Dragon's Honor - Kij Johnson [7]
Kakkh flicked his tongue out to read the air, hot and still and thick with the smells of the chemical indicators. He regretted that the humans were so thoughtless as to fail to transmit olfactory data along their communications channels; Kakkh would have liked to have sniffed Picard’s fear or resolve. How could he tell anything about an entity’s intentions only from its sight and sounds? Their useless transmissions were more proof, as far as he was concerned, that humanoids were a treacherous breed that deserved to be destroyed.
“Master.” Gar stood beside Kakkh’s raised mound in the center of the bridge, a scarlet communications gel cupped between three talons. “Our contact among the Pai has opened a channel from the planet’s surface and asks for a moment of your time.”
“Hah,” Kakkh snarled. “At last.”
Gar dropped the gel into a lubricated depression in the floor. An oval screen between Kakkh’s forelimbs flamed into life, and Gar crawled to one side so they both could see it. Kakkh had to squint against the brilliance of the tiny image, that of a humanoid male dressed in multicolored robes. What Kakkh could see of the human’s surroundings looked dry and painfully bright. And probably cold.
“The sooner we exterminate these people and reshape their world,” Kakkh muttered, “the better.” Then he switched on the automatic translator with a flick of his tail. “Greetings,” he said.
The human snapped shut the paper fan he had been fiddling with. “Noble dragons, I give you welcome.” The man bowed, just low enough to seem a calculated insult even to the G’kkau who, being quadrupeds, did not normally bow.
“I cannot wait to eat this one,” Gar said in an undertone.
Kakkh only curled a warning talon as he responded to the man. “Is everything on schedule?”
“Oh yes,” the Pai male said, sounding quite shocked at the suggestion that matters might not be in order. “Events like this cannot be planned or changed overnight, you know. The wedding is to take place tomorrow morning, just after sunrise. In fact, the wedding feast begins in mere moments, honored dragons.”
“Except that there will be no wedding,” Kakkh said. “Correct?”
“Naturally,” the human said with a smile, baring what seemed to Kakkh to be singularly unattractive and ineffectual teeth. The Pai have the jaws of a rodent, Kakkh thought. They were born to be prey. “I will have killed the Dragon by then.” His smile faded away. “I must admit, I have my regrets about this killing.”
“You what?” Gar snarled.
Kakkh felt his throat frills swelling, but he controlled his response. “What is there to regret? You will rule the Dragon Empire,” he lied.
“Well, yes.” The human tapped his chin with one manicured fingernail. “But it troubles me that I must kill him without the honor of face-to-face combat.”
Kakkh felt a pain in his forebrain beginning. “But you have explained to us that the Dragon is a weak and honorless fool,” he reminded the human. By the fangs of my father, Kakkh thought with some irritation, surely this miserable creature could not be having second thoughts at this late date?
“Oh, he is unworthy of this throne, that is understood. And yet …”
“It is your duty to save the Empire’s honor,” Kakkh said.
“Yes, you are quite right, revered lizards,” the human said. “The honor of the realm demands a new Dragon, and I must be that man. I would, of course, wrest the Empire