Dragons & Dwarves by S. Andrew Swann Page B

tongue and near-nonexistent lips. I might have suspected that the sounds weren’t even coming from her if not for the feel of moist breath on my forehead as she spoke.
    She raised one hand and drew her clawed fingers together at its point, the gesture disturbingly human. “An interesting synchronicity. I wish to understand humans. I feel we both may have embarked on an endless task.”
    Conversing with her was helping me recover from the initial impact. With that came the feeling that she was playing with me. I didn’t feel that levity—even the levity of a two-hundred-foot lizard—was appropriate. I took my notebook out of my pocket.
    “Theophane, I am investigating the death of one of your fellow dragons. I need to know why he died.”
    “Perhaps you do, Mr. Maxwell. Do I?”
    “Do you what?”
    “Need to know why?”
    “Aren’t you concerned at all about Aloeus’ death? He was one of your own.”
    “You are right to believe you do not understand dragons.” Theophane shook her head and withdrew it. When she moved, I was no longer surrounded, and I breathed a little easier. She moved away from the video pillar, toward a vast wall of windows that overlooked the eastern city.
    I walked up next to her, the view an antidote to the claustrophobia I’d been feeling. Below us, the arched glass roof of the Old Arcade flashed sunlight back up at us.
    “There is no reason the death of Aloeus should concern me more than the death of anyone else.” She shook her head. “We are not social animals. We do not form tribes, cities, or religions—any trappings of such things we undertake for the sake of others.”
    “I find that hard to believe.”
    “Of course you do. You have been trained from birth that another man must have authority over you, that other men define the codes you shall adhere to. You exist in a prison made of other human beings.”
    There was something very cold in the way she said that. My hand shook a little as I took notes. “You mean that dragons don’t?”
    There was another of her snorts that I took to be laughter. This one held less humor than her prior ones. “Consider me, Mr. Maxwell. You look at a creature supreme in physical prowess, in intellect, in mystical ability. Perhaps that sounds immodest, but modesty is a human virtue. To have a tribe, one must lead, and others must be willingly subjugate themselves.” She drew herself up and spread wings that reached from one end of the cavernous space to the other. “No dragon is a slave.”
    This was not what I was expecting, and it didn’t feel quite right to me. “You mean to say that there’s no social connection between dragons at all?”
    “We are not human beings.”
    A statement that any good newsman would recognize as a non-answer answer. She had sidestepped the question as adroitly as any politician. It prompted me to push slightly. “Aloeus’ death means nothing to you?”
    “We are sovereign creatures, each one’s fate is his own.”
    “Even if it wasn’t an accident?”
    She looked down at me, then turned her serpentine neck to look out at the eastern horizon. “There are no accidents,” she said. A clawed finger touched the ground near my feet. It was disconcerting, the black talon was almost the length of my forearm. “Ask me about dragons, Mr. Maxwell.”
    There was something in her voice, a burning emotion that I could feel in her words, but couldn’t identify. Rage or grief? I didn’t know, and its intensity frightened me. “Tell me why you came here, through the Portal.”
    “This is the background you need?”
    “You are a dragon. Everything I’ve heard says Aloeus was leading the way out, that nonhumans were being persecuted—”
    “A refugee?” Her neck twisted and brought her face withing a foot of my own. Apparently, while modesty might be a human virtue, pride was universal. “Is that what you believe?” Her voice lowered in pitch until her consonants caused my ribs to ache.
    “Why,