“No, I’m truly glad. The Firemaidens said that if you were dead, they’d throw me off the bridge.”

“Ten lengths ago I would have told them to do it. I’m too tired now.”

“Didn’t you hear me shout? I wanted to take it off and make sure the leather strap was holding. It’s meant to be permanently fixed with steel pins.”

Rayg worked on his model for a few more days, and was extra diligent at the bridge as well. They went through a few more practice glides, and the Copper flew back and forth and did turns under the bridge—with the harness tied around his limbs and a long, long line leading back to the bridge, just in case.

But in the end, he flew. He knew he didn’t fly well; nor could he do any of the fancy maneuvers he’d seen some of the dragons flying over the Imperial Resort perform for the sheer joy of it, but the ability made him feel complete, perhaps for the first time in his life.

And it hurt to know that Halaflora wasn’t up to it.

After showing his mate, he demonstrated his wings to Nilrasha. Her wings had come in some months ago, but he’d purposely kept away so he wouldn’t have to watch her fly. It didn’t help that Halaflora described the occasion in excruciating detail, full of praise for how natural and well formed she looked in the air.

“Oh, it’s a miracle, your honor. The Spirits are rewarding you at last.”

“You don’t have to call me your honor, Rasha. Not when we’re alone.”

“I like formalities. It’s so easy to hide behind them. If you offered to take me up, I’d say yes. You know that.”

“Take you up?”

“You know. Mate.”

“Nilrasha, my mate is above in the palace.”

“Oh, we wouldn’t have to fly out together, silly. Go out separately, and meet where she couldn’t see.”

The Copper felt bar-struck. “I meant a dragon should just have his mate.”

“So we are never to…I thought you just mated with Halafora to make the line happy.”

“Yes, but it doesn’t make the mating anything less for that. She’s been kind to me.”

“And you to her. Too kind. Do you ever—”

“I don’t want to talk about that. You’ve got the wrong idea about me if you think I could—”

“Could? Do you have another injury I’m unaware of?”

He rattled his griff. “Would, then. No. Not while Halafora lives. I’ve pledged myself to her, and that’s an end to it.”

“But do you still love me, RuGaard?”

He couldn’t answer that. If he did, he’d never be able to look at Halafora across a feast again. He turned tail and left the Firemaid’s cold, chaste quarters.

Chapter 24

He told FeLissarath and his mate that as soon as the bridge was completed and he could turn his attentions to Anaea, they would be free to leave.

“The odd thing is, I don’t think we want to go,” FeLissarath said. “The hunting is good, and we have friends here among the humans and condors. Perhaps we’ll leave the palace to you and set up somewhere in the mountains. A little cave. Really rough it, like young, wild dragons of the north first mated.”

His mate looked at him and she loosed a prrum.

Talk turned to politics, as it often did. Rumor had come up through the Drakwatch that SiBayereth, SiDrakkon’s first clutchwinner, had been killed, not in a duel, but in his bath. Some were saying he was assassinated in retribution for some of the killings and forced duels that had been taking place with greater frequency since SiDrakkon turned Tyr.

Others said that he’d bodily insulted some maiden dragonelle and she’d taken the traditional revenge of a female wronged and discarded.

The Copper returned to his cushions and his mate, exceptionally happy to be in Anaea and out of the Imperial Resort and its feuds. He slept with his neck across hers in silent appreciation.

So eager were the FeLissaraths to be in their new digs that they started hunting for caves almost immediately, and turned over all the day-to-day temple duties to him.

Now that he had his wings he hunted for NiVom, searching the mountains to the south, but there was no sign of him. He spent a rather cold night in the mountains—the Upper World made him feel exposed and watched; he didn’t like it, even when the unpredictable weather was nice—and flew back in the morning.

It was a brilliant, clear day. The sort of day that wouldn’t think about being evil, and instead put off ill tidings until the next overcast.

He saw a distant dot. It was a dragon, male—and therefore not Nilrasha, nor FeLissarath. It was light-colored, reflecting the sun, perhaps white.

He beat his wings hard toward it. He hoped if it was NiVom he’d recognize him rather than think him an assassin, despite the improbability of his being in the air. The dragon turned a little, not running away then, but coming toward him.

They rushed toward each other with frightening speed. The Copper saw that it was a light shade of bronze, though a good deal smaller than Father, at least Father as he remembered him. The dragon gained altitude at the last moment, as though seeking an advantage, and the Copper veered away, fearing a tailstrike on his weak wing and upset by something odd about its lines.

The dragon had a rider!

The implications so upset the Copper that he dropped toward the palace as fast as he dared—Rayg said that he couldn’t be certain that the joint wouldn’t give way under what he called “extraordinary stress” but refused to further define it.

His wing held as he leveled off, making for the staircase cut into the side of the mountain, topped by the familiar outlines of the dragon palace.

The other dragon—for some reason the term hag-ridden popped into his head, but he couldn’t remember the origins; perhaps it was some story mother dragons told their hatchlings to compel them to behave—followed his course, though it made no attempt to catch up.

He came in for a landing at the wide lower entrance hall, and Fourfang trotted up.

“Get my mate and Nilrasha. Danger!”

Fourfang glanced up and turned around, doing a fair attempt at running on all fours to get back inside the palace.

The Copper backed into the entrance to get solid Anaean stone between himself and the stranger—there was that term again, hag-ridden.

The man shouted words down at him, but he couldn’t comprehend their meaning.

“May I land?” the dragon roared.

“What is it, my lord?” Halaflora said from the entrance.

“Stay back. If a fight begins, use your flame to help me and then run for the Lower World.” He stuck his head out. Oh, this was cowardly! He stepped out.

“Cry parley and land away. Beneath me, now.”

The dragon turned one more circle and landed well, though it rocked the man in his leather seat a little. The hag-rider wrapped the reins around a curved tooth at the front of his seat and hopped off, though he kept hold of a rope linking him to his leather seat.

The Copper tried not to stare at the elaborate reins linking dragon, head and wing, to the rider. There were copper rings punched through the skin of the dragon to better fix the lines. He wondered if that hurt.

The man glubbed out a few words.

“That’s Parl,” Halaflora said. “It’s a trade tongue here on the surface.”

“Can you speak it?”

“Only a few words. I know a greeting.”

“Then say it.”

She coughed something out that sounded like the mindless yapping of a dog.

The man took off his helmet and said something in return.

“He’s being polite,” she said.

And there the conversation sputtered and died out. The man spoke to his mount, and the dragon said, in a rather thick accent: “We have come to bring peace.”

“That’s good. I hope you may also go in peace.”

The dragon translated for the hag-rider. The man responded, through his dragon: “We seek allies in a great war. A war that unites dragon and man against their common enemy.”

Hawks and mice uniting against the dogs and cats! The Copper didn’t know what to make of it, but he was in the Imperial line and needed to answer well.

“If you are so united,” the Copper said, “why do you need to speak the man’s words? Why do you fly tied head and wing tip to the man? Answer me that, and don’t bother saying anything to him.”

The bronze looked nonplussed.

“I tell the man that, and he will be angry,” the bronze said.

“All the more reason not to translate it.”

The hag-rider yapped something.

“That was a ‘What?’” Halaflora said.

The Copper smelled Nilrasha lurking somewhere. He suspected she was slipping around the side of the palace, next to the stairs.

“It is a great war,” the bronze said. “We win battles.”

“I’m happy for you, then. I’ll welcome any dragon who wishes to come in friendship, parley, and leave in peace. Leave your men at home, though. It’s bad manners to bring armed men into a free dragon’s home.”