Much of the morning passed in a blur.
Ragwrist himself helped usher dwarves in and out of the tent. Most offered her silver or gold coin in return for advice with their problems and plans, though a few grumbled when the “Spirits” failed to return the coin as she had the ring. If Wistala seemed stuck, Ragwrist announced that the reading was over. They had to take two breaks to extract the coins from her gums.
“I’m hardly able to speak without rattling or shooting silver into their faces,” she said as Lada put new candles in the holders and fresh incense in the brazier Ragwrist had confiscated from the luxury trade-tent.
The afternoon went much like the morning, only more so.
As the sun fell, there was some murmur outside, and the sound of dwarf bodies dropping to the ground.
Ragwrist bowed as he opened the tent flap and a dwarf strode in, a thin red cape of silk hanging down from a light ornamental helm that reminded Wistala of a spiderweb or the loose-knit caps of the librarians in Thallia, for it was more holes than plate save for a line of what looked like dragon teeth at the top, descending in size from large at the front to small at the base of the skull, rather like her own fringe. His faceplate was golden, and had flames at the edge like those used on some sun signs of the astrologers in Hypat. He carried a staff fully as tall as he was in his left hand, and atop it was a reddish crystal the size of his fist.
“Hmpf,” the dwarf said. “You’re not four years out of the egg.”
“Her egg drifted down the Holy River of Mherr,” Ragwrist said, still in his odd balancing bow, “and was plucked from the bullrushes by a daughter of—”
The dwarf tapped his staff on the ground. “Spare me the biography. A fortune-telling drakka?”
“I hide nothing from your greatness,” Wistala said. Ragwrist bobbed a bit, and Wistala bowed.
“How much am I to give you?” the dwarf said.
Ragwrist raised his thumb three times.
“I can ask nothing from one who has a chair at the Council Table of the Wheel of Fire,” Wistala said, and Ragwrist turned his thumb into a fist and shook it at her. “But if you care for my oracle, you may reward me as you wish.”
The fist stopped shaking.
The dwarf gave a nod that bent his waist just far enough that a charitably inclined person might take it for a bow. Wistala concentrated every iota of her attention on him; were her perceptions claws, they would be dug into his eyes. “My name is Fangbreaker. That’s all I’ll tell you, drakka.”
“No, it’s not,” Wistala said, having heard his heart miss a beat as he spoke the name. Ragwrist toppled out of his bow but came to his feet again quietly.
The staff came down hard enough for Wistala to feel it through the packed mountain dirt. “Gnaw! It is!”
“Were you born with that name?”
She saw eyewhites inside the mask. “I am titled Fangbreaker, but you speak the truth. I was born to a common name. Gobold was I on the day of my birth.”
“Let us call the score even.” She studied his hands. There was a white scar across one set of fingers, those of his right hand. He was wide, even for a dwarf, and still puffed from his walk into the tent. Perhaps wheezed a little.
“I’m not the first dragon you’ve matched yourself against,” Wistala said, feeling her foua pulse. “You’re a warrior at heart, now relegated to the table and dusty papers that make you sneeze.”
“True. But I wish to speak of the future, not the past.”
“You are often opposed at the council table.”
“Any rower on the icewater could tell you this. I would know the future.”
Wistala wondered what kind of seeds she could plant behind that fiery golden mask. “You will put your armor on again. You will lead your dwarves into battle. You will take an act other generals will call rash, but it will bring you victory and accolades. Complete victory and high accolades.”
“Can I trust a dragon?”
“Yes.”
“Because I have before, a mated pair who cheated me.”
Wistala had trouble forming the words. “If I cross you, I will die as they did.”
“Hmpf,” Fangbreaker said. “You take the chance that I will not chase you down the mountain road. But I will cross the Inland Ocean and carry vengeance even into the earthquakes of the fire coast beyond if you prove a charlatan.”
Wistala took a deep breath. She might as well be skinned for a bull as a calf. How would Prymelete put it? “Then hear my oracle and judge: You must and you will master the council table. You must and will throw away the ways of politic and traditon that hold you back. You must and will master yourself, go down the mountains again, burning off the girdle of fat and replacing it with one of leather and iron. You must and you will master your people, as once Thul did, be firm and they will love you for it. Be hard and they will worship you.” She half-heard his lips form a familiar word out of Rainfall’s histories. “Forge them into one weapon, and I see no power on the Upper World or Lower that can stand against you—yes, even the ten-jewel crown will be yours—”
“The crown of Masmodon,” Fangbreaker whispered. “Such an oracle. Oh, dreams! Oh, dreams!”
Wistala collapsed, knocking over some of the candles. Ragwrist stopped one before it could set the tent alight.
“No more, I beg you, great dwarf,” Ragwrist said, falling to his knees. “You’ll be the death of my poor dragon.”
Wistala watched the dwarf out of a rolling, water-lidded eye. He shook himself from his reverie. “Hmpf. The story’s worth some coin, though the pratfall at the end is a bit much.” He reached into his purse and flung a handful of golden coin at her. It rattled off her scales like hail. “Spend it quickly if you lied.”
“You’re too generous!” Ragwrist said, gathering the gold, though he didn’t offer any back to make Fangbreaker’s payment more equitable. Wistala again heard dwarves dropping on their bellies as the staff tapped its way off.
Ragwrist added to the drama by telling the prone dwarves outside that the fortune-telling was over for the day, but by special engagement, the circus would stay one more day before moving off.
That night Wistala ate at Ragwrist’s table.
“Keep up performances like that, and at next two-moon’s break this winter, I shall have a new wagon built special for you, drawn by a tusked-and-silvered gargant. Yes.”
“Aren’t you afraid he’ll come after us if my prophecy doesn’t pan out?” Wistala asked.
Ragwrist wiped grease from his chin with his multicolored sleeve. “They never do. Most hominids spare themselves the embarrassment of admitting they were cheated. Ah, Wistala, this is the beginning of a profitable friendship.”
The circus packed up, though no dwarf children were brought across the lake to see the gargants go, and only a few dwarf-helms showed at the broken towers.
One odd group of humans did come across to watch the circus go, however. A tall handsome woman in a blue cloak, a young girl, and a towhead boy watched the train pack up. The woman knelt beside the boy and continually pointed to Wistala and spoke to the youngest child, and soon the child was pointing, too, but the wind carried her words away.
Wistala wondered if this was the Dragonblade’s family, and for one awful moment was tempted to run up the hill and burn them down to charred bones, so that the Dragonblade might come home to destruction and grief, but she suppressed the evil thought.
She was a dragon, after all, and better than the assassins.
A month later, the circus stopped at the prosperous Green Dragon Inn. Wistala couldn’t say how she felt about the homecoming: happy that she was again seeing familiar faces, or saddened that she would leave with the next “close.”
She appeared at the Quarryness Hypatian Hall and confirmed that she still lived, much to the delight of the children who gathered on the common and stairs to watch.
Rainfall was his same courteous self, and Widow Lessup still despaired at the damage Wistala’s scales did to the doorframe and stair walls, though Wistala walked about the house with claws retracted, trying to pad as lightly as Yari-Tab, who now had a velvet cushion under the skylights in the library.
“And the thane? Still angry with you?” Wistala asked at dinner. The same Old Guard sat around the table, with the addition of Lada and the subtraction of Intanta, who was watching over Rayg.
“We correspond but little,” Rainfall said, Lada hanging on his arm, as she had from the moment of their arrival. “He has more barbarian emissaries out of the north visiting him than agents of the Hypatian Order.”
Rainfall tickled Lada under the chin, and she beamed.
“Circus life agrees with Wistala, who’s grown to twice her former size,” Rainfall said. “How do you like it, Granddaughter? You seem a little thinner, and not just at the waist.”
“They work me from sunpeep to the last red cloud,” she said.
Ragwrist refilled his wine goblet. It was not such fine crystal as the glass Rainfall had broken in his library, but it still sparkled, due to Anja’s applications of rag and ash. “Such thanks! You’ve received an education that will last the rest of your life. And I’ve two more years on my contract.”