“No, Tyr, nothing to add.”

“I won’t press you. Visit anytime, officially or unofficially. I enjoy the presence of virtuous young drakes. We need more of your sort.”

The Copper left and saw NoSohoth in the outer room, organizing the visitors to the Tyr.

As he descended into the rock, he became lost in his thoughts. He should pay a visit to the Anklenes and learn about the conditions on the road to Anaea. Find out what he could about the kern trade. He had a vague idea that it came in on pack animals. It wouldn’t hurt to ask a little of the history of Anaea as well—he wondered how somewhere so far away even became an Uphold.

Fourfang was waiting at the outer entrance to his cave. The blighter almost danced with anxiety.

“Bad! Bad news! Drakwatch came, took Rhea! Took Rhea to SiDrakkon, your honor. I think he eat her!”

Chapter 19

The Copper had been to the outer chambers of SiDrakkon’s cave only a few times to deliver routine messages concerning the younger Drakwatch trainees. He occupied one of the highest levels, practically a whole sublevel of his own, on the well-watered eastern spur of the Imperial Resort.

SiDrakkon’s doorwarden thrall, a rather fleshy human with a shaved skull, begged him to wait and disappeared inside.

SiDrakkon’s mate, an almost gruesomely thin dame with tired golden eyes, greeted him. “I cry welcome. You’ll find my mate in his wet grotto. He’s in one of his moods.” The Copper had no idea what her name was, so he simply bowed.

“I’d be grateful to be shown where that is, honored dame.”

“Just follow the sound of water.”

He could hear splashing, and the babble of human voices, and a plucking sound of some musical contraption or other that grew more distinct as he passed a burning brazier or two throwing off expensive smelling scents. SiDrakkon’s mate dropped some fragrant leaves on the flames and took a deep lungful.

A curtain blocked further progress.

“Your honor,” he called. “It’s Rugaard. Your mate admitted me. I wish to speak to you.”

“Go away, drake.”

The Copper sniffed at the moist air around the curtain. He smelled humans, along with wine and the vaguely sickly smell of fruit.

“I want my thrall back. The girl, Rhea.”

“I sent you a replacement. Didn’t she arrive?”

“I don’t care if you sent a calf of solid gold. I want my thrall back.”

“Well, come in, then. Let’s talk. You should appreciate the air in here.”

The Copper pushed through the double layer of tanned hides on the door. The air was moist, warm and a little steamy. A pool of water filled almost half the chamber, and in an alcove on a woven matt SiDrakkon reclined, reading something written on metal plates laid out under his nose.

The place was crawling with human females sweating in the heat. Some polished his scale, one stood with a barrow containing more metal plates, one played an instrument with strings that made those annoying twanging sounds, and several more just lounged around, drinking or eating or bathing. Only a few bothered to wear even the lightest kind of wrap.

“Take a breath of nepenthe, Rugaard, and relax. Here you can let the cares and responsibilities fall away.”

The thick human musk made the Copper hungry, if anything. He looked around for Rhea and didn’t—Wait, was that her, huddled with an elder of her sex in a corner? So hard to tell without the coloration. She looked shocking with all her hair shorn off.

He noticed that none of the females had very long hair.

“Why did you shear her?”

“All my cushions are stuffed with human hair. Adds a pleasant air to the room, and they still bring a good price once they lose the smell. What do you need that one for? She’s just a thrall, or does she do something special for you? She’s only just ripening now. The next few years are going to be exquisite. I won’t eat her for years, I promise.”

He sniffed at one of the wine-sipping females. She giggled something to a companion. The Copper guessed none of them spoke much Drakine.

Rhea looked at him, a silent plea in her eyes. A muscular blighter came in bearing a stone the size of a dragon egg in iron tongs, and dropped it into a smaller pool connected to the main one. It hissed and steamed as it struck.

“I’m fond of her, and she’s quiet. I’d like her back. I don’t care about the hair. In fact, every time she gets a new coat, I’ll have it shorn and sent to you.”

“You’ve made enough trouble for me, showing me up on the Black River. You’re lucky I’ve calmed down or I’d be challenging you.”

“My memory of events on the Black River isn’t clear at all. You’d better hope it doesn’t come back, or I’ll remember how you hung back while you sent dragons to their deaths.”

He rolled and straightened. “You whelp. Nivom’s bitten out one heart, and you’re after another. Do that and I’ll challenge you to a duel of honor.”

“Challenge away. It won’t keep me from telling the Tyr all I know. Kill me and I’ll swear to its truth as I’m dying.”

Griff flickered on each of them.

“I can’t stay angry in my grotto. Take your silly little girl and snuffle away.”

The Copper switched to the rather slower form of Drakine used for the thralls: “Rhea, come away from there, if you like. Back to my cave.” The girl threw a wrap around herself and hurried to his side.

“I can get a dozen just like her in here tomorrow, you know,” SiDrakkon said.

The last sounded like more of a promise to himself than a parting blast at the Copper.

“Thank you, your honor,” the Copper said. He held the curtain open for Rhea and together they escaped the steaming grotto.

Sure enough, a “replacement” for Rhea arrived the next day, a craggy-faced female with a basket of her own scale-shaping tools. The Copper had no use for her, so he gave her as a parting gift to NeStirrath, who was kindly to his thralls. NeStirrath didn’t bother much about his appearance, and sometimes looked quite deranged about the ears and griff.

He also received a small flower from Tighlia’s own garden, with a message wishing him fortune in his assignment.

As this was no simple journey to the surface and back, the Copper had to decide what to do with the bats. He released them to go where they would, though any who wanted to come with him were welcome, but he warned them that they’d have to make themselves useful.

Thernadad was too old to fend for himself, too blind to find himself food, and too bloated to be of much use to anyone, so the Copper allowed him to drink himself into insensibility on drakeblood, then had Fourfang break his neck with a quick twist as he slept.

“What do with body?” Fourfang asked.

“I don’t care. Burn him and use his ashes for cleansing paste. Or make a stew out of him; he’s fatty enough.”

And so passed the strange, greedy bat who almost accidentally saved the Copper’s life.

Over the next few sleeps Rhea made frightened, whimpering noises. Not knowing what else to do, the Copper woke her each time, and she’d sleep soundly afterward.

As the day for departure grew closer, Nivom visited him twice. Nivom now spent much of his day accompanying the Tyr in his duties, both in the audience chamber and in brief visits to the other hills. At the end of the day they would sometimes eat, or be groomed together by thralls, and his adoptive father, as Nivom called him, would talk the day’s decisions over with him and explain why he overruled a dragon’s punishment of a thrall, or granted a petition, or refused a gift.

“The Lavadome obeys him because he’s loved. I wonder what would happen if a dragon who wasn’t so universally admired took his place atop the Rock.”

“Fighting, I expect,” the Copper said.

“It’s…it’s like a giant game of mirroring to them, with the object being ‘please the Tyr’ so they get what they want. These court dragons in the line, and the leaders of the six hills, they’re just carrion birds and jackals waiting for his death. All playing different games where no one’s quite sure of the rules, so everyone cheats as best as he can.”

“I’m glad of my place at the tail end of the Imperial line. You’ve got the end with the teeth.”

“If the head gets chopped off, the tail dies too.”

“Oh, now you’re being as gloomy as SiDrakkon. Why so downcast? I heard you were cheered as you crossed Wyrram Ridge the other day.”

“And had waste kicked up as I passed between the greater and lesser Skotl hills, let’s not forget.”

“Oh, probably just drakes. Forget it. It would take a mighty turd to slay a dragon.”

“I’d almost rather be back in a war in Bant,” Nivom said. “Well, I must be off. A good journey and success in Anaea. Honor and glory, Rugaard.”

“Honor and glory, Nivom.”

On the day he told NoSohoth he would depart, he met his guide: the Firemaiden Nilrasha. She awaited him at the western exit ramp from Black Rock. He had two long, narrow cave carts, each pulled by a plodding ox waiting for him, one filled with food and supplies for him and his thralls, and the other with grain for the oxen. The Copper bore nothing but his small hoard loaded into a hollowed log, all traded into gold so it would carry more easily, and an introductory message from Tyr to FeLissarath.