Tooth and Claw (36 page)

“Well, I generally sleep in the morning, in the season,” he replied. “After all, our eyes were not designed to work so much in daylight. They become tired. I’m sorry. You don’t know me. I’m Respectable Alwad Telstie.”

“I know your sister,” Selendra said.

“I know, she told me. She said you were beautiful, but left out half of it. It’s hard to melt information out of Gelener.”

Selendra was no longer confused by idle compliments. She cast her eyes down mockingly, laughed, and remembered her first meeting with Gelener and the Exalt’s hurtful advice. “Did she tell you that my father grew up on the Telstie estate?” she asked, deliberately.

“No. How fascinating. Did he know my uncle? My uncle
might want to see him. He appears to want to see everyone he ever knew, to be reconciled, before he dies.”

“He’s dead himself, this autumn, so it’s too late,” Selendra said.

“I’m sorry,” Alwad said. “It’s just been so much on my mind lately. I’m my uncle’s heir, but we quarrelled last year.”

“Has he reconciled with you?”

“Not yet, there’s apparently someone he wants to see first. It’s all very mysterious, it’s as if he has a script for how he’s doing it. He told my father he’d see me two days from now. I’ll be on my best behavior the whole time, you can be sure.” He laughed and took another stein of beer from a passing servant.

“But doesn’t it matter to you?” Selendra asked.

“What? To be reconciled to my uncle? A little. I like the old dragon. Or to inherit his lands and title? Not at all. I would almost prefer not to, to continue in my fine life in the army. As for his wealth, well, that would be useful.”

Selendra hesitated. “I had supposed the three to go together,” she said.

“I suppose they might, though where else he imagines he’ll find a relative to take the demesne is beyond me. He’s never cared much for rank, but he really cares about family.”

“I think that’s better than thinking rank is everything,” Selendra said.

“Why yes. Have you seen your future mother-in-law fawning over old August Fidrak, the legislator? Fidrak hasn’t two crowns to rub together, his lands are mortgaged to the wingtip. He lives on the charity of his daughters’ husbands, and on his stipend in the Assembly. Yet there’s the Exalt treating him as if he’s of much more worth than she could ever be, when she has Benandi, and half Tiamath besides.”

“I don’t think wealth or rank are the important things,” Selendra said.

“Then how do you consider dragons?” Alwad asked, his head tipped curiously on its side.

“By the worth of themselves,” Selendra said. “I love Sher not because he’s an Exalted but because he’s Sher. If I’d fallen in love with you, for example, without any title but Respectable, I’d think you just as good as he is.”

“You’re a radical,” he said, stepping back, laughing. “A freethinker! Does Sher know of this? I’m quite sure my mother doesn’t, she’d have told me.”

“I don’t need to be a radical to think that who a dragon is counts more than birth or wealth,” Selendra said, with what dignity she could.

“Why, that’s the very definition of a radical,” he retorted. “We shall have a radical Exalt among us soon, which is indeed a charming notion. What a pity you can’t take a seat in the Noble Assembly and delight us all with your notions.”

Meanwhile, Frelt was making a good impression on the rest of the Telstie family. He had even made Gelener laugh once, graciously. “You’re just the kind of parson the church needs,” Blessed Telstie said, taking a deep draught of his beer and almost forgetting about the lure of the dicebox.

“And if I may say so on so little acquaintance, but in which I have been greatly struck by her beauty and accomplishments, your daughter is just the sort of wife I need,” Frelt said.

“Say no more before we visit our respective attorneys and speak to our mutual friends,” Blest Telstie said, stepping forward as if to indicate that she was willing to interpose her body between them if necessary.

“If that all proves satisfactory I should have no objection,” said
Gelener quietly, looking at Frelt unsmilingly. She would not have thought to have settled for as little as a country parson when first she came to Irieth, but now that she was facing a third season still unmarried, she had lowered her sights considerably.

On the other side of the room Daverak was still refusing to listen to Penn and Sher. “Quite impossible,” he kept saying. “Consider, it is Firstday tomorrow, and the day after is the case. I need your testimony, Penn, Avan is attacking me, he is being perfectly unreasonable. No, I won’t consider, why should I.”

Penn would not speak about the real risks in the ballroom where they might be overheard. “Can we visit you tomorrow to talk about it?” Sher asked.

“Not tomorrow, no,” Daverak said, and softened it slightly, remembering Sher’s rank, which counted with him as August Fidrak’s did with the Exalt. “Tomorrow is Firstday.”

“I think it is important enough to visit you even on Firstday,” Sher said.

“Oh very well,” Daverak said. “Come to see me in the evening. Come and dine. But I warn you, I have no intention of changing my mind.”

Then the dancing began. The party continued until the sky was beginning to lighten, and everyone agreed as they left that it had been the best entertainment held in Irieth for many months.

It was Firstday, and in the usual way of things Sebeth would have accompanied Avan to church in the morning. There she would have made her public devotions, and while we know that her private devotions were quite otherwise, the world did not. On this particular
Firstday, the eleventh of Deepwinter, the day before the Second Hearing of Avan’s case, she prepared herself as she would for church, with a flat formal cap of navy blue trimmed with white fleece.

“Do you know where your book of prayers is?” she asked. “I’m going now.”

“I’m nearly ready,” Avan grumbled.

“I’m not going with you today,” she said, straightening her cap unnecessarily.

“Aren’t you coming to church?” Avan asked, surprise whirling in his golden eyes.

“Not today,” Sebeth said, in the way she had learned of closing off discussion.

Avan closed his mouth. She had always gone to church with him before, ever since she had come to live with him. They had never talked about religion, but she had indicated amused approval of his choice of the parson famed for his short sermons. She tried not to look nervous. “See you later,” she said, and left him gazing after her.

She knew he would not follow. She trusted Avan for that. They had kept to their understanding for a long time now. It was very cold outside. The snow was hard and slippery under her feet. She walked briskly towards the river, breathing shallowly, wishing she had not agreed to Blessed Calien’s entreaties. His soul, she thought, his soul could be saved to go on to new life or it could perish utterly, and if she could do something to save it, however bad he had been in this life, however much penance he would bear in his new life, she should. He was dying. This would be his last chance.

Telstie House was on the riverfront, in the Southwest Quarter. She was almost surprised that she remembered the way. She had avoided it for years, walking purposefully on other streets if her business had taken her in that direction. She had not been here
since she was a maiden barely out of the care of a nanny. It looked a little smaller, a little shabbier, the snow on the lintels looked unfamiliar, she had never been here in winter. She almost walked on past. It was not too late. But Blessed Calien had done so much for her. She owed him this, as he had said. What was an hour or two to her? An attempt to save his soul? She did not forgive, but he was dying, and his soul, think of his soul. It would cost her nothing to try. For Calien’s sake, then, not for her own or her father’s, she asked admittance.

The servant was a stranger. “Your name?” he asked, politely enough, but coldly. “Eminent Telstie isn’t well and the house is in uproar. I don’t know if anyone can see you.”

“Sebeth,” she said. “Eminent Telstie sent word that he wanted to see me.” She still did not know by what channels he had sent, that it had come to her by way of her priest.

The servant looked at her differently, as if assessing her. She couldn’t tell if he recognized her name or was simply reacting to the lack of a title and family name. She was dressed like the respectable clerk she was. He couldn’t tell anything from that. She saw his eyes linger on the marks on her wings where once she had been tightly bound. “Wait, I’ll ask,” he said, and left her alone above ground in the hallway while he hurried downwards. It was too late to flee, Sebeth told herself sternly. Much too late. She should never have let herself be persuaded to come. Why did she care if he was dying?

The servant came back. “Come this way,” he said. As she followed him down, she thought for the first time that she might have to deal with her brothers and sisters and uncle and cousins and not only with the dying dragon she had come to see. If she had left it too late, if he was too bad to see her, she would leave immediately.

“Exalt Sebeth Telstie,” the servant announced, the name strange
and familiar at once. So he had known her. She swept in past him, as if she were indeed the Exalt she was by right of birth.

It was a sleeping cave, domed, plain stone. He was lying curled uncomfortably on his gold. His scales were beginning to fall already, he could not have much time left. His eyes were faded from the brilliant blue they had been, the blue hers still were. They met hers as she took a step inside. She stood completely still. “Sebeth, my daughter,” he said, as the servant retreated.

“No,” she said, all the anger she had been trying to fight down pushing its way to the surface. “You lost the right to call me that a long time ago. You have dragonets enough, remember?”

His eyes closed. She thought she would go. Then they opened again and met hers, whirling slowly in the pale blue depths. “I asked you to come so you could forgive me that,” he said.

“Forgive you for abandoning me in the caves of kidnappers and rapists?” she asked. “How could anyone, how could any maiden brought up as I had been, ever forgive someone who owed them a father’s care for that?”

“I did not mean to abandon you. I refused to pay the ransom because I believed I could rescue you. I thought I knew where they were holding you. I planned to follow them back and free you. But they had fooled me. When I reached the cave it was empty.”

She weighed this, considering.

“Don’t you believe me?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said, honestly. “It hurt me so much that you had said that, that you had left me there. It almost doesn’t matter why.”

“I tried to contact them again, but there was no way of finding them,” he said. “I thought that you must be dead.”

“Not dead,” she said. “Death might have been preferable, but I have survived.”

“I won’t ask how you have lived,” he said. “I can’t bear to know. I see the marks on your wings, and I won’t ask you how you come to be free now. You didn’t come to me. I thought you might come to me, if you were alive and free.”

“You had dragonets enough,” Sebeth repeated, through tears that she had not known she was weeping.

“I thought you might come when your brother Ladon died,” he said, ignoring that. Sebeth stared at a gold cup beneath her father’s foot. She had seen that cup when she was a hatchling playing with her mother’s gold. On the side turned down into the other gold now, she knew it was inscribed with an S, and her big brother Ladon, the oldest, the heir, the special one, who was August Ladon Telstie, when the rest of them were nothing but Exalts and Exalteds, had said it must be an S for Sebeth. It was the first letter she had read.

“I didn’t know Ladon was dead,” she said, as calmly as she might.

“On the border,” her father said. “Ten years ago now. You are the only child I have left. I am dying, Sebeth.”

Three brothers and two sisters, all dead, without her knowing? But why would she know? She had sought no knowledge of them, shunned it rather. “I didn’t know,” she repeated, feeling stupid.

“I was an arrogant fool not to ransom you,” Eminent Telstie said. “But will you believe it was folly and not cruelty?”

“I wish I had known that all these years,” she said. “Forgive me, father, for believing that of you.”

“I will forgive you if you will forgive me for failing to find you,” he said. They were both weeping now.

Sebeth embraced her father and forgave him, and he forgave her, but even as she wept and asked forgiveness, somewhere inside her was a hard shell, and inside the shell was a self who was not sure if she believed the story her father told her. He had not sought
for her until he was dying, after all, until all his other children were dead.

“Now I must call the attorney and draw up a will to make you my heir,” her father said. “You must marry your cousin Alwad. He will take you, whatever disgrace you have been in, if he knows the title and the demesne goes with you.”

“No,” Sebeth said. She could remember Alwad as a mischievous hatchling. “I will not be married off like soiled goods. I have been in no disgrace, I have done nothing wrong. I fell into misfortune, and rescued myself. I have been working as a respectable clerk. I have a—” she hesitated, thinking how to describe Avan. “A partner. Not a husband, but more than a lover. He cares about me. I have honest work.”

“You have done much, much better than I imagined. I see the marks of binding. Like the Honorable Lords of old, you have risen on your own wings. It makes me proud. Who is your partner? A dragon of Respectable rank you say? Gently born?”

“He is Avan Agornin, son of the Dignified Bon Agornin.” Sebeth thought of the way she had come up from the depths, a finger-length at a time, from the servitude of a streetwalker to being Avan’s clerk and partner.

Tears sprang to her father’s eyes again at the name. “Bon Agornin was a friend of mine when I was a dragonet. I have scarcely seen him since he left my parents’ demesne, but I wept when I heard that he had died recently. He was a good and worthy dragon, and like you, he rose by his own merit. You have said his son cares for you, do you care for him?”