The Copper could picture it. He knew those midnight mists that settled over the plateau, where trees grew short and thick, filling the hillsides with their tangled black roots and boughs, giving way to the rich volcanic soil of the plains that produced running rows of strawberries and grapes separating the rows of kern stalks. The fierce, brilliant sunshine that seemed to come from all directions rather than one, the stars bright at night until the clouds collected and distributed the dew. The whole Aerial Host could glide in unseen by the Anaeans, quiet in their rich clay houses parsing out their horoscopes from the day’s observations.

Those had been happy years, with Halaflora in the sunshine. He was more than half convinced it was the sun that set her on the mend and gave her the strength to believe herself to be carrying a belly full of eggs.

Didn’t dragons deserve their share of the sun?

He brought himself back to Gnash, who was snuffling about where he’d eaten his mid-meal.

“Could you follow them when they were done?”

Gnash licked up some bit of skin and gristle that hadn’t been cleaned yet by the household thralls. “No. They flew too high, too fast. I am but a poor bat in my master’s service. The air is so thin, indeed, in Anaea I could hardly breathe. Everything, everything left me panting, even a short glide.”

“Thank you for your fatigues,” the Copper said. “Can you at least say in what direction they came from, and where they flew to?”

“To the north.”

The Copper considered. He knew Anaea well, having served as first assistant to the Upholder there and then as Upholder himself. North? Hypatia was to the north, but there were no reports of Hypatia employing giant birds. Only the Ghioz used such mounts, since some years after their brief war in Bant, according to the Anklenes. The Ghioz would be more to the east of Anaea, perhaps northeast. And he knew little of the prevailing winds off the plateau in that direction.

“Well done. Rest some days, then fly back and get Wail and the both of you may return. I’m sorry flying was so difficult for you there.”

“The Tyr is just, the Tyr is kind, thinking of his poor servants. Oh, and he is so generous, so generous.”

“Yes, I haven’t forgotten about the animal.” He took a silver disc, a coin with the Red Queen’s image upon it, and carefully bit through it with his most distinctively shaped fang. “Here, give this to the chief steward of the Imperial Herd.”

The bat-creature, which the Anklenes had started calling a “gargoyle,” took it and tucked it tight in an ear. He hardly noticed the flap as it left.

Ghioz.

He could put a stop to their flights easily enough. He could send part of the Aerial Host there. Under a skillful captain, they might trace the return flights and discover the base of the feathered giants. One swift, massive strike . . .

But all this was shadow theater, such as the thralls used to entertain young drakes and drakka of the Imperial Line. Perhaps the fliers were like those shadow images, their movements a provocation to draw him into just that sort of action. If he committed the Aerial Host to far-off Anaea, suppose she struck elsewhere. They could scrape out an existence for a time without kern—the Anklenes were even now experimenting with ways to cleanse it of the blight, starting with boiling and roasting—or, in a pinch, he could send a few hills to the surface to take the sun for a season, if the hills would trust each other not to pillage each other’s properties.

That was the ridiculous part of being Tyr. All the little drakes and drakka thought if he gave an order, it would be obeyed. Some orders were obeyed, some weren’t, it all depended on how carefully he watched and how advantageous his people considered his decisions. They found a hundred ways to interpret his words.

Dragons were altogether too selfish, when they weren’t out and out dishonest, to put the Lavadome’s needs above their own.

If dragons wouldn’t change, they’d have to figure out a way to change the world to better suit their needs.

“My Tyr,” NoSohoth said, breaking in on his thoughts. “The griffaran have met a most astonishing visitor to the Lavadome. He would speak to you.”

The Copper limped up the short passage to the throne room. It was always a slow trip; it bent around to the right and he couldn’t trust his left saa.

He looked out on the assembled dragons. He’d had Nilrasha invite a few key leaders of the various hills, the principal members of the Imperial Line, and the leaders of the Firemaids, the Aerial Host, and the Drakwatch. His griffaran guard straightened and fluffed their feathers as he stepped out onto the throne-shelf.

The old banners won in battle and glory could really use some stitching and cleaning. He recognized one taken in Bant, when SiDrakkon’s swift-dashing drakes attacked the half-completed tower of the Ghioz.

Dragon-necks, waving this way and that as the gossipers took part in two or three conversations at once, stilled and heads turned to the throne end of the room.

Nilrasha stood talking to Essea and two other females, aged widows of some of the hills but still important in influence with their families.

Everyone had a polite mouthful of coin? he thought to her.

Yes, and they’re still restless.

At a nod to NoSohoth, more oliban went on the braziers, filling the air with its thick, spicy odor. He sensed his dragons relaxing, griffs stilled, tails ceased thrashing, waiting for him to speak.

“Thank you for attending me,” he told the assembly. “We have several matters to discuss. Questions to answer, options to consider.

“But first, the war with the demen is over. We are victorious.”

That set them roaring to shake the dust from those rotting old banners. You’d have thought they’d spent the last score of years digging demen out of their holes personally.

Wistala, far at the back of the long, narrow chamber, could hardly see the Tyr for the waving dragon-necks and tight wings.

“Then where is Paskinix?” a well-proportioned young female with almost-healed wingcase wounds asked. “Do we get to see his head?”

“That’s Regalia,” Takea said, from her perch upon Wistala’s back. Ayafeeia, being a high leader of both the Firemaids and the Imperial Line, was at the other side of the press of shoulder-to-hip dragons. “She and her brother, SiHazathant, don’t much like the Tyr. They were just young drake and drakka when he became Tyr—otherwise, some say, SiHazathant might have taken the throne instead of RuGaard. They were of SiDrakkon’s line, but related to Tyr FeHazathant as well.”

Wistala swallowed the last silver coin she’d pocketed in her gum-line. She’d taken a very modest mouthful from the offered platter and had swallowed each one slowly, to savor the taste. But her mouth was still thick with the slime that always came when one had metals, and her eyes were on the cascade of silver and gold descending from the Tyr’s throne-perch.

“His forces are dead, captive, or scattered,” the Copper Tyr said. “The hunt goes on.”

“I hope so,” a red said. His scales were so dark they verged on the brownish color of dried blood. “Wretched egg-thief.”

“HeBellereth,” Takea said. “He’s the best—”

She didn’t find out what HeBellereth was best at.

“It is not the past or present that I asked you here to discuss, but the future. You all know about the shortages of kern because of the blight.”

That caused them to stir. Wistala liked the sound of the Tyr. He reminded her a little of Father with his deep voice, even if she could only glimpse a little scale here and there between the necks and wings and heads. He was probably broadly built, like Father, from what she could see, though he rested against his throne in such a way as to hide his right, and turned his back to hide his left.

A rather serpentine pose for such a noble dragon. Mother always taught her to face friend or enemy with all claws forward, weight distributed evenly—to better move, forward or back, right or left, as circumstances warranted.

“We have an important visitor from the north,” the Tyr said. “He brings news that concerns us all. Make room at the back, there!”

The dragons parted, and the rather officious silver-and-black dragon—NoSohoth, that was it—who’d been going up and down the center aisle of the throne room with some muscular blighters burning pleasant-smelling chips of what looked like resin of some kind used his neck and tail to help clear a path.

A dragon or two gasped. Wistala felt as though her head detached from the end of her neck and dropped to the floor as though severed.

DharSii of the Sadda-Vale, looking haggard and bright-eyed, fixed his eyes on the throne and walked forward.

“I don’t know who that is,” Takea said.

“DharSii, a renegade,” said an old dragon with thin scales so blue they were almost silver. “He once commanded the Aerial Host, but he tried to overthrow Tyr FeHazathant.”

“That was a lie spread by Tighlia and you know it, cousin,” an aged green said. “He saved the Tyr’s life, is what he did. What did he get as a reward? His good name taken.”

Wistala looked at Takea, but she was craning her young neck to see up the aisle to the throne.