Tooth and Claw (23 page)

Exalt and Exalted Rimalin had been out of town for a little while in Leafturn and Freshwinter. Avan had received an invitation to join them at Rimalin. He had been far too busy even to consider it, he had sent them polite and genuine regrets. Then he received a note saying they were in Irieth and asking him to dine that evening. He had Sebeth dash off an immediate acceptance and set off for their town house with a light heart. He had been looking forward to discovering what investment opportunity the Exalted Rimalin
had discovered, and he always enjoyed meeting Ketinar, Exalt Rimalin.

Servants showed him in, through the fashionable front hall, inlaid with pebbles and semiprecious stones, into the Speaking Room, where Ketinar came forward to greet him. She was a dark red, having survived three well-spaced clutches, and though her headdress bore sparkling citrines and garnets, proving her a lady in the forefront of fashion, nobody would have called her beautiful. Her face had an animation that made beauty irrelevant. Her eyes may have been too close to her snout, but they sparkled more than the jewels nodding among the lace on her forehead.

“I haven’t seen you in an age,” she said to Avan in welcome.

“I haven’t been here since before my father’s death,” Avan said, and hastened on before she could speak. “And thank you so much for the letter of condolence you sent me, it was a comfort in a dark time.”

“It’s good you could come tonight. Rimalin especially wanted to see you. We’re very thin of company in Irieth at present. Everyone is out of town, most of them off drearily chasing down venison with their bare claws, or with bare steel if they are female.”

“So what brought you away from that delightful pursuit?” Avan asked.

Ketinar laughed. “I truly don’t find it delightful, after the first day or two it’s about as exciting as picking blackberries. But we came up to town because Rimalin has some business, which concerns you as well.”

She clearly wanted him to ask about it, but he resisted for the time being. “I find I am the first to join you,” Avan said, looking into the empty room, which was usually crowded in all seasons.

“You are our only guest tonight,” Ketinar said. “When Rimalin finally comes up, we’ll be able to eat. We do have some fairly fresh
venison, brought up from the country. Be sure to admire it, for Rimalin caught it all himself.”

Rimalin joined them presently, and the venison was duly eaten and admired. After dinner, in place of the usual sponging, Rimalin suggested that Avan might like to join them in their bathhouse.

“I didn’t know you had your own bathhouse,” Avan said. “I’d be delighted.”

“It’s only big enough for three, so we don’t usually use it for company,” Ketinar said.

She led the way down into the family part of the establishment. A servant with a pike clutched in his claws stood barring the way down, but he stepped aside with a smile as Ketinar waved him away. The lower parts of the cavern were gorgeously appointed in marble with statues and ornaments in gold and silver. The water in the great bath was steaming slightly and was lightly scented with cedar and sage.

“What a delightful scent,” Avan said, wondering what it cost. Sebeth would like it. If he could buy her some it might bring the sparkle back to her eyes.

“It’s one of Ketinar’s extravagances,” Rimalin said, fondly. The three of them took off their hats and slipped into the water.

“It seems a shame to talk business in such comfort,” Rimalin said after a moment of basking.

Avan stared up at the ceiling, marble inlaid with jasper and amethyst in scale patterns. This was luxury at a level he could only envy. “It is very comfortable, but I am listening,” he said. He was in fact consumed with curiosity.

“Old Eminent Telstie is dying,” Rimalin said. Avan raised his head in surprise. This was not at all what he had expected. “Oh yes, he’s not so very old, for an Eminent, but his fire came early and it’s burning him out. He’s not expected to last until summer. He
has no surviving children. His heir was expected to be his elder nephew, but I heard they’d quarrelled. It can’t be his younger nephew, he’s a parson. The elder nephew won’t hold it unless the will is nailed down. He’s young. You know how it is with Eminents. The father is a parson, too. The nephew hasn’t been brought up as the heir to an Eminent should be—old Telstie wasn’t expecting him to need to be, he had plenty of children, but they all perished one way or another. But there’s also a niece—the one we saw in Hathor’s that day. Pretty thing, remember? She has just as good a claim on the Telstie estate as her brothers, or would if she were married to a rising dragon like yourself.”

“But why would she be?” Avan asked, his expectations entirely confounded by the turn the conversation was taking. “I can’t afford to marry. And I’d have to fight her brother.”

“He’s no bigger than you are,” Ketinar put in. “And if you were married to Gelener Telstie and the Eminent’s choice, her brother probably wouldn’t even challenge.”

“She has seventy thousand crowns of her own, even if the other affair didn’t come off,” Rimalin said.

Lulled by the warm water and the rich scents Avan almost began to consider it. To be an Eminent was like something out of a dream. His father had been born on the Telstie estate, and from what he had heard it was a wide demesne, in which he could soon grow large enough to defend his position. Then, like cold water down his scales, he remembered Kest’s insulting name for Sebeth: “Little Eminence.” A dream indeed, and not something in his reach, and to reach it he would have to marry a stranger and give up Sebeth. He might have given her up to save someone very dear to him, Haner, or Selendra, but not for this insubstantiality. “I don’t even know the maiden,” he protested. “She wouldn’t consider me for an instant.”

“We could introduce you,” Ketinar said. “We’ve always wanted the best for you, Avan. We could also talk to her mother and father and tell them how much we esteem you and how suitable you are.”

“What’s the catch?” Avan asked bluntly.

“Somebody has to marry her, and somebody has to become Eminent Telstie. Why not a friend of ours?” Rimalin asked.

“And what would you want in return?” Avan asked.

“Your political influence, when you are Eminent and sit in the Noble Assembly in the Cupola. That wouldn’t be difficult, considering that we agree on most things. Besides that, to manage some of your money. You know how well I manage my own. There are affairs that need lots of capital but bring a huge return. We could help each other. And immediately, for we would introduce her to you immediately, and she is about to return to Irieth immediately, there is one small thing you could do for me.” Rimalin was sunk entirely below the water, only his eyes and nostrils showed. “I believe you are investigating property rights in the Skamble?”

“I am . . .” Avan said, and waited.

“Well, my friends and I might find it quite useful to know what you are going to decide. If the whole area is to come down, which seems the most likely thing, there will be fortunes to be made in demolition and rebuilding. It’s a slum at present, but if it could be reclassified so warehouses could be built there, it could become a goldlode. That’s where I’d advise you to invest your patrimony, if you want it to rival the wealth Gelener will bring you.”

Avan could not speak. “Is it confidential?” he had asked Liralen, and the old clerk had replied “Tolerably.” In his first week in the Planning Office four dragons had tried to bribe him in the street. His contempt for them had been small in comparison for his contempt for any dragon who would accept such a bribe. The work of the government offices was done by such dragons as would
not. Even Kest, whom Avan detested, even Kest, he knew, would not even consider accepting a bribe for an instant.

The moment had stretched and stretched. He could not walk away, he was soaking in hot water and deep in Rimalin’s hospitality. There was even a guard with a pike to stop him getting out. And was it a bribe? They had offered him a great deal, but what it amounted to was an introduction to a maiden with possibilities, no more. Besides, Rimalin had not asked him to change his decision, merely to let him know what his decision would be. Avan’s decision was not yet made, but it already seemed more than likely that it would be the decision Rimalin wanted, to pull down the slum and have the Skamble made into warehousing to serve factories, river, and rail. It was only Sebeth’s protests about the welfare of the working dragons who made the Skamble their home that had been causing him to hesitate and consider some well-built but affordable housing as part of his plan. He could tell Rimalin all this and accept the introduction and the chances that came with it, and lose nothing. Sebeth was not truly his and never could be. If he were a rich Eminent he could give her a small fortune of her own and she could move to another city and pose as a widow.

He opened his mouth, and he was almost ready to tell Rimalin all he knew about the Skamble. Then he remembered Liralen again, the first day he had gone to the Office for the Planning and Beautification of Irieth, directly after he had made his oath of service. “If ever you do accept a bribe, don’t think that will be the end of it. Even if nobody finds out, which isn’t likely, the person who has given it to you will know, and will accept more, and be able to blackmail you into giving more because of the existence of the bribe. And you will know, and you will have to wake up on your bribe every morning and live with yourself knowing how you got it.”

“I can’t tell you,” Avan said, his teeth jarring together as he
spoke. “I have sworn an oath that I will not do such things. Besides, I have little desire to marry a stranger for position.”

“That’s exactly what you need to do,” Ketinar said. “You can’t afford to have that sort of scruples, in your position.”

“Scruples are for parsons, who are Immune,” Rimalin growled.

Avan stood, dripping. To his relief, Ketinar called a servant to dry his scales. “I think I’d better go,” he said.

Ketinar walked to the door with him. Rimalin remained in the water. “What a pity,” she said, when she had made her farewells. “I expect there’s some maiden somewhere you’re in love with, and though it doesn’t show for men as it does for us, sometimes it’s just as permanent a change.”

Avan was grateful she took it so well. Nevertheless, as he flew home he did not expect to receive any more invitations from the Rimalins, nor ever to see Ketinar again.

The Illustrious Daverak had occasionally chanced to come to Irieth out of season before this, but had never before been forced to spend several days there when he would have preferred to be in the country. Now, on a chill Freshwinter morning that would have been perfect for hunting, he had to knot his tail waiting in an overheated attorney’s office, and then deal with irritating detail. The affair of the writ was more troublesome and time consuming than he had imagined. His attorney, Mustan, believed it would be possible to defeat it, but not as easily as Daverak would prefer. It seemed it would be necessary to go to court and have a judgment. The attorney wrote at once to all Bon’s children, demanding statements and evidence.

“It isn’t as clear-cut as you seem to think,” Mustan said, pushing his eyeglasses closer to his eyes as he read his own notes. He was a young dragon, barely twenty feet long, but rising in position. Daverak had once been served by the long-established firm of Talerin and Fidrak, as had his father and grandfather before him. He had met Mustan at a party in Irieth, in season, several years before, and been completely won over by his energy and knowledge of the world. Slowly, over the next few years he had come to entrust all his business to him, first his investments and then almost everything, until Talerin and Fidrak did no more than the most routine parts of the management of the estate of Daverak. It was barely thirty years since Daverak had begun working with Mustan, but he had come to trust him completely. Even now he had no doubt of Mustan’s competence, nor of his honesty. But for the first time, as Mustan questioned him closely on the affair, he did not experience complete confidence in his attorney’s abilities. He wasn’t sure Mustan saw things as he did. He wondered if he might have been better with an old established firm like Talerin and Fidrak after all, in such a delicate family matter as this. Yet he had entrusted Mustan with the affair of his marriage settlement and never twitched a claw.

“It would be a clearer case if the parson at his deathbed hadn’t been his son,” Mustan said, glancing up.

“There was another parson, one Freld or Frelt. My wife will know the name, she knew him. He judged the case at the time.”

When Daverak had explained everything about the matter, Mustan sighed, and threw a little more coal on the fire, although Daverak found the little room already intolerably hot and close. “That will help show you had right on your side when you acted. If Freld or whatever his name is will come to court, it will help. Speak to him about it when you get the chance, perhaps even invite him to dinner if that wouldn’t be too onerous. We’ll need his goodwill.”

“I’ll speak to him,” Daverak said, though he regarded Frelt as a social inferior.

“But he’s useful as a witness, not a parson. The parson who was with Bon is the only one who can help show his intention, and that is Penn, and he will speak against you from what you say.”

“He as good as admitted at the time that Bon didn’t mention it. And he won’t go back on that now if he knows what’s good for him,” Daverak said, allowing a little flame to show in his throat.

“He is a parson, and Immune,” Mustan said, looking a little shocked.

“I didn’t mean anything improper,” Daverak said. “Just that he knows his preferment is dependent on family influence.”

“I thought it was rather dependent upon this—” Mustan looked at his notes. “This Benandi family, to whom he has allied himself?”

“They will not like to hear of him speaking against his own family,” Daverak said, irritated by this quibbling.

“Well, whatever he says, I’ll make sure we have a very experienced Pleader in court to question him about it. I was thinking of retaining Dignified Jamaney.”