wrong; it was the same pale grey as the clay, but its hide was so thin that she could glimpse the coil of white intestines pushing against the skin of its belly. Plainly it was unfinished, hatched too soon to survive. Yet still it crawled toward the beckoning meat. As she watched, it gave too strong a push with one of its malformed hind legs and crashed over on its side. Foolishly, or perhaps in an effort to catch itself, it opened its flimsy wings. It landed on one, which bent the wrong way and then snapped audibly. The cry the creature gave was not as loud as the bright burst of pain that splashed against Thymara’s mind. She flinched wildly and nearly lost her grip. Clinging to her tree branch, eyes tightly shut, she fought a pain-induced wave of nausea.
Understanding slowly came to her; this was what Tintaglia had feared. The dragon had sought to keep the cocoons shielded from light, hoping to give the forming dragons a normal dormancy period. But although they had waited until summer, they had still emerged too soon, or perhaps had been too worn and thin when they went in. Whatever the reason for their deformities, they were wrong, all wrong. These creatures could scarcely move their own bodies. She felt the confusion of the young dragon mixed with its physical pain. With difficulty, she tore her mind free of the dragon’s bafflement.
When she opened her eyes, a new horror froze her. Her father had left the tree. He was on the ground, threading his way among the hatching cases, heading directly toward the downed creature. From her vantage, she knew it was dead. An instant later, she realized it was not that she could see it was dead so much as that she had felt it die. Her father, however, did not know that. His face was full of both trepidation and anxiety for the creature. She knew him. He would help it if he could. It was how he was.
Thymara was not the only one who had felt it die. The two young dragons had reduced the deer to a smear of blood and dung on the trodden, sodden clay. They lifted their heads now and turned toward the fallen dragon. A newly-hatched red dragon, his tail unnaturally short, was also making his tottering way toward it. The yellow let out a low hiss and increased his pace. The green opened its maw wide and let out a sound that was neither a roar nor a hiss. Feeble globs of spittle rode the sound and fell to the clay at his feet. The target had been her father. Thank Sa that the creature was not mature enough to release a cloud of burning toxin. Thymara knew that adult dragons could do that. She had heard about Tintaglia using her dragon’s breath against the Chalcedeans during the battle for Bingtown. Dragon venom ate right through flesh and bone.
But if the green did not have the power to scald her father with his breath, his act of aggression had directed the short-tailed red dragon’s attention to her father. Without hesitation, both yellow and green dragons closed in on the dead hatchling and began snarling threats at one another over its fallen body. The red began his stalk.
She had thought that her father would realize that the hatchling had died and was beyond his help. She had expected him to retreat sensibly from the danger the young dragons presented. A hundred times, a thousand times, her father had counselled her to wariness where predators were concerned. ‘If you have meat and a tree cat wants it, leave the meat and retreat. You can get more meat. You cannot get another life.’ So surely, when he saw the red dragon lurching toward him, its stubby tail stuck straight out behind him, he would retreat sensibly.
But he wasn’t watching the red. He had eyes only for the downed hatchling, and as the other two dragons closed on it, he shouted, ‘No! Leave it alone, give it a chance! Give it a chance!’ He waved his arms as if he were shooing carrion birds away from his kill and began to run toward it. To do what? she wanted to demand of him. Either of the hatchlings was bigger than he was. They might not be able to spit fire yet, but they already knew how to use their teeth and claws.
‘Da! No! It’s dead, it’s already dead! Da, run, get out of there!’
He heard her. He halted at her words and even looked up at her.
‘Da, it’s dead, you can’t help it. Get out of there. To your left! Da, to your left, the red one! Get clear of it!’
The yellow and the green were already preoccupied with their dead fellow. They dived on it with the same abandon they had showed toward the deer. Strengthened by their earlier feast, they seemed more inclined to quarrel with one another over the choicest parts. Thymara had no interest in them, except that they kept one another busy. It was the red she cared about, the one that was lurching unevenly but swiftly toward her father. He saw his danger now. He did what she had feared he would do, a trick that often worked with tree cats. He opened his shirt and spread it, holding the fabric wide of his body. ‘Be large when something threatens you,’ he had often told her. ‘Take on a shape it doesn’t recognize and it will become cautious. Present a larger aspect and sometimes it will back down. But never turn away. Keep an eye on it, be large, and move back slowly. Most cats love a chase. Don’t ever give them one.’
But this was not a cat. It was a dragon. Its jaws were wide open and its teeth showed white and sharp. Its hunger was the strongest thing in it. Although her father became visually larger, it showed no fear. Instead, she heard, no, felt its joyful interest in him. Meat. Big meat. Food! Hunger ripped through it as it staggered after the retreating man.
‘Not meat!’ Thymara shouted down at it. ‘Not food. Not food! Run, Da, turn and run! Run!’
The two miracles happened simultaneously. The first was that the young dragon heard her. Its blunt-nosed head swivelled toward her, startled. It threw itself off-balance when it turned to look at her and staggered foolishly in a small circle. She saw then what had eluded her before. It was deformed. One of its hind legs was substantially smaller than the other. Not food? She felt a plaintive echo of her words. Not meat? No meat? Her heart broke for the young red. No meat. Only hunger. For that moment of oneness with it, she felt its hunger and its frustration.
But the second miracle tore her from that joining. Her father had listened to her. He had lowered his arms, turned away and was fleeing back to the trees. She saw him dodge away from a small blue dragon who reached after him with yearning claws. Then her father reached the tree trunk and with the experience of years, ascended it almost as swiftly as he had run across the ground. In a few moments he was safely out of any dragon’s reach. A good thing, for the small blue had trotted hopefully after him. Now it stood at the foot of the tree, snorting and sniffing at the place where her father had climbed up. It took an experimental nip at the tree trunk, and then backed away shaking its head. Not meat! it decided emphatically, and wobbled off, charting a weaving path through the hatching grounds where more and more young dragons were emerging from their wizardwood logs. Thymara didn’t watch the blue go. She had already slithered up onto the top of her branch. She came to one knee, then stood and ran up it to the trunk of the tree. She met her father as he came up. She grabbed his arm and buried her face against his shoulder. He smelled of fear sweat.
‘Da, what were you thinking?’ she demanded, and was shocked to hear the anger in her voice. An instant later, she knew that she had every right to be angry. ‘If I had done that, you’d be furious with me! Why did you go down there, what did you think you could do?’
‘Up higher!’ her father panted, and she was glad to follow him as he led the way to a higher branch. It was a good branch, thick and almost horizontal. They both sat down on it, side by side. He was still panting, from fear or exertion or perhaps both. She pulled her water skin from her satchel and offered it to him. He took it gratefully and drank deeply.
‘They could have killed you.’
He took his mouth from the bag’s nozzle, capped it and gave it back to her. ‘They’re babies still. Clumsy babies. I would have got away. I did get away.’
‘They’re not babies! They weren’t babies when they went into their cocoons and they’re full dragons now. Tintaglia could fly within hours of hatching. Fly, and make a kill.’ As
