Tooth and Claw (6 page)

Frelt was delighted to see Selendra bustling down to greet him. He had wondered a little, after Avan’s abrupt departure, if he might be treated as badly by the children as by the father. He had remembered Penn’s behavior to him the night before. Much as he hated it, he knew that if he wished to be on terms with the family he would have to admit that he was wrong. He had been unsure if he would be able to see Selendra at all. In the course of the night, he had convinced himself it was Selendra he wanted, and he now half-believed that he had been in love with her for some time. A farmer had shown him through the lower door, and he made his way slowly up through the narrow corridor, squeezing himself unpleasantly at times with some more concern for the burnish of his scales than might be thought appropriate for a parson. So when he saw Selendra coming down, the smile he gave her had much of genuine pleasure in it, along with a little of the pride that was his strongest quality.

“Blessed Frelt, how may we serve you?” Selendra asked. “Would you care to take breakfast with us?”

“Thank you, Respected Agornin. I should be delighted.”

Selendra turned and the two of them made their way up towards the heights of the establishment. When the corridor broadened so they could walk abreast, Frelt immediately took advantage
of this to come up to her side. He smiled at Selendra again, hoping she noticed the strength and evenness of his teeth. She did not smile back, but regarded him gravely. “Is there anything wrong?” she asked. “We were not expecting to see you today.” The only thing she could imagine might have brought him was the irregularity over the funeral, which she knew her brothers would not want to discuss with any stranger, least of all Frelt.

“Respected Agornin, nothing is wrong, nothing at all. I just came once again to pay my respects to your family and to see if I might serve you in your time of grief.” This speech was so bland it could have been made by any parson to any recently bereaved young maiden, but Frelt softened it with another smile, this one much less natural.

Selendra took him literally, and was confused. “We welcome you, of course, but my brother Penn is still here if we needed a parson, and the funeral is over and I don’t see that there is anything you
can
do.”

“I came to pay my respects to you, Selendra,” Frelt said, whirling his dark eyes at her a little in a way that was quite unmistakable. “As you are going away soon and there is little time, I did not want to wait.”

For all that Frelt was a country parson, he had spent some little time in society in Irieth, and he usually considered himself a more sophisticated dragon than those around him. He knew this was not behavior that would be condoned by society, and this was not at all how he had behaved when he had made an offer for Berend. But time was not on his side, and he wanted to seize his opportunity. They would soon be returning to the drier and more inhabited portion of the establishment and he did not know when he might have time alone with Selendra again. Also, he had been thinking so much and with such concentration on his plan that he
had almost forgotten that Selendra had never thought of him in the light of a lover, indeed that she had seldom thought of him at all. He wanted to have matters arranged between them before he began to speak to her brothers.

Selendra stopped dead, unable to misunderstand him, and most especially the use of her personal name, but so completely astonished at his declaration that she could no longer control her legs. Frelt, not anticipating this, took another step and almost tripped over her tail.

“Do you think you might come to care for me?” Frelt asked, recovering himself, leaning close to her, looking into her eyes and putting his claw on her arm.

For Selendra this was close to a nightmare. No male dragon but her father and brothers had ever been so close. The corridor was dark and confining, and more than slightly damp. She had never known Frelt well, but she had always disliked him, thinking him nothing like good enough for Berend. He leaned closer still, leaning on her, well aware that she was a maiden dragon and could be awakened to love by such closeness. He had intended to use argument, but now that he felt her close, he was almost overpowered himself by the scent of her.

Selendra felt her wings rising, though there was no room for them. They brushed the cobwebs at the top of the passage. She clapped them back to her sides, and in so doing she regained the use of her senses and could back away from him a step or two.

“I am sensible of the honor you do me, but my answer is no,” Selendra said, delivering the set speech all maiden dragons are taught to deliver, but in terrified tones. “Never speak to me of this again,” she said, as firmly as she dared, backing slowly away from him.

“I have a fine parsonage in the mountains, and am parson of
six demesnes,” Frelt explained, ignoring her denial, knowing all females refused the first time. “If you married me you would be mistress of your own establishment, and you would not have to leave the countryside you love. Parsons’ wives are not forbidden to fly.”

“I said no,” Selendra said, turning and scurrying away from him up the passage, letting her words drift back to him on the wind of her passage. “I hardly think you know what you are saying, sir. You do not know me and cannot mean to seek my person in marriage. You once loved my sister Berend, I know.”

“Oh, that was long ago when you were but a dragonet. Before I saw your beauty I loved your sister as the shadow of what you would be.” Frelt was rather proud of this speech, which he had prepared on the way over the mountain, in case she might refer to his earlier wooing. He wished he could deliver it in better circumstances—Selendra was scuttling away from him as fast as she could, and he had difficulty keeping up, so that he almost had to shout, and could not be sure she heard.

“My answer is no! Please do not bother me further,” Selendra begged, all but crying, running with little leaps of flight whenever the ceiling was high enough. Frelt pursued her as fast as he could, but with bound wings he was at a disadvantage.

Selendra almost burst into the dining room where her family was gathered, with Frelt still in pursuit. Fortunately her good sense returned to her when she was far enough from him, so she could turn and face him in the broad hallway between the speaking and dining rooms.

“I am serious, sir, and I mean what I say,” she said. “No, do not come closer, you are a parson and I know you were making me an honest offer and do not mean to ravish me.”

Ravishing her was closer to Frelt’s thoughts than he would have wished to admit, but he also was calmer after the chase and
stopped as he was bidden. “Will you not take a little time to consider?” Frelt asked. “Must I consider my hopes dashed forever?”

“Yes, yes, forever,” Selendra replied, still in some agitation. “Now go, please, if that was your purpose in coming here.” Again she repeated the rote words of refusal, running them together in her haste to have them said. “I am sensible of the honor you do me but my answer is no. Please believe me, Blessed Frelt.” She put her hand on the door to the dining room. “My brothers are here and I am under their protection.”

Frelt found himself growling far back in his throat. She had not needed to say that. He was a respectable parson, not some bandit. He forgot for the moment that he had hoped to carry her off and go through formal arrangements later. He even forgot how close he had been to her, and that he might yet have succeeded in his object despite all her denials. He turned around huffily, and before him lay the long downward corridor, and beyond that the long walk home, and once more he was facing it without having partaken of any refreshment.

A
ll three dragons looked up from their beef as Selendra pushed the dining room door open in its arch. It was a sturdy old-fashioned close-fitting wooden door, and it creaked beneath Selendra’s hand. Some say wooden doors are Yargian and therefore abhorrent, lumping them with mantillas, confession, and cooked meat, others say they are simply out of the mode for the time being. Bon Agornin had yielded sufficiently to fashion to remove the door on his speaking room, but he had insisted that tradition must rule so far as concerned his dining room. The siblings therefore had the protection and warning a door affords, and prepared themselves to greet their sister and, as they still imagined, the Blessed Frelt.

Selendra came in in some confusion. At one moment she was flushed almost pink, at the next, she went pale, paler even than Haner’s accustomed delicate gold. She closed the door behind her and stood a moment with her tail to her family.

“What is wrong?” Haner asked at once.

“Where is Frelt?” Penn inquired, only a moment later.

If Selendra had been given time to compose herself, she might
have been able to give dissembling answers to these questions. She knew a dragon maid should not betray agitation after turning away a proposal of marriage. Yet the agitation was internal, she was given no time, and she could hardly feel that the proposal had been decorous. She turned to face them.

“Frelt has gone,” she answered her brother. “And I am a little shaken,” she informed her sister. She lowered herself to the ground, and Avan silently passed her a haunch of beef. She took it but did not begin to eat for a moment. The others stared at her.

“Gone?” Penn asked, collecting himself. “Without waiting for whatever business that brought him here?”

“He had no such business,” Selendra said. “Or rather, I was his business. He came to propose to me, and he did, and I declined, and he has left. That’s the whole of it.” Seldom has a maiden been less gratified by an unwelcome proposal. She sank down on her haunches, again flushed pink and reduced to a condition of near-paralysis.

“Did he . . . approach you?” Haner asked.

“If he did I will have him torn out of the Church,” Penn said, rising to his feet angrily.

“And I will tear him to shreds once he has lost his immunity,” Avan said, his wings rising of themselves. “Selendra?”

“He has not hurt me,” Selendra said quickly. “He did not assault me. But he approached closely enough to distress me and I seem to have lost my composure.”

“You are pink!” Penn declared, though at that moment she was almost white. “If he has done that he will marry you in recompense.”

“But that’s what he wants!” Selendra said, pinkening again, and backing a step away from her brother without rising. “He came here hoping to claim me as a bride. I hate him, and I will never marry him.”

“You should not have been alone with him,” Avan said.

“A parson!” Haner said, stung into defending her sister. “Parsons are always greeted, you know that, because they cannot fly up to the usual entrances. You were there when Sel said she was going to greet him, you yourself told us she had gone with approval.”

“He was abusing his position as a parson,” Avan said.

“I am not hurt,” Selendra insisted, the weakness of her voice belying her words. “Nothing has happened, except that he proposed and I rejected him.”

“He should have asked me for permission to speak to you,” Penn said, frowning. “Permission which I should certainly have denied. But if you are pink my dear, and I am afraid it seems you are, then it is too late to turn back and there must be a marriage. It is making the best of a bad situation, I know, but consider the alternative.”

“I am not pink, I am merely agitated, I shall not be pink when I have eaten and rested a little,” Selendra said, attempting to turn her head to examine her own scales. “I will never marry Frelt. He is a bully and a prig and a pompous swine.”

Avan and Penn exchanged speaking glances. They were dragons who had seen more of the world than their sisters, and the thought of what could be done with a sister who was neither maiden nor wife hung heavily upon them. Avan was reduced to wondering if he had any acquaintance in Irieth who might consent to take his sister as a consort in such circumstances as this. It would not be a marriage such as he would desire, one which would give her an establishment of her own, but there were dragons rising in the capital who might find her dowry and connections sufficiently attractive for that, despite her blush, even if they might not want to share their names and status with her. It was not what any dragon would choose for his sister, but it might be better than a marriage with a parson she despised and who had deliberately ruined her.

Selendra took a few bites of her beef in silence. Then she looked up, her big violet eyes brimming with tears and whirling rapidly. “Why are you all looking at me without speaking?” she asked. “I have done nothing wrong, nothing. I am not in disgrace. I refuse to be.”

“Of course you are not,” Haner said, going to her sister at once and folding her wings around her. “Come away to our own cave and rest, you’ll soon be well again.”

The sisters made their way out together. “Am I really pink?” Selendra asked Haner as soon as they were alone. “Pink so that everyone can see?”

“Just a little, sometimes,” Haner answered. “It will soon pass off, I’m sure, if you didn’t let him come up close to you.”