The Dragon Marshal's Treasure (U.S. Marshal Shifters 1)

Theo

That morning dawned clear and bright with only thin, wispy cirrus clouds at the very top of the sky.

Dragon weather, Theo St. Vincent thought with great satisfaction. In the dragon-settled valley of Riell, any forecast that boded well for flying was considered good luck. Theo had left his home years ago, but as much as he had sometimes tried to shake off its legacy, the stories and lore of Riell had stayed with him. Clear skies, to him, meant he was about to get what he wanted.

The Marcus case.

Gordon Marcus had swindled his investors for years. As far as Theo could tell, the man had done it without ever acquiring so much as a wrinkle in his face, his suit, or his conscience: all the available photographs of him seemed to show a hale and hearty man with a suntanned face and a natural, relaxed smile. It was an affront to honor, and all the more so because Marcus had stolen from the poor as well as the rich.

Dragons took wealth personally. Their hoards were built up carefully over lifetimes and lineages and were valued for their beauty and rarity, not only for their price. Centuries ago, dragons had claimed gold by force and fire. Now the worst sin for a dragon was to increase one’s hoard dishonorably. Where there was no principle, Theo had always been taught, there could be no prize. They held to that rule very strictly.

A human financier like Gordon Marcus, as far as Theo was concerned, was a paper dragon. If Marcus insisted on trying to claim draconian wealth, Theo would ensure that he faced draconian justice—or the nearest thing to it. It was his sacred responsibility to deal with the havoc this pretender had wrought.

Besides, he had to admit he liked combing through treasure. He didn’t mind enjoying the fulfillment of his duty. And as the only US Marshal dragon shifter in the country, he was surely the natural choice.

He’d prepared a speech to this effect but only got a few words into it before Martin, their office’s Chief Deputy Marshal, cut him off.

“Theo, I never considered assigning anyone else.”

This threw him. He had expected to have to argue his case. Nearly all his colleagues were shifters—their office quietly handled shifter-related crimes and emergencies in addition to regular Marshal duties—and all of them knew the valley’s reputation. All shifter enclaves were secretive and cozy, as they had to be to survive, but Riell had always taken that one step further. It was clannish and insular even by shifter standards. Riell dragons didn’t socialize or intermarry. They didn’t help. They tucked themselves away with their hoards and their stuffy, antiquated ideas; they settled legal disputes by fighting duels; they had their own figures of speech and their own unique accent. Theo had come out into the wider world from a life with no McDonald’s and no TV. Early on, he had learned to explain his ignorance away with some vague story about having been homeschooled in a nearly Amish community, but shifters and their kin knew the real truth was even stranger. And knew that it came with its own kind of snobbery.

He’d only been here six months. He’d expected to have to spend years changing their minds about him.

“Your background in asset forfeiture is extensive,” Martin said, considerately acting as if Theo weren’t staring at him with his mouth half-open with shock. It was this kind of discretion that made Theo prize him so highly as a superior. “You’re more than qualified to evaluate what’s worth us seizing to sell to help the victims. I can’t think of anyone who could do a better job with it.”

Theo regained a little of his cool. “Probably the extensive Marcus dossier I emailed to you revealed my interest.”

“Yes,” Martin said gravely. “All forty-seven single-spaced pages of it.” His brow furrowed in a little. Martin was a pegasus shifter in his early fifties, with salt-and-pepper hair that was only now starting to turn more fully to the lustrous gray of his shift-form, and he had the kind of natural gravitas that made even Theo’s dragon, a prickly and status-conscious beast, defer to him. It was strange to see him worried. “I think this is the only time you’ve ever come to me with a request. Why Marcus? If you knew one of the people he defrauded—”

Theo shook his head. “I don’t know anyone who puts their money with such people. Dragons like gold you can touch. I can almost guarantee you Marcus never made a cent off any one of us.”

“So there’s no grudge?”

“All my hereditary enemies are archaeologists and brave knights who defend villages,” Theo said. “I bear him no grudge. Only ill-will. He gathered his hoard dishonestly, and that makes it my business.”

“Marshal business or dragon business?”

He hesitated. He tried as much as possible to avoid talking about his heritage and he had already done it more than he liked, but he couldn’t look into Martin’s eyes and lie to him. “Both.”

“That’s lucky for you,” Martin said, his voice as calm and steady as ever. “And Theo?”

“Sir?”

Martin had told him a dozen times that Theo didn’t need to call him sir, but he couldn’t seem to get himself to stop.

“If you want something, you don’t have to assemble a fifty-page—”

“Forty-seven.”

“—dossier on why you should have it. Not to begin with, anyway. You can just ask.”

Theo nodded slowly, fighting back his desire to protest against this. Of course he should have to prove that he was deserving, how else could he trust that they would take him seriously? Why should Martin take him on credit alone? He felt like they were speaking different languages. But he said, “Yes, sir,” and tried to ignore the ache that went through him, since it didn’t make any sense.

“Dragon instincts aside, asset expertise aside,” Martin said, “I’d send you on this one anyway just because it’s going to need such a delicate touch. Marcus’s wife and daughter are still in residence, and I need the Marshal who knocks on their door to be the kind of person who, say, has the fugitives he catches write him love letters from prison.”

“That only happened once!”

“It happened twice.”