Natasatch let out a frightened squeak and raised her neck, ready to spit fire.
He met her gaze, let one griff twitch. “Sorry to startle you, my dear.”
“Au—FuThazar, whatever are you doing in my chambers?” Natasatch said. “I commissioned you to find a cache of old Hypatian coin to give as a gift to Imfamnia, not to intrude on my chambers.”
“I will withdraw, but first I must speak to you, Protector,” AuRon said.
“Ah, well, as long as you’re here,” Natasatch said. “Begone, you,” she told her servants. “Not a word to the Sunlight Queen of her gift. I want it to be a surprise, and if it gets spoiled you’ll hang upside down on my balcony from dawn to dusk.”
The servants scuttled off.
AuRon felt a stab at her casual mention of punishing her human slaves. He’d seen a good deal of cruelty in his life, and rather than becoming hardened to it, he’d grown more sensitive over the years. Not that any dragon dared admit a missing patch of scale for any of the two-legged races.
Worse, his mate looked as if she’d been living in the wild, and not living well at that. “You look thin,” he said. “Are you eating?”
“Very well. I get the best calves-livers in Dairuss,” she said. “It’s not doing you much good. Have you been ill?”
“I expect it’s Blood for the Empire.”
“What in the air is ‘Blood for the Empire’?” AuRon repeated the phrase to make sure he’d not misheard.
She cocked her head, as if he’d asked her why her scales were green. “I forget how long you’ve been away. Blood for the Empire. We’re bled regularly. There’s good coin in dragon-blood, especially from the rich Hypatians, and in extracts sold on the other side of the Sweep of the Ironriders.”
Fine. His mate was looking sickly and aged so some shriveled old Hypatian galleon-master could frolic with his fifteenth wife until he impregnated her.
“So, they have an Empire that spans two-thirds of the world, and they have to bleed you to acquire gold to eat?”
“It’s so much more than that, my—old friend,” she said. “Excavation projects need dwarfs. Roads must have surveyors and shorers. Armies to maintain order. They’re rebuilding the old Sailing Market so it can circle in the Inland Ocean once more, as in Hypatia’s glory.”
“I thought the point of the Empire was safety for dragons. You look like you’re about to topple, and you’re young and healthy. What happens with older dragons?”
“Less is expected of them, of course,” she said. “NiVom is brilliant. He thinks of everything.”
“I wish my brother were still Tyr. He had less brilliance and more sense. I don’t remember seeing any starved-looking dragons in his—”
“Hush! Are you flapping mad? Don’t speak of him! Every important dragon from the Sun Empire, and a few from the Dark, is here. The place is thick with griffaran and the Queen’s spies.”
“The birds are stuffing themselves with fruit and nuts, as far as I can tell,” AuRon said. “As for spies, half of the dragons here seem to be slipping on and off one another’s balconies or meeting in hillside glades. They’re going to keep busy reporting who is engaging in a quick tryst with whom. What sort of dragons are these? They’ve got the morals of mead-addled blighters at a spring mating festival.”
“Would you like a look around my sleeping chamber? I assure you, it’s cold and empty.”
“No colder than mine,” AuRon said.
“We could change that.”
“Were we to join, I’d prefer it to be up in the sun and clouds, as proudly mated dragons. I’m not about to join in some dreadful scuffle like a furtive blighter.”
“You know very well that’s impossible, my lord.” Sometimes she used the traditional honorific to poke fun at him when he grew pretentious. “Were I to take someone up, it would be remarkable. Every gossip would try to figure out who it was. Unlike some dragonelles of my acquaintance. It’s more strange if they aren’t cavorting over the city during a celebration, with Imfamnia setting the social tone.”
“Pity,” AuRon said.
“Will you remain long? Perhaps you could return to Dairuss. You could hide in the high pass.”
AuRon looked at the astonishing layout of tools for dragonelle preparation. There were knives and files and hooked cutters for scale, paints and dusts and glues and brushes and rags and mysterious pointed sticks for decorating scale, and vast quantities of a reddish clay.
“What’s all the clay for?”
Some of Natasatch’s good humor returned. “You really are out of date. It’s a wing-skin soother and tightener. A folded wing should look smooth and supple. It’s hard work, standing there with your wings stretched until it hardens. Then you do it again with them folded. Takes the better part of a day.”