Kaz spent the rest of that day and all of the next recovering from his injuries. The atmosphere in the Sharpjaw den was strangely relaxed, given the fact that they had to know staying was likely a death sentence. Either because of this, or because there were no females to enforce constant rigid conformity to the rules, the male kobolds were nearly jovial. More than once, a loud laugh broke the quiet of the den.
The males did, however, continue their training and the rotation of the warriors guarding the stairs. Twice, a howl was relayed to them, indicating that something was attacking above, and then, shortly thereafter, another howl let them know it had been dealt with.
Kaz spent most of his time sitting on a rock, with another rock placed in front of him so he could prop up his crushed paw as he watched the other males work and train. Zyle was impressed with how quickly it, and Kaz’s other injuries, healed, but Kaz brushed off his comments by insisting they must have looked worse than they were.
Li took the opportunity to be as lazy as possible, which seemed to be her preferred state. The youngest male, Ilto, was assigned to help Kaz, since he was going with the party when they left. He fetched food and water for Kaz and Li, and seemed particularly fascinated by the way Li held her food in her little hands as she ate.
“She doesn’t bite you?” Ilto asked, staring avidly at Li as she daintily accepted the scrap of meat he had offered her. When other people were watching, she seemed to make an effort to show off how graceful and tidy she could be, rather than devouring her food in great gulps like she did when Kaz fed her.
Kaz chuckled. This wasn’t the first time the other male had asked something like that, so he already knew the answer, but Kaz replied anyway.
“She bites me all the time,” and hits me with her wings, and nearly chokes me with her tail, “but not hard. It’s not really painful.”
Li whistled around her mouthful of food, letting Kaz know she didn’t appreciate the comment or the mental imagery that went along with it. If she bit, hit, or choked him, it was because he was doing something stupid, like trying to get one or both of them killed.
“But how do you make her stay with you?” Ilto persisted, crouching down so his nose was perilously close to Li’s teeth.
“I don’t,” Kaz told him, turning so the young warrior was less likely to find out just how much those sharp little teeth hurt. “She can go anytime she wants to. As long as she’s with me, I keep her safe and fed, and so far, that’s been reason enough to stay. She’s a very strange fuergar, though, so I wouldn’t expect any other to act like she does.”
Ilto sighed in disappointment, but the look in his eyes said he hadn’t really given up, so Kaz changed the subject.
“Tell me about this Etle,” he said, feigning nonchalance. He had tried asking directly about the Redmanes, and Ilto always found somewhere else to be soon after that. It seemed as though Zyle still had something he was trying to hide, and it had to do with the other tribe. Kaz hoped that Ilto might slip if he came at the topic from a different angle.
Sure enough, Ilto stood back up, looking uncomfortable, and Kaz hurried on, explaining, “My sister is the chief of the Longknife tribe, and when I get back, I’m to go on my spirit hunt. Once I’m an adult, she wants to mate me with a female named Moru, and I’m… not sure if she likes me or not. How did Civ and Etle meet, and how did he get her to like him?”
Ilto’s ears perked up. “Oh! That’s quite a story.” He crouched down again and leaned in closer. “Civ doesn’t like it when we talk about it, but I’ll tell you, so long as you don’t tell him.”
Kaz nodded eagerly, shifting closer. He pretended to wince as he moved his leg, though his paw didn’t really hurt any more, and Ilto drew even closer, supporting Kaz’s arm until he settled again. At the contact, which would usually only happen between close friends and family, the last of the tension drained from Ilto’s body.
“A few months ago,” Ilto began, “a new tribe entered the mid-levels. Tribes coming up from the Deep always look down on us, thinking they’re stronger just because they come from below, but most of them are soft. Zyle says they just stay in power because that’s the way it’s always been, and living in the Deep is so easy that they train but never fight, you know?”
Kaz nodded.
“Right, so the Bron- Um, this tribe was different. They have a lot of members, enough for three or four dens, and they know how to fight. They started calling luegat on all the tribes that control the staircases, and after they won the first few through overwhelming force and trickery, no one else would accept, so they declared vara instead. It was bad, and tribes from the bottom four mid-levels began rising up all at once. The Redmanes aren’t one of those, but they got displaced by one when they-”
Ilto stopped again, glancing away, and Kaz was barely able to keep a straight face. If the tribes controlling the stairs were the ones being defeated and forced to move, and the Redmanes were displaced, then the Redmanes had lost the stairs they controlled. But Civ had said that they would let the humans use their stairs. Somewhere in there was the thing Zyle didn’t want them to know, but Ilto was already moving on.
“For a little while, they were on the level below this one, and during that time, their chief reached out to ours. She wanted an alliance, allowing members of our two tribes to use each other’s stairs without paying for passage, and Etle was part of the group that came to discuss terms.”
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Ilto rolled his eyes. “You saw Civ. Tekdu had been approached about him more than once, but she always turned the offers down, because she wanted to mate him to her own daughter when she came of age, even though he’s quite a bit older. But while the Redmanes were here, a huge yanchong entered our territory, and they helped defeat it when it looked like it would dig right through our main den.
“During the battle, Civ ended up guarding Etle after her own males were injured. Then Civ himself was hurt, but he just kept fighting, while Etle shot off more power strikes than I’ve ever seen before.” He waved his hands, pretending to swing a blade, then fall back, before flashing his fingers in a broad mimicry of an explosion.
“After it was all over, Etle went back to her tribe and asked her chief to make an offer for Civ, and it turns out Etle is their chief’s oldest daughter! Their chief agreed, and the offer was made, and once Tekdu saw how strong Etle and the other Redmane females were, she decided it was better to be friends than make enemies of them, so she-”
The male’s nose dipped, and his ears lowered. “She was going to agree. I’m sure of it. She just didn’t have time before…”
This time, Kaz’s eyes narrowed. So, it was possible that their group would arrive and this Etle would change her mind, either because she was no longer interested in the male, or because he didn’t come as part of a deal between two strong tribes. Zyle and Civ had said the negotiations weren’t complete, but Civ had sounded very certain he would still be welcomed. This didn’t sound quite as absolute as they had implied, which meant the group of humans could be turned away, but Ilto didn’t look like he realized he’d just admitted something he shouldn’t have. That meant Kaz still hadn’t found the secret.
“Well,” Kaz said, “I’m sure it’ll be fine. Civ will make strong pups, which is what every female wants above all else. We’ll leave you all with the Redmanes, and take their stairs down. Do you know how to get to the set of stairs after that?”
Of course, Kaz himself remembered, since it wasn’t far, and the tunnels between stairs on the central nine levels were the wide, straight ones created by whatever lost race had carved out the stairs themselves. Still, he couldn’t help pushing, hoping the young warrior would slip up.
“Ah, haha, no,” Ilto said, straightening and backing up a few paces. “No, I… I’ve never been lower than this level. Civ and Regz will be your guides. I’m just… I’m the youngest, and I’ve never had a mate, so they thought that I should go, so… I should, um, go. Now.”
He waved a hand in the general direction of the gate leading out of the den. “I have watch now.”
Kaz tilted his head, letting his ears twist curiously. “Oh? I thought all of you who’re going with us were supposed to be resting because Zyle didn’t want to risk you getting injured right before we leave.”
Ilto’s fluffy ears swiveled, and he backed up another step. “Oh. Yes. But I should… get some more food for Li! She looks hungry. Again.”
He turned and loped away, leaving Kaz and Li staring out over the empty training area, where the warriors warmed up each morning, and most teams prepared for their shifts by engaging in mock battles. It was just after dinner now, though, and everyone but those standing watch at the gates and stairs were either eating or preparing to sleep.
“That was very suspicious,” Kaz murmured to the little dragon, who had just finished wiping her greasy hands and mouth on his fur. She clicked in agreement, then inquiry.
Kaz chuckled and sent her a picture of one of the broad passages leading between the staircases on the nine mid-levels. His memories were much clearer than they had been before he accidentally began to temper his body, so the image was as sharp as if he had just passed through a few days before.
“All nine mosui levels look like this,” he told the dragon. “There’s no way he hasn’t heard it described, even if he hasn’t been there himself. The reasonable thing to do would be to say that it’s easy, or that we just have to go straight.”
Li’s head bobbed, and she sent an image of the wide, square hallway broken and littered with fallen stones, then another of the same hall covered in fulan spores.
Kaz sighed. “The second one is possible, I suppose. If Zyle needs us to get his kobolds safely to the Redmanes, he wouldn’t want us to give up and leave now because the fulan has already taken over down there. He seemed genuinely surprised to hear that it’s on more than one level though, so I doubt that. The tunnel being blocked or damaged is even less likely, given how hard it is to break the ancient walls.”
He sent her a picture of a whole group of kobolds, each swinging a pick at one of the passage walls. The picks bounced off or shattered, leaving no mark.
“The stairs above aren’t as resilient. More of them are broken than remain usable, but the ones in the mid-levels and the Deep, as well as the ancient hallways, seem to be all but invulnerable to damage. I have no idea how Zyle plans to block the stairs if one of those monsters tries to come down, but I doubt he’ll even try to destroy them.”
An image appeared in his mind, a gold dragon, slashing with mighty claws at an immense set of stairs, causing them to crumble to dust. He held back a laugh, though he knew she could feel his amusement. Reaching up, he stroked her head, and she only tried to nip him once before allowing the caress.
“You are the strongest of all dragons, and I’m sure you could take care of it, but Zyle doubtless has something in mind, and no one would believe you were just a fuergar if you started going around breaking unbreakable things.”
She clicked unhappy agreement, and they sank into silence until Kaz closed his eyes, drawing in a deep, slow breath as he began to press in on the ki in his core while also suffusing his lungs with every bit he didn’t need to keep the rest of his body functional. With each breath out, he released the pressure on his core, flooding his channels, slowly growing both the amount of ki his core produced, and the amount stored in his middle dantian, which in turn saturated his lungs with even more ki. He had been practicing ever since his head stopped hurting sometime last night, and he could already tell that the link between the pool of ki in his chest and his lungs was a little stronger than it was when he started, and the lungs themselves could hold more ki without allowing the excess to leach into the rest of his system or, worse, into the air he breathed out.
With a bored whistle-sigh, Li settled down into her favorite position wrapped around his neck. She already knew that once he started this, he wouldn’t stop until something or someone managed to break through his concentration, so she might as well sleep. After all, dragons didn’t need to cultivate.