Tighlia looked sharply at her mate as soon as he mentioned Nivom.

The Tyr got a faraway look in his eyes. “I’ll give him a stripe for that when he gets his wings. Blue will look well against that white of his.”

He blinked, and looked around the banquet table. “We’ll need an Imperial messenger to report progress. Simevolant, you haven’t been off Black Rock these three years.”

Simevolant tucked his head against his shoulder for a moment. “Tyr, I’m touched, really, with this expression of the Imperial confidence. But I’ve got a notion—send Rugaard, here. He’s never even been to the Upholds. The experience will do him good.”

“Rugaard?” Tyr said, looking at the Copper as though he’d never seen him before. “Wasn’t he killed at…Oh, yes, of course. The egg saver.”

Simevolant offered one of those smiles that made the Copper’s scale bristle. “Yes, the eternally budding flower of the Drakwatch training caves. Is he not a marvelous young drake? Stand, Rugaard, for you are looking fine tonight, and let the assembly see the future of the Imperial line, adopted by the Tyr himself. I don’t believe he’s attended a banquet before, and he needs an introduction anyway.”

The Copper rose, shifted uncomfortably, and did his best to open his bad eye. He didn’t want to be exhibited thus, but Simevolant had such a musical way of putting things, you followed his words this way and that the way you did a good blood trail.

“The Drakwatch calls him ‘Batty,’ I understand,” SiDrakkon said. “He keeps bats as pets.”

The drakka twitched their noses and fluttered their eyelids. They were laughing at him. No matter how polished his scale, or even his edging—

“Burn it, Sime; you’re always wriggling out of things,” the Tyr said. “You chatter your way through life like a drakka. I won’t have it.”

“Stand up for yourself, cousin,” Simevolant said out of the side of his mouth. “You want to stay in those drippy holes forever?”

The Copper found his voice. “I’d be grateful for the opportunity, Tyr.”

“That’s a norther’s vocalization if I’ve ever heard one,” a dragon opposite the Copper at the banquet said. “How did he ever come to the dome?”

Tyr’s tail tapped in thought. “Never been to the Upper World?”

“No, Tyr.”

“Well, Bant’s as good a place as any to get sunstruck. NoSohoth, get his shoulder line painted, won’t you?”

“Congratulations, Rugaard,” Simevolant said. “Keep out of the way of most of the arrows. Remember to put a little dwarf’s-beard on your wounds.”

The rest of the banquet passed in a blur. He met the dragons and dragonelles, drakes and drakka of the Imperial line. A trio of drakka, who he later found out were directly grand-daughtered to Tyr, twitched their noses as they greeted him and perfunctorily laid their necks across his, pressed on by their mother, a rather pinched-looking, tight-scaled creature named Ibidio. Two were sleek, beautiful specimens, the third rather thin and sickly, but they were polite enough under the urging of their mother. Her mate, AgGriffopse, the champion of the Tyr’s first—and only—clutch before he lost his first mate, had been badly wounded fighting dwarves and died of his injuries within a year. Many sad tales were sung of AgGriffopse, and the Copper was glad of a chance to meet some of his titular relations at last. AgGriffopse and Ibidio’s daughters were gracious enough to greet him as a brother, and his hearts beat hard at their touch as they crossed necks.

The only one of the three who really spoke to him was the sickly one, Halaflora, conversing between tiny mouthfuls of food. Perhaps that was why she was sickly. She was interested in details of life in the Drakwatch. Ayafeeia and her sister Imfamnia spent most of their time discussing how they would have organized the banquet.

“No, no. Make the dishes stationary. That way the society has to circulate,” Ayafeeia said.

“Look at Tighlia up there, queen of all she surveys. How I envy her,” Imfamnia said.

“Envy’s nothing to brag of, daughter,” Ibidio said, raised scale in her voice.

Tighlia’s relations of the Skotl line, on the other hand, didn’t mix much with those from the Tyr’s Wyrr side. They didn’t have quite the decor of scale and elegance of manner the Tyr’s side possessed. He spoke with only one, a grim, battle-scarred dragon with still-healing wounds on his uncased wings—SiDrakkon’s son, SiBayereth. He glistened, a deep red oily color, like blood spilled in shadow, but was polite enough to tip his head as he congratulated the Copper.

“Heartstrong of you to jump forward, cousin. Don’t let them frighten you about the Upper World,” he said in the growling accent of his Skotl clan. “Our family’s just so used to being guarded down here, they swoon at the thought of risk.”

The Copper swelled with pride, willing to hurl himself against a wave of spears at such praise. A guard! And of these splendid, noble, glamorous, glittering dragons—his…his family.

Chapter 14

The Copper walked around the caverns of the Drakwatch trainees one last time. The rather brackish pool, the loose skull that one of the thralls had jammed back into place upside down, the boiled kern and fatty joints, the smoky smell of the fat-lamps and drakes—each bore a memory.

He limped around saying good-bye to his trainee companions. He knew they told jokes behind his back, because of his age. But they didn’t dare snicker when his eye was on them. He towered over them, thanks to years of Imperial hams and chucks.

“You’ll need a good travel thrall,” NeStirrath said. He looked into the Copper’s cave, where Harf scrubbed the decorated archway in his usual halfhearted manner. “Strong and road-wise. That fool can feed your bats until you come back.” Harf scratched his paunch and edged out of the way. “I’ll give you one of mine, Fourfang. He’s mostly blighter, strong as a dragon, for his size.”

“I’ve come to wish the drake honor and glory as well,” a dragonelle’s voice called. Rethothanna didn’t bother to announce herself as a stranger to the Drakwatch caves or wait for an invitation, but the drakes would hesitate to attack a full-grown female.

She closed her nostrils. “Fee-fie-foe-foul, when was the last time these holes were washed out?”

“There’s a sluice from the upper levels that backs up,” NeStirrath said. “But do not tell the Imperial Family that their waste stinks; they’d never believe it. What are you doing bringing your refined nostrils to these caves, female?”

“As I said, to wish young Rugaard safe horizons. I give him a gift, as well.”

The girl thrall who’d worked his face stood just behind, a heavy quilted coat around her and a woven basket tied to her back.

NeStirrath dug around behind his griff and extracted some loose scale. “For an egg-dripping drake you make the journey, but you couldn’t be bothered to come wait on me for your blasted song?”

“Even the oldest of trees needs to bend now and then. I wanted the advantage of home ground to hear your song, lest my hearts melt and I lose all my concentration in your glory.”

“Don’t jest with me.”

“You old, stump-winged fool. I’ve wanted you beside me for years. You’re the best dragon in the dome, and yes, I include the Tyr himself in that assessment. But we can talk later. It’s youth that needs the benefit of our years now.” She swung her oxeyed head around to the Copper. “To glory bid, eh, drake? I’ve brought you a gift. Come forward, Rhea.”

The girl stepped up to the base of the dragonelle’s neck, her flat face hidden behind her straw-colored hair. Harf put down his brush and made an ooking noise.

“You remember Rhea; she arranged you for the banquet. You need a proper body thrall, and she needs some time in the sun, or she’ll grow up all bent and spindly, no matter how many fish she eats. Bant’s sunny enough.”

Rhea shivered despite her quilted coat.

“She’s worried about Black Rock. Thralls get eaten in here,” Rethothanna said.

“Not in my caves,” NeStirrath said. He pointed his tail toward Harf. “That idle-fingers is still intact, as you can see.”

“Can she make a journey?” the Copper asked. The slight girl didn’t seem up to a climb to the gardens.

“She’s young. She’ll harden to the road,” Rethothanna said.

NeStirrath brought Fourfang over. The blighter had shoulders fully as broad as the girl was high, and legs like a dragon. He offered a long list of instructions, both to Fourfang and the Copper, as Rethothanna inspected the skulls decorating the passages. “Above all, remember your lessons and keep a dragon’s virtues. You can’t go far wrong.”

The Copper thought it funny that the same advice went to a blighter as well as a dragon. What would a blighter do with learning? It would pass through him like water, clear going in and smelly and tainted coming out.

“And keep off that poor girl,” he finished.