Tooth and Claw by Jo Walton Read Free Book Online Page B

her family.
    “What is wrong?” Haner asked at once.
    “Where is Frelt?” Penn inquired, only a moment later.
    If Selendra had been given time to compose herself, she mighthave been able to give dissembling answers to these questions. She knew a dragon maid should not betray agitation after turning away a proposal of marriage. Yet the agitation was internal, she was given no time, and she could hardly feel that the proposal had been decorous. She turned to face them.
    “Frelt has gone,” she answered her brother. “And I am a little shaken,” she informed her sister. She lowered herself to the ground, and Avan silently passed her a haunch of beef. She took it but did not begin to eat for a moment. The others stared at her.
    “Gone?” Penn asked, collecting himself. “Without waiting for whatever business that brought him here?”
    “He had no such business,” Selendra said. “Or rather, I was his business. He came to propose to me, and he did, and I declined, and he has left. That’s the whole of it.” Seldom has a maiden been less gratified by an unwelcome proposal. She sank down on her haunches, again flushed pink and reduced to a condition of near-paralysis.
    “Did he . . . approach you?” Haner asked.
    “If he did I will have him torn out of the Church,” Penn said, rising to his feet angrily.
    “And I will tear him to shreds once he has lost his immunity,” Avan said, his wings rising of themselves. “Selendra?”
    “He has not hurt me,” Selendra said quickly. “He did not assault me. But he approached closely enough to distress me and I seem to have lost my composure.”
    “You are pink!” Penn declared, though at that moment she was almost white. “If he has done that he will marry you in recompense.”
    “But that’s what he wants!” Selendra said, pinkening again, and backing a step away from her brother without rising. “He came here hoping to claim me as a bride. I hate him, and I will never marry him.”
    “You should not have been alone with him,” Avan said.
    “A parson!” Haner said, stung into defending her sister. “Parsons are always greeted, you know that, because they cannot fly up to the usual entrances. You were there when Sel said she was going to greet him, you yourself told us she had gone with approval.”
    “He was abusing his position as a parson,” Avan said.
    “I am not hurt,” Selendra insisted, the weakness of her voice belying her words. “Nothing has happened, except that he proposed and I rejected him.”
    “He should have asked me for permission to speak to you,” Penn said, frowning. “Permission which I should certainly have denied. But if you are pink my dear, and I am afraid it seems you are, then it is too late to turn back and there must be a marriage. It is making the best of a bad situation, I know, but consider the alternative.”
    “I am not pink, I am merely agitated, I shall not be pink when I have eaten and rested a little,” Selendra said, attempting to turn her head to examine her own scales. “I will never marry Frelt. He is a bully and a prig and a pompous swine.”
    Avan and Penn exchanged speaking glances. They were dragons who had seen more of the world than their sisters, and the thought of what could be done with a sister who was neither maiden nor wife hung heavily upon them. Avan was reduced to wondering if he had any acquaintance in Irieth who might consent to take his sister as a consort in such circumstances as this. It would not be a marriage such as he would desire, one which would give her an establishment of her own, but there were dragons rising in the capital who might find her dowry and connections sufficiently attractive for that, despite her blush, even if they might not want to share their names and status with her. It was not what any dragon would choose for his sister, but it might be better than a marriage with a parson she despised and who had deliberately ruined her.
    Selendra took a few bites of