His friend tossed his wide shoulders in a shrug. “Something about not enough time in the cocoons, and not enough dragon-spit to go around. Bad legs, crooked backs — look, look at that one there. It can’t even lift its head. The sooner the others kill it and eat it, the kinder for it.”
“They won’t kill it.” Thymara’s father spoke with certainty. She wondered how he knew it. “Dragons don’t kill their own kind, except in mating battles. When a dragon dies, the others eat them. But they don’t kill one another for food.”
Rogon had sat down on the tree limb next to her father. He swung his bare callused feet lazily. “Well, there’s no problem that doesn’t benefit someone. That’s what I was coming to talk to you about. Did you see how quickly they ate that deer?” He snorted. “Obviously they can’t hunt for themselves. And not even a dragon like Tintaglia can possibly hunt enough to feed them all. So I’m seeing an opportunity for us here, old friend. Before this day is out, it’s going to dawn on the Council that someone has to keep those beasties fed. Can’t very well leave a hungry little herd of dragonlings running wild at the base of the city, especially not with the excavation crews going back and forth all the time. That’s where we come in. If we approach the Rain Wild Council to hire us to hunt to feed the dragons, they’ll be no end of work for us. Not that we could keep up with the demand, but while we can, the pay should be good. Even with the big dragon helping us kill for them, we’ll quickly run short of meat animals for them. But for a while, we should do well.” He shook his head and grinned. “I don’t like to think of what will happen when the meat runs out. If they don’t turn on one another and eat their kin, well, I fear that we’ll be the closest prey. These dragons were a bad bargain.”
Thymara spoke. “But we made a deal with Tintaglia. And a Trader’s word is his bond. We said we’d help Tintaglia take care of them if she kept the Chalcedeans away from our shores. And she has done that.”
Rogon ignored her. Rogon always ignored her. He never treated her as badly as some of the others did, but he never looked directly at her or replied to her words. She was accustomed to that. It wasn’t personal. She glanced away from the men, caught herself cleaning her claws on the tree’s bark, and stopped. She looked back at them. Her father had black nails. So did Rogon. Sometimes it seemed such a small difference to her, that her father had been born with black nails on his hands and feet and that she had been born with claws, like a lizard. Such a small difference on which to base a life-or-death decision.
“My daughter speaks the truth,” her father said. “Our Council agreed to the bargain; they have no choice but to live up to it. They thought their promise to aid the dragons would end with the hatching. Obviously, it isn’t going to.”
Thymara resisted the impulse to squirm. She hated it when her Da forced his comrades to acknowledge her existence. It was better when he allowed them to ignore her. Because then she could ignore them as well. She looked aside and tried not to listen to the men as they discussed the difficulties of hunting enough meat to feed that many dragons, and the impossibility of simply ignoring the newly-hatched dragons at the base of the city. There were ruins beneath the swampy grounds of Cassarick. If the Rain Wilders wanted to excavate them for Elderling treasure, then they’d have to find some way to keep these young dragons fed.
Thymara yawned. The politics of the Rain Wild Traders and the dragons would never have anything to do with her and her life. Her father had told her that she should still care about things like that, but it was hard to force herself to be interested in situations she would never have a say in. Her life was apart from such things. When she considered her future, she knew she was the only one she could ever rely on.
She looked down at the dragons and suddenly felt queasy. Her father had been right. And Rogon was right. Below her, young dragons were dying. Their fellows were not killing them, though they did not hesitate to ring the ones that had collapsed, eagerly waiting for them to shudder out a final breath. So many of them, she thought, so many of the hatched dragons had emerged unfit to face the harsh conditions of the Rain Wilds. What had gone wrong? Was Rogon right?
Tintaglia paid another swooping visit. Another carcass plummeted from above, narrowly missing the young dragons that had gathered at her approach. Thymara didn’t recognize the beast she had dropped. It was larger than any deer she had ever seen and had a rounded body with coarse hair. She glimpsed a thick leg with a split hoof before the mob of dragons hid it from her view. She didn’t think that was a deer; not that she had seen many deer. The swampy tussocks that characterized the forest floor of the Rain Wilds were not friendly to deer. One had to journey days and days to get to the beginning of the foothills that edged the wide river valley. Only a fool hunted that far from home. Such hunters consumed food on the way there, and had to eat from their kill on the way back. Often the meat that survived the journey was half spoiled, or so little of it remained that the hunter would have been better off to settle for a dozen birds or a good fat ground lizard closer to home. The dropped creature had a glossy black hide and a big hump of flesh on its shoulders and wide sweeping horns. She wondered what it was called and then a brief touch of dragon mind told her.
A rising note of anger in Rogon’s voice drew her unwilling attention back to the men’s conversation. “All I’m saying, Jerup, is that if those creatures don’t get up on their legs and learn to fly and hunt for themselves within the year, they’ll either die or become menaces to folk. Bargain or no, we can’t be responsible for them. Any creature that can’t feed itself doesn’t deserve to live.”
“That wasn’t the bargain we struck with Tintaglia, Rogon. We didn’t barter for the right to decide if those creatures would live or die. We said we’d protect them in return for Tintaglia protecting the river mouth from Chalcedean ships. The way I see it, we’d be wise to keep our end of the bargain, and give those youngsters a chance to grow and survive.”
“A chance.” Rogon pursed his mouth. “You’ve always cared too much about giving chances to things, Jerup. One day it will be the death of you. It nearly was today! Did that creature think about giving you ‘a chance’ to live? No. And we won’t even speak of what sort of fortune you bought for yourself eleven years ago with the last thing you gave ‘a chance to live’.”
“No. We won’t,” her father agreed abruptly, in a voice that was anything but agreeable.
Thymara hunched her shoulders, wishing she could make herself smaller, or suddenly take on the colours of the bark like some of the tree lizards could. Rogon meant her. And he was speaking loud and clear because he wanted her to hear. She shouldn’t have tried to speak to him, and her father should not have tried to force him to acknowledge her. Camouflage was always better than fighting.
Despite his harsh words about her, she knew Rogon was her father’s friend. They had grown up together, had learned their hunting and limbsman skills together, had been friends and companions throughout most of their lives. She had seen them together in the hunt, moving as if they were two fingers on the same hand, closing in on whatever prey they stalked. She had seen them laughing and smoking together. When Rogon injured his wrist and couldn’t hunt or harvest for a season, her father had hunted for both families. She had helped him, though she had never gone with him to deliver the food they took. No sense rubbing Rogon’s nose in the fact that he was accepting aid from someone who should never have been born.
Their friendship was what had made Rogon come down the tree so swiftly to check on her father’s safety. It was what had made him angry at her father for risking himself. And ultimately, it was why he wished that she didn’t exist. He was her father’s friend, and he hated to see what her existence had done to her father’s life. She was a burden to him, a mouth to feed, with no hope that she would ever be an asset.
“I don’t regret my decision, Rogon. And make no mistake about it. It was my decision, not Thymara’s. So if you want to blame anyone, blame me, not her. Ignore and exclude me, not her! I was the one who followed the midwife. I was the one who went down and picked up my child and brought her home again. Because I looked at her and from the moment she was born, I knew she deserved a chance. I didn’t care about her toe-nails, or if there was a line of scales up her spine. I didn’t care how long her feet were. I knew she deserved a chance. And I was right, wasn’t I? Look at her. Ever since she was old enough to follow me up into the canopy or along the branchways, she has proved her worth. She brings home more than she eats, Rogon. Isn’t that the measure of a hunter or gatherer’s value to the people? Just what is it that makes you uncomfortable when you look at her? Is it that I broke some silly set of rules and wouldn’t let my child be carried off and eaten? Or is it that you look at her and see that those rules were wrong, and wonder how many other babies could have grown up to be Rain Wilders?”
“I don’t want to have this conversation,” Rogon said suddenly. He stood up so abruptly that he nearly lost his balance. Something her father had said had hit a nerve with him. Rogon was among the best of the limbsmen. Nothing ever rattled him. Sudden cold crept through her. Rogon had children. Two of them, both boys. One was seventeen and the other was twelve. Thymara wondered if his wife had never been pregnant in the years between the two. Or if she had miscarried. Or if the midwife had carried a squalling bundle or two away from his home and
