ʺYou could help,ʺ I said, panting, to Dag.
ʺI could,ʺ he agreed, from somewhere out of sight around her rib cage. His voice echoed slightly. ʺBut I’m not going to. This is your show, I think.ʺ The way he said it I didn’t even feel like my older brother was telling me he wasn’t going to do something I wanted him to do. What I thought of was the way he agreed when Ralas told him to take Sippy and me with him. Just like that. No fuss. Although that was about Ralas, of course. And it was me she gave the ointment to.
Dragon skin isn’t, I guess, quite as thick as you think—or anyway as I thought—it’s just that they’re so big, dragons, everything is all about how big they are. Also the bumps and knobs and ridges are thick and hard, but they’re supposed to be protective. The scales in between feel surprisingly like skin—warm and unexpectedly elastic. Although you still have to get down on your hands and knees and lean as hard as you can when you’re trying to rub liniment into a dragon. And the occasional scale-edge bites into your palms. But you know you’ve finally started to get where you want to go when the dragon begins to hum.
By that third day the other cadets were coming back. A few of the fourth-years came around when everyone was eating to gloat at the First Flighters, but it was a nice sort of gloating, a ʺsee you on the other sideʺ kind. Most of the different years did kind of stick together, the first-years together and so on, but you could sure tell that the third-years were a tense bunch. They were huddled together like a regiment in enemy territory. Dag being Dag, he joined the First Flighters but always managed to stay at the edge. I could guess that he’d been like this before the First Flight assignments went up, but it made it easier for the third-years to overlook him now. Except it seemed to me that they didn’t. If anything they were trying to welcome him but he wasn’t making it easy. Dag is a stubborn old geezer and I guessed that whether it was conscious or not he was damned if he was going to be accepted at last because everyone was (nearly) as upset that Hereyta was on the First Flight list as he was. I swear he got taller every time we approached a third-year group.
But there was more to it than that. I didn’t notice, the first two days. One or two people wandered as if idly past where we were sitting and said something to Dag about a dragon, and Dag answered, and they went away again. Then once I did notice that someone seemed to have passed by our table an awful lot for one meal unless he was very hungry or very absent-minded, and finally Eled said to Gham, who were both sitting with us, ʺLet’s go pester the cooks for a few minutes and let poor Chort ask Dag whatever he’s dying to ask him. Ern, you come with us.ʺ
ʺNo, Ern, you stay here,ʺ said Dag. ʺChort has to grow up some day, and Ern’s not even a cadet.ʺ
So Eled and Gham strolled away and Chort, after a moment, sidled up, looking at me in a sidly kind of way, and then asked Dag what seemed to me a completely harmless question about the grooming mixture he used on Hereyta. Dag answered calmly and Chort sidled away again. Eled and Gham came back with a plate of sweet buns the kitchen had given them to make them go away, and we all went on eating. I would have started noticing more after that anyway, but by the next day when the Academy started to fill up again for the next term it got so obvious that a lot of people turned to Dag for answers about dragons that I didn’t have to.
But I was totally not expecting it when one of the tutors came to our table at breakfast on the fourth day. The cadets all shot to their feet so I stood up too. Facing us was a tall, white-haired, straight-backed, commanding old fellow in the red and blue of the seriously senior higher-ups. He let everyone scramble to his or her feet and come to some kind of dazed, early-in-the-morning, not-expecting-any-ordeals order, but he had the sort of presence that makes you feel after the fact that whatever you’ve actually done, it’s the right thing. So the line of half-stupefied third-year cadets was transformed under this man’s eyes into a crack troop, alert and ready for anything. Ralas has a quieter version of it. It makes you like her even more at the same time as it makes her even more intimidating.
Then he said, as politely as if he were the cadet and we were the tutors, ʺSingla Dag, please introduce me to your brother, as I have not yet had that privilege.ʺ
Dag was less flustered than the others, maybe because big impressive in-charge types were all, to him, both inclusively and individually responsible for Hereyta’s presence on the First Flight list. The higher you were in the hierarchy the more responsible, and this guy looked pretty high. He answered promptly enough though, and maybe only I could hear the edge in his voice: ʺZedak Storkhal, this is my brother, Ern. Ern, I wish to present you to Zedak hri do lun Storkhal.ʺ
I made sure I had my visitor’s ribbon on straight, but the zedak didn’t look like someone who’d be ironic before he laid you out. I didn’t know how to address a tutor, let alone a zedak, which were the really important ones, and I had no idea what the hri do lun meant, but the way everyone was behaving, it probably meant ʺgod.ʺ Oh, well, I thought. ʺZedak Storkhal, my honour is already in your hands; anything else I can give you is yours.ʺ
ʺYour honour is gift enough,ʺ this scary old man said, which is the correct response, of course, but he said it as if he meant it. I tried to stand straighter. ʺBut I would ask you for something else. I have heard that you have an ointment that heals old aches, and I, like Hereyta, have a sore shoulder, and I would beg a little of your ointment if I could.ʺ
If he had said ʺthe Academy is being dissolved tomorrow and all the dragons set loose to go feralʺ it couldn’t have been more astonishing. Around me I felt everyone turning to stone, and tables all over the hall were falling silent. The zedak was standing a few feet away from us and he had a carrying voice.
Back home I was used to giving people stuff for things like aching shoulders. But I was used to having them ask me quietly, and offhand, as if they weren’t really asking. I was not used to being addressed like an audience was watching, which there was. And I wasn’t at home either. But Ralas had drummed it into me that you were responsible for the stuff you gave people, and you did not automatically give them what they asked for. You asked questions first. I should have been saying ʺyes, sir, no, sir, how high do I jump, sir?ʺ and I was going to interrogate him instead.
At least I remembered to call him sir. ʺHonoured sir, I must ask you about the pain in your shoulder, because the liniment may not be the best choice. Sir.ʺ
He looked positively amused—and still perfectly at his ease. That made one of him, in the length and breadth of the food halls. ʺAsk away, respected brother of Singla Dag.ʺ
So I did, and at the end I took a deep breath and said, ʺIt’s not the liniment you want, sir, butʺ—here patting my pockets; I’d brought all the stuff I knew how to use with me to the Academy because I couldn’t help it, it would be like leaving your trousers behind, but most of it was upstairs in Dag’s room under the bed—ʺbut delor leaf. Ah.ʺ At the same time, I wouldn’t feel like myself if my pockets weren’t lumpy, and one of the lumps had just proved to be a little cloth wallet I knew contained, among other things, delor leaf. I was fascinated to observe that my hands weren’t shaking as I unfolded it. I don’t suppose the zedak was really ten feet tall but I felt mouse-sized as I went round the table to give him his leaves. ʺSir. That’s, uh, about three days’ worth. Steep it in boiling water. Sir.ʺ