Tooth and Claw (19 page)

“You have fire, darling,” Berend said, smothering the burning writ with her tail. “Just let me put this out before it makes a stink.”

“Fire,” Daverak said, sounding quite pleased with himself. “I had no idea it was so close.” He breathed out another experimental gout of fire.

“Maybe you should practice outside until you can control it well,” Berend suggested, practically.

“I shall do that tomorrow,” Daverak said. “Fire, and I’m not three hundred yet.”

“They are signalling that dinner is ready at last,” Berend said.

Daverak frowned at his wife.

“They say early fire is a sign of greatness,” Haner ventured, not adding the frequent corollary that early fire was a sign of early death. Flame was certainly a strain to a dragon’s system. Her father had used his seldom but judiciously.

Daverak smiled at her, exposing teeth that had been blackened by his blasts of fire. “Thank you for the confidence,” he said, attempting his usual languid tone, but far too excited to achieve it. “Now, by all means let us eat before some of us starve to death amid the excitement.”

As the family were alone, dinner consisted of six muttons, their skin and wool removed before they reached the table by farmers expert in that craft. Wool, and whole muttonwool fleeces, were much prized in millinery. The fleeces would be sent to the cities and reappear in the form of cunningly contrived headcoverings. Daverak immediately took hold of the largest and began to rend and tear at it. Berend took up another. Haner, with the dragonets still close to
her, began on a third. The dragonets soon crept out and began to eat, only to cower again when Daverak’s flame erupted again, engulfing the haunch of mutton he had in his claw, filling the whole room with the scent of seared meat.

“I do think it would be a better idea to practice outside,” Haner said, when the gout of flame came a little close to her tail.

“Nonsense, it’s perfectly safe,” Daverak said, selecting a second mutton and doing it again.

“I wonder why it is that there is a prohibition on cooking meat?” Berend said, conversationally, swallowing a great bite of the fatty underbelly of her mutton. “It smells rather pleasant.”

“Flaming at it isn’t cooking it,” Daverak said, looking a little guilty.

“Oh, I see, how foolish of me,” Berend said, and gave a little snort that might have been laughter at her foolishness or might just have been part of her digestion. She was gulping down her meat rapidly.

“The prohibition is because the filthy Yarge do it,” Daverak said, turning his seared haunch in his claw a little as if wondering if it would make him a social pariah to eat it. “That’s what they told me in school anyway. Apparently they tried to make us do it during the Conquest, and it was one of the reasons we revolted. Disgusting cooked meat sticks in the craw. That’s what they said, anyway. I’ve never tried it myself.”

“Is the haunch you flamed disgusting?” Berend asked.

“I already said that was different from cooking,” Daverak said, frowning.

“But how does it taste?” Berend asked. “As cooked meat is illegal, that’s probably the closest I’ll ever come to seeing any, and it does smell pleasant, or at least interesting. How does it taste?”

“The same as always, only a little warmer,” Daverak said, taking
a tentative taste. “Besides, if you really want to try cooked meat there are places in Irieth you can get it. It’s one of those thrills some dragons go in for. I never fancied it myself, but a few years before I married you there was a fad for going off to the Migantine quarter to try it. I don’t think anyone went more than once.”

The conversation then turned to reminiscing about fads of past Irieth seasons. Haner, naturally, could have little part in this, but she ate and made occasional remarks to keep the conversation on this neutral topic. She also made sure the dragonets ate their share, or more than their share. She was not hungry. When the servants returned to remove the bones and sponge down everyone’s scales to remove drops of blood, all the mutton had been eaten. Daverak had taken three, Berend two, and Haner and the dragonets between them only one.

After dinner, Daverak announced that he would be going out to taste the wind, by which everyone understood that he intended to practice using his fire. The nanny returned to take charge of the dragonets. Berend settled down couchant in front of the mantel, beckoning Haner to sit beside her. Haner would much have preferred to withdraw to her room, but felt sorry for poor Berend, abandoned by her husband when she was in such a delicate condition. She accordingly took her place beside her sister and sat back on her own haunches. “I can’t think what possessed Avan to be so idiotic,” Berend said.

“You know he was counting on that flesh,” Haner said. “You know he needs to make his own way in the world. He’s working in the Planning and Beautification Office, that’s very competitive. There are dragons there who would eat him first and face an inquiry cheerfully afterwards when he wasn’t there to stop their bribing the judges. He needs his position, and that means he needed father’s flesh far more than Daverak possibly could.”

“Oh yes, I understand all that. I only took one bite myself, you know.”

“One big bite,” Haner said, for she still resented Berend’s one bite.

“And you took your share, did you not? You are a foot or two longer than you were.” Berend measured Haner with her eyes. “Don’t worry, we’ll find you a husband yet,” she said, more kindly.

“Not by ruining Avan!” Haner objected.

“Daverak’s very angry,” Berend said. “You saw that. Usually I can make him do what I want, eventually, but that one might be hard to get him to relent. That’s what I meant about Avan being an idiot. If he’d just left it, after a while I’d have had Daverak invite him here after this clutch was all finished, at a time when there was a cull and he could have made it up. I had him halfway around to agreeing to add a little gold to your share as well. He likes you.”

“He has a strange way of showing it, shouting at me that way,” Haner said.

“If he didn’t like you it wouldn’t just have been shouting,” Berend said, placidly.

Haner stared at her, but she just shook her head a little. “What do you mean?” Haner asked.

“I mean he likes you, and you should be glad he does. But now Avan has got on his bad side, and he’ll hound him. He really will ruin him if he can, and I don’t think there’ll be anything you or I can do to help him, and I’m warning you not to try.”

“Avan was quite confident he could win,” Haner said.

“Avan with father’s attorney up against all that Daverak can hire? You were the one who mentioned that there are judges for sale, and if necessary I doubt Daverak would hesitate. We just have to think of Avan as lost, because of his own foolishness in pushing
this. I’m sorry, I’ve lost a father and a son this month, now I have to face losing a brother too.”

This was the first time Berend had mentioned Lamerak, and Haner unfurled a wing and laid it in comfort across her sister’s shoulder. “What about Selendra?” she asked, quietly.

“I think I can persuade Daverak that Avan bullied her into putting her name to it, if I’m allowed to work on him in my own way in my own time. I can manage him, but not if he’s kept constantly stirred up. He’s quite pleased with me for starting this clutch now. And that, by the way isn’t accidental but quite deliberate timing on my part.”

“But the risk to your health?” Haner ventured.

“There’s no risk as long as I eat well enough,” Berend said. “And that means dragon as well, of course, spiritual as well as physical sustenance.”

“Daverak is killing more than the weaklings,” Haner said, lowering her voice.

“I have enough to worry about with myself and my family, I can’t concern myself with all the farmers and servants, Haner, really, it’s too bad to ask me to. That’s his business, and we shouldn’t meddle.” Berend shrugged off Haner’s wing and turned to her sister crossly. “Don’t interfere. Leave Daverak alone, and let me try to salvage you and Selendra and the dragonets as best I can.”

“I’ll do my best,” Haner said.

When she was safely alone in her own room with the door closed and Lamith sent to bed for the night, Haner opened the letter she had received earlier. She found much to comfort her in Selendra’s
letter. Although it was clear her sister missed her greatly, she also seemed to be settling down happily in Benandi.

“Everyone here is very kind,” she wrote, “especially Felin, who is really good to me. I don’t think Penn could have found a better wife if he’d spent a hundred years looking. She’s very beautiful, more now than she seemed at the wedding. Her scales have come to be the kind of red of clouds at sunset, very unusual, and very striking. I’d think she spent hours burnishing them, except that I know she doesn’t have time to give them more than a wipe over after dinner most days. She spends a lot of time with her dragonets, and she often goes out with Penn to see the parishioners, helping them out with food and medicine. I go too, sometimes, I’m learning my way around the place.”

Selendra went on to write about flying in the mountains with Sher, “Who is, if you please, the Exalted Sher Benandi, but he’s not the slightest bit stuck up or pleased with himself, though his mother, the old Exalt really
is
. Now I know you’ll tease me because I mention the name of a gently born male, but you need have no fear, he’s betrothed, or as good as, to a very elegant young maiden, the Respected Gelener Telstie, who is also here, so you see we have much company. (She is apparently the granddaughter of father’s old patrons, but Exalt Benandi thinks I should not mention such things.)”

Selendra had tried her hardest to make the letter as cheerful as it could be, and Haner was almost entirely taken in by the tone. She took comfort as best she might from the thought that at least her sister was quite happy. The letter ended with professions of effusive sisterly love, and then beneath her sister’s name she had written “Amer especially wishes to be remembered to you.” Dear Amer. How well Haner now understood her desire not to come to live in Daverak! Still, she could not say that, or she would distress Selendra. She did not want to distress Selendra, which was why she had
not written before. Telling her sister how unhappy she was would do no good, and to write that she was happy would be a lie.

She took up pen and paper at once to reply, then hesitated, not quite sure what she should say. She wrote the direction carefully: “The Respected Selendra Agornin, Benandi Parsonage, Benandi.” Then she stared over the paper for a moment, her silver eyes whirling, missing Selendra so much that her wings ached.

“My dearest Selendra,” she wrote, “Writing your name makes me feel a little closer to you. I am glad to hear you are well and largely enjoying your days. I’m sure you’ll be cutting out this Telstie female with the Exalted Lord, now I see that you are on first name terms with him—or is that only on paper? I am well, and well cared for. Berend seems to be increasing without undue trouble, she is thriving so far and hopes for another clutch of three.” After this she sketched out the trouble with Daverak and Avan, along with a little drawing of the look on Daverak’s face as he discovered his fire, which she was sure would make her sister laugh. “Berend says she will try to intercede for you, but that we should think of Avan as lost now that Daverak has set himself so firmly against him,” she wrote. “I will never give up Avan, but I will not be able to hope to see him while this case continues. It might be as well for you to remove your name from the Writ in case, for while it remains there and I live here we cannot visit each other, and I would dearly like to see you should there be any occasion.”

This, with the drawing, almost filled the sheet, there was room only for another two lines.

“Have you ever considered, dearest sister, that the situation of servitude is morally indefensible, and bad for master and servants alike? It is surely wrong for any dragon to give up their whole life to the whims of another,” she wrote, and had no room for more. There was also no room for the avowals of love and promises to
hold her sister in her thoughts that Selendra had made her. She signed it simply “H” and folded the letter up. Under the seal she drew a tiny dragon with her wings spread wide to embrace another. She then sealed it carefully. The sight of her own seal, which she had brought with her from Agornin, made her a little sad. It was very splendid, gold set with pyrites, and it matched Selendra’s, which was set with amethysts. They had been Hatchday gifts from Bon the year before. She sighed, set it down on her pile of gold, and went out to lay her letter on the ledge where the servants would collect it and take it to the mails.

When she was back in her room, she realized that she should have flown herself to deliver it to the mails at the station the next morning. She could no longer rely on the servants to take it. She would never have thought Daverak would read her mail before, but then she would never have thought he would be inches from eating her alive before, nor that he so mistreated his servants. Now she had seen him angry and suspicious she thought it more than likely he might intercept a letter to Selendra. He would not find she had said anything she should not, but he would not find the picture very flattering. She crept back out and retrieved her letter, thoughtfully.