DharSii made that throat-clearing rattle he liked to do when making up his mind or stifling the truth. He was an excellent dragon, but he couldn’t lie convincingly to save his life. “Ahem. She’s exploring a cave to make sure the troll didn’t leave another generation behind.”
“Grim business. I don’t envy her the job,” the Copper said.
“Grim business indeed,” DharSii agreed, and this time the Copper was sure he meant the words.
DharSii was good to his word. He and a few skilled blighters bearing tools and materials showed up after breakfast.
The Copper smelled a good deal of wine and brandy on him the next day, and his eyes were exhausted and red. It wasn’t like DharSii to overindulge in anything save boring conversation. He ate lightly and politely, was often the first dragon up and about in the morning and set an example in enthusiasm as he “chewed his gravel,” as Scabia liked to put it to the hatchlings.
They worked on the broken pulley, with DharSii trying different qualities of rope, wire, tendon, and banding DharSii kept applying some sort of blue goop to the wood of the pulleys to see where the pressure was falling hardest. The Copper’s wing began to hurt from the constant strain of extending it without the assistance of the artificial joint.
Finally, he was able to take a short flight, keeping low to the ground. Sure enough, the joint gave way, and he came to a clumsy, tail-dragging skid of a landing.
“Were there only a dwarf about,” DharSii said. Written on his face, clear as dwarf letters, was pity with his relative’s state. With most dragons, pity and contempt were one and the same, and the Copper suspected this was so of DharSii. “We don’t have the right kind of material.”
“I remember Rayg speaking of ‘gut-core,’ ” the Copper said.
“Not familiar with that,” DharSii said, pulling leather tighter with his teeth.
DharSii took the afternoon off and flew south to see Wistala again, bearing two bags across his chest. The Copper wondered if they hadn’t found a comfortable cave and were setting up digs where they could be free of Scabia six days out of seven. They were suited for each other. DharSii’s scale hardly twitched when Wistala’s name was mentioned, but that was just his self-possessed nature. His sister, however, practically dropped scale with the intensity of her prrum when they spoke of DharSii.
“What is that you’re doing there with my nephew?” Scabia herself said, as the blighters reattached the joint on his wing. It might not work right for flying, but it was comfortable and provided support when it was folded, so the relief was palpable.
“We’re trying to fix this wing of mine,” the Copper said.
“In better days a dragon would use crippling injuries to improve himself in philosophy and mind the next generation, Tyr RuGaard. You hardly spend any time with the hatchlings. They might benefit from a better male example than NaStirath.”
Scabia never said so directly, but she treated the Copper as an equal and gave him grudging respect. She was a great one for titles, and the fact that he’d been Tyr of Two Worlds, etc., etc., meant more to her than it did to the Copper. To the exile, it was just a stream of words his court majordomo used to recite to save himself having to come up with anything pertinent to the matter at hand.
“You’re scratching the floors!” she bellowed at the blighter workmen, picking up their tools and placing them back in wooden trays with long handles. One of the blighters loosed his urine in fear, poor devil.
“Am I the only one who cares for this last vestige of Silverhigh?” Scabia asked the ceiling, which was as close as she came to reprimanding the Copper.
“I should have been watching them, Scabia,” the Copper said. “We are poor guests, I’m afraid. Your hospitality should make us grow more grateful over time rather than careless of it.”
He’d learned a diplomatic tongue in the Lavadome, dealing with the egos of powerful dragons and dragonelles. With his tail, he both sheltered the blighters and nudged them toward one of the servant-cracks leading down to their quarters. He’d smelled fire on Scabia’s breath and was afraid she would burn them, scorched floors or no.
“Nonsense,” Scabia said. “It’s good to have some dragons about. My nephew is always coming and going, which leaves me nothing for conversation but Aethleethia and NaStirath. My daughter, though I’ve raised her to be a respectable dragon-dame, is in possession of more appetite than wit, and I don’t care for NaStirath’s jokes.”
Mentioning that he was considering a journey was out, at least after that speech. When Scabia got an emotional updraft under her, she could peck and scratch at all around her until the sun disappeared and the stars turned circles.
“How are the hatchlings?” he asked.
“So quick! They have excellent memories and are serious even in play. Not at all what I’d expect from that ninny.”
Scabia was still under the impression that NaStirath, Aethleethia’s mate, had sired the clutch.
“They say hatchlings often resemble the sire’s sires,” the Copper said.
“Perhaps, Tyr RuGaard,” she said. Then she switched to mindspeech. He hardly understood one word in three, but it was something about Wistala being of better quality than first impressions allowed.
For Scabia to use mindspeech with him, even unsuccessfully, was a high compliment. It was possible only between dragons of natural affinity who’d long grown accustomed to each other’s minds or between mother dragons and their hatchlings.
The Copper warmed at the compliment, even from Scabia. He’d known so few others in life who genuinely liked him. Most dragons, even unusually bright ones like DharSii, saw only his injuries and deformities. There was something deep and dark in most dragons that hated weakness, clumsiness, deformity of any kind. It had served him to advantage in the snakepit of the Lavadome, where the contempt of the other ruling dragons kept him safe from suspicion as he grew up and made him an agreeable choice for Tyr—such a wreck of a dragon would never grow popular or powerful.
The warmth turned to bile. He’d won the intimacy of a vainglorious old recluse. Some achievement. He made a few excuses about wanting to soak his sore wing in the hot springs and left her as soon as he decently could.
DharSii spent another day away and returned at night. Again he assured the Copper of Wistala’s health and safety. The hunting was just exceptionally good on the south slopes of the Sadda-Vale; as proof he brought in a big, wide-horned, hairy creature called a yilak. Wistala had stayed behind to keep an eye on the herd. It was a wild descendant of a beast of burden that the blighters had used in their days of power and glory, large enough for each dragon to have a satisfying haunch, plenty of flank-meat for the hatchlings, and the organs could go to the blighters, who had dozens of recipes for what they considered to be the delicacies of yilak brain, heart, and digestive organs.
Wistala thought it likely that if the dragons watched over the herd, killed or drove off the predators, they might take up residence in the south passes and see a good deal of natural increase. They were tough creatures, able to withstand a winter on the slopes. It would add some variety to their diet and if they could capture a few, the blighters could put them to work.
The Copper enjoyed his haunch, so much so that he followed it up with a double helping of gravel. Already, new scale was beginning to bud up under the worst patches of the white-rot stuff, and the diseased scale was beginning to drop off in twos and threes. The blighters didn’t even bother to collect scale with white-rot to trade, though he’d been told they ground up the healthy bits and put it into weapons and tools to strengthen the metals.
But that was for the future to reveal. After the yilak feast, DharSii ordered up more wine and drew the Copper aside.
“I’ve given it some thought and I think I have a solution that will allow you to fly.” He said no more until his blighters could be called, and they went to work.
“Solution” wasn’t the word the Copper would have chosen; it was more of a second-least-worst outcome, the worst being not able to fly at all. DharSii put in a locking mechanism so his wing could be either open or shut, and taught the Copper how to alter the configuration by means of a heavy pin and a pair of metal bands with hooks.
When the wing was locked open, he could fly, but the joint didn’t work, and it was fatiguing to make the adjustments with this wing that the natural joint, and Rayg’s flexible arrangement, allowed. But it did stay open and support his weight in the air. When closed, the wing didn’t settle quite right against his side. It looked like he was trying to shade his limbs on that side with his wing or keep a wound exposed to air, but it was not particularily fatiguing to do so. The Copper did discover, though, that his shoulder was unusually sore after the test flight. He was terribly out of condition, and asking his muscles to fly in a different manner than they’d done his whole life.
But the feel of air under his belly and his neck and tail making the hundreds of adjustments of muscle and scale they did while in the air on his brief flight made him feel that the soreness had been purchased in a fair transaction.