That had been my sticking point with Uncle Orma’s thesis: interbreeding on such a scale had seemed unthinkable. If the Saints had been part of a deliberate draconic experiment, though, suddenly their existence made a lot more sense.
“Only the Ardmagar Tomba and his top generals knew about it,” the old archivist continued. “These half-humans had capabilities mere dragons did not. They were to be a race of weapon-creatures to wipe humanity out of the Southlands once and for all.
“Tomba and the others failed to consider that half-humans might take the humans’ side,” wheezed the archivist, his wings shaking with palsy. “They turned their minds against us, invented the martial art to fight us. War against humans was never the same again.”
That martial art was the dracomachia. I was convinced now beyond all doubts: Orma had been right.
The archivist snorted and spat on the floor again. “My grandfather bred three half-humans himself, and he helped found the Censors after dragonkind’s ignominious defeat. There was to be no more interbreeding. We Censors were charged with ensuring that the Great Mistake never happened again.”
“By suppressing all memory of it?” I cried.
“And by policing those undraconic inclinations that might lead someone like yourself to come into existence. Clearly we have failed in our mandate,” he snarled, his milky eyes squinting, as if that might help him see me. “I smell what you are, you thing. You also should have been eradicated. I would kill you right now, if not for Comonot and this fearsome female.”
“Do you hold my treaty to blame?” said Comonot, eyeing the older dragon warily.
The archivist flapped his spindly wings once, a species of shrug. “If our task had been to hold the plates of the world in place, we would have known it was doomed from the start. Perhaps our ideal, too, was futile. Some things you only see after the fact.”
He began coughing again and couldn’t seem to stop.
Eskar rushed to the archivist, knocked him onto his side, and jumped on top of him. “She’s trying to clear his airways by forcing his diaphragm to contract,” said Comonot at my shoulder. “Don’t be frightened. It’s very effective.”
I drew him away from the violence in the corner. “Ardmagar, I need to go home. I’ve learned that Jannoula—General Laedi, Experiment 723a—will be traveling to Goredd next. Could you warn the Queen? I haven’t been able to contact her because the quigs took my thnik.”
“Of course,” said Comonot, his gaze still drifting toward Eskar. “I’ll tell Queen Glisselda about Jannoula, and that you’re on your way.”
“Can you spare Eskar to fly me?”
Comonot drew back, giving himself a triple chin, and frowned. “Absolutely not. I need Eskar here. We have two more labs to capture on the way to the Kerama. The hatchlings can take you.”
I bowed. It would have to do. At least I’d be going home.
Comonot’s eyes had locked on Eskar again. She was still jumping on the archivist, even though he’d already coughed up a ball of yak skin and a small boulder. “Do you suppose,” said Comonot, leaning in confidentially, “Eskar would consent to be mated?”
I choked. The Ardmagar slapped me on the back. “I know about your uncle,” he said. “That gave me the idea. Eskar exemplifies what I want for our people: the reexamination of assumptions, the flexibility needed to choose unorthodox options.”
“She chose Orma,” I said throatily, still coughing.
“Nothing stops her from choosing me as well.” The old saarantras gave me a sly sidelong look. “Sometimes our reason will lead us to the same morality as your empathy and feeling, and sometimes it won’t. I find that …” His mouth formed not-quite words, waiting for his mind to catch up. “Exhilarating?” he offered at last.
I wasn’t sure about that, but then I was going home, and that was exhilarating enough for me.
I returned to the atrium, where the former exiles had built an enormous fire and, like true Porphyrians, were preparing a celebratory feast. Cooking was not a draconic art, by any stretch; dragons wolfed down their prey, warm and bloody, like all good predators. The exiles still relished grabbing a felldeer by the throat and shaking it until its neck snapped; I’d witnessed this many times on our journey. It wasn’t raw that bothered them so much as bland.
One of the things Porphyry had agreed to supply, and which the exiles had carried uncomplainingly, were sacks of pepper, cardamom, and ginger. They used these spices now to exquisitely season their roasted yaks.
Comonot arrived just as everything was ready. We feasted long into the night. I slept by Eskar, who’d been told I was going. “You should have asked me first,” she muttered, a sulfuric scolding. “I could have persuaded Comonot to let me go.”
She didn’t say so, but I suspected she would have stayed in Goredd until she found Orma. I rather doubted Comonot’s chances with her.
I was impatient to get going, but another half day passed before the Porphyrian hatchlings were ready to leave. “We had to make preparations,” Brisi—in her saarantras—explained, leading me by the hand to a smaller chamber off the main atrium.
I gasped in astonishment. The hatchlings had built a basket of woven wire and wood. “Do you like it?” said Brisi, bouncing on her toes. “You looked so miserable when Eskar carried you. Now you can sit properly. It’s an aerial palanquin.”
I helped them move it into the atrium, where the hatchlings unfolded in a clutter of extending wings. Quigs scrambled to unlock and open a mechanical door in the ceiling. It let in an unexpected shaft of brilliant moonlight; I’d lost track of night and day down here. Grasping my basket with her front claws, Brisi flew me to the height of the mountain and out into the open sky. The other four hatchlings flew circles around us.
The palanquin was ingenious, but Brisi was not the strong, smooth flier Eskar was. I experienced every wing beat as a terrifying drop followed by a stomach-lurching heave. I was sick over a glacier. Brisi watched with interest and screeched, “A thousand years from now, that will still be there, frozen in the ice. Unless a quig eats it.”
We flew until dawn, hid and rested, and took off again in the late afternoon. Days passed in this pattern. The hatchlings carried me in turns, but none had Eskar’s wingspan. My stomach acclimated, but then I would toss and turn when it was time to sleep, unaccustomed to the stillness of the ground.
The hatchlings, to my surprise, seemed to have a clear idea of how to get to Goredd. I asked Brisi about this one morning when we stopped to rest. “Maternal memories,” she screeched. “I’ve always had them, but they didn’t fit in my head properly. They make sense for the first time, in context.”
We passed encampments, glacial plains filled with dragons of the Old Ard. My entourage took care not to fly too near, and kept a sharp eye out for scouts. It was easier to evade the eyes of other dragons than I would have guessed. Some instinct, or perhaps maternal memory, prompted my entourage to use the landscape to full advantage, skimming valley bottoms and ducking up ravines. Often the clouds hung low, a white ocean between grim island mountaintops, and the hatchlings used this for camouflage. More than once, they landed and held still, disguised as rocks or snow (after stowing my basket and me in the twiggy taiga or under a glacier).
On the sixth night, however, we crossed a ridge and found ourselves above a “vulture valley”—a draconic cesspit. An enormous old male had been resting on the ground, concealed by the ridge; he spotted us overhead and flew to intercept us, screaming, “Land and be identified!”
The hatchlings had strict instructions to comply with all such demands. Per Comonot’s orders, they were to land on the nearest snowy peak and explain that I was another dangerous deviant (like Orma, I supposed) to be delivered to General Laedi.
My entourage had other ideas. Brisi plunged into a sudden nosedive straight toward a knife-like ridge; her quick movement triggered the old male’s prey drive, and he barreled after her. Icy wind bit my cheeks; I could not catch the air to breathe. The earth spun and tilted sickeningly as Brisi stretched her wings. My sight blurred; my ears rang; my head snapped back painfully.
She circled back up toward her fellows. The bright spots in my vision cleared, and I saw that the others had stretched a net of chains between two of them. They flew at the old saar’s face; he was focused on Brisi and couldn’t dodge in time. Claws and horns entangled, he thrashed and bucked, pulling the net out of the hatchlings’ grip. They screamed in dismay, but the net did its job. The hostile dragon was too tangled up to fly. He careened out of the sky and hit the sharp, rocky ridge at a horrifying angle. He died instantly, his neck broken.
The hatchlings, alarmed, buzzed around him like bees. They’d only meant to entangle him so they could escape, but there was no undoing what had happened. After a hurried discussion, they carried his body in the net to a more secluded ravine, where flames wouldn’t be a beacon to our enemies, and burned him according to Porphyrian funereal custom. Brisi spoke words I didn’t know, until I realized it was her native tongue in a dragon’s voice, a hard-mouthed Porphyrian. I understood just enough to discern prayers to her gods, Lakhis and Chakhon.
Giving the unknown dragon a funeral had struck the hatchlings as the fitting and proper thing to do. I marveled at this. Comonot had been loath to give the Porphyrians quigutl devices, but he’d utterly failed to foresee the Porphyrian innovations the exiles would bring with them: voting, cuisine, and now funeral rites. The world was changing indeed.
It was nearly dawn, so we found ourselves a different secluded gully to sleep in. As I tried to get comfortable on the rocky ground, I said to the hatchlings, “It was clever to bring a chain net, and to know how to use it. Dragons are famously bad at working together, but you made it look natural.”
Brisi examined her talons, a coy gesture a human girl might have made, but completely bizarre in a dragon. “We learned to use nets from the fishermen back home.”
Around us the others softly murmured, “Porphyry!” like another prayer.