Dragon Outcast

by E. E. Knight

  “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.

  “She doesn’t like being outdone by our beautiful new queen,” SiMevolant continued, bowing to Imfamnia. “Ladies, look to your mates, for no hearts remain true when Imfamnia passes. Beautiful Imfamnia.”

  “I’m going to go see Tighlia. Will you be all right, darling?” the Copper asked his mate. She smiled up at him from her cushions and nodded.

  “When has Halaflora ever been all right?” SiMevolant asked, and everyone waggled their eyebrows.

  “You go too far, SiMevolant,” the Copper roared in his face. “Cry challenge, and meet me
in the pits!”

  “RuGaard, you really must have your body-slave look to your teeth and tongue,” SiMevolant said, his griff not even twitching. Behind him, NoSohoth pushed his way forward, guiding blighters with incense to calm the situation. “Unless you intend to slay with your breath. But soft! I cry submission. I meant no offense; it was only a little jest at my sister. She’s known me for years. I mean no harm.”

  “Thank you, my lord,” Halaflora said, ignoring her brother and staring at the Copper. “Thank you for that.”

  Her sister Ayafeeia looked at him with new eyes. She flicked a griff at him, one warrior to another. He turned away.

  “Now I know why he walks so oddly,” SiMevolant said. But softly. “It’s that lance stuck up his tailvent.”

  He left the party and sought out Tighlia. One of her thralls admitted him.

  “No, no more visitors,” he heard her cry, followed by a low humming hominid voice. “Oh. Well, I can stand him,” she said a little more quietly.

  The elderly female thrall brought him into the cheery little room. Now a bronzed tooth and a scale and a claw from, he guessed, her mate stood on a special pedestal in the center of the room. Other than that it was largely unchanged, though perhaps the air was a little heavier, as though she rarely left the room.

  “I’ve come to pay my respects, Tighlia,” the Copper said.

  “Wine?” she asked, indicating a deep cistern next to her low shelf. She took a tongueful. “It’s good. Go ahead! I’ve never poisoned a guest’s wine, and I’m not going to start today.”

  “A little, thank you.” The Copper took a tongueful. “Why aren’t you at the mating banquet?”

  “Because my brother’s going to be there,” she said a little thickly. “I suppose you find that odd.”

  “I grew tired of the banquet myself.”

  “You know what he’s done with the Gardens, I expect.”

  She’s even drunk! All I have to do is make one good leap. I’ve got enough strength in my good sii to— “Made them into a private park for himself and—”

  “Yes, that’s bad enough,” she said, taking such a great slurp of wine a little ran out of the corners of her mouth. The spill somehow disarmed him, and he relaxed. “Oh, how sloppy of me. Yes, bad enough to deny decent dragons the view, but do you know he’s stocked it with his precious, plump human females? Brought at great expense, oh, yes, the demen slave traders and ferrymen are happy with him. He’s in there all day sniffing around like some wretched dog. Getting himself puffed up for a night with Imfamnia.”

  “She’s an energetic young dragonelle—er, dragon-dame,” the Copper said.

  “There’s something sad about that mating. Of course, there always is with a dragon his age and some bright thing with her wings fresh out. Happened before, just not in the Imperial line. If you must dilly-dally you can at least be discreet about it and not bring the jade-scale into company.”

  “Manners have never been my specialty.”

  “He hardly visits me anymore,” she said, and paused for a little more wine. “Doesn’t care for my advice. You know what he told me, once we had things sorted in the Rock? I brought him a whole bellyful of matters needing attention. He said, ‘I’m Tyr now; I can do what I want.’”

  She paused.

  “‘I can do what I want.’ What a child. What an old, foolish child. It’s quite the opposite, you know. Perhaps he never really understood what it meant to lead.”

  “I came to tell you about some improvements I have in mind for the western road,” the Copper said. “I was wondering if you had any advice about stonecutters.”

  “Oh, I’ve had too much wine for any of that. How is your mate?”

  The Copper tried to find the proper words. “I’m…I’m content.”

  “Good for you, RuGaard. I hope you will be able to stay content. As for me…oh, I must do some serious thinking. But first, a little more wine. It is the day of my brother’s mating, after all. Oh. Stonecutters. Yes, come tomorrow and I’ll give you a name. Fat human, smelly as a pig’s arse and dripping fleas, but he does good work with his crew.”

  The stonecutter’s name was Hiriyal, and he did excellent work and regulated an efficient crew. With their quick—albeit expensive—help, each day saw the tunneling progress and the slag pile grow. Hiriyal was a “free slave,” which sounded like a contradiction, but he made his strange social position work for the benefit of himself and his men.

  The Firemaidens had carried out their orders a little too enthusiastically, and he found Rayg chained by the ankle to a heavy boulder. He got around by having a blighter help him lift it into a barrow, and together they could move it to the next site, though negotiating the catwalk was obviously impossible.

  The Copper had the chain struck off and set up a temporary household while the most difficult element of the work, the stonecutting, was carried out under Rayg’s supervision. After a few arguments about methods with Hiriyal, they made good progress.

  The Copper was surveying the first span with Rayg when the young man suggested that he fly below and look at the supports.

  “I can’t fly.”

  “Is it that wing? The one that hangs?”

  “Yes, useless. Not even good to glide; it’s more of a swooping fall, I’m afraid.”

  Rayg walked around him. “I believe the problem’s in that joint. It looks different from the one on the other side, like the two ends are slipped.”

  “I know the cause,” the Copper said.

  “I might be able to fix that. It looks like all it needs is a brace to keep the outer edge from sliding and then folding over the inner.”

  The Copper hardly dared hope. “You can’t be serious.”

  “It’s simple…” He said a word the Copper didn’t understand. “Just a matter of give and take.”

  “If you do that, I will set you up like a kern king. Once you finish the bridge.”

  “I’d always heard dragons are terrible. You’re better than barbarians.”

  “I should hope so,” the Copper said.

  Over the next weeks Rayg worked with two pieces of wood carved into shapes that resembled a crescent moon, thick leather, metal bands, and some studs. Rhea helped him, holding the wing still as he tested model after model. It infuriated the Copper, as each session ended with an “I’ve got to build another model” that became an inevitability ending the experiments.

  He wondered if all this work was just an excuse to divert his attention from an escape attempt, or some bit of spycraft, but all Rayg seemed to do was spend more and more of his off time with Rhea.

  Then one day, after an unusually long session extending and retracting his wing over and over and over again until the Copper’s muscles grew weary, with Rayg making chalk marks on the wood, the man said, “This model will work.”

  “You mean—” the Copper began.

  “Oh, I’ve got to improve it. A little more shaping. But this one folds just enough. It’s a little stiff, but better too rigid than something that’ll give way when you’re in the air.”

  The bridge, and the wing contraption, both progressed daily. After having his skin rubbed raw extending and retracting his wing, he tried a short glide from one construction platform to another.

  His wing stayed open! Hearts beating, he threw his head to the sky and roared, so loudly that the Firemaidens came running, thinking there was a fight.

  With that he launched himself off the platform. Rayg shouted something but he didn’t catch it; it was lost in the sound of air as he flew. He tried one beat, two, three, gaining altitude with each stroke of his wings. He had never realized how good it would feel to use the muscles on his back properly, how perfect the sensation—

  Snap!

  The device flew off and he felt the old, faint grinding sensation of his bones folding against each other. His wing collapsed and the world spun around him. No, yes, he managed a turn, leveled out, and then the ground was suddenly beneath him and it struck hard.
>
  He woke smelling his own blood. But he managed to stand, and looked at the skid mark he’d made in the canyon’s side. He’d lost a few scales as well.

  He picked up the broken contraption and made the long, slow, sore climb back up to the construction site.

  “I’m glad you live,” Rayg said.

  “How thoughtful of you,” the Copper responded.

  “No, I’m truly glad. The Firemaidens said that if you were dead, they’d throw me off the bridge.”

  “Ten lengths ago I would have told them to do it. I’m too tired now.”

  “Didn’t you hear me shout? I wanted to take it off and make sure the leather strap was holding. It’s meant to be permanently fixed with steel pins.”

  Rayg worked on his model for a few more days, and was extra diligent at the bridge as well. They went through a few more practice glides, and the Copper flew back and forth and did turns under the bridge—with the harness tied around his limbs and a long, long line leading back to the bridge, just in case.

  But in the end, he flew. He knew he didn’t fly well; nor could he do any of the fancy maneuvers he’d seen some of the dragons flying over the Imperial Resort perform for the sheer joy of it, but the ability made him feel complete, perhaps for the first time in his life.

  And it hurt to know that Halaflora wasn’t up to it.

  After showing his mate, he demonstrated his wings to Nilrasha. Her wings had come in some months ago, but he’d purposely kept away so he wouldn’t have to watch her fly. It didn’t help that Halaflora described the occasion in excruciating detail, full of praise for how natural and well formed she looked in the air.

  “Oh, it’s a miracle, your honor. The Spirits are rewarding you at last.”

  “You don’t have to call me your honor, Rasha. Not when we’re alone.”

  “I like formalities. It’s so easy to hide behind them. If you offered to take me up, I’d say yes. You know that.”

  “Take you up?”

  “You know. Mate.”

  “Nilrasha, my mate is above in the palace.”