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“It occurs to me,” the cat said, “that once underground, you could make a meal of me.”
“Can you keep something from the birds earthbound and ditch-gossips?”
“Of course. Felines are full of secrets.”
Wistala drew herself up on her stubby legs. “I’m a dragon, feline, and I give you my word as Wistala Irelianova that I’ll keep a fair bargain if you will.”
Whiskers twitched. “And what would a dragon be?”
Wistala froze for a moment. The cat seemed perfectly worldly, well-spoken and felicitous of fang. Apart from the chopped-short neck and face, she was almost drakine after Jizara’s elegantly limbed fashion. How could she not know what a dragon was?
“We are old, falling between mountains and man, gifted by the Four Spirits with strengths to order the world.”
The cat’s back rose in a graceful arc. “Order? Order is the enemy of the feline. We thrive on chaos, and if there’s not enough about, we instigate some. I hope you haven’t come to bring order to Tumbledown.”
“Nothing like.”
“I should think a creature meant to bring order to the world would be bigger.”
“I’m young.”
Yari Sunwarm Fourth Orangedaughter turned her alarmed pose into a casual stretch. “Make me this hole, Wistala Irelianova, and I and my kits will be in your debt and keep your secret that a dragon has come to Tumbledown.”
“Bargain.”
“Then let us touch whiskers . . . errr . . .”
Wistala extended her griff. “Will these do?”
“How beautiful! Yes, of course.”
The cat approached and stood nose-to-nose with her, then put her head alongside Wistala’s. Wistala felt the cat’s whiskers tickle as they flicked along her scales and probed the gaps. They prrumed at each other, and Wistala felt a warm affinity.
“I fear I shall have to like you for your mind, Wistala Irelianova. You are too hard to perch on for a comfortable nap and smell like that furnace the men use to cook their metal.”
“It’s Tala to my friends.”
“Then I’m Yari-Tab to you. Follow.”
The cat jumped away, tail flicking this way and that in excitement. Dragons and felines must be related somehow! Even their naming customs bore some resemblance.
“What’s catspeech like, Yari-Tab?”
The cat spoke from deep in her throat: long garble garble hrrr hunt and fair garble garble hrr blood.
Why, felines used words of Drakine!
“Beware blighters bearing gifts,” Wistala said back to her in Drakine, quoting an old dragon-proverb.
“Watch out for—ummm, dirty presents?” Yari-Tab said, as she trotted up a leaning column that reminded Wistala of a windblown tree on a mountainside.
“Close. That was dragonspeech.”
“Well, I never! I feel like I’ve got a new tchatlassat.”
Wistala thought she knew the word. “A . . . clutchmate?”
“More like a—umm . . . cousin. A distant blood relation who is also a friend.”
