The knight went sprawling, landing inches from where Gwen and Isobelle stood. With a start, Gwen realized that the body wearing the knight’s armor was quite obviously female, and not even a young, boyish female at that—the dancer moved with such overt masculinity that Gwen would never have known had the woman not landed literally right before her eyes.

With a scream of rage to match the roar of the dragon, the knight lurched to his feet and drew his sword. Without his lance, he seemed tiny, one man facing down dozens—one man facing the most massive creature ever to walk these lands.

The fight was quick and brutal. Without his lance the knight was doomed. The dragon closed in, swarming around the knight so thickly his gleaming silver armor became invisible. The knight leapt back, but then lost his balance—for a horrible moment he stood there, as if on the edge of a cliff, about to fall. At Gwen’s side, Isobelle cried a wordless shout of warning, as wrapped up in the spectacle as Gwen was.

The dragon saw its chance and charged.

The knight moved with deliberate grace. He had never been off-balance at all. Before the dragon could stop its charge, the knight had raised his sword and driven it deep into the eye of the beast.

The dozen-throated dragon howled in rage and pain, and flames spilled out of its mouth to lie, smoldering, against the hillside. Its wings flapped futilely—its arms tried to grab for the knight, who held on grimly to the sword long enough to twist it once—and the beast collapsed into a hundred pieces, scattered on the grass.

Dimly, Gwen was aware of the crowd screaming, thundering applause, but she could not take her eyes off the dancer who had been a knight. The silver-clad figure was still gazing down at her sword, embedded between arm and rib cage of the dancer whose costume had born the eye of the dragon. She pulled the sword out, very much the way someone would pull a blade from a beast they had killed. Gwen half expected her to clean it of the creature’s blood. The dancer gave a shake, stepped back, and replaced the sword in the sheath at her belt. Slowly, slowly, she became herself again.

It was Isobelle pulling her hand from Gwen’s arm that shook her from her trance. The dancers who had been the dragonsfire were skipping around the perimeter of the clearing and weaving through the throngs of watchers, holding open jingling velvet bags that were beginning to sag under the weight of the coins the viewers tossed in. Isobelle had let go of Gwen in order to fumble in the pocket of her skirt, pulling out a fistful of coins and shoving them into the nearest bag.