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He scanned the waiting crowd of dragons for familiar faces—their own hatchlings all served the Empire in one capacity or another, and they would quickly recognize him from his twice-stumped tail. Not recognizing anyone, he landed and settled his wings so that they tented and changed his outline as much as possible. All eyes were on the workers, mostly men and blighters, shaping and prepping scale.
Some of the cosmeticians were creating outlandish, colorful designs on their dragons, working paint and shaping scale into swirls or spikes or what looked like vines or jagged bolts. He recognized some iconography from the Lavadome. He knew enough to recognize a toothy Skotl sigil from the pen-quill-like flourish of the Ankelenes.
At the other end of the spectrum were dragons just giving scale, teeth, ears, and wings a good cleaning and oiling.
AuRon opted for something in the middle. He joined a line for an artisan who was deepening faded greens on older females and pulling misshapen scale from male dragons’ faces, making them look neater, sleeker, and wind-friendly.
“I’m Jussfin, your honor,” the human said when AuRon’s turn came, in decent Drakine. He had the squat body and heavy shoulders of a Ghioz stonelayer. “Some skin-painting, sir?”
“Make me look a little heavier and more imposing, if you can,” AuRon said.
“Of course, sir.” He gestured to some colors and a blighter assistant started to pour paint into a pan.
“So, where will you be seated, your honor?” Jussfin asked.
“Near the roasting hogs, I hope,” AuRon countered.
They fell into chitchat. AuRon decided to try his story, that he was a small-time trader who flew into the Far East selling “medicinals.” He’d been east a lifetime ago with the Chartered Company in its traveling towers and could describe the markets of the East from memory.
“Ah, so you’re an aboveground most of the time,” Jussfin said.
“I’ve always been a traveler,” AuRon said.
AuRon tried to imagine what a dragon of the Empire might possibly talk about with someone painting his body, and finally asked if he knew what color the Queen would be wearing.
“Black, I hear,” Jussfin said.
“No,” the dragon next to AuRon countered. “I’m sure it will be red, to commemorate the battle. Yellow highlights.”
AuRon deployed DharSii’s famously noncommittal throat-clearing, lest he fall into a conversation with this dragon.
“You’re done,” Jussfin said, coming to his rescue. “No scale makes for light work. I appreciate the rest. I feel up to pulling misshapen scale from the most elderly dowager now.”
He surveyed the results. Jussfin had taken his natural dark stripes and enlarged them, adding a bone-colored outline around them to make them more pronounced. He’d dusted his wings with something that made the skin redder and a little reflective.
They settled on a price. AuRon argued only a little; Jussfin had named an amount lesser than any other he’d seen pass up and down the ranks of dragons. He ended up giving over two golden coins and telling the artist to never mind about the change.
“Many thanks, your honor,” Jussfin said. “I think you’ll find the roast pork at its most succulent to the north, by the overhang and the waterfall, your honor. Keep well above and behind the Queen’s dinner-path.”
AuRon made a special effort to rise early the day of the feast. He wanted to find a few hiding spots, should there be guards checking names or who knew what sort of introductory rituals. Still, he was not the first dragon aloft—there were messengers and a few dragons of the Aerial Host up and around, and more than a few males and females returning in the predawn gloom from assignations. Keeping to the shadows, he explored the monument to draconic vanity looking down on the city of Ghioz from the Red Queen’s old palace.
He’d been here before and had nothing but unhappy memories of the place. He’d been told that the side of the mountain had been reshaped several times; it had first been carved into the likeness of some kingly dwarf or other, for the foundations of Ghioz were as a dwarfen trading post at an important river junction. As the city changed hands and empires came and went, the face on the mountain changed races as well. When AuRon first laid eyes upon it, it was the classic, sharp-jawed visage of the Red Queen looking down upon Ghioz.
Now, with a good deal more carving and the addition of a great bronze snout and copper scale gone green with age, it was a dragon’s face, snout tucked toward breast and watchful eyes looking southwest, somewhat in the direction of the Lavadome, he supposed.
Vanity. Monuments to power. If any of the Empires had given thought to the temporary nature of the mountain’s appearance, they showed no sign of it.
AuRon wondered if deep in his hearts, his Copper brother didn’t miss the feeling of being atop the pinnacle of power represented by that carving. He frequently said that NiVom, the most intelligent dragon he’d ever met, would make a better Tyr in any case, but AuRon wondered. It seemed NiVom maintained his hold only by the exercises of Imfamnia, whom no one dared call the “Jade Queen” these days.
They were still at work on the mountainside, it seemed. Scaffolding and signs of digging ran from the eye like a twisting wooden tear. There were no construction noises this morning, however; all the thralls were hard at work preparing for the feast.
AuRon explored the works and found his answer among the ironmongery and picks. The builders were at work on the chamber behind the eyes, fixing two great lenses and fire-braziers in the manner of navigation lights he’d seen on the shores of the Inland Ocean. His own Isle of Ice had had such a fixture, though much smaller, on the cliff above the docks. AuRon guessed that when the great braziers were filled with hot coals, the light would be refracted by the lenses and intensified so that it might be seen a horizon away.
Still, among all the clutter he could watch events below. There were several hiding places amid the lumber and tunneling and sheets for keeping the dust down, and he could wriggle out and escape around the lenses if the other access points were blocked. Yes, it was quiet and safe. Warm even, out of the weather. He’d been afraid that he would have to cling to some windswept outcropping again.
For that matter, Wistala sometimes questioned DharSii about his former expectations when he’d been part of the Lavadome’s elite in his youth. Did Wistala wonder how her face would look, glaring out over Ghioz?
The feast would take place in the gardens beneath the carved mountainside and palace, above the city of the Ghioz yet below the palace of this NiVom who called himself the Sun King.
