Page 206 of Dragon Outcast (Age of Fire 3)

“I have my order,” the Skotl said.

Not smart enough to remember more than one, NoSohoth mind-spoke to him. The Copper thought it a rare intimacy.

“I’m mated to the sister of his mate. He can see me.”

The Skotl’s eyes narrowed as he tried to work out the family dynamics.

“You see Imfamnia, then,” the Skotl said.

“Oh, very well.”

NoSohoth led him, the Copper nudging him along whenever he tried to stop and talk politics. They found Imfamnia in Tighlia’s old quarters. She’d mounted colored quartz and sheer fabrics in her balconies and galleries, bathing the room in a hideous watery color trying to be green.

“Tighlia lives with the Anklenes now,” NoSohoth said. “She fell into a rage and started burning the silks and smashing Imfamnia’s glasswork with her tail.”

They found Imfamnia with SiMevolant. A thrall was painting her griff, and another slave was mixing colors for the one with the brush.

“No, dull as passwater,” SiMevolant said as she lowered her griff and turned her head this way and that. “Would you consider having gemstones embedded?”

“But then my griff wouldn’t close up properly.”

“That may become the new fashion, then. Remember, as queen of the Lavadome you set the style.”

Tyr’s mate was always title enough for Tighlia, NoSohoth thought.

“Mate-sister,” the Copper said, breaking in on the decorating. “I must see the Tyr at once.”

“NoSohoth, I thought there were orders about guests without invitations,” SiMevolant said.

The Copper came forward, the quartz-filtered light making the whole interview dreamlike. “Anaea has been attacked. By men flying on dragons.”

“Ewwww. That must look a fright,” SiMevolant said. “Skin tones.”

Mother had warned him that he would have to overcome. But there were few foes as implacable as stupidity.

“Quiet, love,” Imfamnia said. “You’ll find my mate in his Gardens.” She walked over to curtains dividing this chamber from another, opened them, and then stuck her head outside and said a few words.

“Not you, NoSohoth,” she said as the Copper moved toward the gardens. “Family only.”

The Copper passed out under two silver-clawed griffaran perched high to keep watch over the Tyr’s privacy. He saw SiDrakkon in one of the warm pools.

One of his human females washed him behind the crest by sitting astride him, a blanket-sized piece of soft leather polishing Tyr SiDrakkon’s scale, grinding her body back and forth. The rest of his human females bathed, or lounged, or ate, or anointed one another with oils taken from silver vials.

A muscular blighter brought forward a huge, polished turtleshell of wine. He grunted as he set it down.

“Idiot!” SiDrakkon roared. He knocked the vessel over. “Silver! I won’t drink out of anything that isn’t silver.”

The blighter scurried away in the direction of the banquet entrance.

“The purity of silver! I require purity!”

The Copper approached and bowed. A few of the women covered themselves and cleared the way between the dragons.>“‘Close’ and ‘probably’ are not exact enough that I wish to bet my life on it. I’m exhausted. I need a meal. Oh, and find one of my bats. I’ll give him a nip of blood if it would hurry him down the tunnel in search of the Drakwatch.”

The Copper sent messenger bats in both directions on the western road looking for Drakwatch patrols, bearing a request to hurry to Anaea and assist the Upholder’s mate and the Firemaid at the cave mouth.

Upholder’s mate. His mate. Sickly little Halaflora. So much depended on a cripple and a weakling. Whatever Spirit had put into dragons’ nature the desire to contest every mouthful, with the weakest dying off, must be having a good, ethereal laugh at that.

Rayg found one other item on the dragon-rider and brought it to him before one of the Firemaids ate it. It was an odd little pendant on a thin chain, a tiny figure of a man standing with his arms and legs outstretched within a circle.

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