Page 117 of The Priory of the Orange Tree

She could see the whole of Ginura from here. Salt Flower Castle shone in the last of the sunlight.

The dragon awaited her in a natural shelter. Her true name was impossible for humans to pronounce, so she was known to them as Nayimathun. Hatched long ago in the Lake of Deep Snows, she now bore countless scars from the Great Sorrow. Every night, Tané would climb to the shelter and sit beside her dragon until the sun rose. It was just as she had always dreamed.

Talking had been hard at first. Nayimathun would not hear of Tané using the sort of respectful language that befitted a god. They were to be as kin, she said. As sisters. Anything else, and they would not be able to fly together. Dragon and rider had to share one heart.

Tané had not known how to cope with this rule. All her life she had spoken to her elders with respect, and now agodwished for them to speak as if they were the closest of friends. Gradually, haltingly, she had told the dragon about her childhood in Ampiki, the fire that had taken her parents, and her years of training in the South House. Nayimathun had listened patiently.

Now, as the ocean swallowed the sun, Tané walked barefoot to the dragon, whose head was curled against her neck. The position reminded Tané of a sleeping duck.

She knelt beside Nayimathun and placed a hand flat on her scales. Dragons did not hear in quite the same way humans did. Touch helped them to feel the vibrations of a voice.

“Good evening, Nayimathun.”

“Tané.” Nayimathun half-opened one eye. “Sit with me.”

Her voice was war conch and whale song and the distant rumble of a storm, all smoothed into words like glass shaped by the sea. Listening to it made Tané drowsy.

She sat down and leaned against the ever-damp scales of her dragon. They were wonderfully cool.

Nayimathun sniffed. “You are wounded.”

Blood was still leaking from her hand. Tané closed it. “Only a little,” she said. “I left in haste and forgot my gloves.”

“No need for haste, small one. The night is newborn.” A rattling breath passed through the dragon, right down the length of her body. “I thought we might talk about stars.”

Tané looked to the sky, where tiny eyes of silver were starting to peer out. “Stars, Nayimathun?”

“Yes. Do they teach the lore of stars in your Houses of Learning?”

“A little. In the South House, our teachers told us the names of the constellations, and how to find our way with them.” Tané hesitated. “In the village I was born in, they say stars are the spirits of people who fled from the Nameless One. They climbed up ladders and hid in the heavens to await the day when every fire-breather lies dead in the sea.”

“Villagers can be wiser than scholars.” Nayimathun looked down at her. “You are my rider now, Tané. You are therefore entitled to the knowledge of my kind.”

Not one of her teachers had ever told her this would happen.

“It would be my honor to receive it,” she said.

Nayimathun turned her gaze skyward. Her eyes grew brighter, as if they were mirrors for the moon.

“Starlight,” she said, “is what birthed us. All dragons of the East came first from the heavens.”

As she sat beside the dragon, Tané admired her bright horns, the fringe of spines beneath her jaw, and her crown, blue as a fresh bruise. That was the organ that allowed her to fly.

Nayimathun saw her looking. “That part of me marks the place where my ancestors fell from the stars and struck their heads against the seabed,” she said.

“I thought—” Tané wet her lips. “Nayimathun, forgive me, but I thought dragons came from eggs.”

She knew they did. Eggs like clouded glass, smooth and wet, each with an iridescent shine. They could sit for centuries in water before a dragon wriggled out as a tiny, fragile being. Still, questioning a god made her voice quake.

“Now, yes,” Nayimathun said. “But it was not always so.” She raised her head to face the sky again. “Our ancestors came from the comet you call Kwiriki’s Lantern, before there were any children of the flesh. It rained light into the water, and from that water, dragonkind came forth.”

Tané stared at her. “But, Nayimathun,” she said, “how can a comet make a dragon?”

“It leaves behind a substance. Molten starlight that falls into the sea and the lakes. As to how the substance grew into dragons, that is knowledge I do not possess. The comet comes from the celestial plane, and I have yet to occupy it.

“When the comet passes,” Nayimathun continued, “we are at full strength. We lay eggs, and they hatch, and we regain every gift that we once possessed. But slowly, our strength fades. And we must await the next coming of the comet to return it.”

“Is there no other way to regain your strength?”

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