Right.
So picture this.
Midday. Heat shimmering over the Longland plain like the gods themselves are sweating. Wheat fields bending gold and nervous. Cicadas screaming like unpaid prophets.
And ahead of us—
A tax collector.
On a mule.
Two bulging leather sacks tied to either side of the saddle. Silver. You can hear it. Clinking. Singing. The purest music known to dragonkind.
He is hunched forward, bald spot blazing in the sun, kicking the mule like it personally insulted his lineage.
Behind him?
A full-grown Dragon flying low enough to singe barley.
You have never truly understood career miscalculation until you've seen a bureaucrat try to outrun a dragon.
"I told you we should have ambushed him near the bridge!" I'm shouting over the wind, clinging to the base of his neck. My hair is whipping in my mouth. "This is messy! This is public!"
The Dragon doesn't answer. He's focused. Wings beating slow and deliberate. Closing.
The mule is already reconsidering every life choice that led to this field.
And then the tax collector does something so astonishingly stupid I almost respect it.
He pulls out a sling.
A sling.
He loads a stone while bouncing on a terrified mule and actually turns to aim at us.
"WHAT is he doing?" I shriek.
The stone whips through the air and bounces harmlessly off the Dragon's shoulder.
The Dragon does not dignify that with a reaction.
Another stone. This one hits me in the thigh.
"YOU MISERABLE ABACUS!" I scream, standing up on the Dragon's back like a deranged goddess of poor impulse control. "I WILL INVENT NEW TAXES FOR YOUR BONES!"
I throw my arms wide and unleash what I believe is a terrifying war cry.
It comes out somewhere between a tavern cheer and a seagull being strangled.
"YAAAAAAAAA—!"
The mule screams. The tax collector yelps. Silver sacks sway wildly.
The Dragon dips lower. Heat rolls off him in waves. The wheat blackens in a streak beneath us. The smell of scorched grain rises thick and sweet.
We're ten heartbeats from taking him.
Five.
Three—
And then—
The Dragon jerks.
Not from a sling stone.
Not from a hidden spear.
He halts mid-flight so abruptly I nearly go sailing over his head and into agricultural martyrdom.
"What are you doing?!" I clutch scales, scrambling. "Finish him! Finish the accountant!"
He hovers.
Wings beating once. Twice. Then still.
He inhales.
Not smoke. Not silver.
Air.
He tilts his head slightly, nostrils flaring.
The tax collector keeps riding. Mule braying. Silver clanking. Getting smaller in the distance.
"Dragon," I hiss. "He is escaping. With our retirement plan."
He doesn't move.
His voice drops. Low. Tight.
"Someone is tampering with the board."
I blink.
"What board?"
He doesn't answer right away.
His pupils narrow to slits.
Then widen again.
"Our hoard."
The word lands like a dropped blade.
"What about it?" I snap. "We buried it. We sealed it. We warded it. You counted it. Twice."
He descends without another word.
We hit the ground hard enough to rattle my teeth. Dust kicks up around us. The wheat field crackles, half-charred from our pass.
The tax collector disappears over the rise.
Gone.
And for once neither of us chases him.
The Dragon's head turns north.
Toward the low hills.
Toward the ruin.
Our ruin.
The old collapsed watchtower from the forgotten Wall. Broken stone. Dead olive trees. Perfect little cavity under the foundation where two respectable criminals keep their future.
"You're guessing," I say, but my voice is thinner now. "You're just feeling moody."
He growls.
It's not loud.
It's worse than loud.
"I know the weight of it," he says. "I know the balance of it. It sits in me."
He presses a claw into the soil as if listening through it.
"I can feel absence."
That's new.
We don't waste another breath.
He shifts—briefly, painfully—into his smaller, traveling form. It makes him shudder. I grab my dagger. We run.
Across the field. Through the scrub. Up the stony path toward the watchtower ruin. My sandals slap rock. My heart is in my throat.
Nothing looks disturbed at first.
The stones are where we left them. The scrub brush hides the entrance as neatly as before. No obvious tracks.
"That's good," I say too quickly.
He doesn't reply.
He moves the stone slab aside.
We slip into the hollow beneath.
Cool air. Earth. The smell of linen, old coin, dried herbs, oil.
My eyes adjust.
The sacks are there.
All of them.
Stacked exactly as before.
I exhale. "See? You panicked. Again. For nothing."
He steps forward.
Slow.
He nudges the first sack with his claw.
It tips too easily.
He slices it open.
Silver spills.
But—
It doesn't sound right.
It's a duller clink. Thicker. Wrong.
He pushes the coins aside.
Underneath—
River stones.
Painted.
Silver paint. Crude but convincing in low light.
My stomach drops.
"No," I whisper.
He tears open the second sack.
Same.
Top layer silver.
Below?
Stone.
Weight adjusted. Volume preserved. Just enough real coin at the surface to fool a glance.
I stagger back and trip over a bundle of rope.
"They were here," I breathe. "They were in here."
Not a smash-and-grab.
Not chaos.
Precision.
They knew how much to leave so the sacks felt right.
They knew how to stack them.
They knew how deep to fake.
The Dragon stands utterly still.
His entire body has gone rigid.
"Who?" I whisper.
He doesn't answer.
His gaze moves to the wall.
To the small emergency cache amphora we buried behind loose stone.
He digs.
It's still there.
He opens it.
Empty.
Not smashed.
Not broken.
Opened.
Clean.
He exhales slowly.
That sound—
That is worse than rage.
Someone didn't just steal from us.
Someone studied us.
Mapped us.
Entered the board.
Played a move.
I swallow hard.
"Okay," I say, forcing my voice steady. "So. We were robbed. That happens. We adapt. We—"
He turns his head toward me.
His scales look duller already.
"I told you," he says quietly. "The pattern shifted."
The ruin feels smaller.
Like it's listening.
Somewhere out there, someone knows where we sleep.
Knows where we bury our future.
And for the first time in a long time—
We are not the only predators circling a region that looked ripe.