They were finally ready to get moving, only one more day, and this mess would be over.
His crew had been searching for weeks, so imagine his surprise when he found out that their quarry was still loitering at the scene of the crime!
It was genius really. They had searched all over, from the mountains in the north to the small towns and villages in the west, where they knew she had grown up.
"And yet-" his voice was hard, as he surveyed his crew, "you're telling me that none of you thought to check the very place she was last seen?"
There were a lot of bowed heads and scruffed feet, as well as a single "no sir" from one of them. probably Coffeeoil by the intonation.
He glared at them, "Well, that's by the by. Do we at least have a location now?"
There were some mutterings and glances between themselves, and then Marmalade, an idiot with a dog's name, stepped forward, "We spoke to one of her employers, boss, and they confirmed seeing the dragon. As of two days ago, it was still alive."
There were nods from the rest of the assembled mob, and Marmalade took a fortifying breath and carried on, "Employer said she normally does dock work on a Thursday so we should be able to pick her up there tomorrow. She leaves in the evening and then walks home around-" they took a moment to look at the rest of the crew, and there was a little bit of back and forth before he continued, "-around eight. She stops off in one of the pubs and then she's been living in an old warehouse on North Back Mill Street."
There were more nods and a couple of claps, and with a relieved sigh, Marmalade merged back into the mass. Breathesharp stared at them and sighed like a disappointed parent.
This crew had been by his side since he was a boy, or, to put it better, they had all been by each other's sides.
They had all grown up together, following his lead and trusting in his judgement for most of their lives. He had expected better of them, when he set them to find the missing dragon, but it wasn't their fault, not really.
Who would have expected her to just stay exactly where she was? It was perfect, genius, completely unexpected. They had even tracked her down to her origin. Her dead mother, gone to earth years back, her sire, unaware they even had a daughter.
The small gang she had run around with hadn't known where she'd gone, or much of anything really. She had kept to herself.
"Why was she hired in the first place?" he questioned, and there was a series of shrugs, before Bigdog stepped forward, a sheaf of papers in her hands, glancing at the others as she spoke. "As far as we can tell, she was just one in a chain of many. The dragon passed through at least three other hands before hers. She was known as a good worker and occasional thief, but mostly she did courier work, good at keeping her head down and moving unnoticed. Her prior rep was good."
She shuffled through the papers. "Seems she's been doing odd jobs since she picked up the dragon. A couple of courier runs, but mostly day labour. Which makes sense, she's in a new territory, she can start fresh."
"But," She flipped through the papers a little more, more for something to do with her hands than anything else, "she's kept the dragon with her on all of her jobs. It seems she's disguising it as some sort of big lizard. I could go into more detail, but…"
She shrugged and looked to him for approval, and he nodded as she melted back into the crowd.
With a sigh, he looked them over. "Alright then you sorry lot, since you can't be trusted on your own, here's the plan…"
Formality broke down as they crowded around him, studying the map they'd picked up, already marked with key locations. "We know where she'll be working, and what route she takes home. Our best bet is too…"
They discussed the plan for almost an hour, until everyone, even Marmalade, knew their positions and timings by heart. There would be no time to run rehearsals, but it should be enough.
They would swarm the dock around noon and pick up the girl along with the dragon, simple as that, on the surface at least.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
Reports indicated that it was attached to her, and talks with the hapless captain who had scared her off indicated that the animal had only panicked when the girl was threatened.
Picking up an extra body was no big deal anyway. It was always better to cut clean, and the girl should be grateful if she knew what was good for her.
-
The next morning they were all in positions. Marmalade would cover the back roads, and Payback and Skithurl were to walk patrols and make sure that nobody tried to interfere or call the guard. They didn't want trouble, their quarry wasn't supposed to even exist, after all.
Breadapple would be on the rooftops, ready to shout and alert the rest of them if something was going down that they weren't a part of. She was also armed with a very large crossbow, but hopefully, it wouldn't be needed at any point.
They planned to do this clean. No need to make it messier than it had to be.
Plus, if they hit the dragon… Breathesharp didn't even want to think about that. Best to lose their target and try again another day, than for that to happen.
Coffeeoil had the supplies they would need, once they caught the thing. A bag of various types of meat, a cage made from twisted copper, for if everything went wrong, and a whole bag of gold nuggets and flakes, still in their natural form.
From what they'd researched, dragons ate meat, but they also required a weekly feeding of pure gold, fresh from the earth.
Marmalade and Payback had argued with the rest of them about this, but in the end had agreed that it was better safe than sorry, and they could always sell it on again afterwards if the thing decided it wasn't hungry.
They had tried to do their research, but there wasn't much information out there. The postal service, as far as they could see, had never given out any information about how they had raised their dragon. Nothing, not even what they fed it on a day-to-day basis.
He would be the one to do the jump, with Bigdog by his side.
-
The girl wouldn't be going home until gone eight, so they had time to have an early breakfast and set themselves up in their positions. Marmalade had called in a positive sighting, as she walked towards the docks, no deviations there.
He was glad. They needed this job to work out.
He was in position, seated outside a cafe on the edge of the docks, nursing a bowl of tea prepared in the old style, which was so rare around here nowadays. Bigdog was lurking around a corner, ready for his signal.
He mused about the strangeness of this job as he sipped the tea. He wasn't even sure who was paying them, but he suspected it was the government.
Until this job, Breathesharp hadn't even believed that there were dragons. He thought they were a myth, made up by foreigners as just another excuse to call themselves more civilised.
And Gods did they ever make the most of those excuses. But no, they did exist, and soon there would be one less shot in their rifles. One less excuse.
If they fucked up here, he didn't want to think what it would mean. Both for him and his crew, and the country in general.
They needed their own dragon.
Rumours were that the foreigners were on the verge of civil war. That they'd soon be pulling their soldiers back to deal with the violence, leaving only a skeleton crew behind.
If they could get a dragon on their side before that happened, even if it was only tiny and half-trained, it would be a massive feather in their cap. They could build morale around that, it would help them take back what had been taken from them.
They needed this. His crew needed this. The country needed this.
They needed the win.
-
He hadn't intended to drink the tea, only to use it as a prop, but he found himself sipping it, closing his eyes to savour the taste.
As he finished the bowl, he glanced around, spotting his prey as she rounded the corner. Right on time, with her day bag over one shoulder and the dragon over the other.
If their reports were correct, then she would settle the dragon down somewhere alongside her bag and then work until noon, when most workers took their break. She would work for another hour and then take her break uninterrupted, coaxing the dragon to eat.
They would be able to jump her at that point with minimal confrontation.
He watched as she was called onto one of the ships. It was a small ship, compared to some, but it was built for navigating the midlands and travelling the foreign routes, rather than moving up and down the coast like their own ships were, which tended to be small and fast, but less manuverable.
He held the bowl in his hands, feeling the last of the warmth leech out of it, and watched at the ship. It looked ready to sail, within the next hour at most. They probably needed some last-minute cargo fetching, a forgotten bag or something similar. He had done this work when he was young, along with the rest of his crew, there was always one last thing to fetch.
He watched as they unfurled the sails and put all ropes in all the right places, frowning as one of the sailors started to unhook the gangplank.
It was the shout from Breadapple that finally made it sink in, and he surged to his feet, throwing the bowl down and running towards the ship.
Way too late.
Ahead of him, the ship pulled out, and his target went with it. All their planning, all their working, for nought.
How had she known? Had she known? Why did she choose today to leave, they had been so close!
He wanted to cry, but he held it together as his crew filtered out of their positions, until they were standing around him like a protective shield.
Bigdog reached out, putting a hand on his shoulder, and he sighed.
"What we gonna do, boss?" The voice was Marmalade's. He wasn't the smartest of the crew, but he knew as much as any of them that this had been their last chance.
Breathesharp hummed, staring at the departing ship, not seeing it, no thoughts going through his mind, until he finally spoke, the words emerging from somewhere else in his brain.
"I guess we go after her."