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“Oh, the years have accustomed me to that. You’re not cruel. I lived among barbarians when I was very young. Dragons aren’t cruel to those in their power. They don’t go out of their way to make captives miserable to amuse themselves.”
“You’re never afraid I’ll lose my temper and eat you? I thought that all thralls, free or no, lived with that fear.”
“Not particularly. It would be an easy death.”
“What do you mean?”
“Have you ever seen a really old dwarf?”
“What does that have to do with anything?” the Copper asked, puzzled.
“I am getting to that. They get so they just sit. Can hardly lift a finger anymore, but too stubborn to die. Some get wheeled about in tiny pushcarts, for a time, while they still talk and give instructions. Eventually, when truly ancient, they lapse into silence. They get fed and washed off once a day, from the same contraption, a sort of portable pump you wear on your back. They might as well be a potato plant. Rows of statues in the hall of ancients.” Rayg shuddered. “Just eyes, glaring out of this bird’s nest of hair. I think death’s better.”
“You’re not a dwarf,” the Copper said.
“No one can accuse you of being of philosophical mind,” Rayg said. “I only mean I’m troubled by the frailties of inevitable age.”
“I’ll see to it that a few of your children are around to help as you get older.”
The Copper looked at Rayg. He knew him to be at least a score of years into adulthood, yet he still looked hale and hearty. He wondered if he didn’t have a secret source of dragonblood or something to keep himself so youthful looking.
A pair of young drakes, glaring at each other, approached, but the Copper waved them off.
“More grievances to be settled,” the Copper said, trying to put a briskness in his voice that he didn’t feel. Rayg’s talk of decline depressed him. “It is enough to make one wish for a return of dueling.”
“But you hate duels.”
“Oh, I’m just tired and I didn’t enjoy my wine. Just last night I had my meal interrupted by two dragons—never mind their names; they were sort of a charcoal and a dull bronze. Charcoal sold a herd of cattle, an even score, to Bronze in exchange for three young thralls. By the time Bronze delivered the thralls and picked up the cattle, two of the beasts had sickened and died. Charcoal insisted that Bronze take the carcasses, as they could still be eaten.
“Neither could resolve anything between themselves, so they brought it to me. Bronze wanted to keep the ten kine but give only two slaves, but Charcoal demanded that the original deal for the herd be kept.”
“What did you do?”
“I told Charcoal that if dead cattle were so valuable he should keep them and replace them with live beasts. Bronze claimed that he would be given two more sickly beasts and insisted on the return of one thrall and that anything else would be a cheat. Now both are more angry with me than with each other. United in their disgust at my decision, they had a fine session of tail-bowling after, it seemed.”
“Dwarves had disputation hearings,” Rayg said when he’d finished chuckling. “I saw one once. Part of one—I’m told it went on for much of the day. Each side brought several others to give their version of events.”
The Copper couldn’t dig teeth into it, but something about speaking to Rayg always settled his mind. Or the purge settled his mind and he was simply used to venting his firebladder—figuratively—in Rayg’s presence. It often gave him ideas. Maybe Rayg’s manner of settling disputes could be put into practice here.
“Speaking of disputes, may I ask you for a favor?”
“Of course.”
“Those twins, SiHazathant and Regalia. They’ve been giving dragonblood to the expectant mothers among their thralls, trying to breed extra-strong humans or something. A little dragonblood is a fine thing, but a diet of it exclusively—the babies are born dead, or don’t live long. Which is probably just as well. The mothers are deeply grieved by the . . . the mutations. One killed herself. Would you tell them to stop experimenting?”
Idle fools. Of course, it wasn’t all that different from what he’d done with his bats, but the bats weren’t dangerous to begin with and had been much improved by doses of dragonblood. Humans, on the other hand, were and always would be a threat.>They had the usual questions about dying of hunger on the way—he told them that they would just have to sneak a sup from sleeping Firemaids, there should still be some left in the Star Tunnel—and of course, there were the demen themselves.
“Now, you can help yourself to a little of my blood. Just a little. I’m weak enough from feeding demen. You can clean out this cut, while you’re at it.”
Nothing like bat saliva for speeding healing, he’d found. Even Nilrasha thought it was disgusting, but she couldn’t argue the result—the wounds healed thrice as fast with only the faintest of scars.
Thinking he’d done a good day’s work, he told the thralls he would have an extra haunch of roast pork for supper. And perhaps a second or even third helping of that wine his adoptive grandmother used to be so fond of. He had blood to make up.
All the while he met that afternoon with NoSohoth, the smells coming up from the kitchens made it very hard to keep his mind on affairs in the hills. NoSohoth’s droning lulled him, and he had to resort to his old training cave-watch trick of digging sii into saa to stay awake.
Unfortunately, dinner was spoiled by one of his thralls, the female in charge of the cleaning staff. She was a massive creature, as wide as she was tall, almost white hair bound up in a Tyr’s household kerchief.
“Oh, sir. One of my scrubs, she found some strange odds and ends in your wizard’s sleeping chamber. We’re used to his strange devices, but we wondered about this.”
