Natasatch gave off a brief prrum at the compliment. “Well, I wish my scale shone like yours.”

“Get your thralls to properly polish it. Chalk soda and lemon juice, that’s the thing. And if they put a little oil on it afterward; it keeps the tarnish down, dear.”

Ear to ear in conversation, the dragonelles proceeded underground. AuRon and NiVom trailed behind in companionable silence.

They sat, according to Lavadome decorum, around a tiny feeding pit with Imfamnia across from AuRon and Natasatch facing NiVom.

The food, rather than being brought up from an under-chamber, had to be brought in from another room by a thrall.

AuRon took a quick glance at the Ghioz. He hadn’t seen many up close, at least without the din and confusion all about. They were smaller and darker than the men of the north, but had wiry frames that held a good deal of strength, considering the weight of the platters brought in for the guests. Some of the thralls were bearing entire calves and small pigs, roasted with different kinds of gravies.

He had no complaints about the food. AuRon hadn’t dined so well—ever. He even sampled the wine, but hardly understood half the words NiVom and Imfamnia used in the description of its origin and reputation. It sounded as though they were describing the quality of a warrior:

“This one’s rather new and still a bit stiff; it could have been better treated by the barrel, but you’ll find it has strong legs, with the apple blossom carrying the smokey cheese behind…” and other such rubbish.

“What does wine care how its barrel treats it?” AuRon asked, and NiVom and Imfamnia exchanged looks.

“We’re used to eating rough and drinking glacier runoff,” Natasatch explained.

“Oh, I do love you outdoorsy kinds of dragons,” Imfamnia said, touching Natasatch’s tail with her own. “Such stories! Tell us of the north. You must get a great deal of fresh air and sunshine; I can tell by your eyes and scale that you’ve never had to substitute kern for being above ground.”

“They used to give us different kinds of oils in the cave, with herbs suspended in them…” Natasatch gave a brief version of her captivity on the egg shelf.

“But where did you come from, originally?” Imfamnia asked her. “You look so familiar!”

“I’m not really sure—I was taken captive very young. I think I remember being underground, but it might have been images from my parents’ minds.”

Imfamnia went on describing Natasatch’s perfections of limb and scale “quite youthful-looking; you’d never know you’d mated, let alone sat atop four eggs.”

“It was five, we lost one,” Natasatch said.

“Five! Oh, if good old Tyr FeHazathant could have seen that. He’d have stuffed you and your hatchlings with cattle.”

“We managed,” AuRon said. “There’s good fishing in the north. The waters around my island are thick with cod.”

“Riches indeed,” Imfamnia said.

“I understand RuGaard is keeping up the tradition of giving gifts to those lucky enough to sit atop eggs,” NiVom said.

Imfamnia cocked her head. “Your brother is an odd sort of fellow. He’s no FeHazathant, and not nearly as impressive-looking as SiDrakkon or SiMevolant were as Tyr. He’s so clunky and offbeat, it’s rather disarming. He’s more than he appears.”

“You were the champion in the hatching struggle?”

“Yes,” AuRon said, which was more or less the truth. He had some help from the Copper and the egg-horn.

“You still have your egg-horn, I notice,” Imfamnia said, as though reading his thoughts. “Is that a family tradition, or…”

“It did me great service in getting out of my egg, so I left it in. The skin’s almost overgrown it.”

“Yes, at first I thought it was a stuck arrowhead,” NiVom said.

“There are the wildest rumors going around the Lavadome about your brother,” Imfamnia said. “We’ve been away for years, so perhaps we heard incorrectly, but there is a rumor that he betrayed and murdered his own family.”

“None of us treated him much like family,” AuRon said. “Except perhaps for one, but she died as a hatchling.”

“Poor little blighter, he must have had it hard,” Imfamnia said.

“Whatever’s in the past, he’s a decent enough dragon now,” AuRon said. “Going by what little I’ve seen of him.”

“Yes, his story is altogether remarkable,” Imfamnia said. “It’s like an elf made it up for a song. To rise from lower than dust and become Tyr.”

“If he has truly reformed,” NiVom said.

“What’s that?” AuRon asked.

Imfamnia tossed her snout to make light of the issue. “Oh, you can never be certain with rumors. Of course no one can say for sure, except perhaps his mate—but his first mate, my sister, a sickly little thing, she died under conditions that were… unique.

“My sister never ate but tiny little bird pecks,” Imfamnia continued, tearing off a great haunch and swallowing it as though showing a contrast. AuRon watched it pass down, like an accelerated quick trip by groundhog through a snake. “She had no appetite her whole life. But then she dies, all alone at dinner, supposedly choked to death on a mouthful of meat. Something’s not right about that.

“And then he mates an old comrade from the Firemaids—after she’s taken her oath, mind—while the poor thing’s still moist in her grave.”

Perhaps he hadn’t reformed so much after all, AuRon thought.

AuRon wondered at NiVom’s quiet, tired manner. He looked bloodless, like a dragon back from a winter thin on meals and heavy on fighting, but bore no scars. Perhaps the feasting at Ghioz wasn’t as good as his mate claimed.

Their hosts gave them a comfortable old storage cave in the mountain. The heavy doors made AuRon think it had once held valuables; it still smelled faintly of gold and there were some silver utensils that Imfamnia told them to swallow if they chose.

“So much good metal to eat in the Grand Alliance,” Natasatch said. “I don’t miss the ore from the island one bit. It would just sit in your gold gizzard, taking forever to digest.”

“You think we’ve made a change for the better?” AuRon asked.

“Time will tell. I think the offspring have.”

“I’m going for a walk,” AuRon said. “Enjoy the silver.”

He followed his nose and ears, watched the noisy construction of the dragon-face. His brother had faults, but he didn’t believe one to be vanity. He wondered if the image was meant to flatter his brother and disperse suspicions about Imfamnia’s and NiVom’s loyalty.

Frantic hammering and calls in the Ghioz dialect still echoed from behind the canvas on the brass dragon snout and lanterns cast shadowplay of swinging limbs and distorted bodies bent over work-surfaced. NiVom and Imfamnia had their labor gangs working through the night, it seemed. He saw one group of workers, obviously off-duty, huddled in the shelter of the scaffolding like pigs in a sty. Speaking of which, the underbrush was thick with dumped buckets of hominid waste and discarded food. He heard rats and other vermin.

There were other camps here and there, with cooking fires and bakeries going even at this late hour. So many workers! They had enough men here to form a small city of them—he wondered how NiVom and Imfamnia were able to afford such a monument to vanity.

His hosts should take more care with their charges; there’d be disease if they weren’t careful. He observed red welts on the backs and arms of some of the workers as they lay on their stomachs, the injuries dabbed with some kind of chalky paste.

Whip-rash.

Poor dumb brutes, treated like horses and mules who couldn’t be reasoned into performing their duties. Men could reason, after a fashion, though the ability varied from individual to individual. Too much intelligence made them mad, like Wrimere. Naf, perhaps not as bright as Wrimere, was a far more sensible reasoner. Maybe men needed the relief of frequent laughter to purge their brains the way indigestibles purged the bowels. Naf, always ready to bray in that mulish fashion of his or cackle like a sitting bird, had his mind right.

Some of the workers twitched in their sleep as he passed, startled awake and avoided his eye, as though guilty for being at rest. He smelled quick fear in their sweat.

He wanted out of the tumult and reek. It was a fine night, Ghioz apparently had milder winters than the Bissonian Scarpes he’d lived in to the east. Perhaps he could find a spot on the ridge behind the works to watch the stars and think.

He found his way up to the ridge, making use of a dusty road that must lead to a source of lumber or a quarry or smelter or some other camp supporting the alterations to the mountainside, for it was recently and heavily rutted.

As he stepped out upon it he saw a shadow shift on an overhanging tree ahead. The tree, a lopsided hardwood, had been trimmed back to keep the road clear, but a few branches at the top still overhung the road. Near the top, a mass that he took to be an eagle’s nest reached out a limb and moved through the canopy to a thicker mass of branches.