Tooth and Claw (28 page)

Selendra barely acknowledged the introduction, so caught up was she in all the hats. “It’s almost like treasure,” she said, remembering the cave under the mountain. Her chain was safe in her bed at home.

Hepsie and Felin laughed indulgently, then Hepsie scurried off to find materials and patterns. At last she fashioned a cap in several layers or flounces of fleece. “There, that’ll look fine while you’re in mourning, and if you want to put some sequins or jewels in it later, they’d go here,” Hepsie said, indicating by poking bright blue sequins in along the inner flounce.

“It looks lovely,” Felin assured her. Hepsie held up a bronze mirror, and Selendra admired her reflection.

“Thank you,” she said, and gave Felin a shy hug.

Felin arranged payment with Hepsie. “Will you send them to the parsonage?” she asked.

“If you don’t mind waiting half an hour, ’Spec Agornin’s is almost made up, now I’ve done the fitting. You could take it with you.”

Hepsie busied herself about her construction in an inner cave, leaving them alone among the hats. Selendra and Felin sat down comfortably. This was the opportunity Felin had been waiting for. “You look beautiful in that hat,” she said.

“I really like it,” Selendra said.

“I’m sure Sher will be most taken with it,” Felin went on. Selendra looked at her guiltily. “Yes, I know. The Exalt told me something about it.”

“The Exalt? What does she know about it?”

“What Sher has told her. He told her he loves you.”

Selendra’s eyes were whirling so fast they felt as if they could fall out of her head, but she could find nothing to say.

“Don’t you love him?” Felin asked. “Couldn’t you try?”

“I quite clearly don’t,” Selendra said, looking at the smooth golden scales of her curving flank with distaste.

“How could you not?” Felin asked.

Selendra could not argue with that, for she knew she had indeed grown to love him imperceptibly. She hung her head.

“Do you love someone else?” Felin persisted.

“No,” Selendra said.

“Then why not? If Sher loves you enough to brave his mother for you, which he has never done for anyone else—” Which he wouldn’t do for me, Felin thought, sighing inwardly, though she was devoted now to Penn, “—then I think it is your duty to try to love him.”

“Surely the Exalt doesn’t want me to?” Selendra asked, her eyes now wide with horror.

“No, she doesn’t, quite the opposite.” Felin smiled, showing a glimpse of her sharp white teeth. “But if this was one of Sher’s usual shallow infatuations he would have gone away by now to some other distraction. He’s still here, and still looking at you in church. My dear, can’t you see it’s cruel to do this to him? Don’t you love him at all?”

Selendra thought of what Amer had said. Perhaps if he touched her. Yet he had been so close. Her heart had been touched, but her coloring had not. Surely if he was close enough to touch her heart then her scales would have turned if they could? “I like
him a great deal, but it’s impossible,” she murmured, almost inaudibly. “I’m sorry, Felin, I would if I could, but I can’t.”

“Most maidens in your position would be only too glad to have any Exalted running after them, let alone one as handsome and amusing as Sher,” Felin said, deeply disappointed.

“There is so little power we have, as females,” Selendra said. “Only to be able to choose to accept or reject a lover. We have to wait for them to ask, even then. You’re telling me to think about wealth and position and disregard what I feel.”

“No. Nothing of the kind. A competence is sufficient for happiness, as I know well. That’s all extraneous to what I’m really telling you, which is that if you could love Sher it’s your duty to marry him and make him happy,” Felin said.

“If I could have loved him I’d have come back from the picnic with blushing scales,” Selendra said, harshly.

“Will you at least talk to him?” Felin asked.

“He hasn’t tried to talk to me,” Selendra said.

“He wants to go flying with you on Deepwinter morning,” Felin said. “Will you go?”

Selendra looked up, tears glimmering in her lavender eyes. “Of course I will,” she said.

Felin wanted to embrace her, but wasn’t quite sure. There was something reserved in Selendra, she thought, something that made her difficult to love as sisters should love one another. Maybe that was what prevented her from loving Sher as anyone sensible would.

Selendra sat blinking back tears and trying to think of her new hat, not of Deepwinter morning, and Sher, and Amer’s numbers, and her obstinately golden scales.

I
n the third week of Icewinter, Sebeth was again in the confession room of the little old church in the Skamble. It was again evening, after the service. Sebeth had made her confession and been absolved.

“Is there news?” Blessed Calien asked, as he took his claws from her eyes.

“Good news, Blessed One,” she said. “Avan has completely changed his mind. One day he would hardly listen to my suggestion of keeping a few houses, now he is definitely going to keep half the Skamble, including this street.”

The priest blinked in astonishment. “What changed his mind?” he asked.

“I don’t know, Blessed One. It happened overnight, the day after I saw you last. I had been so worried about it, and he wasn’t interested in what I was saying about it. Then suddenly, he would listen to everything you told me to suggest, and he liked it, and most of it is going onto the new plan.”

“Are you sure?” Calien’s dark eyes whirled faster.

“I have copied it twice,” Sebeth said, unconsciously flexing her
fingers at the memory. “The upper part, near the railway tracks, by the goods yards, will all be destroyed and turned into warehouses.”

“I could hardly hope to save that, it’s no more than slums,” the priest said. “Besides, though it provides homes to some of the poorest in the city, nobody should have to live to the sound of shunting engines. That is according to my plan.”

“Avan says the houses there scarcely have excavations, the dragons are just sitting on top of the topsoil and loam,” Sebeth said, shuddering a little at the thought.

“Do not despise the poor for what they must endure,” Calien said, sanctimoniously. “Do not despise the servants, for they did not bind their own wings.”

“No, Blessed One,” Sebeth said, subdued.

“What about the rest of the Skamble?”

“It’s saved!” Sebeth said, her eyes lighting up like twin blue stars. “The Office is Planning and Beautification, you know, and Avan’s going to keep some of the money raised from the warehouses and use it to beautify what’s left. Only the worst houses will be razed, and in their place will be better houses, and little orchards near the river. He hopes to bring the area up. There will be grants for those who are prepared to work on their houses.”

“And the church building?”

“This street is safe,” Sebeth said, proudly. “I persuaded him to draw the warehouse line just a little north of here.”

“Well done,” the priest said. “It must be a miracle of blessed Camran that changed his mind so abruptly when I had almost given up hope of so much as keeping the darkness over our heads. Bless you, little sister, you did very well.” He frowned, and Sebeth wondered why.

“Thanks be to Camran,” she said, bowing her head.

“You are sure that Avan has the right to make this decision?
That the Planning Office cannot be overruled by some other office?” Calien asked, anxiously.

“I have copied and recopied the documents controlling that, some of them dating back to the Conquest and the original foundation of Irieth. He’s sure, and so am I.”

“Did you learn anything of the foundation of Irieth?” he asked.

“Only what we already know, that it was founded after the Conquest, when the Yarge had most thoroughly defeated us, and they wished to herd us all together within borders, as a farmer might pen swine away from muttonwools.” There was a little bitterness in Sebeth’s tone.

“Some say Irieth was a city before that,” Calien said, the slightest rebuke apparent in his tone.

“Majestic Tomalin was named in one old charter,” Sebeth admitted.

“Who can tell, about time so long ago?” the priest said. “It was the mercy of Jurale that the Yarges knew the gods and brought them to us, instead of killing us all when they might have.”

“Yes, Blessed One,” Sebeth said.

They sat for a moment in silence, contemplating this fact, of the Yargish conversion of dragonkind, which was, for them, the truth, and which was considered by most right-thinking dragons the most rank heresy. Then Calien began to worry again. “Can Avan be overruled within the Planning Office?” he asked.

“Why, yes, but I do not think that will happen in this case,” Sebeth answered.

“Why not?”

“He was entrusted with this project alone by Liralen, and it will be to Liralen’s credit that he carry it out well. Liralen will present the project to the Board, and the Board always do what Liralen
suggests to them. Normally, there might be rivalry within the Office, but in this case as Avan so recently bested Kest, he is standing rampant over them all.”

“Good . . .” Calien hesitated, his eyes still troubled. “Kest is no longer causing trouble?”

“Kest causes trouble the way normal dragons fly, but at present it is all insinuation. You know, Blessed One?” Sebeth made her voice into a whine to imitate Kest. “Though Avan attacked me from behind and without warning I did swear to support him so I will not allow the words peculation or simony to pass my lips with respect to him.”

The priest laughed. “Does that win him friends?”

“The opposite,” Sebeth confirmed.

“Then tell me when the matter has passed the Board, and we will all gather to give thanks to the gods for our escape,” he said.

“Thank you, Blessed One, I will,” Sebeth said, gathering herself up sejant preparatory to leaving.

“Wait,” Calien said. “I do have some other news for you.”

Sebeth waited obediently, bowing her head.

“Your father is very ill,” he said.

Sebeth’s head came up and her eyes flashed blue fire. “I have no father, you know that,” she said. “You know how he rejected me when most I needed him, you know what happened to me and what a life I led. You and the other Blessed Ones helped me then. I have no father but Veld, who is father to us all. You know that.”

“You have an earthly father, whether you acknowledge him or not, and he is very ill,” Calien said, calmly. “The Church teaches forgiveness for any sins.”

“For any sins repented and confessed,” Sebeth said. “He will never do that. I need not forgive him.”

“Are you Veld to know what he keeps hidden in his heart?”

“No, Blessed One,” Sebeth said, but she did not lower her head in submission. “He may have repented, but he did great harm to me and I cannot forgive him.”

“That is a sin you should have brought to confession,” he said, sternly.

“Yes, Blessed One, but when I was in most need he said he had dragonets enough and abandoned me.” Sebeth did not sound penitential. “Camran might forgive him, and Jurale, who are so wise, but I think even they would have trouble if he had done that to them.”

“However that is, he is sick, and word is that he is looking for you.”

“For me?” Sebeth blinked. “He said—”

“And I said he may have repented of saying so,” the priest interrupted gently.

“How do you know?”

“I hear many things. I heard that he is near the end of his life, and he is looking for you. I am telling you this. You must do as you think best. If you cannot forgive him for his sins against you, maybe you should consider whether you could bring him to a true confession at the last.”

“You mean I should take you with me to see him?” Sebeth asked.

“If you go, you should go alone, but ask him to see me, or some other priest. He might be prepared to listen. Camran has given us one miracle. He may be about to offer another. Any soul saved is a blessing, and one in such a high place is an example to others.”

“He would never convert in public,” Sebeth said, sure of that. “Oh Blessed One, I do not want to see him. I should forgive him, but I cannot, and seeing him when I feel that way would just distress us both. If he wants me it must be for me to forgive him, and I am not ready.”

“You may not have very long to prepare yourself,” Calien said. “But go now, and think about what you want to do.”

Sebeth gathered herself together, took off her mantilla, and went out into the streets of the Skamble. She had come to the church almost dancing with delight for the joy of having saved it, she left with dragging feet and a frown so hard it pulled her ears forward.

Daverak neither fulfilled Haner’s worst fears nor her best hopes. He did not blame her for Berend’s death, nor did he usher her politely to the nearest ledge and tell her to take herself off. He did not devour her on a slight pretext, nor demand that she marry him in her sister’s place, as had been the case in a nightmare she had the first night after Berend’s death. Nor did he insist that she continue to sleep in the room where Berend had died, providing her with another sleeping cave immediately she mentioned her uneasiness with her old one. On the other hand, he would not augment her dowry as Berend had told Dignified Londaver he would. The most he would say on the subject was that he’d see about it after he had subdued her brother.