One

“Baaaaa.”

Constantine of Norka, once the famed warrior leader of the sept of the silver dragons, jerked upright from where he had been dozing in the weak morning sun. The air in the small sitting room was still and quiet, the gas fireplace gently blowing warmth into the room, leaving him with a sense of being frozen in an endless moment of time. He cocked his head and held his breath, wondering if his mind had been playing tricks on him.

“Baaaaaghhh.” The distant noise started out in a thin, mechanical approximation of a sheep’s bleat, but ended in what sounded like the cough of an asthmatic toad. One with a heavy smoking habit.

“Constantine!” The bellow that followed the horrible noise all but shook the stone walls of Dauva, permeating even the farthest point of the castle. The gas jet sputtered as if in sympathy with the noise.

With a martyred sigh, Constantine got to his feet, taking a corporeal form despite the desire to fade into the spirit world where no one could see him.

“Is it too much to ask you to keep your deviant sexual aids from my son?”

Constantine pursed his lips, crossed his arms, and leaned against the wall as the dark-haired, dark-eyed man strode toward him, clutching in one hand a fast-deflating blow-up sheep clad in fishnet stockings.

“What makes you think that belongs to me?” Constantine asked, taking a conversational tone. He’d found through centuries of experience—not including the time while he had been inconveniently dead—that doing so had the tendency to enrage Baltic even more. And there was nothing Constantine liked better than to push Baltic’s emotional buttons. It was payback, he felt, for all that he had suffered at the hands of his once friend, later mortal enemy, and, finally, reluctant housemate. “That guard of yours—what is his name? Pablo? Pachelbel? You know who I mean, the one who enjoys both sexes—he has many such things. You do me wrong to accuse me when it likely belongs to him.”

“His name is Pavel, as you well know,” Baltic said, breathing heavily through his nose.

Constantine gave himself two points for the loud nose-breathing. He wondered if he could get Baltic to grind his teeth—that was a worth a full five points, and getting that would push his daily Aggravating Baltic score over twenty. It would be a new high, and one that he had long sought. “Pavel? Are you sure?” Constantine rubbed his jaw as if he was considering the fact. “Doesn’t sound very likely to me. You’ve probably gotten it wrong. Such things happen when you get old, you know.”

Baltic’s jaw tightened, but Constantine didn’t see any sign of teeth grinding. “I’m younger than you, a fact you like to forget.”

“Well, strictly speaking, you were younger than me. But my beloved Ysolde had my spirit form summoned just a short two years ago. That makes you older.”

Baltic took a deep breath. “I don’t know why I bother conversing with you. You never have anything of intelligence to say and simply use up air.”

“You talk to me for the same reason you begged me to join your sept—you know I am the superior wyvern.”

“You are deceased,” Baltic said, enunciating with deliberation. “You are a former dragon. You no longer exist. You are, in effect, a nonentity, and the only reason I went against my better judgment to include you in the sept of the light dragons is because Ysolde—my Ysolde—pleaded with me to keep you from being without a sept.”

Constantine sniffed. He disliked the way the conversation was going and said the one thing he was sure would derail it. “Perhaps Ysolde got that sheep with the charming garters and stockings to distract your lusty attentions. Perhaps she is tired of you, but is too kind to tell you. Perhaps she desires another. Say, for instance, me…”

“Out!” Baltic bellowed, pointing dramatically at the door. The sheep gave a feeble “Baaagh” before the last of the air slid out of it with a rude noise.

“Out?” Constantine brushed his fingernails along one arm, and lazily examined the results.

“Out of my castle! Out of my sept, and my hair, and most of all, out of my life!” Baltic yelled, glaring at the sheep when it uttered one last rude noise before falling limp in his hand. He flung it to Constantine’s feet.

“My beloved Ysolde wouldn’t allow you to kick me out,” Constantine said, buffing his fingernails again. Should he give himself a point for the wisp of smoke that emerged from one of Baltic’s nostrils? No, he decided after a moment’s thought. All dragons tended to such things when under the grip of strong emotions. Even he had the tendency to get smoky about the nostrils when he was riled.

“She is not your beloved!” Baltic snarled. “She is my mate! She always has been, and she always will be. Stop referring to her in that obscene fashion.”

“It’s not obscene. I love her.”

“You do not. You simply desire her because you know she prefers me to you.” A little smile curled the edges of Baltic’s lips. “She is my mate, not yours.”

Constantine sadly deducted three points for that blow. Dammit, how was he to reach his goal of twenty irritation points if Baltic made zingers like that? “I gave my life so that she might live. If that does not show eternal dedication and love, then I do not know what would. Besides, my beloved Ysolde enjoys having me about the castle. She told me so just the other day.”

“Then she is in the grip of brain fever, and I will have her doctored as soon as possible.” Baltic pointed to the deflated plastic sheep lying in a heap on the floor. “See that you keep your sex toys from my son.”

“I can’t help it if Alduin favors my beloved Ysolde with his shared fascination of all things… unique…,” Constantine said with a little smile of his own. He figured mentioning Baltic’s eighteen-month-old child would push his former foe over the edge, but, alas, Baltic had a better grasp on his temper than Constantine liked.

“Ysolde has many tastes, all of them unique, but she does not try to corrupt our son with them. See that you do the same.” Baltic strode off before Constantine could goad him further.

“Fourteen points,” Constantine said with morose pleasure, idly looking through the window to the wilderness beyond. Dauva, the home of Baltic and Ysolde, and all the rest of the light dragons (whose numbers totaled six, including Constantine), was situated outside of a remote town in Russia. Constantine had been born and raised in a region that was now Poland, but he much preferred the south of France and its balmier climate.