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Some dragons bowed deeply, others just bobbed their nose-tips, and a few put heads together—mind-speech didn’t come easily to Skotls—to discuss their Tyr as he walked by, his withered left forelimb giving him an odd gait.
A bit of green flashed across the fields, parting a rather sickly flock of sheep grazing on hairy lichens. The procession halted again.
“Tyr,” a young dragonelle said, throwing herself down before him with neck turned full round to expose the lesser hearts beating behind her chin. “My name is Yefkoa. My parents wish me to mate against my will . . . to . . . to SoRolatan.”
The Copper knew him. SoRolatan was another Copper, though brighter and with less of a blood-tinge to his scales. A former Upholder at the tip of the Empire’s southern wing, he’d grown rich mining for the ores dragons needed—indeed craved—for a healthy growth of scale. Rumor had it he had a jade or two. Now he wanted multiple mates?
“SoRolatan has a mate, does he not, dear?” the Copper asked.
“But barren, poor creature,” Nilrasha said, glaring at the frightened, skinny little thing, her wings hardly dry from emerging. “The old Upholder’s daughter in the Six Ridges, you’ll remember.”
The Copper had come to the Lavadome practically as a hatchling but had never quite developed the ear for politics, intrigue, and out-and-out gossip that most dragons born there seemed to possess. He tasted the air next to his mate’s cheek in gratitude for her smooth supply of detail.
“I suppose you have someone else in mind?” the Copper asked. Yefkoa seemed a sleek young dragonelle with an attractive set of wings, even folded and decorously tucked. He understood SoRolatan’s interest. The Copper was mated, not dead.
“No, Tyr. I . . .”
She kept looking at Nilrasha as though fearing a bite.
“Spit it out,” the Copper said.
“I want to fly. Out in real air under real sun.”
The Copper wondered if she wasn’t one of those back-to-nature dragons. She’d clearly never tangled with crossbows or war machines.
She looked healthy enough, and had nice lines for air, as far as he could judge such matters. “Flying, eh? How fast are you?”
“Fast!” she said. “Just watch.”
She hopped nimbly onto a rock and opened her wings—every set of male eyes upon her—and launched herself into the open air of the Lavadome. She gained altitude fast, then dropped into a gliding, tail-balanced swoop. Reflected burning earth turned her glittering young scales to meteors as she rounded the Imperial Rock and returned.
The Copper would have liked to fly like that. His artificial wing joint allowed him to stay aloft and maneuver, but he was no aerialist.
Fortunately the wind of her landing dried his eyes.
Skotl. All brawn and no brains, Nilrasha thought to him. Don’t let a nice pair of wings make you do anything rash. SoRolatan is an important and influential dragon.
Mind-speech is a strange thing. The closer two dragons are, the better their communication link. Sometimes Nilrasha preempted his thoughts, but she was better at guarding hers. Whenever he probed to find out about his first mate, Halaflora, for example—
Ahh, the past is set. You’re Tyr, you need to be thinking about the future, as yet unformed.
“Name the Upholds, the dominant hominid race in each, its principal product for the Empire. You can really impress me by naming the Upholder as well,” the Copper said.
“Ha-errr,” she began, settling her wings in a way that made his hearts beat faster. “Bant, mostly blighters, produces fleshstock—sheep, I mean—and grain, the Upholder is . . . NiThonius. Far Anaea, humans, produces kern, the Upholder is . . . is . . . Ru—no, CuPinnatax ...”
If you’re really planning to sit through this, I’m going to go on to the river and have a bath, Nilrasha thought. But she made no move to abandon him in so public a manner.
“The Aerial Host could use you,” the Copper said, cutting her off as she mentioned that Yellowsand, to the southwest, offered only rare spices and herbs and a few jewels grudgingly extracted from the waste-elves there in return for horseflesh. “But remember, fly only at night, unless it’s an emergency or over the home mountains controlled by the griffaran. We aren’t ready for the surface yet.”
“And SoRolatan? His hoard-offering to my family?”
“I’ll see to it that it is replaced—within reason.”
You’ve made an enemy today, Nilrasha thought to him.
And also a friend. She’s young—she’ll be around longer.
Young dragonelles forget favors like clouds lose water, she thought back. Old dragons like SoRolatan hold grudges like dwarves keeping beard-light.
