Tooth and Claw

by Jo Walton

  “Yes, that’s just why this will work, don’t you see?” Avan had been thinking this out all afternoon. “He wouldn’t marry Selendra, even if he were free, nobody would marry a compromised maiden however attractive her dowry, and Selendra’s will be only moderate even if you and I could add a little to it.”

  “I could not add anything,” Penn said hastily. “I have a family of my own to think of.”

  “Well I might add a little, not being established yet,” Avan said. “But that’s neither here nor there, it would not be enough to make a difference. Nobody would take her as a wife, but through the good offices of Exalt Rimalin, Exalted Rimalin might take her as a consort. A second wife, you know,” he added, after a moment in which Penn’s countenance had become very forbidding. “The Church does allow such things,” he ventured.

  “I hardly know how you can consider suggesting such a thing for your own sister,” Penn said. “No doubt such positions of concubinage are well enough for some poor unfortunate females without any protection, but that you might think Selendra had come to that!”

  “It would be better for Sel than marrying the dragon who deliberately set out to ruin her, a dragon Father was at feud with for the last six years and whom she despises,” Avan said. “Exalt Rimalin is a jolly, friendly dragon, and a political hostess. I could see Sel often and be sure her position in the establishment was what it should be, and not the drudgery such consorts often endure. And she would have provision made for her exactly as for a wife, I speak of a formal position as consort, not selling her into concubinage.”

  “She would most likely bear clutches without pause until she died, and her children would have no inheritance,” Penn said. “The more formal the arrangement, the less power you would have to relieve whatever misery came of it. No, Avan. I would regard such an arrangement as a disgrace. I will not hear another word about it.” Penn leapt over his brother, not quite a flight, yet his wings were spread rather more than some in the Church would like to see a parson’s wings.

  Penn landed neatly and walked away down the corridor without a backward glance, meaning to seek out Selendra to inform her immediately that he would consult with Frelt about their marriage. He found Haner first, sitting on her haunches at the door of the sleeping cave. “It’s all right,” she whispered. “She’s asleep, but look!” Penn looked through the archway to where Selendra slept on the gold of her dowry. She lay curled up with her head under her wing, the picture of feminine grace. Her scales were clean and burnished, and shone a clear pale gold, with no trace whatsoever of any bridal pink.

  “How have you managed it?” Penn asked. “What trickery is this? Paint?” But he looked again and knew no paint could ever be so perfect or even.

  “She only needed to rest and become calm,” Haner said. “Amer made her a tea and she has been well since.”

  Penn started in surprise. He knew only a little of the herbs to which desperate maidens might resort. He had been told in the seminary what a sin they were. “I will speak to Amer,” Penn said, and stalked away, leaving Haner staring after him.

  Amer was in the storeroom, arranging some fruit with the remains of the beef for supper. “How are you, Blessed Penn?” she asked. Amer had been his nanny, but since he had been a parson she had always behaved towards him most respectfully. He liked this, of course, and would have been most resentful of any undue familiarity, but it made him a little sad sometimes when he felt a constraint between them where once no constraint had been.

  “I’m well,” he said. “Amer, I’m here about Respected Selendra.”

  “ ’Spec Sel’s sleeping. She’ll do well enough now.”

  “What did you give her?”

  Amer looked up guiltily. “ ’Spec Haner told you?”

  “She said you’d made her a tea. Amer, I have to know. Respected Selendra is my sister, and she’s coming into my establishment, to live with my wife and dragonets, mingle with my friends and patrons. Is she a maiden still, or have you given her color back by deceit? Should she marry Blessed Frelt?”

  “She should certainly not marry any such blackguard who would do such a thing,” Amer said, slapping the beef down hard and turning to Penn as if he were still five years old. “Deceit indeed. She’s a maiden for sure, the same as if that dragon, who would better be called damned than blessed, had never crowded against her. Two minutes in the passage! It takes more than that to turn a maiden’s scales for good, if she doesn’t want them to be turned. I gave her some tea to help her body calm itself, the same as if I gave her sallow-bark for a fever, that’s all, no tricks, no deceits, she’s not been awakened to him. She’ll make some good dragon a true mate one day, you need have no fear.”

  Penn was not entirely convinced by this, but he was nevertheless extremely comforted. He knew he had asked the name of the herb Selendra had taken, and that Amer had carefully not given it. Still he felt reluctant to inquire further. This assurance seemed enough. He remembered his wife, Felin, how her gold scales had blushed pink all at once when she accepted his proposal and his embrace. He wanted that for his sisters and no counterfeit. But neither did he want to force Selendra to marry a dragon they all despised. He had been trying all day to persuade himself that Frelt was not such a bad dragon, but the memory of his judgment in the undercave the day before had kept coming back to remind him that Frelt was not the kind of dragon he would seek as a brother-in-law. Now he could forget that, and forget too Avan’s shocking suggestion, and put his mind at rest.

  “Very well. Thank you, Amer,” he said.

  “One more thing,” the old nanny said. “I spoke to ’Spec Sel but she won’t have had time to say anything to you. I’d like to come with her to Benandi. I’ll work hard and help your wife with the dragonets, or do whatever work you ask of me. I really want to stay near ’Spec Selendra now, in case she needs me at all, you know. And besides you were always my favorite when you were one of my young ones.” She sank slowly down onto her back legs, her wings bound back, and her arms extended towards him. “Please, Blessed Penn. Let me stay with the Agornins.”

  Penn had by no means intended taking Amer with him. He knew Felin, his wife, would be astonished. He wasn’t sure whether they could entirely afford another servant. But he also knew that he couldn’t possibly refuse. The combination of the appeal with the hidden threat of what might happen to Selendra without Amer nearby to help was too much for him. He raised the old dragon back to her feet. “Of course we will take you with us,” he said.

  4

  Leaving Agornin

  12. PENN’S PREPARATIONS FOR DEPARTURE

  Among our great families such as the Telsties and the Benandis there is a tendency for dragons to act as if the world will go about its accustomed course forever, improving a little in each generation as best such improvement can be accomplished—the addition of a farm to an estate here, some marshland drained there, perhaps a new method of running beeves so that ten can graze where only eight grazed before. Change, to these dragons, is something slow and steady as the erosion of mountains. Proposals for improvement are examined very carefully, and a lord could say that this matter of improved grazing methods might be something his grandson could profitably begin—and this when the lord is himself scarcely married. Yet somehow, despite the great demesnes these families hold, and the great influence they control in the Assemblies, progress in a different sense has swooped down on them at the speed of wings and not the slow considered creeping steps they would prefer.

  Bon Agornin’s gold, not that which he had passed on to his three younger children, but that which he had used three hundred years before to purchase the estate of Agornin and the title of Dignified, had been made in ways those dignified, illustrious, exalted, august, and eminent personages we have chosen to make lords among us lump together and dismiss in a word as “trade.” True, Bon had shaken off these associations as soon as he could. He had used them to climb and achieve position in the world and, once he had achieved the position he desire
d, had dabbled in them no more. He had purchased his establishment, married his ill-dowried but indubitably gently born bride, and proceeded thenceforth to amass wealth and improve his estate through honest farming. All the same, through the succeeding centuries the stench of trade had clung around him a little. Much though he might speak of his youth on the Telstie estate with his widowed mother, and of his estate of Agornin, never mentioning the intervening period, there remained something of the city about him. The cities, as hardly needs to be mentioned, are anathema to all right-thinking dragons, except only for Irieth, and Irieth only when the Noble Assembly is sitting, or in the months of Budding and Flowering in those years, very rare of late, when the Noble Assembly shall hold no session.

  This shadow of the city was but rarely apparent in his Dignified years, and it had cast but little reflection upon his children. Illustrious Daverak had considered it for a moment while courting Berend, but had soothed his conscience with the memory of her mother, who had been a Fidrak, which, though the family was now sadly impoverished, meant that her ancestors had held their acres since before the Conquest. Penn, in the Church, had prospered on his own accomplishments and the patronage of his friends, in particular the Exalted Sher Benandi and his mother the Exalt Zile Benandi. The younger maidens had as yet not made their way in the world at all, but had hitherto not anticipated much difficulty following Berend into good marriages. As for Avan, how he presented himself at home and what he did at Irieth were rather different, as we shall see.

  At Undertor, the only visible sign of old Bon’s earlier ventures into trade was the railway, which cut across a corner of Agornin land. It was a corner distant from the establishment, and in no way blocked or spoiled any prospects which any dragon would especially wish to view. Indeed, the land where it now ran had always been marshy and good for nothing. The railway engineers had, in putting it in, drained the land and freed up a field or two next to the line for farming, of which Bon made good use by running drafters. These drafters would become slowly accustomed to the noise of the passing trains and could then be sold into the cities as bustle-hardened, raising their value greatly.

  There had been a great commotion in the district when the railway had been proposed, and some of the neighboring Dignifieds had quarrelled, or tried to quarrel, with Bon Agornin for allowing it to blight the countryside. Bon’s commercial past was remembered when he took the gold from the railway company. If Bon had not agreed, the railway must have taken a very different course and stayed far away from Undertor altogether. By allowing it to run through this neglected corner of his land Bon made freight flow through directly from the mines of Tolga to Irieth, not to mention speeding the mails considerably and incidentally providing transportation for any dragons who, through heavy burdens, through age or infirmity, or because they were traveling with dragonets or parsons or servants, might not wish to fly where they were going.

  Bon Agornin had insisted, when he leased the land to the railway, on having a station put on it. “It will be useful for Penn,” he said. Penn then had already been in training for that most respectable of professions, the Church. In general the station was mostly used by the local farmers to send fresh russets and pippins up to the city, where fruit always obtained high prices. This had slowly come to reconcile the neighbors, who also grew fruit and used the station for shipping it, so much that now Bon was almost accounted a benefactor to the district for having allowed it to be provided. Penn had several times made use of it in coming home, and it was his intention to make use of it again. The railway did not run all the way to Benandi. The previous Exalted Benandi, Sher’s father, had refused indignantly to have anything to do with it. It ran at its closest to within twelve miles of the establishment, where there was a little halt to which a carriage could easily be sent when there was a parson or a visitor to be collected. Naturally carts could also go to this halt to load their produce, in Benandi’s case usually sweetberries in summer and russets in autumn. In Benandi the railway was still far more deprecated than in Undertor, where the blessing was easier to see, as it ran so much closer.

  Penn had intended to take the railway as far as the Benandi Halt with his sister, and then have her fly the last few miles while he traveled by the carriage which he could cause to be sent for him. Now that Amer was added to the party, he reconsidered this and wrote to his wife, Felin, accordingly.

  Most dragons regard writing as a feminine accomplishment, and letter writing doubly so. In ordinary circumstances, even Penn would have asked one of his sisters to write a note to his wife for him. Yet he was a parson, and had mastered the difficult art of holding a pen between his claws, and he felt that what he wanted to say to Felin was of a sufficiently private nature to make it necessary to write it out himself.

  “My dear,” he wrote carefully. “I hope you and the children are well. My father is dead, as we expected, may his soul fly free. Selendra and I will depart for Benandi the day after tomorrow, and should be with you by the afternoon train. I find that it is necessary to bring with me my father’s servant Amer, who was my nanny when I was a dragonet. She is anxious to accompany us rather than go to Daverak’s establishment, for reasons which I am afraid are largely sentimental, and of which I am very much afraid the Exalt” (here he meant Exalt Benandi) “will disapprove. Amer will doubtless prove useful to us with the children, and a help in the kitchen, she is very skilled in making preserves and potions.”

  After a moment’s thought he struck out the last two words, considered recopying the letter, gnashed his teeth, and let the matter stand as it was. Penn had already decided not to take Felin into his confidence on the matter of Frelt’s attempted seduction of Selendra. He told himself that it would distress Felin to no purpose, but in his heart he knew that it would cause his wife to distrust his sister, which would lead to an unhappy family situation for himself. “I know you will welcome her, and consider the extravagance of another servant one which we can endure,” he wrote, thinking that this was the best way of approaching the matter with his wife. “However, Exalt Benandi, who takes such an interest in the affairs of her domain, may not see likewise, and may interfere in a way which I would find intolerable. Therefore, hire an extra eight drafters to pull the three of us home from the Halt in the carriage. This is an extravagance, but it is one for which we can endure Exalt Benandi’s reproaches, while if Selendra flew and Amer walked behind, she should be sure to begin at once to believe that we could not afford another servant.” Penn knew, or believed he knew, how to manage his patroness. He had learned of such little deceptions or, as he preferred to consider them, misdirections from her son.

  “Let her know you have hired the drafters, and if you wish to, complain with her of my extravagance.” Thus Penn ordered his wife to be lectured, and permitted her, if she chose, to side with his patroness against him. He may have understood the Exalt Benandi, but as yet he knew very little of Felin. This seemed to him all it was necessary to say, and he was nearing the end of the page, so he reminded her again that he hoped to be with her for dinner in two days’ time, that is the fourth day of the first week of the month of Leafturn. He added his best wishes to her and to the children. Then, feeling quite pleased with himself, he sealed the letter, directed it, and had Amer take it down to add to the mail that would be collected from Agornin Station that evening.

  13. PENN AND SELENDRA LEAVE

  Illustrious Daverak flew to Agornin the next morning, as had been arranged. His intention was to take formal possession of the demesne and to escort Haner home with him to Daverak. He arrived not long after the family had breakfasted, a melancholy affair, for now that parting was so close the two sisters were inclined to weep whenever they caught sight of one another. They all gathered on the ledge when they had finished eating, and although the clouds were low, they soon caught sight of Daverak beating steadily towards them.

  “I wonder that he has not brought Berend with him,” Selendra said. “It would give more of an air of legitimacy to this
whole affair.”

  Penn turned on her angrily.

  “Unlike the division of his body, this is what our father wished,” Avan interposed before his brother could speak.

  “I know,” Selendra said, bowing her head submissively. “I won’t be rude to him, and didn’t mean to be now, it’s just everything’s so different and I feel like crying all the time.” Haner put a wing around her sister and the brothers left the pair to weep together until Daverak landed.

  “Good day, brother,” Penn greeted him. “Did you have a good flight?”

  “The winds were quite strong, but they will be with us going back,” Daverak said. It was a flight of a little more than an hour to Daverak, perhaps twenty miles if distances might be measured in the air.

  “Did Berend not want to struggle with the winds both ways?” Haner asked.

  “No, she didn’t,” Daverak smiled and looked away in the direction of his distant demesne. “She has just discovered that she is in a delicate condition, and did not want to leave home at this time.”

  “With egg already?” burst out Selendra, unable to hide her astonishment.

  “Yes, thanks be to Veld,” Daverak said, nodding politely towards Penn as he mentioned the god, as if acknowledging that he was infringing a little upon the other dragon’s territory and graciously asking permission.

  Barely four years had passed since Berend’s first clutch of three. Even Penn who, as a parson, had to preach that increase was Veld’s blessing, felt a little taken aback at this news and the evident satisfaction which Daverak took in it.

  “You will have your caves full of dragonets,” Haner said, brightly, feeling the pause in the conversation grow too long.

  “We certainly hope so,” Daverak inclined his head. He had never paid much attention to his wife’s sisters, but he was glad now that it was Haner he was taking into his establishment. Though he had not shown it, he had not liked Selendra’s outburst at all.