Part 4 (2/2)
”But she's right,” said Millie. ”Rudeness is rudeness, even if unperceived.”
Glisselda rolled her eyes. ”You know what Lady Corongi would say. We must show them we're superior and put them in their place. Dominate or be dominated. Dragons know no other way.”
That sounded to me like an extremely dangerous way to interact with dragons. I hesitated, uncertain whether it would be within bounds for me to correct Lady Corongi, Glisselda's governess, who outranked me in every possible way.
”Why do you think they finally surrendered?” Glisselda said. ”It's because they recognized our superiority-militarily, intellectually, morally.”
”That's what Lady Corongi says?” I said, alarmed but struggling not to show it.
”That's what everybody says,” sniffed Glisselda. ”It's obvious. Dragons envy us; that's why they take our shape whenever they can.”
I gaped at her. Blue St. Prue, Glisselda was going to be queen someday! She needed to understand the truth of things. ”We didn't defeat them, whatever you may have been told. Our dracomachia gave us approximate parity; they couldn't win without taking unacceptable losses. It's not a surrender so much as a truce.”
Glisselda wrinkled her nose. ”You imply that we haven't dominated them at all.”
”We haven't-fortunately!” I said, rising and trying to cover my agitation by rearranging the music on the stand. ”They wouldn't stand for it; they'd bide their time until we let our guard down.”
Glisselda looked profoundly disturbed. ”But if we're weaker than they are ...”
I leaned against the harpsichord. ”It's not about strength or weakness, Princess. Why do you imagine our peoples fought for so long?”
Glisselda put her hands together, as if delivering a little sermon. ”Dragons hate us because we are just and favored by the Saints. Evil always seeks to destroy the good that stands against it.”
”No.” I nearly smacked the harpsichord lid but recalled myself in time, slowing my hand and tapping twice. Nevertheless, the girls stared at me round-eyed in antic.i.p.ation of my astonis.h.i.+ng opinions. I tried to moderate that with a gentle tone. ”The dragons wanted these lands back. Goredd, Ninys, and Samsam used to be their hunting ground. Big game ran here-elk, aurochs, felldeer-in herds stretching to the horizon, before our kind moved in and plowed it under.”
”That was a very long time ago. Surely they can't still miss it,” said Glisselda shrewdly. It would be unwise to make a.s.sumptions about her intelligence based on her cherubic face, I noted. Her gaze was as sharp as her cousin Lucian's.
”Our people migrated here two thousand years ago,” I said. ”That's ten dragon generations. The herds have been extinct for about a thousand, but the dragons do indeed still feel the loss. They are confined to the mountains, where their population dwindles.”
”They can't hunt the northern plains?” asked the princess.
”They can and do, but the northern plains are only a third the size of the united Southlands, and they're not empty, either. The dragons compete with barbarian tribes for diminis.h.i.+ng herds.”
”They can't just eat barbarians?” said Glisselda.
I disliked her supercilious tone but could not say so. I traced the decorative inlay on the instrument lid, channeling my irritation into curlicues, and said: ”We humans aren't good eating-too stringy-and we're no fun to hunt because we band together and fight back. My teacher once heard a dragon compare us to c.o.c.kroaches.”
Millie wrinkled her nose, but Glisselda looked at me quizzically. Apparently she'd never even seen a c.o.c.kroach. I let Millie explain; her description elicited a shriek from the princess, who demanded: ”In what manner do we resemble these vermin?”
”Take it from a dragon's perspective: we're everywhere, we can hide easily, we reproduce comparatively quickly, we spoil their hunting, and we smell bad.”
The girls scowled. ”We do not either smell bad!” said Millie.
”To them we do.” This a.n.a.logy was proving particularly apt, so I took it to its logical conclusion. ”Imagine you've got a terrible infestation. What do you do?”
”Kill them!” cried both girls together.
”But what if the roaches were intelligent and worked together, using a roachly dracomachia against us? What if they had a real chance of winning?”
Glisselda squirmed with horror, but Millie said, ”Make a truce with them. Let them have certain houses to themselves if they leave the ones we're living in alone.”
”We wouldn't mean it, though,” said the princess grimly, drumming her fingers on top of the harpsichord. ”We'd pretend to make peace, then set their houses on fire.”
I laughed; she'd surprised me. ”Remind me not to earn your enmity, Princess. But if the c.o.c.kroaches were dominating us, we wouldn't give in? We'd trick them?”
”Absolutely.”
”All right. Can you think of anything-anything at all-that the c.o.c.kroaches could do to persuade us that we should let them live?”
The girls exchanged a skeptical look. ”c.o.c.kroaches can only scuttle horridly and spoil your food,” said Millie, hugging herself. She'd had experience, I gathered.
Glisselda, however, was thinking hard, the tip of her tongue protruding from her mouth. ”What if they held court or built cathedrals or wrote poetry?”
”Would you let them live?”
”I might. How ugly are they, though, really?”
I grinned. ”Too late: you've noticed they're interesting. You understand them when they talk. What if you could become one, for short periods of time?”
They writhed with laughter. I felt they'd understood, but I underscored my point: ”Our survival depends not on being superior but on being sufficiently interesting.”
”Tell me,” said Glisselda, borrowing Millie's embroidered handkerchief to wipe her eyes, ”how does a mere a.s.sistant music mistress know so much about dragons?”
I met her gaze, clamping down on the tremor in my voice. ”My father is the Crown's legal expert on Comonot's Treaty. He used to read it to me as a bedtime story.”
That didn't adequately explain my knowledge, I realized, but the girls found the idea so hilarious that they questioned me no further. I smiled along with them, but felt a pang for my poor, sad papa. He'd been so desperate to understand where he stood, legally, for unwittingly marrying a saarantras.
As the saying went, he was neck deep in St. Vitt's spit. We both were. I curtsied and took my leave quickly, lest this Heavenly saliva somehow become apparent to the girls. My own survival required me to counterbalance interesting with invisible.
It was, as always, a relief to retire to my rooms for the evening. I had practicing to do, a book on Zibou sinus-song I'd been dying to read, and of course a number of questions for my uncle. I seated myself at the spinet first and played a peculiar dissonant chord, my signal to Orma that I needed to talk. ”Good evening, Phina,” boomed the ba.s.so kitten.
”Fruit Bat has started wandering around the garden. I'm concerned that-”
”Stop,” said Orma. ”Yesterday you were offended when I didn't greet you, but today you leap straight in. I want credit for saying 'Good evening.' ”
I laughed. ”You're credited. But listen: I'm having a problem.”
”I'm sure you are,” he said, ”but I have a student in five minutes. Is it a five-minute problem?”
”I doubt it.” I considered. ”Can I come to you at St. Ida's? I'm not comfortable discussing this through the spinet anyway.”
”As you wish,” he said. ”Give me at least an hour, though. This student is particularly incapable.”
As I was bundling up, I realized I had done nothing about Basind's blood on my cloak. The dragon's blood had long since dried but was still s.h.i.+ny as ever. I slapped at it, causing a blizzard of little silver flakes. I beat as much of the stain out as I could and swept the gleaming detritus into the fireplace.
I took the Royal Road, which descended in wide, graceful curves. The streets were dark and silent, lit only by a quarter moon, lighted windows, and occasional Speculus lanterns that had been set out early. Down near the river, the air was sweet with woodsmoke and rich with someone's garlicky dinner, then dense with the reek of a backyard cesspit. Or maybe offal-was I near a butcher's?
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