Page 62 of Dragon Rule (Age of Fire 5)

“Hard to think about a few loose tail-scale when there are swords about your throat,” NoSohoth said.

“What else do you have for me. Briefly, please, for I am tired.”

“Nothing that can’t wait until you’ve rested from your flight and enjoyed a few meals. There’s some rather good blind bonefish in the larder.”

“I’ll spend a few hours in the Audience Chamber. I can try to keep myself awake. I don’t want my dragons to think themselves unattended. I’ll be on the shelf in one hour; see there’s some coin to pass around.”

“Just some poor Hypatian amalgams. Next to worthless.”

“Well, there’ll be some gold from the sack at Swayport shortly.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” NoSohoth said. “I rather think the Imperial Treasury spends more on the Empire than it gets in return. If it weren’t for NiVom squeezing what he can out of the Ghioz, we’d be destitute.”

“We? You mean me, you old hoardbug,” the Copper said.

“My Tyr, have I ever denied you grateful coin?”

“No. I’ll think about finances later. I’m for a splash, then you can admit the petitioners into the audience hall.”

He shook off the thralls busy polishing his claws and oiling his artificial wing joint and descended to his baths. The heat and steam would work faster than any thrall.

The fleshy human female thrall in attendance gave the air a juicy aroma that made him relish his bath. She spread frothy bubbling fats on his scale and scrubbed them off again with a bristle brush. One of his predecessors, SiDrakkon, had made a fetish of the place, filling it so the musky feminine reek made one’s head swim, but that was entirely too much of a good thing. One had to come out of the bath sooner or later.

Feeling delightfully clean, he hissed for his monitor-bats.

Aged Ging and her son Fang came in, trailed by a tiredlooking Gang. Ghoul had disappeared some years ago in the Star Cave, but then he’d always been the slowest of the three.

“A sup, a sup, my Tyr?” they chorused, like eager, whining puppies.

They whined for blood, of course, and he relented and let them open a vein in his sii where he could keep an eye on how much they slurped down. They were the descendants of bats that had been dining on his blood for generations, and they’d grown into monstrous versions of the original clan; they were the size of largish dogs these days, and toothy young Fang displayed a pebbly skin that might be mistaken for his brother’s dragon-hide. Fang had cunning eyes and sharp ears, and a nose for sniffing secrets, and a devious mind. The Copper trusted only Fang’s weakness and lust for dragon-blood.

The Copper resolved not to feed Fang’s offspring dragon-blood. These bats had grown quite freakish enough, thank you.

He’d learned to question them after a feeding rather than before. So eager for blood were they, they’d tell him anything if they thought it would please him into letting them nick open his skin. The Copper would rather hear what he needed to hear than what the bats thought he wanted to hear.

“Any news?” he asked, as the bats burped out their satisfaction with the bloody suckle.

“NiVom and Imfamnia are breeding blighters,” Ging, the best-spoken of them said. She had a network of other bats who, the Copper suspected, suckled off her own substantial frame. “They mean to launch a war ’gainst Old Uldam, use blighters against other blighters, it seems.”

“Any news passing in the Lavadome?” The Copper liked to think of his conversations with the bats as catching up on news he wouldn’t otherwise hear, rather than spying. Spying on the dragons one purported to lead struck him as distasteful.

“The Ankelenes talked a lot against the attack on those pirates.”

“Old Ibidio called it bleeding dragons for the humans,” Fang said. “Wasting good blood on humans, now. What have they ever done for us but cause trouble? Useless-like.”

“He means ‘dragons doing the bleeding humans wouldn’t do’,” Ging clarified. “Those were her exact words.”

The Copper would have to live with Ibidio’s second-guessing and disparagement. She had laid the eggs of FeHazathant’s second-generation descendants and was of the oldest and most distinguished part of the Imperial Line. “Well, Ibidio’s always talking against me to the Ankelenes. As long as it’s just talk, I don’t mind. Is she planning anything?”

“Naw,” Fang said, and the others also shook their heads, hominid style. “That LaDibar, he’s the one you have to watch out for. Shifty-like.”

“Still visiting the thrall pens and the demen quarter, I hope?”

“Aye, Tyr, nothing brewing there but soup bones. As long as the feed’s good, they’re happy.”

“Aye, jes’ like us’n,” old Gang said, licking remaining fangs clean of the last bits of blood.

The Copper met with his court the next day, making it clear to them that it was a strictly informal gathering. He ordered a plain meal rather than an imperial feast. They had platters brought into the Audience Chamber, now filled with dozens of newly captured battle banners of Ghioz and collections of skulls and stained hides from the Ironriders.

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