Tooth and Claw (7 page)

“But I did,” Selendra admitted. “I was so surprised that I couldn’t move, and he came close and leaned on me.”

“Whatever are we going to do?” Haner asked. “Penn really does mean it about making the best of a bad situation, he’ll have you married off. But what else can you do?”

“Amer will know,” Selendra said with decision. “Go to fetch Amer, and tell her what has happened. If there is anything we can do to get my color back, she will know.”

Selendra made her way to the sleeping cave, and Haner hurried off to fetch Amer.

Amer tutted and blew out hot breath when Haner explained what had happened, and poured out scorn and expletives upon Frelt. Then she told Haner to bring Selendra to the kitchen, and put a kettle of water on the fire to heat.

“You are old enough to understand,” she began, when Selendra came in, pink and miserable. “I cannot treat you like a child to be given medicine without knowing.”

“I’ll take it whatever it is,” Selendra pleaded.

“Most likely, this will restore you without danger,” Amer said, as she ground her herbs. “But you should know there is a chance that it will not work, and another smaller chance that it will work too well. This is medicine, not magic, and medicine works by numbers and not by nature.”

“By numbers?” Selendra was confused and still pink. “Let me have it, and I shall count as high as you like.”

“That would be magic,” Amer said, smiling and showing her teeth. “Besides, it has to brew, and you will have to wait. Haner said he touched you?”

“He leaned on me,” Selendra admitted for the second time. She sank to the floor, couchant, her head bowed down on her upper arms and her wings half-furled over her, almost more affected by the memory than when it had happened.

Haner put out her own wings to help cover her sister, and there were tears in her eyes. “We have to do something,” she said to Amer.

“I’m doing all I can,” Amer said. “You will certainly need this tea to help you put it behind you. But what I mean by working by numbers is that for most dragons it works without harm, but there is no way of telling whether you are one of the few who will be harmed.”

“I’ll take it,” Selendra said, so low as to be almost inaudible.

“You have to understand,” Amer insisted. The water was boiling, and she poured it on to the mess in the pot. There were ground seeds and some green weeds and something red and dried that swelled in the water to look almost like a flower. Amer stirred it
vigorously then set it aside. “If it doesn’t work, you’re no worse off than now. If it does, well and good. If it works too well, you’ll be restored, but you’ll not be able to blush when the right time comes. Now sit up and tell me you understand before I give it to you.”

Slowly, Selendra rose from the floor. She stretched herself to her whole length, twenty feet without curling, and raised her crest and wings as much as was possible in the kitchen, crowding Haner and Amer into corners. “I understand, and I will take the risk,” she said. “I have always wanted to marry and have dragonets with some dragon I love, despite the risk, but I will give all that up if only I may be restored to safety and not have to spend the rest of my short life with that repulsive Frelt.”

“You don’t have to give up hope unless you don’t blush when you’re close to a dragon who loves you,” Amer said. “It’s repeated doses of this that really do harm. Besides, don’t overrate the risks of marriage. You speak of a short life as if that’s the lot of every bride, but your mother didn’t sicken until her third clutch, and they say such things go by blood. If you’re careful, both of you, and if you marry a dragon who will be satisfied with two clutches, not too close together, you may live to be dowagers gloating over grandchildren yet.”

“I think it’s terrible that maidens must give up their gold and marry,” Haner said. “Both their dowry gold and their own natural golden color. I don’t wish to die as mother did, as so many dragons do.”

“It’s just as bad to be an old maid,” said Amer. “You toughen under the chin, and then your gold turns gray.” Amer herself was almost the same color of the rock of the caves. She picked up the pot of tea, sniffed at it, then strained it carefully into a cup.

“If I can’t marry, I’ll give you my dowry, Haner,” Selendra said, as she took the cup. “With both of our shares, and your delicate
beauty, you can make a splendid match to some very considerate August or Eminent, and I can come and live with you and be an aunt to your single clutch of dragonets.” She sipped the tea, wrinkling her snout at the bitterness.

“Or if you find you can marry, I could do the same and come and live with you,” Haner said. “Let’s say that we will not agree to marry any dragon the other does not know and esteem, and that we will make our establishment together in that way.”

Selendra drained the cup. “I can agree to that,” she said. “But it seems as if you would have a much better chance of finding a good husband if it were known that you have sixteen thousand crowns worth of gold, instead of a mere eight.”

“Most likely the tea won’t have any bad effect,” Amer said. “The more you fret about it the worse it will be.”

“I’m feeling better already,” Selendra said. Indeed, she seemed to be returning at once to her natural gold.

“Fretting about not being able to blush can stop you doing it just as much as my medicine,” Amer said.

“I’m not fretting,” Selendra said. “I’m just talking about Haner’s marriage prospects. There’s that friend of Daverak’s, Dignified Londaver, he danced with you twice at Berend’s ball.”

“He’s nothing to me,” Haner insisted, but she smiled.

“I’d esteem him,” Selendra went on.

“You’ll like as not marry yourself and be happy,” Amer said. She scraped the remaining herbs from the pot and threw them on the fire where they sizzled and shrivelled with an acrid smell.

“I’m feeling sleepy,” Selendra said.

“That’s the medicine working,” Amer said, taking the cup from Selendra. “I’ll just wash this for you. Go to your cave and sleep, when you wake you’ll be as good as new.”

Haner went through the passages behind her sister. As soon as
they went into their sleeping cave, Selendra settled down on her gold.

“I mean it you know,” she said to her sister. “Tell everyone you have sixteen thousand.”

“Then you do the same,” Haner said. “If it should be that you can’t marry, you’ll find that out. If not, then whichever of us shall first find a husband will also give a home to the other. It would be so good to live together as we always have. I shall miss you so much when I am with Berend.”

“I shall come and visit you there,” Selendra said. “Berend invited me. I shall come for a few weeks or a month next spring. There will not be room in Penn’s parsonage for you to visit me, but we shall not become strangers to each other.”

“But then if you meet some dragon you wish to marry in Benandi he will be quite a stranger to me.”

“I doubt I shall ever marry,” Selendra said. “I thought I wanted to, but this was so unpleasant as to change my mind about it entirely. I shall remain a maiden, old and gray, and you shall be a ruby-red dowager, and we shall live together always.” Selendra yawned in a way any mother, governess, or nanny would have said was unfitting for a dragon maid, showing the full expanse of her fangs and the great red cavern of the inside of her mouth.

“The first of us to find a dragon to love shall accept him only if the other knows and esteems him, and then we shall all live together,” Haner said.

“I so swear,” Selendra said, embracing her sister.

“I so swear,” Haner repeated, embracing Selendra back.

Selendra settled back on her gold, yawned again, more befittingly with her wing before her mouth, and fell asleep. Haner watched her for a moment, feeling the first pang of what separation would really mean. For Haner, separation from Selendra seemed as
great a sorrow as their father’s death. She sat down across the mouth of the cave and prepared to guard her sister against any dangers that might come.

Penn spent the whole day from breakfast onwards up on the heights, praying to all three gods. He prayed for mercy for Selendra, for wisdom for himself to do the right thing for her, and for the soul of his father, flying even now towards rebirth. He would have gone to the old church where he had first learned to know the gods, but for the possibility of meeting Frelt there. The more he thought of Frelt the more angry he became. He tried to forgive him, as a parson should, he tried to think better of him than he did, and he tried to find peace through meditation. He found no forgiveness, and could not but think worse of Frelt the more he considered matters, but at last he did find a kind of peace in sitting on the highest point of the crag, the winds and clouds around him, repeating the prayers for his father’s soul over and over.

When he came down, he first encountered his brother. Avan had also spent the day fretting about Selendra. Frelt’s proposal had eclipsed even the Illustrious Daverak’s rudeness for both brothers. Penn’s silver eyes were distant when he came in, whirling only once or twice in a minute, for he had kept them fixed on the depths. He almost stumbled over Avan where he lay couchant across the ledge blocking his brother’s entrance.

“I have had a thought about Selendra,” Avan said. Penn blinked, stepped back carefully, and tried to bring his mind up to the moment, losing all his hard-acquired calm in the process.

“What?” Penn asked. “I can’t see that there’s any choice but that she will have to marry him.”

“I knew you would think so, but there may be another answer.” Avan smiled and drew himself up sejant, legs under him, tail curled around his legs and his arms folded across his breast. “I have a good friend, the Exalt Rimalin. She has an establishment in Irieth, and one in the country, somewhere in the north. Her husband is a minister in government.”

“I believe I have heard of him,” Penn said, though his friends were not political. He was utterly puzzled as to where this could be leading.

“They have some gold, but are not rich, not as those of Exalted rank are considered to be rich. However, they own their establishments outright and owe nothing to anyone and are looked at on all sides as a respectable family. I believe the Exalted Rimalin might be induced to look favorably upon Selendra, with her dowry and being my sister, and yours of course.”

“Look favorably on her?” Penn was even more confused. He even wondered for a moment if Avan could be suggesting some such position as governess to Rimalin’s children. “Look favorably how?”

“As a consort, of course.”

“But you said he had a wife, that his wife was your friend.”

“Yes, that’s just why this will work, don’t you see?” Avan had been thinking this out all afternoon. “He wouldn’t marry Selendra, even if he were free, nobody would marry a compromised maiden however attractive her dowry, and Selendra’s will be only moderate even if you and I could add a little to it.”

“I could not add anything,” Penn said hastily. “I have a family of my own to think of.”

“Well I might add a little, not being established yet,” Avan said.
“But that’s neither here nor there, it would not be enough to make a difference. Nobody would take her as a wife, but through the good offices of Exalt Rimalin, Exalted Rimalin might take her as a consort. A second wife, you know,” he added, after a moment in which Penn’s countenance had become very forbidding. “The Church does allow such things,” he ventured.

“I hardly know how you can consider suggesting such a thing for your own sister,” Penn said. “No doubt such positions of concubinage are well enough for some poor unfortunate females without any protection, but that you might think Selendra had come to that!”

“It would be better for Sel than marrying the dragon who deliberately set out to ruin her, a dragon Father was at feud with for the last six years and whom she despises,” Avan said. “Exalt Rimalin is a jolly, friendly dragon, and a political hostess. I could see Sel often and be sure her position in the establishment was what it should be, and not the drudgery such consorts often endure. And she would have provision made for her exactly as for a wife, I speak of a formal position as consort, not selling her into concubinage.”

“She would most likely bear clutches without pause until she died, and her children would have no inheritance,” Penn said. “The more formal the arrangement, the less power you would have to relieve whatever misery came of it. No, Avan. I would regard such an arrangement as a disgrace. I will not hear another word about it.” Penn leapt over his brother, not quite a flight, yet his wings were spread rather more than some in the Church would like to see a parson’s wings.

Penn landed neatly and walked away down the corridor without a backward glance, meaning to seek out Selendra to inform her immediately that he would consult with Frelt about their marriage. He found Haner first, sitting on her haunches at the door of the
sleeping cave. “It’s all right,” she whispered. “She’s asleep, but look!” Penn looked through the archway to where Selendra slept on the gold of her dowry. She lay curled up with her head under her wing, the picture of feminine grace. Her scales were clean and burnished, and shone a clear pale gold, with no trace whatsoever of any bridal pink.

“How have you managed it?” Penn asked. “What trickery is this? Paint?” But he looked again and knew no paint could ever be so perfect or even.

“She only needed to rest and become calm,” Haner said. “Amer made her a tea and she has been well since.”

Penn started in surprise. He knew only a little of the herbs to which desperate maidens might resort. He had been told in the seminary what a sin they were. “I will speak to Amer,” Penn said, and stalked away, leaving Haner staring after him.

Amer was in the storeroom, arranging some fruit with the remains of the beef for supper. “How are you, Blessed Penn?” she asked. Amer had been his nanny, but since he had been a parson she had always behaved towards him most respectfully. He liked this, of course, and would have been most resentful of any undue familiarity, but it made him a little sad sometimes when he felt a constraint between them where once no constraint had been.