She crossed over to the others.

More platters of fish arrived and Scabia pointed with her tail toward Wistala, shook it three times, and they made a mountain of cooked, blackened fish before her.

“It’s quite safe,” Scabia said. “The blighters look to us for protection from the trolls, and of course the other races of the world who have superceded them.”

Wistala ate, but the charm of prepared food was nothing like that of Mossbell, with lively conversation and the friendly banter with Widow Lessup about the cooking. She felt like a pig at a trough.

“How many trolls have you killed, lord?” Wistala asked NaStirath.

“Hmmmmm. Killed? I set one aflame once and he made quite a spectacle rolling back to the mountains, but I don’t care to close and kill. Awful, the stench of trolls. I’m not sure that burning improves the odor.”

“I know DharSii has killed several,” Aethleethia said. “Every time he does it, the blighters talk of nothing else for moons.”

“Keen on sports, my good uzhin is,” NaStirath said with a belch. “Shall we have molasses elixir tonight, to celebrate our happy arrival?”

“No,” said Scabia firmly.

“Why do you care so little for the fates of other dragons?” Wistala asked.

The other three stared at her.

“Now see and hear, thirteen winters,” Scabia said. “You’re a guest, and welcome as long as you will be accommodating, but I don’t want challenges or lectures and twaddle about what we must and must not do, or you’ll find me a terrible enemy who’ll drive you from this home cave with fire and tooth and claw. This vale is safe and distant, and those wise enough to stay here do well. As to other dragons’ affairs, we keep out. It was a lesson dearly learned. My father? Dead. My brother? Dead. My mate? Dead. My sons? All dead. DharSii only just survived out there, was even a captive once, and it seems every time he crosses the mountain ring or goes down the river, he comes back with a new scar.

“We give no cause to the Ironriders or the wildhairs or the blighter bands on the steppe to feel aggrieved, and the trolls on the outer slopes of these mountains keep other hominids from the so-called civilized lands at bay. I don’t look for trouble in the wider world, and the wider world comes for no trouble here. Am I making myself understood?”

“Perfectly,” Wistala said. In different circumstances, would she have become Scabia?

“Oh, I don’t care for this sort of talk,” Aethleethia said. “Now let us have a pleasant game to aid the digestion. Wistala, how are you at add-a-couplet? We have a poem about dancing gems that is quite without a decent end.”

Wistala woke to the sound of dragon claws on the floor below her loft. She came instantly awake, but it was only Scabia, with NaStirath fidgeting behind.

There was a little light, but just a little, coming in from the ceiling hole.

“Good morning, Wistala,” Scabia said. “I came to say that I regret some of my words from last night—no, don’t apologize.”

Wistala wasn’t about to. “You’re most kind,” she said, which was true, to a point. She’d been foolish to seek an alliance with other dragons.

“I’m really here to ask you if you wish to stay, to live with us,” Scabia said.

“It is quite the most marvelous home cave,” Wistala said, watching blighters clean up dragon waste about the pool.

“We would like you to be uzhin,” NaStirath said.

“Wistala, I am like my uzhin DharSii in that I’ve no patience for disguise. My beloved daughter is the best of dragons but barren, and I would have hatchlings in this cave again.”

Wistala stiffened.

“Don’t look alarmed, I’m not asking for you to take wing on a mating flight now,” Scabia said. “Nor even call any male here your lord. NaStirath is a fine dragon and would sire strong hatchlings. You would have a home and honor and, yes, even precious metals here for the rest of your moons if you would leave a few clutches for Aethleethia to sing over and raise as her own. Don’t look so shocked—it was not an uncommon practice in ancient Silverhigh. You’re obviously healthy; I’ve never seen such thick scale on a maiden before, more like that of your grandsire AuRye, who was always stuffing himself with well-armored dwarves and golden hilts from broken battle-axes. I will condescend to say that such a famous line will improve the blood around here.”

Scabia cast a pointed glance back at NaStirath.

She’d always meant to keep her promise to Father; in fact, she’d dreamed of a clutch of restless eggs last night for some reason, but this, this—“Unnatural,” she said. “It would be unnatural.”

“No more unnatural than a dragon wearing hominid jewelry and a carrying harness,” Scabia said. “Were you born with that icon on your fringe, perhaps? Or growing up among hominids, as I suspect you did. Tell me I guess wrongly.”

“I . . . ,” Wistala said, groping for words. “I didn’t come here to find a mate.”

“Is it a song you want?” NaStirath put in. “I know one or two:

“There once flew a maiden of AnFant

Whose mind was as pure as her vent

But when—”

“You’re not helping your cause, NaStirath,” Scabia said, again employing the juvenile—deservedly so, Wistala thought.

Scabia turned those faintly pink eyes back on her. “Now, dear, we shall have breakfast soon. Let’s have you join us for a few more meals and we’ll speak no more of this while you recover from your fatigues and hurts. Get to know my darling Aethleethia, and I’m sure you’ll come to feel, as I do—”

“I must go,” Wistala said, hopping from her loft and running for the exit. Grand, Vesshall was, but it was also hollow. Hollow of honor, hollow of feeling, hollow of—

She almost bowled DharSii over as she sprang out the tunnel mouth, leaped from the ledge, and spread her wings beneath the stone canopy that suddenly seemed as dreadful as the thorn garden below. He began to say something, but Wistala didn’t hear the words in her eagerness to get away, flying south as fast as she could.

Chapter 24

Is this a joke?” Ragwrist said.

Wistala sat with him in the equestrian theater, a riding arena outside Hypat, where his riders practiced during winter camp.

She’d come south in easy stages, keeping to the west side of the Red Mountains and not raiding livestock. She slept only on the loneliest hilltops, and drank snow she melted with her foua, with an eye to avoiding the barbarians. In this way she made a long and ultimately fruitless search of the Red Mountains, even passing into the southlands and the borders of the Empire of the Ghioz, without meeting another of her kind, finding nothing but bats and bears and a horrid troll or two in likely caves. If any dragons did lurk there still, they were being quiet about it.

I am but one, and my enemies can’t be numbered. I shall have to improvise. Perhaps the Dragonblade and the dwarves have a weakness only one familiar with their habits could exploit. Cunning is required, treachery even. What would Prymelete do?

“It would be a terrible risk,” Ragwrist said after she outlined what she wanted him to do. They’d gone to some trouble to find a place where they could talk quietly. The new apprentice fortune-teller, Intanta’s great-granddaughter Iatella, had been hanging about getting an eyeful of Wistala and peering at her through the crystal shard. Though she was a skinny little girl, Wistala didn’t like being overheard, even by someone almost small enough to be gulped down in one swallow.

“I know. If the dwarves suspect me, they will kill me at once. And they know how to do it. I’ve seen the proof.”

Ragwrist did not ask her to elaborate.

“No, I don’t mean that. This Fangbreaker fellow is offering me so much money for you, I can retire to an estate and sell the circus to pay for the finest velvet cushions for my sore feet and sit-upon. I am afraid to trust myself. Especially since if your plot does not come off, I shall have made a powerful and implacable enemy.”

“You may always plead ignorance and desperation brought by poverty,” Wistala said. “You’ve had ample practice.”

“You’re getting as cynical as Brok. Where is the kindly green giant I once knew?”

“Still freezing her tailvent shut in the north, perhaps. Ah, I shall trust you. Perhaps my fate can balance out your desire to become a landlord like your brother.”

“Canny of you to mention him. But remember, elves have no particular feeling for their siblings, and evoking his memory awakes in me no desire to help avenge him. All I want to do is forget that unpleasant night.”

“Odd that you would send money to Lada to help her get Rayg back, then. Yes, I’ve been to the Green Dragon Inn and heard the latest from Forstrel. He’s raising bees for Lessup’s honey-mead now, near an old cave I sometimes use, and complained much of the share Hammar demands from all production. He also told me that you paid out of your pocket to fix some of the damaged houses. And that you raked the old ferry-bell out of the ruins and kept it.”