Rieven turned from the camera drone and sat on the steps at the back end of the Internal Domicile, the ossified corpse of One-eye rose behind him. It was time for sleep. He needed it, and his pearl needed it. Once that thing hatched, he was giving it a name; this business of referring to it as an inanimate object was going to end. It was sentient, it was sapient, it was male. It was he. Ok, then. He would be named upon his hatching, just as any living thing in the Operatic Empire. The name itself would be chosen, as was customary, at the time of birth. Time to hurry up and wait.

  He rested his hands on the step behind him and leaned back, tipping his head back and opening his mouth in a great yawn. It was the one compromise he made, he didn’t even allow the yawn to make any noise, just the yawn. The broadcast had gone fine. It was just more of the same. He’d had meeting after meeting these last few hours, and he was at the point where they all blurred into one singular meeting, bereft of meaning alone. He closed his eyes and just allowed himself to be.

  Perhaps it was a quirk of dragon eyes, or perhaps it was a quirk of his singular draconic and humanic mixing within his axiomatic pattern, or even his ability to work axiom within matter combined with his ability to see axiom now, but even with his eyes closed he could see the impression of the axiomatic swirls and threads and even a faint vaguery of laces. It was all jumbled together without his sight to provide context for what he was looking at, and he figured Ono would have him fighting blindfolded here pretty soon. All of that aside, it was beautiful. The view was delightful, especially at the end of his waking day.

  The longer he gazed through his closed eyes at the pretty patterns the axiom made, the more he could feel his body relaxing. The patterns were living, constantly changing, and never the same in their individuality, but they were identical in their class; not unlike stars. From a distance they all looked the same, and as one gathered more data, one could begin to divine patterns to their existence, one began to assign class or type or greatness. So too were the axiomatic patterns, the more he learned about them, the more he could see consistencies between certain patterns. This one looked like weariness, that one had a hint of stability, a third reminded him of brittleness or the state of being near-collapse, he couldn’t tell, it was all so new.

  He hadn’t made a study of it yet, though the good doctor was harassing him to start a list. He wanted to compare what Rieven was seeing and experiencing to the database his tools checked to determine if a patient’s laces were damaged or whole. There were bound to be fascinating overlaps, perhaps even exact matches, but Rieven couldn’t bring himself to care at the moment. He could hear the voices of the others in the room with him, but he chose not to focus on them. That was more work than he wanted. Instead he kept his focus on the axiomatic patterns in the dragon of stone on his wall. The patterns seemed to speak of cruelty, cunning, and deviousness.

  Dragons may lack subtlety, but they certainly cultivated the ability to plan deeply, wait patiently, and close a trap on their prey with finality. All of that and more were represented within the corpse of the dragon. It would appear his negative emotions were so strong they survived his death. Interesting. As he looked at the location where he thought he saw the brain, there seemed to be something hiding there, something small and unlooked for. What was it?

  Just as he was about to attempt a dive to see, Jackon’s hand landed on his shoulder and gently shook him. “My lord, your quarters are made ready. You will rest better there than under the corpse of your foe. They are right this way, through those doors off to your left. There is only the one entrance, so you will not be disturbed in any way, sir.”

  Rieven allowed himself to be pulled gently to his feet and opened his eyes. He saw only Jackson and Ono were near him, the others had gathered in a huddle off to the right. “Very well, Jackson, please keep the world away from me for a few hours, thanks.”

  Jackson nodded seriously and watched him as he made his way through the doors, closing them behind himself. He saw a large room, smaller than the one he had left, but large for quarters on a starship. It was about thirty metres cubed. More than he needed for quarters. Perhaps he could get it subdivided so he could have meeting rooms, living quarters, a study, among other things; really turn it into a complete suite, perhaps even a quaternary bridge just for him? That thought really appealed.

  Off to the side was a cot – nothing fancy, but it held a mattress and not just a hammock. With a pillow. It was perfect. He threw himself down on it, heard his black box set down behind him, and then knew no more.

  -x-

  “I’m worried about him Jackson,” Ono said as Rieven closed the doors to his new quarters, “he tires so easily now. It only seems that he gets half the time he used to.”

  Jackson growled low in the back of his throat, a sign of assent. “He does sleep more often, but not as long. I venture that he all told, he sleeps less in any given thirty hours than any other human aboard the Hidden Dagger, he just has to break those hours up throughout the day. So really he is not any worse off, he’s just on a tighter circadian cycle than any of you.”

  “You do know that a day in the Operatic Empire is twenty-four hours, right?”

  “Of course, master sergeant Ono. Why you people have sixty seconds and sixty minutes but only twenty-four hours will always be a mystery to me. In the draconic empire, as commandant Rieven loves to call it, everything is a base ten system, even time, unless you are speaking poetically, then it is filled with things that make no logical sense. We have the li, which could be smaller than an hundred metres, or larger than a thousand. What use is that? You could also get stuck with the cubit? How is that useful, considering dragons are always growing? It seems our ancient times were filled with ever-changing units of measure to suit our ever-changing bodies. It’s a logistical nightmare. When are you people going to evolve?”

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  Ono laughed hard, wiping a tear from his eye. “That is the most passionate I believe I have ever heard you be thus far about anything that wasn’t immediately life or death. I expect we’ll standardise our units of measure about the same time we standardise our monetary system. It’s all mixed together, every time we conquer a new people, we add their monetary system into ours, you have gold jackets mixed in with silver anamells, neither of which are equal to the golden clips of Burr. It’s exhausting. Everyone thought we would go to some sort of artificial currency, credits or somesuch, especially now that the empire has almost reconquered its old pre-splintering boundaries, but nope, people just don’t trust the machines. Not tamper proof, they say. Better to use good old precious stones and metals. It works, why change it?”

  Jackson merely rolled his eyes. It seemed humans were as useless at efficiency as dragons. Just differently. He was still adjusting. Ono asked, “What do you think of your Adjunct duties among the humans?”

  Jackson snorted in wry amusement. “You people are soft in ways I do not expect, yet in the next breath are willing to consign every life within your ship to death if it would accomplish the goals of the mission, without hesitation. There is a lack of consistency which is bound loosely by mission status. It is fascinating. Truly.”

  “That’s people for you. More specifically, that’s the Void Spectres for you. Takes a certain something to be like us. You find it in other places, but mostly here. Any troubles I can help smooth over?”

  “No, not as such. Thus far, I have been able to intimidate and threaten my way through any situation resulting from non-compliance. Having several squads of inquisitors at my beck and call seems to make it hard to prevent me from doing what I will. Combine that with the authority I was given among the SIs and it’s an automatic failure to resist. I suspect they know I am helping to prevent damage to them in the future. They seem to care for me. I believe I will always have them on my side so long as I grant them respect.”

  “Then you are wiser than most commanders I know. No wonder you are so successful here.” He pulled a cigar out from a depressed chamber in his shoulder, then withdrew a small knife from the same shoulder. He spoke as he slowly cut off an end, “I don’t mean to poke my finger in your business, just asking, one equal to another,” here he paid extra close attention to his cigar, looking to Jackson like he was trying to appear innocuous; it immediately drew his suspicion and he sharpened his attention, “what are you going to do with no lady dragons around?”

  Jackson physically drew back his head in confusion. This was not where he had thought the conversation was going. “What do you mean? Why should that make any difference in my ability to help and to serve?”

  Ono finished trimming his cigar and swapped the knife for a lighter. “I’m just saying,” he puffed a few times as he lit it, “you’re a young, handsome dragon – don’t look at me that way, you know it and you know I’m not coming onto you, you’re not that pretty you know. Anyways,” he replaced the lighter and closed the chamber in his pauldron, “you’re on your way to a foreign empire, minimum of six years and change before you return. Realistically ten. You’ve got only yourself what matches your own biological signature, and you don’t have any possibility of that changing. Are you gonna be ok? I don’t know if dragons start families young, or if you like to play the field any, but it can be disheartening, I’d imagine, to have such a bleak prospect before you. Hence: there’s no lady dragons here, are you gonna be ok?”

  He took a moment to gather his thoughts. I don’t know why he’s going here, he thought. It seems strange that he would care, but I suppose he is after my psychological status. Fair enough, I’m appropriating enough of his marines without warning that he would want to know what sort of mind is directing them. Very well. He’ll get an answer. “I shall be fine. Heat Death Virabdhara would not have allowed me to start my own brood any time soon. As you know, dragons are longer-lived than humans, and I am just coming out of my adolescence; old enough to be deadly and competent, but young enough to require more experience. He wanted my joining to be of significant political value, and like any thing of value in his life, he left nothing to chance and everything to his obsessive control.

  “So yes, master sergeant Ono, I will be just fine having my freedom to move and to do and to be without his control in my life, and contrary to what much of your marines seem to believe, sex is not required for a fulfilling life. It adds to one, but does not fulfil in and of itself. What of your question regarding some kind of joining? I do not require any such thing at the moment. I would like something like that sooner rather than later, but I am content simply in enjoying my freedom at the time being, and in serving my new lord. You cannot comprehend the joy that comes from finally serving one with honour.”

  “Indeed I can, Jackson, I can indeed. Why do you think Rieven boy and I am friends?”

  “Fair. I concede the point. I will add only this thought: ten or fifteen years is nothing to a dragon. I have lived for seventy-three already. I can wait longer, fear not.”

  Ono chuckled. “That’s good, then. I’m happy you’re content. Please let me know if you ever require anything. I am in the military and you are in the hold, but we both serve the same man, and you are honourable. I would aid you if I could.”

  Jackson touched his hand to his breast and said, emotion clouding his voice, “I am grateful for your concern. Such a thing is not the norm within my family, we were raised to have concern for ourselves alone. Gratitude.” He was about to say more, but the speakers within Ono’s gorget squawked a report.

  Master sergeant, sir, we have trouble on the lowest deck. Some sort of animals in the coi pond, sir.

  Ono immediately straightened. “What sort of trouble?”

  The fish, sir, they’ve grown legs and are starting to crawl out of the pond with aggression. I don’t want to kill them ‘cause of that bounty on live specimens they’ve got going, but I don’t know what we’re dealing with. Martinez, get your ass off of that! I said catch it, not squash it, no damaging my payday!

  Jackson immediately interrupted, “Sergeant, this is Adjunct Jackson. If any of those creatures are harmed before I arrive, I will eat every one of you after slow-roasting you with my own fire. Am I understood?”

  Ono looked at him strangely, and a little unhappily, his cigar hanging low in his mouth from frustration. There was a brief pause on the other end, before they responded.

  Yes, Adjunct. You are understood. Martinez, step away from those things. No more. I said no more! The comm link cut off.

  “Jackson,” Ono said in a reprimanditory tone, “what was that? Why are you threatening my marines when they contacted me for help?”

  Jackson stood and began running for the lift, yelling behind him as he went, “Because, master sergeant Ono, those are dragons, not walking fish. Dragons, sir!”

  Ono gaped, cigar falling to his feet, forgotten. Half a moment later he was running after Jackson, excited noises escaping his mouth as he caught up. Jackson smiled. Dragons. He was going to care for dragons. He was not alone at all! He couldn’t be happier.