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Nilrasha returned late, ill-tempered, tired, and footsore. She’d been accompanying some drakka in the Firemaidens on a fast training march to the river ring.
“On the return trip I brought a gift of fowl to SoRolatan at the Six Ridges. He’s still smarting over that dragonelle you took out from under his nose.”
“In a fair flight he’d never catch up to her. Fat old thing.”
“Still,” she said, “I had to listen to his fool of a mate babble while I tried to come up with new features to praise on a dragon remarkable only for how little there is to praise. I kept the compliments flowing through an entire meal to get a promise that his latest hatchlings would go into the Firemaidens.”
“You play this game like you’ve been doing it since you were in the egg.”
She looked off, beyond their little outer chamber. “You forget, my love, that I grew up on milkdrinker’s hill. Only one rich dragon there—that bug Sreeksrack—and the rest of us were fighting over his scraps. It’s the same game. They want what you have, only the stakes have changed. Under milkdrinker’s hill it might have been a rusty shovel scoop or a scrawny old chicken. Now it’s rooms looking out on the dome and or a share of oliban trade.”
The Copper touched tail-tip to tail-tip. “You’re the rock my rule rests upon.”
“Quit cracking it and I wouldn’t have to spend all my time filling cracks.” She stared at him as though she were looking at him for the first time tonight. “My Tyr, you look positively bled! You weren’t feeding those bats again.”
“No. Demen.”
“Oh, whatever—”
“That general of theirs, Gigrix, he’d had dragonblood before. I saw an opportunity.”
“You’ll lose his respect. A Tyr doing such a thing.”
He told her about the twins’ experiments with humans and Rayg’s opinion.
“I’ll have a word with their thralls,” she said.
“You have influence even with theirs?”
“I’ve worked hard to have all the thralls come to me with their problems. Thralls know their owners better than their families, you know.”
“I thought you rewarded them out of a kind heart,” the Copper said. It would be hard to say whether he was disappointed, impressed, or some mix of both.
She snorted. “They’re a tool, like claws, like tongue, like feasts.”
“Like mating?” He half hoped she would lie to him.
She cocked her head. “Not ours, my love.”
As the thralls cleared away the meal he put his neck across hers. Nilrasha tickled him with her griff and began to sing.
These were his favorite moments. He felt like a hatchling again, warm against his mother—or at least that’s how he imagined a hatchling felt. He’d had only one brief moment with his own . . .
Chapter 10
They gave him a comfortable nook out of the wind that couldn’t quite be called a cave, but it had a fine view of the mountains to the south, soft bracken to rest upon, and a windbreak. It smelled faintly of dragon, but not DharSii. AuRon found an old white scale, lost under the bracken and tinged with yellow and red fissures.
He idled for a night and a day. A pair of blighters wearing leather reinforced with dragonscale at the knees, shoulders, and elbows, well groomed save that they were barefoot, brought him a cartload of hams and sausages of assorted shapes and flavorings.
“More?” one asked in intelligible, if not intelligent, Drakine.
AuRon broke one open, sniffed carefully, tested it with his tongue, then took a taste. It seemed wholesome.
“This will do for now.”
He ate lightly, just in case.
It was pleasant to be at this altitude. Back in the north, ice and snow would be thick in this fissure. He had just enough energy to find a cool stream for drinking and bathing.
