“Oh, your honor,” she said. “There’s a thrall been asking every day to speak to the dragon in charge. That would be you.”

“A human?”

“Yes. He’s got some plan or idea or bargain or something.”

The Copper half expected to see Harf again, recaptured, but the young man who came before him wearing the tatters of some very tight weaving just looked at him with clear blue eyes. He was extraordinarily handsome, as far as he could tell hominid standards went.

“What is it you want, man?”

“Great one. This bridge of yours. It’s a death trap.” He spoke the simplified pidgin Drakine with a thick accent; he hadn’t been in the keeping of the Lavadome long, it seemed. As for his observation, that required no great mind to discern, with the bones and bodies of dead animals and handlers scattered all over the floor of the canyon below.

“Do you offer a remedy, or is this just idle conversation?”

“I know how to improve it.”

“Do you, now. Have you built many bridges?”

“I’ve been involved in several construction projects. I was trained by dwarves.”

“I didn’t know they shared their secrets so readily with outsiders.”

“I was a kind of special apprentice, your honor.”

“What’s your name?”

“Rayg.”

The Copper did like the look of him, except for the fact that he didn’t appear particularly afraid of dragons. New thralls usually bent and tucked their heads down between their shoulders like frightened turtles.

“I should like to hear your plans.”

“I have a condition.”

“You forget your place. I could lift you and toss you down to rest with the other bones, and no one would say a word.”

The man called Rayg just blinked at him.

The Copper relented, though he wondered if it was a mistake to do so. “What’s your condition?”

“My freedom.”

“Oh, dear. I can’t say that I blame you, but there’s a problem. You’re not my slave.”

“I’m sure I can be traded.”

“Let me see your plans. Then we’ll talk again.”

He widened his stance. “No. Buy me, and then I’ll show you the plan. If you like the plan, I’ll expect my freedom.”

“You’ll supervise the construction?”

“Yes. As long as I can get more, much more, of the materials you’re using now. And some good stonecutters.”

“If I’m satisfied with the bridge you build, I’ll grant you your freedom. You seem intelligent enough, so I’ll see about buying you.”

Negotiating with thralls. The duties of an Upholder, even an Upholder-to-be, had a variety of flavors. Which made him think of the herbs Halaflora added to those big-footed rabbits Fourfang had caught….

He learned from the grunting deman overseer that this Rayg belonged to a general pool of Imperial thralls, to be used for mundane duties like building dams, clearing tunnels, mining for ores necessary to a healthy dragon’s diet. As a member of the Imperial line he could make claims on such thralls, so he simply affirmed that the Uphold in Anaea needed him and paid out a small sum to the overseer as a kind of gratuity.

The Copper was very grateful his life couldn’t be bought and sold so easily.

He had Rayg transferred to his household and introduced to Fourfang and Rhea with a minimum of squabbling. He set Rayg to work with a chalk tablet used to keep track of rations—it would take time to get paper—and tried to do what he could to retrieve the bags of kern from the fallen animals. Blood or rats had spoiled much of it.

The Firemaid told him of rumors from the Lavadome of some political housekeeping carried out by SiDrakkon. Nothing severe, just a replacement of some staff with his Skotl supporters. There’d been a few duels and deaths. SiDrakkon had also converted the Imperial Gardens to a private topiary and bathing area for himself and his mate-to-be, which was causing some grousing, as a walk in the mushroom fields or past livestock pens couldn’t compare with the view from Black Rock.

SiMevolant would have to find new flowers to contemplate. The thought brought him some pleasure.

Rayg presented him with a rough version of the plan, a mixture of tunneling through the stalactite formations and a new platform added to one of the rising rocks, complete with a drawbridge.

“I made it draw up toward the Lavadome,” Rayg said. “I believe you are more worried about enemies getting down into the Lower World than threats coming up.”

The Copper wondered if Rayg knew more about the jealousies and rivalries and head-hunting going on in the Lavadome than he let on.

“It’s wide. Will it hold?”

“I thought you might like to take carts across. Yes, it will hold. The calculations are there, based on the materials I’ve seen. It’s dwarven notation; can you read that?”

“Hmmm. Do it well, and you’ll get your reward,” the Copper said, dodging the question rather than admitting that a thrall could do something he couldn’t, which seemed wrong in an indefinable way. “How long will it take?”

“Two years. Unless you give me more tunnelers and tools. A furnace on site would speed things up as well.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

It was rather nice to leave all the details and worries in the hands of Rayg. He left instructions to the Drakwatch and the Firemaiden garrison that everything he asked for should be given.

“It will take some time to assemble the materials. Maybe you’d like a little sun?”

Rayg’s eyes lit up. “The surface?”

“Yes. Plenty of food, too. It’s been a good summer; kern is coming out of our ears.”

They had to return for SiDrakkon’s mating, of course. They traveled light, bringing Rayg back to the works to supervise the first stages. A rickety catwalk replaced the gap in the bridge, and the Copper for once was slower than his mate, hobbled by his bad sii.

The Copper quietly warned the Firemaidens to watch Rayg, so that he didn’t use his authority to fashion an escape. The project seemed well begun, and Rayg liked his work and got along well with the other thralls, but there was no telling with hominids.

The Copper went so far as to have Rhea decorate him for the mating banquet, as she had for the first time he’d attended a gathering atop Black Rock. NeStirrath helped him prepare by having a pair of blighters paint his war decorations on his good wing.

SiDrakkon reopened the Imperial Gardens to show all the improvements. There were more statues and galleries and plant beds everywhere, and it had been redesigned so a lone dragon could walk the perimeter in something like isolation, at the cost of making the space less functional for multiple dragons to enjoy.

But then, as Imfamnia liked to remind everyone, “It is our garden.”

Halaflora set herself on some cushions near the banquet trench and spoke to her other sister, now grave in her Firemaid ring.

Their mating flight commenced with a long, expanding flight around Black Rock, then the inner hills, and finally the outer edge of the Lavadome. Thralls had been coached to cheer them from the rooftops and hills, and dragons who knew what was good for them trumpeted their well-wishes.

Imfamnia was in her element at the mating banquet, alternately roaring orders and simpering. The Copper was rather glad for a sickly mate rather than this whirlwind in painted scale. “This? This is nothing,” she said. “Wait until we get a new trade route open. I want everyone to shake off every scale they can. There are some new metal-based paints that will drive everyone mad with excitement when they see them. Such vivid colors!”

“Is it wise to send dragonscale directly to the merchant houses?” Rethothanna asked. “Especially for luxuries? I always thought it was wiser to bring scale to market indirectly, so its source would be harder to trace.”

“And what of it, if the source is found? We control every road and every river in the Lower World for many marches in every direction,” Imfamnia responded. “I’ve even heard the Wheel of Fire has been smashed in the last year by barbarians. Those dwarves had the only army capable of forcing itself anywhere near here, or so my mate says. Isn’t that right, Tyr?”

“Yes, the main threat against us in the Lower World is gone. And as for the Upper, the Ghi men got a lesson,” Tyr SiDrakkon said, for in the Copper’s heart there would only be one Tyr, and the title choked on its way out his lips. “We’ll teach the same to any who dare come against us.”

“War, war, war,” Ibidio said. “You make it more likely with your foolishness and bragging. There’s always risk in war. Always loss.”

The Copper suddenly noticed that Tighlia wasn’t at the celebration. “Where is my granddam?” he asked. “I would like to pay my respects.”

“The old has-been keeps to her room,” SiMevolant said. He’d had his claws painted up with gold striping and added black to his tail. The Copper thought he looked like a bumblebee among the coneflowers bordering one of Anaea’s kernfields.