Wistala thought the Queen was struggling with her firebladder. “But social gossip doesn’t concern our brave Firemaids. I came to deliver my mate’s word. Consider it a summoning. The Tyr would like to see this new Firemaiden and hear her account of matters in the Upper World.”

Wistala felt the tingle of the gazes upon her such that it made her scales ripple. “I—I thank you for the opportunity to obey, my Queen,” Wistala said.

“Don’t let me stop you from enjoying your feast. You look as though you could use it. Ayafeeia, see that a body-thrall with sharp snippers and fresh file attends to her. Her scales are running quite wild.”

“Yes, my Queen.”

The Queen drew Ayafeeia away and said a few more words, quietly. They crossed necks again.

“Such an insult,” an old Firemaid said, interrupting Wistala’s concentration. “Send a renegade with a demand. We’ll give her war, if she wants it.”

“I expect she does want it,” Ayafeeia said, leaving Nilrasha.

Behind her, the Queen touched nose-tip with a very young drakka standing sore-footed at the end of the line as she departed. A dragonelle at the opposite end said something quiet about on the climb since she lost her hatchling teeth in milkdrinker’s hill.

Eyes narrowed in thought, Ayafeeia watched the Queen take off. “The losses from the dragon-riders are still within this generation. We’ve just completed a hard war with the demen. She knows we are weak.”

Wistala had heard much talk of battles with the Ghioz. “How does she know? Spies?”

“Quite possibly,” Ayafeeia said. “There are dragons who weigh gold above blood.”

“A curse on such dragons,” Takea said, looking directly at Wistala. “If I learned of one, I’d not rest until I saw her head left dry atop some mountain.”

Wistala began to believe she’d dropped into a whirlwind: suspicions, jealousies, politics, worries of civil war, war in the Lower World, worries of war with the surface. Still, dragons did thrive on challenge, Father always said. Dragon eat challenge and vent victory. It was surfeit that beat you.

“May I ask a question?” Wistala asked.

“Of course,” Ayafeeia said. “That’s the beginning of wisdom.”

“Why did she call you ‘maidmother’ at some times and ‘sister’ at others?”

“We are sisters after a fashion, though one presses the issue in this case. Her mate was married to my sister.”

“I still say she did it,” someone said quietly.

“None of that, now,” Ayafeeia said. “I won’t have the Queen disparaged, either in my hearing or out of it.”

“When all is said and done, she broke her oath,” one of the Firemaids said. “She took the third oath. Do our traditions count for nothing?”

“Yes. How convenient that your sister died when she did, Ayafeeia,” Takea said. “It couldn’t have worked out better for Nilrasha.”

“Takea, watch that tongue of yours. You have a little too much Anklene blood in you for decent manners. It could have worked out better for Nilrasha, if Halaflora had died with more witnesses to her choking. There wouldn’t be all these foul rumors and adder-backing. I can believe the story they told. Halaflora always had more strength of heart to her than body. I’m not sure Nilrasha isn’t the better Queen. A Queen needs energy.”

“There’s an old saying—defend loudest your deepest enemies, until it is time to strike,” Takea whispered to Wistala.

“Could it be said that becoming Queen is a higher calling?” the young drakka Nilrasha had spoken to said, raising her voice. “The Queen is the spiritual leader of the Firemaids. Nilrasha just rose above any maidmother.”

“Have some respect for her rank, and understanding of her character,” Ayafeeia said, straightening. “I abhore all this nasty gossip. My adopted brother, our Tyr, has the best interest of dragons at heart. Nilrasha has the best interest of the Tyr at heart. He makes enemies; she deals with them. Not even dragons can be governed without a little fear, I believe.”

She grated her teeth in thought. “Wistala, you must be made ready for presentation in court. I suppose I should attend. As usual I’ll leave Malitha in charge of our hill. Takea, you’ve not been atop Imperial Rock since you were presented as a hatchling. You must go, especially as Wistala is in your charge. Whatever you do, don’t let her pull up her lips like that in front of the Tyr.”

Wistala enjoyed the experience of the body-thralls working her scale.

First, several of them gave her a good scrubbing with bristly, long-handled brushes that cleaned her scale above and beneath. She was the ruin of at least three brushes.

Then they trimmed her scale in such a way that misshapen pieces covering old wounds looked a bit more comely and in line with the others. Some were considered a lost cause and—rather painfully!—yanked out and carefully gathered.

Even worse, a pair of bats, muttering to each other and with many apologies in broken Drakine, nibbled and licked at her wounds.

“The bats are, well, creepy, but they do help one heal,” Takea said. “To think, we used to eat or burn them out.”

“I still gulp one if I get a chance,” another drakka confessed. “The Tyr doesn’t miss ’em. Rodents never run out. I think the thrall capture them too, to toast on sticks and wrap their food up in the wings.”

Ayafeeia came by to check the progress. “Tuve, a little highlighting around the eyes,” she said to an older thrall with a gloriously long mane like a lion. “And Wistala, at court keep those big wings of yours tucked high. More room for everyone else.”

“And the males will notice you,” Takea said, snorting.

“It’ll be a fast suitor who can catch up to her, once she’s flying again,” the Firemaid in charge of the body-thralls said.

Wistala wondered about the thralls. They didn’t chatter the way hominids on the surface did, but just exchanged a few quiet words as they worked. They looked healthy enough, though perhaps a bit undersized. There were no marks of lash or shackle on them, as she’d seen on slaves in some of the surface lands she’d passed through, but then it sounded as though troublesome thralls were simply eaten.

“How do you do?” Wistala said to the thrall working with her brushes, painting scale about her eye.

“My apologies, mistress, did I get paint in your eye?” she asked.

“No, I was just introducing myself. My name is Wistala. How do you do?”

“Your thrall is named Tuve, mistress,” Tuve said.

“You must not mind dragon-breath, Tuve,” Wistala said.

“Oh, Susiron help us,” the Firemaid in charge of the thralls said. “Not another of these Anklene radicals.”

Tuve smiled. “A little oliban ash and witch hazel in the nostrils, mistress,” she said quietly. She took out a thinner brush and blackened it and went to work again.

“They’re hypocrites,” Takea said, tapping a scale that needed to be removed. “The Anklenes have three thralls to every one the Firemaids have. If they’re so concerned about how they’re treated, they can start with their own. The thralls die like flies over there. Bad air from all those illumination lamps.”

“Some say they only report them dead, then sneak them to the surface.”

“I’ll wager they eat them. Always counting and measuring things. No one will cheat you like the one doing the accounting, my father used to say.”

“Not enough honest dwarves to go around,” the Firemaid in charge of the thralls said. “You can trust dwarves. They’ll cut their own throats before they lie. If only they wouldn’t starve themselves. Not like elves, who play games with definitions of truth and falsehood. Now a good stupid man, that’s almost as good as a dwarf. If you ever mate and set up in a cave of your own, Tala, look for the ones who count on their fingers instead of in their heads. That’ll be a thrall you can trust.”

Wistala’s painting thrall gestured to a younger version of herself with similar thick hair. The girl brought forth a polished sheet of tin. Wistala saw herself, as in a silvery pool at sunset. Her eyes looked bigger and brighter.

“Have her show her teeth, Tuve,” Takea said. “She’s a Firemaid now, and she does have a royal set of renders. She should be showing a lot of tooth.”

Tuve smeared a foul-tasting grease on her teeth. Wistala’s lips retreated in disgust, practically of their own accord.

“That’ll impress the Tyr!” Ayafeeia said, having completed her own preparations in a very few moments with the aid of a single thrall. “Though the rest of him’s a bit of a wreck, he bears very fine teeth.”

“The Tyr’s sure to remember you!” Takea said.

Chapter 15

The Copper sent the body-thralls away to hear the report from Gnash. He’d given her just a taste of his blood and promised her the use of a steer once her report was done.

“I saw them myself, great one,” Gnash said. “Mighty birds, with men lumpy under fur riding them. They flew low over the kern, only at night and in cloud or rain, and dropped a bitter powder, like dried dung.”