"This is all your fault, you know."

It would be fair to say this was not the response any of those present—particularly Sir Crispin—expected from Malfeazy after the revelation of his contractual fraud.

"My fault?" queried the knight.

"Of course. If you'd only done your job properly and killed that bloody dragon, he wouldn't have gone blabbing about his stupid cousin, would he? And I wouldn't be down a bunch of zero-pay, long-range, kick-arse minions. If you had to not kill a dragon, why couldn't it have been one of the ones that didn't talk? As in, all the bloody rest of them?"

"I can assure you all dragons talk," said Rarg!. "True, not in a way any human could understand, but that's rather more a reflection on—"

"Oh, shut it, sulphur-breath," snapped Malfeazy. "The people are talking."

Sir Crispin placed his helm back on. "It seems to me," he said, raising his sword, "someone in your position would be wise to adopt a more respectful tone."

"And it seems to me," replied the Count, "entirely remarkable that someone of your intellectual capacity is able to breathe and walk at the same time."

The knight blinked. "I...but...there is nothing wrong with my intellectual capacity. I...I...achieved perfectly good grades in my schooling."

"Maybe so, Sir Cretin, but you scored a big fat F in the school of life, didn't you? Straight As, though, in gullibility and being a gormless wonder."

"I'm sorry," blurted Alyx, standing largely forgotten behind Sir Crispin, sword hanging limply from one hand, "but can somebody please explain what the hell's going on? Who even is this guy?"

"Before you stands Count Velezon Malfeazy," replied Sir Crispin. "The man who set me on my quest to rid the world of dragons. My benefactor. My mentor. My inspiration, when I was at my lowest ebb. The man who gave me back my purpose—or at least, so I thought."

"Seems like a complete tosser to me," muttered Kayt.

"Alas," agreed the knight. "I can but concur. It would seem he is not what I believed him to be."

For an unarmed man standing before a defrauded gryphon, a pissed-off dragon and a betrayed knight, the Count appeared remarkably relaxed. He gave Sir Crispin a grin.

"Oh, I don't know. If it's inspiration you're after, I think you could do a whole lot worse. After all, if you weren't such a credulous loser, you could very well be me."

"I...what do you mean?"

"I mean, we started off the same way, Crispy. Lesser sons of noble birth, the both of us. The also-rans, the spare spares, the never-gonna-bes. Fated to be footnotes in the family tree. Only, unlike you, I chose to do something about it."

"I did do something," protested Sir Crispin. "I chose the path of chivalry, of noble endeavour, of service to the public good."

"Oh, please," scoffed Malfeazy. "If I hadn't fed you all that crap about dragons razing villages and pillaging farms and scaring small children and so on, you'd still be moping around Norlandia helping little old ladies find their lost pets and looking for someone or something to be noble at. You chose to be a nothing. I, on the other hand, chose to take what life declined to give me. First, a title, then magic, and—now that I've cleaned out a boatload of deceased dragons' hoards—untold riches as well. Look upon what could have been, and weep."

Sir Crispin had become very still. "You lied about the depredations of the dragons? Those tales were fabricated?"

"Of course they were, you idiot. Oh, don't get me wrong, dragons are no angels; I'm sure they've flame-grilled their fair share of people. But, given the wretched beasts mostly keep to themselves, it's mainly just those stupid enough to go after them. You know, people like you."

"Speaking of stupidity," said Alyx, "it might just be me, but it seems pretty dumb to be confessing all this, right in front of the ones you've wronged. Seems a pretty good way to get flame-grilled yourself. Or seriously pecked or clawed or stabbed or some combination of the above."

Malfeazy's smile never wavered. "Yes, you would think so, wouldn't you? Fortunately, unlike the rather obtuse Sir Crispin here, dumb is not a characteristic with which I am cursed."

"Well," said the knight, "perhaps I am not as intelligent as you. I am, however, quite bright enough to lock you in the nearest dungeon, while those of better moral fibre determine your fate. You are coming with me."

"No," said Malfeazy, "I'm not. You see, I've been saving a rather special spell, for just such an occasion as this. A spell of great rarity and cost, the very last of its kind. A spell fashioned deep in the wilds of the Sky Reaches by the Jötnar, the long-extinct frost giants of ages past, a spell whose very synthesis has been lost to the mists of time. A spell I spent an inordinate amount of time searching for—and then took quite an extraordinary amount of trouble to steal. A spell of enormous power, contained"—from around his neck the Count raised a luminous ice-blue pendant, suspended on a gold chain—"within this tiny object."

"Anybody got a spell to make him shut up?" yelled a wag from the crowd.

"Very pretty," said Kayt, and meant it—she knew exactly what outfit that little gem would match perfectly. For the moment, however, she had more pressing concerns.

"Sir Crispin," she called, "don't you think it might be a good idea to relieve your former friend of his jewellery?" While it felt a little strange to be making requests of the knight who had been their adversary not so very long ago, it was quite clear who was currently the greater evil. "You know, before he tries to pull off whatever magic trick it is he's got planned?" 

"You are entirely of my way of thinking, good lady." Pleased to have a clear course of action to follow, in this world of shifting sands and sudden untruths, Sir Crispin advanced on Malfeazy, sword raised—until, without warning, the weapon was wrenched from his grip as if by some invisible hand and sent tumbling and spinning across the stable-yard. He stood in stunned disbelief.

"The thing is, you see," said the Count, "I have other spells, too." Without so much as a glance in their direction, he pointed at the heckler from a few moments ago—who instantly developed a face full of pimples, male-pattern baldness, extreme halitosis, vicious body odour and a rare and exciting collection of venereal diseases to find out about at his leisure. The poor man suddenly found himself in an ever-widening circle of solitude.

Malfeazy threw back his head and laughed. "Oh, you poor simpletons. Did you really think I would be so foolish as to place myself at your mercy, without suitable protection? That I would come all this way, without the means by which to get precisely what I want? Not to mention, have a little fun along the way? Now, enough of this chitchat—"

"Huzz—!" called a not particularly quick-on-the-uptake spectator, before one of their friends clapped a helpful hand over mouth.

Malfeazy's eyes narrowed, but he chose to let it pass. For the moment.

"So now," he continued, once again clasping the pendant, "it's time to bring this show to an end."