Tooth and Claw

by Jo Walton

  He was a Dignified, and he would be an Illustrious. Selendra had given him her approval. If she married him she would be away from Daverak and the terrible practices condoned there. Yet her heart did not beat faster, her breath did not catch in her throat, and though he took a step closer to her on the shelf she did not feel the tide of pink rush through her scales the way it did to maidens in stories.

  “How do you treat your servants?” she asked abruptly.

  Londaver stopped where he was, frowning. “My servants?” he asked. “How do you mean? I keep their wings strapped down and make sure they know when I like dinner, that sort of thing.”

  “And what happens when they grow old?”

  “Oh, usually we unbind their wings and let them live on farms nearby,” Londaver said, relief at having a question he understood plain in his voice. “Mother usually sees to it. She sends them beef and preserves now and again.”

  “That’s what we did at Agornin,” Haner said. “Here the servants are all afraid. It’s making me think the whole institution is wrong. No dragon should be unable to use their wings.”

  “Parsons,” Londaver countered quickly.

  “That’s free choice,” Haner said. “That’s different. It just seems wrong.”

  “Are you a free-thinker?” Londaver asked, taken aback. “A radical?”

  “I don’t know, what do they believe?” Haner asked.

  “Well, that servants should be freed, that religion should be kept to Firstday, and the Old Religion tolerated, that everyone should be equal before the law, that kind of thing.”

  “I think I may be,” Haner said, consideringly, surprised at herself.

  “You’d better keep that to yourself,” Londaver advised.

  “Are you still making me an offer?” Haner asked.

  “Yes, certainly, why would that change anything?” Londaver asked, sounding honestly puzzled. “You’re not going to unbind all the servants at Londaver or anything are you?”

  “Not immediately,” Haner said. She wasn’t sure that this indulgence of her beliefs as if they were an eccentricity was what she wanted, but it was much better than what she might have had. She shuddered to imagine Daverak’s response to her declaration of free-thinking, or even her father’s.

  “Then how would you like to come over here and embrace me?” Londaver asked, uncertainly.

  Haner hesitated. If she did, she would blush, and then she would be committed. “Don’t you think you ought to check with Illustrious Daverak about the dowry first?” she asked. “Before you’re entirely committed?”

  “You’re so practical, Haner,” Londaver said. “So clever and so practical, and so pretty in that delicate way. I really do like you the best of all the maidens I ever met. Do you think Daverak would try to cheat us? I suppose I would be in a better position to negotiate with him if you’re not looking all bridal. Very well, let’s just keep it a verbal agreement until I speak to Daverak. But I shall consider that we are to be married, whatever color your scales are, and I dearly look forward to seeing them pink, and then redder and redder.”

  He was no dragon out of legend, bold, wild, and firm of resolve. But he was considerate and not cruel and he could give her a home where Selendra could also live. “I’ll marry you as soon as you like, once you have the dowry all arranged,” she said, thinking that she must write to Selendra at once.

  40. A SECOND DEATHBED

  Haner and Londaver returned to find the establishment in uproar. “The Exalt Daverak has been taken unwell,” Exalt Londaver said gently to Haner. “We’ll be going now, I only waited for you to come in. You’ll want to be with your sister, Haner dear.” She smiled at Haner in a way that showed she guessed what had passed under the stars. Haner was almost too concerned to notice.

  “How serious is it?” she asked the older dragon. “Should I send for a doctor?”

  “One has already been sent for,” Exalt Londaver said gently. “My husband has gone to fetch one for her. I’d go to your sister at once, that’s where you can do most good.”

  Without hesitating to bid good-bye even to her newly affianced husband, Haner hurried down to Berend’s sleeping cave, only to find it empty. She stopped a hurrying servant and asked where Berend was.

  “Hatching Room, ’Spec,” the servant said, and hurried on, head bowed.

  Haner went to the Hatching Room with a heavy heart.

  She heard her before she saw her. Berend was groaning horribly, catching her breath and groaning again. Haner hurried in. Berend was sitting curled around her two safely delivered eggs. She was more green than red, and some of her scales were falling. Next to the nacreous swirling iridescence of the eggs she looked like spoiled meat. She looked up as Haner came in, and Haner saw that her eyes were whirling wildly.

  “Illustrious Londaver has gone for a doctor,” she said, her voice losing confidence in the middle of the sentence.

  “A parson would be better,” Berend said, between groans. “The egg is broken, I can feel it. It’s killing me, the same way Mother died. You were only an egg, but I remember.”

  “The doctor might be able to help,” Haner said, without much hope. “I wish Amer were here. She’d know what to do.”

  “Daverak would have eaten her by now, for being old and slow and ugly,” Berend said, tossing her head and groaning again.

  Haner could say nothing.

  “And just the worst time,” Berend went on, quite conversationally. “I have no idea what Daverak will do, but it won’t be anything good. I was hoping you’d have thoroughly secured young Londaver, but I see you didn’t.”

  “Don’t worry, we’re to be married,” Haner said, soothingly.

  “Then why aren’t you pink?” Berend asked. “No, he’ll slip away now, because unless he felt really committed he won’t marry you when Daverak won’t stand by my promises.”

  “I’ll be all right,” Haner said. “Don’t worry about me.”

  Berend’s eyes rolled and she let out another very loud groan. “Look after my children,” she said. “All four of them.”

  “I’ll do what I can for them,” Haner promised.

  “They like you,” Berend assured her.

  Haner knew that already. “I like them,” she said, feebly.

  “Do you think you could shift this egg?” Berend asked, abruptly, panting a little. “It’s definitely broken, no doubt of it. It’s hurting me.”

  “I can try, but I’m no doctor,” Haner said. She walked around her sister and lifted her tail. She almost dropped it again. She had never seen so much blood. More was oozing from beneath her sister’s tail. The flesh of Berend’s private parts looked stretched and torn. Haner could not see an egg. As she moved her hand, a scale fell from the tail where she had been touching it. “Should you be in here?” Haner asked. “If you start to thrash around you’ll break those two eggs.”

  “That would be the last beef to break the bridge as far as Daverak’s concerned,” Berend said, and slowly dragged herself to her feet. “I came here because I thought I might manage to deliver the egg, and here is where it would need to be. I started to bleed in the Dining Room. It was almost funny. Our guests didn’t know whether to help me or eat me.”

  “Oh Berend,” Haner said, torn between laughter and tears. “Can I help you to your sleeping room?”

  “I don’t think you can help, unless you can free the fragments of the shell.”

  “I can’t see them,” Haner admitted.

  “That’s bad,” Berend said, and groaned again as she began to drag herself along up the corridor, one step at a time, towards her sleeping cave. Her scales were falling as she moved.

  Haner’s attendant, Lamith, met them part way. “The doctor’s not here yet, ’Spec,” she said, to Haner. “Shall I send for the parson?”

  “Yes,” Berend said. “Send somebody who can fly, because I need him soon.” There was a great smear of blood stretching down the corridor from the door of the hatching room.

 
“There’s nobody here with wings unbound,” Lamith said, not harshly but stating a fact.

  “I could go,” Haner suggested, tentatively. “Or Exalt Londaver may come back with the doctor, and he could go.”

  “I don’t know how much g——ing time this will take,” Berend said, and the frank obscenity shocked her sister. “I think you’d better go, Haner, I don’t want him to come too late.”

  “Good-bye then, Berend, beloved sister, in case we don’t meet again.”

  “Come back with him, come in with him,” Berend said. “I want someone of my own with me while I die.”

  “Should Lamith fetch the children?” Haner asked.

  “For Jurale’s sake no, have pity on them,” Berend said, explosively. “I had to watch my mother die this way, no need to inflict it on them.”

  Haner made for the nearest open ledge and flew off towards the church and the parsonage. The night was still clear and full of beautiful stars, the air was chill but clean, bearing a taste of distant fir trees, and she could not help feeling a deep relief to be outside and away from the blood and the pain.

  The parsonage was dark, and she had to wake both the parson and his wife to explain who she was and what she wanted. “If the Exalt is dying, it is an emergency, I will fly,” the parson declared at last, looping the red cords around his claw so that he could bind his wings again after he had reached Daverak. Haner wanted to ask if he would have walked to a farmer’s deathbed, or perhaps not gone until morning. “Has the Illustrious been told?” he asked, as they flew. “Somebody should send to him at once, in Irieth.”

  “There’s nobody to fly,” Haner said, only then realizing how ridiculous this was, when there were so many farmers on the estate. “I’ll find somebody to send,” she said.

  “She may not last until his return,” the parson warned. “If she’s as bad as you say. Irieth is far away. But Jurale has mercy, and she may.”

  They landed on the ledge. It was now well on into the night. The establishment seemed unnaturally quiet. Haner could smell the blood at once, though it had been cleaned from the floor. The doctor was coming out of Haner’s sleeping cave when they got there.

  “Dead,” he said, briefly.

  “That isn’t her room,” Haner said. “It’s mine. Hers is up the corridor.”

  “Perhaps this was nearer,” the doctor said, looking at her strangely. It would have been, Haner realized, much nearer. But she did not want Berend to have died in her room, on her gold, and with nobody with her.

  The parson went in, alone. He put up a restraining claw to stop Haner in the doorway. She waited, numb.

  “Where is the Illustrious Daverak?” the doctor asked.

  “In Irieth on business,” Haner answered.

  “So unfortunate that this should have happened when he was away,” he said.

  “She took every care of herself,” Haner said. “She wanted this clutch. She was looking forward to the third egg. She was eating well.”

  “It’s a terrible thing,” the doctor said. “She wasn’t herself at the last.”

  Haner wondered what Berend had said to him, but dared not ask.

  The parson came out, licking his lips. Haner could not even indulge her grief by beginning to eat her sister, she knew she must wait for Daverak. It was only then that she realized how alone she was here now. Daverak had taken her in as Berend’s sister. With Berend dead, would he even be prepared to keep her? Berend had said that he liked her, but she had also said that he would no longer make up the dowry so that she could marry Londaver. Useless to curse Daverak for being arrogant and selfish, or Londaver for being poor and weak, or her hands for not being claws. Whatever they were, she was in their power in her own despite. At last she wept, outside the room where Berend lay, and the parson and doctor thought it most appropriate, for they were not to know that her tears were far more for her own situation than for her dead sister.

  11

  A Maiden’s Love

  41. A THIRD PROPOSAL

  To turn our minds and our attention back two weeks in time and sixty hours flight west, the attentive reader will not have forgotten, even amid the excitement of Irieth and the dramatic developments in Daverak, that the last we saw of Selendra, Sher, and Penn’s two dragonets they were lost in a cave deep beneath the Benandi mountains and the falls of Calani.

  There we shall rejoin them, in the drear dampness of the chilly limestone, hurrying towards the daylight Sher had glimpsed, hurrying indeed so much that they almost, in their haste, fell down another pit. Sher saved himself on the brink, drawing to a halt so sudden that the two dragonets, immediately behind, stepped on his tail.

  Sher peered down into the pit. “The light’s coming from down here,” he said. “It seems to be a substantial cavern. I think we’ll have to go down.”

  “Is it a good idea going deeper and deeper like this?” Selendra asked, anxiously.

  “This is where the moving air seems to be coming from,” Sher said, without answering her directly. “I’ll go first, and I’ll take Wontas. There’s a terrible glare of light down there, we can’t be far from the outside. It makes it harder to see, though. Wait there until I call.”

  With no more hesitation, Sher took Wontas and plunged down over the edge. Selendra moved forward into the space he had freed. Gerin cowered down beside her, looking over the edge. She immediately realized what Sher meant about the light. From behind she had been in the familiar homely darkness of any cavern. Now, leaning down on the slippery edge it was too bright to see without blinking her inner lids over her eyes, but that made it much dimmer than it would be without any light at all.

  She waited, unable to see much, for what felt like a long time. She felt an uncomfortable drip on her neck, water heavy with lime, ready to grow a limestone tooth on her scales if she waited here much longer. She thought of the half-eaten treasure and imagined the teeth growing through her fallen scales and bones. Gerin began to speak, but she shushed him, not wanting to miss anything Sher might say. She had almost become convinced that he had managed to kill himself in the depths before she heard his voice, thin and echoing.

  “It’s a bit tricky, but we’re out. Can you hear me, Selendra?”

  “Yes,” Selendra called, deeply relieved.

  “It’s a big cavern, and there’s a slot halfway down the wall which leads to the outside. There’s no ledge or cave, just a slot. The difficult bit is managing to fly straight out and then down to where you can land, below. I’ve left Wontas down there, by a little stream. I know roughly where we are, though I’ll need to go up high to check. One thing is for sure, we’re facing due west into the setting sun, which makes it hard to see.”

  “Where are you now?” Selendra asked, fighting down panic.

  “Outside, circling in the air. It’s too steep to perch. It’s not a cliff, but it’s sheer.”

  “And where is the slot, relative to me?”

  “It’s due west, and you’re facing it, below you.”

  “Then make sure you’re not in the way, we’re coming now,” Selendra called, then waited for a moment, drawing breath and tensing her muscles for the dive into the uncertain light.

  She never knew how Sher had made it. Even knowing the slot was there, and knowing there was nowhere to alight immediately outside, it was all she could do to clutch Gerin tightly and let her wings carry her down and forward, aiming for the center of the space. She was almost blind as she came directly into the light. The gap, or slot as Sher had called it, was not large. She flew for it, struggling against the damp air and the sensation that the cave wanted to suck her down and swallow her.

  Once outside, she could see. An undistinguished hillside of tumbled rocks and grass lay below her, with a few muttonwools grazing unconcernedly among the boulders. At the bottom of the slope ran a small, fast-moving stream, then another slope rose up, not as high nor as steep as their own ridge, and beyond that other ridges. She flew down to the stream, delighting in the warmth and movement o
f the clean outdoor air. As she went down, she lost the direct rays of the sun, and it was suddenly cold, colder than the cave had been. She caught sight of Wontas, drinking awkwardly from the water, his broken leg caught up against his chest.

  She landed as close to him as she could, then looked around for Sher. He was high overhead, circling.

  “Sher said he’d go up until he saw which way to go to fetch the basket,” Wontas said, looking up, water dripping from his mouth.

  Selendra spread out her wings, feeling a great urge to stretch them after so long in such cramped conditions. She folded them, then opened them out again completely and arched her back. Only then did she bend her neck to drink. The water was icy, making her teeth ache when it touched them.

  “Did that stone move?” Gerin asked, suddenly. Selendra looked up where Gerin was looking, at the opposite slope. It was strewn with boulders, ranging in size from the size of a hatchling’s head to almost as big as she was. None of them were moving. She looked back to Gerin, puzzled.

  “It seems as if they move when I’m not looking at them,” he said. Selendra looked back at the rocks. They were still, very still, with a stillness that seemed more like waiting than the natural stillness of rocks that lie where they have fallen.

  Sher came swooping down. “It’s cold here in the shade,” he said, closing his wings with a great clap. “I know the way back to the falls, but it’s an hour’s flight. We have come a tremendous distance under the mountains.”

  “The sun is almost down, we must have been underground for hours,” Selendra said. “You go as quickly as you can and fetch the basket.”

  Sher drew her upslope a little, away from the dragonets, who were both drinking in the stream. “You couldn’t carry one of them?”

  “Not for an hour, and not safely at all,” she replied, quietly. “Why?”