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“True. But I wish to speak of the future, not the past.”
“You are often opposed at the council table.”
“Any rower on the icewater could tell you this. I would know the future.”
Wistala wondered what kind of seeds she could plant behind that fiery golden mask. “You will put your armor on again. You will lead your dwarves into battle. You will take an act other generals will call rash, but it will bring you victory and accolades. Complete victory and high accolades.”
“Can I trust a dragon?”
“Yes.”
“Because I have before, a mated pair who cheated me.”
Wistala had trouble forming the words. “If I cross you, I will die as they did.”
“Hmpf,” Fangbreaker said. “You take the chance that I will not chase you down the mountain road. But I will cross the Inland Ocean and carry vengeance even into the earthquakes of the fire coast beyond if you prove a charlatan.”
Wistala took a deep breath. She might as well be skinned for a bull as a calf. How would Prymelete put it? “Then hear my oracle and judge: You must and you will master the council table. You must and will throw away the ways of politic and traditon that hold you back. You must and will master yourself, go down the mountains again, burning off the girdle of fat and replacing it with one of leather and iron. You must and you will master your people, as once Thul did, be firm and they will love you for it. Be hard and they will worship you.” She half-heard his lips form a familiar word out of Rainfall’s histories. “Forge them into one weapon, and I see no power on the Upper World or Lower that can stand against you—yes, even the ten-jewel crown will be yours—”
“The crown of Masmodon,” Fangbreaker whispered. “Such an oracle. Oh, dreams! Oh, dreams!”
Wistala collapsed, knocking over some of the candles. Ragwrist stopped one before it could set the tent alight.
“No more, I beg you, great dwarf,” Ragwrist said, falling to his knees. “You’ll be the death of my poor dragon.”
Wistala watched the dwarf out of a rolling, water-lidded eye. He shook himself from his reverie. “Hmpf. The story’s worth some coin, though the pratfall at the end is a bit much.” He reached into his purse and flung a handful of golden coin at her. It rattled off her scales like hail. “Spend it quickly if you lied.”
“You’re too generous!” Ragwrist said, gathering the gold, though he didn’t offer any back to make Fangbreaker’s payment more equitable. Wistala again heard dwarves dropping on their bellies as the staff tapped its way off.
Ragwrist added to the drama by telling the prone dwarves outside that the fortune-telling was over for the day, but by special engagement, the circus would stay one more day before moving off.
That night Wistala ate at Ragwrist’s table.
“Keep up performances like that, and at next two-moon’s break this winter, I shall have a new wagon built special for you, drawn by a tusked-and-silvered gargant. Yes.”
“Aren’t you afraid he’ll come after us if my prophecy doesn’t pan out?” Wistala asked.
Ragwrist wiped grease from his chin with his multicolored sleeve. “They never do. Most hominids spare themselves the embarrassment of admitting they were cheated. Ah, Wistala, this is the beginning of a profitable friendship.”
The circus packed up, though no dwarf children were brought across the lake to see the gargants go, and only a few dwarf-helms showed at the broken towers.
One odd group of humans did come across to watch the circus go, however. A tall handsome woman in a blue cloak, a young girl, and a towhead boy watched the train pack up. The woman knelt beside the boy and continually pointed to Wistala and spoke to the youngest child, and soon the child was pointing, too, but the wind carried her words away.
Wistala wondered if this was the Dragonblade’s family, and for one awful moment was tempted to run up the hill and burn them down to charred bones, so that the Dragonblade might come home to destruction and grief, but she suppressed the evil thought.
She was a dragon, after all, and better than the assassins.
A month later, the circus stopped at the prosperous Green Dragon Inn. Wistala couldn’t say how she felt about the homecoming: happy that she was again seeing familiar faces, or saddened that she would leave with the next “close.”
She appeared at the Quarryness Hypatian Hall and confirmed that she still lived, much to the delight of the children who gathered on the common and stairs to watch.
Rainfall was his same courteous self, and Widow Lessup still despaired at the damage Wistala’s scales did to the doorframe and stair walls, though Wistala walked about the house with claws retracted, trying to pad as lightly as Yari-Tab, who now had a velvet cushion under the skylights in the library.
“And the thane? Still angry with you?” Wistala asked at dinner. The same Old Guard sat around the table, with the addition of Lada and the subtraction of Intanta, who was watching over Rayg.
“We correspond but little,” Rainfall said, Lada hanging on his arm, as she had from the moment of their arrival. “He has more barbarian emissaries out of the north visiting him than agents of the Hypatian Order.”
Rainfall tickled Lada under the chin, and she beamed.
