Tooth and Claw (20 page)

E
xalt Benandi looked at her son in surprise. “My dear, Leafturn is advancing. There has been one snowfall already. It’s no time for picnics.”

“Yes it is, mother, it’s exactly the time,” he said. “You’re right, the leaves are turning and beginning to fall, summer has gone, it’s the last opportunity to picnic before we are all frozen into place for winter.”

“You know you spend half the winter hunting,” the Exalt said, but her voice was fond. She knew he would go away as abruptly as he had arrived if she did not make his visit pleasant. If he really wanted a picnic in Leafturn, she would have to arrange one. She wished every day that Sher were not free of her control, not realizing that it was because he was that she loved him.

“You remember the wonderful picnics we used to have when I was home from school?” Sher asked, coaxingly.

“I do,” his mother admitted. “But they were in Greensummer, not on the edge of Freshwinter.”

“It would be very nice to go out for a whole day, up into the
mountains, before the snow comes for good, don’t you think? Show them to those who haven’t seen them before?”

“Gelener has probably seen plenty of mountains,” the Exalt said, a slight edge of bitterness apparent in her voice. It wasn’t working out the way she had wanted. Blest Telstie had returned to Irieth, leaving Gelener with her for what they all described as “a nice long visit.” Sher was polite and amiable enough to her, but he showed no sign of being attracted. Gelener, seeing this perfectly well, became colder and colder to them all as her visit progressed. Although the Exalt had rarely invited the Agornins up to the Place since that first night of Gelener’s visit, Sher spent a lot of time down at the Parsonage.

“She won’t have seen ours, though, Mother,” Sher suggested. “And Penn told me his dragonets haven’t either. We used to have a contraption for carrying children about, a basket? Do we still have it?”

“We do, but Sher—”

Sher ignored her in his enthusiasm. “We could all go up to the Calani Falls, and maybe even explore the cavern a little. I used to love that as a child. We used to go when Father was feeling a little better, do you remember?”

“Sher, you are not going to head me off like this. I need to ask you a question.” He spread his claws, and waited, the picture of innocent readiness. If any sixty-foot-long bronze-scaled dragon could look like a dragonet, Sher did his best to do so. “Are you—” she hesitated. She had to be careful with Sher. “Are you growing fond of little Selendra Agornin?”

Sher’s immediate reaction was to prevaricate. Easy denials were on his tongue, but he bit them back. He would have to fight this battle with his mother, he knew, he just hadn’t been expecting it yet. He knew he would have to work her around slowly, and it might be
as well to know how much opposition he had to expect and from what quarter. “I think I may be,” he said, slowly, keeping eye contact with his mother, trying to sound as sincere as he could. “I’m not quite sure yet. I have said nothing to her, you know I would want to talk to you about anybody I was considering seriously. But I do like Selendra, yes. She’s charming and interesting to talk to.”

“Oh dear,” the Exalt said, wincing a little. “She’s almost penniless, you know.”

“She has sixteen thousand crowns,” Sher said. “Not much by our standards, perhaps, but that’s hardly penniless. And our standards mean, or ought to mean, that we don’t need to look for an heiress. Benandi is rich. I am rich. A bride of mine doesn’t need to be.”

“No, not necessarily, though it does help,” said the Exalt, thinking of the bills Sher had run up in Irieth and elsewhere in the last few years. “But Selendra isn’t of our kind. She’s pretty, in her way, but her father rose to his rank, and his rank was only Dignified. That might not matter, and her mother had very good blood. But she has no discretion. Penn doesn’t mention his father’s beginnings, Selendra blurted them out in her first dinner party. Would you want your wife to do that? She doesn’t have the poise a wife of yours needs. Think of your position. You came to it very early, but you have to act in accordance with your rank. I’m telling you what your father would if he were alive. Your wife will be Exalt Benandi. Selendra has never been to Irieth, never managed a great estate, never even lived in one. She should marry someone of her own kind, and so should you. Marriages too far apart in rank may seem exciting, but marriage is a day-to-day affair, you have to rub along together, and differences of that nature become like grit in the gold of the comfort of daily life.”

Throughout this speech Sher had been shifting restlessly. “I have thought about what you’re saying,” he said when his mother
had finished. “But there isn’t such a huge difference as that. Bon died Dignified, that’s only two steps down from Exalted, and besides the Fidraks thought him good enough for their daughter.”

“She was the daughter of a minor branch,” the Exalt put in.

“There are only two ranks that matter,” Sher went on, ignoring this. “The gently born, and the others. There’s no doubt that Selendra is gently born, and I’m sure you’d not dispute that.”

“No, certainly not,” the Exalt said. “But darling—”

“In that case, we are of the same rank,” Sher said. “You wouldn’t worry if I wanted to marry the daughter of an Eminent, would you?”

“Do wait until you have known her a little longer,” the Exalt counselled.

“I intend to. I have by no means made up my mind to marry her,” Sher lied. He did not want to make his mother angry now, he wanted to bring her around slowly. “This conversation has made me feel more inclined rather than less, but marrying her to prove I do not subscribe to an outdated convention of class would be just as foolish as refusing to marry her because I did.” He shook his head. “You asked me if I was growing fond of her, and I think I have answered you. I think I may be.”

“Yes, you have answered me,” the Exalt said, and sighed. “Was it to show her the waterfall that you wanted to arrange a picnic?”

“Partly,” Sher admitted, with a disarming smile. “But the dragonets have never been up there, and they’d love the cavern. I started thinking about it and I do want to take this chance before the water freezes. We could invite a big party if you like, all the pretty maidens for miles around, one last frolic before winter.”

“Oh very well,” the Exalt said. “But I really do advise you that I feel she’d be a terrible choice. Do look around a little before you set yourself on Selendra.”

“I will,” Sher said. “Thank you about the picnic. It’s just the sort of thing I enjoy. Invite as many dragons as you like.”

“I certainly will be inviting some other maidens. Do pay a little attention to them please, and don’t spend all your time with Selendra.”

“I’ll be polite to every one of them, and look at them closely, and you’ll be the first to know if I give my heart away forever,” Sher said, smiling again. “But do try to find some that aren’t entirely icicles. I don’t know what made you pick Gelener Telstie, but I get a chill every time I go near her.”

“Oh Sher, you’re impossible,” the Exalt said, laughing and waving him away.

The Exalt had fulfilled her promise to make up a big party. Sixteen cheerful laughing young dragons set off from Benandi Place in the morning sunshine. There were a few clouds over the high peaks and the air was cold. Nevertheless the sky was a wonderful blue. If not for the chill it could almost have been Highsummer. Sher carried the basket with Gerin and Wontas dangling beneath him. The basket was old, dating from before the days when the railway was so extensive. Felin had worried that it might not still be strong enough. She remembered being carried in it herself when she had first come to Benandi. They tested it carefully. Sher reared up rampant, dangling the basket so the children could bounce about in it no more than three feet from the ground. At last Felin was satisfied and strapped them down carefully for the flight.

Other dragons carried baskets of fruit. Sher had promised that
there would be a little hunt for something to supplement them, males only, all claws and no weapons. (Penn, out with the Exalt to wave the others off, felt this was directed at him, and frowned.) General spirits were very high. Sher was right, it seemed, everyone did want some last excitement before the snows came. Everyone’s headgear was bright and summery; several of the maidens even wore hats with trailing streamers. Gelener made some little concession to the wind with her choice of hats and put away her sequins and dancing mirrors for the occasion.

It was a two-hour flight to the Calani Falls. It was for this reason that Selendra had refused to go so far on an ordinary day, prompting Sher to develop the whole picnic idea. The countryside all the way consisted of limestone uplands, cut and dissolved here and there by vanished rivers. Everywhere the bones of the land poked out through the thin soil. Rowans clung where they could, higher up there were stands of pines. Heather and gorse, dying back now, covered the ground between them. Selendra found it bleak but beautiful; she knew Haner would long to draw it.

When they reached the falls the sun was still shining, though the clouds seemed much nearer and the chill much sharper. They approached the falls from the south, flying towards the falling water and the cliff face, then angling down towards the pool and the meadow below. The pool was deep. Only one end was churned by the waterfall; the other was smooth enough to reflect the sky, and the flying dragons as they circled down to land.

“You’re right, it’s very beautiful,” Selendra said to Felin as they landed, first down after Sher. “But don’t you find flying with a large party is less fun than with a small one?”

“Less chance to talk, certainly. This is where we’ve always come for picnics,” Felin said, frowning at Sher, who was carefully unloading
the dragonets a little way away. “I didn’t imagine we’d come all the way here again this year.”

“Sher seems ready to twist himself in a knot for the dragonets,” Selendra said, following her sister-in-law’s gaze.

“When it isn’t too much trouble to himself,” Felin said. “Selendra—” she stopped, as Gerin and Wontas were freed from the basket and came hurtling over to their mother and aunt. Sher strolled over behind them, leaving the basket empty on the grass.

“We flew,” Gerin said. “Did you see us, Mother? Did you see us, Aunt Sel?”

“We could see everything spread out down underneath, like in a picture,” Wontas said.

The other dragons landed in a whirr of wings and stretched themselves after the flight. Gelener gave a little shiver as she looked around. “It’s very empty,” she said.

“The beauty lies in the absence as much as in what’s here,” Sher said. “You haven’t seen the cavern yet. It’s behind the fall. Come and see.”

“Cavern?” asked Wontas.

“A natural cave, not someone’s home. It’s a splendid place, primitive and wild, going on for miles under the rock, with hidden pools deep down there,” Sher said. “It’s from the days when male dragons scratched out caverns with their claws and their wives waited at home to polish the gold and jewels they brought them.”

Gelener looked down her snout at him.

“I think Respected Telstie might like some fruit first,” Felin suggested tactfully. “And didn’t you say something about some meat to go with it?”

Sher smiled. “I’ll find you some immediately,” he said. He bounded off, the dragonets watching him enviously, and soon all the male members of the party were high in the air above them.

“What do you think they’ll find?” Selendra asked, staring up. Sher was the largest of them, and the brightest burnished. His scales caught the sun as he flew.

“Maybe a wild swine, or if we’re really lucky a venison or two,” Felin said.

“Most likely nothing,” Gelener said. “I didn’t see anything as we flew here, though even lower down the trees are almost bare enough for real hunting.”

“Do you hunt?” Selendra asked.

“I have hunted since I could fly, with a spear of course. Though after I marry I think I’ll take up a rifle and do some fire-hunting. My father doesn’t think it right for a maiden, but I’m longing to try it.” Selendra was relieved to see that Gelener did have something in common with Sher after all. “I think I’ll go up to my uncle’s estate at High Telstie for the hunting this year. He’s having a party of friends for the season. Will you hunt here, Felin, or go into the real mountains?”

“I’m too old for all that now,” Felin said, beginning to unpack the fruit.

Gelener’s eyes sped up in mild surprise. Selendra was suddenly tired of the conversation.

“I’ll take the dragonets and walk by the pool,” she said.

Felin waved her away. “No swimming today,” she warned the dragonets.

“We’d freeze,” Wontas said solemnly.

There were tracks of venison at the edge of the water. The grass was trampled and there were hoofprints in the mud at one shallow point. Selendra pointed these out to the children, who immediately wanted to track them and drag them back for dinner. “They might have been here days ago,” Selendra said. “Uncle Sher will find some up in the crags.” The crags above were mostly pinewood, with gullies,
perfect hunting territory as the gorse thinned, if there were any venison there at all. Now she had seen tracks, and knowing it was too early in the year for formal hunting, it seemed very likely to Selendra that they would find something.

There were cries from the others at that moment, and Selendra, looking up, saw the hunting party returning, bearing triumphant carcasses. “There, see,” Gerin said, craning his neck upwards.

She walked back towards the party. They were maidens for the most part, so the general impression in the sunshine was of golden scales, with here and there the pink of a bride. Felin’s deeper pink in the center of the group as she handed out fruit, was very conspicuous. This had not been so obvious when they set out, with the bronzes and blacks of their husbands and brothers mixed among them. Selendra wondered about it a little. Was the Exalt offering Sher some alternatives to the fashionable but frosty Gelener? Or was he seeking an escape for himself?