#clownexpert

The immense and impossible dragon glanced sidelong. At the top of the stairs was a gilded, if peeling, throne.

"Thrones," he said, with the same delicate tone one might use when discussing municipal garbage buildup, "are very much the domain of royalty."

The dragon's scales whispered against one another as it shifted, raised its immense head. It appeared to be giving the man the kind of scrutiny one might when a delicious steak suddenly began talking back.

[You aren't king, then.]

"Oh, heavens no." His eyes widened, as if surprised. "I'm the Patrician, an entirely different breed of tyrant. Not a birth title."

There was a drip of contempt in the last words.

[And yet,] the dragon mused, its eye narrowing as it examined the Patrician, [you hold yourself apart from the common people.]

A hint of smoke in the way it laid itself across the Patrician's mind, and he found his skin prickling, no matter how hard he willed it not to. Sometimes, even for him, these things were a lost cause.

"Well, yes," he replied, leaning back a little in his seat, to look the beast in the eye. It blotted out most of the light in the room, but the dull gold shimmer in its scales was one of the few things it had in common with Sybil's little swamp dragons. It was distracting, and made the less evolved part of his brain gibber with fear. Exactly none of that read in his voice.

"They get rather upset if I hold them close."

It wasn't... a laugh, exactly, in the same way that it wasn't the dragon speaking, exactly. Nonetheless, a warm, low ripple of amusement still made itself known in the Patrician's mind.

[A tyrant who disapproves of kings.] Its massive bulk moved, leather and whispering scales dragging across the floor and themselves. It bent down to examine him with a pupil the size of a horse's head. The hairs on his arm stood up, but he said nothing - either struck mute or with nothing further to add.

[Alright,] it declared, and laid its head on the floor, watching him with just a hint of smoke tracing out from between its teeth, [I like that well enough.] A split second pause. [When you wake up, I'll be less dragon, more terrier. As a gift.]

"How literal are you being?" the Patrician tried to inquire, but instead he found himself murmuring the question in a daze, at a face that swam into familiarity quickly. He was asking His Excellency, His Grace, Commander Sir Samuel Vimes, the reluctant Duke of Ankh-Morpork, who gave him the patented stony stare.

Vimes hoisted Vetinari more securely in his arms.

"I," he growled, as Vetinari tried to blink away afterimages, "bloody hate wizards, magic, and especially gods damned L-Space."

For a dizzying moment, Havelock Vetinari could hear the scales in his voice, smell a curl of smoke that didn't fit a cigar's profile.

"Ah, Vimes," he managed, "Sybil does so love you. Even missing your scales."