The evening rapidly became a blur of novelty meats—the most tentacled being octopus stuffed with squid stuffed with cuttlefish—and introductions I couldn’t keep straight. A handful of people had traveled the Southlands (including an octogenarian who insisted that we Goreddis were poisoning ourselves by eating so much pine; Kiggs was confounded by this, but I thought of Josquin and Moy and laughed to myself). I met the heads of all the founding families, of whom I only remembered the one I’d already met, Amalia Perdixis Lita. Two of her sons, smiling, bearded fellows in their forties, accompanied her. Camba was evidently the baby of the family.
We kept glimpsing Comonot and losing him again. Halfway through the evening, he planted himself beside the fountain and began telling stories in a wine-ripe voice. Kiggs darted over to Comonot’s side at once, and I followed. Drink rendered the Ardmagar talkative, and there were matters of state and strategy that the prince wouldn’t wish him to reveal to the gathering crowd.
“I’ve seen war and carnage,” the old saar was saying. “I’ve killed humans, burned villages, eaten their babies, and stepped on their dogs. I’ve killed other dragons—not often, but I’ve severed more than one jugular and been scalded by the steaming blood. Battling the Old Ard should have been nothing new.”
His jowly face sweated in the evening heat. He took a swallow of wine. “Still, I had never seen anything like this. The sky-rending screams, the choking sulfurous smoke stinging your eyes even through nictitating eyelids. Below you spreads a valley of charred and oozing meat—meat you can’t even eat, all nestmates and co-fliers. You recognize that flayed wing or this mangled head, the smells of a hundred individuals beneath the singular reek of death.
“How many did I kill? When they first charged us, fangs bared and gullets blazing, I hoped I might not have to kill at all. A bite on the back of the neck to establish dominance, and they’d back down. That was our way, once. But the moment comes when claws are tearing at your eyes and your wing is on fire and you have no other option.
“We won that battle, if you can call it winning. We were the only side with dragons still flying. They fought to the death, all of them.” The Ardmagar paused, his eyes glazed, remembering.
“It was unconscionable,” he said at last. “Eskar was right. I can’t countenance the deaths of so many. We lay single eggs and incubate them for three years. We are a slow-maturing species. When I think of all the time and resources and education that lay wrecked on the floor of that valley, just to stop me from returning north …” He shook his head, his mouth bowed bleakly. “What a waste.”
“Why did they fight to the death?” asked a tall man at the edge of the listening crowd. I recognized him as one of Camba’s brothers; shadows flickered over his face in the lamplight. “The Old Ard are dragons, too. They value logic as much as you do. Where’s the logic in dying?” Around him the crowd murmured in agreement.
Comonot considered. “Logic can lead to many ends, citizen. No one likes to admit that—not even your philosophers. Dragons revere its incorruptible purity, but logic will coldly lead you over a cliff. It all depends on where you begin, on first principles.
“The Old Ard have found a new ideology. Its endpoint is potentially the death of thousands, up to and including themselves. I can assure you that they have arrived there through ruthless, unflinching logic, from some very particular beginning. We could, in principle, reason backward to find out what it is. I’m not sure I care to.”
“Why not?” asked someone else.
Comonot’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Because what if it makes sense?”
The gathered Porphyrians laughed at his marvelous joke. Comonot blinked owlishly at them, and I suspected he hadn’t been joking at all.
Our hostess, the Honorable Phyllida Malou Melaye, had quietly joined the circle of listeners. She raised her bulldog chin and spoke up: “It is generally in Porphyry’s interest for the Old Ard to be quelled. They’re bent on taking back the Southlands, where half our fortune is tied. However, as much as we’d like to support you, Ardmagar, you must acknowledge that we risk retribution if we help you and you lose. The Old Ard would not overlook it; they might even punish us before they take the south.”
Comonot bowed cordially. “I hear and respect your caution, Madam Speaker.”
“You must balance Porphyry’s risk with adequate compensation,” she said, refilling her wineglass at the fountain. “We have a panoply of ideologies here, but there’s one we all agree on: flexibility is always possible, for the right price.”
“I expected that,” said Comonot. “I am prepared to negotiate for—”
Kiggs elbowed the Ardmagar, which caused the old saar to slop some wine onto the floor. Servants appeared as if out of nowhere to mop up; Comonot scowled as Kiggs whispered urgently in his ear. “I wasn’t going to blurt it all out here,” Comonot grumbled back. “Give me some credit, Prince.”
Speaker Melaye raised her glass. “We will negotiate in committee over the coming days. Let us enjoy our dinner. Business makes a bitter sauce.”
Comonot wordlessly raised his glass to her in turn and downed what remained of his wine.