Dragon Rule - E. E. Knight [16]
Her cave was simple, adorned only with a few trophies of the Battle of Hypat, where she’d lost her wings in a dreadful crash.
She offered Wistala wine, or honey-sweetened blood, or hot fat. Wistala chose the fat, as she’d flown hard and fought winds. The Wind Spirit was sending air from the south and the north to do battle over Hypatia and the Inland Ocean.
Nilrasha called a female blighter and issued orders.
“Did you send for me all this way just for company?” Wistala asked. Nilrasha had become a much more serious dragon since losing her wings, she’d matured into a Queen to be respected and regarded, if remote.
“Wistala—I’m afraid.”
Nilrasha, afraid? Wistala, from her time in the Firemaids, had heard the stories of the Queen’s legendary ferocity in battle. She’d been the sole survivor of a futile attack on a well-fortified Ghioz city in Bant, struck hard in the uprising against the Dragonblade’s hag-riders, and sacrificed her wings in battle against the Ironriders.
She couldn’t say she knew Nilrasha well enough to know whether she was being entirely honest. According to some of the Firemaids, Nilrasha was an expert at playing politics, hiding the jump and the tear behind a apparent interest in only your betterment. But Rainfall had taught her to start politely, and return courtesy with courtesy doubled.
“I am sorry to hear that. Is there anything I can do to allay your fears?”
Nilrasha loosed a quiet, friendly prrum. Wistala had an awful griff-tchk in which she wondered if she hadn’t asked precisely what Nilrasha wanted her to ask.
“There is, sister. I need you to take my place.”
Wistala thought she had heard wrong. First, she hadn’t been called sister by anyone since she was a hatchling. Second: “Take—your place?”
“By my mate’s side, in the Lavadome. He’s set me up in these lovely quarters, it’s like still being able to fly, in a way, not that I did much flying as Queen even in a place like the Lavadome. But I’m no longer able to perform even half my duties as Queen. There’s something about a broken-winged dragon that inspires contempt in enemies and useless pity in friends.”
Nilrasha waggled her wing stumps. It was a disarming gesture, so dreadfully unsettling it was humorous.
“Act as his mate?” Wistala managed, feeling her scales tingle as they resettled.
“Don’t look so shocked, sister, there is a precedent for it. Back in the days of Silverhigh, of course.” Silverhigh was a half-legendary dragon civilization, in an age long, long ago when dragonkind ruled the Earth and flew proudly in the sunshine. Before the assassins came.
Bother precedents and Silverhigh. Her brother? She didn’t hate him outright. In her opinion, he’d turned into a rather noble dragon even if he looked, walked, and flew a little offbeat. Wistala had given him his bad eye in her fury over his role in the discovery and murder of their parents.
Nilrasha waggled her stumps again, pointing one at Wistala. “I don’t mean you’d be his mate. It’s true, we’ve had no luck with hatchlings, probably because we’ve both been so smashed about in our youth, but I don’t mean a sort of substitute egg layer. Only that you’d act in my place in matters of rank and title.”
“Why me?” Wistala asked. Surely there were more famous dragonelles—Ibidio, for instance. She was the well-respected daughter of Tyr FeHazathant, the greatest and most legendary of the Tyrs. Since Tighlia’s death, Ibidio had always set the standard of how a great female dragon should act. If anyone deserved to display a proud side of green at court functions it was she. “Surely someone like Ibidio is more used to life in the Lavadome on Imperial Rock.”
Nilrasha’s wings froze and her griff flashed open and shut again with a snick that echoed off the cavern walls.
The Queen cleared her throat. “First, you’re his sister. When all is said and done, I trust blood. Second, you’re an outsider. You don’t belong to any