She’d been working in her father’s office since she was old enough to do math. When he was away, she ran the small empire he’d built. She hired and fired. She paid wages and made sure the various businesses had what they needed to keep running at optimal efficiency.
Lines checked and boat settled once more, Livia scanned the sea again. Where
was
that dragon? Had he drowned right in front of her eyes? Was a tragedy about to take place? And if so, what in the world could she do about it?
“Oh, Mr. Dragon?” she said softly, into the gentle breeze that caught her sail once again. “Where are you?” Her quiet voice took on a sing-song quality as she looked out over the calm sea. “I really hope you can hold your breath a long time, Mr. Dragon.” She began to fret over his safety. “Mr. Dragon?” she said again after a long pause while the sea remained calm beneath her little boat.
“My name is Hrardorr, not Mr. Dragon,”
a deep, rumbly voice said directly into her mind, making Livia jump.
“Though I do appreciate your polite form of address. It is much better than some of the things I have been called.”
“Where are you, Sir Hrardorr?” Livia asked aloud, shocked that a dragon had actually spoken to her.
“If you are in the little boat, I am directly below you right now. I will surface off your port side in a few minutes. Do not be alarmed.”
“I am in a small boat,” she replied, still feeling amazed at this unlikely conversation. “I had no idea dragons could swim like fish!”
A rumbly chuckle sounded through her mind.
“Most cannot. One of my ancestors was a sea dragon. It gives me a little bit of an edge in the water. Now, tell me, are you squeamish? It’s been my experience that many female humans do not like watching my kind devour our prey. Will you object if I eat my catch above the surface?”
“Not at all, Sir Hrardorr. I’ve been fishing since I was young. I clean and gut my own catch. I don’t think I’m squeamish. Unless…you don’t do anything…uh…strange to your food before you eat it, do you?”
Again, the dragonish laughter sounded in her mind.
“No, milady. I don’t believe you would consider it so. I just eat it, like most beings. Of course, the fish I caught is much larger than those you probably deal with.”
“What did you catch?” The dragon had piqued her curiosity. Did he bag a whale or something?
“Watch and learn,”
he said, with a hint of humor while, just off her port side, his head rose above water, followed rapidly by the rest of his body.
Her boat rocked, and she reached out to grab the lines to steady herself. In the dragon’s mouth was the sixteen-foot monster shark that had been terrorizing the fishing fleet of late.
“Oh, well done!” She knew she was smiling, but couldn’t help it. “The local fishermen will be singing your praises for taking old toothy away from their nets. Thank you, Sir Hrardorr!”
He seemed to preen for just a moment, then shook his head up and down, positioning the shark for a few giant chomps. Just that quick, the shark that had menaced the shore for weeks was gone. Swallowed almost whole by the biggest dragon Livia had ever seen.
Of course, she’d never been this close to a dragon in her entire life. Maybe they were all this big close up. Then again, this dragon seemed like he was larger than life from his coloration to his swimming abilities. He was special. She just knew it.
“Was this little shark really bothering people?”
he asked, sounding curious in her mind.
“Little?” She had to laugh. “Only a creature as magnificently proportioned as you would think that monster was little.” She shook her head. “But to answer your question, yes. It was chewing through nets and chasing swimmers. There seem to be an abnormal number of large sharks in our waters this year, and that was one of the bigger ones. I know for a fact that nobody would mind if you ate a few more of his friends, if you feel so inclined.”
The dragon bowed his head.
“It would be my pleasure.”
His head turned, but he seemed to be looking up, not down at her in the little boat.
“Now, tell me, whose are you and why do they let you out here all by yourself with such dangerous creatures all around your boat? Old toothy was not alone. There is a school of sharks in this water, and you should know that most of them were swimming circles around your boat until I arrived.”
That was news to Livia. She’d figured her bait might attract one or two of the predators, but she’d had no idea there were so many sharks out there, out of sight in the deeps.
“While I appreciate your warning, and I will be more careful in future, I can assure you that I am an experienced sailor and well able to take care of myself on the water. As to your question, I am nobody’s. I don’t even know what you mean by that.”
“Whose family do you hail from? Which set of dragons are your protectors? Surely, they take your safety more to heart than to let you sail out here on your own. Or is there someone else in the boat with you? Or a dragon flying overhead, watching over you from time to time?”
Livia looked around at her small, empty boat. Only her bait fish and tackle were with her. Why didn’t the dragon know that? And why did he ask about dragons flying above? Wouldn’t he…?
Oh, dear Mother of All. He was blind.
She’d heard stories of the new arrival to the Lair. A blind dragon. Speculation was rife in the town about what a blind dragon could do. Seems she had just learned a bit more than anyone else knew, but she would never gossip about Hrardorr. She wasn’t that kind of person.
“Sir, you mistake me. I am not from the Lair. I live in town. I am a sea captain’s daughter. My grandpa taught me to fish and to sail. I have never met a dragon before today. You are the first I have ever encountered.”
“Truly? And yet, you can hear me when I speak.”
He seemed to think for a moment, then continued,
“Human females who can hear our speech are rare, mistress. Your ability to do so would make you welcome in any Lair in the land, simply because you can talk with my kind and do not appear to be afraid of us. You’re
not
afraid of me, are you?”
he asked, seeming to want to be sure.
“Should I be?” she asked in a tone that she knew conveyed her amusement. “Honestly, Sir Hrardorr, I had no idea how you communicated, or that it was rare to be able to hear you. As I said, I’m not well acquainted with the ways of dragons or those who live with them. I’ve lived on this coast all my life.”
“If I were still a fighting dragon, I would bring you to the Lair myself. You aren’t mated yet, are you?”
Livia was puzzled by his question, but answered anyway. “No, I’m not married.”
“Then you must make your way to the Lair. You could find your mates there. I’m sure of it. A lady of such talent and gumption as yourself would be well suited to our life there.”
“Mates?” Livia repeated, surprised but intrigued by the idea.
She’d heard about the strange way the knights lived, of course. When she’d been just coming into her womanhood, her girlfriends had talked of little else than the idea of mating with a handsome knight. Until, that is, someone was told by her mama that matings among knights weren’t one on one. No, two knights shared one wife.
Livia didn’t know why it was so, only that all the married knights were parts of trios. Happy trios, to be sure. She’d seen a few of the Lair women shopping in the square from time to time, and they all seemed happy enough. Nobody ever claimed the knights were bad husbands. Quite the contrary.
But for some reason, not many of the men who lived alongside the dragons up on the cliffs were married. There were few Lair wives and, because of that, few children.
Occasionally, a knight would form a liaison with a town woman, but nobody had become a Lair wife from the town in recent memory. The affairs seemed merely to be of convenience, not love everlasting.
“Mates, their dragon partners, and eventually children,”
Hrardorr seemed to answer her question.
“Little dragonettes and tiny human babies, with two dragon parents and three human parents.”
“All of them?” Livia asked, intrigued by the concept.
“Of course,”
Hrardorr said.
“That is the family unit of the Lair. They all share in the parenting of any offspring, dragon and human alike. It is the way we have always done it, since the first fighting dragon partnered with the first knight.”
“I had no idea. I mean, I’d heard things, but nothing like this. It sounds kind of…nice.” She marveled at the idea of a baby dragon being raised equally by humans and dragons, or a baby human calling a dragon papa. “Do you have children, Sir Hrardorr?”
The dragon’s mouth tightened.
“No. And now, I never will.”
“Never is a very long time,” she said softly, wanting to offer comfort.
“Don’t I know it.”
His tone was bitter.
“Being blind isn’t the end of the world,” she said, confronting his depression head on.
His great head reared back as if she’d struck him.
“You know I’m blind?”
“I figured it out. A few of my father’s people do business at the Lair, and they bring back news of new arrivals. I assumed you’re the new dragon that has come here to recuperate. Am I wrong?”
A sigh gusted out of Hrardorr’s mouth, filling her sails for a brief moment. She had to change tack to get back to him, but he didn’t seem to notice.
“No, milady. You’re not wrong. I’m the damaged dragon who can’t even fend for himself anymore.”
“Seems to me you just bagged a menacing shark all by yourself and chomped him to little pieces without any help at all,” she mused. “You’re not helpless. Hopeless, maybe…and that can be changed.”
“You’re a strange female,”
Hrardorr said, making her bark a laugh she hadn’t expected.
“You’re not the first person to tell me that,” she allowed, smiling.
“I’m not a person. I’m a dragon.”
He bared his pointy teeth, as if grinning at her.
“Point taken, Sir Dragon.” She regarded him for a moment, searching for the right words, but she couldn’t find them. “I like fishing. I do it most days when my father is away. Maybe you’d like to meet me here again sometime? I mean, I need protection from the circling sharks, and I suppose you could make yourself useful in lowering their numbers before someone from the town ends up maimed or dead. The fishermen would be grateful, I’m sure, as would most of the townsfolk.”
“You don’t say.”
Hrardorr looked as if he was thinking over her words.
“I like to swim. And I also like the taste of shark.”
“Really? What does it taste like to you?”
“Like victory.”
Victory over his disability, she surmised. Well, it was a start.
“Perhaps I will seek you out again. If your little boat is in the water, I can find it from below. My water hearing works as good underwater as my eyes used to work in the sky.”
“Water hearing?” she asked, intrigued.
“That’s my name for it,”
he replied.
“I’m not sure what the sea dragons call it, but it’s dark underwater. Eyes don’t see much. But sound echoes back to me like waves. I can tell where things are using that sense. I don’t know exactly how it works. It just does.”
“That’s pretty amazing,” Livia told him. “You could also just talk to me, right? I mean, how far away can you get before I can’t hear you in my head? Do you know?”
“It depends on you, milady. On how strong your mind is.”
He tilted his head as if in thought.
“We could experiment, if you like.”
“I think I’d like that. If you wanted to find me at any time, you could just ask, and maybe, if I can learn how to answer you the same way, I could give you directions.”
“If you can speak into my mind, you could do more than that,”
he said, then immediately backtracked.
“But no. I won’t get that close to a human again. Even if you’re not a knight, it hurts too much to lose friends, and you are too short-lived, unattached to a dragon family as you are.”
She didn’t understand a lot of what he’d just said, but the things he was hinting at were intriguing. She resolved to work on him. She’d wear him down in time. Hrardorr didn’t realize it, but he’d just become her new project.
CHAPTER TWO
Seth went to check on Hrardorr, as he’d done every night since the blind dragon had arrived. At first, Seth had thought of Hrardorr as a patient, but over time, he’d come to enjoy the caustic dragon’s company.
Seth had grown up in the Southern Lair and was apprenticed to the healer, though he wasn’t much good at his vocation. He could help stitch wounds and bandage fragile wing bones, but he didn’t have a true healing gift. He’d just taken up the job because the Lair’s aging healer, Bronwyn, was a friend of the family and had been like a grandmother to him since his earliest days.
Bronwyn was getting on in years and could no longer handle the more physical aspects of her job. Once Seth had seen how she struggled, he’d volunteered to help her and had somehow ended up as her apprentice, though he really had no special gift for the work.
Everyone in the Lair just accepted that the quiet son of two accomplished but elder knights would do well as the new healer, since nobody else had stepped forward for the job.
And Seth hadn’t fought it. He wanted to help Bronwyn. If he missed some sword practice to do it, so be it. Bronwyn was more important. People you loved were always more important than anything else, to Seth’s way of thinking. Maybe that had lost him a few opportunities over the years, but that was okay with him.
Hrardorr was becoming important to Seth, too, which was surprising, really. While Seth admired, and was friends with, many of the dragons in the Lair—especially those that needed a healer’s help now and again—somehow, this blind dragon had earned a special place in Seth’s heart in only the few weeks he’d been in residence in the Lair.
Seth could bespeak dragons. He’d always had the ability. It made him eligible to be chosen as a knight, but he didn’t really have the weapons training to go with it. Although he’d taken the basic classes all Lair children were given, he hadn’t had the time to pursue his natural affinity for sword work once he’d apprenticed to Bronwyn. That, his mother insisted somewhat optimistically, was why he hadn’t been chosen by a dragon yet.