Free Forged by Fire by Janine Cross

my elders, to gain merit. I remembered breaking off segments of flatcake for my child hood friends, Rutvia and Makvia, and placing them in their mouths as a show of friendship and trust. I remembered the smell of clay and the talcum softness of kaolin on my skin as I worked alongside my mother in the pottery shed, making moon-shaped candleholders. On Naso Yobet night, every compound in Clutch Re had been lit up with candles cradled in such holders, and then whoosh! We’d blow the candles out at the sound of the Naso Yobet horns resounding from the many temples in the Clutch. In the smoky darkness that fol lowed, we rejoiced, knowing that the Fire Season would be extinguished by the Pure Dragon’s breath and no drought would come. Extinguished, just like those candles.
    Extinguished, just like my mother.
Naso Yobet had been adapted slightly to suit the lack of candles in the impoverished arbiyesku. Instead of a candle, a glowing fagot represented the Fire Season, balanced pre cariously upon a rock cupped in palms. The clean, herbal scent of the hair wash made the air smell crisp, despite the smoke from the smoldering fagots. My damp hair clung to my ears, and water dripped over my collarbone and down my spine and belly, pleasantly cool.
From the center of Xxamer Zu, from the four compass windows in the temple’s golden spire, unseen daronpuis blew their long Naso Yobet horns. The sound rolled across the fields like the resonant braying of musk stags. The ar biyesku dropped their glowing coals to the ground and crushed them with their rocks. I dropped my own and re leased my rock atop it. I had no desire to crouch and smash the fagot to ashes, not with my ribs as painful as they were.
The dragonmaster appeared at my shoulder, the glass bead at the end of his goatee braid swinging to and fro. He rubbed a hand over his bald pate in agitation, leaving behind sooty marks. He opened his mouth to speak, then hesitated. He smelled of rotting teeth and tumorous disease.
He thrust something toward me. Grabbed my hand, squeezed hard to open it. He dropped a pebble on my palm.
“To place in the bowl,” he said, his words sounding re hearsed. “So the One Dragon blesses our union.”
I stared at the pebble in my hand, then gaped at him. He was summoning me to the mating shack.
Did he really expect me to follow? Did he really think I would allow him to pull off my bitoo, place his hands upon me, straddle my hips . . . ? Damn him to eternal mulching in a Skykeeper’s gullet, if he thought I’d follow.
He scowled at the look on my face. “Splayfooted fool,” he hissed, leaning close, spittle spraying my cheeks. “Not that. Think! Use your tit-soft head for once.”
It took me a moment to realize: He wanted a place where we could speak privately.
He’d heard from Gen.
Adrenaline, hope, and expectation instantly enlivened me. Gen had summoned us! He’d secured a portion of the stables, had found a way for me to lie, undetected, with a venomous dragon, that I might again hear dragonsong, that I might divine the secret to breeding bull dragons in captiv ity. It was time for me to leave the arbiyesku.
People were watching us from the corners of their eyes. Fwipi was watching, sinewy old body taut.
The dragonmaster flared his nostrils, angry that I wasn’t giving the appropriate response for a woman who’d just re ceived a summons by her claimer, but I couldn’t for the life of me recall it. I’d heard my own mother say it plenty of times to my father during my childhood, after he’d pressed a congle nut into her palm. Numerous times I’d heard other women murmur the traditional response when summoned by their claimers. But I couldn’t recall a word of it now.
For a moment I thought the dragonmaster might strike me for my idiocy. His hand, which still clenched mine, tight ened hard, grinding my bones together. He twitched, once, released me, turned, and lurched in his simian gait toward the mating shack.
I swallowed and nursed my