Free Witchbreaker (Dragon Apocalypse) by James Maxey Page A

same.”
    “Forgive me for being dubious. Grand Cooper is one of the wealthiest men alive. Why would his children be wandering the world as coinless vagabonds?”
    Brand chuckled. “That’s kind of a long story. But who needs coins when we have dragon bones?” He held up a blackened rib.
    Sorrow’s eyes opened wide. She hadn’t even thought of the fortune scattered around them. Dragon bones were worth their weight in gold at blood houses. Even bones burnt black would bring a good price.
    “Since we all worked together to kill this dragon, I assume we split this treasure three ways?” he asked.
    Yesterday, she would have argued. Their verbal contract said that anything they dug up would belong to her. But Brand had delivered the final killing blow. The division seemed fair. She nodded in agreement.
    “This will buy us passage back to the Silver City,” he said. “Hell, it will buy our own ship.”
    “If you’re Grand Cooper’s son, I’m surprised you don’t already own a whole fleet.”
    Brand shrugged. “I do, technically. But it’s been a long time since I’ve been back home to enjoy any of the trappings of my wealth. My father... he’s something of a perfectionist. When Bigsby was born, he couldn’t bear the thought of his first son having stunted, malformed limbs. So he commanded the midwife to take the baby away and kill it. He buried the body in a closed coffin so no one could see the freak he’d produced, and told the world the child had been stillborn.”
    “That’s awful,” said Sorrow.
    “Fortunately, the midwife didn’t kill the baby. Freaks are a valuable commodity. She sold the child to a circus.”
    Sorrow shook her head. “It’s a sign of this world’s corruption that such things can happen. How did you learn of his fate?”
    Brand fed a new log into the fire, coughing at the smoke it stirred up. When he caught his breath, he said, “The midwife spent her money a bit too freely. My father thought she was stealing from him, but soon learned the truth of what had happened. He kept the secret for almost thirty years. During this time, I was born.” He sighed. “I tried to be a good son, but sometimes he just seemed so unhappy. I didn’t know that every time he looked at me he was almost paralyzed with guilt.”
    “He deserved his guilt,” said Sorrow. “Though he failed, he’d conspired to commit infanticide. I can only imagine how much you hate him.”
    “No. I don’t hate him. He made a mistake, but he’s not evil. Four years ago, he suffered a stroke. His body was half-paralyzed. On his sick bed, he confessed everything to me. Said he’d been a fool to expect perfection from mere human flesh. He begged me to find his lost son and bring him home.”
    He looked at the sparks that rose from the fire. “The ensuing years have been a pretty wild adventure. I’m a different person from the naïve kid who left home. It’s going to be strange going back. Stranger still when I tell Dad that his long lost son isn’t only a dwarf, but also completely flipping insane.”
    “You could...” Sorrow shook her head.
    “What?”
    Sorrow ground her teeth together. “It causes me almost physical pain to say this, but a truthspeaker might be able to help you.”
    Brand’s face brightened. “You’re right. They could command Bigsby to remember who he truly was. It’s an excellent idea.”
    He rose, picking up a branch from the fire. He used his makeshift torch to aid him as he gathered up dragon bones into a pile next to the warrior. “Maybe we’ll run into a truthspeaker on the journey home who’ll be amenable to a bribe.”
    “I think they prefer their compensation to be referred to as offerings.”
    As Brand turned his back to her, Sorrow allowed herself the luxury of scratching her itching thighs. Her stomach tightened as she felt how hard and stiff her skin was beneath the fabric of her britches.
    Brand wound up near the pit the dragon had first erupted from. He crouched