Five frogs leaped at Floridiana. One went for her face, two for her seal, and the rest for her seal paste. With a hoarse cry, the mage hopped back, stumbling over a clump of eelgrass.

Nagi whirled to yell at Captain Carpio, “What are you doing? Call them off!”

“She needs a lesson!” he shouted back. “A good beating!”

“I specifically said that I wanted to negotiate first! I told you I didn’t want to escalate the situation!”

If she’d wanted peaceable conversation, she should have assigned Captain Carpa to the welcome committee. Although, uncharacteristically for the political creature, I hadn’t seen her in the audience chamber all day.

Where’s Captain Carpa? I asked the dragon.

He’d sunk down in his throne, tucking his chin and his pearl into his mane as if that might shield him. “Away on patrol.”

Was she going to be furious when she returned!

One of the frogs arced past Floridiana, shooting out his tongue. He was aiming for her seal but got her wrist instead, his tongue wrapping around and around it like a silk cord. She flapped her hand to fling him off, but he swung back and forth and started to haul himself up by his own tongue.

The frog attacking Floridiana’s head fell short and plopped at her feet, and she pulled back her boot to kick him. With a nimble jump, he landed on her foot. She stamped it, trying to jolt him off, but he wrapped his legs around the top of her boot and clung on. She got a different frog square on her back.

There was a crunch. The frog shrieked.

In the audience chamber, the dragon and I both cringed as if our own spines had just cracked.

“Disengage!” Nagi ordered Captain Carpio, baring her fangs. “Disengage at once!”

“They’ll all die if I pull them back now!”

I waited for the stomped-on frog to get up, but she lay flat on her belly with her four limbs twitching.

How – how did the mage do that? I gasped. All she did was step on her!

No spirit had ever died from getting stepped on by a human!

“Her boots are spelled,” said the dragon grimly without taking his eyes off the scene.

Now that I looked more closely, there was a smudged, faded stamp on the heel of each boot. A strength-booster spell, I guessed, a wise precaution for a lone traveler.

The injured frog still wasn’t getting up. Screaming, one of the others scrambled over and nudged her. She didn’t respond.

She isn’t dead, is she? I asked, still in shock.

I’d seen powerful mages before. Of course I had. But they were Imperial Mages, the elite of the elite, graduates of the Imperial Academy who’d survived decades of training and testing and purging before they won their appointments. This – this was just some poor, tattered, two-bit traveling mage who’d probably taught herself out of a handbook she’d dug up in a secondhand bookshop.

My voice went shrill. Did she really kill the guard? By stepping on her?

“No,” answered the dragon flatly. “I’d have felt that.”

Oh, of course. The bond between liege and vassal would have transmitted her injury and death to him at once.

The frog that had gone to her aid looped his tongue and one foreleg around her and tugged her through the gateway, where the shrimp rushed to help.

Floridiana let them go, either because she was outnumbered or because, for all her posturing, she hadn’t really wanted a fight either. With one frog still dangling from her wrist, she dragged her seal through the seal paste. The frog balanced on her other wrist lashed out with her tongue, trying to snatch the seal, but the mage thrust it at her instead. When it clipped her side, the bronze hissed like a branding iron. Wisps of smoke rose from the seal paste. The frog let out an agonized shriek and tumbled off, hopping and crawling lopsidedly towards the gate.

“Water!” Captain Carpio shouted. “Get her in the water!”

The shrimp scurried into the gateway, stuck their front legs into open air, and yanked her through.

“Oh!” gasped the dragon, as if he’d just remembered something. Knocking aside the strands of his mane, he seized his pearl in one clawed hand. The tunnel of air that he’d opened across the river collapsed. Water roared down on the riverbed.

Floridiana’s head jerked up, but one glance told her that there was no way she could reach the riverbank in time, not unless she cast a very fast, very powerful spell on herself, which I doubted she was strong enough to do. Instead, she used her last few seconds to slam her seal into the seal paste and square on the center of her forehead. Then the water crashed onto her and swept her off her feet, and she was flailing and tumbling and fighting to right herself. But no stream of bubbles escaped her nose or mouth – she was staying calm and holding her breath.

Any competent mage could do as much – more, really – but I was still marginally impressed.

As soon as the water returned, the shrimp swarmed her, coating her in a crawling blanket and biting her all over. The first swirls of blood started to rise around her. Lips pinched shut, she swiped at the shrimp with her seal. The burn spell didn’t work as well underwater, but several of them did drop off her.

Nagi came speeding into the audience chamber, swimming as fast as she could. “Your Majesty! That idiot started a fight! He refused multiple direct orders to disengage. What do we do now?”

The dragon wavered, torn.

As for me, I was thinking furiously. If I wanted him to send me to the Dragon King of the Eastern Sea, what was most likely to force him to beg his liege for help? Help that would require gifts and offerings (a.k.a. bribes) to secure?

Probably getting his guard force decimated.

At the thought, I felt a twinge of…something, but I dismissed it. I’d already helped him out enough at the conference. I’d been selfless and altruistic and all of that for long enough. It was time to prioritize my own interests. Aggressively.

Listen to the captain, I urged the dragon. He knows what he’s doing in a fight. He knows when it would be disastrous to disengage.

Nagi’s eyes nearly bulged out of her head. “No one asked for your opinion, fish,” she snapped. “Don’t meddle in affairs you don’t understand.”

But Captain Carpio is the military man. Er, fish. He knows what he’s doing better than civilians like us.

Nagi obviously did not appreciate being lumped into the same category as me, but before she could retort, the dragon made his decision. “We can’t afford to lose any more guards. Leave the fighting to Captain Carpio. Nagi, if the mage gets all the way here, how do we negotiate with her?”

I jumped in. Negotiate? I asked, feigning shock. What is there to negotiate? We already know what she wants – and it’s impossible!

At least, it was impossible if the dragon wanted to keep his head on his shoulders. During Cassius’ great-grandfather’s reign, a dragon king had begged the emperor to intercede with Heaven. For whatever reason – which varied depending on the version of the story from spite to simple negligence – the dragon had let it rain for fifteen minutes longer and half an inch more than Heaven ordered, and been sentenced to decapitation for the crime. The emperor had seen no advantage to supporting a spirit that disobeyed the proper authorities – what if it, gasp, gave his own subjects ideas about defying Imperial decrees? He’d declined to intervene. The dragon had been duly hauled up to Heaven and beheaded outside the Hall of Purple Mists.

The Dragon Commander has already approved the rain allotments for this year, I counseled. At this point, all we can do is endure patiently until next year.

Nagi took my bait. “Your Majesty, don’t listen to her. That is not all we can do,” she said urgently. “You can still beg the Dragon King of the Eastern Sea to petition for relief on our behalf. That mage won’t require much rain to satisfy her. She just wants to get paid! All she needs are some grey clouds and enough water falling from the sky for her to claim that she broke the drought. A shower would do. A sprinkle would do!”

“But….” The dragon cast a stricken glance at me, and I knew he was remembering the Dragon King of the Eastern Sea’s penchant for vivisection.

“Your Majesty.” Nagi’s tone turned severe, like a governess’. “A monarch must set the needs of his people above his own pleasure. Sacrifices must be made. They are the mark of a good ruler.”

Well, that depended on the nature of the sacrifices, really. Cassius had sacrificed plenty of allies. It hadn’t made him a better ruler. But I met the dragon’s eyes, pretended to gulp, nodded bravely, and seconded Nagi, Yes, yes, you should do it, Your Majesty. For the sake of all those poor people! You must beg the Dragon King of the Eastern Sea to save them from starving this winter!

He looked from me to Nagi and back to me. He opened his mouth, but before he could speak, dull footsteps drifted through the door. They were followed by a loud thud, as if someone had tried to fling the door open – only for it to stick in its frame. There was another thump and, with a grating of wood, Floridiana burst into the audience chamber. Staggered, really, as her momentum carried through the doorway, but she turned it into a few running steps and came to a stop in the middle of the room. Her tunic was ripped, her hair had torn loose from its pins and was waving around her head, and her eyes were wide and her nostrils flared. She looked more like a bandit who’d stumbled out of the wilds to surrender herself than a baron’s respected guest. Frog and shrimp guards surrounded her before she could get any closer to the throne. Nagi hissed and, to my surprise, swam in front of the dragon, blocking the mage.

“Stop right there, human,” she commanded. “Kneel. You are in the presence of Yulus, the Dragon King of Black Sand Creek.”

Whoa, was that his name? Somehow, in all the months that I’d spent with him, I’d never known that. Everyone addressed him as “Your Majesty” or referred to him as “the king” or “His Majesty,” and while he’d certainly have told me if I’d asked, I’d never thought of asking. Yulus. Huh. Cocking my body to a side, I inspected him. Did he fit my mental image of a Yulus? No, not really.

While I was reframing him in my mind as not just “the dragon” or “my dragon” but “Yulus,” Floridiana threw back her shoulders, clenched her fist around her seal, and glared past Nagi. In a watery, garbled voice, with a stream of bubbles, she declared, “Your Majesty. I am Mage Floridiana. Here on behalf of Baron Claymouth.” At the end, she clamped her mouth shut to cut off the flow of precious air.

Yulus was silent for a long moment, preparing himself to act haughty. “Mage Floridiana. You have an unconventional way of introducing yourself,” he pronounced at last. “We will require compensation for Our vassals whom you have maimed.”

She gripped her seal until her knuckles paled, but her voice remained level. “Self-defense. I was attacked. It is I who should be demanding compensation.”

Yulus sneered. I’d watched him rehearse that expression with Nagi before and thought he needed more practice, but Floridiana bought it. Perhaps she couldn’t see very well underwater. Letting more bubbles escape, she demanded, “Is this how you welcome emissaries? With teeth and pincers? Small wonder that Baron Claymouth called on me to end this drought!”

Nagi looked like she was ready to sink her fangs into the mage’s neck.

I decided to intervene before a human got killed right in front of me. Realistically, the Heavenly Accountants shouldn’t expect much from a fish in a cage, but with them, who knew?

Excuse me, Mage Floridiana, I called, but His Majesty already has a plan for addressing the drought.