“‘Close’ and ‘probably’ are not exact enough that I wish to bet my life on it. I’m exhausted. I need a meal. Oh, and find one of my bats. I’ll give him a nip of blood if it would hurry him down the tunnel in search of the Drakwatch.”

The Copper sent messenger bats in both directions on the western road looking for Drakwatch patrols, bearing a request to hurry to Anaea and assist the Upholder’s mate and the Firemaid at the cave mouth.

Upholder’s mate. His mate. Sickly little Halaflora. So much depended on a cripple and a weakling. Whatever Spirit had put into dragons’ nature the desire to contest every mouthful, with the weakest dying off, must be having a good, ethereal laugh at that.

Rayg found one other item on the dragon-rider and brought it to him before one of the Firemaids ate it. It was an odd little pendant on a thin chain, a tiny figure of a man standing with his arms and legs outstretched within a circle.

“I wonder what that could mean?”

“Man’s first destiny,” Rayg said.

“You know that symbol? Where does it come from?”

“The barbarians in the far north. I’m…familiar with them. They’ve got a few prophets and shamans who say life is like a great game between gods of each of the races, and we’re all just pieces dropped into the world and taken up again when we fall to an opponent’s piece.”

“That’s a grim way to think about life.”

“The ones who wear this believe man is destined to rule the earth—worlds, Upper and Lower, as dragons think of it. Man will eventually remove all the blighters, the elves, the dwarves—”

“Dragons too?”

“They don’t speak of it much, but I believe it’s implicit in their philosophy.”

“You get better with the dragon tongue every day, Rayg. You’re an intelligent fellow. I’m glad you aren’t wearing one of those.”

“I was once,” he said. “Now I’m just here to finish a bridge.”

After getting landmarks from the Firemaid, the Copper scouted the mouth of the cavern as the sun set the next day. He took a short, circular flight. There was no sign of his pursuers—or pursuer, rather. It was hard to think of dragons as little more than brute service animals; he still couldn’t quite get his mind around the idea.

Satisfied, he hurried west at the best speed he could manage. Luckily the wind here blew hard out of the northeast, a direction he vaguely knew to hold the Inland Ocean.

He managed to take down the smelliest, hairiest herbivore on four legs he’d ever encountered and, using the tiny gob of flame that was, as ever, all he could ignite, set fire to some brush to cook its skin off. Even the smoky scent didn’t help the taste.

He saw the plateau a long way off, arriving in the late afternoon. It was an unusual sort of mountain range; all the peaks were so close to one another in height that from a distance they appeared identical. Only once you came closer did you see the variety in formations.

The plateau over the Lavadome was smaller, lower, and rounder than that of Anaea. Instead of being lush and green, it steamed and smoked.

He found one of the shafts the griffaran used and circled down toward it.

Two griffaran flapped up to challenge him, but recognized him, he supposed, by his bad limb.

“Good wind, egg saver!” one said, floating beside him effortlessly. The mixture of lizard and bird looked a little less strange aloft, thanks to its colorful wings.

“I’m on urgent business. I must use one of your shafts, and I can’t be delayed. One of you, fly ahead and tell the Tyr I must see him as soon as I land.”

“Follow, then.”

The griffaran had to wait several times for him to catch up. He made the rather terrifying drop through the shaft—plummeting with wings folded into a shadowy gap was a bit of exhilaration he could do without—but it wasn’t a far fall, and his eyes adjusted instantly to the tall cavern of the water ring.

He paused for water and to catch his breath, then went aloft again for the last, mercifully short leg to the Imperial Resort.

He made for the top of Black Rock and the griffaran swooped in front of him.

“Yark! No. No landings on Gardens. Through kitchens now fastest.”

Next, he supposed, SiDrakkon would forbid flying in the Lavadome, or bathing in the river. The orange streams of lava, once so bright and beautiful against the otherworldly crystalline surface of the dome, seemed to have picked up on SiDrakkon’s dour moods and now looked gloomy to him. Or maybe his eyes hadn’t fully converted over to tunnel-sight yet.

He made for the red glow and smoke of the kitchens, and landed next to a pile of dead swine.

Thralls scattered.

He hurried past boiling vats and frying platters, smelling the sweat of the nearly naked kitchen workers. He knew the rest of the way to the Tyr’s door.

NoSohoth, meeting him on the stairs, started babbling about Skotl and Wyrr, of course. “There’s been a duel on almost every hill. The mating between SuUpshauant and Deresa—broke, now, and the Skotl blame the Wyrr, and the Wyrr blame the Skotl side. Hardly a moon goes by where we don’t lose a dragon. Now there’s a Wyrr Drakwatch and a Skotl, and they spend their whole time brawling with each other. CuTarin hill and the north side have threatened to burn each other’s herds—”

“This is war news, man.”

“War? The empire is cracking. After cracks, pieces crumble off. Then collapse. If the Kayai Uphold declares independence—”

“Flames burn in Anaea as we speak.”

“Then you must speak to the Tyr. Except he’s in his Gardens. He won’t emerge until this evening, when the light fails.”

“I know my way to the Gardens.”

Though he knew the way, a wide-bodied Skotl, fully twice his weight, blocked the tunnel up to the courtyard and the gardens.

“Tyr level,” the small mountain of scale grunted.

“Please, Skotl, let him pass,” NoSohoth said. “It’s war news.”

“I have my order,” the Skotl said.

Not smart enough to remember more than one, NoSohoth mind-spoke to him. The Copper thought it a rare intimacy.

“I’m mated to the sister of his mate. He can see me.”

The Skotl’s eyes narrowed as he tried to work out the family dynamics.

“You see Imfamnia, then,” the Skotl said.

“Oh, very well.”

NoSohoth led him, the Copper nudging him along whenever he tried to stop and talk politics. They found Imfamnia in Tighlia’s old quarters. She’d mounted colored quartz and sheer fabrics in her balconies and galleries, bathing the room in a hideous watery color trying to be green.

“Tighlia lives with the Anklenes now,” NoSohoth said. “She fell into a rage and started burning the silks and smashing Imfamnia’s glasswork with her tail.”

They found Imfamnia with SiMevolant. A thrall was painting her griff, and another slave was mixing colors for the one with the brush.

“No, dull as passwater,” SiMevolant said as she lowered her griff and turned her head this way and that. “Would you consider having gemstones embedded?”

“But then my griff wouldn’t close up properly.”

“That may become the new fashion, then. Remember, as queen of the Lavadome you set the style.”

Tyr’s mate was always title enough for Tighlia, NoSohoth thought.

“Mate-sister,” the Copper said, breaking in on the decorating. “I must see the Tyr at once.”

“NoSohoth, I thought there were orders about guests without invitations,” SiMevolant said.

The Copper came forward, the quartz-filtered light making the whole interview dreamlike. “Anaea has been attacked. By men flying on dragons.”

“Ewwww. That must look a fright,” SiMevolant said. “Skin tones.”

Mother had warned him that he would have to overcome. But there were few foes as implacable as stupidity.

“Quiet, love,” Imfamnia said. “You’ll find my mate in his Gardens.” She walked over to curtains dividing this chamber from another, opened them, and then stuck her head outside and said a few words.

“Not you, NoSohoth,” she said as the Copper moved toward the gardens. “Family only.”

The Copper passed out under two silver-clawed griffaran perched high to keep watch over the Tyr’s privacy. He saw SiDrakkon in one of the warm pools.

One of his human females washed him behind the crest by sitting astride him, a blanket-sized piece of soft leather polishing Tyr SiDrakkon’s scale, grinding her body back and forth. The rest of his human females bathed, or lounged, or ate, or anointed one another with oils taken from silver vials.

A muscular blighter brought forward a huge, polished turtleshell of wine. He grunted as he set it down.

“Idiot!” SiDrakkon roared. He knocked the vessel over. “Silver! I won’t drink out of anything that isn’t silver.”

The blighter scurried away in the direction of the banquet entrance.

“The purity of silver! I require purity!”

The Copper approached and bowed. A few of the women covered themselves and cleared the way between the dragons.