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Yari-Tab had her litter of kittens in an old laundry basket upstairs, and Jalu-Coke followed with a fresh litter of her own in the barn. Thanks to Mossbell’s odd hole-and-corner architecture and rich gardens, the kittens had no end of places to explore, and the older cats feasted upon the mouse and rat population. The inside cats took to following the Widow Lessup about, for she was constantly moving the remaining pieces of furniture and ordering her daughters and sons to clean, polish, and organize, and the curious kittens had learned that explosions of startled insects or mice could result every time a wardrobe was pulled out.
“A hundred years of dust in this house, if it’s a day,” the widow said. “Len-boy, fetch fresh rags from the washroom and tell your sister she’s falling behind on the laundry again!”
Rainfall could only spread his hands and apologize when the widow found a pile of ancient crockery under a chair in the morning-room, or spider-sacs thick as peas in a pod under his bed, until Wistala wondered who was truly the master of Mossbell now.
“Carpentry and cooking are the only indoor work I’ve ever been able to manage,” he said, after another astonished outburst when she awoke a family of raccoons napping out the day in the upstairs linen armoire.
Wistala had become something of a public figure on the estate. The Lessup boys brought their friends, and they’d watch her napping in the sun, not knowing that dragons often cracked an eye as they slept, nerving themselves for an approach. Eventually they’d come up to her in tight little groups of two or three, and one would reach out his grubby hand and run a fingernail across her scales. She’d lift her fringe and drop her griff and bring round her head with a piping dragon cry, and they’d run away shrieking as though expecting to be roasted.
Little girls clapped their hands over their eyes when they first saw her, but once they got over their initial shyness stepped across the line into overfamiliarity, even outrage, for they liked nothing better than to set wildflowers in her scales and fringe until she looked as though she was sprouting like a young elf.
“That’s women for you,” Rainfall said, plucking a red blossom from the fold in her skin where she tucked up her griff. “Always improving on nature.”
And then it was time for Rainfall’s granddaughter to return.
Because of the elf’s wounds, the high judge attended Rainfall personally. He came with a dozen attendants and counted out the coin Rainfall owed in back taxes, then sealed Rainfall’s petition to have his granddaughter restored to him with a great deal of melted wax and ribbon. Wistala thought the high judge an odd-looking fellow made mostly of wrinkles and sags, with a dismal attire all of black deep as cave-dark, though it made the polished gold star on his collar flap and the golden tips of his boots look all the brighter.
The judge and his men ate vast meals before they left, leaving the Widow Lessup clucking that the whole household would be eating roots and apples for the next week.
The next day music woke her.
She stretched and followed the lilting tune until she found Rainfall in the music room playing his bell-pipe. This time she couldn’t dance with him, but she could chase her tail and caper until Widow Lessup stormed in with shrieks about what Wistala’s claws were doing to the polished floors.
“I admire your good humor,” Wistala said as she left. “You look fully recovered.”
“Fully?”
“Your eyes sparkle, and your hair is thickly leaved. Such colors!” The willow-leaf locks in his hair had gone red and gold and orange.
“I am happy. I’ve had a letter. Lada comes home today.”
“Do you mind if I ask a question?”
Rainfall’s eyes sparkled. “You’ve chosen a good day to crave a handful of silver to eat. I’m in no mood to deny anything.”
“I should like that. But those tablets with the engraved writing. You held them close all the way back to Mossbell. I’m curious, did you find an old family relic in the ruins?”
Rainfall sat straight upright. “Our legends say dragons sniff out a weak spot the way dogs find bones. There must be some truth in it.”
“If it’s painful to you—”
“Oh, no, nothing like that. Closer to shame, perhaps. I think I told you that Hesstur was one of Eight Sister Cities who founded Hypatia, yes?”
“Yes,” Wistala said.
“Let me sit on you, and you can take us into my library.”
Rainfall put away his bell-pipe and got on Wistala. When he patted her side, she stalked off toward the library, and they soon arrived. The lectern that had once stood under the window was gone, probably sold, but a pair of old chairs filled its place with a velvet-covered object like a small tabletop upon one.
Rainfall seated himself beside it. “Such humble accommodations for history so important.
“When it became evident that the city would fall to the barbarians, those inside did their best to hide their valuables. I’m sure some priest had charge of these tablets and sealed them in one of the lower crypts before all entrances were sealed. She—I say she, for the clues were voiced in the feminine—made some signs in the old law-tongue, the father of the Hypatian high-tongue and the grandfather of Parl, though only judges and librarians read it much now. If the fires and collapses left the chamber intact, earthquake or grave-robbers later opened it again, though I expect the only ones to benefit were the rats.”
“This doesn’t tell me what the object is.”
“An idea, more than anything,” Rainfall said, removing the velvet. “When the eight sisters joined, they formed the King’s Council. The tyrant Masmodon did away with the King’s Council when he broke the Imperial Staves, but after the Reformation, the Directory modeled itself—”
You could never get a simple answer out of Rainfall when he fell into history. “What does that have to do with the tablets?”
