The Summer Dragon

  “Enough of the qit-play, Maia.” Father’s eyes took on that glint, like distant lightning. “Get to work. Now!” Typical. Darian starts something and I get blamed.

  My older brother Tauman and his wife, Jhem, were leading out the other two sires. We hunted the parent dragons hard on the day before Brood Day. They loved it. The sires were first, and would be gone for several hours. Then the dams would get a turn, though after months of nesting they needed the hunt more than the fathers did. There’d be plenty of venison for the feast tomorrow, but more than that, an exhausting day in the skies offered freedom they’d not had in months, helping to blunt their anger and grief when the Ministry buyers carried off their babies.

  “Let’s go.” Darian grabbed my elbow. “We’ve got a lot to do.”

  We started across the paddock toward the broodhouse opposite. “Look at them, Dare.” I pointed at the three broodsires—they practically danced on the stones. A deep rumbling came from Shuja’s chest, and the other broodparents repeated it. I could almost feel it in my bones. I tried to match the cadence and pitch, but it came out as more of a staccato grunt in my abdomen than a rumble, and it wouldn’t carry across the compound like theirs did.

  “You sound like you’re about to throw up,” said Darian.

  “Very funny.” I remembered Mother clucking and cooing at the qits. She told me more than once that dragons have a secret language of their own, and she was learning it. No one thought that possible, but she winked at me when Father laughed at her efforts. I’d been listening to the dragons ever since.

  I understood their emotions, if not what they were saying. “They know their broods are about to be taken from them,” I said to Dare, “but they’re excited about the hunt. Listen to the change of rhythm, and the complexity . . . they’re talking to each other. Mother used to think—”

  “You’re crazy,” said Darian. “You can’t speak dragon. No one can.”

  Mother’s absence still affected Darian, I knew, even all these years later. But I treasured the memory of her chatting with the babies, her face alight. It balanced the other memory—better to think about that than her last words. “Maybe, maybe not,” I said.

  Shuja pranced sideways as the other sires were saddled, his wings half unfurled. The hired farm hands kept a wide distance, although they were perfectly safe with Father on his back. Shuja was our most magnificent dragon. His upright crest, massive jaws, and deep purple-black hide set him apart from the others. Of all our sires, only he had been born outside of the western mountains. He and Father bonded during their time in the Dragonry and had seen many battles together. Shuja’s scales and smoky underbelly were covered with scars. He was the clear alpha among our broodsires and his golden eyes could be . . . chilling. You didn’t take liberties with Shuja.

  Tauman lowered the saddle onto his broodsire, Rannu, our second-oldest sire. Rannu was a classic specimen of the mountain breed with tan and stone-gray markings, stocky legs, and broad wings. He was the first bonded dragon of my older brother. As Tauman would one day be Broodmaster, Rannu was the future of our line. Not a beautiful dragon, but he threw qits that grew up to be strong and biddable. He had never mastered the word “hunt” to any degree, so he nodded his approval of this outing, nearly smacking Tauman on the head with his chin. I giggled as Tauman jumped back. My older brother was a bit too full of his place as heir and future Broodmaster.

  Jhem, her bright red hair a beacon in the lantern light, struggled with her young broodsire Audax. Audax was wild, but he shouldn’t have been that hard to control. He was one of a pair of cave-grays Father gave to Jhem as wedding gifts six years ago, mottled gray and white, with hints of silver in the hard plates on neck and legs. In spite of Jhem’s scolding, Audax crowded Rannu, bumping the older dragon’s wing. Rannu snarled a warning to the younger broodsire—stay clear. Audax returned a deep-throated rumble of annoyed defiance. Jhem, hold him! I took a step forward, but she instantly pulled his head down by an ear frill and spoke to him in low, firm tones, like a mother scolding a stubborn child in the marketplace.

  I let out a sigh of relief. We’d never had a sire-fight in my lifetime. Jhem really needed to get him in hand.

  Audax sat down petulantly, which allowed Rannu a few more inches without Audax actually having to remove himself. He looked like a big, winged, extremely dangerous puppy.

  Father, just buckling his harness to Shuja’s saddle, turned our way. Darian ducked quickly out of sight into the broodhouse.

  “Maia! What did I tell you to do?” Father’s face darkened.

  I didn’t need another lecture about doing things before I was told. Hurrying through the broodhouse door, I tripped over Darian’s lantern where he had left it, just inside. It clattered off the wall. I yelled and dove for it, catching it before it could break and spill burning oil.

  Outside, Audax snarled in surprise. The lantern burned my hands, and I dropped it. It shattered and flames erupted on the paving, just as Fren guided his new horse past the broodsires with his load of woodchips. Audax growled again and lurched backward. The horse squealed and bolted. The cart struck Audax’s tail and tipped over. Fren catapulted out to land on Audax’s tail frill, and Audax spun with a roar of pain, batting Fren the way a person might swat at a fly buzzing too near his face. The blow sent Fren flying twenty feet across the paddock to land in a crumple.

  The panicked horse bolted through the crowded yard, dragging the sideways cart behind it. I heard Father shout and felt the blast of Shuja’s wingbeats as I ran to the driver’s side. Fren! I dropped to my knees beside him, sick to my stomach. He pushed up on one arm, clutched his chest, staring with glazed eyes at the paving stones beneath him. Blood was everywhere. Shuja had pinned the runaway cart, and Tauman struggled with the panicked horse. Jhem had Audax by the nostrils. Darian threw burlap sacks on the fire to smother it.

  Fren looked up at me. “Don’t hurt my horse!” he rasped and slumped forward.

  I eased him onto his back, pulled his hands gently away, and opened his slashed shirt, swallowing my sickness. Audax had torn a gash from shoulder to hip with his talons. Blood welled from the wound, thick and warm as it ran over my hands and puddled on the stone. Avar! I yanked off my jacket, rolled it up, and pressed it as hard as I could against the gash. The fabric turned dark, and red started to seep from beneath it. It wouldn’t stop. I pressed harder and Fren groaned. Suddenly Jhem was pressing on the fabric with me. Fren’s eyes rolled back into his head, reappeared glazed and gray. Dying? I choked on a sob.

  “Darian—get a rake and start cleaning up this mess.” Father knelt beside me. “Let me see.” He pushed my hands away, peeled the blood-soaked jacket from the gash. Whistled. “That’s going to be an impressive set of marks.”

  “Will he be all right?”

  Father said nothing as he eased Fren up so Jhem could bind my jacket to him with strips torn from his bloodied shirt. Then Father picked him up like a child and carried him to the saddle jib, whistling for Shuja. Tauman used the crane to lift Father and Fren onto Shuja’s back.

  “We’re taking Fren to the Temple.” Father spoke to Tauman, never once looking in my direction. “Get those broodsires out of here and work them hard. I’ll join you when I can.”

  Finally, he turned an icy gaze on me. “Curse all, Maia, can’t you keep your mind on your work?” He leaned forward, and Shuja launched into the air. With one downbeat of his wings they cleared the paddock wall and were out over the valley, a silhouette against the pre-dawn sky.

  I stood frozen. Stunned. “I didn’t mean to kick the lantern.”

  Jhem clasped my shoulder. Her face was pale, and she blinked back tears. “Don’t worry. I’m in more trouble than you are.”

  The compound was silent—everybody was looking at me.

  Curse all, Maia, can’t you keep your mind on your work?

  It felt like an omen, as if my mother stirred in her
grave.

  A dragon handler with her head in the clouds . . .

  TWO

  I FOUGHT BACK SOBS as Darian and I cleaned up the debris from the cart and raked the woodchips into a pile. Tauman and Jhem were deathly quiet as they stabled the poor horse. I could tell that Tauman was waiting to explode once they were alone—he couldn’t be happy about Audax’s behavior, and Jhem would get an earful. She hadn’t been born to dragons like he had, though she’d always shown an aptitude—he wouldn’t have married her otherwise. But it seemed that she never quite measured up to his standards, and this wouldn’t help. He could be a bastard sometimes, but Audax shouldn’t have snapped. I didn’t know whether to feel sorry for her or angry that she didn’t have Audax more under control.

  When riders and dragons finally took to the sky for their pre-Brood Day hunt, I sighed and crumpled onto the stone sill of the watering trough. The silence was dense and scornful. A sniffle escaped. “Poor Fren!”

  Darian put his arm around my shoulder, and let me weep for a few minutes. Some part of my mind noted the blood on my trousers, saw that despite several buckets of water, there was still blood on the paving.

  “I didn’t mean to kick the lamp. I didn’t see it there.” I groaned instead of adding where you left it. “Somehow I always end up in trouble.”

  “He won’t stay mad—”

  “It’s just like the last time I saw Mother. I always get—”

  “Don’t, Maia.”

  “Blamed for whatever—”

  “That wasn’t . . . you didn’t—”

  “You and me were fussing over that sick qit instead of doing our chores. But you left right before Mother came around the corner, and I’m the one who got lectured.”

  “You were little.” Darian fidgeted. “You don’t remember it right.”

  We both fell silent. I wanted to say that was your fault, too, but fighting wouldn’t fix anything. I shouldn’t have brought up Mother’s death. The memories chattered from that deep inner silence where they normally slept—her last words as she sat on Grus, scowling, and other specters better left in darkness. Father loved to tell of her bravery and skill when he met her during their time in the Dragonry, when the empire of Gurvaan annexed the small country of Ebrolin. I couldn’t possibly measure up to her example.

  I shrugged off Darian’s arm and dried my eyes with a quick swipe of my sleeve. “We’ve got work to do.” I entered the broodhouse and Darian followed.

  The platform was long and wide enough to contain four gigantic nests in a row—boxes of wood crafted in octagonal shapes two feet high. Three of them were filled with straw as bedding for sleeping broods and their watchful mothers. The fourth was empty. In past years the aeries of Riat bred as many as four pairs of broodparents, though never in my lifetime. Father hoped to fill that fourth nest again. I tried not to look at it.

  Eight enormous doors on either side of the nests could be rolled aside to open the broodhouse to the paddock or to the precipice overlooking the village, or both. The paddock-side doors were only rarely opened when qits filled the nests. But dragons love heights; the cliffside doors were open most days to inspire that instinct from the very beginning.

  I unlatched the first of the cliffside doors, and Darian joined me. Together we rolled them open to let the sun warm the babies.

  Bloody dawn spilled over the horizon. Long shadows streaked the farms on the plains eastward. Far below us, the village of Riat was puddled with lingering fog. The cliff faces to either side of the valley steamed in the early light, while the Roaring spilled off the heights to the north, sending its curtain of mist across the valley. Raptors circling in the warm light above punctuated the quiet with their calls: keirr . . . keirr. It was the beginning of what should have been a beautiful day.

  We turned to the aerie, where qits already began to wrestle in the first light. Darian hunkered down in front of one of the nests. “Look at him, Maia. He’s the biggest one. He’s going to be magnificent someday.” He’d said that at least once a day for weeks, but today his face was different.

  The young dragon topped a pile of dragon babies, dark scales winking in the sun as he tugged on the ear frill of a littermate. His crest—the frill of spines and leather just behind his head—promised to be as impressive as that of his Father, Shuja. Coppery Grus, the broodmother, stretched her leathery wings wide—enjoying a rare moment when the aerie wasn’t crowded with adult dragons. She purred a warning to Darian when he reached out a hand.

  “Don’t, Darian. We don’t know if we’ll keep any yet.” Young dragons bonded quickly, and the bonds lasted a lifetime. Contact had to be brief and businesslike—that was one of the first, most basic rules of dragonlore. It was probably the hardest thing about raising qits—you couldn’t touch them any more than was necessary.

  Darian knew that. “I’m not going to pet him,” he shot back. But he tucked his hands into his armpits and craned his neck that littlest bit closer. “I just want to look at him. He’s gorgeous.”

  “You’ll spoil them for the Dragonry if you—”

  “I know! I know. Don’t be a nag.”

  I directed a wicked scowl at the back of his head.

  But I understood Darian’s desire. In the next nest—that of Rannu and Athys, my brother Tauman’s bonded pair—was a brown female qit with buff-colored markings who always seemed to perk up when I came by. While her littermates tussled, she sat alert in the corner of the nest and studied me with her amber eyes. I ached to touch her soft, dry skin. Her mother, Athys, watched me too, inscrutable brown eyes set deep in the stone-gray brow.

  I couldn’t caress her baby, but I couldn’t help staring into those intelligent little eyes.

  “‘The best ones in the nest raise the value of all the others,’” Darian said, quoting Father. I felt his eyes on me and turned. His face was puckered in a scowl. I knew that he really meant we shouldn’t get our hopes up. The Dragonry would want the best ones.

  “I wish I’d seen the lantern . . .”

  “I know. I’m sorry, Maia. I’m sorry you got yelled at. I won’t let you take the blame alone. I promise.”

  For Darian to admit any part of the blame for anything was rare. He was like Father that way. My anger toward him softened. “Audax started it, really. He’s so emotional.”

  “The youngest male in the aerie—he thinks he has to prove himself. He needs to be taught his place.”

  “Jhem is getting a lecture on that right now, you can bet. High Ones, but I hope Fren is going to be okay.”

  “Well, that was a disaster even if Fren survives. Jhem probably deserves it.”

  “She’s trying. Audax is still young.”

  Neither of us spoke for the longest time.

  “Nag,” said Darian.

  “Horror,” I answered.

  He grinned. “Come on, Maia. Back to work.”

  We moved through our chores quickly, paying extra attention to detail. After the babies had eaten a breakfast of melon rinds, ears of corn, and fish, they tumbled out of their nests to play on the platform. The broodmothers, Grus, Athys, and Coluver, policed the rambunctious qits while Darian and I removed all the soiled straw from the nests. Then we brought buckets of water to wash platform and qitlings simultaneously. This was something new and exciting for them. They splashed and played, with happy yips and mischievous kitten-like roars. With their antics, they practically cleaned each other. All Darian and I needed to do was occasional spot scrubbing with a mop, and then broom the water over the lip.

  It was impossible not to be cheered by their play. I started to feel better, but when I thought of Fren crumpling in my arms, his blood everywhere, my stomach tightened into a knot. I still had his blood under my fingernails.

  Later in the morning we fed the babies again—an extra-large meal of dried beef and smoked livers. It would fill their bellies and make them sleepy, bu
t leave relatively little mess. Then the real labor began. We wheeled in mounds of wood chips to refill their nesting boxes. The inquisitive qits were in and out of our carts constantly, but we didn’t mind. Their dry, shiny scales were surprisingly soft at this age—we were tempted to sneak a caress here and there as we fended them off. The little brown-and-buff female made an especially thorough investigation of my cart, as if she sensed my interest and approved of me.

  At last we were done, and the broodmothers nudged the qits into their nests. As we checked and oiled the harnesses, we watched the qits scuffle with their littermates, converting the last of their excited energy into play. Then we swept the deck, and the shushing sound of broom on stone lulled them to sleep. We gave it a cadence, because dragons love music. The mothers purred to add a soothing counterpoint.

  Soon they were curled in tight clusters of shiny leather, tiny snouts tucked under folded wings. With the bedding refreshed, their naturally clean, talcum scent filled the air. I sought out the little female in the nest of Rannu and Athys. Her back rose and fell under her mother’s wing. I squatted down where I could see her better.

  Darian patted me on the shoulder. “I just saw Father, heading north on Shuja to find Tauman and Jhem. I hope that’s a good sign for Fren. They won’t be back soon, and the broodlings are all asleep. Our work here is done. The help has all left . . .”

  I looked up at him as his voice trailed off. His face was clouded again, and a shiver tickled my back. He seemed to be on the verge of saying something, but then his lips softened into a weak smile. “Let’s go check the traps.”

  I was tempted. It was a daily duty anyway, though maybe not on the day before Brood Day. This particular afternoon it might be salve for our wounds, but it didn’t feel right. “Dare, I don’t think we ought to—”

  “No, I think we should.” He looked terribly serious. Before I could answer, he sauntered into the paddock, then crossed the bridge to the homestead atop the cliff and past the winter stables into the trees. Once out of sight of the compound, he darted between trunks and hurdled deadfalls, eager to be lost in the deep stillness.