A Dragon's Greatest Treasure

Lavender sat in the kitchen of the keep, shirking from Balerifon’s engrossed stare. Balerifon had flipped in moments from disinterest to rapt attention. She had hoped to talk to him on Vallois but this was a bit much…!

“Now,” Balerifon growled. “You mentioned a ‘boiling in the blood’ when you saw the Lord-Prince. Expound.”

Lavender squirmed in the chair Balerifon had placed her in. “Something about him, I looked at him and it was Wrong. I was angry that he was wearing my father’s things but this went beyond that. All I could focus on was stopping myself from attacking him.”

It was the way Balerifon did not move that gave her the most discomfort.

“…Tell me if you feel it again when he arrives,” he finally says. Balerifon stood up and waved his wand once again to dispel his yearning spell for chairs. Lavender found herself falling to the ground, the chair she’d been seated on vanishing.

----

The hour was growing late. Hazel and Dora did not leave the dining room until they finished wordsmithing the message to send to the Lord-Prince.

“Lord-Prince. We accept your terms on one condition. You are not to harm a hair on our heads while you are here.”

Dora’s stone went dull after the message was sent. Apparently you could only send and receive a single message from the summons stone a day before it exhausted its mana.

Robert and Hazel wandered the keep once they were done and found something astounding in the keep’s largest room. Every wall, from floor to ceiling, was lined with rows upon rows of books. There were more of them in the middle of the room, forming aisles that one could walk down at their leisure. Each of those aisles in turn had ladders that could slide up and down them for easy access to the upper shelves.

Robert stared all around in disbelief. “What’m I lookin’ at?”

“A library,” Hazel said. She plucked one of the books from a shelf and flipped through its pages. “I’ve never seen one so big before.”

“I’ve never seen one at all.”

Hazel wasn’t surprised. Most peasants couldn’t read, so why would the lords give them books? It wasn’t just the size of the library that impressed Hazel, though the way the ceiling stretched up made her sure the shelves stretched higher than a single floor. Even from a cursory glance she could tell that someone had taken great effort to organize them books into a system. Even if it was one she could not interpret immediately.

“There must be generations of knowledge stored here,” she breathed. “Two centuries at least.”

“Ten centuries.”

Hazel and Robert nearly screamed from shock at the third voice. Balerifon had snuck into the room behind them. “Behold. The prized jewel of my hoard. Collected texts and scrolls from across our world, all at my disposal. Tell me, who is richer, a man who spends his time acquiring wealth or one who spends his time acquiring knowledge?”

Robert shook his head. “Uh… the guy who got wealth.”

Balerifon’s shoulders slumped. “…No.”

“Oh, uh, is this one of them trick questions?” Robert snapped his fingers. “They’re equally wealthy!”

“No!” Balerifon screeched. “The man who knows more is wealthier in spirit!”

Robert grew confused. “Is that a kind of gold coin? Does it spend?”

Hazel could barely contain her laughter. “It’s amazing. And this is all yours?”

“It is,” smiled Balerifon. “I’ve lost count of how much I’ve read some of these. Each of these texts is a brick, with which I built your sister’s education. I have every genre imaginable. Dramas, comedies, histories, romance…”

“Romance?” Hazel’s attention was piqued.

Balerifon led her and Robert over to one of the aisles in the middle. He gestured to a number of books with light colored covers with the biggest smile Hazel had ever seen on him. “Of every type and flavor. How do you like them? Wholesome? Spicy? Traditional? Permissive?” He blinked when he realized one of the books was missing. “That’s new.”

Hazel’s cheeks went red. She barely knew this dragon, she wasn’t about to share her preferences like that!

“Sorry. I don’t get to talk about books much.” Balerifon’s smile faded. “Your kind like to assume that all dragons think of are young maidens and gold and burning down the countryside. Or burning down the peasants. Or burning down the people in the thatched roof cottages.”

“I didn’t realize you could be so… passionate,” stuttered Hazel.

“There are a great many things your kind do not know of mine.” Balerifon’s head perked up and he looked over to his side. “Excuse me for a moment.”

-----

In the next aisle of the library, Dora lounged on one of the top steps of a rolling ladder.

She’d plucked a book out of the romance section and her eyes had been glued to its pages ever since. How in the nine hells did this dragon have a copy of the fifth volume of Just This Once?!

Not that anyone here would care. But Dora had been waiting with bated breath to find out how the main character Sophia would react to being told of her arranged marriage to Prince Louis, even though she’d shared a passionate night with Jules after an entire book of teasing!

Dora had thought the author had died before ever writing the final volume! Because she’d never found it in any of the bookstores she visited in between jobs.

“It was crazy what happened when they were trapped in that overturned carriage, right?” a voice called out from the floor.

“I know! The way they –” Dora cut herself off and looked down. At the foot of the ladder she sat on was the very owner of this library. “Balerifon! W-What are you…”

“There are actually two versions of the book,” said Balerifon. “The author’s patron was so displeased with the original version that they refused to pay for any additional copies other than what had been agreed upon. The patron would not give them a single gold coin unless they wrote a new version to their liking, and the author refused to call that new version the fifth volume. So instead that version of Just This Once is in stores under the title… well, I think it would spoil your read.”

Dora hissed. “D-Don’t you dare spoil this for me! I’ve waited years to get closure!”

“I would not dream of it,” he teased. “I did not take you for a romance afficionado.”

“I’m a cynic, not a misanthrope.” Her nose was so deep in the book she could smell the paper. “What’s the point of living if you can’t believe in love?”