Freedom and choices. She could seize the one and make the other. ‘I’m staying,’ she said quietly. ‘Not for my dragon. Not even for my friends. I’m staying here for me. To make a place where I do belong.’
Tats looked over at her. ‘Not for me?’ he asked without guile.
She shook her head. ‘Honesty,’ she reminded him quietly.
He glanced away from her. ‘Well, at least you didn’t say you were staying for Rapskal.’ Then, quite suddenly, Tats made a sound, a hoarse intake of breath. A moment later Thymara whispered on a sigh, ‘I see him.’
The animal that was moving cautiously from the perimeter of the forest and into the open meadow was magnificent. Thymara was slowly becoming accustomed to the great size that the hoofed creatures of this dry forest could attain. Even so, this was the largest she had seen yet. She could have slung a sleeping net between the reaches of his two flat-pronged antlers. They were not the tree-branch-like horns she had seen on the other deer of this area. These reminded her of hands with wide-spread fingers. The creature that bore them was worthy of such a massive crown. His shoulders were massive, and a large hummock of meaty flesh rode them. He paced like a rich man strolling through a market, setting one careful foot down at a time. His large, dark eyes swept the clearing once, and then he dismissed his caution. Thymara was not surprised. What sort of predator could menace a beast of that size? She drew the bowstring taut and held her breath, but her hope was small. At best, she could probably deliver a flesh wound through that thick hide. If she injured him sufficiently or made him bleed enough, she and Tats could track him to his death place. But this would not be a clean kill for any of them.
She gritted her teeth. This could very well take all day, but the amount of meat would be well worth it. One more pace and she would have a clear shot at him.
A scarlet lightning bolt fell from the sky. The impact of the red dragon hitting the immense deer shook the earth. Thymara’s startled response was to release her arrow: it shot off in wobbly flight and struck nothing. In the same instant, there was a loud snap as the deer’s spine broke. It bellowed in agony, a sound cut short as the dragon’s jaws closed on the deer’s throat. Heeby jerked her prey off the ground and half-sheared the deer’s head from his neck. Then she dropped it before lunging in to rip an immense mouthful of skin and gut from the deer’s soft belly. She threw her head back and gulped the meat down. Dangling tendrils of gut stretched between her jaws and her prey.
‘Sweet Sa have mercy!’ Tats sighed. At his words, the dragon turned sharply toward them. Her eyes glittered with anger and spun scarlet. Blood dripped from her bared teeth.
‘Your kill,’ Tats assured her. ‘We’re leaving now.’ He seized Thymara by the upper arm and pulled her back into the shelter of the forest.
She still gripped her bow. ‘My arrow! That was the best one I had. Did you see where it went?’
‘No.’ There was a world of denial in Tats’ single word. He hadn’t seen it fly and he wasn’t interested in finding it. He pulled her deeper into the forest and then started to circle the meadow. ‘Damn her!’ he said quietly. ‘That was a lot of meat.’
‘Can’t blame her,’ Thymara pointed out. ‘She’s just doing what a dragon does.’
‘I know. She’s just doing what a dragon does, and how I wish Fente would do it also.’ He shook his head guiltily at his own words, as if shamed to find fault with his dragon. ‘But until she and Sintara get off the ground, we’re stuck with providing meat for them. So we’d best get hunting again. Ah. Here we are.’
He’d struck the game trail that had brought the big buck to the forest meadow. Reflexively, Thymara cast her gaze upward. But the trees here were not the immense giants that she was accustomed to. At home, she would have scaled a tree and then moved silently from limb to reaching limb, travelling unseen from tree to tree as she stalked the game trail. She would have hunted her prey from above. But half these trees were bare of leaves in the winter, offering no cover. Nor did the branches reach and intermingle with their neighbours as they did in her Rain Wild home. ‘We’ll have to hunt on foot, and quietly,’ Tats answered her thoughts. ‘But first, we’ll have to get away from Heeby’s kill site. Even I can smell death.’
‘Not to mention hear her,’ Thymara answered. The dragon fed noisily, crunching bones and making sounds of pleasure with each tearing bite. As they both paused, she gave a sudden snarl, like a cat playing with dead prey; a large cracking sound followed it.
‘Probably the antlers,’ Thymara said.
Tats nodded. ‘I’ve never seen a deer that big.’
‘I’ve never seen any animal that big, except dragons.’
‘Dragons aren’t animals,’ he corrected her. He was leading and she was following. They trod lightly and spoke softly.
She chuckled quietly. ‘Then what are they?’
‘Dragons. The same way that we aren’t animals. They think, they talk. If that’s what makes us not animals, then dragons are not animals, too.’
She was quiet for a time, mulling it over. She wasn’t sure she agreed. ‘Sounds like you’ve given this some thought.’
‘I have.’ He ducked low to go under an overhanging branch and she copied him. ‘Ever since Fente and I bonded. By the third night, I was wondering, what was she? She wasn’t my pet, and she wasn’t like a wild monkey or a bird. Not like the tame monkeys that a few of the pickers used to go after high fruit. And I wasn’t her pet or her servant, even if I was doing a lot of things for her. Finding her food, picking vermin away from her eyes, cleaning her wings.’
‘Are you sure you’re not her servant?’ Thymara asked with a sour smile. ‘Or her slave?’
He winced at the word and she reminded herself whom she was talking to. He’d been born a slave. His mother had been enslaved as punishment for her crimes, so when he was born, he was born a slave. He might have no memory of that servitude, for he had been a very small child when they escaped it. But he’d grown up with the marks on his face, and the knowledge that many people thought differently of him as a result.
They had come to a low stone wall, grown over with vines. Beyond it, several small huts had collapsed on their own foundations. Trees grew in and around them. Thymara eyed them thoughtfully but Tats pressed on. Ruins in the forest were too common even to comment on. If Sintara were not so hungry, Thymara would have poked around in the shells looking for anything useful. A few of the keepers had found tool parts, hammer heads, axe bits and even a knife blade in the debris of some of the collapsed huts. Some of the tools had been of Elderling make, still holding an edge after all the years. One collapsed table had held cups and the remains of broken plates. Whatever had ended Kelsingra had ended it swiftly. The inhabitants had not carried their tools and other possessions away. Who knew what she might find buried in the rubble? But her dragon’s hunger pressed on her mind like a knife at her back. She’d have to come back later when she had more time. If Sintara ever let her have time to herself.
Tats’s next words answered her question and her thoughts.
‘I’m not her slave because I don’t do those things the way a slave would do them. At first it seemed almost like she was my child or something. I took pride in making her happy and seeing how pretty I could make her. It was really satisfying to put meat or a big fish in front of her and feel how good it made her feel to eat.’
‘Glamour,’