Dragons & Dwarves by S. Andrew Swann Page A

want Dave to leave the car, but Dave shook them off. I moved to accompany him, and he just shook his head. ‘No, Leo. Just me.’ The first words he’d spoken to me since we started down here.
    “I didn’t hear what they talked about. But it took longer than my talk with the dragon. Dave, to his credit, didn’t appear intimidated by the fact that he was talking to a hundred-foot lizard with a set of jaws that could bite him in half at the waist. He paced. He waved his arms. He shouted. Just like he talks to the Council.
    “No, I never got to know exactly what they talked about. But I do know he asked what the chain meant. I saw him hold it up, and I could read the question on his lips. I only heard a fragment of an answer, “ ‘. . . a sign of what is at stake . . .’
    “After that, Dave ordered the escort back, and after about a fifteen-minute argument with the ranking cop and the ranking Guardsman, we all pulled back out of earshot.
    “It was hard to believe that Aloeus could whisper.
    “Yes, it did influence Dave’s stand against the Feds. It seemed to solidify his initial instincts. Of course, it didn’t help his standing with anyone when the rumors started that he was talking to something that’d come out of the Portal. I mean the elves were still sitting in a tent city, behind a razor wire wall at Burke Lakefront.
    “If Valdis, Ragnan’s reigning god-king hadn’t fallen about four months into it, Dave wouldn’t have survived. Council was already getting together the legal machinery to remove him, and the courts looked like they were beginning to lean against him. The deal he struck with Zygmund, the rebel overlord who’d defeated Valdis, was nothing less than a political miracle.
    “When food started coming out of the Portal, all of Dave’s enemies were struck dumb for about a month. You know that Dave made damn sure that everyone knew that it was him, his administration, that was bringing the food in. That was when the tide turned. Especially when, after it was obvious that no aid was necessary, the federal government started its other moves to take over the Portal.
    “It was almost two years through the appeals, and the court orders. It was scheduled before the Supreme Court before the Congress decided to decide the issue for everyone. By Dave’s reelection campaign, he was a hero. The man who stood up to the Feds.
    “I know, we’re talking about Aloeus. I didn’t have much personal contact with him after those initial meetings. I was just a mid- dleman. I know that he was active in helping the administration draft legislation to deal with our new paranormal citizenry. The kind of thing that allowed some rights to these critters, at least on the local level.
    “The deal with the stadium? That was just an arrangement to compensate me for the rights I—and the Browns franchise—had to give up so that the city could administer the Portal. I know, the city does own the property, but there was a twenty-five-year lease that both I and the city were obligated to. The fees I get from the stadium are simply compensation for the city breaking the lease.
    “No, I don’t think Aloeus had anything to do with that deal.”

CHAPTER SIX
     
    A FTER Baldassare finished his story, we both sat for a few long moments of silence. While the story itself was good background, it omitted more recent history, specifically Forest Hills and property deals. I knew the omission was intentional, Baldassare was more than adept enough to know why I was here. Either he didn’t want to talk about it, or he wanted me to ask.
     
    “I have a few other questions,” I said quietly.
    “I was sure you would,” he said, smiling.
    It was a chess game now. Baldassare had stopped volunteering information. He wanted me to probe. That way, he would get a measure of exactly what I did and didn’t know. Which meant that, if I asked the wrong questions, in the wrong order, he would blithely allow me to stumble down the wrong