The dragonette glared at me like she blamed me for everything wrong with not only her life specifically, but with the world in general. Still, I’d expected her to just sit there silently until Mother and Indomitable involved us in their conversation, but she had other ideas. Pitching her voice so that I heard her despite the growls and hisses that filled the air, she said, “You speak no Draconic.” She spoke in Tavvanarian, so smoothly fluent that she must have had the Tongues Advancement. It was that, or she’d grown up speaking it, which I didn’t think particularly likely. Though there might have been an element of that as well, since she used human inflection in a way that most adult dragons I’d met didn’t.

  As intrigued as I was by that, I was also annoyed. Not only did she look at me like I was dirt, but she used that special inflection, carefully designed to project a mix of incredulity, amusement, annoyance, and personal offense, that is usually only heard from human teenagers. As though I’d purposefully avoided learning the language in preparation for one day meeting her.

  “You speak Tavvanarian,” I countered, choosing to reply in Karakani just to see how she’d react. Impolite, perhaps, but she’d started it.

  “I do,” she agreed, with the second eyelid blink that was the dragon equivalent of rolling one’s eyes. Then she froze and narrowed her eyes at me, probably at the moment she realized she’d replied in Karakani. “You are as sneaky as he said you would be,” she said, more an accusation than a statement.

  “He does not know the half of it.” I crinkled my eyes with amusement, and was pleasantly surprised to see her return the expression before going back to her much put upon irritation.

  That might not have been the end of our short conversation, if Mother hadn’t interrupted. “Daughter,” she said, and my attention was instantly on her. “This is Indomitable, clutchmate of my own father. Introduce yourself.”

  I looked up at the old male, who was now gazing down at me with focused curiosity, his eyes a bright yellow against the deeper and more complex saffrons and reds of his scales. And it was just and only that: curiosity. For all that Mother had talked him down, the interest in his eyes looked entirely innocent. Which might just be me being shit at reading dragons or him being good at hiding his intentions, and I knew that, but it set me at ease nonetheless.

  “I am Draka,” I told him with all the pride I felt in myself and my accomplishments, but without exaggerating the way I had at the conclave. “Daughter of Sower of Embers, Reaper of Flame and He Who Darkens the Night. This is my island, by right of inheritance and by right of might, and I bid you both welcome.”

  “Such a polite whelp,” Indomitable said, eyes crinkling. I was surprised to find that, while they’d sounded quite similar in Draconic, his voice was higher than Mother’s when he spoke a human language. “I am Indomitable, as your mother has already told you. And this is my… what is it, little one? Three times granddaughter?”

  “Four,” the young amber replied promptly, without a hint of the attitude she’d shown me.

  “Is it? Hmm… Waters, Eruption, Dawn and then Glacial. So it is! My four times granddaughter, then. Go on, little one. Introduce yourself as your cousin several times removed has.”

  “Must I?” the young brass asked.

  “I am afraid so,” her several times great grandfather said solemnly.

  With an air of utter resignation, the brass said, “I am Sandstorm.” This was apparently, for reasons I couldn’t fathom, very embarrassing. After only a moment’s pause, she added, “I was very young and they will not let me change it until I choose an adult name!”

  “I see,” I lied. “Well, good luck with choosing one, then. I have not chosen one either.”

  “Of course you haven’t,” she muttered. “You can’t be older than three decades at most.”

  I smothered the urge to tell her how right she was. The fact that she guessed that I was many times older than I actually was, at least biologically, was far more flattering than she could have known. If she guessed by my size alone, that meant that my hoard must be far bigger than anyone would have expected at my age.

  I mean, Mother had pretty much said as much, but it was nice to have independent confirmation.

  I felt Mother’s eyes on me, and remembered that there had been two things I should find out. The first had been their names. The second…

  “What brings you here?” I asked. “Mother tells me your territory is far across the sea. Are you that sensitive?”

  “Ah, that.” The relaxed air that had surrounded Indomitable slowly vanished, to be replaced with something more solemn. “I confess that I may or may not have been able to feel the outpouring of magic from my own lair, but I was much closer. No more than three day’s flight eastward, with rest. I was in the area as…”

  Indomitable trailed off, seeming unwilling to continue, and Sandstorm wilted beside him. She turned toward him, yet kept her distance, as though she wanted comfort and reassurance but wouldn’t allow herself to seek it.

  The old dragon gently curled his tail around her and stated, “My granddaughter has been orphaned, no more than ten days ago. I came as soon as I felt my descendant die, but It took some time to reach her, drive off the dragons who’d killed her father, and then find her where she was hiding. I was trying to decide what to do with her when I saw the beacon. Here seemed like as good a place as any.”

  In the uncomfortable silence that followed, I wished more than ever that I had Instinct back. She at least would have thought of something to say — maybe even something that was appropriate from one dragon to another. What the hell could I say in a situation like that, which wouldn’t be woefully inadequate, insulting, completely out of character for a dragon of my age, or most likely all three?

  If nothing else, I felt like I understood Sandstorm a little better. She wasn’t just being moody, standoffish, and a bit of a bitch for the sake of it. The poor girl, for all that she was the size of an elephant and probably half a century old or more, had to be grieving and scared out of her mind. It couldn’t help to be separated from her hoard by thousands of miles, either.

  “That is unfortunate,” Mother said, rescuing me from my awkwardness. “You have my condolences."

  At her words, Sandstorm hissed, pulling away from Indomitable and locking her eyes on Mother. “I do not need them!” she growled, pushing herself low to the ground, tail straight and wings opening slightly as though ready to take flight — though whether to flee or throw herself across the gap to our branch, I couldn’t say. “You did not know him, and you do not know me! I will return, retrieve my hoard, and… and I will carve out a territory somewhere! Do not insult me with your pity!”

  I responded instinctively, matching her by crouching and hissing in outrage. The two adults in the room, though, took her outburst calmly. Indomitable looked down on her with a hissing chuff that conveyed patient understanding. Mother, for her part, said, “Peace, young one. I meant no insult. I meant only to say that I lost my own mother to humans when I was no older than you, and that I know your pain.”

  I was slightly offended at this revelation, to be honest. She’d never told me that. Though I supposed that I’d never asked, either. And it had its intended effect, soothing Sandstorm’s wounded pride and anger, misdirected though it may have been.

  It took a little longer for me to settle down and stop baring my teeth at her. I might not have been Instinct, but I was still part dragon, and she’d been rude to my mother, as a guest in my territory. No matter how much sympathy I felt for her situation, I needed a moment to get over that.

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  After her outburst, the mood of the meeting changed. Mother seemed to let go of the annoyance and resentment she carried for her uncle, relaxing a little as they fell back into their conversation. I assumed that she didn’t want me to know what they were talking about by the fact that she spoke Draconic, when all of us there were perfectly able to speak something I’d understand. Or perhaps that was her subtle way of hinting that I should talk some more to Sandstorm. That was how I chose to take it — it was less insulting.

  And getting to know her better would probably be a good idea. She was the first dragon I’d met who wasn’t considered an adult, and unless Indomitable intended to drag her back home with him, I figured she might try to settle somewhere within a thousand miles or two. And hell, we were related, if only distantly. Might as well see if we could have a civil conversation.

  Keeping my eyes on the dragonette, I jerked my head toward the knotted mess where the trunk of the tree split. Then, without waiting for a response, I started walking that way, claws sinking deep into the bark as I moved down the sloping branch. At first Sandstorm only looked at me dismissively, but then either boredom or curiosity got the better of her, and she followed.

  “Did you want anything? To play-fight, maybe? Show me a shiny stone?” she huffed, looming over me as we reached the center.

  She was trying to intimidate me, but that wasn’t going to happen. I wasn’t scared of her. This close up she didn’t look all that much bigger than myself. A foot and a half didn’t go far when I was used to everyone being half again my size, and she had a kind of slouch to her, like a nervous cat, that made her look smaller. And unless I was mistaken in my assumptions, she couldn’t have many Advancements. Just from comparing our sizes and guessing at her age, her hoard must be pitiful! It was simple: most of my size came from growing my hoard, but I was still growing naturally, too. Slowly, but enough that it was noticeable when I went long enough without any significant additions. Or at least it had been, when I was smaller. At any rate, an inch per month wasn’t an unreasonable estimate, which meant that in two years I’d be bigger than her!

  Hell, I had a bunch of gold sitting in the shrine, and more waiting at the Admiralty. If I brought those home, I might outgrow her just from that! But by the derisive way she’d said I couldn’t be older than three decades, I was sure she must be half a century if not more. So, ergo and QED and all that, the poor girl must be absolutely destitute.

  I felt a pang of pity for her, along with a smug pride. She might be bigger than me, but I might just be able to take her. So when she tried to put me down, her derision ran off my scales like rain.

  “I wanted to talk somewhere we would not be constantly interrupted or drowned out,” I told her coolly. “And to tell you that I forgive your rudeness in light of the tragedy you have suffered.”

  “You forgive me?” she asked, and though she drew herself up a bit she seemed more dismissive than annoyed. “Why should I care about that?”

  “Care, or don’t,” I told her, matching her tone. “I forgive you.” When she didn’t respond to that I asked, “You came from a few days to the southeast? Past Vanar?”

  She glared at me for several seconds, not saying anything. Then she bared her teeth and hissed softly, and I tensed up, but she didn’t make any aggressive moves. Finally she huffed heavily, relaxing a little but not dropping her dismissive demeanor. “That is what the humans call the big island we passed over, I suppose?”

  “You don’t know? You’re speaking Tavvanarian!”

  She gave me a dismissive head-wiggle, the dragon version of a shrug. “I speak human, however that might sound. This is what most of the humans on my island sound like.”

  “And where is that?”

  As though I’d asked something incredibly ignorant, she blinked her second eyelids at me and said, “A half day’s flight from this Vanar. Why do you care?”

  “I’m curious. Does your island have a lot of sand?”

  “Why would it?”

  “Well… your name.”

  “No,” she said with false patience. “Father took me north once, to an island with no end. There was a vast expanse of sand there, which billowed in the wind sometimes. I thought it was very…”

  When she trailed off and didn’t speak again I asked, “Very what?”

  “That has nothing to do with you.”

  “Come on! Very what?”

  “No!”

  “All right,” I said, pretending to back off. “If you’re too embarrassed to say, then—”

  “Very pretty!” she snapped. I didn’t even have to goad her, really. She just took the bait the moment I dangled it in front of her. “I thought the clouds, tan and gold and red, were very pretty! So I decided to name myself after them. Happy now?”

  “Yes,” I told her. I was being completely honest, too. It was petty of me, but I was quite satisfied to have gotten her to talk so easily. “And I agree. Sand storms can be very pretty. Powerful, too. I don’t see why you’d be embarrassed about calling yourself after them.”

  I was mostly honest about that, too. I could see how someone might think a dust storm was pretty if they’d never had to sit in its way and just endure the awful stuff. I’d personally be happy never to see another one in my life, but I thought that telling her that might sour the mood worse than it was already.

  “Yes, well…” she said, trailing off. Then she narrowed her eyes at me. “You have a strange way of speaking.”

  Mentally, I started. Had I been? Without Conscience to remind me, had I forgotten to mimic the way Instinct spoke? I must have. Scrambling for a way to explain myself, I landed on a half-truth. “I do,” I agreed. “I spent months with only humans to talk to before Mother found me. I try to speak properly around her, but sometimes I forget.”

  That, finally, lit a glimmer of actual interest in her eyes. “You spent time with humans? Alone? But you’re so little!”

  “The first time I met a human, he was bigger than me,” I told her, feeling oddly smug about that. “It was just after I learned to fly.”

  “Did he not try to kill you?”

  “No! He’s rather nice, really. His mate, though, she’s vicious. Tried to kill me twice. We get along better now, though.”

  She tilted her head, as though a different angle would make her understand me better. “You… get along? You mean that you know these humans?”

  “Oh, yeah. They’re my friends! Them and lots of others. I have a whole flock of them.”

  “Why?”

  Any momentum I’d been building vanished. Her bafflement struck me dumb. She’d seemed so interested that I would never have expected her to question something that everyone, whether it be human histories or Mother and the other dragons I’d met, had made sound so fundamental to being a dragon.

  “Why would I not have a flock of humans?” I asked, genuinely perplexed.

  “They are so small. And fragile. They only live a few decades at most, do they not? What is the point?”

  “The point?” I asked, utterly bewildered. “Why does there need to be a point? They’re funny, and loving, and brave, and interesting. And they’re mine. My friends, my servants, my—” I almost said my family, but caught myself. Sandstorm definitely wasn’t someone I could tell about that. “They help me grow my hoard, too!” I finished, figuring that would interest her. “I am far richer than I could ever have been on my own thanks to them.”

  “Father always thought them rather useless,” the dragonette said, again with that dismissiveness from before. “I can see amusing yourself with them. I have enjoyed the adulation of many humans since I was little. But I do not see the point of getting to know something that will be dead soon anyway, when I could spend that time getting to know someone worthwhile.”

  “My humans are not useless!” It felt like an attack on me and the ones I loved, and I instinctively reacted accordingly. I ducked low, to get a better angle to strike at her throat, flaring my wings for balance and baring my teeth in warning. “They are as valuable to me as my hoard, and you will not insult them!”

  Surprised by my aggression, Sandstorm reared back. All the way back. She must have expected me to lunge at her or something, because in her haste to get her throat out of range she went up on her back feet, spreading her wings and balancing precariously as she stretched and arched her neck way out of my reach.

  And then she disarmed me almost completely when instead of responding with anger of her own, she said, “Peace! I meant no insult! I truly do not see the point but I am sure that your humans are lovely!”

  I hissed, low in my throat, then huffed and sat back, collecting myself. I was a little embarrassed about my outburst, to be honest, but also satisfied that she’d backed off as quickly as she had. That, and mildly pleased that she’d chosen to apologize at all rather than try to slap me down for challenging her.

  There was also the possibility that she saw beating up a child much younger than her as beneath her, but I chose not to consider that.

  As I made noises of acceptance, and she settled down, Mother spoke up from much closer than I’d expected. “I believe we will leave it there,” she said. “I am pleased to see you getting along so well. Sandstorm, we will speak again soon. Uncle, it was… more pleasant than I expected to meet you. Now we shall visit with some of the other visitors. Come, daughter.”

  I made some polite farewells, and we were off. I expected I’d see more of them soon enough. Now, though, we had a life to save.

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