Tooth and Claw

Praise for
Tooth and Claw

“A delight . . . On a basic level,
Tooth and Claw
works much the same way that
Watership Down
worked. Highly recommended for anyone who loved the books of Austen, or Heyer, and wishes that someone was still writing social comedies that were just as sharp and just as pleasurable.”

—Kelly Link, author of
Magic for Beginners
and
Stranger Things Happen

“Utterly sui generis . . . It’s a rare book that leaves me wishing it were twice as long, but
Tooth and Claw
is one such.”

—
Fantasy & Science Fiction

“Plot strands come together just as they should, with delightful triumphs, resolutions, revelations, and comeuppances.”

—
Locus

“Books as full of delights and excellent writing as
Tooth and Claw
are the rarest of prizes.”

—
The New York Review of Science Fiction

“Have I mentioned how much I love this sly, witty, fast-paced, brilliant little book?”

–Jane Yolen

“Brilliantly riffs on Victorian society, with loyal family servants, prim and proper parsons, and country-house parties camouflaging hypocrisy, misogyny, and classism.”

—
Romantic Times BOOKreviews

“The pacing is masterful, the characters distinctive, the climax exciting. . . . Definitely one for the Favorites shelf.”

—Sherwood Smith

Books by Jo Walton from Tom Doherty Associates

The King’s Peace

The King’s Name

The Prize in the Game

Tooth and Claw

Farthing

Ha’penny

Half a Crown

Jo Walton

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in
this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

TOOTH AND CLAW

Copyright © 2003 by Jo Walton

All rights reserved.

Design by Milenda Nan Ok Lee

Edited by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

An Orb Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010

www.tor-forge.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Walton, Jo.

Tooth and Claw / Jo Walton.—1st Orb ed.

    p. cm.

“A Tom Doherty Associates Book.”

ISBN-13: 978-0-7653-1951-7

ISBN-10: 0-7653-1951-9

1. Dragons—Fiction. 2. Brothers and sisters—Fiction. I. Title.

PR6073.A448T66 2009

First Tor Edition: November 2003
First Orb Edition: January 2009

Printed in the United States of America

0    9    8    7    6    5    4    3    2    1

This is for my aunt, Mary Lace, for coming so far down the road toward fantasy for me, and for coming down so many other roads with me, plenty of them real as well as metaphorical.

This novel owes a lot to Anthony Trollope’s
Framley Parsonage
.

I grew up reading Victorian novels. People since, from Joan Aiken to John Fowles and Margaret Forster, have done fascinating things with writing new Victorian novels from modern perspectives, putting in the things the Victorian novel leaves out. That gives you something very interesting, but it isn’t a Victorian novel. It has to be admitted that a number of the core axioms of the Victorian novel are just wrong. People aren’t like that. Women, especially, aren’t like that. This novel is the result of wondering what a world would be like if they were, if the axioms of the sentimental Victorian novel were inescapable laws of biology.

I’d like to thank Patrick Nielsen Hayden for accepting a novel rather different from what he imagined he’d be getting; David Gold-farb, Mary Lace, and Emmet O’Brien for reading it in progress and making useful comments; Sasha Walton for drawing me a very helpful picture, making endless suggestions, some of them very good, and being forbearing (again) during the writing process; and Eleanor J. Evans, Janet Kegg, Katrina Lehto, Sarah Monette, Susan Ramirez, and Vicki Rosenzweig for beta reading for me.

I’d also like to thank Westmount and Atwater libraries for having excellent collections of Trollope, and the Trollope-l mailing list, especially Ellen Moody, for thought-provoking discussion. Thanks are also due to Elise Matthesen for my beautiful necklace
The Crowded Minds of Dragons
, and my partner, Emmet O’Brien, for love and delight during the writing process. Without all this, this novel would not have been written.

She’d like me to bring a dragon home, I suppose. It would serve her right if I did, some creature that would make the house intolerable to her.

—Anthony Trollope,
Framley Parsonage
, 1859

Tooth
and
  Claw

B
on Agornin writhed on his deathbed, his wings beating as if he would fly to his new life in his old body. The doctors had shaken their heads and left, even his daughters had stopped telling him he was about to get well. He put his head down on the scant gold in his great draughty undercave, struggling to keep still and draw breath. He had only this little time left, to affect everything that was to come after. Perhaps it would be an hour, perhaps less. He would be glad to leave the pains of the flesh, but he wished he had not so much to regret.

He groaned and shifted on the gold, and tried to feel as positive as possible about the events of his life. The Church taught that it was neither wings nor flame that gave one a fortunate rebirth, but rather innocence and calmness of spirit. He strove for that fortunate calm. It was hard to achieve.

“What is wrong, Father?” asked his son Penn, approaching now that Bon was still and putting out a gentle claw to touch Bon’s shoulder.

Penn Agornin, or rather the Blessed Penn Agornin, for young Penn was already a parson, imagined he understood what troubled
his father. He had attended many deathbeds in his professional capacity, and was glad to be here to help ease his father into death and to spare him the presence of a stranger at such a time. The local parson, Blessed Frelt, was far from being his father’s friend. They had been at quiet feud for years, of a kind Penn thought quite unbecoming to a parson.

“Calm yourself, Father,” he said. “You have lived a good life. Indeed, it is hard to think of anyone who should have less to fret them on their deathbed.” Penn admired his father greatly. “Beginning from very little more than a gentle name, you have grown to be seventy feet long, with wings and flame, a splendid establishment and the respect of all the district. Five of your children survive to this day. I am in the Church therefore safe.” He raised a wing, bound with the red cord that, to the pious, symbolized the parson’s dedication to gods and dragonkind, and to others meant mere immunity. “Berend is well married and has children, her husband is powerful and an Illustrious Lord. Avan is making his way in Irieth. His is perhaps the most perilous course, but he has strong friends and has done well thus far, as you did before him. As for the other two, Haner and Selendra, though they are young and vulnerable do not fear. Berend will take in Haner and see her well married under her husband’s protection, while I will do the same for Selendra.”

Bon drew a careful breath, then exhaled with a little puff of flame and smoke. Penn skipped nimbly aside. “You must all stick to my agreement,” Bon said. “The younger ones who are not settled must have my gold, what there is of it. You and Berend have begun your hoards already, let you each take only one symbolic piece of mine, and let the other three share what little is left. I have not amassed a great store, but it will be enough to help them.”