The Dragonbone Petticoat

Chapter 1A

Ilmar at first didn't deign to see them, for while they were well dressed, they were much too thin to his taste. While their flawless ensembles leaned into the effete gray area shadowing both good and bad taste, in which lords and ladies became frilly, painted puppets, what could not be overlooked was their unpalatable emaciation, for he preferred to wine and dine plumper guests, from the pleasingly round to those so rotund their crinkled eyes leaked fat and their elbows and knees were pinched in the effort to hold back massive, wobbly flesh. In art, Ilmar was a sophisticate, equal parts aesthete and sensualist, but in diet, he was a cannibal, plain and simple.

Having slouched in his chair until his hands, gripping the armrests, were elevated over his head, Ilmar now appeared to hang on only out of spite, or perhaps to maintain a tenuous pinch on the stem of his wineglass, which had become slick with condensation and made a wet circle on the wood. While he now craved only the things griffins hungered for, and he could no longer savor his favorite wine, a chilled wineglass was just as cool and comforting in his slack grip. "While I can't say I found your lackluster proposal intriguing, at least it abstracted my attention, and I have questions now that I didn't have before." Absentmindedly, Ilmar sent another pulse of ice magic into the wineglass, until the streaked glass frosted with a crinkling sound.

"We live to serve." The woman's true nature seemed buried beneath the surface. Not that she was a deep person, but far from it, seeming to Ilmar just as superficial as any of his wives. And this vain creature was buried several layers under, so that beneath a youth caked on by rouge and eye-shadow lay a middle age brushed thin by the dye reddening her hair past its natural, pale blush to shades of pink and scarlet more often caught in glints of rubies, and even under this lay a loftier antiquity crinkling here and there, not only in the crow's feet tightening her eyes to darkening beads, but the wizened corners of her lips and the shrunken hollows between her fingers.

"Do you indeed? How delightfully slavish." Gripping the cushioned arm rests until his fingernails pinched in and dug at his cuticles, Ilmar he licked his lips and imagined how the svelte scientists might taste. While he preferred the plump, the thought of these walking bread sticks tucking themselves in his oven on his say-so was hilarious. "Well then, while young master regales us with his scheme, be a good girl and bring us small plates and steins. Give the keg a generous pull, if you wish. Make yourself at home. Not that you haven't already, as your proposal was much too long." While he mournfully eyed their rolled-up sheafs of blueprints, his eye flicked up, sparking with sarcasm. Ilmar well knew the woman was the master, and the man her creature--and perhaps her creature comfort to boot, given his over-affectionate toadying--but he did so love to rib his guests. And now he occasionally de-ribbed them, then went on to thoroughly de-bone them, Lancurc having first tenderized them in salt or boiling water.

"His lordship jests." The man's laugh was so practiced that he seemed to glow, as if it leaped from a natural spark of good humor.

"No, I am quite peckish," said Ilmar. "If we begin while our appetites aren't seen to, young Venos. you take your own lives in hand."

"Very droll," giggled Venos. While his eyes slitted in mirth, Ilmar could see the younger wizard seething behind his feigned amusement. "Our host is part dragon, Lucinia."

As Venos turned to regard his mistress with overacted pleasure, he missed the dragon-clawed glare with which Ilmar favored the wizards.

"Do you mean the way he seems to slough his skin, as he seeps to the floor like that?" Lucinia elevated her nose, which by nature already arced toward the heavens, so lofty was her proboscis and so imperious and snooty was her manner.

"No," Venos tittered. "I'm thinking of chameleon scales. Our philanthropist would have us think him an anthropophagus."

"There are false smiles all around," said Ilmar with a laconic tone. "Is this your usual fare, or can I trap your bon mot under glass, and by water and love, hope a laugh flowers?"