AuRon was used to the saddle by now—though he resolved none but Naf could ride him—and they took off again.

“And the south. Our source of sustenance and of trouble. We love the Ghioz for their plentiful food, barges full of grain and feed they send from their southlands, but it has always come at a price of arrogance, or domination. They outnumber us and frequently outwit us; more than one Dairussan has borrowed from their ample coffers to find that it must be paid back through Ghioz tax collectors and market law. They think of us as upright blighters in need of direction and management.”

“You should be honored to be thought of as blighter by such as they. I would rather freeze in that pass with you than pass a holiday with the Ghioz, from what I’ve seen of them. Always trying to get others to do their dirty work.”

“They’re slavers, one way or another. Now they’ve got that great white dragon and his mate as their dragon lords, when others aren’t coming and going to keep an eye on those two. I’m—ho, what’s this, AuRon? Name a specter and he appears.”

Naf pointed to what AuRon’s sharp eyes had already picked out—a green dragon flying up from the south.

“I don’t recognize her,” AuRon said.

“Is there danger?”

AuRon judged the green, trying to close distance. She didn’t move through the air with the slow, steady beats of an experienced flier, he suspected she spent most of her time on the ground.

“I should think not. She flies like a dragon born for swimming.”

“She’s coming straight for us.”

“Let your fears go like a loose scale. I can outfly anything with scale,” AuRon said, getting height advantage, just in case. “Though I don’t want to take you too high. Your nose will bleed or you’ll freeze.”

The lumbering dragonelle waggled in the air as she approached, showing her belly. AuRon guessed she wanted to talk, the gesture struck him as funny or playful, though he didn’t know what the signals might mean to these dragons of the Lavadome.

He circled her, she circled him.

“I believe that’s one of the Ghioz Protectors,” Naf said. “She visited our dragon.”

AuRon came up alongside her. “Happy to meet a new dragon,” she called. “Might we alight and talk? My name is Imfamnia, my mate is the Protector of Ghioz.”

And so it was that AuRon met the former Queen of the Lavadome, Imfamnia, called the Jade Queen, and now an exile.

They alighted on a rocky hilltop, sending hares fleeing for their lives.

“I am AuRon. I’m carrying my friend, King Naf of the Dairuss.”

The dragon-dame tipped her head to the King. “Very pleased,” she said, in stilted Pari.

She had too much paint on her by half for AuRon. A health-tonic-selling dwarfs trade wagon looked subdued compared to the purples and reds and golds about her eyes, griff, nostrils, and ear-buds.

“NiVom is feeling unwell this morning, otherwise he would have been up in this delightful air,” she panted, sucking in a good deal of it.

“The white?” AuRon asked. “I met him in the war against the Red Queen. Where he changed sides.”

“To the nation of his birth, who’d cast him out before your brother took power. He never wanted to make war on them, and reverted to where his true loyalty lay at the first opportunity.”

Naf hopped off the saddle chair and stretched his back.

“It’s getting late, AuRon,” Naf said. “We’ll want to find a place to overnight.”

Imfamnia cocked her head, puzzled. “Perhaps I misunderstood, but did that man just order you to rest for the night?”

“He hasn’t flown before, and I’ve no wish to tax him.”

“Curious. Well, pleased to meet you, AuRon. I hope we shall be good friends. I know we will. There’s a terrible shortage of new anecdotes at our feasts these days, in Ghioz we’re cut off from most of Lavadome society. I don’t know if you’re aware, but I’m not exactly welcome there.”

“You didn’t fly all this way to tell me this.”

She tucked her shaking wings in to her sides a little tighter. “We heard a rumor that you were to be our new neighbor.”

“Neighbor?”

“Fellow dragon lord. Protector of Dairuss.”

AuRon shifted his gaze to Naf. “That would be up to him.”

“Up to—a human?”

“King Naf is lord in Dairuss. I wouldn’t presume to tell him how to arrange his affairs.”

The dragon dame bent her neck without moving her head. Some might interpret it as a bow, others as a twitch. “I’m pleased,” she said, in that halting Pari. She shifted back to Drakine: “You know, AuRon, if he’s fatigued, a little dragon blood would help revive him. Does wonders for older human males. Might even help with the brittle hair.”

“Dragon blood?” AuRon asked.

“It’s all the rage with certain allies of ours. Sometimes, at banquets, NiVom and I are quite drained.”

AuRon looked over her perfectly formed lines. “You don’t look like you’ve ever shed a drop of blood in your life.”

Imfamnia chuckled. AuRon still wasn’t sure he liked laughing dragons. Silliness wasn’t befitting of dragonkind.

“I’ve never claimed to be a fighting dragon. There are more pleasant things to do with one’s life. You’re mated, aren’t you? Too bad. With so little scale you must be quite an experience.”

AuRon stilled his griff. Mating, perhaps the single most important decision a dragon could ever make, reduced to an experience. Less and less he was liking this dragon-dame.

“I’m sure I don’t have your experience to judge,” he said.

“I’m sure you don’t. But that’s easily remedied.” She brushed him along the side with her wing.

He’d never encountered anything quite like her. She appealed in a way that was hard to define, a less dragonlike attitude could hardly be imagined. She behaved more like a blighter who’d had too much rice wine or an elvish jester.

“You didn’t fly after us to joke.”

“No. Flying is wearisome. My mate and I thought we would invite you to our residence. Surely with two lands sharing a long border and a longer history, we have matters to discuss, so that the thralls don’t become restive and take matters into their own bloody little hands. Cooler dragon heads should be called in to resolve things, don’t you agree?”

“How did you learn I was to be sent to Dairuss?”

“You’re new to the Grand Alliance. News travels faster than wings. Especially in matters of mating, dueling, or politics.”

“Again, matters I know little of and care of less. I’m already mated, I’ve had my share of duels and won’t seek another, and as for politics, I don’t know enough to have an opinion.”

Imfamnia made a noise that was half laugh, half prrum. “An admirable disinterest. To tell you the truth, sometimes I have difficulty distinguishing them myself. What is your mate’s name again?”

“Natasatch.”

“Please send her my regards. Should your King Naf there decide to accept you as Protector, I hope we’ll see you in our resort soon. The change of company would be most welcome.”

“Hail and farewell, King Naf,” she added, switching back to Pari. “I hope the next time I visit your city, no one shoots arrows at me.”

“Enjoy the rest of your tour, AuRon. It shouldn’t take long, unless you enjoy counting sheep.”

With that, she trotted away and launched herself into the sky.

They rested in one of the towns near the Ghioz border, in a broken-down old castle overlooking a village nestled along the Ghioz road through the hills.

Naf told him a story about the defense of the castle against the Ghioz, long before he was born. Dairuss had lost, of course, but they resisted gallantly while they could.

He wondered what difference it made in the long run. Sometimes you just had to give up trying to fly if the winds were too strong. He hoped Naf wasn’t nerving himself for another gallant-but-futile resistance to the Hypatians and his brother’s empire.

Naf wandered into town cloaked. He liked to go among his people disguised, it seemed, and returned with two plucked turkeys and some bread and wine. After eating, AuRon curled up in the foundation of a collapsed tower and slept.

The beautiful and slightly silly Imfamnia invaded his dreams.

They were up with the larks the next morning. Naf settled himself rather stiffly into the saddle chair. “Old bones don’t take quickly to new tricks.”

They flew back northward on the Dairuss side of the Red Mountains.

“And at last, the west. Hypatia. We bled plenty for them when they were bowing and scraping to the Wizard Anklemere and we were the only men west of the great desert who wouldn’t submit. We won our freedom then—only to lose it shortly after to the Ghioz. It appears my land is fated to remain free for only brief periods in between conquerers. Now, with the Tyr’s dragons at their backs, they’re haughty and demanding.”