Chapter 29

The number of dragons living at the Albarant ducal house was on the small side.

Even the weakest noble house kept at least two or three dragon steeds. They were, in practice, more or less what horses were to nobles elsewhere.

Setting those dragon steeds aside, the ducal house kept ten dragons in total.

That’s few, considering the vassals’ dragons out in the territory were raised right alongside them.

The reason they were raised together was simple: a single dragon needed a lot of space.

On top of that, the vassals’ dragons were bound to run into each other often, so there was also a deliberate intention behind raising them together — to get them used to one another.

…Which meant that for a house as old and storied as Albarant to have only ten dragons, not counting the dragon steeds, said something grim: a great many dragons had died when the current Duke inherited the title.

Makes sense. The exclusive trainers had all died too.

Maybe it should count as fortunate that even this many had survived.

With that thought in mind, I looked over the Marcelid dragon in front of me — among the dragons that remained, a female noted for being unusually sensitive and prickly.

“Grrrrrrr……”

Baring her teeth, growling low in her throat, the dragon kept fanning her fin open and folding it closed again. Larger than a male’s, the fin was as graceful and beautiful as lace — but her temperament was anything but.

“What’s bothering you?”

“Grrrrk…….”

For about a week, just feeding them had been more than enough to handle, and after that I’d been given an unexpected stretch of leave to rest, so I hadn’t had the chance to look over each dragon individually.

I needed to check whether this was simply her temperament, whether her breeding season had come, or whether something was physically wrong with her.

“Does Luira like going for walks?”

“No. Not especially. She doesn’t seem to care much for using her wings.”

“Hmm.”

Female Marcelids prefer staying near water. They choose a territory good for bearing and raising young, and once that territory is set, they aren’t quick to change it.

Males, by contrast, had developed strong flying ability in order to go searching for females like that. But being female didn’t mean she never flew at all, so I nodded.

“I’ll have to take a closer look at her separately later. I can’t turn someone this on edge loose with the dragon steeds, so I’ll ride a different one.”

Once I’d stepped away, I glanced sidelong at Luira shifting restlessly, then went and fitted a saddle and reins onto another dragon.

“Grrrrrrrr.”

“Good, let’s go for a walk.”

“Grk!”

At the word walk, the Twin Head’s wings gave an excited flutter, and both of its heads bobbed busily, clearly pleased.

I took a rein in each hand and tightened my grip with my thighs. Twin Heads were, true to their name, two-headed dragons, and both heads had to be managed carefully.

“Easy now.”

I held back the impatient tugging of one head, which kept fussing to get going, and rode out onto the training grounds.

“Grrrrrrr!”

“Graaaaaahh!”

Amused by the Twin Head’s whole body shaking with impatience to fly, I pressed my heel firmly against its green-and-red scales.

As if it had been waiting for exactly that, the great wings snapped open, and the instant I felt that first weightless lift, we were airborne.

Twin Heads were difficult to handle. Simply mediating between two heads, each insisting on its own way, was a challenge in itself.

Flying one, in that sense, demanded no small skill. In the Albarant duchy, left with nothing but apprentice trainers, getting a Twin Head into the air had simply been beyond what the trainers there could manage.

So unless its owner flew it himself, the dragon normally had almost no chance to fly at all.

“Kyaaaaahh!”

“Kyarrrrrr!”

“…Incredible.”

Bruce’s mouth fell open, and the word slipped out before he knew it.

Shaking its long neck, the Twin Head soared freely through the high sky, clearly delighted — so delighted that it even rolled its whole body over in a loop, showing off.

Litia’s composure through that sudden stunt, keeping the Twin Head from working itself into too much of a frenzy, was astonishing.

Considering even the knight who owned the dragon sometimes found it a handful, it really was remarkable.

How could someone so young handle a dragon that well?

That was a level effort alone couldn’t reach. No one knew that better than Bruce himself. If hard work alone could have gotten him there, it would have been himself on the Twin Head’s back, not Litia.

Feeling an awe too complete to even curdle into envy, he couldn’t tear his eyes away from them until the Twin Head’s airborne walk finally ended.

“Goodness. You two really were dying to fly, weren’t you?”

Once the Twin Head had flown to its heart’s content and landed, it shoved both heads toward me, cooing fiercely. I stroked each head with a hand as it pressed in, delighted.

“There, there. Satisfied now? Shall we head in?”

“Kkrrrrung!”

“Kkrrrrr!”

After flying around for a good while, the Twin Head seemed satisfied at last, cooing nonstop as it went obediently back into its pen.

“Huh. Who’d have thought it would listen that obediently…”

“I take it it doesn’t usually get to fly much?”

“No one but the Knight Captain has ever been able to ride it. As you know, with two heads, it’s just hard to handle…”

True enough. Twice the opinions meant twice the difficulty.

I scratched my cheek, doing my best to ignore the way Bruce’s eyes were shining with unusual brightness. I knew this was the dragon under his care — he must have had quite a time of it.

“Now that the dragon steeds are back in their pens too, we should take the other dragons out for their walk. Except for the female Marcelid.”

At that, Bruce nodded and waved the other trainers over.

“You heard the trainer?”

“Yes!”

The trainers started moving to bring out the dragons each was responsible for.

“Where’s the trainer in charge of the Marcelid?”

“That’s me, Trainer Litia.”

I nodded at the trainer who stepped forward, one hand raised.

“Has anything unusual come up while you’ve been looking after her? Even something small — please tell me.”

“Unusual…….”

He seemed to be searching his memory. Faintly, I could hear the dragon steeds chewing on hay and, further off, a low growl somewhere in the distance.

“Luira’s basically got a sensitive temperament. More sensitive than the other dragons, I’d say? She’s always been like that.”

“Hmm…….”

“I’ve had her about five years now. I just figured she was simply the finicky type…….”

“She had an owner before you.”

I turned at Bruce’s sudden interjection.

“An owner?”

“Yes. It was back when the Albarant ducal house was in the thick of the succession dispute.”

A heavy silence settled over us at that.

“…I don’t know the details. Not knowing is probably why I’m still alive to say so. All I know is that her owner and the trainer in charge of her both died back then.”

“I see…….”

I turned my head toward the pen where Luira would be.

Dragons are intelligent. Intelligent enough that when a new person suddenly came calling themselves her owner, she must have dimly sensed that her previous one was never coming back.

If that’s the case, it makes sense she turned so sensitive.

Ten-odd years might sound like a long time. But that was only by human standards.

Marcelids in particular tended to be long-lived. Ten years, for a dragon, might amount to no more than a single human year.

“Trainer Litia. Is there anything that can be done?”

At the question, I looked at Luira’s trainer. For all his big build and rugged look, the uncertain flicker in his eyes suggested he was rather sensitive himself.

“Something that can be done…….”

With dragon training, even the same reaction often had a different cause behind it in each case. I couldn’t give a definite answer without knowing Luira better. It wasn’t something the trainer’s skill alone could fix.

“Who is Luira’s current owner?”

“Ah, that would be Lady Durna. The Albarant ducal house’s alchemist.”

“An alchemist?”

Something else entirely caught me off guard. An alchemist. That a single house could afford to keep an alchemist on staff.

The Albarant ducal house, of course.

Their financial power must be staggering. Alchemy and magic were both money pits.

“Where is she right now?”

At that, they exchanged uneasy looks. What? Why that reaction, just from asking where someone was?

“Well…… we don’t actually know.”

“…Huh?”

“Lady Durna comes and goes like a ghost, and once she gets absorbed in her alchemy, she shuts herself up in her room for days on end…….”

“Oh, boy.”

I held my head at an explanation that gave me a headache just hearing it. An alchemist — I should have seen this coming the moment that word came up.

“…Lady Durna must have picked Luira herself, right?”

“Not really. His Grace the Duke gave Luira to Lady Durna.”

Hm. That made sense. For an alchemist, a Marcelid was a solid choice — the water a Marcelid produces is the purest there is, without a single impurity mixed in.

I’d heard that was highly valued in alchemy. Apparently, extracting water that pure through any method besides a Marcelid took tremendous effort.

But that was one matter, and this was another.

“…For Luira to get better, Lady Durna is going to need to cooperate.”

“We’re well aware of that, but…….”

I sighed at the way the trainers’ eyes kept darting around. Bruce seemed to be holding something back, but I let it go.

This wasn’t a situation to blame them for. However much they managed the dragons, they were apprentice trainers through and through — their authority only went so far.

“Don’t worry about that part. I’ll handle it myself.”

But I had that authority, didn’t I? Besides, my assigned dragon was Kazen — the Duke of Albarant’s own partner dragon, an Agrix.

…Alchemist or not, she couldn’t very well ignore the Head of House and her own patron, the Duke of Albarant, and keep right on with her research.

“For today, let’s just take Luira out for her walk. I’ll move on the matter of Lady Durna as fast as I can.”

What I needed to do right now was take the on-edge Luira out for her walk. Going to find the Duke about Durna could wait until after that — there was no rush.