Keee, keeee came the screams from the demen, hissing like Widow Lessup’s old kettle before making the morning infusion.

“What’s left is running,” one of the Firemaids called, spitting to cool her mouth.

“Drakka, finish them,” Ayafeeia said. “Run and pounce, before they get back to their holes.”

It wasn’t a battle anymore, if it ever was. It was an extermination.

Wistala couldn’t watch the rest.

They had to relocate, to remove themselves from the reek of blood and waste.

“It doesn’t usually go that well,” Ayafeeia said, as the Firemaids settled down to a meal of the vanquished. “If they’d been quicker and quieter, as demen usually are, it might have gone ill. I’ve been engulfed before. It seems they suddenly flood up from the floor and walls and you’re in a sea of them. You’re lucky to form fighting pairs.”

She and a pair of drakka, returning from the fight with gore-smeared mouths and saa, attended to Wistala’s wound. They dusted it with some kind of ground lichen and wetted the root that Wistala knew as dwarfsbeard to revive the sticky strands before laying it on and binding it with sponges.

“It’s a shallow cut. They always look worse than they really are,” one of the drakka said, checking the bindings. “You’ll be limping for a while.”

“Well, Wistala. I’d say you arrived just in time to see the last of the Demen War,” Ayafeeia said. “I envy you. You can tell your hatchlings a fine story someday.”

“I should think you’d have a better one,” Wistala said. “You led the fight.”

“She—” a Firemaid began.

“Wistala,” Ayafeeia said, “the Firemaids take a most solemn oath of celibacy, so that we may be more devoted in defense to the Empire. Hatchling survivals are two to one favoring the female, so we must do much of the work of defense of those who do take mates.”

One of the dragonelles licked at her torn and riven scale. “Oath or no, some recant at the first opportunity, like—”

“Enough of that,” Ayafeeia said.

Wistala couldn’t help but be moved at such an attitude. This green bodyguard had saved her life twice now. She’d often despaired of finding a mate—she’d once promised her father that she would avenge their family’s destruction by having many hatchlings—but if she couldn’t have her own, she could certainly protect those of others.

But she was also a Hypatian librarian. The title meant much to her. Would she have to renounce her Hypatian rank if she joined these sisters from the Lavadome?

“Tell me more about how one becomes a Firemaid,” Wistala said.

Chapter 12

The chief dragons of the Lavadome met in the map room.

The map room was a minor wonder. It was the design and labor of one of the Copper’s predecessors as Tyr, the thrall-sniffing sybarite SiDrakkon, begun in the days when he assisted Tyr FeHazathant.

SiDrakkon took the idea from a map the Anklenes made of the Lavadome, formed in three dimensions out of the poured stone the dwarves made. He turned one of the Tyr’s old hoard-rooms into a map room and had the Anklenes re-create the Upholds as though viewed from high above, mountains and rivers and forests in miniature.

The only shortcoming was that one had to be careful where one stepped, for some of the peaks proved fragile.

The Copper thought the map rather shortsighted. It encompassed only the Upholds of the Dragon Empire of long standing, from Anaea to Bant. The rest of the world did not exist unless it bordered their Empire. But then, SiDrakkon always had lacked imagination to match his ambition.

Already, thralls with artistic talent had started painting the walls with the representations of the rest of the Upper World. It didn’t look quite right, but SiDrakkon’s artisans had done such a lovely job with the mountains and rivers that he couldn’t bear the thought of tearing them down and starting afresh.

The Copper listened to HeBellereth’s chief of thralls report of matters in the southern and northwestern Upholds. The human captain could more easily step through the sculptures without obstructing the others’ view.

NoSohoth had to be present to keep track of decisions and opinions and supervise decorum. HeBellereth had to be there to give his opinion; he’d just returned from a tour of the Upholds with a few snout-picked fast-winged scouts of the Aerial Host. HeBellereth wasn’t the quickest of the dragons in the Lavadome but he had a good eye for weaknesses and fault and his snout-picked thralls showed the quality of refined gold. Then there was LaDibar, of course, so that Anklene opinion might be consulted. NoFhyriticus stood apart, close to the wall, his gray skin darkening so that he seemed hardly present at all. The Copper asked him to attend because of his practical mind. He would have liked Nilrasha to be present as well, but she had business with the victorious Firemaids just returned from the Star Tunnel.

Just outside the entrance a few dragons of the principal hills waited so they might have their share in the discussion.

CoTathanagar was among the outer audience, of course. He’d found his way into the map room despite the lack of an invitation, probably to cadge for an Upholder apprenticeship for one of his relations. At a griff-twitch to NoSohoth he’d been ejected.

Thralls worked hard at the entrance, circulating air with fans. Despite its size, the map room tended to grow stuffy very quickly if more than two dragons stood in it. SiDrakkon had always been an aloof, solitary dragon, and couldn’t imagine bringing other dragons into the map room, so he’d never improved the airflow in the chamber. He liked to brood in peace.

“Ever since the Ghioz claimed all those islands to the east in the Sunstruck Sea I’ve feared for Komod and Tuvalea. Men and blighters of the most primitive sort live there, unchanged in their worship of dragonkind since Silverhigh, and they cry and wail of Ghioz slaveships raiding their coasts. On the Windbreak Isles the Ghioz established relations with the headhunters there—they paddle their canoes into Tuvalea and whole villages disappear. They kill the old and take the young.”

“One might ask the difference between a Ghioz slave-raid and our own thrall trade,” LaDibar said with a sniff.

“The tribes willingly offer up strong sons and daughters as sacrifice to the Upholders for their favor,” NoSohoth said. To the Copper’s mind NoSohoth had his own ways of wasting time and breath, but even patient, courtly NoSohoth tired of LaDibar making the same observations over and over again.

“Ah, yes, that old swindle,” LaDibar said. “After a poor harvest the Upholder explains that he was unhappy with the quality of the last offering and sent a warning. To think of dragons resorting to such tricks in this advanced age.”

“We fight for them,” HeBellereth said. “Remember the great migration out of the Black Tip. The Komod and Tuvalea would have been driven from their huts and fetish-places by those . . . one hardly wants to call them blighters. Primitives, more like.”

“Thralls. I’m sick of hearing of them,” the Copper said. “What are a few thralls a year compared to the cattle and goats we need?”

“Not to mention the oliban,” NoSohoth said.

“Especially not to mention your profitable skimming from the oliban trade,” LaDibar said in the airy manner that allowed the Anklene to claim he was joking if challenged.

“Worse news,” HeBellereth said. “We saw many of those Ghioz roc-riders over the Sloai Horsedowns. If the Ghioz swallow Hypatia, as seems likely, the Ku-Zuhu could be lost to us. Without Hypatia’s protection they’ll become just another province of the Ghioz.”

HeBellereth’s chief of thralls put models of condor-like birds over a depiction of gently rolling hills.

“Ku-Zuhu is not ours to begin with,” LaDibar said. “It’s not even an Uphold.”

“But they are friendly to us, as well as the Anaeans,” the Copper said. “We and the Anaeans both benefit from their cattle and grains.”

“And the cloths. There are no weavers like the Ku-Zuhu. They remember patterns even the elves have forgotten.”

“Textiles!” LaDibar said. “We cannot eat textiles.”

“But we trade the textiles to the other Upholds, you Anklene cloudhead,” one of the assembly outside the door called.

“Who said that?” LaDibar called. “I’ll have your—”

“Let’s not spoil the sculpture with blood,” the Copper said.

“Za! I’m not about to start a duel, Tyr,” LaDibar said.

“We all know that,” HeBellereth grunted.

“LaDibar, I would appreciate a suggestion,” the Copper said. “Where should we counter the Ghioz?”

“It is difficult to make a decision. There’s not enough information.”

“There’s never enough information with you,” HeBellereth growled. His griff twitched in anger.

“None of that,” NoSohoth said. “More oliban on the fire, there at the entrance.”

The thralls perfumed the air.

“HeBellereth, you believe the Ghioz will move against Hypatia?”