At the center of the walkway was a sandy pit, usually reserved for hatchlings of the Imperial Line. There’d been some fine tussles and games among the hatchlings, always the best part of any dinner, to the Copper’s mind. Now the pit held only a single green corpse, resting on its side.

All the assembled dragons quieted at his approach and regarded the dead hatchling silently.

The Copper took a breath. He didn’t care for any of her company.

There was LaDibar, one of the senior Anklenes, at the honored position to her left where the freshest dishes arose. In his youth the gold had been proclaimed a genius, a prodigy, a dragon of rare mind and discernment. The Copper didn’t dispute any of it, but for having such a rare mind he never did much of anything useful with it.

A handsome young couple of almost perfectly matched Skotl dragons sat across from Nilrasha. He was red and she, of course, was green, but their snouts were much alike. SiHazathant and Regalia were high in the Imperial Line; the mystical said they were SiDrakkon and Tighlia reincarnated. No one disputed that they were related to SiDrakkon through a cousin; their father had died bravely in battle against the hag-riders when first they arrived. Their hatching was still talked of, for they came from a strange double-egg, sharing a single egg-sack, though both had been rather small in consequence. When SiHazathant was losing to his brother in the hatchling contest, Regalia fought at his side and together they triumphed.

They’d been inseparable ever since. Regalia served with her brother in the Drakwatch by a special dispensation during SiDrakkon’s rule—it was either that or SiHazathant would have had to go into the Firemaidens. It hadn’t been as awkward as some predicted. She’d proved herself equal to the drakes, and she had a dragonelle’s ability to hold her temper. They were both unusually grave for dragons of their age, as though in private mourning of some unspoken grief.

The third dragonelle was an unmated female Wyrr named Essea. She didn’t have any particular talent or skill that the Copper could discern; if anything, she was a silly gossip, but she was of the Imperial Line and a friend and confidante of Nilrasha. The rest of the Imperial Line looked rather down on his mate because of her humble birth—Nilrasha had come out of the hovels at milkdrinker’s hill—and slighted her whenever possible. The Copper was grateful to Essea for her unstinting kindnesses. She’d helped Nilrasha acquire a modicum of courtly manners and speech.

In a sense he and his mate were both outsiders to a line that they ostensibly led. He’d been adopted high into the Imperial Line by Tyr FeHazathant after rescuing a batch of griffaran eggs; she’d mated him after the overthrow of the hag-riders and the Dragonblade and taken the title of Queen. They were more popular in any other hill than they were in their own home caves.

Thus the emptiness of the gardens as Nilrasha mourned.

“It is good to see you well, my Tyr,” Regalia said, and all but Nilrasha gave a prrum of agreement.

The Copper looked at the dead little hatchling at the center of the sandpit. A Skotl, but small, even for a hatchling. Her jawline, the lift of her protective griff—

“This was Tilfia,” Nilrasha said, speaking low, as she did when unhappy. The Copper felt a little stab behind his breastbone. For all the bluff and strength that he admired, she sometimes sounded like the tired, defeated drakka who’d dragged herself out of that Bant waterway after the lost battle with the Ghioz. “I didn’t know her name.”

“The hatchling who complained about her brother sitting on her,” the Copper said.

“I should have known her name,” Nilrasha said.

“You can’t expect to know every hatchling,” Essea said, pressing tail to tail with her friend.

“Tighlia did,” Nilrasha said. Regalia’s eyes lit up at the name. FeHazathant and Tighlia, of Wyrr lines and Skotl, had mated and put an end to the civil wars that had almost emptied the Lavadome, and the Anklenes had suggested that FeHazathant take on the ancient title of Tyr, a kingly name out of dragon legend dating back to Silverhigh, if not before.

“We’d rather have you as Queen,” Essea said. “Tighlia was a scold. And a traditionalist.”

Nilrasha yanked her tail out from under Essea’s. “Tighlia watched me win a whole sheep in the single leap and triple leap as a hatchling, and invited me into the Firemaids herself. She never forgot a name. I can’t even be bothered to learn them in the first place.”

“How many have we lost to this plague?” the Copper asked.

“Eight dragons. It seems to be hitting the Wyrr hardest,” LaDibar said. “Fourteen hatchlings and a drakka. We also lost Gubiez in the Anklene hill.”

“Rayg says the cause is a brown growth on the latest train of kern.”

“Oh, scut,” LaDibar said. “Bad meat, perhaps. But a disease that attacks kern wouldn’t bother a dragon. Completely different entities, sun-eating and meat-eating. To think—za! Now, perhaps a poison—but no one’s mentioned a smell or taste.”

“Grieving over her is just making everyone miserable,” SiHazathant said. “Enough mourning. We’re not her parents. Let’s be done with this.” He opened his mouth and reached for the little body.

“Don’t touch her!” Nilrasha roared. Regalia hooked her neck neatly under her brother. “I said she’d go into the Firemaidens, and go into the Firemaidens she will. Her bones will rest in the cairn, and in a generation or two some other young hatchling might make a talisman out of a piece of her scale. As far as I’m concerned, she died in battle.”

“Battle?” LaDibar said. “What battle? There’s been no battle. To think!”

“Don’t be so sharp that you’re brittle,” Nilrasha said. “Someone’s been at work at the kern, to poison us.”

“Dragons?” Regalia said. “Treated like parasites? Like bat—or scale-nits, I mean?” Her eyes flamed even brighter than they had at the mention of Tighlia.

The Copper would have chuckled if he hadn’t trained himself not to betray his emotions in public. Regalia had a good head on her neck. Nilrasha had better instincts, or perhaps she was just reading half-formed suspicions drifting through his own mind.

“To think! Is it so strange for natural food poisoning to take the weak?” LaDibar said. “That human is just puffing himself up again. He strings a few words of Dwarvish together and everyone calls him a savant. Za!”

“LaDibar, if you’re so sure Rayg’s wrong, feel free to eat the hatchling,” the Copper said. “We’ve mourned. Let’s finish it.”

Nilrasha took a breath and glanced at Essea. Essea tightened her lips and drew in her head a little, a signal for dignified silence and attention.

“Barbaric custom,” LaDibar said, after just long enough of a pause to make the Copper suspect he’d been searching for a way to refuse and keep his dignity. “We don’t eat drakes or dragons, so why eat hatchlings?”

“Very well,” the Copper said. “SiHazathant is hungry and already offered to perform the service. With the word of one of our most respected young Anklenes to guide him, I’m sure he’ll have no qualms, and if something should happen, well, Regalia’s legendary for her forgiving nature.”

Regalia settled her griff. Not quite a warning rattle, but her brother shut his nostrils and raised his head away from the hatchling.

“Yes,” LaDibar said. “Well, in circumstances like these, I think it meet to test your caution, and take caution in your tests, as we say in the temple when probing the unknown. Our Queen’s wishes should be respected, in any case.” He tilted his head complyingly at Nilrasha.

Nilrasha scooped up the hatchling, and for a dreadful griff-tchk the Copper feared she would swallow the corpse herself in her misery. But she merely made for the grand stair.

“I’ll be at the Firemaiden cairn in mourning for some time,” she said, forming the words out the side of her snout with difficulty.

Her coterie bowed deeply as she left. Essea raised herself up for a moment as if to follow, then thought better of it. Or maybe she just wanted to discuss the Queen’s strange behavior with the others.

Nilrasha mourned through several lightings. Two more old dragons died. Rayg’s strange, inverted manner of obtaining fluids allowed the remaining sick hatchlings to recover with the resiliency of young blood, with the exception of one poor little soul who hardly breathed as Rayg attended her.

Privately, the Copper credited Rayg with more than a score of lives saved against that one which would have been lost anyway. He must think of a suitable reward—one that didn’t deprive the Lavadome of Rayg’s services, of course. The offer of having his own (golden!) chair installed in the throne room didn’t impress the quirky human. Much of the rest of the Copper’s thinking as to rewards was met with a shrug.

The Copper suspected that Rayg chose the gesture just to revolt him. The humans’ tendency to apparently dislocate their shoulders at will turned the stomach.

Rayg, when the crisis was past and after a good deal of work and experimentation, discovered that washing and boiling wouldn’t remove the strange blight, but long roasting in a dry pan rendered it harmless—and made the kern almost indigestible.