Tooth and Claw Read Online Free PDF

initiated any combat. The last thing necessary now was a long lingering that would feed the flame of animosity. Penn knew himself well. After six months or a year in his own parish, with his own wife bringing him meals he liked to eat in his own snug dining room, he would be able to endure the sight of Blessed Frelt and even Illustrious Daverak with equanimity. At the moment, it was all he could do to bid Frelt go in the name of the gods without ripping him limb from limb.
    “And you have a good journey back to Benandi,” Frelt said, with heartiness Penn distrusted.
    “I will be staying here for a day or two, then escorting my sister Selendra back with me,” Penn said, curtly but unavoidably.
    “Only Selendra?” Frelt asked. “What is to become of Haner?”
    Penn’s vision closed in on Frelt and he felt his claws flex involuntarily. The implication of Frelt’s question, that the family might abandon Haner to her own devices, filled him with anger. Then he remembered his father’s confession. A dragon whose father had eaten his siblings has little right to object to a suggestion that he might abandon his own. “Haner will be living under the protection of the Illustrious Daverak in future,” Penn said, calmly and evenly as befit a parson.
    “Then wish them both a pleasant journey from me too. May Jurale see that none of you become weary and thirsty on the way.”
    “Thank you,” Penn said, though he understood perfectly well that Frelt hoped to be provided with more refreshment for his own little journey.
Let him drink from rainpuddles
, Penn thought, as he smiled and raised an arm in polite parting ritual.
    Fuming, Frelt set off along the rocky way. It would be quitedark before he reached home, and he had dismissed his servants for the day before he set off. How he wished he had a wife to wait up for him and prepare meat and refreshing fruit for his return. He could afford one. He had inherited only a very small store of gold from his parents, but his parish was a prosperous one and he had no expensive habits. He had gone into it all carefully seven years before when he had made suit for Berend. There was no doubt he could afford a wife, and dragonets, if they were not too many. A wife would be a great benefit to him. Yet when he had been disappointed he had not tried again. He had been too busy feuding with old Bon, and besides, there hadn’t been anyone in the district pretty enough to catch his eye. He was too discriminating, he thought, walking on, his tastes were too refined. His first choice had become an Illust’. He could not be expected to settle after that for some farmer’s daughter, or, worse, some Dignified’s daughter twice his age and beginning to toughen under the chin. Yet since Berend’s marriage those had been all the district had to offer. Maybe he should go to Irieth one spring and see the maiden dragons displayed by their mothers on the marriage market, pick out one for himself. They might all say they wanted an Exalted or an August or an Eminent and would settle for an Illustrious, but there were more maidens than Augusts to please them. He knew plenty of them would be glad of a wealthy parson, with a good living, thirty feet long, and already starting to accumulate something to pass on to his children.
    He trudged onwards, uphill, the setting sun warm on his back. He did not resent the red cords that bound his wings. He was proud of them, proud of his own endurance of them. Some parsons, he knew, would have considered this circumstance enough to remove them to fly home. Frelt prided himself that he did not, that his inner piety was reflected in his outer obedience to every letter ofthe law. There were still a few parsons in Tiamath who flew every day, who wore cords only when they preached, and he condemned them as did every right-thinking dragon. They were few, but there were many who wore cords until circumstances were difficult, until the cords started to chafe, until they had a