Tooth and Claw (32 page)

They flew out of the parsonage into a beautifully clear Deepwinter morning. The sky was a clear pale blue, and seemed a million miles above their heads. The snow reflected the golden sunlight and seemed to caress the curves of the trees with a drift of white. It was bitterly cold, so cold that they both felt sure with the wholehearted faith of a child that it was indeed the sun of ice that had risen that morning and not the sun of fire, and they were glad it was Deepwinter and that the sun’s fires would be rekindled that night.

Sher did not ask where she wanted to go. He barely spoke to her, beyond asking her to accompany him. She followed him up the wind and into the hills. The air was dry and bitterly cold, rasping in the back of her throat like ice needles. He descended at last into a high meadow where muttonwools were pastured in summer. She followed him down and landed carefully, anything could be hidden under the snow. It was deeper here than in the valley, coming almost to her belly.

Sher still showed no inclination to speak, merely looking at her until she could barely keep still. Selendra remembered Amer telling her that words spoken beneath the sun of ice would fall coldly on the ear.

“It’s a beautiful day,” she said at last.

“You are beautiful,” Sher said, his voice a little hoarse. “It is beautiful because it has you in it. O Selendra, everything has been so bleak without you. Felin, who has always been like a sister to me,
told me to wait, and I have waited and I have not changed. I asked you to marry me once before, have you changed your answer?”

“There are two things before I can agree,” she said, as she had planned. “If you are absolutely sure this is what you want.”

“I am beyond doubt,” he said. The weeks of waiting had affected him. He seemed older, more sure of himself. He took a wallowing step through the snow towards Selendra, who held up a hand to stop him.

“The first is a vow I made.”

“A vow?” He looked at her blankly.

“When I left Agornin, my sister, Haner, my clutch-mate, and I vowed that we would not marry without the other approving the proposed husband.”

Sher looked relieved. “I thought you meant—that’s actually terribly sweet of both of you. She must stay with us often when we are married. I will happily meet your sister. How soon can she come here?”

“I don’t know. There is a court case between my brother Avan and the Illustrious Daverak, who is her guardian, and I need to go to Irieth for the twelfth of Deepwinter. She’ll be there as well. After that, possibly.”

“And will Penn go to Irieth with you?” Sher frowned.

“Penn and Felin are both going.”

“Then let us all go. I’ll have Benandi House opened and we can all stay there. I can meet your sister. I’m sure it won’t take long to have her approve me.”

Selendra sighed inwardly, because her plan called for Haner to refuse her approval once the Exalt had suffered enough. Sher took another step towards her. She retreated. “Not until my sister has approved you. And there is another condition.”

“Another? Selendra, you are beautiful gold but I long to see you pink.”

“Your mother.” Selendra’s voice was hard.

“I can deal with her,” Sher said.

“I will not marry you unless your mother approves. She must treat me as if I am your equal. She said some very hurtful things to me yesterday. I like you so much. I thought about it after we got out of the cave, how resourceful you were, how brave, and what lovely funny things you say.” She was entirely sincere saying this, she smiled, and Sher’s heart turned over. If he had been a maiden he would have glowed pink just from her words. “But we would need to live in Benandi, at least part of the time, and I can’t live with your mother disapproving of me in her way and forever nagging me and acting as if I am half a dead venison you dragged in covered in flies. If we are to be happy together, she must welcome me into the family.”

Sher blinked. “Selendra—we needn’t live with my mother. We can visit her now and then for a day or two, but we can live anywhere. I have four estates in addition to this one. If you don’t like any of them we could buy another estate. I usually go to Irieth for the season, we could do that, or not just as you like. My mother needn’t figure in our lives.”

“She will, even if we avoid her. Our children, when we have them, will need to know Benandi. She will make my life a misery whenever she can, and theirs, telling our children that I am not good enough to be your wife and their mother. You remember what she said about my father. I can’t marry you if you have doubts about my family, or if she is going to act like that.”

“Then she will welcome you,” Sher said, his jaw set at an angle of determination that would have surprised his friends and his mother very much. “In Irieth. Where your sister will also approve me.”

“Oh Sher,” Selendra said, loving him, no artifice in her at all now. He stayed where he was, staring at her, smiling a little. For Selendra, although the day was as cold as ever, it felt as if the Deepwinter fire had been kindled already in her heart and the sun burned warm again. Sher did not take advantage to press her further at that time, although she would no longer have desired to be capable of stopping him.

“I must speak to your brother,” Sher said. “Come, dearest Selendra.” They rose up to fly home together.

It has been baldly stated in this narrative that Penn and Sher were friends at school and later at the Circle, and being gentle readers and not cruel and hungry readers who would visit a publisher’s offices with the intention of rending and eating an author who had displeased them, you have taken this matter on trust. No examples of this friendship have been shown you, such as the two dragons exchanging confidences, or setting out together to enjoy themselves on a day out. The truth is that the very real friendship they had once shared as children had attenuated through time and the nature of their adult lives. Their lives and their enjoyments were now very different, so confidences and shared enjoyment had become matters of memory rather than commonplaces.

This was, of course, as the Exalt would have delighted to point out, largely because of their different stations in life. Sher had the dignity and finances of his position, and Penn those of a country parson. Even his living as a parson had been Sher’s, or rather the Exalt’s, gift, and it takes a great deal of resilience in a friendship to be able to endure charity given by one friend to the other. It is often
not the giver who resents this, who, though they have lost in worldly ways have gained the delight of heaven, and also the joy of gift-giving, but the one who must, having little, accept more than they can hope to offer in return. If there is a return expected and granted, as between Penn and the Exalt, where spiritual and pastoral duties were exchanged for worldly comfort, then all may be well. But with Sher, Penn felt he had been given much and was returning nothing at all. Naturally he resented this, and naturally, he tried not to resent it, and resented the necessity of effort. Equally naturally, Sher sensed both resentment and effort, which put a constraint into the ease of their relationship. Besides all this, Sher’s life remained very worldly and full of enjoyment while Penn over time grew more and more devoted to the Church and to his parish. They had in fact grown apart, and they both regretted this extremely, for they had at one time done everything together.

Thus when Sher returned with Selendra, still without the pink that would speak for itself, it was awkward for him to seek out Penn, more awkward than it would be if they had never been close. Selendra wished to accompany him, more to avoid being left alone with Felin than for any other reason, but he gently discouraged her. “I need to speak to your brother alone. We may need to discuss matters unsuitable for you.”

Felin was out when they returned, visiting parishioners. Selendra took up a book, relieved to be alone.

Penn’s office had a door, a very plain door that had been put in to replace the old carved door some generations ago. Sher knocked upon it with a careful claw. “Come in,” Penn called, dolefully. Sher entered, and stood looking about him awkwardly. The room was Penn’s, and held books and writing utensils which Sher recognized as Penn’s, yet in some sense it belonged to Sher, as did the whole parsonage. Penn was supposed to be writing his Deepwinter sermon, to
be read to the congregation after he had kindled the fire, but he was in fact lying supine staring at the Order commanding his presence in Irieth and considering the sin of suicide.

“Sher!” Penn said, pulling himself up sejant and trying to smile. “Good to see you.”

“Good to see you, too,” Sher said, fitting himself with some difficulty into the study and closing the door.

“Not in trouble, I hope?” Penn asked, with a heartiness that sounded false in his own ears.

“I hope not,” Sher said, smiling awkwardly. “In fact, the opposite. I asked your sister Selendra to marry me, and she has agreed, once we have worked out a few details.”

“Oh thanks be to Jurale!” Penn said, and promptly burst into tears.

Sher was extremely puzzled by this reaction. “It’s not as bad as that,” he said. This had no effect. “I’ll take good care of her,” he tried. Penn sobbed on. “What’s the matter?” he asked at last.

Penn pushed the Order towards him. Sher took it and read it. “Selendra already told me about this,” he said. “You’re all going to Irieth, she said. I’ve offered you the use of Benandi House.”

“You may not want to,” Penn said, getting back a little control. “You may not even want to marry Selendra when you know.”

“Know what?” Sher asked. “I find it very hard to think of anything that would stop me wanting to marry Selendra.”

“Then that’s one burden you’ve relieved me of,” Penn said. “The worst of disgrace is bringing other dragons down with one.”

“Disgrace?” Sher asked quickly.

“Ah, yes, it’s different marrying the sister of a respectable parson and marrying the sister of a disgraced parson,” Penn said.

Here Penn did his old friend an injustice. Sher would never have considered marrying some abstract sister of a disgraced parson, nor
indeed anyone who suffered under any great social burden. He would never, for instance, have contemplated falling in love with Sebeth. Yet now he had fallen so firmly in love with Selendra he would not have wavered whatever had happened to her family. “Tell me what the problem is,” Sher said, with commendable calmness.

“I heard my father’s confession on his deathbed, and it will come out in this trial, and I will be ruined and thrown out of the Church,” Penn said, succinctly.

Sher blinked several times. He considered and dismissed several responses. He was not, in fact, shocked that such a thing had been done. He had heard it whispered that the Old Religion was quietly thriving. He was, however, shocked that Penn, who he secretly thought had grown rather stuffy and conventional since he became a parson, had done it. “Can you get your brother to call off the case?”

“Not after the First Hearing,” Penn said. “He’d be subject to penalty for bringing it frivolously if he did that now.”

“Then can’t you get him to agree not to call you?” he asked.

“Avan did agree, it’s Daverak who has called me,” Penn said.

“Then how about Daverak?”

“He doesn’t care a mouldy plum about me.” Penn shook his head sadly, shaking tears from his snout.

The old school term made Sher smile in reminiscence. “Daverak’s your brother-in-law. Care about you or not, he can’t want you disgraced.”

“Berend is dead.”

“Even so, there are dragonets who are her hatchlings who are Daverak’s heirs. You could talk to him and emphasize the social side of this, the effect on him,” Sher said.

“I can’t bear the thought of his knowing,” Penn said.

“He’s going to know if you tell the whole world in court,” Sher
said, a touch of impatience in his voice. “Illustrious, isn’t he? Daverak? I’ve met him, I think. He cares a lot about rank and things like that. I’ll come with you to see him if you like, it might help.”

“That would be extremely kind of you,” Penn said, then laughed through his tears. “Oh Sher, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to talk to you like that when you’re so good to me.”

“Don’t forget I have a vested interest in keeping you out of disgrace. I might not care, but my mother would, and Selendra has made it a condition that my mother be enthusiastic.”

“The Exalt will never do more than tolerate—” Penn said, staring.

“The Exalt will do a great deal more than that,” Sher said, his voice hard. It softened to a teasing tone. “But it will be a great deal easier for me if she sees you as a respectable parson who is almost always here for Firstday and never ever flies even over a ravine or goes hunting.”

Penn laughed. When he had just taken up his cords he had slipped them for a day’s hunting with Sher and only narrowly avoided being recognized.

“You have my blessing for marrying my sister,” Penn said. “Her dowry is inadequate enough, but no doubt you have enough for two.”

“Her dowry is magnificent,” Sher said. “Hasn’t she told you?”

Penn stared at him. “Told me what?”

“About the treasure we found?”

“Treasure? The dragonets are always talking nonsense about that treasure but surely it isn’t real—”

“Real. Treasure. Gold. Jewels. Very valuable treasure. Your dragonets and Selendra and I found it, and divided into four parts I’d say it would be worth several hundred thousand crowns each, if not more. I haven’t been trying to get it out, because of the snows, but
come spring your two hatchlings will be receiving a fortune, and so will Selendra. So none of you will have to worry about gold, no matter what else, and no doubt my mother will be pleased to see that I have enlarged the coffers of Benandi as no heir has before me for several thousand years.”

It was on his land, and he could have claimed it all, but what good was gold to him compared to the good it could do to his friends? Penn looked stunned. “I had no idea,” he said. “I should apologize to Wontas for disbelieving him.”

Sher laughed. “I’ll come with you to speak to Daverak,” he said. “I’ll arrange about the treasure in the spring. And I’ll marry your sister as soon as it’s convenient for us all.”