He said, “We are blessed to meet a real Dragon Groom. You must have been preparing your whole life for this honour.”
“Well, I guess I did other stuff, too,” I said, coughing in embarrassment. Grentz handed me his waterskin, and I drank a big, thirsty swallow.
He pointed at a half-finished building higher up the slope. “See that rotunda on the side? I designed that.”
“Yeah,” Stakrat snorted, grabbing Grentz in a headlock. “He designed a niche in the shade so he could sleep during his work shift.” I jumped away as the two began wrestling each other in the middle of the street. Even though Grentz outweighed her by an elephant to an antelope, Stakrat was scoring most of the points. I could tell they were just having fun, but still I backed away like I did when a fight broke out at school. I found myself standing at the wall beside the preacher boy.
Our awkward silence lasted so long, I had to break it. “Hey, I know you don’t think I should be here, but I’m kind of excited to see the realm.”
“Grav’nan-dahé has declared you an honoured visitor, Copper Guest, and I will show you every courtesy.” He then went on to contradict this by shutting up and looking away.
Well, thanks, I thought, nice to meet you, too. Stakrat and Grentz, having finished this week’s episode of Battle of the Dragon World All-Stars, joined us in the shade by the wall, grinning and sweating. I gave Grentz his waterskin back, and they both drank.
“He didn’t introduce himself, right?” asked Stakrat, tucking a lock of her hair back in place. “This is Davix. Lead Apprentice in Atmospherics.”
Davix snapped his head up. “I’m not lead.” He looked angry, which almost made him less handsome, but he also looked like a sad Labrador puppy, which made me want to pat him.
“You’re performing Rinby’s duties, aren’t you?” she said. “Do a good job, and Tix-etnep-thon-dahé will make it official. She would have wanted that.”
Davix made a barely perceptible nod, and she smiled. Did they have that psychic connection I had with Altman sometimes? Well, if Davix was this brawling babe’s boyfriend, I bet he had bruises to show for it.
“Let’s go,” he said. “We have to get the Copper Guest dressed for tonight.”
The narrow, cobblestone streets of Cliffside were trenches of unbroken architecture, the buildings on either side made of neatly laid, rough-hewn stones in red and brown. It was hard to tell if they were twenty years old or two centuries. Over and over, I was thinking, I’m in another world! But it was hard to actually convince my brain of this.
We passed a low wall overlooking the valley, which was mostly lost in fog. Three frogs sat peacefully on the wall.
“Krasik!” I announced happily, and Grentz and Stakrat looked confused. Davix tilted his head, as if seeing me for the first time.
“You know the ancient word,” he said.
Was he impressed? I shrugged as nonchalantly as I could. “Yeah, I guess I’m pretty fluent.”
A sleek orange cat was sliding along the base of the wall and, without warning, sprang up to grab a snack of fresh frog. But before she could sink her claws into one, the amphibian trio jumped off into space. Webbing between their arms and legs spread taut as they caught a thermal and flew away into the fog.
“You’ll have to be faster than that, kitty,” I told the cat sympathetically, but she snarled at me and ran when I tried to pet her. “Hey! Aren’t the cats here friendly?”
“They’re predators,” Davix said, like I was born yesterday.
I thought about Consul Krasik-dahé, who shared a name with the little frogs. What was happening back at the hotel? Maybe my dad had already called the cops on her. I’m in another world, I’m in another world…
As we continued our journey, descending through switchback streets, I noticed we were being followed by the same crabby man in black.
I whispered to Stakrat, “What does that chaperone guy want with us?”
She rolled her eyes. “Some of the elders are less trusting of the young than others.”
“What doesn’t he trust you about?”
“He’s making sure we don’t have reproductive sex.”
Do toes get startled? Because mine managed to find a gap in the otherwise perfectly laid cobbles, and I stumbled. Grentz caught me by the arm and stood me back up.
“Okay,” I mumbled through my embarrassment. “We’ll take reproductive sex off the to-do list.” The fog cleared above us for a second, and I looked up.
“You keep checking the sky,” Davix said. “What are you looking for?”
“Um, dragons?” Had he been watching me the whole time? “I mean, assuming they fly. Do they?”
Grentz looked at me in bewilderment. “How do you not know that? You’re the Dragon Groom.”
“The Copper Guest,” Davix said.
Stakrat explained, “Of course they do, Copper Guest. But we almost never see the Five.”
Davix was looking up, too, and I could see the swirling clouds reflected in his dark eyes. “On the second day of Sarensikar,” he said, “just before the sun sets, the Five Dragons will fly high above Cliffside, and we will sing to them.” I wanted to ask what Sarensikar was and what kind of songs they would sing, but I also didn’t want to say something dumb that would make him stop talking, because his voice was deep and dreamy.
Grentz, massaging my shoulders from behind, said, “You’ll see for yourself in a few days, Copper Guest. But now you’re getting special garments made by the Master of Textiles, Lok’lok-sur-nep-dahé himself. I’m sure he’s already working on it.”
“How is that even possible? I’ve only been here for an hour.” As I said that last word, I could feel its strange taste on my tongue. I realized there was no translation for “hour” in the Tongue of Fire. Still, Grentz seemed to get the idea.
“Word travels quickly in Cliffside.”
As if to prove his point, when we rounded the next corner, a tight cluster of six people stood outside a little building of red stone, their faces flushed and dusted with flour.
“We would be honoured if you ate our pastries, Copper Guest,” one said, holding out a plate of bite-sized cakes, each decorated with a raspberry. Her nerve-choked voice reminded me of how I sound any time I have to speak in class.
“You shouldn’t have,” I said, polite like my mom taught me. But the bakers looked at each other in shock.
“We shouldn’t?” said the one with plate, withdrawing it in humiliation. “Oh, forgive our thoughtless offence, Copper Guest. Is this one of your fast days?”
“Well, yeah, things are moving pretty fast, but…Oh! No, not what I meant.”
Unable to explain without a lot of meaningless babbling, I took the plate from her, gobbling down one of the pastries with a big googly-eyed show of appreciation. It tasted of honey and nuts, like baklava but less syrupy. The berry added a tart, juicy explosion to the experience.
“Wow, so good!” I said. I passed the plate around to the apprentices, who each took one—well, Grentz took two—and then offered it to the chaperone. He acted surprised to be noticed, like he was a three-year-old pretending to be invisible. I thanked the bakers again as I returned the empty plate.
“Ekdahi, Copper Guest,” one replied. “Duty enriches life.”
They went back inside their bakery, and I found out we were just a few doors away from our destination. Up to this point, Cliffside had been all about stone, but inside the textiles building, everything was drapes, bolts of cloth, hanging sashes, and furniture luxurious with soft upholstery. We walked through the noisy weaving rooms and past the dye vats, where pools of crimson and blue burped up vapours that made our eyes water. Everyone looked up and stared at me, and it was hard not to feel self-conscious.
Finally, we walked down a corridor lined on all sides with fabrics of pure, unpatterned pigment. The colours swirled around us like a vortex, sweeping us toward a wooden door. Stakrat knocked.
The door was opened by a giant grin haphazardly attached to an
other girl around our age. She was tall and skinny, long wavy hair spilling out of a red silk kerchief. She was dressed in a simple shirt and trousers with a subtle brown-on-black geometric pattern, multiple rings on her fingers, and a jangling bundle of bracelets.
She looked at me over Stakrat’s shoulder and whispered, “You must be the Copper Guest. I’m Kriz’mig, Lead Apprentice in Textiles.” She reached out to do the forearm shake, and this time I was ready for her. Her grin was infectious, and me, Stakrat, and Grentz all caught it. What about Davix, you ask? Yeah, no grin.
“Come in,” Kriz’mig said, “but be quiet, he’s concentrating.”
Inside was chaos—like a fabric art installation titled “Morning after the Hurricane.” Big bolts of material threatened to topple on us, and scraps patterned with tiny flowers drifted through the air on the breeze created by the circling arms of the Master of Textiles. He was the first of the People I’d seen with curly hair, long strands held back from his sweating face by hair clips. His eyes were wide as saucers, but he didn’t look away from the fabric he was twisting in his hands with graceful violence, like some sort of fashion kung fu.
The apprentice, Kriz’mig, caught a few of the flying scraps and stuffed them into a sack tied to the back of a chair. “My master will have your garment ready in time for the dinner, don’t worry.”
And at that very moment, Lok’lok-sur-nep-dahé shouted, “Yes! Yes, I see the design.” Suddenly, he saw me, too. “Copper Guest, welcome. Take off your clothes.”
All in all, I thought our relationship was moving too fast, and when Kriz’mig came forward and started tugging at my T-shirt, I said, “Hold it, wait! How much of my clothes? Don’t you have a changing room or something?”
Lok’lok-sur-nep-dahé pushed a curly strand out of his eyes and regarded me sadly, lips pursed. “He has body shyness.” He turned to his apprentice. “You see, Kriz’mig? It is sad, but you will occasionally meet members of the People so afflicted. They must be treated firmly but with compassion.”
I was allowed to strip under a big piece of mauve fabric. If you’ve ever changed in the middle of a crowded beach under a towel, you’ll know everyone gets to see your butt or worse at some point. And the humiliation didn’t end there, because I was being dressed in what was apparently traditional formal wear. The outfit didn’t even include the loose-fitting, calf-length pants I’d seen on most of the People. No, this was some complicated affair made of a single long piece of fabric tied elaborately around my waist, between my legs, over my shoulder, and God knows where. The elaborate gift-wrapping session concluded with a detailed demonstration of which piece to push aside when I needed to “make water.”
My ears still red from blushing, I examined myself in the mirror. The fabric was pretty incredible, repeating shapes in copper, like birds flying across a navy background shot through with red lines. It reminded me of the realm sky. The elaborate wrapping gave me wider shoulders and a slim waist, my legs showing from the knees down. I was a strange creature to my own eyes, the Dragon Groom, or at least the Copper Guest, special VIP at an invitation-only dinner. But did I look good?
I caught Davix’s eyes in the mirror. Was I imagining it, or did he give me an approving head-to-toe once-over? I looked back at my image and decided that if I squinted, I might, for the first time in living memory, pass for kinda hot.
Lok’lok-sur-nep-dahé adjusted the fall of the material one more time. “That will do,” he said before turning on his heel and hurrying from the room in a cloud of coloured scraps.
Kriz’mig assessed her master’s work. “You look wonderful, Copper Guest!”
“Totally loop-worthy,” Stakrat agreed, eyeing every part of me without embarrassment.
I caught sight of my orange and blue sneaks. “Don’t you have any, uh, local shoes for me?”
Kriz’mig shook her head vigorously. “Never! Those are the best shoes I’ve ever seen. Do not take them off. Lok’lok-sur-dahé was jealous of them, I could tell.” Then she surveyed the floor and sighed. “Always so much to clean up and document when he’s done.” She began sweeping up and bagging scraps, making notations in a small notebook.
She picked up a long strip of black fabric with blue feathers sewn into it. “Hey, Davix,” she said. “You should wear this for Sarensikar. Unless you already have your outfit.”
“I’m not dancing,” he said quietly.
Stakrat grabbed him by the arm. “Did you really just say that?”
“I’m not in the mood. And it wouldn’t be respectful to Rinby’s memory.”
Stakrat’s glare grew more probing. “Why did Grav’nan-dahé call for you at lunch? Was it about Rinby?”
Davix wouldn’t meet her eye. “Good news. The bidahénas have determined her death was accidental.”
“But didn’t you say—?”
He waved her words away. “There are more important matters than my useless theories, Stakrat.” He looked at me like I was to blame for his troubles, and his look made me feel naked again.
“Too bad, brother,” Grentz said, posing in front of the mirror with an improvised scarf of fuzzy orange fabric around his neck. “Everyone’s been waiting for Sarensikar to see you dance again. Copper Guest, you should have seen him last year. He didn’t win the laurel, but he looped a dozen at least.” He adjusted the orange scarf some more. “Kriz’mig, I’m going to take this.”
“It’s late,” Davix snapped. “We’ll go to my house to get the Copper Guest ready for his evening.” He stormed out of the room, leaving me and the other three apprentices to hurry after him.
When we got back out to the street, we waited for Kriz’mig, who appeared after a couple of minutes holding one of the redheaded crows, stroking its head as it looked at us with clear suspicion.
“Oh, I saw those when I arrived.”
Kriz’mig smiled. “This is a kingsolver. Textiles keeps four of them for sending messages. I’m letting Convenor Zishun know you have been properly attired.” She tossed the kingsolver into the air, and I could see it had a paper scroll tied to one leg as it flew off.
As we walked, Kriz’mig kept making adjustments to my outfit, tugging at me until I stopped saying thank you and she backed off. It was strange being out in public in my fancy gift wrapping, but everyone we passed seemed pretty impressed. More and more faces looked down from the upper floors of buildings that lined our route, and I thought I could get used to being a celebrity. We had again picked up our cheerless little chaperone, following twenty steps behind. I gave him a friendly wave, which seemed to pain him.
We were climbing again, following a curving path back up the hillside. “Why did the cobblestones just change colour from green to red?”
Grentz, playing with his new scarf, said, “We just left Sur House and now we’re entering Vixtet.”
“When you and the quadrana arrived,” Stakrat added, “You were up on the message aerie in Renrit House.”
Davix was the one who noticed my utter confusion. “At birth, each of the People is assigned to one of the five houses, named for the Five Dragons: Renrit, Vixtet, Inby, Sur, and Queen Etnep.”
“Oh, she’s the one I’m supposed to…” Not a sentence I could bring myself to finish.
“Prophecy…” Davix began.
“Is heresy, right. Forget I said anything.”
“Each of us grows up in one of the houses, and we live our whole lives dedicated to our dragon patron.”
“Kind of like homerooms at school,” I said, being no less obscure. “But you’re in the same house as your parents, right?”
Kriz’mig said, “You mean our genetic forebears? No, not necessarily.”
“My genetic mother is in my house,” Stakrat said. “We have tea together sometimes, but we don’t have a lot in common. She works in Agriculture on bean varieties or something.”
I was trying to comprehend this. “So, your parents don’t raise you?” This idea appealed to me for a second, but then I thought of my mom watching reality
shows with me while we ate spiced popcorn and cracked each other up. A little elevator of guilt and loneliness ran up my chest.
“No,” Davix said. “You’re raised and schooled by the caretakers and teachers, with the other kids in your house.” He gestured at the buildings around us. “This is Vixtet, my house. I’m going to get a common room so we can do the etiquette lessons.”
Davix led us up a narrow staircase off the main road and through an arched doorway. A man sat at a desk there, making careful notes in a large, leather-bound book. Every time he made an entry, a little yellow jewel in the corner of the cover winked. Davix waited patiently for him to finish, and when the man finally turned his odd, sparkling eyes our way, I could tell he was an octona, like Krasik-dahé. It was more than just the eyes or the smooth, pale skin. I could feel it in my special blood.
“Peace and balance, Cars’tat,” Davix said. “I need a common room for the Copper Guest, just until fifth bell.”
The octona examined my red carpet couture with cool but precise attention. “Sign in for your friends and for the Copper Guest, D’gada-vixtet-thon.”
As we walked away from the desk, I turned back, intending to say, “Thanks for the help,” but it came out as “S’zista farad dr’kaden.” Cars’tat nodded, so I guessed it was the right thing to say.
Davix seemed amused, looking down his big hawk nose at me. “That’s a courtly form not heard in hundreds of cycles. You’re a very formal fellow, Copper Guest.”
I blushed, which seemed like an excessive reaction. “Yeah, that’s what my friends back home say about me.”
Sad little Davix was clearly perking up. Maybe he liked being tour guide. He showed us dorms and dining halls, telling us stories about his childhood, the significance of which mostly left me going, huh, what?, but the others thought they were pretty funny. He led us up a stairway, gesturing for us to be quiet.
“Class is in session, but if Teacher S’arnen doesn’t mind, we can introduce you, Copper Guest. The kids will be excited.”
The Dubious Gift of Dragon Blood Page 7
