by E. E. Knight
“Squawker,” the Copper bellowed. As he inflated his long lungs to yell again, a rather scabby old blighter scrambled out of the biggest cubbyhole, a terraced multiroom wooden pile with some decorative carvings.
The Copper didn’t know his real name; he’d called him Squawker from the first.
Long arms smoothed down the blighter’s sparse fur. “RuGaard-Lord! I attending!” He practically danced in front of the Copper, bobbing.
“Trash and muck everywhere,” the Copper said. “Get it cleaned up at once.”
“Make proper! Make proper!” Squawker bellowed in Drakine, pointing to wheelbarrow, trash-cart, and scrub-broom. Blighters popped in and out of their habitats like startled rats in a trash-heap. The Copper’s one remaining purpose in life was being the prowling cat in the alley.
Most of the blighters could speak a few words of Drakine: yes, beg, at once, very sorry. Squawker was practically an Ankelene scholar, being able to carry on a conversation.
Squawker watched the action. “All fix up proper, many busy hands lighten tasking, for noble dragons orders being mine dragons obey always at once,” he blatted out, with a sweeping gesture at the cleanup action. A female blighter hurled a week’s worth of charcoal dust off her balcony and the Copper watched it descend like snowflakes. A current of air caused by the Copper’s breathing pulled the floating ash toward him and Squawker beat at it in the air like he was fighting off gnats.
“That was quite a speech. Where did you learn your Drakine, Squawker?”
Squawker explored a crevice thankfully out of the Copper’s line of sight. “Father learn in dragon tower. Father teach Squawker growing up.”
“What’s the ‘dragon tower’?”
“Far off in sunset place, on water, high,” he said, sniffing the results of his probe on caked fingertips and scowling. “Father feeder and scale cleaner, travel many flight dragons, but fall off this side mountains, loose dragons, loose circle man. All find here settle.”
“I want you and only you to prepare the Vesshall dragon dinner tonight, Squawker. No other hands are to touch it. Were there many dragons in this dragon tower?”
“Lord, yes, mine many more thans here. Good big dragons. For need stitching and cleaning and feeding. Fighting dragons, mates, ittle-ittle hatchlings. Lord RuGaard want scale cleaned? White soft very bad, Lord, scrape off grow new.”
Insolent cur. “It’s my scale! I’ll attend to it,” the Copper growled.
He tried to get a bit more about the dragon tower out of Squawker, but it was of little use. Confused tales from his father that may have been mostly brag anyway. Blighters always talked up their situation in life. Basking in the reflected power of their betters brought them status, and the better the betters, the better the blighter. Still, it gave him something new to think about.
He probed the rotting tooth, pushed hard—
It came away in a painful ecstasy of relief. The Copper had a foul, bloody, rotting taste in his mouth and spat. He took a mouthful of freshly condensed water from one of the cisterns and spat in the gutter again. Looking in the cistern, he saw the tooth, yellowed at the tip, then brown, then black at the rotted spot at the root.
His mouth already felt better. He’d have Wistala find some herb or other to soothe the pain and clean the hole. Like her dragon tower companion DharSii, she was clever about many things, but had an especially good nose for medicinal herbs.
He picked the tooth up with his lips and tossed it to Squawker.
“Treasures, my lord! Thank you, thank you, thousand thankings. May your claws breed inside many enemies throats. All proper not a moment too much!”
“You’re welcome, Squawker. I enjoy our little conversations. They’re so refreshingly deranged.”
“Always best deranged for you, Lord RuGaard,” Squawker said, bowing deeply.
The Copper prowled the tunnels of the Sadda-Vale. If he’d cared about art and stonemasonry, he would have found interest in every arch and decorative tile. Artistic flourishes might intrigue DharSii and Wistala and engage them in one of their interminable discussions. To the Copper, the facades were so much dirty old junk, with a potential to shelter bugs or vermin. Beauty was found in usefulness, like the perches in the great hall or that hole in the top of the stone ceiling that allowed you to fly in and out of the hall at need. As for these tile-decorated passages, they should burn it all thoroughly, just to kill off the scale nits and eggs and ear-diggers no doubt lurking in the moister crevices.
So there were other dragons, here in the north. His impression, from the experiences of his brother and sister, was that the only dragons not part of the Dragon Empire were a few back-to-nature oddballs and this vestige of the first age of draconic greatness in the Sadda-Vale. He’d heard of some mercenary dragons—his former bodyguard Shadowcatch had been one—who were the remnants of some mad wizard’s army. He should have questioned Shadowcatch more closely; it never occurred to him that the dragons were established and breeding.
Scabia would no more think of risking her dragons’ lives in the world outside the Sadda-Vale than she’d scrape out her nostrils during one of the interminable feasts she’d throw to celebrate some long-dead ancestor. She’d seen too many relatives die, sticking their snouts into the affairs of hominids and trying to change the flow of history. “One might as well beat back the tide with your wings,” she liked to say.
The Copper ate his evening meal alone, as usual. What wasn’t usual was the reason. Instead of making himself miserable through loneliness, this time he wanted to think.
How would a band of dragons support itself, if not as part of the Dragon Empire? Were they mercenaries who fought for food and gold, or independents banding together for protection, or some vestige of the Circle of Man who’d employed the Dragonblade, the fierce man who’d briefly helped the idiot Tyr who preceded him control the Lavadome? Perhaps men who wished no part of domination from the Empire—or their pet Hypatians—paid the dragons to protect them.
If there was bad blood between this dragon tower and the Empire, all the better.
One danger, though.
The Copper stretched muscles chilled by the blood diverted to digestion. He looked over his scale. It was thin and shabby. The metals available in the Sadda-Vale were the next thing to inedible. One ate “gravel” made out of shales that had bits of heavy metals in it. It cleared the digestive tract and kept the scale growing—just. But there was no pleasure in eating it. Gold and silver, that brought the thick saliva to the mouth and, once consumed, left one tingling and pleasantly heavy. There’d never been much coin or plate or scrap when he arrived, begging for shelter and succor in the Sadda-Vale. A few blighter traders brought in metals, mostly copper and tin, to exchange for dragon-scale and claw-sheaths, but the Ironriders had grown desperate and robbed even those poor pack-merchants. The trickle had dried completely, leaving them with nothing but unpalatable ore.
Worse than the flimsy condition of the scale, he had the telltale white edging, a rot forcing itself toward the scale root.
Of course, it was all pointless. He suddenly remembered he couldn’t fly. The pulley contraption that served as his wing joint—he’d been crippled as a hatchling before they even emerged—had broken down and was in poor repair. He probably wasn’t in condition to fly far even if it were working.
He’d have to beg DharSii to take a look at it and see if he could engineer a solution.
Well, never too early to improve one’s health. Walking with more purpose than he had in years—his walk would never be graceful, with his withered sii—he passed out into the vast courtyard before Scabia’s hall and wandered down to the steaming lake. There was a good moon for hunting.
Long ago, there’d been some kind of human settlement on the shores of the lake. They’d died off or fled, or possibly been eaten, and the blighters had occupied the few buildings with intact roofs. This morning it smelled like last night’s boiled fish and blighter feet. The humans had made game pools, perhaps
for crab or freshwater mollusks. They were near a warm spring and conveniently dragon-sized for bathing.
The Copper couldn’t fly, but he could swim. He dove in the steaming water and nosed around in the wreckage of old docks and boats. Not being able to see in the underwater gloom was to his advantage—he was forced to rely on his probing tongue and claws. He smashed an overturned boat—something about the nature of the minerals in the water of the Sadda-Vale prevented metal from disintegrating. From the hull he rooted out a few nails others had missed or hadn’t bothered about, then, miraculously, found a pair of oarlocks and an old sword blade buried in the muck.
He came up to the surface, then noticed that some fish—big-mouthed hunters—had come to investigate and eat creatures stirred up by the disturbance. He was quick enough to catch two in his jaws before they could swim away. He let the lake water run out between his locked teeth and swallowed the wriggling fish.
The oils in cold-water fish flesh were good for the firebladder.
The Copper bent the sword-point and swallowed it. The nails and then the oarlock followed the weapon down into his gullet. Gold or silver would be better than steel and iron, but health was health.
The water cooled fast once the chill winds of the Sadda-Vale could play over it. The metal in his stomach shifted as the weight pulled it into the gizzard that would digest and distribute it.
Feeling better than he had in years, he gave his tail a final shake, vented loudly, and decided to turn in. Sleep would speed the nutrients to the scale-root, or so he’d been told in his days in the Drakwatch.
He saw a dragon flying north toward the great hall. It reminded him of something his old instructor had said in the Drakwatch: Think of either good deed or crime, and the opportunity to pursue either course will present itself forthwith. He recognized DharSii and spat out a glob of fire—his wounds prevented him from doing more.
DharSii adjusted his wings, circled, and descended.
“How goes the hunting?” the Copper said. He spoke to other dragons in a sidelong manner, hiding his bad, half-closed eye by pretending to gaze out into the distance across the steaming lake. DharSii was too polite a dragon to mock a disfigured comrade, but old habits remained like scars. He’d been told, innumerable times, that his eye gave him a half-witted expression.
He thought about inquiring after his sister’s health and success in the hunt, but did not want to provoke DharSii. The atmosphere under Scabia had lightened a great deal since Wistala’s hatchlings arrived and went under her and her daughter’s care, but there was no particular need to be direct about their quasi mating.
DharSii’s griff, the fanlike shields protecting his throat and neck-hearts, rattled and his scale smoothed.
“RuGaard. You’re out late,” he said. He settled his wings. “Yes, the hunting’s been good. We managed to take a troll, so the sheep in the west-side pastures should thrive this summer. It was an unusually canny troll that I’ve been after for years. Your sister was beyond helpful. I’d attest that she’s the best hunter in the Sadda-Vale, particularly when it comes to those monstrosities.”
“You smell like blood. Was either of you injured?”
“Your sister is fine. We were both knocked about a little.” DharSii exhibited some cracked and torn scale. “As I said, he was a canny fellow. You smell a little of blood, too, when you speak.”
“Lost a rotten tooth, and good riddance to it.”
DharSii’s wings rippled, and the Copper felt that the great Red was getting set to end the interview. He had something on his mind, obviously, and he might give a quick agreement just to return to whichever intellectual obscurity was working on his thoughts this week.
“I need a favor, DharSii. When you have the time, I was wondering if you’d take a look at this wing joint of mine. A band or something has come loose.”
“Thinking about flying again? Excellent. A dragon needs exercise. I’ll see what I can do. There’s a decent blacksmith among the blighters who will assist.”
“More than exercise. A change of scenery, now and then. I was thinking of going west. Sort of an extended hunt. I’m famished for wild game and some decent metals.”
DharSii looked closely at him. “Not breaking the terms of your exile, I hope. I wouldn’t want the Aerial Host to get an excuse to appear over the Sadda-Vale.”
“Nothing like that. Though I do hope they’ve forgotten about us. I feel like I’ve gone venerable here, it’s been so long.”
DharSii’s tail lashed. The Copper suspected he hated Vesshall, the Sadda-Vale, and his relatives here, but he felt bound to them. “It’s the fogs and mists. It feels like one endless season, or being underground.”
DharSii was an exile, too, the Copper decided—an internal exile, forbidden from indulging his own preferences.
“You have powerful enemies,” DharSii said. “They’ll kill you if they can.”
“AuRon slips into the Empire now and then to see his mate. I don’t intend to fly anywhere south.”
“AuRon was never anyone of consequence in the Lavadome. You were the Tyr, and as it stands now, you’re the only former Tyr who has survived the office since my grandsire’s egg was laid.”
“About my wing?”
“I’ll get some blighter toolmakers and have a look tomorrow. Good enough? I’m off to Scabia’s wine-cellar. I think there’s a brandy mix that would do your sister and me some good at the end of this hunt. It’s been an arduous one.”
“Why didn’t she return with you?”
DharSii made that throat-clearing rattle he liked to do when making up his mind or stifling the truth. He was an excellent dragon, but he couldn’t lie convincingly to save his life. “Ahem. She’s exploring a cave to make sure the troll didn’t leave another generation behind.”
“Grim business. I don’t envy her the job,” the Copper said.
“Grim business indeed,” DharSii agreed, and this time the Copper was sure he meant the words.
DharSii was good to his word. He and a few skilled blighters bearing tools and materials showed up after breakfast.
The Copper smelled a good deal of wine and brandy on him the next day, and his eyes were exhausted and red. It wasn’t like DharSii to overindulge in anything save boring conversation. He ate lightly and politely, was often the first dragon up and about in the morning and set an example in enthusiasm as he “chewed his gravel,” as Scabia liked to put it to the hatchlings.
They worked on the broken pulley, with DharSii trying different qualities of rope, wire, tendon, and banding DharSii kept applying some sort of blue goop to the wood of the pulleys to see where the pressure was falling hardest. The Copper’s wing began to hurt from the constant strain of extending it without the assistance of the artificial joint.
Finally, he was able to take a short flight, keeping low to the ground. Sure enough, the joint gave way, and he came to a clumsy, tail-dragging skid of a landing.
“Were there only a dwarf about,” DharSii said. Written on his face, clear as dwarf letters, was pity with his relative’s state. With most dragons, pity and contempt were one and the same, and the Copper suspected this was so of DharSii. “We don’t have the right kind of material.”
“I remember Rayg speaking of ‘gut-core,’ ” the Copper said.
“Not familiar with that,” DharSii said, pulling leather tighter with his teeth.
DharSii took the afternoon off and flew south to see Wistala again, bearing two bags across his chest. The Copper wondered if they hadn’t found a comfortable cave and were setting up digs where they could be free of Scabia six days out of seven. They were suited for each other. DharSii’s scale hardly twitched when Wistala’s name was mentioned, but that was just his self-possessed nature. His sister, however, practically dropped scale with the intensity of her prrum when they spoke of DharSii.
“What is that you’re doing there with my nephew?” Scabia herself said, as the blighters reattached the joint on his wing. It might not work right
for flying, but it was comfortable and provided support when it was folded, so the relief was palpable.
“We’re trying to fix this wing of mine,” the Copper said.
“In better days a dragon would use crippling injuries to improve himself in philosophy and mind the next generation, Tyr RuGaard. You hardly spend any time with the hatchlings. They might benefit from a better male example than NaStirath.”
Scabia never said so directly, but she treated the Copper as an equal and gave him grudging respect. She was a great one for titles, and the fact that he’d been Tyr of Two Worlds, etc., etc., meant more to her than it did to the Copper. To the exile, it was just a stream of words his court majordomo used to recite to save himself having to come up with anything pertinent to the matter at hand.
“You’re scratching the floors!” she bellowed at the blighter workmen, picking up their tools and placing them back in wooden trays with long handles. One of the blighters loosed his urine in fear, poor devil.
“Am I the only one who cares for this last vestige of Silverhigh?” Scabia asked the ceiling, which was as close as she came to reprimanding the Copper.
“I should have been watching them, Scabia,” the Copper said. “We are poor guests, I’m afraid. Your hospitality should make us grow more grateful over time rather than careless of it.”
He’d learned a diplomatic tongue in the Lavadome, dealing with the egos of powerful dragons and dragonelles. With his tail, he both sheltered the blighters and nudged them toward one of the servant-cracks leading down to their quarters. He’d smelled fire on Scabia’s breath and was afraid she would burn them, scorched floors or no.
“Nonsense,” Scabia said. “It’s good to have some dragons about. My nephew is always coming and going, which leaves me nothing for conversation but Aethleethia and NaStirath. My daughter, though I’ve raised her to be a respectable dragon-dame, is in possession of more appetite than wit, and I don’t care for NaStirath’s jokes.”