The arrival of the Exiles, as she styled them, had forced the statues to move. There were hatchlings now—she still thought of them as hatchlings, half in wonder at the word, despite their breathing their first fire and showing thin skin where their wings were coming in. Her senses, exposed to new smells of dragonkind, new voices entering her ears, woke up as if from a dream. Colors struck her as brighter and the smells of the blighters roasting sheep made her as hungry as a dragonelle after her first flight. The Sadda-Vale seemed to be blossoming.

She was even starting to like DharSii again. Before Wistala visited, briefly, all those years ago, she grudged him his trips into the world outside the Sadda-Vale. Now she realized he was just trying to avoid becoming another dusty statue, issuing the same words to the world as though they were engraved beneath their claws like aphorisms. Had he not become intrigued by her—an odd object for affection, she was so muscular as to be ungainly, and her wings never managed to fold up in the neat, tight, attractive manner of a high-blooded female—they never would have had the hatchlings.

Even the idea of setting her home against the power of RuGaard’s former dragons excited her. She’d exercised unlimited (well, limited by good manners and tradition) power in the fogs of the Sadda-Vale for too long. Having an outside power to defy and subvert added spice to her life.

Ultimately, the dragons in this Empire would come around to her way of thinking. The lessons of Silverhigh had been forgotten everywhere but in the Sadda-Vale. If she could only speak with one of the better-bred dragons. They could sit down and talk over fish and fowl. Perhaps a sturgeon, suitably fried with breading and a brace of Vale hares. Even the most arrogant or silly dragon came around to her thinking with sufficient discourse—look at NaStirath and DharSii. Dragons must retreat to the most inaccessible corners of the earth and live with as little disturbance to the outside world as possible. If the hominids come, let them come exhausted by long marches in bad weather across bleak lands, hungry and covered in boils and bug-bites. Then let them taste fire and go back to remind future generations of the pain that crossing dragons brings.

This NiVom and Imfamnia might think they were atop a pyramid of domination, controlling the Hypatians, who drew enmity and discontent away from their dragons the way vinegar and soaping fats drew flies away from your feast, but all they were doing was going soft and offering their bellies to those below. The dragons of Silverhigh thought themselves clever beyond hominid ken, too, but they still woke too late to the throat-cutting party gathering about their beds.

No one but stupid NaStirath knew of the emissary who’d come from Tyr NiVom within a few months of the Exiles’ arrival, all those years ago. Before Wistala’s hatchlings, before the death of that stolid yet beautiful avian bodyguard of the former Tyr.

She and the Empire dragon met on a rocky outcropping overlooking the crossed pylons outside the Vesshall. She arranged it so he squatted facing both her ancient hall and the sun, though the Sadda-Vale’s usual overcast interfered with that element of her tactics. The emissary had blustered and threatened that they turn the Exiles out to starve in the far north, or face the wrath of all of dragonkind . . .

All dragonkind. Were all dragonkind gathered, they could probably learn most of each other’s names and histories in a few days.

Scabia had the blighters carry off the welcoming food, drink, and ore she’d offered to the emissary. Orders given to me under my own roof mean that you must be on your way back to your Tyr. My contempt for these demands I’ll have you to carry back shouldn’t prove too heavy a burden. I decide who enjoys hospitality in my own home.

As long as it is your home, the emissary had replied.

I heard this dialogue in one of the dwarfish epics, didn’t I? Now I’m supposed to ask ‘Is that a threat?’ and you reply that you were stating a fact or making a promise or some other coolly superior remark . I am most displeased. I am famous for not seeking trouble in the world beyond this mountain ring. But if trouble comes storming in, know this: The Sadda-Vale is the last fragment of the glory that was Silverhigh. Break a glass vase and you will learn. The beauty is gone, but the fragments are more dangerous than they look. You will not be harmed if you leave now and do not alight again until you are beyond the mountains. This audience is at an end.

The memory of the conversation still thrilled her. Too bad her mate was dead—after seeing the emissary snort and turn wing, she felt so invigorated she would have given the old eleven-horn several turns in the clouds.

It did a dragon good to get the blood up now and again. No wonder that Wistala was fertile. Perhaps she’d coddled Aethleethia too much over the years. Well, that was fish heads down the kitchen chute.

In any case, if that silly messenger was a sample of the leadership style of this new empire, there’s no wonder that it’s already falling apart. Perhaps more Exiles would show up. Perhaps even brooding females. There were caves all over the eastern slopes facing the lake—you had to watch out for trolls, but they could be hunted out of the mountains.

She wondered how she’d manage to pass the word south that there was room for a few more in the Vesshall. Of course, they had to be the right sort. If this NiVom and Imfamnia were clever, they might send a few trusty infiltrators. She would have to question closely and watch closer still.

It had been so long since anyone challenged her for dominance of the Sadda-Vale that she hardly knew how to take it—whether to be insulted that all her efforts here could just be cast aside because of a political feud or complimented that they thought her a potential rival rather than a half-forgotten curiosity.

True, the Sadda-Vale would never support the number of dragons that the Empire to the south could. There were only so many fish even in so long and deep a lake, sheep reproduced only so fast, and it wouldn’t do to starve the blighters on millet and dried dragon-waste ground into chicken-feed. Worse, the only metals were the poor ores that DharSii blasted out of the scraggy rocks. The Sadda-Vale was meant to be a pleasant resort for a few months in summer, really, not a breeding ground for dragons.

Scabia, in her younger days, had made a habit of going for either a flight or a swim every morning before eating. The combination of hunger and exercise clarified her thoughts. As she aged, the flights and swims became now-and-again endeavors, though sometimes she had bursts of energy and restarted the habit for a season. Lately, if she was feeling particularly well, she’d rouse herself enough to float around in one of the warmer corners of the spring-fed lake.

This morning, some weeks after Wistala had departed and with DharSii off cracking rock and gathering ore for the week, she roused herself early—even before the hatchlings were clamoring for food—and eased herself down to the lake. Her joints didn’t care for the sudden activity so soon after waking and she heard a scale or two clatter to the stone floor as she left her sleeping perch. The sun rose early in the northern summer and the sky was already a brilliant daylight blue.

She plunged into the warm swirls and drank steam through her nostrils as she paddled about. She even snapped at a fish who was hungrily exploring the lake-bottom mud she’d churned up.

Exercise done, she shivered as she climbed back to the decorated entrance with its old dwarfish designs.

Once she was back in the shadows of the entrance hall, Larb appeared, fluttering just above her head.

“You’ve been exercising, am I right, yer ladyship? You’re looking fit and trim, that’s a fact. Me, I think I’m coming down with something.” He let loose a trio of tiny but significant coughs. “A dab of dragon-blood is just what I need to get my head hanging the right way down.”

“You are a ghastly-looking little thing, Larb. Were you accidentally boiled in your youth or does all your kind look that way?”

“It’s jes’ me benighted upbringing, too long underground with no fresh insects or cattle. Oh, the hunger I knew then! The hunger I know now!”

Disgusting. Presumptuous. Yet there was something disarming about a creature that she might swallow whole and send fluttering down her gullet asking to draw blood for a meal.

“What sort of diseases are you carrying in that snaggle-toothed mouth of yours, I wonder?” she asked. Everyone knew bats transmitted deadly illnesses, though opinions on just how they did it—curses, spellcraft, a poison that worked on the balance of spiritual elements in a dragon, some sort of infinitesimal parasite that leaped from bat to dragon—varied depending on the expert consulted.

“Diseases. Oh, no no no, yer ladyship. Look, do I fly in circles. Am I off balance? Do I pant, or stare? It’s only sleeping in the cold that does me any harm.”

“Oh, I suppose so. Take it from the base of my ear. Don’t bother licking first to numb it—I find that more unpleasant than the nip.”

Scabia tried not to twitch at the nip. Self-control is everything. Control your self, control your world.

Still, she twitched.

Larb suckled and lapped, then loosed a burp so minuscule she found it cute. Her twisted and bent old fringe rippled. A prrum forced its way up her throat in response. What was happening to her of late? She was turning into a simpering dragonelle. Cute! Her mind must be going. That was it. Perhaps she’d go noisily mad. That would be a lot more fun for all concerned than waiting for the gray curtain of senility to fall. She wondered if she’d just fly off into the north, raving.