“Your performance was quite a novelty. I hope you don’t think I indulge in self-flattery often, but we did rather well out of it. Charity work is not the least of my delights. I’m sorry we couldn’t have you into the house, but it was elegant dress and the talk would have bored you in any case.”
Their roundabout way of talking certainly made Ileth dizzy. Ileth stopped the procession near the door. “Close enough,” she said. “If he wants it, he can come and get it.”
“Fespanarax,” she called. The gardener set the bucket down and hurried away with a strange walking-jogging gait that made it seem like he had three legs.
“I’ll leave you two alone,” the Baron said.
She lifted a handful of the silver, then let it trickle into the bucket again. She could buy her own squadron of fishing boats in the Freesand with the coin next to her foot. Used, but still . . .
“It’s me again, Ileth. We have a little gift for you.”
“You’re going to be a bother about this, aren’t you?” Fespanarax said, raising his head. He had a groaning sort of a voice, like a heavy door on old hinges. “I don’t find you or your bird chatter charming in the least.”
“Well, I like dragons, even grouchy ones. Good thing for you, since we’re stuck together here for a . . . for a while.”
“Grouchy, eh? You’re a bold one.”
Dragon baiting might be fun, but she didn’t want to push it too far. “I just think it would be good for you to be on your feet.”
Fespanarax sniffed the silver. His mouth began to slime up, an effect Ileth had been told about but hadn’t seen yet. “Just because you’re human and about as old as a summer dandelion, doesn’t mean you can’t be right. I should get up.”
And he did, grinding his teeth the whole time. The slimy saliva dripped, reminding Ileth of clear syrup. He trundled forward, a little stiffly, and extended his enormous tongue and began to take up coins, curling his forked tongue around them almost lovingly. He swallowed them, slowly, as a human might relish olives or some other delicacy.
He took short breaks in his slow, methodical eating, letting the slime in his mouth build up until it dripped.
Ileth backed up a little so he could work the bucket better. He dropped a coin here and there but retrieved each, artfully. Then he ate the bucket itself. They must have a powerful digestion.
“Just one gold coin?” he asked.
She hadn’t even seen him eat it.
“Yes,” Ileth said. “I think it was supposed to be dessert.”
“There’s another coin in your shirt pocket.” Why did they never put pockets on anything for women but aprons? They were so useful.
“Which is a gift from the Baron. I intend to keep it.”
“That gold is worth a lot more to me than your life, girl.”
“Are you threatening to kill me?”
“Hmm. Let me think.” Fespanarax spoke Montangyan with no attempt to sound human. He was more difficult to understand than most. He spoke each word as if he were treading out corn, pounding it out his mouth and not much caring about the shape. “No. Just teaching you an important lesson: don’t flit about strange dragons with the smell of gold on you. You don’t know me.”
“I know you are a dragon of the Serpentine.”
“I was. I hope to be again. What I am now, though, is a prisoner in a conflict I find I care increasingly less about. I’m starting to think the only thing keeping me here is habit.”
“They would miss you at the Serpentine if they never saw you again.” She took out the coin. “Sir, if it means that much to you, I’ll show you the loyalty of—”
“Oh, girl, noble gesture. No, you keep it. I know you danced hard last night. I could see the heat on the men’s faces. I never felt more than an academic interest in such displays, but I did appreciate the break in the monotony, and for that I hope that coin of yours attracts some friends.”
The silver had improved his mood, it seemed. His eyes looked around with new interest. “Huh, Cunescious has grown. You know, it feels good to be on my feet. I might walk around a bit so the coin moves about and settles in my metals gizzard.”
Stepping so slowly that he reminded Ileth of one of the ruptured old sailors on the Freesand fish docks, the dragon went out into the morning air. He walked toward a pond, setting all the geese to alarmed honking.
Dun Huss, usually so measured, hurried in to speak to her after he departed. Had she ever seen him run?
“You know, Ileth, I’d have to check with Ottavia. Two sick old dragons up on their feet. I don’t know which was more remarkable: the ancient Lodger, or the notoriously obstinate Fespanarax. He can be stubborn, and you’ve got him up and strolling about.”
Praise from the dragoneer warmed her more than the satisfaction of seeing the dragon up and about, as she hadn’t yet developed an interest in Fespanarax beyond duty. It even let her brain and mouth cooperate. “I think Fespanarax just went into a decline because he was bored. This morning, he finally became bored with being bored.”
Dun Huss decided that night to depart early the next day, unless the weather turned unusually foul. He and Preece paid a brief call on their host at his house to thank him, leaving Ileth and Galia to their quarters. It gave them a chance to decide how they’d divide the house with the men gone. In the end, they both decided to be upstairs, but to share a bedroom for the companionship and security.
Galia, oddly, seemed to be losing her nerve about the dragoneers leaving. She asked if they could perhaps negotiate for a little more time to be sure of their position with the Galantines.
Dun Huss shook his head. “Our host has dropped more than one hint about the expense of feeding so many dragons. Now that Fespanarax at least seems on the mend I can’t delay. I wish they would let us change Cunescious with Fespanarax, as Galia is being accepted in exchange for me. Cunescious is young and the experience might do him good. I’m not sure I like Fespanarax’s attitude of late. He was never the easiest dragon, and I’m not at all sure that he won’t give you difficulty. Getting a message to the Serpentine through the Galantines could take weeks. I asked the Baron about a swap and he declined, politely, but very definitely.”
“Why not Preece, then? He is senior to me. The Galantines do not seem to think much of women.”
“It’s not that I do not trust Ileth and Preece, but two young people, stuck in a foreign land with little to do.” Dun Huss chuckled. “The Galantines would never allow it. No, it is as the Charge said, we can count on the women to be treated more like company than prisoners. And there is just that odd chance the Galantines will take pity on two women and let you go as a gesture of gallantry, with some sort of solemn promise that Fespanarax will not participate if hostilities resume. They can be quite sentimental, as you see from the Baron and his animals.”
It was a cloudy, windy morning, but they decided to risk leaving in any case. If the weather forced them down, it forced them down. They could return in easy stages, and the Baron had weighed them down with gifts of food for both humans and dragons.
The Baron and his wife rode out, with the cat perched in her lap and the dog running beside the high two-wheeled cart. The rat might have been left home on the chilly morning, or content to remain in the Baron’s wig. Ileth wondered that the household staff, usually so considerate of women in general, let the Baroness up on the cart, considering her condition. She suspected it would overturn easily.