“You must have faith in my mate. Don’t listen to the whisperers—me excepted, of course. He just needs time to see Hypatia grow used to living and working with dragons.”
“If there’s a plot against Tyr RuGaard… how would I learn of it?”
“Some dragons have a natural gift for sniffing out secrets and finding weaknesses. It’s quiet up here. I have visitors. Most of them are important Hypatians, or Hypatians who want to be important. They come here to seek my help, an intervention from the Tyr. They’re always awestruck, at first, and tell me about the only other time they met a dragon. I’ve heard an elf named Ragwrist used to have one traveling with his circus; it seems she told fortunes and somehow worked her way into the Wheel of Fire. She humbled a dwarf-king’s fortress that entire armies hadn’t managed to breach.”
“I’ve heard that story too,” Wistala said. “I think storytellers look for ways to improve on the truth.”
Nilrasha cocked her head and flexed her stumps again, as though brushing off imaginary birds perched on her fringe.
“A dragon who can bring down a dwarvish fortress so mighty that no army could take it might find herself in another conspiracy, wouldn’t you agree, sister?” Nilrasha looked at her sharply.
Was Nilrasha testing her to see if she was already involved?
“We’ll talk more in the morning. Would you like my thralls to clean your scale before you retire?”
Wistala enjoyed their services that evening. She wanted to think, and strangely enough, having the Queen’s servants cleaning and polishing claws, teeth, and scale gave her strange powers of concentration in their busywork. When they were done she fell into a deep, post-flight sleep and dreamed of moss-covered ruins filled with stalking cats and furtive rats.
They breakfasted on freshwater fish hauled up to the Queen’s eyrie in a woven basket on a line.
“You’ll not mind if we climb down so I can show you something? After, there’s good hunting in those woods, if your taste runs to wild goats or small deer.”
Wistala agreed. The Queen had the good manners to ask if she’d changed her mind about serving as Queen-Consort.
Wistala had assured her that she had not, but had more doubts than ever about how well she’d fit the role. “I’m no social dragon. I learned my manners from an elf.”
“That’s the great thing about being Queen. Blunder away. Your manners are never laughed at, at least to your face. Perhaps you’ll introduce a few new traditions,” Nilrasha said, giving an unsettling laugh.
Wistala’s family hadn’t been laughing dragons, though she’d learned humor in Rainfall’s gentle school.
They began their descent and Wistala found it exhausting, despite the chiseled-out holds for sii, tail, and saa. She hadn’t had to cling vertically in years.
“I see now how you stay so fit,” Wistala said. “Hanging on for your hearts’ dear life is good exercise.”
Nilrasha held on with her tail as she negotiated a difficult overhang. “Better than flying in many ways—the constant strain of unusual angles brings a muscular warmth and a healthy fatigue that much faster.”
They circled the pillarlike mountain of stone in the long climb down. Not even a goat would call it a path, but it was a series of sii-holds.
“Do visitors come up in that same basket that brought the fish?” Wistala asked, watching a wary blight cling tightly to the knot-and-handle as the basket descended.
“If they’re invited, yes.”
“What if they’re not invited.”
“They find their own way up. And a much faster way down. So far, my luck has held. As you are about to see, sister.”
Nilrasha took her to a sort of dimple in an outcropping from the mountain, out of the wind and big enough for a mother dragon to use as an egg shelf.
“I used to use this to rest during my climbs,” Nilrasha said. “You’re breathing hard. Perhaps we can catch our wind among some more of my trophies.”
The shelf didn’t hold eggs, or captured banners and broken swords and helmets. The shallow rocky well held bones, some with bits of desiccated flesh still on. Skulls of at least two kinds of hominids, broken blades, pieces of rope and chain and broken dragonscale, even bits of demen back-carapace lay in a jumble. It smelled of rats, though how rats could live halfway up a mountainside Wistala had to wonder.
They smelled of sun-bleached death, a crisp dry odor like shed snakeskins. Wistala saw that the pieces had been arranged as though they were at a human dinner party, with shields and sagging packs serving as furniture. The display showed a grim sort of humor, skulls sat on shield-platters staring back at their own bodies and weapons were substituted for missing limbs. “Who are they? Were they, I mean.”
“They were assassins,” Nilrasha said. “There have been several attempts on the Tyr’s life. But many more on my own. Certain members of the Imperial Line think that if I were out of the way, RuGaard will mate again. What some dragons will do to become Queen. Also, there’s old Ibidio’s faction, who think I outright murdered poor Halaflora. I’ve saved a souvenir or two of each assassin.”
Wistala thought the collection a macabre one. Some of the Firemaids kept a trophy of a broken sword or shield or an old helm to commemorate a battle, but pieces of the enemies bodies?
At least there were no dragon heads. None that Queen Nilrasha wanted to put into the tableau, anyway.