And who was expected to support the mate and all the little squalling, hungry mouths? No wonder the dragons in the Heavy Wing of the Aerial Host constantly asked for new campaigns and opportunities to pillage.

Certainly, your human—and his family—devoted hours to care of teeth and scale, but any marketplace thrall would willingly do the same, and devote himself a good deal more to filing, pulling, and arranging scale to lie in the most attractive manner possible in exchange for safety and comfort away from the mines.

But, to her mind, the humans had the better end of the bargain. The dragon had to constantly report on the human’s skill at fighting from dragon-back—all that tedious tracking of missile accuracy and lance-hits on targets. And oh! if you should happen to accidentally smash him into drippy jam while attempting a tricky maneuver that results in a collision with a fellow dragon or a cavern, everyone from your winglane to the grand commander of the Aerial Host would be giving you a thorough dressing-down for carelessness. Bad for unit morale and all that. As if you intended to have an accident!

True, some dragons in the Heavies who didn’t care for their rider for whatever reason tended to arrange an accident, but one shouldn’t be accused of the crimes of others. That simply wasn’t fair.

So she chose the Light Wing.

At first, they almost wouldn’t have her. She’d been so long guarding the crossing that her wing-muscles had atrophied, and of all those tested, she came in last on endurance, last on climbing, and next-to-last in maneuverability.

One thing saved her. On her oral examination, she spoke of her hatching on the Isle of Ice and her first years there, where under her parents’ tutelage she learned to scout, hunt, find shelter, fish, crab, forage for metals—useful Upper World skills that few of the idle young dragons of the Empire could match. She had a good record with the Firemaids, too, and anyone who could spend a year with Angalia on guard duty without going mad and shrieking off into the darkness was not prone to fits of nerves or depressions. The two Light Wing veterans suddenly turned pleasant.

Welcome to the Aerial Host Lights, daughter of Natasatch, CuSarrath, the Wing Commander, said. She always thought of herself as the daughter of AuRon and Natasatch, but it would be have been impolitic of the Wing Commander to mention her father. He was in exile, after all.

Her father. She thought of him as a bit of a crank. He would have been happy living his life out on that cold little island, bathing in glacier water. As a newly winged dragonelle, she’d disliked him intensely, always trying to keep her out of the social life of the Empire, but she’d grown more sympathetic to his nature when she was in the Firemaids. She was feeling that she might like a little peace and quiet, without orders or duties or bleedings, especially if she could find a well-struck, conversational, and cultured male.

She looks stunned, the other examiner said, and she pulled herself back out of her thoughts and thanked them. They gave her directions on where to go next, and an Aerial Host identifying ring for her ear that she could show at any Empire post for garrison bedding, rations, and medicines, should she need them.

They gave her a lecture about how service in the Light Wing was very demanding but she could now consider herself among the elite of the Empire—no matter what the Heavies said about the Heavy Wing being present and key to every major victory of the Empire.

Strangely pleased with herself, she was welcomed into the main training cave for the Light Wing. It stood in the fabled dwarf halls that had once belonged to the Chartered Company traders. They’d since relocated, having taken a ridiculously small offering from a Hypatian noble for the keys to the delvings that sat picturesquely in the middle of a waterfall. Someone said he’d fallen into debt and been rescued by NoSohoth, who took possession of the halls. He offered them to the Aerial Host as patriotic duty to support the Empire—but if they’d share a small percentage of coin brought away from their pillaging expeditions, he’d see that Hypatia improved the quality of the food barged up to the delvings.

Which was its own brand of perdition. The Lights were forever being tested and judged. Speed trials. Flame accuracy trials. Observation trials. The moon never changed fully around without some kind of test where your performance was recorded, and if you were at the bottom of the class—without a certified injury or illness—twice in a year, you were booted out and given a choice of going into the Heavies, taking up garrison duty, or being allocated to dreary tunneling or thrall guard duty.

She was healthy and young, without injury or deformity, so there was little problem with outperforming dragons who’d been injured in action or brought up on sickly diets, as seemed to be the case with some of these older dragons who’d been raised in the Lavadome. She’d known plenty of sunlight once she came aboveground on the Isle of Ice, with a diet of fresh, wiggling fish, crustaceans, and a good deal of mutton. Her only shortcoming was, perhaps, a tendency to have thinnish scale—the Isle of Ice was not rich in metals—but on Host rations of mined copper the scales were coming in thicker and faster.

So she exercised relentlessly and volunteered for everything. Like this fast-flapping flight.

Oh, Mother, how wrong you were. Perhaps Father had been right. He’d never wanted to become involved in the Empire. And now here she was, setting off to what could be a battle. She didn’t have a fierce bone in her body.

They must be on an important mission. CuSarrath himself was leading it, after receiving a hasty message from NiVom, who was visiting NoSohoth in Hypatia. CuSarrath had told his six fastest fliers that they’d just volunteered for a sprint up to the northern borderlands of Hypatia, with him as the seventh flier.

He’d left orders to mobilize the rest of the Light Wing and recall all training groups. When at full strength, they were to relocate north to Quarryness.

Varatheela wondered what could possibly be going on that would need the whole strength of the Light Wing of the Aerial Host. Even training flights served a purpose for the Empire—watching roads and coastlines. Without the Lights, much of the Hypatian coast and the land between the Red Mountains and the Inland Ocean were vulnerable.

She was starved and exhausted by the time she reached the tower. She’d never been this far north since joining the Empire, not even on a reconnaissance flight.

She’d heard of this Dragon Tower of Juutfod, though. They were mercenaries, but hardly hostile. Most of the work they did was for the Hypatian Empire, helping the merchants who traded on the western coast or keeping the northern passes of the Red Mountains free of bandits, trolls, and the occasional Ironrider raid.

The fliers made one great circle over the tower, then began a slow descent, tightening each loop.

A red dragon with black stripes, riderless, flew up to meet them.

“Dragons of the Empire,” he called. He spoke with a faintly clunky Skotl accent, Varatheela decided. It was halfway familiar to her. “Welcome to Juutfod. Are you in need of direction?”

Alarm bells rang faintly in the town below and Varatheela saw watercraft being hastily loaded.

CuSarrath closed with the striped dragon. “Well, DharSii, like a bit of brass in a bag of gold, you show up again.”

“State your business,” this DharSii—or Quick-Claw—called.

“We have learned that the criminal RuGaard has broken his parole and is making mischief against the Empire here. He is to be turned over to us. I give you the Sun King’s word that he will not be harmed, but he will be rendered flightless and placed somewhere where he can be watched and attended properly.”

“Broke his parole, you say? How careless. By doing what?”

“Do you admit he is here?” CuSarrath asked loudly. CuSarrath was a bright enough dragon, but to his way of thinking, whoever made the most noise won an argument.

The striped red cleared his throat. “I admit to fishing with him from this tower. The sailfish are unusually large this year, CuSarrath. They must have had a rich winter in southern waters.”

“Ha,” CuSarrath said. “You admit it.”

“He gave his word that he would not reenter the Empire, and apart from a rather shabby trick by NiVom on the Isle of Ice, he hasn’t broken that word. Unless you claim Juutfod and the dragon tower, too. Shall I tell them about a change in allegiance? It might anger them—they’re almost a clan unto themselves and they value their independence.”

“We would, if those old saddlesore swaybacks and their gimpy hag were worth it. Bandy words all you like, but Juutfod is part of ancient Hypatia. Hypatia is part of the Dragon Empire.”

“Rubbish and nonsense,” DharSii said. “To listen to the Hypatians, the Eternal East is part of Hypatia, because Trader Iao of the First Directory once emptied his bladder in the sulfur pools while buying tea in Ya-ying. The nearest Hypatian hall is in Quarryness, and that’s more than a day’s gallop away. If you knew your Hypatian law, CuSarrath, unless a fast rider can cover the distance to a Hypatian hall in a day, any borderland is not legally part of the Empire.”

Varatheela did not follow politics, but to her it seemed DharSii was getting the better of the exchange.

“I’m relieved you know where the Hypatian hall is, DharSii. Tell RuGaard that he has three days to get his affairs in order and present himself at the hall in Quarryness, or we’ll come and get him and turn this tower into the legendary rubble-heap of Juutfod.”