matron, Mrs. Park, stared at Astrid and Jane sternly. “We have very strict rules here in regards to our prisoners.”
Astrid nodded. She had learned all of this during training, but Mrs. Parks acted like the newest addition to the Hawthorn Facility didn’t know a thing. This was maybe due to the fact that Jane, the other new addition to the prison facility, seemed so nervous and unsure of herself.
“Yes, ma’am,” said Astrid. Mrs. Parks looked at her over the tops her glasses as if Astrid was a naughty child speaking out of turn.
“These prisoners are very dangerous. While their iron shackles bind their magic, they still retain the evil seductiveness of their voice and their gaze. And don’t”— and here she struck the top of her desk with a bamboo back scratcher, causing both Astrid and Jane to jump— “Don’t look directly into their eyes! This is why you’ll wear these whenever you tend to the dragons.”
She handed them what appeared to be pairs of glasses, which had special lenses that obscured dragons’ direct gazes. Astrid had handled pairs of glasses like these during her training. They had a blind spot in the middle that forced your eyes to look around its edges to see. Mrs. Parks handed them sets of earbuds, which blocked off sound, but also allowed communication with their partners and the technician in the security booth.
“Remember, look into the monitors above the cells. They’ll display what the dragons are saying to you. Do not take the ear buds off for any reason. They view humans as playthings, and will do anything to trick you. Since you are new, they will try all their games. But keep the upper hand! Remember your training. Now put on your glasses and earbuds. For this evening I will go with you, but after this you both will guard the dragons during the third shift. You should be grateful for this duty, as they are more active and restless during the day. Come along, now, it’s dinner time. Jane, if you will push that cart there. It has their food.”
“How many are here?” asked Jane with trepidation.
“Currently, three,” said Ms. Parks. “We had four. But we executed one this morning. Our new Prime Minister has no patience with these unrepentant abominations.”
Jane sighed with relief, which, in Astrid’s eyes, marked the young woman as a coward. One did not sign up to work with dragons if you did not have the backbone to face them. But it was the cool pride in Mrs. Parks’ voice at the Prime Minister’s actions that shocked Astrid. Sure, housing and feeding for their extraordinary long lives was a hot political issue. But Parliament had decreed that no dragon would face death at the hands of humans, that is, until the newly elected Prime Minister pushed for the “just punishment” of the crimes of dragons, many of whom were convicted of murder.
“Which one was executed?” asked Astrid breathlessly.
Mrs. Parks eyed her with suspicion. “You aren’t one of those dragon lovers are you?” she asked coldly.
“No, no,” denied Astrid. “It’s just in school I studied all the cases.”
“All the cases?” said Mrs. Parks with an arched eyebrow.
“I majored in exopsychology, with a minor in draconology.”
“Oh?” said Mrs. Parks with obvious disapproval, as if Astrid’s particular choice of university degree was an affliction.
“Well, when I started there was that big kerfuffle about possible alien contact, remember? And there was a big push to train exoscientists and that got me a full scholarship. Only that whole thing turned out to be a big fat dud, so I minored in the one non-human sentient species we have on the planet. Otherwise, I would have lost my funding.”
“Oh, right then,” said Mrs. Parks grudgingly.
“And as you know, there aren’t many jobs for someone with my qualifications.” Astrid said this last a bit of hauteur in her voice, but Mrs. Parks was seriously annoying her. If the government thought her studies were worthy enough to fund the four years she took to get her degree, then a prison matron had no business questioning it.
Mrs. Parks snorted. “Well, I’m so glad you deigned to join our ranks, Ms. Davis,” she said scornfully. “We don’t always get someone with your, er… qualifications. I do hope you don’t find it beneath your education to work with dragons.”
Actually, Astrid was thrilled. Since she was a little girl and her grandmother had told her stories about dragons, she was fascinated with them. And her love for the tales grew beyond what her grandmother told her. Astrid loved any story, real or myth, about them. It was sad that they were so often painted as demons or murderers. To Astrid these last stories seemed concocted, the product of human fear, despite there being few instances of dragon criminals.
“No, of course not,” said Astrid. “I’m happy to take any work that fulfills my obligation to the government for funding my education.”
“Uh, huh,” said Mrs. Parks with a doubtful tone. “Well, the executed shifter was the one who used the name Austin Drake.”
“Oh,” said Astrid. Sick disappointment filled her. Austin, before he was arrested, had a distinguished military career. He did, that was, until a records match found another Austin Drake who served in the First World War. That was soon after the Reveal, when a prominent London newspaper reported the news that dragons lived among humans. Any piece of evidence that pointed suspicion that a person was a dragon resulted in witch hunt. Austin’s crime was treason, which carried a death sentence until Parliament stayed all of them. But now that had changed. And a beautiful golden dragon was no more.
Astrid felt her eyes mist and she reached under her goggles to quickly wipe away the evidence of her treasonous heart. It was not politically correct to have an appreciation for the only other sentient species that shared the Earth with humans.
“Something wrong, Ms. Davis?” asked Mrs. Parks.
“Dry eye. Forgot my drops this morning.”
“Unfortunate. Take care that you don’t forget critical job duties. That could cost all of us.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Astrid dutifully.
“But the one you should especially watch out for is Templeton Rawlins.”
“Oh, he’s the one that murdered Prime Minister Pearce,” piped up Jane. “I read about that in history class.”
“Yes, that’s right,” said Mrs. Park. “He’s been here for twenty-four years, and a nasty bit he is. He’s caused at least three guards to quit in fright. One had a heart attack shortly after he quit his employ.” The matron leaned in and spoke with a conspiratorial tone. “We suspect Rawlins used magic on him for that, but since we didn’t find any breaks in his ironwork, he must have had a confederate do it for him. In any case, the Prime Minister decided he is too dangerous to keep, and the execution order will be coming any day.”
Astrid bit her lip to keep her protests from spilling on her lips. Rawlings lived quietly prior to his arrest, managing his family estate and in general keeping out of the public eye. Aside from the one instance of criminality, he’d never harmed a single soul. Though there was a rogue element in every society, she had a difficult time fitting the crime to the dragon, even if the evidence was incontrovertible.
Mrs. Parks used her key card to unlock the outer and then the inner doors to the inmates’ quarters. There was a row of heavy duty tempered glass doors lining the hallway on either side of granite walls. Hawthorne was a medieval castle converted for use as this facility and a considerable sum had been spent in upgrades to make it suitable to house the strongest and most devious dragons.
“You’ll notice their ironwork,” Mrs. Parks said coolly. “The locks to the shackles on their wrists, neck and ankles are electronic, controlled by codes in the security booth. Our technicians rotate the codes on a daily basis and they, along with the shift supervisors, are the only ones that have them. Special permission is needed to key the codes in the locks, which must come from my day mode counterpart, Mr. Roache, or me. The chains retract into the wall to pull the inmate against it when we need to enter their compartments. It’s best to try to secure their co-operation for this, as they can seriously hurt their human bodies by fouling the operations of their chains with their bodies.”
“They would do that?” said Jane.
“Oh yes. It’s happened. They don’t like being restrained that way and will do anything to avoid it.”
Astrid puckered her lips. She thought she’d hate being restrained by shackles on all extremities; the neck would be hateful enough. It was one thing to read about it in the schoolbooks and another completely to see it in the flesh.
“This one is Evan Waters.”
“He’s the American dragon, isn’t he?” said Jane.
Mrs. Parks nodded. “Yes, as you know, he was arrested when a DNA scan at the airport picked up his dragon heritage.”
Astrid worked hard to keep the daggers from her eyes. Evan was only fifty percent dragon, a hybrid, and by all accounts couldn’t even shift. But he was detained anyway on immigration charges since he lied about his heritage on his visa to gain entrance to the country. As far as she knew, he hadn’t even been to court.
“Hello, Waters,” said Mrs. Parks nastily. “These ladies are your new guards, Ms. Davis and Ms. Hellstrom. They’ve brought your dinner.”
“Go fuck yourself,” appeared on the electronic screen above the door. Astrid remembered Mrs. Parks explaining this. However, Hawthorne’s newest matron was shocked that the speech-to-text software so literally displayed the dragon’s crude words.
“Eloquent, as always,” said Mrs. Parks. She shoved the covered dinner plate in a special glass box in the door that only opened inside the cell when the slot on the outside closed.
Waters lifted the lid, and cursed. He picked up the plate and flung it against the glass. Ground raw meat slid down the glass as the metal plate clattered on the flagstone floor.
“You know I don’t eat that shit,” danced the words on the screen.
“It’s a dragon’s dinner, Waters,” said Mrs. Parks, “and that’s what you get. If you don’t want to eat it, that’s fine.”