“You start right away,” said Kazul. “I’ll want dinner at seven. In the meantime, you can begin sorting the treasure.” The dragon nodded toward a dark opening on the left. “I’m sure some of it needs repairing. There’s at least one suit of armor with the leg off, and some of the cheaper magic swords are probably getting rusty. The rest of it really ought to be rearranged sensibly. I can never find anything when I want it.”

“What about the library you mentioned?” Cimorene asked.

“We’ll see how well you do on the treasure room first,” Kazul said. “The rest of your job I’ll explain as we go along. You don’t object to learning a little magic, do you?”

“Not at all,” said Cimorene.

“Good. It’ll make things much easier. Go and wash up, and I’ll let you into the treasure room so you can get started.”

Cimorene nodded and went to the room Kazul had told her to use. As she washed her face and hands, she felt happier than she had in a long time. She was not going to have to marry Therandil, and sorting a dragon’s treasure sounded far more interesting than dancing or embroidery. She was even going to learn some magic! And her parents wouldn’t worry about her, once they found out where she was. For the first time in her life, Cimorene was glad she was a princess. She dried her hands and turned to go back into the main cave, wondering how best to persuade Kazul to help her brush up on her Latin. She didn’t want the dragon to be disappointed in her skill.

“Draco, draconem, dracone,” she muttered, and her lips curved into a smile. She had always been rather good at declining nouns. Still smiling, she started forward to begin her new duties.

Cimorene settled in very quickly. She got along well with Kazul and learned her way around the caves with a minimum of mishaps. Actually, the caves were more like an intricate web of tunnels, connecting caverns of various shapes and sizes that belonged to individual dragons. It reminded Cimorene of an underground city with tunnels instead of streets. She had no idea how far the tunnels extended, though she rather suspected that some of them had been magicked, so that when you walked down them you went a lot farther than you thought you were going.