The tower room, with its high vaults, pale stone walls, and many lancet windows open to a soft blue sky and creamy clouds, looked just as the bower of a dragon should. The Queen Ransomed’s wings and slim body belonged here, in a way that made sense of her species; having met her abroad, in circumstances that had not suited her, Qora was satisfied by this revelation, and paced the perimeter while she indulged him with the alien serenity of dragons.
When at last he lit on the pillow set out for him, she settled on the other, and the gossamers of her complex robes eased into a sheening ivory and white and orange pool around her. How similar her clothing was to the outfits designed for her on the pirate asteroid, where they’d first encountered one another… and how different, in how she wore them, and in the setting that framed her.
It was good to see her where she belonged, Qora thought. He hadn’t planned on this visit to the dragon throneworld, but in retrospect it was one of his better ideas. He’d greatly enjoyed the ride to it, and he’d been intrigued by his brief glimpses of the Other palace when the functionary led him to the Queen Ransomed’s abode. Perhaps he should not have peeked into the bathing chamber, with its multiple pools, or the closet, hidden from view sensibly by a curtain and not a door. But curiosity never strayed far from his heels, and he’d wondered how dragons nested. The answer that this dragon in particular did so without clutter, so that the view was the true décor, gratified him.
“In regards to your request for a meeting… I hope you have no pressing errands.”
“A delay,” Qora guessed, unperturbed. “Don’t worry. I didn’t think I could stroll into the ruler of a galactic nation’s parlor on a whim.” At least, not the leader of alien galactic nations, but the fractious and fallen Others could not run their governments the way Faulfenza did. “I am prepared to wait.”
“And I am pleased to host you,” the Queen said. “Are you certain you wish to stay?”
He canted his head. “Is there a reason you want me to go?”
“None,” she said. “I am pleased you are here. I have few friends. But the errand that takes my consorts away… I don’t know when they will be done with it.”
“I can wait,” Qora said. “I am exactly where I am supposed to be.”
* * *
Over three months later, Qora supposed that if one trucked with intergalactic conquerors, one must wait on their wars. Or the prelude to their wars; the Queen Ransomed had attempted to explain something about factional differences and turbulent neighbors, but it had been bad enough to learn Eldritch political intriguing without adding the draconic equivalent to his burdens. He could have left long ago—she had offered transport to wherever he wished—but somewhere around the end of the first month his innate stubbornness had activated, like a timed maintenance routine. He had promised his shape to the Chatcaavan Emperor; he wouldn’t leave without bestowing it.
He saw no reason to limit the gift while he waited. After all, he’d already taught one shapeshifter, the retiring Attendant to the Twelveworld Lord. Why not hundreds?
“Greetings! Would you like to learn an interesting shape? You can try mine!” Qora paused as the dragon backed away from him. “No? Another time, maybe.” He stepped in front of another of the few winged males at this level of the city. “You? You could be among the first to know the wonder of the Faulfenzair form!” He tilted his head away from the words spit at him, chuckled. “All right. Not you, either.” He stopped in the center of the street and spread his arms. “Anyone? I’ll teach all who long to learn!”
As expected, the Chatcaava hurried around the strange alien shouting in its indecipherable tongue. Qora grinned and resumed his ramble. After exploring the entirety of the palace grounds, including the areas reserved to servants, he’d used the chaos created by the other visiting aliens to slip into the surrounding wilderness for hikes. Between the Eldritch males jumping off balconies and hunting one another through the city streets, and the Eldritch female agitating the entire imperial harem, Qora doubted his hosts had the cycles to notice a lone Faulfenzair climbing the sea cliffs or strolling through the fields. By the time his hosts realized he was running loose, they were so grateful for how little trouble he was that they gave him far more license than they would otherwise have. Which made it a wonderful time to finally begin exploring the capital city… not just because everyone assumed he’d be more interested in hiking than sightseeing, but also because the city-dwellers had been habituated by the visiting Eldritch to shrug off the visits of aliens.
Had Qora mentioned his desire to see the capital to the Queen Ransomed, he would no doubt have been assigned a guide, possibly even a guard. Anyone would have told him he was crazy for strolling into a foreign city full of potentially hostile strangers without knowing the language. They would even have been right.
He was so glad he hadn’t consulted anyone before leaving.
The city was some distance from the palace, and a stranger-looking place Qora would have been hard-pressed to invent. The cramped facades at ground level were interrupted by entrances for low status individuals and deliveries from vehicles. Many failed to have solid doors, and while that would have been unexceptionable in a Faulfenzair city, the lack was peculiar among the Others, who valued their privacy and guarded their valuables. The impression below, where Qora could walk, was of a warren inhabited by vulnerable people whose lives were unnoticed and precarious.
But above… craning his head back, Qora counted the dragons soaring overhead or dropping onto various balconies: at least twelve silhouetted in the narrow rectangle he could see past the overhangs and awnings, all males with their pointed wings so reminiscent of predatory sea birds. The few males that shared the street with him were outnumbered by the four-armed females… and the ones that weren’t visibly infirm or elderly had the hollow gazes of the undervalued and overlooked.
How strange the universe was that the Promise had delivered them to. The God had told His people the Others would help them usher in the Golden Age… of course, the Faulfenza had assumed those Others would be worthy of creating one. And perhaps they were. Maybe the only thing the Faulfenza had gotten wrong was the belief that only perfect people could create beautiful things.
Well, he was here, to meet more of those imperfect people… exactly where he was supposed to be. Exactly where he had been, for months.
* * *
The Chatcaava called the throneworld city raug vararik, and its rulers had ensured their subjects were too far from the palace to interrupt its pleasures. In that they differed from the Eldritch, who had built their palace in the middle of their capital, the better to stress the differences in station between rulers and ruled. As far as Qora could see, it was one of the few differences between the species. Oh, the Chatcaava were reptilian-looking bipeds who could change shape, and the Eldritch were tall, flat-faced humanoids who could read minds, but those were variations on a common theme. Perhaps the similarity arose from their origins as evolved species, rather than engineered ones, like the Pelted? But humans, who had also evolved naturally, didn’t strike Qora the same way, or perhaps he hadn’t met enough of them.
He liked this city, though. It had too few curves, with too many people in one place, and yet he was arrested by the dark and hidden pockets created by the overhanging balconies, and by the shock of upper stories revealed by the occasional openings to the sky. He liked the sense of history that the buildings breathed out like incense: many Others have lived here for generations, and many will for generations to come. He trusted—more or less—the sense of rightness he felt walking here, knowing he was where he should be. All his life, he’d followed that sensation, the one that assured him he was on the proper path, and though it had led him into grief and tumult, he couldn’t help craving the reminder, like an echo of a rung bell hung in his heart: you are in the right place at the right time, you are, you are.
That sensation was riding him when he turned into a part of raug vararik even more shadowed—if that was possible—and joined the flow of Chatcaava on their unfathomable Other errands. It flooded him when he paused outside the dark mouth that led into a building. Leaning toward the chasm, he paused, nostrils flaring. Incense had a character that transcended species… why was that? The mélange of spices and musk was unfamiliar, but he knew it for what it was, anyway. The Faulfenza needed no temples, but he had learned to recognize Other holy places.
What did he know of Chatcaavan gods? Only what the Queen had said of her Living Air, and what their males had sworn by its Dying breath.
“So then,” he murmured. “Let us see, shall we?” And stepped into the gloom. His eyes adjusted until he perceived a glorious chamber: round, rather than the rectangle he’d been led to expect from the exterior, paneled entirely with dark wood, with every surface carved and polished to a glossy finish. The spice that mingled with the incense scent was strong enough to taste when he leaned close to one of the walls, and with his eyes so near he could pick out the hints of paint that detailed the figures in gold and crimson.
He was not alone: on the opposite side of the chamber several Chatcaava were kneeling, their horned heads wreathed in trails of gray smoke. The incense cones burned from the cupped hands of a statue, also wood, nearly black… and this figure was so stylized Qora would not have recognized it for a dragon without the extra limbs. He wasn’t sure the extra limbs were wings, even.
Someone approached, and he waited, curious, for this was surely the priest of the establishment. The dragon wore a stole similar in design to those that hung around the necks of the high status males of the palace, but meaner: the fabric less lustrous, the cut less extravagant. But Qora approved of the stern expression, even if the enormous, gem-like eyes made the creature look like a child not yet grown into its head.
As expected, the male addressed him in Chatcaavan, and while Qora had learned a great deal of atomized vocabulary in his months on the Throneworld, that was the limit of his ability. “I apologize,” he said in Universal. “I don’t know your tongue.” And in his limited Chatcaavan, one of his few memorized sentences: “Bau zak.” No understand/speak.
The male tilted his head, the low light glinting off his purple eyes. Then he stepped in front of the first of the reliefs and beckoned. Amused, Qora followed and let the priest’s words flow over him as he examined the relief. Did it matter that he didn’t speak the language? Not, apparently, to his host. Which seemed fitting, because if a Chatcaavan god existed, then surely he needed no words to be understood. Or was that how it worked with alien gods? Qora was still unwilling to wager on whether there were such things. What was more sensible… that Faulza was the single god over all thinking species, most of whom were unaware of Him? Or that Faulza was solely god of the Faulfenza, whom He had chosen as His most beloved children, and that all other gods were falsehoods?
The first relief depicted creatures without wings, laboring in forests full of fanged shadows, a scene that could have sprung from one of the Faulfenza’s Wisdom Scrolls. Had they also not feared the iifaul and the other monsters of the dark? The priest led him to the next, where he spoke in impassioned tones over the carved dragons mourning their dead, many of whom were broken infants. In the next panel, several dragons stood at the top of a hill in the attitude of petitioners… had they had more than one Qudii, Qora wondered? The First-Mother of the Faulfenza had attracted the attention of the God with her cry for help… and Faulza, in reply to her prayer, had Painted her in flame and smoke and granted her the MindFire for the defense of her people. Perhaps then, the dragons’ Living Air had done something similar?
But in the next panel, the dragons at the top of the hill had fallen to their knees, appearing to keen or writhe in pain. Above them hovered a set of angles that felt cruel in their perpendicularity. Qora would have drawn the wind as continuous lines, not this collection of spikes and congeries. The priest’s voice lowered, grew urgent and fearful, before leading him to the next panel, where the dragons sported fangs and talons, and then wings.
From there, Qora expected the usual story of Chatcaavan dominion over creation he’d heard, and more significantly, seen implied in the arrogance and expectations of every dragon male’s body- and mouth-speech. They considered themselves the natural rulers of the universe, as fully as the Faulfenza considered themselves the chosen ones of all thinking species. But oddly, the story that unfolded across the other half of the temple seemed to tell of setbacks and warnings, briefly rising to a height where a gentler-looking wind touched the dragons’ lifted arms, and ended with the dragon figures stumbling down into shadowed forests full of monsters again. So the round room had a purpose, after all, for the story was not linear, but cyclical. How clever, and unexpected!
“Thank you,” Qora said when the priest finished his recitation. “I am enlightened.”
The male sniffed, but seemed satisfied, and returned to those praying in the back of the chamber. Was the statue their god after all, or one of the monsters? Qora wondered what he would have learned had he understood their language, or they his. But it didn’t matter. The sensation that licked his heart like the tongues of a fire continued to whisper that he had been in the right place, at the right moment. Now, however, it was time to resume poking the snoot where curiosity led him next.
* * *
“But where have you been?” the Queen asked, concerned. Her hands on his arms were cooler than they should have been. Was that her pregnancy, or her worry, he wondered? “I sent someone to your chamber some hours after you left, but you had not yet returned. It is not usual for you to be out so long on your hikes.”
“You have many fine and beautiful wild places surrounding your palace,” Qora said. “But I thought ‘why should the visiting Eldritch have all the fun in the city?’ Before you grow fearful, see for yourself. I am whole and in one piece.” He patted one of her hands. “No fears, yes?”
She lowered her head, resigned. “It is useless to tell you to do what you will not, isn’t it. My sister has not learned that lesson yet, but I will not fight you.”
“You are wiser, Queen Ransomed.” Qora’s nose wrinkled nearly to the bridge. “But the princess’s stubbornness has its uses.”
“Yes,” the Queen said. “Did you enjoy your visit to the city?” At his expression, she sighed, smiled. “I see. It was not your first, was it.”
“There, now… you already know everything you need to!”
“Truly I don’t know how you slip away so. I have been distracted, but I didn’t think I was that distracted. This is, perhaps, a talent of Faulfenza. To efface themselves? Become invisible?”
“We are good at being where we are,” Qora said, because acting mysterious was easier than explaining what he suspected… which was that most Others couldn’t see what was in front of their noses. Denial of oneself trained one to deny everything else.
“You were so good at being elsewhere that you nearly missed your opportunity.”
“But only nearly!”
“But only nearly,” the Queen conceded. “You are fortunate; I believe the next time my consorts depart, they will not return for much longer than even you would be prepared to linger.” She gestured toward the stairs. “The Emperor awaits you in his tower.”
“Excellent. Lead the way.”