The Redundant Dragons

Contents

Copyright Page

Dedication and Acknowledgements

Advanced Readers’ Blurbs

Chapter 1

Chapter 5

Chapter 10

Chapter 15

Chapter 19

About the Author

The Redundant Dragons

by

Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

All rights reserved

Copyright © October 18, 2018, Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

Cover Art Copyright © 2018, Karen Gillmore

Gypsy Shadow Publishing, LLC.

Lockhart, TX

www.Gypsyshadow.com

Names, characters and incidents depicted in this book are products of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author or the publisher.

No part of this book may be reproduced or shared by any electronic or mechanical means, including but not limited to printing, file sharing, and email, without prior written permission from Gypsy Shadow Publishing, LLC.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

ISBN: 978-1-61950-342-7

Published in the United States of America

First eBook Edition: November 23, 2018

Dedication

This book is dedicated to its Kickstarter backers, especially Anne Young and Stephanie Bonsanti, as well as to Nelson's Blood, my sea shanty group, who inspired the nautical bits.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my editors and publishers, Charlotte Holley and Denise Bartlett of Gypsy Shadow Publishing, cover artist Karen Gillmore, cheering squad and first beta readers Becky Kyle and Tania Opland who helped me navigate the story and suggested Malady should be a major player instead of a minor irritation. Thanks also to my final beta readers, Carolyn LaPlant, Becky Kyle (again), and Morgiana Halley.

What follows is a list of my Kickstarter backers for this book. Thank you.

Linda Cork, Joanne Forster, CE Murphy, Daniel Vinette, Anne Young, Wooster, Charlotte Holley and Denise Bartlett, Julia Bonser, Ruth J. Burroughs, Kristal Dalgetty, Jory Bernstein, Katherine Roe, Curtis Berry, Lis Halliday-Tyler, Susan Mandel, Corey Liss, Isaac 'Will it Work' Dansicker, Donna Bailly, Gail Sullivan, Jean-Marie Ward, Cynthia F. Shelley, Chad Bowden, Laurie Hicks, Gwen and Steven Yaple, Diana Rehfield, Gavran, Joella Berkner, Stella Sloop, Liv Margareth Alver, Daniella Gembala, PyrrhaIphis, Marti Wulfow Garner, Deborah Fishburn, Laurie Weaver, Katrina Oppermann, Sandy Hershelman, Daniel Pelletier, Becky Kyle, Victoria L. Sullivan, Jesse Fitzsimmons, Janice Ziv, Shala Kerrigan, Cat Allen, Barbara A Denz, Stephanie Bonsanti, Paul Bullard, Shannon Scollard, Tania Opland, Kirsten Pieper-Schulz, Amy Browning, Kal Powell, Carol Guess, Sandra Doherty, Vicky DiSanto, Thomas Bull, Katherine L. Mock, Esha, Christine Boyer Maj, Erica Hamerquist, Tom Linton, Greg Hallock, Elizabeth Sloan, Kathleen Lane, Traevynn, Jane Anderson, Marketa Zvelebil, Marilyn L. Alm, Jeanne Evans, Karen Gillmore, Jamie Cloud Eakin, Arnd Empting, Ted Briggs-Comstock, Virgina Korleski, Debby Rodrig, Carol Berry, Barbara Chandler-Young, Jinjer Stanton, Sarah Frazier, Karen Bull, Otomo, Lee Jackson, Kevin Andrew Murphy, and Lynn Garren.

Advanced Readers’ Blurbs

Clever, amusing, and inventive. Don’t read it last thing before bed because you won’t be able to stop. A considerable gallery of well-drawn characters. Verity is a splendid creation and very sound on dragons. And there are Ghost-Cats. What else could we want?

—Kerry Greenwood

Author of the Phryne Fisher detective novels (Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries TV series) and The Spotted Dog in the Corinna Chapman series

The Redundant Dragons is a book chock full of quirky characters, effervescent dialogue and wicked humor. The story rockets from one character to another without a misstep. But underlying the fun there’s a serious theme reflecting the best and worst in humanity (and dragonity) and a reminder of how easy it is to find oneself on the wrong side. Although this is the second in a series, I had no trouble following the plot. Now I MUST find the first, which I expect to enjoy just as much.

—Sharan Newman

Author of the Guinevere series and the Catherine LeVenseur Mystery series

Scarborough’s Redundant Dragons is a wicked swirl of humor, fantasy and astute social commentary that moves along so fast you almost don’t notice how deep it goes.

—Joyce Thompson

Author of Bones, Sailing My Shoe to Timbuktu, and the novelization of Harry and the Hendersons

Elizabeth Ann Scarborough does it again with another fantastic light-hearted fantasy where dragons aren’t the villains, but likable heroes.

—Pamela K. Kinney

Author of How the Vortex Changed my Life, Haunted Richmond and Haunted Virginia

Elizabeth Ann Scarborough’s new installment of the Songs from the Seashell Archives series slides through fantasy, literature, sci-fiction, and song as easily as one of her time-traveling characters slips through the ages. A reluctant queen, a pirate’s curse, and a thunder of delinquent dragons are only the beginning in this fanciful tale. Oh, and ghost cats. We mustn’t forget the ghost cats!

—Mollie Hunt

Author of The Crazy Cat Lady Cozy Mystery Series

Dragons, a bard, and witches, Oh yes! I made some new friends, and greeted some old ones. I even sang along with the bard. Elizabeth Ann Scarborough grabbed my attention with a Song of Sorcery and has kept it ever since.

—Elisa Ballou

I really couldn't put the book down. I had to know what was going to happen to the reluctant queen and her fanciful friends next!

—J. M. Jennings aka Billie Maverick

Author of The Drenching

Chapter 1: Dragons At Large

The controversial new queen watched from the battlements as the former drone dragons made their presumably joyous exodus from their workplace dungeons. More than one blinked nervously, poking its head out to look up and down the city streets. Then, claw by claw, each slunk out of its industrial den, abandoning the familiarity of the only home it had known for many years, if not its entire life.

‘Hooray, the dragons are free at last!’ thought the truth-and-justice side of Queen Verity, followed by the more realistic thought. ‘Oh dear, the dragons are free. Now what?’

Malady Hyde, the queen’s personal assistant, her predatory eye keen for signs of weakness in her monarch, swooped in to stand beside her. The crumbling gray stone of the castle’s jagged roof had recently been reinforced with a lacework of wrought iron studded at intervals with the latest distant-viewing apparatuses.

Just look at what you’ve done now! Malady said. Liberating dragons is all very well, but the next question is who will liberate us from the tyranny of dragons once they figure out that without the kibble, they have the upper claw.

Malady was a stranger to truth as Verity knew it, which made their relationship even more antagonistic than it would have been solely because of their differing worldviews, but in this case the queen very much feared that Malady had a point.

Verity had a feeling that the rest of the population of Queenston, whom she supposed she ought to think of as her subjects, were less than enthusiastic about the turn events had taken since she was recognized as the first royal to reign in four generations. Her feeling, as usual, was not wrong.

Verity knew she wasn’t good at queening. Her mother had assumed that Verity’s ability to tell the truth and be able to detect lies would be an asset in a leader. In fact, it made it almost impossible. The problem was that in politics, everyone was lying, all the time, in such tangled webs of interwoven falsehood that she couldn’t say who was being untruthful about what since it all gave her an unbearable, raging headache. The pain had never been so bad in her life. Malady, appointed her assistant by the same troublesome mother who had appointed Verity queen, kept going to court in her stead, since lies were her native tongue.

In the politics of dragons, however, Malady was missing something. The dragons were no longer dependent on the kibble, but neither would they have anything else to eat for very long. The wild game was already much depleted in a matter of a few days, and the head of the Cattleperson’s Association had begun complaining of livestock predation. It’s not like we’re made of coos, were his exact words.