It didn't take a dragon's senses to be able to tell that Stefan didn't like it one little bit, but his gaze was the first to drop. "As you wish, my Lord," he sighed at last. "Will you be returning tomorrow?"
"Of course," I replied as I concentrated for a moment, and both Stefan and Ashadh twitched as the sphere of the Lung materialized before me with an electric snap. I reached out, closed a taloned hand about the softly glowing sphere. "Some time tomorrow afternoon." I turned to my son. "Heading out, Ashadh; time to make some more biscuit money. Mind Stefan, and please don't try to eat--" I choked off hissing in shock as my son suddenly leaned forward to touch his nose to, then lick, the sphere.
"Ancestors, child!" I yelped, yanking the sphere away. "Don't ever do that!" Ashadh didn't respond, save to blink at me dazedly. A not-surprising state, if contact with the sphere had affected him the same way it did me. Across from me, Stefan had bounced to his feet, his eyes full of concern. "My Lord! Did he--"
"He sure as hell did," I replied as I gently touched the side of my son's face. "Ashadh? Are you alright?" The young dragonet didn't respond at first, but then blinked and shook himself, then began rubbing his head against my hand and crooning as if nothing had happened.
"My Lord?" Stefan looked ill.
I shook my head as I studied my child, then slowly brought the sphere back within Ashadh's reach. He saw the movement and once again reached out to sniff at, then lick the glowing globe, purring loudly. "Well, I'll be damned," I breathed, then looked up at Stefan. "This thing almost killed me the first time I touched it, and here my son is, licking it!"
Stefan blinked, then frowned. "Perhaps it recognizes his Lung blood?"
"Maybe," I mused, "but then why the hell did it-- Whoa! No, Ashadh, don't touch!" I pulled the sphere away from where the dragonet was now trying to grab it in his jaws "You don't want to do that; weird things happen when you stick this thing in your mouth."
Ashadh whined at me, but finally subsided. I kept a wary eye on him as I once again addressed Dithra's agent. "I'd better get out of here before something else happens." I placed the sphere within my jaws, and once again that strange, not-unwelcome sense of connectedness enveloped me.
I nodded to him, then, acutely aware of my son's intent gaze, concentrated on the image of a little bungalow huddled next to the railroad tracks. . . .
Snap.
A few hours of sleep, then I hauled my weary backside over to Dithra's abode, the sky just barely beginning to lighten. When a dragon says morning, she doesn't mean 0900, or dawn for that matter. What she means is that time prior to dawn, when the sky has lightened to the point that, as the Qur'an says, the eye can tell a white thread from a black thread. That is what a dragon considers morning.
Yuck.
It was just getting that light when I arrived at Dithra's front door and, still yawning mightily, stumbled inside. The Eldest was there in the foyer to greet me, her green-gold eyes twinkling with amusement at my half-asleep expression. "Welcome, dear Hasai; I take it that you did not sleep well?"
I chuckled tiredly. "My Lady, if I keep popping back and forth like this for very much longer, I think I'm going to come down with the world's first terminal case of jet-lag." I rubbed my eyes. "Would we happen to have any coffee in the house, my Lady?"
She hesitated the barest fraction, and I had a bad moment where I thought she was going to pick up where Stefan left off. But then she just smiled, her gray-green dress swirling slightly as her arm swept aside to invite me in. "But of course, dear one, as I make sure there is whenever you are kind enough to visit. Please, share a cup with me. The Sstahn clan's ambassador has arrived, and awaits our pleasure in one of the guest suites. I believe it would be to our advantage to make her wait a bit longer."
I looked at Dithra sidelong as she accompanied me down the passageway leading toward the dining room, and my smile was not nearly as pleasant as her own. "Making her sweat, my Lady?"
She returned my gaze, her own smile widening a bit. "My dear Hasai, dragons do not sweat, so it would be rather difficult to achieve that state with the Sstahn ambassador. However, I do intend to make her just as annoyed and apprehensive as possible."
"Ah;" I chuckled, "I stand corrected, my Lady."
I blinked when I found a fresh pot of coffee already set up and waiting for us in the dining room, --getting predictable, Sarge-- then frowned when I spotted the young female standing apprehensively in the corner. She was trying hard to be unobtrusive, and not succeeding very well. I paused in the room's entryway, gave Dithra a questioning glance. She looked past me at the young female, then smiled at me reassuringly. "That is T'ress, of the clan K'tahh, dear one. They were gracious enough to lend me her services as a private assistant while Stefan, Kaa'saht, and the other members of my staff remain busy . . . doing other things."
"And reporting back everything she sees and hears, I have no doubt," I purred, my eyes studying the female much like the way a cat studies a cornered mouse. The young dragoness, her guise resembling a young college co-ed, blanched slightly, her hands nervously smoothing down her conservative dress while the rest of her tried very hard to blend into the wall behind her.
"But of course," replied the Eldest, her smile broadening slightly as she took her seat, "I would be both astonished and more than a little worried about her mental health if she did otherwise. How would you like your coffee?"
Dragons. I gave my head a small, amused shake, then looked again at T'ress. "Just a little sugar, enough to round-off the edges," I replied at last. Moving quickly, T'ress came off the wall and poured me a cup, adding a tiny amount of sugar with a hand that shook slightly. I studied that hand as it measured the sugar, then the brown and dark-gray dress that clad the arm above it. "My Lady, I've been intending to ask someone this for quite some time; why does it seem that all the dragons I've met always clothe their human forms in colors that match their scales?"
Dithra blinked at the question, then frowned for a long moment while T'ress prepared her cup. Finally, the ancient dragoness gave a very human shrug, a wry smile coming to her face. "Well, dear one, I must admit I never really thought about it before, but I suppose the reason is that it feels right." Her eyes twinkled with humor as she gestured toward myself. "And what about yourself, dear Hasai? Why do you wear the colors of your true form?"
Startled, I looked down to blink in mild astonishment at the steel-gray turtleneck I was wearing, along with a pair of black slacks held up with a steel-buckled belt, and finally the pair of black leather sneakers. My eyes then slid to the side to study the black nylon flight jacket I'd tossed across the back of a vacant chair. Black and silver; how appropriate, I thought, a chill running through me. "You're right, my Lady; they just seemed to be the correct things to wear." I almost continued the thought, but kept silent, the words I was about to speak echoing inside my head. I have been in my true form whenever I have been with my children, and that has been every moment I possibly can. If one's form affects one's thoughts so quickly, and so subtly, in what other ways, has it influenced me? My answer came to me immediately, in the image of myself coiled on the ranch house floor, staring dumbly at the radio as it waited for a reply. I suppressed a shudder of alarm.
"Is there something amiss, dear one?" Dithra had paused, her cup in her hand, a look of concern in her eyes. "You look troubled."
I considered for several seconds, then shook my head. "Nothing of immediate importance, my Lady. I had a thought, and . . . ." A pause, then a frustrated sigh. "I'm still trying to put it together," I finished lamely, then chuckled. "I'll let you know if I ever get it straight."
The ancient dragoness studied me from over her coffee cup for another long moment, then almost glanced at T'ress, who had resumed her role as wall support. "As you wish, young Hasai. Perhaps we shall have the opportunity to discuss it at some other time."
I made a noncommittal sound, rubbed at my eyes, then changed the subject. "My Lady, perhaps I'm just tired, but could you explain this to me just one more time? Why do we have to spend time with these so-called clans? I thought your Council was the bunch we needed to contend with, so why aren't we dealing with them directly?"
Dithra smiled, tilting her head in the way that signaled amused exasperation, but after a moment of thought answered anyway. "Dear one, the Council's strength does not stand upon empty air; it stands upon the strength of the gathered clans. It is the Elders of the strongest clans or their representatives that stand within the Council, being replaced in turn by other clans when they gather greater strength than those who stood within the Council before them."
"So why deal with the Council at all, if the clans hold all the power? Hell, why does the Council even exist?"
Dithra paused to sip a bit more of her coffee before answering. "The clans have the greater power, this much is true," she replied at last "but it is very difficult to get the clans to act with one voice. In a gathering of the clans, the debate on the simplest of subjects can go on seemingly forever, to the point of trying even an Elder's patience to the breaking point. There are many arguments, and the occasional battle. To move quickly and decisively, those are abilities that are beyond the clans."
She paused again, her eyes growing distant for a moment, then she looked back to me with a small smile of apology. "However, what we had was more than sufficient, at least until the coming of the humans. Then things started happening far too quickly. It was Ksstha who realized we needed something new, and labored to make the clan Elders see they needed to gather their collective strength within the claws of a relative few, so the dragons could speak with one voice, act with one will, in the face of the human threat."
I raised an eyebrow, but before I could speak Dithra continued. "Yes, dear one, I know; power concentrated in one small place can be easily abused, and so it was for the early Council. Ksstha ruled as if he were the First Ancestor come back to the world, tolerating no opposing voice in his war against the humans, until at last the clans rose up and took back much of their strength. Ksstha was deposed, though he was too strong to remove from the Council entirely, and the new Elders of the Council chose among themselves for the position of Eldest. And so it has been from that time on."
I frowned at the Elder dragoness. "It's like the Knesset, then; you're trying for a No Confidence vote."
Dithra blinked. "Forgive me, young one, but what was that word again?"
I smiled. "Knesset. It's the name of the Israeli Parliament. It's a form of human government, my Lady. The parliament is the larger, lower body, much like your clans, while the executive branch acts much like your Council. If the parliament decides the, ah, Council, is screwing up, they can try to muster up enough votes to force them to resign."
"Vote." Dithra thought about that word for a moment, then smiled. "Ah; I remember. A very strange concept, that every human should have the same amount of strength as every other human."
I paused in mid-sip. "Um, don't our people do it the same way?"
The ancient dragoness gave me an amused look. "Certainly not! Is an infant just out of the shell the equal of an Elder? No, dear Hasai; we see an individual dragon not just as a body to be counted, but as a summation of his age, wisdom, and personal power. Surely that is the better way, don't you agree?"
"Hm; I'll have to think on that one," I replied carefully. Individual strength rather than numbers? It would never work with humans, but what about with a species where age empowered rather than enfeebled? Interesting. . . .
Finally we had our fill of coffee, and sent T'ress to fetch the Sstahn ambassador to meet us in Dithra's huge living room. It was an amusing encounter, to say the least; the dragoness actually stuttered, her head constantly turning to keep me in sight as I did my usual restless circuit of the room, and Dithra ruthlessly exploited that nervous distraction to tie the clan representative into a diplomatic knot. Afterwards, as Dithra accompanied the ambassador on a short tour of a certain point of interest near the rear of the property, I wandered back to the kitchen for one more round of the dark brew. I chuckled softly to myself as I recalled the meeting, then shook my head in admiration at the magnitude of the dangerous, horribly complex game of both strategy and chance Dithra was playing so adeptly. Perhaps there was something to this diplomacy stuff, after all.
The velvet glove does have its uses, conceded my human half, but only when it contains a steel fist. I blinked at this little piece of worldly wisdom, then paused to consider the increasingly assertive wraith that was part of me. I was interrupted, however, by Dithra's return. "We are close, dear one; very close," she said, her eyes glowing with triumph as she seated herself again. I lifted a quizzical eyebrow over my coffee cup, and she smiled and explained. "The Sstahn are the most influential clan yet to make pact with us. With them within our circle, the Council's power is severely compromised. With just a few more agreements of the level of the one we have just made, the Council will have no choice but to allow me back." Dithra paused then, and gave me a sharp look. "Then, dear one, we shall indeed deal with our opponents, but we shall do it in the manner outlined by tradition."
I looked at her steadily, silently, for nearly a full minute, but the ancient dragoness met my eyes unflinchingly. "They will not go quietly," I offered at last. "They have too much to lose."
Dithra continued to meet my gaze. "There is indeed that possibility, dear one," she said at last "although I pray to the Ancestors it does not come to that. If it does, however . . . then they are yours."
I smiled.