The ache of the tooth ate up other, older aches. His loneliness for his mate, Nilrasha, held hostage against his continued good behavior, for example. Or the nagging doubts about his decisions the last few weeks when he’d occupied Imperial Rock in the Lavadome. That, too, nagged at him, before the sore tooth’s preoccupative power revealed itself.

Miki’s absence bothered him more than he let on. The old bird had been his last reminder of the formalities and honors of being Tyr. Now that what he’d always thought of as traditional nonsense was gone, he found himself missing it more than he would have believed possible, sitting upon his throne in the Lavadome.

Poor old bird. He wished he’d saved the feathers, instead of giving them to the hatchlings as playthings and decor. He’d burned the body for fear that the blighter thralls—servants, as they were known in the Sadda-Vale, of vast appetite—would dig it up and eat it, stringy flesh and all.

He reclined on the floor in the wettest corner of the Great Rotunda, a vast round room, the heart of Vesshall Palace, filled with elegantly-shaped dragon perches protruding from the walls like exploring claws. A circular portal to the sky admitted light, fresh air, and, of course, water.

A drainage channel ran to a discreet grate in the wall and he idly cleaned it with the tip of his tail. The blighters who lived in the Sadda-Vale and acted as servants to the dragons in exchange for protection of their flocks and families swept dirt and refuse from the meals into the channel, where it was carried away to an underground pig wallow. Faint swinish sounds echoed up from the chute behind the grate.

In this, his chosen spot, the drips drowned out the chatter of hatchlings and the inanities being exchanged between Scabia the White, the ancient dragon-dame who’d given them refuge in the Sadda-Vale, and her daughter Aethleethia. Aethleethia was a well-bred female, perhaps a little on the slight side, especially when compared with his muscular sister, but something of a drip. Perhaps, having been badgered and nudged by the domineering Scabia her entire life, she never had a chance to develop much of a personality.

The other dragon of the Sadda-Vale, Aethleethia’s mate, NaStirath, would have been much admired back in the Lavadome, where the Copper had grown up and eventually ruled. NaStirath had golden scale and a sense of humor that was alternately biting and clownish. Even the tiniest court needed a jester, the Copper supposed.

He could climb up onto one of the comfortable, dragon-contoured perches and get out of the wet, but that seemed such a bother. Besides, anytime he reclined on one of them, he started thinking how comfortable the design and how a few such perches scattered around Imperial Rock would add to everyone’s enjoyment of the gardens and view, and then he remembered that the gardens, and the view, now belonged to another Tyr.

The hatchlings started chasing around the center of the Grand Court, pouncing and rolling, and he decided to go deeper before one of them scurried behind his flank for protection and they started teasing him about his scale again or asking him when the wheels on his wing would be repaired so they could watch the artificial joint in action.

He ambled down to the blighter alley, still poking at the troublesome tooth with his tongue.

Everyone in the Sadda-Vale recognized his step. He had a hopping, three-legged gait, thanks to an old injury in his hatching-duel that left him with the right sii crippled. The saa just behind it was somewhat overmuscled to compensate, adding to his corkscrew balance. His mate, Nilrasha, had used healing arts she’d learned in her youth as a Firemaid to massage and stretch it back to some sort of utility, but without her constant attention it had lapsed into near-uselessness again, and he kept it close to his breast.

Once he’d directed armies of three races. Now he had to content himself with the duties of a few dozen lazy blighters.

The other dragons didn’t bother with blighter alley, but the Copper had taken it up as a project to occupy his mind when he and his siblings arrived a few years back. Once, he suspected, it had been a winery or apothecary or some other sort of workspace that required a good deal of sorting and cubbyholing.

The blighters had taken up the long, tall-spot in the deep tunnel and put wooden walls, platforms, and ceilings into the honeycomblike walls. It suited blighters to live on top of and across from each other. They were always shouting across the tunnel to their neighbors opposite or swinging up and down the ladders to visit.

Even so deep in the earth, blighter alley was warm and comfortable. Three pipes the thickness of his forearm ran, spaced out, from floor to ceiling, placed in such a manner that they weren’t too difficult to keep clear of when passing down the alley. That stiff-necked striped dragon DharSii kept the lines in repair. They led from natural hot springs beneath up to the kitchens, where they fed out into great copper sheets and pans for the dragons’ food preparation. Scabia was fond of her meats grill-cooked and dripping with juicy sauces and gravies.

Condensation running from the pipes and leaking steam emptied, rather cleverly, he had to admit, into cisterns, so the blighters always had access to clean, warmed water. There was therefore no excuse for the scraps and ventings and waste heaped in the gutters.

“Squawker,” the Copper bellowed. As he inflated his long lungs to yell again, a rather scabby old blighter scrambled out of the biggest cubbyhole, a terraced multiroom wooden pile with some decorative carvings.

The Copper didn’t know his real name; he’d called him Squawker from the first.

Long arms smoothed down the blighter’s sparse fur. “RuGaard-Lord! I attending!” He practically danced in front of the Copper, bobbing.

“Trash and muck everywhere,” the Copper said. “Get it cleaned up at once.”

“Make proper! Make proper!” Squawker bellowed in Drakine, pointing to wheelbarrow, trash-cart, and scrub-broom. Blighters popped in and out of their habitats like startled rats in a trash-heap. The Copper’s one remaining purpose in life was being the prowling cat in the alley.

Most of the blighters could speak a few words of Drakine: yes, beg, at once, very sorry. Squawker was practically an Ankelene scholar, being able to carry on a conversation.

Squawker watched the action. “All fix up proper, many busy hands lighten tasking, for noble dragons orders being mine dragons obey always at once,” he blatted out, with a sweeping gesture at the cleanup action. A female blighter hurled a week’s worth of charcoal dust off her balcony and the Copper watched it descend like snowflakes. A current of air caused by the Copper’s breathing pulled the floating ash toward him and Squawker beat at it in the air like he was fighting off gnats.

“That was quite a speech. Where did you learn your Drakine, Squawker?”

Squawker explored a crevice thankfully out of the Copper’s line of sight. “Father learn in dragon tower. Father teach Squawker growing up.”

“What’s the ‘dragon tower’?”

“Far off in sunset place, on water, high,” he said, sniffing the results of his probe on caked fingertips and scowling. “Father feeder and scale cleaner, travel many flight dragons, but fall off this side mountains, loose dragons, loose circle man. All find here settle.”

“I want you and only you to prepare the Vesshall dragon dinner tonight, Squawker. No other hands are to touch it. Were there many dragons in this dragon tower?”

“Lord, yes, mine many more thans here. Good big dragons. For need stitching and cleaning and feeding. Fighting dragons, mates, ittle-ittle hatchlings. Lord RuGaard want scale cleaned? White soft very bad, Lord, scrape off grow new.”

Insolent cur. “It’s my scale! I’ll attend to it,” the Copper growled.

He tried to get a bit more about the dragon tower out of Squawker, but it was of little use. Confused tales from his father that may have been mostly brag anyway. Blighters always talked up their situation in life. Basking in the reflected power of their betters brought them status, and the better the betters, the better the blighter. Still, it gave him something new to think about.

He probed the rotting tooth, pushed hard—

It came away in a painful ecstasy of relief. The Copper had a foul, bloody, rotting taste in his mouth and spat. He took a mouthful of freshly condensed water from one of the cisterns and spat in the gutter again. Looking in the cistern, he saw the tooth, yellowed at the tip, then brown, then black at the rotted spot at the root.

His mouth already felt better. He’d have Wistala find some herb or other to soothe the pain and clean the hole. Like her dragon tower companion DharSii, she was clever about many things, but had an especially good nose for medicinal herbs.

He picked the tooth up with his lips and tossed it to Squawker.

“Treasures, my lord! Thank you, thank you, thousand thankings. May your claws breed inside many enemies throats. All proper not a moment too much!”

“You’re welcome, Squawker. I enjoy our little conversations. They’re so refreshingly deranged.”

“Always best deranged for you, Lord RuGaard,” Squawker said, bowing deeply.

The Copper prowled the tunnels of the Sadda-Vale. If he’d cared about art and stonemasonry, he would have found interest in every arch and decorative tile. Artistic flourishes might intrigue DharSii and Wistala and engage them in one of their interminable discussions. To the Copper, the facades were so much dirty old junk, with a potential to shelter bugs or vermin. Beauty was found in usefulness, like the perches in the great hall or that hole in the top of the stone ceiling that allowed you to fly in and out of the hall at need. As for these tile-decorated passages, they should burn it all thoroughly, just to kill off the scale nits and eggs and ear-diggers no doubt lurking in the moister crevices.