“I’m not sure how I’d know what that was. I don’t have any idea what humans already use.”
Manishi ran a finger over the rough, jagged surface of the sodalite. “The Parama Mountains have never been mined by humans. There must be any number of stones available there that we’ve never heard of. It could start a whole new line of research.”
It was an interesting idea. “It would have to wait until I can leave the city, but that could work.”
Manishi waved her hand in the air, a gesture Lamprophyre was unfamiliar with. “You’re afraid of scaring people? Just leave at night, and no one will see you to be scared.”
And that was a surprisingly useful idea. “That’s true,” Lamprophyre said, concealing her excitement at the thought of not being trapped in the human city, waiting on humans to come to terms with her.
“So it’s settled,” Manishi said. “You’ll bring me something unique, and I’ll pay you a fair rate for it.”
“Not good enough,” Rokshan said. “If it’s something no one’s seen before, how can you put a fair price on it? And suppose Lamprophyre doesn’t find anything you’re satisfied with? Then she’ll have put in the effort for nothing.”
Manishi’s lips curved in a scowl. “All right, what do you suggest?”
“You’ll pay Lamprophyre to search, just as you would an ordinary explorer,” Rokshan said. “And then we’ll negotiate a price for anything she finds. After I’ve done some research on fair prices.”
“Rokshan, don’t be absurd. Merchants mark up their prices once they’ve bought the stones from the suppliers. I should only pay what I would if I bought from an ordinary supplier.”
“I’m not stupid. I’ll take that into account.” Rokshan turned to Lamprophyre. “Is that an acceptable deal?”
Lamprophyre’s excitement about being able to fly freely had faded as the conversation progressed. Manishi struck her as the kind of obsessed person who might create a dragon-incapacitating weapon simply to be able to say she’d done it, and without being able to read her mind, Lamprophyre couldn’t prove her guilt or innocence. If Manishi were the one who’d made the weapon, it was a bad idea for Lamprophyre to provide her with stones to make other artifacts, potentially dragon-harming ones.
On the other hand, this deal, as Rokshan put it, put Manishi where Lamprophyre could watch her. She might lead Lamprophyre to the egg-stealing bandits, too. And if it wasn’t Manishi behind the theft, she might still provide Lamprophyre with information about other adepts who were.
“I suppose so,” she said. “I think reasonable people can always come to agreement.”
“You don’t know enough humans,” Manishi said. “But don’t worry, you can trust me.”
“Which is what untrustworthy people always say,” Rokshan said.
Manishi scowled again. “Just be circumspect when you ask around,” she said. “I don’t want anyone figuring out that I have a new supplier. You won’t work for anyone but me, right?”
“She’s an ambassador, not a rock sniffer,” Rokshan said. “Anything she does is her own business and none of yours.”
“But I won’t cheat you,” Lamprophyre said. “If that’s what you’re worried about.” People who worried about being cheated usually did so because they were cheats themselves, but it seemed Rokshan knew this about his sister, so Lamprophyre wasn’t worried.
“Of course not,” Manishi said. “If you happen to find any large pieces of obsidian, I’ll pay you double the market rate. See? I’m giving up my advantage so you’ll know I’m trustworthy.”
“Uh huh,” Rokshan said. “Fifty rupyas for Lamprophyre to make the journey. In advance.”
“Excuse me?” Manishi’s eyes widened. “That’s virtually extortion. I pay a rock sniffer twenty rupyas to make an exploratory journey.”
“But Lamprophyre has skills no rock sniffer can boast, and she can also do her own digging. Fifty or nothing.”
Lamprophyre watched the exchange in fascination. How did Rokshan know she could dig?
Manishi eyed Lamprophyre. “All right. Fifty.” She dug in a pouch at her waist and pulled out a handful of silver coins, from which she counted several into Rokshan’s hand. “I advise you,” she told Lamprophyre, “to learn to speak on your own behalf quickly. You don’t want to look weak.”
“It’s not weak to allow others the pleasure of using their strengths on your behalf,” Lamprophyre said. “Does it make Rokshan weak that he has to ride my shoulders in order to fly?”
Manishi grabbed Rokshan’s wrist. “You’ve flown on a dragon?” she said in a low, intense voice, as if she were telling a great secret. “How is that possible?”
Rokshan removed his wrist from her grip. “It’s a glimpse of the future. If humans and dragons can learn to live together in harmony, who knows what might be possible?”
Manishi regarded Rokshan closely. Then she turned her attention to Lamprophyre. Lamprophyre wished more than ever that she could hear Manishi’s thoughts, because the female’s eyes were narrowed and her lips set in a firm line. The expression probably meant something, but it was incomprehensible to Lamprophyre. “Who knows,” Manishi repeated. “Contact me when you have something.” She turned and strode toward the entrance without another word.
“Sorry,” Rokshan said. “I told you she was like that.”
“It doesn’t matter, so long as I can gain coin to pay for things.” Lamprophyre squinted at Rokshan’s hand. “I thought coin would be bigger. The stories all make it sound so important, and it’s just little things.” They were small and round, not much bigger around than the stones in Manishi’s rings, and had curved dents all across their flat surfaces.
“Vahas are bigger—they’re made of gold.” Rokshan closed his hand over the rupyas. “This will be enough to make a start. You don’t mind me handling your money, do you?”
“Of course not.”
“Well, I’ll keep careful track, anyway.” Rokshan put the rupyas away in his own pouch. “I have to give Manishi credit for one thing—it hadn’t occurred to me that you could fly out of here at night. You can fly at night, yes?”
“I can see by moonlight, though I’ve flown under the dark moon a few times. It’s scary in an exciting way.” Lamprophyre looked at where the half-moon sailed high in the eastern sky. “There should be enough light tonight.”
“Don’t feel like you have to run Manishi’s errands immediately. It will do her good to wait.”
“I have to find stone for myself to eat, though.” Lamprophyre sank down on her haunches next to Rokshan. “Want to come along?”
Rokshan laughed. “Do you even have to ask?”
Chapter Ten
The half-moon hung high in the western sky when the sun set, as if the moon were chasing its brighter sister. Lamprophyre waited impatiently for the color to fade from the distant horizon, then took to the sky with Rokshan clinging to her ruff. Manishi’s idea was sound; she heard no cries of fear or distress with either her ears or her mind. Even so, she rose high above Tanajital before winging her way northward. “I didn’t realize how much I took flying for granted,” she said. “I was only confined to the coliseum for half a day and it felt like forever.”
“I think things feel like they take much longer when there’s something else you want to do,” Rokshan said. She felt him lean far back and grip the ridge at the base of her wings, as if he were looking up at the sky. “Flying in the dark is so strange. It’s like night swimming, unable to see what’s beneath you and nothing but the stars and moon overhead.”
The Green River was a wide, bright snake winding its way across the invisible land below, gleaming in the moonlight. Lamprophyre remembered what she’d thought about needing to bathe. Maybe that was the solution, night swimming. She scowled. Flying at night, bathing at night…she shouldn’t have to behave like a sneak thief, skulking about in the darkness so no one would see her to be afraid. “Do you swim in the river, then?”
“Sometimes. Not often. I u
sed to go with Dharan and Baleran, but Dharan lives in Kolmira these days, and Baleran returned to Sachetan when his apprenticeship was finished.”
“I take it they’re friends of yours.”
“The best of friends. I wish they could meet you. Dharan in particular. He’s a collector of legends and ancient stories. He’d be in raptures over the chance to interrogate you. In a polite way, of course. He’s more proper and correct than any noble I know.”
“I thought royalty only had friends among the nobility.”
Rokshan was silent. Lamprophyre considered her words and couldn’t see anything offensive in them. She said anyway, “I’m sorry if that was rude.”
“What? Oh, no, I was just remembering. Dharan is unique in every way. The most brilliant mind of our generation. Taught himself to read when he was three, was studying advanced mathematics when he was seven—that might not mean anything to you, but among humans, it’s exceptional. His parents aren’t wealthy, just a couple of shoemakers, but they took him to the academy in Kolmira when he was eight, and the scholars sent him to Tanajital for a formal education. That’s where we met, at the academy here. I was struggling with one of my classes and the scholars assigned Dharan to tutor me. He taught me mathematics, I beat the stuffing out of the boys and girls who were tormenting him, and we became friends.”
Lamprophyre banked right to take advantage of an updraft. “I don’t understand most of that. Academy—you go there to learn things? We have stories of humans and dragons learning together, but I didn’t know it happened in a particular place.”
“Academies are mostly for the upper classes who can afford to pay, except for people like Dharan. They teach scholarly subjects and prepare students who are inclined that way for studying magic and artifact creation. There are schools for the lower classes, but not all of the citizens take advantage of them. I’ve heard commoners are more likely to learn practical skills.” Rokshan laughed. “I’m not sure an academy education is so much greater than an apprenticeship. I learned aspects of mathematics I never use.”
“So why did some of the other learners torment Dharan? Was he too proud of being intelligent?” She thought of Coquina and how she wished she’d been in a position to beat her, if only metaphorically.
“Actually, no. He’s the most self-effacing man I know. Human children are just like that sometimes. Dharan was poor and small for his age and they took pleasure in making him miserable. People like that still infuriate me.” Rokshan laughed again. “But then Dharan grew about seven inches and gained fifty pounds, mostly muscle, and suddenly he didn’t look like such a fun target anymore.”
Lamprophyre laughed with him, though she had no sense of what human measurements meant in practical terms or by comparison to dragonlengths. “And Baleran was also in the academy with you?”
“A few years later. Baleran was there to study magic. I met him because he was Manishi’s apprentice for about a week before he lost patience with her and demanded a different master.” Rokshan shifted his weight, rubbing up against the sensitive spot at the back of Lamprophyre’s neck and sending an odd twinge through her. “If you knew how unheard of that was, you’d have a sense for the kind of person Baleran is. Changing masters is rare, and a student demanding that change and getting it is almost impossible. Also, the scholars thought they were doing Baleran an honor by assigning him to a princess—apprentices benefit from the resources of their masters, and Manishi could have done much for him.”
Lamprophyre snorted, sending up a cloud of pale smoke. “I barely know her and even I know that’s improbable.”
“Baleran figured it out almost immediately. He put together a truly amazing case for his being reassigned and dragged me into it as a character witness against my sister.”
“No wonder you don’t get along.”
“That would be true if Manishi thought like an ordinary person. She hadn’t wanted to have an apprentice at all, but Mother thought it would be good for her. So Manishi might actually be grateful to me for getting her out of it.”
Lamprophyre’s opinion of Manishi continued to drop. “I thought you and Manishi had different mothers.”
“We do, but Mother married Father when Elini’s children were little more than babies. I think Tekentriya is the only one who remembers Elini. Mother’s certainly always considered all of us her own.”
“I see.” If Hyaloclast became pair-bonded a second time, her mate certainly wouldn’t consider Lamprophyre his child, and she wouldn’t think of him as her father. Humans were so different in unexpected ways. “And you and Baleran became friends.”
“He’s the kind of person who makes up his mind about things and then never wavers. He decided I was interesting, and then he decided we were friends, and then he was just always around me and Dharan. If he hadn’t been interesting himself, it would have been annoying.”
That made sense. “So do humans have clutches, too? It sounds as if Baleran and Dharan are the same age as you.”
“They are, and you may be right, but it’s not as formal as I think dragon clutches are,” Rokshan said. “For one thing, there are hundreds of children born in a year in Tanajital alone, and that’s far too many for us to know all of our age-mates—or am I wrong, and your clutch is large?”
“No, there are seven dragons in my clutch. Which is large for a dragon clutch, but not several hundred large.”
“It’s more accurate to say humans create their own clutches, if I understand correctly. We make friends among those studying in the same classes, or sharing apprenticeships, things we only do with those of the same age.”
Lamprophyre thought about this for a few beats. “I can’t decide which way is better. Though there are so few dragons born to a clutch, it’s not as if we can avoid knowing each other well. It would be nice not to have anything to do with Coquina.”
Rokshan leaned forward. “You’ve mentioned her before. She sounds like a bully. Does being part of the same clutch mean you’re thrown together often?”
“Always. She’s bigger than I am, faster, prettier. It feels like anything I do, she gets there first.” Lamprophyre knew she sounded petty and didn’t care. “We were friends when we were dragonets, but as we got older, she decided I wasn’t good enough to be her friend. And because we’re in the same clutch, I can never get away from her.”
“Until now.”
Startled, Lamprophyre craned her neck as far as she could and still couldn’t see more of Rokshan than his right foot. “What do you mean?”
“Well, you’re the first dragon to have contact with humans, right? Coquina didn’t think to approach us. And you’re the first ambassador, and the first to fly with a human. It sounds like there are a lot of things you’ve done that Coquina can’t say she did first.”
She’d never considered that. “You’re right,” she said, the bitterness she always felt when thinking of Coquina fading.
“Which dragon was she, anyway?” Rokshan asked.
“The green one. The one who laughed when it turned out I couldn’t tell you were male.”
“Huh. Well, I don’t know what makes dragons attractive to other dragons, but I can tell you your coloring is much prettier than hers. Green and rose aren’t nearly as nice as blue and copper.”
His compliment warmed her heart. “Thank you.”
Rokshan leaned out to one side to look around Lamprophyre’s head. “I can’t see well in the darkness—is that the mountains up ahead?”
Lamprophyre nodded. She didn’t need much light to see clearly in the darkness, and the half-moon illuminated the dark peaks and, beyond those, the higher range of mountains that surrounded Mother Stone. Snow gleamed white on Mother Stone’s slopes, making her glow in the moonlight. Lamprophyre had barely been gone a day and the sight still gave her an unexpected pang of homesickness.
She banked right again and headed for the nearest gleaning field. She was hungry enough for a bite of stone she decided Manishi’s demands could wait. The cool, c
risp night air felt even better after a day spent in the heat of the lowlands, and she glided the last few dragonlengths, welcoming the wind coursing over her body. She alit neatly at the base of the gleaning field and crouched to let Rokshan off.
“This looks like it was carved out of the mountains,” Rokshan said. He took a few steps toward where the slope began. “How is that possible?”
“Dragon claws are sharp and strong,” Lamprophyre said, “and dragon teeth are even stronger.” She climbed up to an outcropping and sniffed the granite. The aroma made her stomachs growl. A protruding knob the size of her fist beckoned to her. “Watch out,” she told Rokshan. She traced a guide line with one claw, circling the knob, then dug the rest of her claws in and twisted. A sharp skree sounded from where her claws scored the stone, and fragments and dust flew. Lamprophyre dug a little deeper, then loosely held the knob with her left hand and struck it a sharp blow with her right. The knob popped off in her hand, releasing another shower of stone dust.
She turned back to face Rokshan, whose mouth was hanging open. “That’s incredible,” he said. “I had no idea dragons were so strong.”
“It’s more that our claws are strong, though I’m sure dragons are stronger than humans because we’re bigger.” Lamprophyre bit into the knob of granite, chewing blissfully. “I didn’t realize how much I wanted this.”
“How much should we take back with us? Because strong or not, it did take you a few minutes to break off that rock, and we might be here all night.” Rokshan pulled out the sack he had tucked into his waistband and shook it out.
“Oh, I’ll take some of what’s already been gleaned,” Lamprophyre said. “But it’s never so fresh as when you take it right from the stone.” She gestured at the neat piles of stone, realized Rokshan might not be able to see them, and took the sack from him. “I don’t need much.”
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