The Dragon's Midwinter Debt

The pass is closed. The pipes are frozen. The lodge owner keeps saying a dragon is coming, which is charming, because I am here to audit his books, not his folklore. Then the roof shakes, and I stop finding it charming. His name is Rurik. He is the last of something, and he does not have gold. He has debts — hundreds of them, centuries deep, catalogued in the same careful hand as my grandmother's. My grandmother. Who died before she would tell me what she did during the war. I came up this mountain to close an account. Instead I've opened one that names a living man as a payment, and ties me to a dragon until it's settled. We have until the thaw. The nights are long, the fire is small, and I am starting to suspect the debt is not the only thing that has been waiting to be claimed.