May as well chance it.

He glided down the mountainside. Most probably he wouldn’t be noticed. The whole city was thick with dragons, and masses of slaves—“thralls,” to use the euphemism of the Lavadome—there to do the work of feeding and washing them.

Tracking her was not as difficult as one might have thought. Natasatch still occupied the modest cave they’d shared as Protector of the poor province of Dairuss. He’d found an old servant who remembered them—one of King Naf’s veterans, a peg-legged man who thought the smell of dragons tolerable, and certainly better than the carrion-strewn battlefields of the Ghioz wars, and he was discreet about the occasional visit of the great king’s old friend. He’d told AuRon about the enormous feast planned in Ghioz to commemorate the victory over the Ghioz that had established dragons in the Upper World. AuRon, who’d played a role in that victory, settling his own score with the Red Queen, suspected they’d chosen the date on the basis of likely pleasant weather for gathering rather than on that of history.

AuRon wondered how the Ghioz felt about a mass of dragons descending on them, to eat their cattle, pigs, and sheep and leave nothing but hooves and other offal to be cleaned up.

In any case, he learned where Natasatch had temporarily established herself—the old hippodrome, now called the Drag-onhalls. She’d gone early to aid her friend Queen Imfamnia—remarkably now on her second turn as mate to the ruler of the Dragon Empire after serving her own exile—in preparing for the party.

The hippodrome/Dragonhalls were easy to find from the air. Two small horse tracks flanked the building, which was then enclosed by a much larger horse track for long races. The outer track had multiple fences, and dogs between the fences, and guards posted behind the dogs, to keep out beggars and scale-filchers.

There was an interior ring as well, covered against weather save for a small hole in the peak. Remarkable construction, yet typical of the Ghioz. The seats had been converted to dragon-sized benches; evidently meetings of some sort were held here, though the place smelled a little of blood, which set his griff to twitching. There was a wide corridor behind the seating for bringing horses to and from their stables. The stables had been enlarged to make sort of small apartments, though the ones near the roof looked more spacious and had a view out of the city, judging from the light bleeding in.

He heard snoring dragons, saw piles of wine casks, still wet at the bungs. From one apartment above he heard the tussling, flapping sound of mating.

AuRon shook his head. Dragons mating indoors, in secret. He followed his nose until he found Natasatch’s scent. It was in one of the bigger spaces at the top, what used to be an old promenade where viewers could look down on the horses or into one of the rings. There was a nice sort of arching gallery giving her a view of the city. He found an empty apartment, passed through to the balconies, and slipped into Natasatch’s temporary residence from behind thick draperies.

He heard voices, human and dragon. Natasatch was saying something about scale-polish to a human with a head shaved and tattooed with a design that reminded him of interlaced dragon-scale. When she finished, he used DharSii’s quiet throat-clearing sound to draw her attention.

Natasatch let out a frightened squeak and raised her neck, ready to spit fire.

He met her gaze, let one griff twitch. “Sorry to startle you, my dear.”

“Au—FuThazar, whatever are you doing in my chambers?” Natasatch said. “I commissioned you to find a cache of old Hypatian coin to give as a gift to Imfamnia, not to intrude on my chambers.”

“I will withdraw, but first I must speak to you, Protector,” AuRon said.

“Ah, well, as long as you’re here,” Natasatch said. “Begone, you,” she told her servants. “Not a word to the Sunlight Queen of her gift. I want it to be a surprise, and if it gets spoiled you’ll hang upside down on my balcony from dawn to dusk.”

The servants scuttled off.

AuRon felt a stab at her casual mention of punishing her human slaves. He’d seen a good deal of cruelty in his life, and rather than becoming hardened to it, he’d grown more sensitive over the years. Not that any dragon dared admit a missing patch of scale for any of the two-legged races.

Worse, his mate looked as if she’d been living in the wild, and not living well at that. “You look thin,” he said. “Are you eating?”

“Very well. I get the best calves-livers in Dairuss,” she said. “It’s not doing you much good. Have you been ill?”

“I expect it’s Blood for the Empire.”

“What in the air is ‘Blood for the Empire’?” AuRon repeated the phrase to make sure he’d not misheard.

She cocked her head, as if he’d asked her why her scales were green. “I forget how long you’ve been away. Blood for the Empire. We’re bled regularly. There’s good coin in dragon-blood, especially from the rich Hypatians, and in extracts sold on the other side of the Sweep of the Ironriders.”

Fine. His mate was looking sickly and aged so some shriveled old Hypatian galleon-master could frolic with his fifteenth wife until he impregnated her.

“So, they have an Empire that spans two-thirds of the world, and they have to bleed you to acquire gold to eat?”

“It’s so much more than that, my—old friend,” she said. “Excavation projects need dwarfs. Roads must have surveyors and shorers. Armies to maintain order. They’re rebuilding the old Sailing Market so it can circle in the Inland Ocean once more, as in Hypatia’s glory.”

“I thought the point of the Empire was safety for dragons. You look like you’re about to topple, and you’re young and healthy. What happens with older dragons?”

“Less is expected of them, of course,” she said. “NiVom is brilliant. He thinks of everything.”

“I wish my brother were still Tyr. He had less brilliance and more sense. I don’t remember seeing any starved-looking dragons in his—”

“Hush! Are you flapping mad? Don’t speak of him! Every important dragon from the Sun Empire, and a few from the Dark, is here. The place is thick with griffaran and the Queen’s spies.”

“The birds are stuffing themselves with fruit and nuts, as far as I can tell,” AuRon said. “As for spies, half of the dragons here seem to be slipping on and off one another’s balconies or meeting in hillside glades. They’re going to keep busy reporting who is engaging in a quick tryst with whom. What sort of dragons are these? They’ve got the morals of mead-addled blighters at a spring mating festival.”

“Would you like a look around my sleeping chamber? I assure you, it’s cold and empty.”

“No colder than mine,” AuRon said.

“We could change that.”

“Were we to join, I’d prefer it to be up in the sun and clouds, as proudly mated dragons. I’m not about to join in some dreadful scuffle like a furtive blighter.”

“You know very well that’s impossible, my lord.” Sometimes she used the traditional honorific to poke fun at him when he grew pretentious. “Were I to take someone up, it would be remarkable. Every gossip would try to figure out who it was. Unlike some dragonelles of my acquaintance. It’s more strange if they aren’t cavorting over the city during a celebration, with Imfamnia setting the social tone.”

“Pity,” AuRon said.

“Will you remain long? Perhaps you could return to Dairuss. You could hide in the high pass.”

AuRon looked at the astonishing layout of tools for dragonelle preparation. There were knives and files and hooked cutters for scale, paints and dusts and glues and brushes and rags and mysterious pointed sticks for decorating scale, and vast quantities of a reddish clay.

“What’s all the clay for?”

Some of Natasatch’s good humor returned. “You really are out of date. It’s a wing-skin soother and tightener. A folded wing should look smooth and supple. It’s hard work, standing there with your wings stretched until it hardens. Then you do it again with them folded. Takes the better part of a day.”

Hard to think of his fiercely practical mate transformed into a vanity-ridden frivol. “I don’t suppose I can interest you in forgoing the clay treatment and instead eating a brace of ducks.”

“And spoil my appetite for the party?”

“Is there any way I might attend?” AuRon asked.

“It will look strange if I arrive at the Grand Feast with any but a Firemaid from my uphold. But there are so many dragons invited—I’m sure you can lose yourself in all the comings and goings.”

“I’ve no wish to speak to anyone but you there. But I am famished. I’ve been flying hard these past ten days.”

“Perhaps—perhaps we could find some time together. Again, with all the pairs of dragons at this feast. Stay about the fringes, and for the Four Gifts’ sake, don’t come near me when Imfamnia’s about. I think she suspects you and I communicate in secret.”

She quieted, and switched over to mindspeech. I’m unsettled, AuRon. Imfamnia and NiVom are up to something with this feast.