Chapter 16
Rainfall did not die.
 
As he recovered from the blood loss, it became clear to all that he would never walk again, barring some kind of miraculous healing. At first Wistala wondered if it was best that he had lived beyond his wounding (though she later looked back on that sentiment with shame). He could not walk, and he made a rather pitiable sight being hauled around like an arrowed deer over the shoulders of Forstrel, Jessup’s nephew.
The only time he moved as she remembered him was upon Stog, for he rode the mule about Mossbell’s lands, offering advice—that’s how it sounded to Wistala. He was far too polite to issue anything that sounded like an order to the new tenants. And at table, he presided from his chair with his former charm.
To help him in the house and on the grounds, the Widow Lessup and her whole family moved into Mossbell. With Rainfall unable to so much as work the handle of his well-pump, he needed a good deal of assistance.
Wistala helped him up and down stairs. She regularly wore her game harness, and Rainfall sat atop her back gripping it as she negotiated the tight, winding stairs of Mossbell.
“I should flood the place and pole about, as they do in Wetside,” Rainfall said. She’d heard stories of its famous water gardens before.
Mossbell’s old ferry-call rang thrice for dinner, forestalling another tale of spiced shrimp and tuna. The Jessup and Lessup clans trooped in from the fields in answer.
Yari-Tab had her litter of kittens in an old laundry basket upstairs, and Jalu-Coke followed with a fresh litter of her own in the barn. Thanks to Mossbell’s odd hole-and-corner architecture and rich gardens, the kittens had no end of places to explore, and the older cats feasted upon the mouse and rat population. The inside cats took to following the Widow Lessup about, for she was constantly moving the remaining pieces of furniture and ordering her daughters and sons to clean, polish, and organize, and the curious kittens had learned that explosions of startled insects or mice could result every time a wardrobe was pulled out.
“A hundred years of dust in this house, if it’s a day,” the widow said. “Len-boy, fetch fresh rags from the washroom and tell your sister she’s falling behind on the laundry again!”
Rainfall could only spread his hands and apologize when the widow found a pile of ancient crockery under a chair in the morning-room, or spider-sacs thick as peas in a pod under his bed, until Wistala wondered who was truly the master of Mossbell now.
“Carpentry and cooking are the only indoor work I’ve ever been able to manage,” he said, after another astonished outburst when she awoke a family of raccoons napping out the day in the upstairs linen armoire.
Wistala had become something of a public figure on the estate. The Lessup boys brought their friends, and they’d watch her napping in the sun, not knowing that dragons often cracked an eye as they slept, nerving themselves for an approach. Eventually they’d come up to her in tight little groups of two or three, and one would reach out his grubby hand and run a fingernail across her scales. She’d lift her fringe and drop her griff and bring round her head with a piping dragon cry, and they’d run away shrieking as though expecting to be roasted.
Little girls clapped their hands over their eyes when they first saw her, but once they got over their initial shyness stepped across the line into overfamiliarity, even outrage, for they liked nothing better than to set wildflowers in her scales and fringe until she looked as though she was sprouting like a young elf.
“That’s women for you,” Rainfall said, plucking a red blossom from the fold in her skin where she tucked up her griff. “Always improving on nature.”
And then it was time for Rainfall’s granddaughter to return.
Because of the elf’s wounds, the high judge attended Rainfall personally. He came with a dozen attendants and counted out the coin Rainfall owed in back taxes, then sealed Rainfall’s petition to have his granddaughter restored to him with a great deal of melted wax and ribbon. Wistala thought the high judge an odd-looking fellow made mostly of wrinkles and sags, with a dismal attire all of black deep as cave-dark, though it made the polished gold star on his collar flap and the golden tips of his boots look all the brighter.
The judge and his men ate vast meals before they left, leaving the Widow Lessup clucking that the whole household would be eating roots and apples for the next week.
The next day music woke her.
She stretched and followed the lilting tune until she found Rainfall in the music room playing his bell-pipe. This time she couldn’t dance with him, but she could chase her tail and caper until Widow Lessup stormed in with shrieks about what Wistala’s claws were doing to the polished floors.
“I admire your good humor,” Wistala said as she left. “You look fully recovered.”
“Fully?”
“Your eyes sparkle, and your hair is thickly leaved. Such colors!” The willow-leaf locks in his hair had gone red and gold and orange.
“I am happy. I’ve had a letter. Lada comes home today.”
“Do you mind if I ask a question?”
Rainfall’s eyes sparkled. “You’ve chosen a good day to crave a handful of silver to eat. I’m in no mood to deny anything.”
“I should like that. But those tablets with the engraved writing. You held them close all the way back to Mossbell. I’m curious, did you find an old family relic in the ruins?”
Rainfall sat straight upright. “Our legends say dragons sniff out a weak spot the way dogs find bones. There must be some truth in it.”
“If it’s painful to you—”
“Oh, no, nothing like that. Closer to shame, perhaps. I think I told you that Hesstur was one of Eight Sister Cities who founded Hypatia, yes?”
“Yes,” Wistala said.
“Let me sit on you, and you can take us into my library.”
Rainfall put away his bell-pipe and got on Wistala. When he patted her side, she stalked off toward the library, and they soon arrived. The lectern that had once stood under the window was gone, probably sold, but a pair of old chairs filled its place with a velvet-covered object like a small tabletop upon one.
Rainfall seated himself beside it. “Such humble accommodations for history so important.
“When it became evident that the city would fall to the barbarians, those inside did their best to hide their valuables. I’m sure some priest had charge of these tablets and sealed them in one of the lower crypts before all entrances were sealed. She—I say she, for the clues were voiced in the feminine—made some signs in the old law-tongue, the father of the Hypatian high-tongue and the grandfather of Parl, though only judges and librarians read it much now. If the fires and collapses left the chamber intact, earthquake or grave-robbers later opened it again, though I expect the only ones to benefit were the rats.”
“This doesn’t tell me what the object is.”
“An idea, more than anything,” Rainfall said, removing the velvet. “When the eight sisters joined, they formed the King’s Council. The tyrant Masmodon did away with the King’s Council when he broke the Imperial Staves, but after the Reformation, the Directory modeled itself—”
You could never get a simple answer out of Rainfall when he fell into history. “What does that have to do with the tablets?”
“These tablets are laws that applied to the Kings on the original Council. It was quite a remarkable idea, kings subject to law. Each of the sister cities were afraid of bad rule, or the assumption of a tyrant like Masmodon, so as a condition of their confederation—”
Wistala wasn’t sure what that last word was but dreaded interrupting now that he was getting to the point.
“—made eight laws, one for each city, that the Kings on the Council would have to obey. The idea that laws applied to kings was the work of the dwarf-philosopher Doomzeg, though some say he was inspired by the practice of Royal Responsibilities in the ancient Blighter Uldam Empire. It doesn’t do to mention those sorts of theories, especially around the priesthood.”
“Naturally,” Wistala said, lost again.
“Not that Blighter Civilization is established. It’s still much debated in the—” Rainfall cocked his head, and his hair-leaves rustled. “You jest with me. But let me illustrate from the tablets: ‘No ruler shall kill, maim, imprison, or exile without trial by judge.’ That’s an important one. ‘No ruler shall make law that applies but to all.’ Oh, I fear I’ve translated that badly, but in essence it prevents a king from issuing an edict preventing, say, one shipmaster from transporting wine if other shipmasters are allowed to. Specific laws were the ruination of many in the days of the despots. ‘No ruler shall accept or give divination’—another old practice that might be used to get around the other laws, declaring yourself or a family member a god so that one’s word becomes religion rather than law. ‘No ruler shall confiscate—’ ”
Wistala stopped him before he could read through all eight and closely examined the tablets. “Why does the ownership distress you, then?”
“When I found them, I swore to myself that I would make the journey to the Imperial Library at Thallia. Oh, I could lose myself there like a drunkard in a brewery! But I find I can’t bear to part with them, even if I had the use of my legs. I’ve spent much time cleaning the inlay. Now they shine like a mariner’s guiding star in these dark times. Is it wrong for me to keep them here?”
“Why in the Two Worlds would you ask me?”
“While your judgment is not yet developed, your heart is usually in the right place.”
Wistala didn’t correct him that a dragon had several hearts. He continued: “You tell me you are not yet two years of age, yet your mind is so far developed.”
“We learn from our parents while still in the egg.”
“Fascinating. But what surprises me—”
The tolling of Mossbell’s signal interrupted his thought. “It must be Lada,” he said. “I asked Forstrel to ring as soon as any riders appeared. Wistala, bear me to the front gallery window!”
The front stairwell had a landing with an arched window in it looking out on the balcony between the two trees, made of glass so fine, there were hardly any distortions when peering through. He worked the latches and forced open the frame.
“Odd that she does not ride,” Rainfall said. “She used to love ponies. Yet—it was cool this morning, good of the thane to provide her with more comfortable transport.”
A two-wheeled cart—very like but a little more elaborate than that of the wandering dwarf with the ponies Wistala had met on the road—moved up the lane with a rider behind.
“Perhaps you should remain inside, Wistala.” Forstrel, all hair and limbs, was still ringing the bell as though the barn was going up in flames.
“Young Lessup!” Rainfall called. “Yes, Forstrel, up here, please. I should like to meet my granddaughter on my steps.”
One of the Widow Lessup’s daughters had the sense to put out a chair for Rainfall, and Wistala saw that he was installed before the rig had even turned around in front of the house.
The escort, only a little mud-splattered in the blue livery of Thane Hammar, didn’t descend from his horse. Wistala could tell from Rainfall’s stiff manner that he didn’t care for this discourtesy.
“Here’s your spawn back, and more besides!” the escort said as the rig-driver stepped down and lowered a support for the cart. When that was locked in place, he opened the doors at the back of the cart, and Lada stepped down.
“Phew, she’s tossed all over the inside,” the driver said.
Lada, a little stained about the neck, was helped out of the cart. Her eyes were wide and wet, and she shot an accusing look at Rainfall.
“Rah-ya, Lada, my moppet,” he said, extending his hands. Wistala saw a little skirt behind and decided that some of the Lessup household were standing behind their master. “I’m sorry for the rough journey.”
“Monster! Demon! You’ve ruined everything! Everything!” she said in so loud a voice, her words cracked. She fled into the house, dodging around Rainfall as he reached for her.
“And you’re welcome to her,” the thane’s liveryman laughed. He reached into a bag on his saddle and drew out the doll Wistala had brought. “Here’s her mystery doll, Rainfall. You should be more careful in your plotting than to leave such tokens lying about.”
Rainfall put his arm about Forstrel’s shoulders, and the youth took him inside as the house went into uproar. She heard doors closed, shouting, crying, and quick steps as the Lessup clan gathered to discuss events.
Wistala could do nothing. She watched the rider and rig disappear, then went to Rainfall’s library. If he were greatly troubled, he’d probably go there. She curled up about his tablets and waited, unable to simply fall asleep.
He appeared as the juicy smells of dinner being cooked began to fill the house, brought in by Forstrel in a wheeled basket used for gathering fruit.
“I really must have one of those sick-benches built,” he said as he settled into his reading chair. “Thank you, Young Lessup. Ah, Tala, you appear again when you’re most needed. You can see about getting some dinner, Lessup. I won’t eat tonight.”
The boy placed a blanket over Rainfall’s legs and left, shutting the door behind.
“So much for homecoming joy. But she’s beautiful, do you not agree?”
“I’m just getting so I can tell hominids apart,” Wistala said.
“Perhaps not in a way that can be captured by portraits or sculpture, you have to look into her living eyes to appreciate her. Wild and open, like my son’s. I wonder what her mother was like.”
“Why was she angry to you?”
“I need a glass of wine,” Rainfall said. He moved for his bell—
“I’ll bring it,” Wistala said, glad of an excuse to make the trip to the cellar and back. “Which kind?”
“The blueberry, I think. Something sweet to wash the bitter words from my mouth.”
Wistala crept past the room that had been prepared for Lada and heard sobbing from the crack beneath. Her griff extended a little, and she descended to the wine cellar and searched the tags on the month’s table wine for the blueberry picture.
She carried it back up in her mouth, startling one of the younger Lessup girls as she emerged from the cellar. The child let out a squeak and ran off toward the kitchen. It was the one who liked to tie her hair up in ribbons, Wistala noted absently; all the others in the family simply watched her as she went about Mossbell.
Rainfall opened the cork-and-wax top and poured himself a generous glass. “Once I had thirty of these,” he mused as he rolled around the purple liquid. “And I didn’t have to make my own wines. Though if the estate prospers now, I’ll continue the practice. There’s a satisfaction in enjoying the fruits of one’s own labors. That’s the one thing I’ve learned all these wretched years since the troll came. Oh, and about dragons. Forgive me, Tala.”
“You ask my forgiveness? Since you saved me from the river, you’ve lost the use of your legs and your granddaughter’s love.”
“If you’ll indulge me in applying a correction: Don’t be so quick to mark fate and toss it into baskets marked ‘fortune’ and ‘misfortune’ as though you’re sorting apples. It was an illness that forced me to cease traveling as a judge—a heavy misfortune—yet that same illness kept me in Tysander, where I diverted myself at the circus and lost my heart to the most skilled rider that ever sat atop a horse. My wife could stand on a horse’s bare back with reins tied to her hair all day and still beat me with her strategy at Advantages when we played at night. I imagine if her father or grandfather had spoke against me, she would have cried out, too. I should never have shouted at her. Unforgivable.”
“What is the quarrel?” Wistala asked.
Rainfall looked out the library skylight—still cobwebbed and dusty, the Widow Lessup hadn’t climbed a ladder in the library yet—and blinked.
“She’s convinced herself she loves Hammar.”
“A man who stuck her in a cold attic?”
“Apparently she blossomed up there like a solstice succulent shut in the Yule dark. Hammar is young and wild. Nature and instinct took its course.”
“So they are mat—married?” Wistala asked.
“They can’t be, not under Hypatian law, because of her age. But sadly, she’s not too young to bear his child.” Rainfall’s fingers tightened on the glass stem, and it broke.
Her host blotted up the wine and his own blood with blotting paper. “And the last of the thirty are gone. Oh, what shall I do, Tala? I’ve suspected he wanted to add Mossbell to his lands, but to resort to this?”
“Wait, this is about land?” Wistala said.
‘“I’ve no doubt of it. With the land—soon to be prosperous again now that the troll is gone—goes responsibility for the road and bridge. He should like to make all who cross pay a toll.”
“How does he stand to get the land?”
“He won’t have any difficulty getting me declared an invalid, with the judge in his pocket. It would devolve to Lada, save that she is not of age to run an estate. Lada’s child would naturally inherit—I’m pierced from my own quiver, insisting Eyen to confirm his parentage with the priests and courts. And she’s only too happy to name Hammar as the father. He would become master of Mossbell.”
Wistala’s head hurt from trying to follow the convoluted circumstances. “I’m not sure I follow the law, but in all your talk of courts and powers—I thought it was to ensure justice and fairness. This strikes me as quite the opposite.”
Rainfall admired the glass one more time before discarding it.
“The law and fairness often dance together, but they are not married,” he said. “Lately I’ve grown too fond of engineering, for one can trust calculation and breaking strengths. No thane may change the weight of a stone, no matter how much he wishes. But! I am still master of Mossbell. Perhaps I shall sell it to the dwarves and move south.”
He sniffed the air. “But I’m keeping you from your dinner.”
She wasn’t hungry; perhaps Rainfall’s upset and sour mood had transferred itself to her by something like mind-speech.
Mossbell’s problems were like a tar pit, the more she struggled to help her host, the worse his plight became!
She went out to the stable barn and found Stog licking at the remains of his evening grain. Jalu-Coke’s kittens, all ears and tails, were chasing each other about on clumsy paws. This was the sort of law she understood: the mice ate Stog’s grain, and the cats ate the mice.
“Does the master need me?” Stog asked her.
“Oh, no,” Wistala said. “I wanted to think. The house was closing in on me. You’re looking well.”
“Good grain and clean water,” Stog said. “I am lucky. It is a blessing to know how lucky one is.”
“What happened that night we parted? Did the men find you?”
“Not the way you think,” Stog said, shifting on his hooves. Wistala nipped his bristly tail—the donkey in him showed most at the mane and tail.
“Tell me. I need a diversion. Treks and tracks, I shan’t be mad.”
“Silly, really. I took my chance to get back to the Dragonblade.”
Wistala was so astonished, she couldn’t speak.
“What?” she finally said.
“You hate me now,” Stog said. “But I’ve been wanting to tell you since our return. I’m grateful to you, unlike these fool kittens, I know what you’ve done for me. Let’s have honesty between us.”
“Was he such a fine master as all that?”
“Not as kind as our good elf. But that didn’t signify. It wasn’t the treatment; it was the excitement of the hunts. I, a pack mule at column-back, used to have flowers thrown on me as we passed through towns, mouth stuffed with carrots and sugar beets. Cheering. You must know that a dragon can wreck whole lands.”
Wistala tried to keep her tail still. “I’ve heard of dragons being blamed for storms and earthquakes.”
“You may well glare, but that doesn’t signify. Hominids fear your kind.”
“Conceded. So you thought you’d make a try for his hall?”
“Yes, I know the look of the mountains; it’s not far south of here. But I stopped in a field to avail myself of some corn . . . and the next thing I knew I had a rope around my neck and another bad master. Then you appeared again. In the Dragonblade’s mule train, I learned not to fear the dragon-smell, but I’ve never liked it until you.”
“So the Dragonblade lives not far south in the mountains? He must be close to the Wheel of Fire dwarves, then?”
Stog’s ears went up and forward. “Close? Of course. He lives in their city.”
For the second time since entering the barn, Wistala was startled into astonishment. But of course he would live with dwarves, as they helped him kill dragons.
“The Wheel of Fire?” Wistala asked.
“The dwarves build fastnesses like no others, and he must be guarded sky and tunnel. It must signify to you that the Dragonblade’s line has made enemies, very powerful enemies, of your kind.”
He’s made an enemy of me, small, stumpy, and misfortunate. But she’d promised Father nests of hatchlings.
She was making herself miserable and hungry for metals, so much so that the tools hung by the hearth looked tempting. Rainfall had written a letter to the metalsmith’s guild in the coastal town of Sack Harbor asking for a quantity of brass and copper meant for the melting pot but so far only an answer had arrived naming a price. Wait, that Jessup fellow said something about spare shingles. . . .
“Stog, thank you for an honest tale,” she said.
As the night deepened, she wandered the grounds, prowling, really, for the vegetable garden’s fall planting was coming up, and if she was sharp, she might get a raiding rabbit if wind and shadow favored her.
Were she Father, she’d take Stog’s knowledge, every memory, every path, and learn about the Wheel of Fire dwarves and the Dragonblade. There were headless, clawless corpses of her own blood with only her left to mourn. What had those men shouted?
“The Avenger”?
But she was alone and small. Even Father in full fury hadn’t been a match for the dwarves, and she had nothing like his experience in battle.
Then there was her promise.
Even the worst cave has a best spot, Mother would say. She’d found a good spot here at Mossbell. But if the thane claimed Mossbell, there’d be no more clean, quiet cellars and hearth-roasted goats or Widow Lessup’s mutton stew and gravies. Hammar would certainly turn her out—or worse—and if Rainfall sold his estate, would he be able to find a new home with a growing dragon in tow? They’d make a sight on the road: an invalid elf riding muleback, a pregnant girl hardly out of childhood, and a stumpy-legged drakka. Of course, Mother would tell her to improvise.
Curse Hypatia and its laws and courts and judges, robbing a kindly elf of his all. Hammar shaped the law into an ax to cut down a better citizen than he.
Couldn’t the law be used to strike back at Hammar? No. Rainfall understood it better than she; he’d called it hopeless and would sell.
Of course. She hurried back to Mossbell, dragon-dashing when she saw the door and flushing a rabbit.
The household had gone to bed, and she had to draw back his bed curtains and wake him. The room smelled like the hot stones in their grate that warmed the metal plate that supported his bedding.
“Rainfall, I’ve got it,” she said when he left off blinking and rubbing his eyes.
She was disappointed to see the number of leaves left on his pillow as he drew himself up with his new bedrail. “Let’s have a light and hear it, then. For—”
“Never mind.” She spat into the iron plate that caught the wax from his bedcandle. He lit his candle from the flame. “Some great lord would probably give you employ just to do that,” he mused.
“I’ve had an idea about the estate.”
“Let’s hear it, then.”
If she had the right muscles for it, she would be smiling. She tried pulling her griff as high as she could, and felt the corners of her mouth go up. “Sell Mossbell to me! I’d let you live here until the end of your days, without asking for anything. My way of repaying the debt I owe you for saving me.”
Rainfall’s face fell. “Ah. An excellent idea, but it wouldn’t work, I’m afraid.”
“Why not?”
“Wouldn’t be legal. There are actually two objections. You must be a Hypatian Citizen to own Hypatian land. The estate also controls the bridge and road, and only a titled Hypatian may own that.”
“So to own the estate entire, I must be a Hypatian citizen and titled. No other objection?”
“No. I’d once hoped Lada would marry well, but she’s been dishonored beyond any man with a title taking her.”
“Why can’t I become a Hypatian citizen, and titled, then?”
At that Rainfall’s hand gripped the bedrail so hard, his knuckles went bloodless. “By the Guide Divine, you’re right! Why not? Rah-ya, Tala. Rah-ya! I know just how to do it. Rah-yah! What a joke! To my library, I’m sure there’s a precedent of use.”