“Then tell me how I rephrase my question,” Palino said waspishly, “in the light of the primitive customs on Home Eight.”
I said, “There’s no such place as Home Eight. This world is called Sveridge.” Primitive indeed!
Palino gave me a pale glare. I gave him one back. Lewin cut in, smooth and humorous. “You’re up against primitive Dragonate customs here, Siglin. We refer to all the worlds by numbers, from Albion, Home One, to Yurov, Home Ten, and the worlds of the Outer Manifold are Cath One, Two, Three, and Four to us. Have you really no idea which of your mother’s husbands is actually your father?”
After that they all began asking me. Being heg is inherited, and I knew they were trying to find out if any of my fathers was heg, too. At length even Alectis joined in, clearing his throat and going very red because he was only a cadet. “I know we’re not supposed to know,” he said, “but I bet you’ve tried to guess. I did. I found out in the end.”
That told me he was Sveridge, too. And he suddenly wasn’t a genius in the Camerati anymore, but just a boy. “Then I bet you wished you hadn’t!” I said. “My friend Inga at Hillfoot found out, and hers turned out to be the one she’s always hated.”
“Well,” said Alectis, redder still. “Er, it wasn’t the one I’d hoped—”
“That’s why I’ve never asked,” I said. And that was true. I’d always hoped it was Timas till now. Donal is so moral, and Yan is fun, but he’s under Donal’s thumb even more than he’s under Mother’s. But I didn’t want my dear old Timas in trouble.
“Well, a cell test should settle it,” Lewin said. “Memo for that, Palino. Terens, remind me to ask how the regular Dragonate usually deals with it. Now, Siglin, this charge was laid against you by a man known as Orm the Worm Warden. Do you know this man?”
“Don’t I just!” I said. “He’s been coming here and looking through our windows and giggling ever since I can remember! He lives on the Worm Reserve in a shack. Mother says he’s a bit wrong in the head, but no one’s locked him up because he’s so good at managing dragons.”
There! I thought. That’ll show them you can’t trust a word Orm says! But they just nodded. Terens murmured to Alectis, “Sveridge worm, Draco draco, was adopted as the symbol of the Dragonate—”
“We have all heard of dragons,” Palino said to him nastily.
Lewin cut in again. I suppose it was his job as presiding Updriten. “Siglin, Orm, in his deposition, refers to an incident in the Worm Reserve last Friday. We want you to tell us what happened then, if anything.”
Grim’s teeth! I thought. I’d hoped they’d just ask me questions. You can nearly always get around questions without lying. And I’d no idea what Orm had said. “I don’t usually go to the Dragon Reserve,” I said, “because of being Mother’s heir. When I was born, the Fortune Teller said the dragons would take me.” I saw Renick and Palino exchange looks of contempt at our primitive customs. But Mother had in a good Teller, and I believe it enough to keep away from the Reserve.
“So why did you go last Friday?” said Lewin.
“Neal dared me to,” I said. I couldn’t say anything else with a lie detector in my hands. Neal gets on with Orm, and he goes to the Reserve a lot. Up to Friday he thought I was being silly refusing to go. But the real trouble was that Neal had been there all along, riding Barra beside me on Nellie, and now Lewin had made me mention Neal, I couldn’t think how to pretend he hadn’t been there. “I rode up behind Wormhill,” I said, “and then over the Saddle until we could see the sea. That means you’re in the Reserve.”
“Isn’t the Reserve fenced off at all?” Renick asked disapprovingly.
“No,” I said. “Worms—dragons—can fly, so what’s the point? They stay in because the shepherds bombard them if they don’t, and we all give them so many sheep every month.” And Orm makes them stay in, bad cess to him! “Anyway,” I said, “I was riding down a kyle—that’s what we call those narrow stony valleys—when my horse reared and threw me. Next thing I knew—”
“Question,” said Palino. “Where was your brother at this point?”
He would spot that! I thought. “Some way behind,” I said. Six feet, in fact. Barra is used to dragons and just stood stock-still. “This dragon shuffled head down with its great snout across the kyle,” I said. “I sat on the ground with its great amused eye staring at me and listening to Nellie clattering away up the kyle. It was a youngish one, sort of brown-green, which is why I hadn’t seen it. They can keep awfully still when they want to. And I said a rude word to it.
“‘That’s no way to speak to a dragon!’ Orm said. He was sitting on a rock on the other side of the kyle, quite close, laughing at me.” I wondered whether to fill the gap in my story where Neal was by telling them that Orm always used to be my idea of Jack Frost when I was little. He used to call at Uplands for milk then, to feed dragon fledglings on, but he was so rude to Mother that he goes to Inga’s place now. Orm is long and skinny and brown, with a great white bush of hair and beard, and he smells rather. But they must have smelled him in Holmstad, so I said, “I was scared because the dragon was so near I could feel the heat off it. And then Orm said, ‘You have to speak politely to this dragon. He’s my particular friend. You give me a nice kiss, and he’ll let you go.’”
I think Lewin murmured something like, “Ah, I thought it might be that!” but it may just have been in his mind. I don’t know because I was in real trouble then, trying to pick my way through without mentioning Neal. The little box got so wet it nearly slipped out of my hand. I said, “Every time I tried to get up, Orm beckoned, and the dragon pushed me down with its snout with a gamesome look in its eye. And Orm cackled with laughter. They were both really having fun.” This was true, but the dragon also pushed between me and Neal and mantled its wings when Neal tried to help. And Neal said some pretty awful things to Orm. Orm giggled and insulted Neal back. He called Neal a booby who couldn’t stand up for himself against women. “Then,” I said, “then Orm said I was the image of Mother at the same age—which isn’t true: I’m bigger all over—and he said, ‘Come on, kiss and be friends!’ Then he skipped down from his rock and took hold of my arm—”
I had to stop and swallow there. The really awful thing was that as soon as Orm had hold of me, I got a strong picture from his mind: Orm kissing a pretty lady smaller than me, with another dragon, an older, blacker one, looking on from the background. And I recognized the lady as Mother, and I was absolutely disgusted.
“So I hit Orm and got up and ran away,” I said. “And Orm shouted to me all the time I was running up the kyle and catching Nellie, but I took no notice.”
“Question,” said Renick. “What action did the dragon take?”
“They—they always chase you if you run, I’d heard,” Alectis said shyly.
“And this one appears to have been trained to Orm’s command,” Palino said.
“It didn’t chase me,” I said. “It stayed with Orm.” The reason was that neither of them could move. I still don’t know what I did—I had a picture of myself leaning back inside my own head and swinging mighty blows, the way you do with a pickax—and Neal says the dragon went over like a cartload of potatoes and Orm fell flat on his back. But Orm could speak, and he screamed after us that I’d killed the worm and I’d pay for it. But I was screaming, too, at Neal, to keep away from me because I was heg. That was the thing that horrified me most. Before that I’d tried not to think I was. After all, for all I knew, everyone can read minds and get a book from the bookcase without getting up from his chair. And Neal told me to pull myself together and think what we were going to tell Mother. We decided to say that we’d met a dragon in the Reserve and I’d killed it and found out I was heg. I made Neal promise not to mention Orm. I couldn’t bear even to think of Orm. And Mother was wonderfully understanding, and I really didn’t realize that I’d put her in danger as well as Neal.