Two griffaran rose into the air, one with the head and arm of a deman in its claws, the other gripping a leg. A jagged shard of crystal, long and slightly curved, spun as it fell. It broke into ugly barbs as it struck the ground just behind his bad sii.>The Copper would have liked to fly like that. His artificial wing joint allowed him to stay aloft and maneuver, but he was no aerialist.
Fortunately the wind of her landing dried his eyes.
Skotl. All brawn and no brains, Nilrasha thought to him. Don’t let a nice pair of wings make you do anything rash. SoRolatan is an important and influential dragon.
Mind-speech is a strange thing. The closer two dragons are, the better their communication link. Sometimes Nilrasha preempted his thoughts, but she was better at guarding hers. Whenever he probed to find out about his first mate, Halaflora, for example—
Ahh, the past is set. You’re Tyr, you need to be thinking about the future, as yet unformed.
“Name the Upholds, the dominant hominid race in each, its principal product for the Empire. You can really impress me by naming the Upholder as well,” the Copper said.
“Ha-errr,” she began, settling her wings in a way that made his hearts beat faster. “Bant, mostly blighters, produces fleshstock—sheep, I mean—and grain, the Upholder is . . . NiThonius. Far Anaea, humans, produces kern, the Upholder is . . . is . . . Ru—no, CuPinnatax ...”
If you’re really planning to sit through this, I’m going to go on to the river and have a bath, Nilrasha thought. But she made no move to abandon him in so public a manner.
“The Aerial Host could use you,” the Copper said, cutting her off as she mentioned that Yellowsand, to the southwest, offered only rare spices and herbs and a few jewels grudgingly extracted from the waste-elves there in return for horseflesh. “But remember, fly only at night, unless it’s an emergency or over the home mountains controlled by the griffaran. We aren’t ready for the surface yet.”
“And SoRolatan? His hoard-offering to my family?”
“I’ll see to it that it is replaced—within reason.”
You’ve made an enemy today, Nilrasha thought to him.
And also a friend. She’s young—she’ll be around longer.
Young dragonelles forget favors like clouds lose water, she thought back. Old dragons like SoRolatan hold grudges like dwarves keeping beard-light.
There were several castrated dragons in the Aerial Host, survivors from the brief but brutal reign of SiMevolant and his human supporters led by the Dragonblade. Though unable to produce heirs, they would still like having her around. And if she found some laudi-painted young flier with seed intact who sang his lifesong to her and managed to catch up on a courting flight . . . well, a few generations of eggs inheriting their flying skill would do the Empire equal good.
If SoRolatan made too much of a stink, he’d ask HeBellereth to send the dome-guard Aerial Host for endurance training over SoRolatan’s hilltop. Airborne dragons had to evacuate their bowels sometime.
He sent a message to HeBellereth, and the dragonelle practically licked his good sii clean with her tongue, bubbling gratitude like the old hot pool that had belonged to one of his predecessors.
If mutters arose from the spectators they took care that their Tyr did not hear them.
Nilrasha moved off toward the river ring.
A second messenger spotted his griffaran guard and corrected their course to the landing where the demen were held prisoner.
Of all the hominids, demen struck the Copper as the oddest. They looked like bits and pieces of other creatures fixed together with that liquid stone the dwarves used and men imitated. Bits of them about the shoulders and spine reminded him of scuttling pinchg-prawn with their carapaces enclosing tasty flesh. They had long, strong fingers, and toes for probing and gripping, and big eyes oddly set slowly blinking on either side of their pointed scabby heads. They had long, knobby-kneed legs that reminded him of frogs or toads, folding themselves neat as dragonwings against their sides when they sat. If a squatting demen closed his eyes you’d almost think him a stalagmite.
Which, he supposed, was the point.
They could squeeze into crevices one would think a snake couldn’t wriggle through too.
They were fast on their feet, though when panicked they shot in different directions, which, according to the reports he’d been hearing and sending on to the Anklenes to be recorded, was their one weakness in battle. He’d seen them working in the Lavadome often enough to know they could be cruel, especially to other races put under their supervision.
This assortment, bereft of their nets and crystal-tipped spears and slingstones that broke into ugly fragments in a wound, looked much the worse for their experiences. A deman was an emaciated-looking thing compared even to an elf, and these were thin as kern-stalks in a drought.
They squatted, mud-splattered and smelling of the river, chained or roped or weighted fixed to boat-bottom, half in the boats and half out and with that nasty thrall-dealer Sreeksrack—or so everyone called him. He had lost his honorable dragon name long ago—something having to do with a duel, Nilrasha said. He was a Copper as well, but of a bronzeish hue that reminded the Tyr of his father.
No one minded owning thralls, but the business of gathering and evaluating and culling them was best left to others.
Sreeksrack bobbed his head, trying to get his Tyr’s attention.
Captives taken in war belonged to the Tyr—though by tradition they were quickly sold, adding to the hoard of the Imperial Line. Vast sums moved in and out of the hoard overseen by NoSohoth. There were always coins rattling in NoSohoth’s gold-gizzard as they digested and turned to scale, but if a mouthful here and there kept so efficient a servant to the family line loyal, the Copper was willing to part with it.
Poor thralls. What must it be like to be rowed across the river ring in chains, nothing but toil to look forward to, even if it was under the splendid burning streaks above?