“Would you like some food now?”
“No, perhaps later. My appetite isn’t much these days. There are other advantages to living here. I’m fond of reading. I can get books here. Histories, geographies, even stories. Do you read Drakine?”
“Not at all. Oh, gknuss, I know that: stop! Could I read one of your histories? I’d like to know more about dragons.”
“Dragon histories aren’t that different from human histories. Maybe they see more of it. Like humans, they’re resourceful in a pinch, but that’s nothing to how adept we are at making ourselves comfortable. Having humans care for our more mundane needs is a habit in place since before your grandsires’ time. You’re familiar with the idea of a habit?”
“I know you can pick up bad ones more easily than good.” Secretly, she felt crushed. The Lodger wasn’t at all what she expected, and she’d enjoyed this time (when he was awake, anyway) more than anything she’d done since coming here. But he had to bring up habits. The Captain was a great exemplar and expounder on habits. He demanded good ones from his charges and ignored all the bad ones he’d picked up himself.
The Lodger yawned. “I enjoy this sort of talk. But it tires me these days. I think I will sleep for a while.”
He settled down with his head between his forelegs, again reminding her of a lanky old hound.
Ileth saw a scale nit making for the dragon and smashed it with her foot.
“My appetite has come back a little thanks to your conversation. Maybe you can order me a light meal. Nothing that’ll pry another tooth loose, perhaps some warm broth and cow liver, sliced thin.”
She couldn’t suppress a spin. The dragon had asked to eat! Interestingly, she cared for the dragon’s sake, not that she’d carried out her first commission on her own successfully.
The dragon set his head down and took a few deep breaths. She sat cross-legged opposite his nostrils, watching. She rose as she’d been taught in the dance classes, using just the muscles in her legs and trying to keep her spine upright, and faked a loud cough. The Lodger didn’t stir. She stepped forward and touched him on the bridge of his nose between his nostrils. The skin felt like river-smoothed stones, but warm and slightly yielding like the tissue of her own nose.
One golden eye popped open and she startled.
“You have to be careful with older dragons, human, especially in the transitions between sleeping and wakefulness. We have violent dreams. That may persist into waking.”
“I’m sorry.”
“If you want to touch, just ask first. I take it as a compliment. Other dragons don’t.”
“They warned us about that. I thought you were asleep.”
“Everything takes a long time with my years riding one’s back. Even going properly to sleep.”
Ileth nodded.
“I’ll give you a tip: a dragon’s griff relax ever so slightly in sleep.”
“The griff, they are—?”
“These,” he said, extending two projections like armor-plated fans from behind his jaw. He rattled them against his neck scales. “They protect the upper neck in battle. Well, that’s the original purpose, I suppose. You can read a dragon’s mood by studying his griff. But when I am asleep, you should go stretch your legs and get something to drink and eat.”
He closed his eye again and wiggled his shoulders down. When his griff dropped again, Ileth sidled out and hurried up to the kitchens.
She’d lost track of time underground again. The kitchens were nearly deserted. She smelled baking bread and her own appetite roused. Interesting that they were making bread. Perhaps there was to be a feast with humans and dragons. She didn’t think the dragons ever requested bread.
The kitchen worker was an older man. He had a curious artificial leg. It looked like it was made out of the same sort of clay as the pipe she’d smoked at the party.
The Lodger’s words came back to her. Why a leg made out of, or coated with, pipe clay? She could reason it out, right? Something to do with impact? No, she didn’t see how clay would be better than wood. Of course! He was a baker. He’d be standing by hot stoves all the time. Wood would dry out and rot unless it was constantly cared for, and metal would heat up and conduct to his stump. Pipe clay was built to handle heat and remain comfortable. She supposed it would show dirt and be easy to clean as well, both important matters for a baker. One hoped.
The baker had shaggy eyebrows and raised one as she changed her walking lantern for a larger one that threw more light.
“You hungry, dear? I have a warm loaf and I’ll share a bit of cheese with you. I remember how hungry I got when I was your age, and I wasn’t even leaping about all day. A swallow of brine wouldn’t go amiss either. Eases the sweat cramps.”
“I’m looking for some . . . for some liver for the Lodger. He says he has an appetite and there’s nobody about. Thin sliced, the liver.”
“Back on his feed, is he? Good. Terrible when a dragon gets old and starts to go.”
Since the Lodger was the first dragon she’d ever known, she didn’t know whether to agree, so she just gave what she hoped was a sympathetic nod and moved to the cool storage. She hoped she could find a liver. Did they throw all the organ meats together for sausages or something?
She heard a dripping sound and followed it to the cool room. A pipe ran up the wall of a carved access shaft and branched out like a three-limbed tree here, part of the feed system that used a tank somewhere high in the delvings to keep ready water at the cisterns and the mouths where the cleaners stuck canvas hoses for washing out the gutters and flushing out the lavatories.
She wondered at the intricacy of it all. Light. Air. Water. Dragons. People. Food. Sewage. All following their paths.
A cat, disturbed in its prowling, shot into the dark mass of hanging meat and sausages. After a few attempts, she found a brine barrel with livers, right next to one with brains. No kidneys. Perhaps they were turned into pies or sausage right away.
She wrapped the liver in a leather apron and carried it like a swaddled baby back up through the bakery. The night baker resumed his discourse as if she’d been standing there the whole time:
“When I was an apprentice we lost one—he just went to sleep. And kept sleeping. The filth piled up and it took a lot of doing to shift him and clean him. Being fulsome of energy at that age and strong besides, I was on that detail. I keep my fingernails cleaner now.” He held up his hands with palms held so she could see his nails.
He covered a series of trays filled with long loaves of ration-bread with flour-dusted cloth and placed them into a slotted cabinet as he spoke.
“Went on sleeping and breathing for a year or more. Nothing could rouse him. We dribbled water and honey and broth on his tongue, calf’s blood even, kept him going as we could, and one day—I was there—his last breath came out like a wind. Better they go outside, you know? There’s a village on the lake-belt road where one died not far from here. Arzenine. He was holed in a battle, a highpoon head got stuck deep where they couldn’t get at it, and Arzenine didn’t want to die in a cave. No reason for the village but for it growing up around his little shrine from the pyre. Nowadays them mendicants hanging about the spot sell pine ash with a bit of rust scraped into it claiming it’s from the dragon. You passed it on your way here, probably.”
“I came up from the south.”
“Truly? You got that barky accent of a northern girl, though. If you’re from south of the Pass I’ll eat my apron.”
“It was a roundabout trip.”