She startled despite herself. For a mature male dragon, he could be eerily silent when he wished, almost as quiet as her scaleless brother.
“Worried about being turned out of the Vale?” she asked.
“I’m not worried; annoyance is good for her. Expressing displeasure is her only regular exercise.” DharSii flicked a dropped rotten potato into the pool where it belonged.
Wistala didn’t like Scabia, and Scabia’s grudging kindness in allowing her exiled family safe harbor in the Sadda-Vale heightened the dislike.
DharSii’s color was up around his neck-hearts. She knew him well enough now to know that was the chink in his invincible aplomb. Eyes, wings, tail, claws, griff, and teeth would never betray his mood, but his capillaries let him down.
“Are you still determined to carry out this foolishness, bouncing off south like a broken chariot wheel?”
“I told you last night, the only way you’ll stop me is to break my wings. Care to try?”
“Sticking your nose into Lavadome politics might mean they gets lopped off, high up, where your fringe meets your head. I couldn’t bear that.”
Curse him! She would have covered twoscore horizons just on nervous friction.
“Ha-hem,” he harrumphed, falling into his old habit of clearing his throat as he made up his mind what to say, or to cover for keeping his tongue still. “I’ve met exactly one sensible, cultured, and lively dragonelle in my whole life. Can’t the world sort itself out for once? Who knows how many crises have passed in our score of years here, yet the sun still rises and the snows still come and go. We’ve had so many meetings and good-byes, I’ve resolved never to have another.”
“Ha-hem,” she harrumphed back at him, which was her only option other than twining her neck as tightly around his as she could. But if she began the embrace, she and Yefkoa would probably remain in the Sadda-Vale until their joint-scales grew brittle and dropped with age.
“Take this advice,” DharSii said. “Ask permission of someone to enter the Empire. It’s a thin bit of scale, but it may serve to confuse the issue enough for you to. I’m an old hand at exile.”
“Yet you yourself returned.”
“My sympathy for the Lavadome had not quite run out. But with the dragons gorging themselves on the world like Silverhigh of old, I’m content to leave them to their fate.”
Sometimes he could be as cold-blooded as a lizard. The dragons of the Empire might not be worth a blighter’s cuss, but what of the generation still dreaming in their eggs? What gorging had they done?
“I’m not,” Wistala said. “We owe something to the generations not yet born, even if their grandsires are fools.”
“A fair point. Would it be unfair for me to mention the new generation here? They may need you someday.”
“Having you with me will better my chances of returning to them,” Wistala said. “Will you not come with me?”
“I have my own phantoms to chase. While you are away, I’ll indulge myself in a little exploration.”
“More history of the Lavadome?” she asked.
“There are some missing pieces to the Lavadome’s story I’d like to find. I’ve indulged myself too long here. For the first time in my life, I’ve enjoyed the companionship at the Sadda-Vale. I mean you, of course. And your brothers. They’re each stimulating. So alike in their resourcefulness despite their disadvantages. Still, I can’t bear the thought of listening to Scabia without you others around.”
“I wish you luck, then. I will—miss you.”
“One last warning. There have always been powers who want to use dragons, alive or dead, for the strange substances that course through our blood. Our magic, if you’ll forgive the word. Long ago, Anklemere was attempting something with dragons—what, I do not know—and I fear his plans; perhaps even his mind, if you want to look at it that way, lives on. The Dragon Empire may think they rule sky, ground, and tunnel, but my vitals tell me they are being used like puppets. Who or what has the other end of the strings I cannot say.”
Yefkoa had behaved oddly at the Sadda-Vale once she was well enough to meet the other dragons. She bowed low before Scabia, as Wistala had coached her to do, and complimented her on everything from the taste of the sturgeon pulled from the lake to the intricate carvings in the passages.
“You just don’t see workmanship like this except in Imperial Rock in the Lavadome,” Yefkoa said. “Who made it? Dwarfs?”
“There are some dwarfish makers’-marks, but also blighter and human,” Scabia said, dropping out of her usual formal speech in an unusual condescension. “You can tell the difference in the details. The dwarfs will make a support look like rope, or piping, whereas the blighters will be more organic and men imitate leaves and vines of nature, as most of their artisans were probably trained by elves in the days of Silverhigh.”
Most strange of all was Yefkoa’s praise of the Copper. Wistala had forgotten over the years in exile how her brother had been loved by some of those he used to rule. Yefkoa spoke of him in tones of gratitude and awe, and was deeply disappointed that he was away. Wistala knew in a vague sort of way that he’d done some favor or other for her in her youth—had he given her a place in the Firemaids despite her slight frame and thin scale? Well, in any case, here was another dragon who loved her brother deeply. Wistala, when she looked at him, saw only a collection of injuries and an expression that verged on half-witted thanks to the eye injury she’d given him after their parents were murdered. She’d ceased to hate him long ago, but still wondered at the respect such a limping, undersized wretch seemed to inspire in others.
The bat Larb outdid Yefkoa in his praise of Scabia. He declared he’d never imagined such a Queen of snows—she was simply the most breathtaking female dragon in the world. He waxed on about the vastness of the Vesshall, his echolocation quite inadequate. This went on for a full shift of moonlight. Scabia reacted to the bat’s obsequious patter in a way Wistala had never imagined. She let loose with a prrum and invited the bat to eat his fill, complimenting him on his Drakine.
After dinner, when Scabia was amusing herself by telling stories to the youths, Wistala and Yefkoa looked over an old map of the Red Mountains.
“Where shall we reenter the Empire?” Wistala asked.