“RuGaard,” the Copper said, fiddling with his wing and pulling it shut with a pained wince.
“The old Tyr? I have seen you before, years since. Passing eastward, you were.”
“Thank you for the compliment of your memory.”
“The day I start forgetting dragons is the day I’ll be fit for my last trip beyond the surf aboard a flaming raft. But I’m not ready for my last ride yet, if you think you’ll be taking over in the name of the Empire—”
“Nothing like that. I’ve given up all claim to any title or position. It’s been years since I’ve had any part of the Empire. I’m a wandering exile, lonely for the smell of my kind.”
“Smell we have, all you want, free as air. You take anything else, I expect you to work for it. Everyone earns their keep in the tower, man or dragon.”
“What is the price of a decent meal?”
“A ride to the top of the tower. Don’t worry about a saddle, I know how to hook on to scale for short trips. I need to check the fire-wardens up there. I found some drips of whale oil at the bottom of the tower, which means they’re getting sloppy again, and I don’t want my tower burned to the ground. Ain’t like whale oil is cheap, neither.”
She introduced herself as Gettel and clung to him using her knees and ankles. The Copper sighed and extended the wing again. He double-checked the condition of the locking-peg. It would be just his luck for it to give way at the top and have him kill the mistress of the tower by accident.
The Copper wasn’t used to bearing a person. He’d last done it in his youth and he didn’t like the sensation. His neck was a vulnerable spot for a blade.
“So, sick of old Scabia at the Sadda-Vale, m’dragon?”
“I’m lonely,” the Copper said, honestly enough. “I’ve spent too much of my life in decisive thought and action. A life of contemplation of the day’s fish haul and techniques of de-boning and filet preparation isn’t for me.”
“If it’s activity ye seek, I can use you. There’s coin in it for you to eat—I know there’s precious little of that where you come from. Not just messenger-flying, either, but real fighting. Feel up to taking on some dwarfs? I’ve a rich commission from the Hypatians.”
“I’ve no enemies among dwarfs. All mine are farther south.”
“Your Empire. They tried to get me to join, but I don’t care to call another my master. Between them to the south and the barbarian chiefs to the north, Juutfod is in a bad way. Both would like to claim this tower and my dragons.”
“I don’t care to call anyone my master, either,” the Copper said.
“RuGaard, you won’t. Partnership is what I’m thinking. I know your reputation. I’ve heard you praised by tongues that don’t find words of praise easily. To be honest, I could use a dragon with some leadership experience in the tower. I can put it on paper if that’s your preference. Got a copy of the old Chartered Company articles around here somewhere that I copy from, if your tastes run to laying everything out on a bit of thin rag.”
“I’m as rusty as this wing joint. To tell you the truth, being Tyr was mostly a figurehead position. People listened to me because I was up on a golden perch with bodyguards all around.”
“We could give it a try for a while. You might find you like it here. I know there’s dissatisfaction down south. We might get another recruit or two, and I could sure use ’em, if this tower’s to keep free to do our business the way we like.”
This was close enough to perfect that the Copper wondered if it was some kind of trap. Was old Gettel holding some kind of bounty offer from the Empire for his death or capture? Would she take him below, just to have an axe-wielding blighter strike his neck from the shadows?
“I’d like to know more about this tower and what it does,” the Copper said.
She escorted him to a wooden platform large and heavy-timbered enough to support a curled dragon. It could be raised or lowered from a quadruple brace by means of chains and heavy woven cables.
“Counterweight at the other end,” she explained. “This is the fifth version of the lifter. Just six men working a capstan can lift our heaviest dragon to the top. Try to keep to the center—less wear and tear if it’s balanced.”
She reached up and rang a brass bell three times by its pull. There was a pause and then the Copper felt the wood shift beneath his feet. The platform ascended as though by magic. Guide-cables kept it stable.
In the light-filled upper chambers, dragons reclined with viewing slits to the world outside and wide balconies to the central shaft. The Copper guessed she had eight full-grown dragons. There were two drakes and six drakka, a typical ratio. One female, probably ready to lay eggs, had a splendid retreat near the ground floor, with a heavy timbered egg shelf with huge iron-bound beams forming a lattice that protected her yet gave her light, air, and a good look at the activity of the tower.
The wealth and knowledge that went into the construction of the tower astonished him. When he’d seen it years ago, he’d assumed it was some relic still standing from a lost high civilization, but on closer inspection of the walls and timbers it looked as though it had been built in his lifetime. The Copper had had no idea any humans outside Hypatia could achieve something like this, save under the whips of slave-gang organizers such as the Ghioz.
So there was inspiration and mind in the north, as well. Perhaps the barbarians would one day rise to greatness. “How would you like to be known here? You’re welcome to leave your name behind, if you like.”
“I’ve plenty of identifying marks. Still, we might as well confuse the issue.”
“Some of the dragons take names in the local tongue. ‘Broadwing’ and all that. It’s more friendly to human mouths.”
“I don’t know the local language.”
“You’ll pick it up, if you speak some Parl. How about ‘Brighteye’?”
“I like it,” the Copper said. “What does it mean?”
She explained that she was referring to the good one, not the milky and half-shut bad eye, and he accepted the name. So he became ‘Brighteye’ in Juutfod tower. He met Loic Varlson, the chief dragon-handler, and a few stout bodies who knew how to ride or care for dragons. Many of them were descendants of “wizard men” from the Isle of Ice. One of them didn’t like the look of Scabia’s dragonhelm; he said it “looked elvish.” There were a few blighters around to aid in the cleaning and working the capstans, but no dwarfs or elves in the tower.
She set him up with a perch—sort of a section of floor, open to the central shaft of the tower, where the lift ran. It was cavelike, though perhaps a little noisier than he would have liked, for the dragons of the tower—it seemed about six were living there at any one time—enjoyed calling across and between levels to each other.
The dragons of the tower were happy with their lot and their mistress. The tower’s most stable source of income was from the merchant shippers, who pooled together every quarter-year to buy flights out into the Inland Ocean to bring back word of approaching storms. Dragons have keen eyes for weather, and at the sight of towering thundercaps they could soon estimate how severe the storm and how quickly it was coming. They’d hurry for the eastern shore of the Inland Ocean and warn the coastal traffic to seek shelter.
Just saving a ship or two this way more than paid for their bounty. Gettel saw it as good exercise for her dragons.
He tried to find out exactly how old Gettel was; she was ancient-looking yet seemed spry and sharp. The dragons said she collected loose dragon teeth, ground them up, baked the powder into her daily bread, and mixed it in her oat porridge. One of her older dragons quoted her as saying
keeps me feisty
.
The Copper believed it. She was quick to reprimand dragons who claimed illness, ate too much, or didn’t keep their sleeping-shelves tidy. Any one of them could break her like a twig without a thought, but still she wasn’t afraid to rap a dragon across the nose with her cane for not picking up a dropped scale and putting it in the ration bucket. She also quieted the men—twoscore or so lived in the tower, with twice that making the climb every morning from the town below—when they started in on elves or dwarfs as weavers of a conspiracy against men.
“Only conspiracy against men I ever found to be true was their indolence and stupidity working together to keep ’em from getting any work done,” Gettel said, putting them to work changing the lift’s guide-cables.
Of course there were brushes with the dragons from the south, but at the moment the forces of the Dragon Empire were concerned with other horizons. He heard news of the fliers meeting pleasant fishing expeditions out from Hypatia, or young couples heading out to the wilder western “colonial coast” for their long mating flights.
The Copper explored the foundation of the tower, curious as to where the dragon-waste and other garbage went. There were tunnels beneath the tower leading down the cliff, and natural chutes for dumping waste into the surf. There were always fishing boats in the water around the tower, taking their share of the fish and crustaceans thriving on dragon-waste and scraps.
There were rats in the tower as well. It had a double wall facing the exterior for better insulation, and the rats had passages up and down running the whole height of it. They grew brave at night and came out in search of dropped food.
The Copper had learned that if you really want to know about a place, you should talk to the vermin. Their survival depended on always looking and listening.
“Here’s a boon, mates!” a rat said. Their speech wasn’t all that different from that of the bats he’d known.
“Maybe he’s trying to sucker us out for an extermination,” one high-pitched voice squeaked.
The Copper shrank away from the remains of his dinner. “Don’t worry—some of my best friends have been vermin.”
Some came out and ate; others, suspecting a trap, picked up pieces and scurried away. They disappeared into crevices the Copper wouldn’t have believed would fit a big cockroach.
He let them finish his dinner. Like most lower animals, the pecking order was enforced brutally.
“How would you like a share of my food every night?” the Copper asked.
“This much?” a rat with reddish ears asked.
“Sometimes more. Less, if I’m famished.”
“Rolling in it,” another said. “Yes, yes!”
“I count thirty-one of you,” the Copper said.
“If you say. We just call it the mob,” the rat with red ears said.
“Well, if any more than this number come, I’ll eat the stragglers. Now, in return for your food you have to do a little work. Seems like you all know every nook and cranny in this tower. I’d like to know more about the dragons here, and the humans who work with them. Who fights with whom, who mated with which dragonelle.”
“Just dodge dragons, don’t listen to their gossip,” Red Ears said.
“Start. That is, if you want a choice selection of my dinner.”
The rats, in their greedy way, brought back memories of the bats he’d traveled with through the Lower World with Fer-nadad and his family. But he’d learned his lesson and didn’t become close to any of the individuals.
Each day he counted the number rushing to his food, and brought his tail down hard to scare away the extras bringing up the rear. The rats were ninnies who couldn’t count—their numbering ascended “one, pair, mob.” Therefore anyone who wasn’t first or second to the food feared being eaten himself, so they all rushed out of the walls like a living carpet when he called them to dinner.
After they stripped the meat, they gnawed bones and told him of the doings in the tower. Much of it was garbled—“wide wings fighting lopside, luck in for fooding”—and he had to repeat questions to put together a sensible answer. But it diverted his mind from nerving himself for the future.
Most of the gossip they brought was useless. The rats paid very close attention to the biological cycles of the dragons of the tower, for solid dragon-waste was almost as good as a filched meal. According to the disgusting stories of the rodents, dragon-droppings made for a fine meal, being a perfect mé-lange of the odds and ends the dragons ate, with hides and cartilage conveniently digested.
Though it was useful knowing which dragon was constipated, and therefore irritable and to be avoided if you didn’t like an angry bash of a territorial tail as you climbed up to take in some sun and air.
He took a short flight with a dragon named Skystreak, a thin-framed male whose usual employment was sending messages from Hypatia to its reclaimed colonies across the Inland Ocean. The Copper thought it strange that there were no dragons of the Empire willing to take that duty. Perhaps NoSohoth didn’t like the idea of another dragon of the Empire handling his mail. NoSohoth always had at least three coinmaking schemes behind his back at any one moment of his life.
Or it was a convenient way for this Skystreak to serve as an agent, reporting on the activities of the Dragon Tower of Juutfod.
Skystreak didn’t seem like the sort of dragon NoSohoth would choose as a spy. He was fidgety and inattentive when not flying and kept up a steady stream of chatter that would do the most gossipy old dragon-dame credit.