The remaining bits and snippets following the spiral incident. It doesn’t have everything I intended, but there’s various dragons whose plots can’t move forward until I finish this, and it’s coming up on a year since I started writing all this up, so I’m wrapping up with what I’ve got. Part 1 is here.
The actual events and their sequence were not much in question. All but the first few moments of Rabak's attack, Malakal's attempt at intervention, and Yirol's vicious answer had been seen by many witnesses, and with Luacano's illuminating castings, Guayaquil's testimony, and Rabak's own statements under Portsmouth's spell-of-truth, even the solitary moments of the oracular bath that had prompted it all could be established to within a reasonable certainty. All that remained were questions of intent, and culpability, and aggravation versus mitigation.
It was the Council witnesses who investigated most of those questions, on Calabar's behalf, and offered her their opinions. And when they were finished, Calabar took all their statements that Jamsa had faithfully scribed, closeted herself with Portsmouth and Cartagena, and emerged hours later with her decisions.
---
“Rabak,” Calabar said, pitching her voice loud and nearly flat. “Had you done what you have done in your right mind, an assault of this degree upon a clanmate who had not offered you battle would mean exile, permanent and absolute.”
She saw several dragons in her audience--every dragon of the Hewn City lair, bar one or two, and more from the Beacon and Sundial Terrace than she had actually summoned to be present--stiffen, and there was the sound of a great many wings, gently rustling. Lund, lurking in the back, twitched like he’d been bitten by something, and a brighter streak of orange moved among his golden lichen. Calabar forged on with alacrity, for fear that Malakal might panic before her statement was through.
“But I have spoken with Guayaquil at length, and I am convinced that you did not act in your right mind. Furthermore, Ibague has asked me, eloquently, to spare you any punishment for what outside influences pushed you to do. Therefore, permanent punishment is withheld.”
She could hear several sighs.
“At the same time, I cannot leave this crime entirely unpunished. You would not have flown the course you did if there was not a deeper rot here. It has been made clear to me that you bear no love for Ibague, and while that may or may not have its own just roots, I cannot believe that it had no influence on what occurred.”
By now, Calabar felt certain she understood the situation as well as an outsider could. Ibague was popular with many dragons in the clan, but among his fellow spirals, only Malakal claimed any friendship. That, in itself, was enough to prompt further digging; it had always seemed to Calabar that others of a species would, logically, best be able to read their own kind.
In the end, Calabar had liked Valuyki’s description best. It might not have been the most systematic laying-out of facts, but it had the benefit of color.
‘Ibague ties Malakal all up in knots! Sneakily, all slippery, so Malakal doesn’t even know he’s got his own wing over his eyes and his claws on his own neck. And Rabak does know, and it ties her up in knots too, seeing it.’
“Rabak, your punishment is still exile. A temporary exile, and a symbolic one, given your condition, but exile nonetheless. Ferrenafe has dug you a chamber here, off an unfinished tunnel where no other dragon has reason to go. You will go to it, and you will dwell there, alone, for half of a year. To ensure that you are healing, and to bring you food, Guayaquil will visit you every other day, but she will not speak to you, and you will not speak to her, on pain of doubling the length of your isolation. Do you understand your sentence?”
If she tried to contest it, Calabar would be lenient. It was a hard sentence for a spiral; they very nearly needed to talk. But Calabar had discussed it at length with Nalaikh and Guayaquil, and it would currently do Rabak little harm. The spiral was still in a half-trance, wreathed with Water magic, and both healers thought it would be a very long time until she broke out of it. Far, far longer than a mere half-year.
And so long as she was meant to be isolate and silent, Malakal had that much less reason not to return to the lair where his brother dwelled. Calabar could mandate their separation, and she would, if she had to. But it would be better to let his own timidity and avoidance do the job for her. Neither Lund nor Uxmal seemed to mind him, and she trusted them, as guardians, not to push him into anything unwise.
“I understand,” Rabak said, in that hollow, wet, underwater voice that made Calabar’s vestigial gill slits want to open. “It’s fair. I’ll be alone with the water. And I think that’s for the best.”
Good. Calabar turned her attention to the next dragon.
“Yirol,” she said loudly, her voice going a bit sharper when she saw the young mirror fidgeting her wings. If she protested or resisted, Calabar would not be lenient. “Had you not been acting under provocation, you also would be facing exile.”
Salem, naturally, bristled, but he had the good sense to keep his mouth shut. No--Ibague, still wrapped in bandages, was wound around his head and jaw, reminding him to stay silent.
“You must understand that it is only your youth that spares you, regardless. Rabak acted violently, but she had already been stopped and restrained. You were not acting to protect Ibague, but to avenge his injuries, and that is not acceptable within the clan. Especially given the disparity between the injuries Rabak inflicted on him, and the injury you inflicted upon her.” Calabar let her voice deepen into a growl. “If you act with so little restraint again, you will be cast out.”
Yirol hissed--quietly, but Calabar could see the jut of her tongue before her teeth. But she nodded immediately after, so Calabar let the tiny gesture alone.
“As it is, I have delegated the duties of punishment to Talca, and by extension to the rest of the pack. You will learn the full of it from them, but I am given to understand that, at the least, you are not to run and hunt with the pack for a full year and some after. I am told that would have happened regardless of how I chose to punish you, because a thoughtless attacker is not safe to hunt with. I am also told that there is more, but that I would not understand it.”
“You have proven ignorant of pack law, so you will be shown it,” Talca said scratchily, raising her voice to be heard over the rattle of Yirol’s sudden cough. “A mirror should know it by instinct. As your instinct is deficient, you will be taught it at our claws, and you will be grateful that we will teach you at all. We could let the wilderness cull you, Plague child. Instead, you will receive the mercy that you did not show, and suffer through your instruction.”
She shifted in place, a rare fidgety movement from Talca, and Calabar saw her claws flash. In various places around the library, the other mirrors twitched as well, almost the exact same vague shuffling movement, seeming so idle but so clearly showing claws. Calabar nodded once to Talca.
“Do you accept your sentence?” Calabar asked, and Yirol bobbed her head sulkily. Good. She would rather leave the beating to the other mirrors.
“On the matter of this lair’s groundwater....”
===
Coatl wasn’t Guayaquil’s native tongue, but at least she could actually parse it without anyone shouting in her ear. And Ihosy tended to be very patient with her lack of fluency.
“This happens in the Gladeveins,” she said. “Bad earth, rotting dead things, sometimes Plague fools. I see it when I am hatchling.”
“It is... easy to fix?” Guayquil asked, carefully modulating her tone to get the adverb right. She was still struggling with all the variations on verbs; she had to get adverbs down before she could even begin to start on tense.
Ihosy made a little shrugging gesture, her crest sleeking back as if in embarrassment. “Yes. No. I can, with you. It is easier to fix with you. But it is not fast to fix. Cannot just send it away.” She stopped for a moment, and Guayaquil could see her consciously composing what she was going to say next, preparing a long rush of humming that Guayaquil, with her limited skills, could understand. “Where does it go? Into ground? Then into roots. Into river? Then into fish. Is in fish now, is in roots now, is in river now, is in ground now. Have to drink it away.” She shrugged again. “To drink is not right, but you do not know word that is right. To drink it away with roots that are healthy, with ground that is thirsty. To make many roots, much ground to drink it away.”
Dilution, Guayaquil realized. Many Water mages worked that way. She did so less than most; blood was water that could fight and destroy that which invaded it, and she used that to her advantage. But she was familiar with the concept. And she could feel the wretchedness in the waterway in front of them like infection overrunning thinned-out blood; the water here was too tired to win any fight she tried to put it in. Ihosy was right, they had to dilute the poisons in it and create a level playing field before her own skills could come into effect.
“It is not fast to fix,” she agreed. “The water is not strong.”
“The ground is not strong, also. The roots are not strong. Very not fast to fix. Also, it is not all new. Many poisons here, very old. Old poisons in the ground, old poisons in the roots, old poisons in the river, old poisons in the air. We, you and me, we can never fix all poisons. It needs many, many, many druids, many, many Water dragons, many, many Wind dragons. Then, maybe, not now, in many years, they can fix it. But we can make the roots and the ground drink much new poison.”
She said the last with confidence, her crest standing up, and Guayaquil felt her own rising in solidarity. “We can,” she agreed, and ignored the little frisson of doubt she felt when her pulse thudded in time with the bad water flowing all around her.
===
“Ranaghat.”
It took barely a second to parse the gravelly voice, and then Ranaghat was curling around in the narrow tunnel, draping her neck over her hindquarters to smile toothily at Calabar from under her mask. “Our honored clanhead remembers me!”
Calabar didn’t rise to the bait, just rumbled in the back of her throat and continued on her course. “What sort of rituals have you been doing here, since Portsmouth and I left for the Beacon?”
“Oh, the usual,” Ranaghat said, with an airy shrug and a quick, crackling giggle. “Ceremonial hunting, ritual combat, bone-throwing, gut-reading, blood-letting-”
Once again, Calabar made the deep throaty rumble, this time loud enough to cut Ranaghat off. “Blood-letting.”
“Of course! It’s a very important Plague ritual!” Ranaghat grinned more widely at her. “What kind of priestess could I call myself if I didn’t open myself to infection and test the virulence of my blood? I might as well join the rest of the coddled children here and boil my water before I drink it!”
She giggled again, her voice cracking twice before breaking into a high, pure trill of true laughter. They should have set the cistern and the oven up ages ago, really; it wouldn’t have taken her two outbreaks to start just boiling all the water that came into the lair, if she had been minded to avoid illness in the first place. Though Ranaghat supposed she might be more reluctant to test her resistance if she had gotten the runs with the rest of them. There were benefits to being one of the Plaguebringer’s servants.
"Not that it would make much difference to you,” Calabar said, and while the throaty growl was still in her voice, Ranaghat could catch a badly-hidden edge of amusement. Wry laughter, but laughter all the same. Well, as long as it kept the clanhead off her throat, Ranaghat was glad to amuse. “You wouldn’t be affected by Plague-tainted water.”
There it was, then. With effort, Ranaghat killed the giggles--there was a line somewhere, and she didn’t intend to cross it--and did her best to look contrite. It was a false contrition, and it would obviously be so, but the point was not to make Calabar think that she was truly sorry, just to make her believe that Ranaghat was making the gesture.
“Ibague is my friend,” she said. “And Salem is too. I know how Rabak felt. I shan’t lie, I did think it was funny how he wound them both up. But I didn’t want Ibague hurt! If I’d known what was stirring in that pool-”
“As I understand it, it’s far more than just that pool,” Calabar said. The hint of amusement in her voice was gone, and while she wasn’t any closer to dangerous, she had clearly gone all sober. How tedious she had to find it. “The groundwater all around here is tainted.”
“Didn’t you know that when we moved in, clanhead?” Ranaghat asked, grinning at her again. “I did! This is old, bad ground. I’m not saying I might not have stirred some of it up--such things happen! Especially here, especially when, well, I am an imperial....”
She saw Calabar’s head jerk up and her eyes narrow. Perfect. “And you didn’t consider this a problem?”
Ranaghat paused, twitched her whiskers, tilted her head in a pretense of considering the question, and then shrugged it off. “I did know it was possible. But I could hardly not open my veins, and it’s an even better test of my blood, to do it here. Did you expect me to be afraid, honored clanhead?”
Calabar pulled her head back slightly, and seemed to be studying her. Finally, she snorted. “If I expected a Plague dragon to be cautious,” she said, “That was my error. Ranaghat--when I return to the Beacon of the Radiant Eye, you and Kandukur will come with me. That lot of idealists there could use you back to shake them up.”
Ranaghat’s whiskers curled up nearly to her chin as she grinned at Calabar. “It will be my pleasure.”
