“What will you do?” Wistala asked.

“If I must, I’ll make the difference out of my own funds, limited as they are. Thralls must be found.”

OuThroth’s hall was a work-in-progress. A good stone foundation had been laid—Wistala saw a dwarf working figures on a piece of paper next to a small fire with an infusion kettle atop it—but the roof timbers were still half-done, gaps covered by a mix of canvas and cordage.

A vast amount of lumber was piled near the riverbank, but it was poorly situated. The bottom trunks were wet and rotting and she could see mosses and mushrooms the size of chest-scale growing out of wet cracks in the bark. If OuThroth wasn’t careful, half of his purchase wouldn’t be fit for bedding-chips, let alone roofing. A shame, since they were fine big boles. Some venerable stands of timber had been cut, only for this heedless youth to leave it to rot along a riverbank where it had been dumped by a barge.

Waste. Her old guardian Rainfall would have been outraged to see such ancient trees cut but then left to rot.

Inside, OuThroth’s hall was sparse but comfortable. His bed-platform was set up in the coziest corner, if the winds to-day were the prevailing. A mass of copper tubing ran beneath it, giving a hiss now and then.

“It’s the latest thing, a bed-warmer. Steam flows through it and returns to a sort of big chamber as water, where it is turned to steam again. There’s all sorts of dwarfish inventions like valves and cooling chambers involved, I don’t know the half of it, but it will be a fine perch for my hall. The dwarf has arranged a summer-bed as well, a clever thing like a great thick fishnet.”

“Aren’t you afraid, with all that space beneath where you sleep?” Wistala asked. “Assassins could get in under there and be next to your breast without waking you.”

“Oh, the hominids are beaten and they know it. I have a few Hypatian lancers and whip-hands here to keep order among the thralls. They make sure no one is hiding weapons or secretly making shields in the smithy. As for the Ironriders—well, you’ve just come from there. Did they give you any trouble?”

“We could hardly have found trouble had we looked for it,” Yefkoa said.

“Yes, I used to bring in a dozen or more gold coins a month in purchasing commissions,” OuThroth said. “Now it’s a few pieces of silver here and there. That’s why the hall is taking so long to complete—the thrall trade’s drying up or moving to other provinces. Most of them are coming from the north in the hill country of the upper Inland Ocean these days. If only I’d been posted there! Wallander buys wild horses and feedstock rounded up from the plains by the Hypatians, but that’s nothing compared to thrall-trade. There’s talk of war with the southern princedoms. I’m hoping that since now I’ve become experienced I can win a position there. The massacre threw the whole Empire into a tumult and there are titles up for the swallowing like summer bats.”

“The massacre?” Wistala asked. She felt a little sorry for OuThroth; he seemed starved for other dragons to talk to. Callow, yes, and perhaps a little lazy. If this was an example of the generations being raised by the Dragon Empire, it was no wonder war and revolution were in the offing.

“Oh, you wouldn’t have heard if you’ve been in the wild. A vast number of assassins from the Sunstruck Sea infiltrated the Queen’s feast, posing as thralls. They used terrible poisons, first in the wine to addle their heads, then on their blades. Seventeen dragons dead, including the male Twin, and the Sun King and Queen only just escaped. Infamy!”

“Who else was lost?” Yefkoa said. “Any Firemaids?”

“Mostly Lower World dragons. Ayafeeia was the only Firemaid I’d heard was killed. I’m thankful NoSohoth declined his invitation to attend, as he was engaged in important negotiations with the northern provinces in Hypatia, or I might have lost a most important ally and any chance of soon gaining another title.”

Shallow, callow youth! was all Wistala could think. Even in the great war with the Red Queen and her Ironrider allies, they’d never lost so many dragons in any one battle. Rainfall would be sure to retreat into short, polite phrases so as not to give his mind away.

“May you get what your work here deserves,” Wistala said.

They fed and restored themselves from the fast flight over the barren steppes and camped under some vast riverbank willows. When Yefkoa was slumbering soundly, Wistala left her and slipped through the gate to the outer pens.

She walked up to the trio of dwarfs watching over their stock. They sat in a ring, smoking and exchanging quiet words over a beer-cask with Hypatian letters on it.

“Come to view the merchandise again?” one of the dwarfs asked. “No sickness. Plenty of kids, even one mother-to-be. We’re not counting the not-yet-born, of course. Bonus for you.”

“Yes, I would like a closer look,” Wistala said. She reared up, and came down with all of her weight on the dwarfs, trapping them in her sii. She stomped furiously.

When the dwarfs were reduced to muddy stains, she turned on the occupants in the pens. The dark-haired Ironriders shrank away from her.

Some were chained together. It was the work of only a few moments to break the links. They set up a wailing.

“All of you! Run!” Wistala managed.

They didn’t understand her, so she flapped at them, just missing with her wingtips, until the whole mass was running for the low hills of the southern steppelands. They left only one behind, an old fellow who looked like he’d died from exposure. She extracted his tongue before burning him.

Once she was sure of their departure, she loosed her flame into the pen and on the dead dwarfs.

When she told Yefkoa what had happened the next morning, she expected complaints. Yefkoa stood silent for a moment, then said, “Good. Only fair way to take thralls is battle; this burning villages and hauling them in from the bushes bothers me. It means trouble, though, and things were going well with OuThroth.”

“Like you, I was almost enslaved when I was young. It was dwarfs then, too. I can’t right the wrong done to my family, but I can save another.”

While they ate, OuThroth hurried over.

“I must ask you about one matter. There were some dwarfs camped outside the walls yesterday. We were in negotiations about the purchase of thralls. The negotiations were taking overlong, as being dwarfs, they pressed their advantage to the limit and asked for a price above the very clouds. My watchmen heard signs of fighting last night, and this morning both dwarfs and thralls seem to be gone.”

“They are, after a fashion,” Wistala said. “Believe me, you wouldn’t have wanted those thralls. I’ve been among the Ironriders for some time, seeking old bones.”

“Disgusting custom,” Yefkoa said. “Some Ironriders dare to wear dragon-scale, or have the skulls of those killed in fighting as clan totems.”

“That’s not an answer,” OuThroth said. He was capable of pressing a point when a potential profit was involved.

“Your thrall-gatherers were trying to cheat you,” Wistala said. “Fully a third of the thralls they were trying to sell you were diseased. It’s not an easy illness to spot—they go pale and listless and bloodshot about the eyes, and while not immediately fatal, it does leave the victims vulnerable to other, more quick-killing diseases.”

“What did you do with the bodies?”

“We ate them. We were famished.”

“You ate diseased flesh?”

“Only after a good roasting,” Yefkoa said.

“Don’t worry—it does not spread to dragons,” Wistala said.

“I understand there is already a great loss of thralls underground,” Wistala said. “Had a more experienced person spotted the disease, they would have been traced back to you. Or worse, the signs might have been missed altogether and a vast die-off of thralls could happen underground.”

Getting rid of the thralls was an audacious move, but Wistala had her reasons. The way she saw it, OuThroth had two options. He could report to NoSohoth that a pair of dragonelles that he admitted devoured a couple of slave pens full of thralls, or he could feign ignorance of the entire matter.

No matter what he did with the first option, it would reek of mismanagement of his Protectorate. Letting a pair of unknown dragonelles eat stock . . .

No, he would tell the Hypatians to shut up if they valued their slave-trading concession, pass along the disease story, and if worse came to worst claim that killing the dwarfs was rough borderland justice for their attempt to cheat the Dragon Empire.

“It would set the works back years,” Yefkoa said, breaking in on Wistala’s thoughts.

OuThroth bowed. “You’ve done me a great service, Yefkoa and errr . . .”

“My oath-sister, Tala,” Yefkoa supplied.

“That is a handsome headdress you wear, Tala. It is elegantly shaped. Elven-make?”

“A family heirloom. All I know with certainty is that it is old.”

“Tala is from one of the noblest families in the land—but she dislikes when I name names,” Yefkoa said, and Wistala grew afraid that Yefkoa would play the game too sharply and arouse the youngster’s suspicions.