A scream and a clatter. The Copper’s attention went to the far end of the bow, near where the thralls entered and exited the kitchen.

“Drop him, Simevolant,” the Tyr said across the sandpit.

The golden drake ceased dragging a thrall up out of the trench. “But his platter was empty and I’m hungry.”

“An empty platter’s not his fault. A thrall’s a thrall, but you can’t eat them for no reason at all. Let him go, now.”

Simevolant released the man. The thrall was so frightened he scuttled for the exit without picking up his platter. The other food bearers continued circling. He noticed they quickened their step at Simevolant’s end, sometimes bumping into one another.

“That’s done it, worm,” Tighlia said, looking pointedly at Simevolant. “Their tiny brains can’t hold more than one thought, and now they’re more concerned with being eaten than keeping step.”

“Let’s have some drumming,” the Tyr said. “Where are those clever blighters with the kettledrums?”

NoSohoth extended a black-tipped wing toward a grove, and a trio of blighters came forward, two bearing pairs of vast, leather-topped drums and a third with a hollow polished log. They went to work on their instruments, filling the gardens with rhythmic pounding. The Copper liked the sound so much he couldn’t help swaying and stamping his feet.

“Mind the step, now, fellows; no one’s been eaten,” the Tyr said to the thralls passing under his nose. “That’s more like it. Steady on and I’ll order a barrel of sweet ferments up for you after the meal.”

SiDrakkon, sitting to his sister’s right, hardly ate at all, and worked at the edge of an embedded shield with his claws, prying up the rim.

“SiDrakkon looks unhappy,” the Copper said to Rethothanna.

“He’s always in a temper. Pay him no mind. Stuck between the ambitions of his sister and the directions of her mate. He’s the Tyr’s eyes and voice in the Lavadome, and he’s not an energetic dragon. Doesn’t like parties, either. Speaking of which, how is your first Imperial banquet?”

The Copper looked around. “It’s the most splendid thing I’ve ever seen.”

“It occurs to me that I’ll have to hear your lifesong at some point. You’re the first outsider to seek the Lavadome in…oh, a generation’s time. Of course, we don’t advertise our presence. Even with such allies as we have on the surface, we have to keep our home secret.”

The Copper would have liked to hear more from her, for he was curious about the Upper World and its dangers, but the drummers had exhausted themselves, and NoSohoth waved her over.

“My turn. May the Air Spirit carry my voice well,” she said. She stepped forward, and all eyes turned in their direction as NoSohoth announced: “Cry hear and hear, for we’ll have poetry now. A new work on the late feuds of the founders of the Lavadome by Imperial memoriam. Hear Rethothanna.”

Simevolant scanned the crowd, found the Copper. “I say, cousin, what are you doing there, lurking in the blade-bushes? Come and find your place at the banquet.”

The Copper stepped forward, and Simevolant made room for him, nudging a drakka aside.

“Hear me, Spirits; hear me, Ages; hear me, dragons great and small, for I tell a tale of the founding of a new Silverhigh….”

Simevolant ignored her preamble and snatched a plump sausage linked into the shape of a curly-tailed dog off a platter. “Now, how are things in the lower levels? I so seldom get down your way. Is the strength of the Drakwatch still keeping the Imperial Resort from falling?”

The drakka around Simevolant fluttered their eyelids and griff at his joke.

“Little has changed since your last visit,” the Copper said. He’d rather listen to Rethothanna than chatter and joke.

“I’ve traveled with the Drakwatch. Muddy, tiring business. Wars and body pieces. Have you made it out of the training caverns yet?”

“No,” the Copper said.

“You won’t lack for learning. But nothing teaches like experience. Even up here, you’d be amazed at what a young drake can experience.” He tapped the drakka next to him on the nose.

The Copper tried to close an ear to his yammering, but Simevolant kept asking questions. How many thralls were being brought across the river, the size of the herds driven underground from the surface provinces, improvements to dwelling space in the Skotl Hill…

The Copper caught only bits of Rethothanna’s performance. It dealt with the Tyr’s vision for a new Silverhigh here in this deep fastness, and told how he rose to preeminence after a series of duels and feuds between Skotl, Anklene, and Wyrr lines that divided the dragons of the Lavadome, uniting them through a rigid hierarchy where even the lowest dragons at least commanded numerous thralls. Thus, “Each dragon a lord, each dragonelle a queen.”

The Copper wondered what it was like to be one of even the lesser lords around the banquet, so important that your deeds were sung by others. They must be proud dragons indeed. And what dragonelle would not be pleased to be a queen?

But there were queens and there were Queens. Rethothanna dropped in a few lines of praise for Tighlia’s beauty, “a flower of the Skotl line, plucked and placed as high as any Wyrr for all to admire.”

Simevolant brought up a fragrant quantity of gas at that, loudly enough that Rethothanna had to pause until he was finished.

“I do beg your pardon,” Simevolant said. “Go on. I’m a dragon turned to stone by the power of your words.”

During kern, a thick, yellowish paste full of smashed vegetables that aided the digestion, Rethothanna finished with FeHazathant’s victory at the duel of Black Rock, after which the “iron-willed, steel-limbed” dragon assumed the old Anklene title of Tyr, borne by the dragon who ruled and commanded his fellows in the old, half-forgotten Age of the Sorcerer, when Anklemere ruled.

“They wallow too much in the past, that generation,” Simevolant said. “Refighting old wars. What’s going to come after the Tyr dies? That’s what concerns me. I’ve no ambition whatsoever, but there are plenty who do. Dragons can be ruthless in getting what they want.”

The dragons spat torf-sized gobs of flame into the water troughs placed here and there among them, and Rethothanna bowed to the crackle and hiss of water turned instantly to steam.

“Excellent,” Tyr said, casting flame into the sandpit at the center of the banquet. “So polished, and all the grim business of bodies and broken eggs left out. I don’t like brave deeds tarnished, you know. Come, Rethothanna, take first position there and eat your fill.”

A dragon, wings thick with red laudi, moved over, and with some shoving and squashing the dragons rearranged themselves around the banquet.

The Tyr thumped his tail. “Now I have an announcement. Our Uphold in Bant has suffered some serious reverses of late. The humans and blighter tribes there are set upon and need our assistance. I’m sending a dragon up to set things right.”

“Bant. Oh, how tiresome,” Simevolant said. “Humans. They can’t stand to see the moon change without starting some new feud.”

The Copper would have liked to ask what the moon was, but he kept his tongue.

“I don’t need to tell anyone at this table how important Bant is to our food supply. I’ve decided that SiDrakkon shall go and help our Upholder in Bant, ummm—”

“NiThonius,” Tighlia supplied.

SiDrakkon glowered, going even more purple about the cheeks. He reared his head back, but the Copper saw his sister quickly put her head across his neck and whisper something in his ear.

“He’s not even of the Imperial line, Tyr,” Tighlia said. “My brother is only to ‘help’ him?”

“NiThonius is a wise dragon. The Bant are a raucous crowd, argumentative as crows and headstrong as boars. He knows how to handle them.”

“I wonder who is handling whom. Two more like him in the Upholds and we’ll be skeletons down here. Food is short enough.”

The Copper wondered at that, with thralls sweating and groaning under the weight of the platters that flowed around the banquet. But perhaps exceptions were made for banquets.

“I want full powers,” SiDrakkon said. “As the Tyr’s representative. Three good, battle-tested dragons. And three sissa of the Drakwatch to support.”

“I don’t want another surface war,” Tyr said. “The hominids lose ten thousand and we lose ten, and they have a fresh ten thousand before ten eggs are even laid.”

“Let me manage things or find another dragon,” SiDrakkon roared. The whole table went quiet.

Tyr stood.

Thralls hurried to throw more sticks of incense in the braziers, and a thick, sweet odor fell over the banquet.

The Tyr glared at his mate’s brother. “Fair enough,” he said in a steady voice. “Best to speak softly, with a fearsome host behind the words. You pick the dragons. As to the Drakwatch, I want Nivom leading the three siisa. He’s impressed me. I understand he’s quite driven the demen away from the caves bordering the far shores.”