“Sedric, let go! Can’t you hear her? She says she wishes to speak to me. I think the best way to insult her and anger her is to ignore such a request. And speaking to the dragons is exactly why I came here. And it’s why you are here, too! So follow me and please, have your pen ready to record our conversation.”
She tried to pull free of him. He kept his grip and leaned down to peer into her face. “Alise, are you serious?”
“Of course I am! Why do you think I came all this way?”
“But . . . the dragon is not speaking. Unless mooing like a cow or barking like a dog conveys some meaning to you. What am I to record?”
She looked at him in confusion that became dismay and then, inexplicably, sympathy. “Oh, Sedric, you cannot understand her at all? Not one word?”
“If she has spoken a word, I haven’t understood it. All I’ve heard are, well, dragon noises.”
Almost as if in response to his comment, the dragon released a rumble of sound. Alise swiveled her head to face the dragon. “Please, I beg you, let me have a moment with my friend! He cannot seem to hear you.”
When Alise met Sedric’s gaze again, she shook her head in woe. “I’d heard that there were some who could not understand clearly what Tintaglia said, and a few who could not even perceive she was speaking at all. But I never thought you would be so afflicted. What are we to do now, Sedric? How will you record our conversations?”
“Conversations?” At first he’d been annoyed at her childish pretense of talking to the dragon. It was the same annoyance he always felt when people greeted dogs as “old man” and asked “how my fine old fellow has been.” Women who talked to their cats made him shudder. Alise, as a rule, did neither, and he’d thought her calls to the dragon had been some new and unwelcome Rain Wild affectation. But now, to insist that the dragon was speaking to her and then to offer him her pity—it was too much. “I’ll record them just as I would log your conversations with a cow. Or a tree. Alise, this is ridiculous. I’ll accept, because I must, that the dragon Tintaglia had the ability to make herself understood. But this creature? Look at it!”
The dragon writhed its lips and made a flat, hissing noise. Alise went scarlet. The young Rain Wilder beside the dragon spoke to him. “She says to tell you that although you may not understand her, she understands every word you say. And that the problem is not in her speaking, nor even in your ears, but in your mind. There have always been humans who cannot hear dragons. And usually they are the most arrogant and ignorant ones.”
It was too much. “Keep a civil tongue in your head when you address your elders, girl. Or is that no longer taught here in the Rain Wilds?”
The dragon gave a sudden huff. The force of her exhaled breath blasted him with warmth and the stink of the semirotted meat she had just eaten. He turned aside from her with an exclamation of disgust.
Alise gave a gasp of horror and pleaded, “He does not understand! He meant no insult! Please, he meant no insult!” An instant later, Alise had seized him by the arm. “Sedric, are you all right?” she demanded of him.
“That creature belched right in my face!”
Alise gave a strangled laugh. She seemed to be trembling with relief. “A belch? Was that what you thought it? If so, we are fortunate that was all. If her poison glands were mature, you’d be melting right now. Don’t you know anything of dragons? Don’t you recall what became of the Chalcedean raiders who attacked Bingtown? All Tintaglia had to do was breathe on them. Whatever it was she spat, it ate right through armor. And right through skin and bone as well.” She paused, and then added, “You have insulted her without meaning to. I think you should go back to the ship. Right now. Give me time to explain your misunderstanding of her.”
The Rain Wild girl spoke again. She had a husky voice, a surprisingly rich contralto. Her silver gaze was both unsettling and compelling. “Skymaw agrees with the Bingtown woman. Whether you’re my elder or not, she says you should leave the dragon grounds. Now.”
Sedric felt even more affronted. “I don’t think that you have the right to tell me what to do at all,” he told the girl.
But Alise spoke over his words. “Skymaw? That’s her name?”
“It’s what I call her.” The girl amended. She seemed embarrassed to have to admit it. “She told me that a dragon’s true name is a thing to be earned, not given.”
“I understand completely,” Alise replied. “The true name of a dragon is a very special thing to know. No dragon tells her true name lightly.” She treated the dragon’s keeper as if she were a charming child who had interrupted an important adult conversation. The “child” did not enjoy that, Sedric noted.
