Tooth and Claw

by Jo Walton

  Selendra clapped her hands enthusiastically. “You’re as good as a play yourself!”

  “Why thank you, Majesty,” Sher bowed like an actor. “Merely re-enacting the history of our glorious nation.”

  “Not the real history,” Penn interjected. “There’s more poetry than history in that. The Yarges beat us because they had weapons, and once we had weapons too, we threw them out again. You’d think from Etanin’s play that we did it with bare claws and flame, when the Conquest had already proved that claws and flame don’t get anywhere against cannon.”

  “Don’t be boring, Penn,” Sher said.

  “Don’t be romantic, Sher,” Penn said, in exactly the same tone, and for a moment everyone could see the dragonets they had been, scarcely ten years older than Gerin and Wontas when they met at school. For an instant the three females present were united, smiling fondly at the males.

  “I must get the children ready to go out,” Felin said, breaking the moment. “I shall look forward to the play, Sher, historical or not it will be an experience. I have never seen one.”

  “Neither have I, and I have always always wanted to, ever since Penn used to tell me about the theater when I was a hatchling,” Selendra said, stepping towards the door. “I shall freshen up and then join you to work on the invitations, Mother.”

  She left, and Penn and Felin followed her out.

  “Mother,” the Exalt repeated, bitterly. “She meant that as a blow.”

  “You shouldn’t pick fights with her,” Sher said. “I’m sure you’d like each other if you’d stopped waging open warfare.”

  “She wants to fight with me,” the Exalt said. “Can’t you see that? Oh, I know it’s my fault for provoking her in the first place, but I can see I’m going to pay for it. I sometimes wonder if she wants to fight with me more than she wants to marry you.”

  Sher paused, considering. He had been trying to reconcile the two of them for more than a week now, with very little success. “I can see how you might think so,” he said, rejecting the urge to defend Selendra blindly and giving it consideration. “But no, I know she loves me.”

  “I don’t see it in her scales,” his mother said.

  “She is waiting until you accept her, I have told you that,” Sher said. “I have seen love in her eyes.”

  “Eyes can lie,” the Exalt said. Selendra’s pristine gold was the only thing in the situation that gave her any comfort. “I don’t think she loves you at all, I think she wants revenge on me because I asked her to leave you alone.”

  “I am quite sure she loves me,” Sher said, thinking steadfastly of what he had read in her eyes in the snowy meadow on Deepwinter morning under the icy sun.

  “I’m quite sure you’re a fool,” the Exalt said. “And which of the wretched maiden’s siblings should I invite to the rout party, since they are at law with each other?”

  “Haner, and Daverak,” Sher said.

  “I see you have some social consciousness after all,” his mother said. “If she is bringing anyone to the family who has any rank at all, it is Daverak.”

  “You’re to be polite to her,” Sher said, leaning forward and catching his mother’s eye. “Whatever you think and whatever you feel, you will be polite, you will stop picking fights and trying to make her unhappy, you will organize this rout for her, and when I tell you to, you will tell her you welcome her into the family.”

  “Veld will strike me blue for lying.”

  “I am the head of this family. I am the Exalted Benandi,” Sher said.

  “Everybody is well aware of that,” the Exalt said.

  “Then listen to me as head of the family. You’ll welcome Selendra when I tell you to, or I’ll serve you at our marriage feast.”

  “You dare?” she said.

  Sher just looked at her.

  “You wouldn’t dare,” she said. “To be known as the Exalted Lord who ate his mother when she was strong and well?”

  Sher smiled, and turned to go. He paused in the doorway and looked back. His mother had lowered her head to the ground, and he saw that she was weeping.

  15

  Affairs Draw Together

  56. A SEVENTH PROPOSAL

  There was more polite company to be found in Irieth on the tenth of Deepwinter than the Exalt had imagined, or than would have been usual. She sent cards, as a matter of course, to all those she knew who were present in the city, but also to the great houses. She addressed these “to those of the Household presently in Irieth.” Because eccentric old Eminent Telstie was dying, and dying in Irieth, and dying without naming an heir, and dying obsessed with reconciling himself with everyone with whom he had ever quarrelled, more members of the great Households were in Irieth than was usual. Most of them were delighted to have some entertainment other than waiting for the Eminent to die. The rout was a great success. It was not the crush it would have been in the season, where as the saying has it, a maiden would be in danger of returning from a walk across the room unsure who had turned her scales. The great ballroom of Benandi House, five hundred feet long, with a floor inlaid with amethyst and mother of pearl, was scattered with dragons in elegant headgear. Snacks of beautifully arranged fruit and meat were laid out in an adjoining dining room. Servants carried around great steins of beer. Thirty-five dragons graced the reception.

  To the disappointment of both Selendra and Sher, Haner was not among them. The Illustrious Daverak came, accompanied by the Blessed Frelt, both burnished to a high gloss and wearing fine dark hats. “Felicitations, Selendra,” Daverak said, bowing. “What a fine match you have made for yourself.”

  “Thank you,” Selendra said. She was wearing a new hat, black and gray, as was appropriate for mourning, but decorated with two diamonds on little stalks, which she hoped he would not see as disrespectful to Berend’s memory. “Where is my sister Haner?”

  “She is a little indisposed,” Daverak said. “She went out two mornings ago, for some air she said, and became very chilled. A doctor has seen her, and says she needs rest and warmth. Her maid is looking after her. She sends her good wishes and asks me to pass on her apologies.”

  “Please send back my good wishes,” Selendra said. “Is her maid good at tending the sick? Our old nanny is here in Irieth with me, I could send her over to you if she might be of use.”

  “Oh, we have plenty of servants of our own at Daverak House,” Daverak said, dismissively. He moved on to greet the Exalt, who was already welcoming the Exalt and Exalted Rimalin. This left Selendra, already a little unhappy, confronted with Frelt.

  Frelt was angry with Daverak, although he had not allowed this to show. He felt insulted not by Haner’s rejection of him, but by Daverak’s way of dealing with it. He now wished to offer his help in the way of the testimony he might give in court, to Avan. He knew Avan would not be present at the rout, as Daverak had been invited, but he knew Penn and Selendra would, and hoped to be able to speak to them about it.

  “My dear Respected Agornin,” Frelt said, bowing carefully, a stein of beer clutched in one claw. “Betrothed and still gold?”

  Half a dozen guests had already asked this question, and been answered politely by Sher or Selendra. It was a natural one in the circumstances. Frelt knew nothing of the color change she had suffered from his proposal at the end of summer. He had almost forgotten he had ever considered her. He had not loved her, as he had flattered himself he loved Berend, he had merely been looking for a wife. He continued to look for one. He smiled.

  He was not at all prepared for her reaction. “I never want to see you again,” Selendra hissed, through her teeth. “Go away.”

  Frelt recoiled, backwards, almost tripping over his tail.

  Penn, who had seen Frelt approaching and Selendra’s tail beginning to twitch, came to interrupt at this point. “Frelt,” he said, in a guardedly friendly way.

  “Penn,” Frelt replied, cautiously, bowing.

  “I am glad to see you here,” Penn said. “Please do enjoy Exalt Be
nandi’s hospitality, but please, if I might ask as much, keep away from my sister.”

  Frelt bowed again, shortly, and stalked away. The Agornin family were all as bad as each other, and he resolved to keep away from them in future as they so clearly wanted. He remembered Avan casually insulting him as he came to call. He would do none of them any more good than he had to. In the far corner of the room he caught sight of a beautiful maiden, accompanied by a formidable dowager and a priest. “Who is that?” he asked Sher, who was passing.

  Sher glanced over. “Oh, that’s Blessed Telstie with his wife and daughter,” he said.

  “Blessed Telstie, the brother of the Eminent Telstie who is at present dying?” Frelt asked.

  “Precisely,” Sher said, bowing politely. He had no idea who Frelt was, other than some priest Daverak had brought in place of Haner, but he knew his duties as a host. “Would you like an introduction?”

  Sher led Frelt over to the Telstie party. “Blessed Telstie, Blest Telstie, Respected Telstie, may I present Blessed Frelt, a friend of the Illustrious Daverak.”

  “I am the parson of Undertor, and have known the Agornin family for years,” Frelt said.

  “Congratulations on your engagement, Exalted Benandi,” Gelener said to Sher, her smile so icy he would hardly have been surprised to see frost on her teeth.

  “Love takes its own course,” Blessed Telstie said, looking remarkably cheerful for a dragon whose daughter had lost a suitor and whose brother was dying. Perhaps he found the prospect of his elder son’s inheriting his brother’s title some consolation, Sher thought.

  “Thank you,” he said. “I must leave you for the moment, I must go and greet my intended’s uncle, August Fidrak.”

  “Perhaps a game of dice later?” Blessed Telstie asked.

  “There will be dice in the little room,” Sher said, turning back. “Through there,” he waved his arm. “I believe there may be dragons in there already.”

  Blessed Telstie was beaming when he left, Gelener was sitting like a gilded ice-statue of a maiden, and Blest Telstie was beginning to interrogate Frelt about his prospects.

  The August Fidrak, whom Selendra had once protested she did not know, was in Irieth to visit the deathbed of his longtime colleague and rival in the Noble Assembly. He was a genial old dragon, happy to acknowledge the connection with the beautiful maiden and the powerful Benandi family. He was too old to seek again for office, though he held on to his seat, but his son might well need friends, even if the blood relationship was distant. He called Selendra “niece” and spoke fondly about her mother. The Exalt came close and listened deferentially.

  Some gently born dragons who cling tightly to the rank in which they were born, or have achieved by marriage or accomplishment, do not favor those whom life has placed in rank above them. The Exalt did not suffer from this fault. There were not many who ranked above her own Exalted status, but those there were, Eminents and Eminences, Augusts and Augustas, she courted assiduously. She often regretted the loss of the Majestics and Highnesses and Honorables of old, there was nothing she would have liked so much as the thrill of having a Highness deign to drop in on a party she had arranged. Deprived of this, she made the most of August Fidrak, who endured her fussing graciously.

  Sher managed to draw Selendra away. “I told you these things were a terrible bore,” he whispered to her.

  “They wouldn’t be if one could choose the participants,” Selendra whispered back.

  “But one never can,” Sher said, bowing at a dowager. “For parties in the country, one can choose. In Irieth, when everyone returns to their own beds at the end of the evening, it’s necessary to go with convention.”

  “I much preferred the theater,” Selendra said.

  Sher laughed. “Soon the crush will thin out a bit, as dragons go off to play dice and eat, and we will be able to dance. Do you realize I’ve never danced with you?”

  “Is there room?” Selendra asked. “This is a big cavern, but I have never danced indoors before.” She was secretly a little nervous about her dancing, which she had learned from Berend and not practiced for a long time.

  “You’ll find there’s room,” Sher said. On the other side of the room, he caught sight of Penn signalling to him. “Excuse me for a moment,” he said.

  “But what should I do?” Selendra asked, in consternation. She knew almost nobody.

  “Talk to Felin,” Sher advised, indicating Felin, who was conversing amiably with Exalt Rimalin. He set off across the room. Selendra watched him go, the assurance in his step. He had been crossing rooms like this half his life, she supposed, while she—maybe the Exalt was right about the differences in their station. She drew her head up and stepped out towards Felin. If she lacked experience, she would make it up with confidence and style. If the Exalt expected to intimidate her, she would be surprised.

  A handsome young stranger paused beside her. He was perhaps thirty feet long, with fine bronze scales and a well-formed tail. “What a delightful rout. Thank you so much for getting unseasonably betrothed and allowing us an excuse to come here and dance. I love these evening affairs, don’t you?” he asked.

  “Don’t you find that it leaves you tired in the morning?” Selendra asked.

  “Well, I generally sleep in the morning, in the season,” he replied. “After all, our eyes were not designed to work so much in daylight. They become tired. I’m sorry. You don’t know me. I’m Respectable Alwad Telstie.”

  “I know your sister,” Selendra said.

  “I know, she told me. She said you were beautiful, but left out half of it. It’s hard to melt information out of Gelener.”

  Selendra was no longer confused by idle compliments. She cast her eyes down mockingly, laughed, and remembered her first meeting with Gelener and the Exalt’s hurtful advice. “Did she tell you that my father grew up on the Telstie estate?” she asked, deliberately.

  “No. How fascinating. Did he know my uncle? My uncle might want to see him. He appears to want to see everyone he ever knew, to be reconciled, before he dies.”

  “He’s dead himself, this autumn, so it’s too late,” Selendra said.

  “I’m sorry,” Alwad said. “It’s just been so much on my mind lately. I’m my uncle’s heir, but we quarrelled last year.”

  “Has he reconciled with you?”

  “Not yet, there’s apparently someone he wants to see first. It’s all very mysterious, it’s as if he has a script for how he’s doing it. He told my father he’d see me two days from now. I’ll be on my best behavior the whole time, you can be sure.” He laughed and took another stein of beer from a passing servant.

  “But doesn’t it matter to you?” Selendra asked.

  “What? To be reconciled to my uncle? A little. I like the old dragon. Or to inherit his lands and title? Not at all. I would almost prefer not to, to continue in my fine life in the army. As for his wealth, well, that would be useful.”

  Selendra hesitated. “I had supposed the three to go together,” she said.

  “I suppose they might, though where else he imagines he’ll find a relative to take the demesne is beyond me. He’s never cared much for rank, but he really cares about family.”

  “I think that’s better than thinking rank is everything,” Selendra said.

  “Why yes. Have you seen your future mother-in-law fawning over old August Fidrak, the legislator? Fidrak hasn’t two crowns to rub together, his lands are mortgaged to the wingtip. He lives on the charity of his daughters’ husbands, and on his stipend in the Assembly. Yet there’s the Exalt treating him as if he’s of much more worth than she could ever be, when she has Benandi, and half Tiamath besides.”

  “I don’t think wealth or rank are the important things,” Selendra said.

  “Then how do you consider dragons?” Alwad asked, his head tipped curiously on its side.

  “By the worth of themselves,” Selendra said. “I love Sher not because he’s an Exalted but because he’s Sher. If I’d fal
len in love with you, for example, without any title but Respectable, I’d think you just as good as he is.”

  “You’re a radical,” he said, stepping back, laughing. “A freethinker! Does Sher know of this? I’m quite sure my mother doesn’t, she’d have told me.”

  “I don’t need to be a radical to think that who a dragon is counts more than birth or wealth,” Selendra said, with what dignity she could.

  “Why, that’s the very definition of a radical,” he retorted. “We shall have a radical Exalt among us soon, which is indeed a charming notion. What a pity you can’t take a seat in the Noble Assembly and delight us all with your notions.”

  Meanwhile, Frelt was making a good impression on the rest of the Telstie family. He had even made Gelener laugh once, graciously. “You’re just the kind of parson the church needs,” Blessed Telstie said, taking a deep draught of his beer and almost forgetting about the lure of the dicebox.

  “And if I may say so on so little acquaintance, but in which I have been greatly struck by her beauty and accomplishments, your daughter is just the sort of wife I need,” Frelt said.

  “Say no more before we visit our respective attorneys and speak to our mutual friends,” Blest Telstie said, stepping forward as if to indicate that she was willing to interpose her body between them if necessary.

  “If that all proves satisfactory I should have no objection,” said Gelener quietly, looking at Frelt unsmilingly. She would not have thought to have settled for as little as a country parson when first she came to Irieth, but now that she was facing a third season still unmarried, she had lowered her sights considerably.

  On the other side of the room Daverak was still refusing to listen to Penn and Sher. “Quite impossible,” he kept saying. “Consider, it is Firstday tomorrow, and the day after is the case. I need your testimony, Penn, Avan is attacking me, he is being perfectly unreasonable. No, I won’t consider, why should I.”