“Perhaps we could precipitate their revolt,” AuRon said. “Control it, so it is directed against NiVom and Imfamnia. Turn them against the Empire. Wistala has friends high in their councils, I believe. They might rally behind reinstalling Tyr RuGaard.”

“Perhaps,” Wistala said, “but the librarians aren’t influential. They’re a bit like the Ankelenes in the Lavadome. They go to them for the answering of questions; they don’t have the influence to sway a city.”

“All I wish for is my mate back. I’m willing to walk alone into the Empire to demand it,” the Copper said.

“RuGaard was rather clever about making the Hypatians his pets,” DharSii continued. “They would lose much if the Empire falls before they’ve reestablished themselves all around the Inland Ocean.”

“One day they will realize that they are the Empire, more than a handful of dragons,” AuRon said. “Clever men will decide that they could do better without dragons taking the lion’s share of the Empire’s riches. After that, we’re finished.”

“If they haven’t decided that already,” Wistala said.

“So, we are resolved to break up the Empire,” AuRon said. “And render the Hypatians impotent at the same time.”

The dragons all nodded.

“A difficult task,” DharSii said.

“The Empire’s strong enough to resist any outside attack now, by any power I can think of,” the Copper said. “Hypatian troops, Ironrider mercenaries, and slave-regiments, two fleets on the Inland Ocean and another being built on the Sunstruck Sea, both wings of the Aerial Host, Roc-rider scouts, the Griffaran Guards—any one of those could smash the barbarians if they so chose.”

“I think Gettel is right,” Wistala said. “If we can handle the dragons, the barbarians might humble the newly arrogant Hypatians. They only think they’re strong because the dragons have won all their battles for them.”

A shadow passed over the opening at the top of the tower.

“Get Gettel,” a dragon voice shouted. “They are coming! The dragons of the Empire are coming!”

“It seems we weren’t the only ones plotting war,” the Copper said.

Chapter 12

Why, oh why, had she ever joined the Aerial Host?

Varatheela wondered.

Of course she knew. She’d been a Firemaid and spent two years guarding an underground lake a weeks’ walk from the Lavadome, halfway between Anaea and Imperial Rock. Once it had been an important artery on the kern trade route—the older Firemaids said that kern had been a vital nutrient that allowed underground dragons to remain healthy without ever getting sun.

She’d had such fun in her early years as a Firemaid, too. Parties and feasts and the sisterly affection of the First Oath. There’d been such thrilling games and contests against the young dragons, with the wingless females set against the Drakwatch and the mature dragonelles skirmishing with the young training reserves of the Aerial Host. Such colorful young males, many with wealthy parents aboveground in governorships.

One was sure to ask her to mate, and then she’d have a sad party to bid farewell to the Firemaids and a happy party with many of the same dragons to celebrate the mating.

The game of deciding on a mate was such fun. She took her time enjoying the attentions of several different males, but when the orders came for her to lead some younger drakka on a long training mission in the west tunnel she looked forward to the excursion. She would finally make up her mind while away, and alternately gladden and break hearts on her return.

So she led the dragons on the march, passing on the lessons she’d learned about tunnel fighting and finding food and water and the way to know which direction is north when you’re deep underground (large patches of cave moss formed natural channels that indicated the north-south axis and glowed slightly better on the flanges facing south in the Northern Hemisphere, reversed in the Southern).

But tragedy struck. A Third-Oath Firemaid guarding the dwarf-barge crossing died of illness and as the senior Firemaid available, Varatheela had to take her place and serve with the surviving Firemaid, a dull old hypochondriac named Angalia. Strictly temporary, Angalia assured her with a wink as the trainees were sent back west under the next senior Firemaid.

So began a good many dreary years.

She sent message after message back to the Lavadome, asking when a replacement could be found for Angalia’s dead partner. Every half year, she received a few brief lines from Ayafeeia that were, in essence, “I don’t understand. You have replaced her?”

“But only temporarily,” she would bellow out into the lake.

Angalia would chuckle. “That’s what I used to say. Ohh, my poor joints. Varatheela, heat some sheepskins to throw over them, won’t you, dear?”

Angalia would talk about the glory days of the kern trade, when they might see a new face as often as once every ten or twenty days, or the time they’d fought some demen raiders before Ayafeeia finally took the Star Tunnel. What little traffic there was these days were training marches from the Drakwatch, Firemaids, and Aerial Host. And, of course, the blood-letters, demen who showed up with the regularity of a tide.

She did learn a few words of dwarfish. The bargemen who crossed the lake brought trade-dwarfs a few times a year, on their way to sell their packs in the Lavadome. But even the luxury trade the Lavadome used to see had moved aboveground, and the dwarfs with it. The remaining traders were those unfortunates and failures who lost the better routes and made what they could off the trickle of underground dragon trade. Their beards were dark and patchy with hardly a glimmer of light.

The food was dreadful. Fish taken from the lake by the dwarfs, heavily salted, and fried in their own liver oil. Salt pork once in a great while from the Lavadome.

“There are some tunnels leading to the surface on the far end of the lake, dear,” Angalia advised. “Sometimes you can find escaped thralls in them, trying to make it out. They get lost and come down to the lake to find water. Sniff around the banks, and if you smell hominid, that means some are wandering about. They usually come back. The trick is to find a good drippy spot and sit with just your nostrils up. Then when they’re sucking water, you lunge up and get them by the head.”

She made a halfhearted attempt to hunt thralls, but the only one she saw was hardly an adult, rail-thin, and covered in either pox or bug-bites that showed bright red against her pale skin. She didn’t have the heart to take her. In fact, she silently wished her well and left her a bit of bladder-wrapped salt pork she’d brought along as provision.

After a year of listening to water drip into the lake, she applied for, and received, a week in the Lavadome.

While even the meager foodstuffs grown and livestock raised in the Lavadome seemed a banquet compared to the fare available at the crossing post, the rest of the visit was a terrible disappointment. The dragons who’d been courting her had moved on to other Firemaids, or had been promoted into the Aerial Host, or had gone on to apprenticeships. Other young dragonelles were attracting the attention of the trainees, who suddenly looked young to her. Squatting beside the lake with Angalia had left her scale dull and the dreadful food had made her lose weight. She discovered, to her horror, that her skin sagged about the wings, hips, and tail. She looked like she’d aged a decade!

At one of the dinners with the Firemaids, Ayafeeia mentioned that she was being pressed by Imfamnia, hard, to give up some more Firemaids to the Aerial Host. To Ayafeeia, the Firemaids defended the next generation of dragons: The Lavadome still had more hatchlings in it than all of the Protectorates combined. Some thought this was because dragonelles expecting eggs wanted the comforts and familiar surroundings of their home hills when about to produce a clutch, but Ayafeeia thought the dragons on the surface were too busy greedily gathering every head of livestock and ring of metal they could fit between their grasping sii to produce any hatchlings.

I’ll go into the Host! she’d squeaked like a hatchling. She actually looked around after speaking, so strange did her voice sound to her.

Once she’d made that fateful decision, all the rest of the choices were easy. She hated the idea of carrying around a greasy, twitchy, complaining human. She’d heard from other dragons in the Host that having a rider wasn’t all it was made out to be. Yes, you had someone constantly attending to your teeth, scale, and claws, but their meals came out of your ration, and all the clothes and boots and furs and weapons and accoutrements came out of your hoard.

Once you were, quite literally, saddled with a rider, you had to take care of him, yes, him, unlike with dragons, female humans almost never devoted themselves to fighting. Everyone knew that male thralls were more trouble. When they weren’t fiddling about with their fronts, they were scratching at their rears. The humans of the Aerial Host—a blighter or two were sprinkled in, but elves and dwarfs didn’t care to seek fortune and glory in this manner—weren’t treated like other thralls. They were left reproductively intact, for one, as the warriors who excelled in their duties were encouraged to father as many offspring as possible to either take their places in the Aerial Host or serve in one of the captaincies—human garrisons led by a dragon.