Upon ascending to the throne a young prince learns the highest state secret in the kingdom is that the treasury, and the very economy itself, has been managed for hundreds of years by a 4lb dragon too runty and crippled to amass or protect its own fortune.
His name is Fortescue and he doesn’t eat maidens (he eats roasted fish with fine herbs and assorted veg prepared by the cook) or slay warriors (he killed a rat that sassed him last week). But he’s very good at counting and assessing. He can stand on a pile of gold and tell if a single piece is missing. He can spot the difference between solid gold and gold plate at 50 yards.
The new king was smooth chinned and hairless, still a child. His uncle offered to advise him, but really the villain wanted to empty the king’s coffers and run off to Spain with a comely young widow. (Well, she’d be a widow by the time they’re ready to leave.)
Dragons are tough skinned and without a magic sword you can’t kill one, even a tiny one who limps a little and can’t fly higher than four feet in the air. The uncle didn’t think Fortescue would have a tough hide, which is how he ended up standing over the creature in the middle of the night holding the hilt of a shattered sword. Fortescue, who’d been having a lovely dream about breathing out flame like a volcano, was irritated. He took a great breath and breathed a narrow jet of flame over the broken sword hilt still in the uncle’s hand. A full sized dragon would have shot flames more widely, but a full grown dragon (regardless of size) can breathe flame hot enough to melt any substance on earth. The uncle screamed, but it was too late to drop his weapon, which had liquified in his hand.
He was thrown in prison in considerable pain. His dashing young widow ran off to France with the baker’s son, which she would have done anyway. The uncle was wrong about many things. He didn’t last very long in the dungeons, with his injured hand. The healers could have saved him, but it involved a saw and he said he’d rather die. Which he did.
The young king buried his uncle in the family crypt, but with a small, plain marker off in a pokey corner. Everyone generally agreed that it was a mark of quality and that he’d grow up to be a very good king.
The young king visited Fortescue in the treasury, which no king had ever done before, and asked the dragon if he could do anything to thank him. Anything at all. Fortescue thought it over and said, “Yes, I would like to fly in the garden at night sometimes. I can’t fly very high, but I like to see the stars.”
The king granted Fortescue the right of free movement within the kingdom. He often went out for an evening stroll on nights that Fortescue was out for a fly. He taught the dragon quoits and the dragon taught the king sound investment strategies. Over many years the king grew in stature and wisdom. He learned a lot from the dragon, who wept at the king’s death some 70 years later and sealed his tomb closed with seams of gold himself. The dragon kept up his faithful service and lived to see the king’s great great great great grandchild born. He died the same morning and they named the child Fortescue.
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