Larch Shavings and Ginger Tea

Alba’s kitchen beat as the warm, pulsing heart of the animal sanctuary. Two colossal copper cauldrons hummed upon the iron range, filling the room with vapors of chamomile blossoms, bruised mountain ginger, and white willow bark. Along whitewashed timbers hung bundles of dried medicinal herbs, gentian roots bound with hemp twine, and pine racks laden with jars of soothing salves. Upon a rush mat spread before the hearth, the young cinder-drake rested its snout atop a faded wool bolster, breathing with a low, raspy wheeze that exhaled minute ribbons of violet smoke.

Dorian knelt upon the flagstones, sleeves rolled past his forearms, knees dusted in curls of golden wood shavings. With a finely honed curved spoke-shave, he smoothed a slender lath of red larch, matching the organic curvature of the flight membrane with millimeter precision through slow, deliberate strokes.

"The spar of the third digit is fractured in two places," Dorian muttered softly, checking the joint with unexpectedly gentle fingers. "If the splint is forged too rigid, the cartilage will calcify and rob him of his folding glide. If it is carved too pliant, the torque of his wings will snap the newly knit callus. Well-seasoned wood knows how to bow before the gale's fury without ever losing its true center. That is exactly the brace we shall fashion for him."

Alba watched him as she stirred the ginger infusion with a boxwood spoon. Dorian worked unhurriedly: each pass of the drawknife lifted a ribbon of wood as thin as onion skin that fell to the rug smelling of resin and hillside. His hands, marked with old scars from saw blades and forge burns, handled the broken wing with a care that did not fit his reputation as a surly hermit.

"Where did you learn the craft of tending fire-beasts?" Alba asked, extending a steaming earthenware mug of tea sweetened with a generous spoonful of dark mountain honey.

Dorian blew across the dark surface before taking a sip. His heavy shoulders tightened by a fraction of an inch.

"In the guard of the Southern March," he said after a long silence. "I was a sergeant of light cavalry during the barons' rebellion. They gave us three courier drakes to carry orders between the valleys when snow cut the passes. My job was to keep their harness and saddles in order without chafing their scales. When the archduke ordered us to use them as fire-rams against the peasants' farms, I refused to harness them. They tore off my stripes on the parade ground and gave me three days to leave the province. The only thing they didn't dare take from me was the Oak medal: the archduke himself had given it to me two winters before, for getting his drakes out of a burning stable."

Alba looked at him in silence. Suddenly a great many things about this man that had never added up made sense.

"That is why you barred your door against me," she whispered, offering the herbal basin to the fledgling, who snuffed the fragrant steam and lapped the edge with a forked tongue soft as warm velvet. "You feared someone had arrived to press the beast into imperial service."

"I know how the chancery reasons," Dorian said, setting his jaw like granite. "To imperial clerks, a dragon is no breathing life capable of agony: it is a mobile siege engine that incurs zero forge taxes."

The young drake issued a soft clicking trill in his throat, and to both their astonishment, dragged his scaly belly across the rush mat until resting his warm snout squarely upon Dorian’s heavy work boot. A drop of golden saliva dripped upon the rawhide toe, and the small reptile closed his eyes, vibrating with a rhythmic purr that sounded like a colossal brass kettle on the boil.

Dorian froze completely, suspending his carving iron mid-air as though breathing might shatter a gossamer spell.

"He likes you," Alba said, smiling. "Cinder-drakes know people who have fire inside them but would rather use it to keep others warm."

"He merely favors the grease on my boot leather." Dorian grunted defensively, though he made no move to pull away and with two calloused fingers gently stroked the scaly ridge between the creature’s amber eyes.

"Whatever suits your pride, Master Joiner," she teased softly, offering him linen strips steeped in cooling comfrey oil and sweet almond balm. "Now hold his shoulder steady while I align the fractured bone with both hands. We shall have this flight wing firmer and swifter than before when the spring sun thaws the peaks."

Through the ensuing hour they worked in an unbroken rhythm of whispered reassurances, sailor's splint knots, and gentle touches. When the final wrap of linen was secured with twin boxwood pegs, the young dragon slept deeply beside the glowing logs, breathing with a peaceful rhythm that filled the kitchen with long-awaited peace. Outside the snow drifted high against the stone walls, but inside there was only warmth and quiet breathing.

On his way out, Dorian stopped by the fence. In the fresh snow around the broken shed there were footprints that were neither Alba's nor his: hobnailed boots, the kind the crown quartermasters issue, which came right up to the hole in the roof and then went back, quickly, toward the king's road.

"Someone else saw your dragon fall," he said.