well. Keep up the practice, and in a century or two you might be really scary.”

The sour look on her face was one that Razorscale treasured.

She was persistent, though; he had to give her that. She pulled out an ensorcelled knife and flipped it through her fingers. “Are you working with the unicorns?”

“Why? Worried?”

“What is your interest in the coronation contest?”

“Nonexistent, if I’m honest. But I can only speak for myself.”

“Are the unicorns planning on interfering with the contest?”

“You’ll have to ask them.” Since it was taking her a moment to decide on the next question, Razorscale continued. “And you’ll get to.”

She looked at him sharply. “When?”

“Hm? No idea. But do say hi to them for me, and anyone else they might bring along.”

The woman said nothing for a moment, then cast a look over her shoulder to where the other mages were talking heatedly. She pointed the knife at Razorscale, turned on her heel, and walked off to join them.

Razorscale grinned at his apprentice, who whispered back, “Nice. She’s going to be worried about how to stop a force of dragons and unicorns working against them.”

His grin was steady. “Who knows? It might even happen. Now let’s see if these amateurs left us an easy way out of this stasis field.”