Page 20 of Raven’s Fight

"Pack-lord Davan," Therun says to the largest, the one with the silver through her coat. The wolf's amber eyes go from Therun to Thauglor to me, each look separate and unhurried. "This is Thauglor Mrithun and Corvus Mourningstar, of the Marzana Empire and the Blackhaven flight."

Davan looks at me for a long moment. I hold it without moving.

He steps forward, and I understand that he isn't weighing whether I'm a danger. He's weighing something else, and I don't learn what until he turns away, satisfied, and sits.

"He's decided you'll do," Therun says. There's something in his voice that isn't quite amusement but lives on the same street.

"For what?"

"That's between him and the female he intends to pledge to. I don't presume to speak for my pack-lords." Therun starts walking again, and the wolves move with us, some ranging ahead, some flanking, easy about all of it. "What I can tell you is that Davan can hold a trail forty miles in good conditions. His pack covers ground two wings of dragons couldn't cover in the same time. They don't need to see a thing to find it. They need to have smelled it once. Once is enough."

I think about the fire drake rotation on Blackhaven's western border. The scent Keir's pack can't quite name. Forty miles in good conditions.

"How many packs?"

"Three on the southern slopes, two on the northern coast, one that runs the interior, and one that considers itself unaffiliated and reliably turns up anyway whenever there's something worth doing." Therun glances at me sideways. "Two hundred and twelve wolves across all of them. A hundred and eight answer to Davan directly. The rest follow their own pack-lords and accept his word on anything that touches the whole continent."

"And they'd come to Blackhaven."

"Davan will go where the work is. The others follow Davan." Simple. Final. "The metallic wing is a different kind of commitment — those are my own blood and I send them with different weight behind them. The wolves are their own. I'm not pledging them to you. I'm introducing you. What happens after that is between them and your female."

I look at the pack-lord, who is investigating something in the undergrowth with the total attention of a creature for whom the world is full of information.

"I'll tell her," I say.

"Tell her accurately," Therun says. "He'll know if you don't."

I believe him.

✦ ✦ ✦

The evening before we leave, Thauglor and I eat in the guest hall alone.

Therun has withdrawn after the signing, his people providing food without requiring company. The hall is large and warm, lit by that amber southern light, and the silence across the table is the comfortable kind that doesn't need managing. Thauglor eats with the methodical efficiency of a man for whom food is fuel and not pleasure. Three years of sharing meals with his family have taught me that's a Thauglor trait rather than a dragon one — Raven eats with real attention, Mina with decisive enthusiasm.

He sets his fork down and looks across at me.

"He tested you well today," he says.

"Did I pass?"

"The wolves decided you'd do. To Therun, that carries more weight than anything I could have said for you." He picks the fork up again. "Davan has refused two previous delegations. He sat for you."

I think about that amber assessment. The unhurried decision. "What was he looking for?"

Thauglor is quiet a moment. "Someone who wouldn't try to own what he was being shown," he says at last. "You looked at the wolves the way you look at Raven's flight. The way a man looks at something he recognizes rather than something he wants. He noticed." A pause. "Most people look at a thing of value and start calculating immediately. You looked at them and understood what they were. That's rarer than it should be."

I don't know what to say to that, so I eat my dinner.

"She chose well," Thauglor says after a while. Quietly. Not quite to me — more the way a man says a thing he's been carrying a long time and finds he's put it into the air without entirely meaning to. He looks faintly surprised at himself, and on Thauglor that expression is rare enough that it takes me a moment to place it.

"All five of us?"

He looks at me. "All five of you." He picks up his wine. "I expected to hate all five of you, if you want it honestly. I had twenty-one years to work up to it." He drinks and sets the glass down. "I was wrong about most of it."

From Thauglor this is the equivalent of a declaration of deep affection. I take it as one.

We finish in comfortable quiet, and I go to bed feeling better about the morning than I expected to.