The place smelled like a bath; odd, he would have thought there might be an unpleasant tang to it. Evidently the swamp dragons were as clean and fastidious as their larger cousins. This dragon was a very dark reddish brown, his patterning laid out in a slightly paler and more golden brown. He looked like a weather-aged statue, he lay so still, his golden-brown eyes staring intently at Aket-ten. There was a tension in the air, however, that told him that their relaxed poses were entirely a deception.

“They are smarter than we thought they were,” she said quietly, without looking around at Kiron. “Mind, they aren’t as intelligent as an ape, and I am not certain I would even put them at the same level as a truly smart dog, but this fellow is definitely as smart as any of the desert dragons. Whoever decided that they were not as bright because they weren’t as big or as pretty made a fundamental error.”

“Huh.” He squatted down where he was, resting on his heels, and stared at the dragon himself. He wondered what she was getting from the beast’s thoughts. This was as close as she was ever going to get to a wild dragon’s mind.

“Partly it’s the tala,” she continued absently, rubbing the palms of her hands up and down her bare upper arms in a completely unconscious gesture. “I think they’re a little more sensitive to it than the desert dragons.”

“Well, it’s a desert plant,” he reminded her. “And if we don’t find the wild tala and harvest it, there are a lot of animals that eat it. Desert dragons are probably used to getting some of it in their prey, so they’ve gotten used to the effect of it.”

“That could be,” she agreed. She and the dragon continued to match unblinking stares. “You know, falcons hate this. Being stared at, I mean. It’s a challenge; that’s one way they challenge each other. Cats, too. In cats, the first one that looks away loses, and is going to get attacked. He sees my staring at him as something else. Some kind of contact. I wonder if they have a very primitive kind of Speaking? Something that requires eye contact?” She never once dropped her gaze. “It doesn’t seem to bother him at all that I can put thoughts into his head—and what’s more, he knows that they’re mine and not his own.” She tilted her head to the side. “I thought I might have been sensing something like that from the dragonets, too.”

“Haven’t you ever felt that from any of the other adult dragons?” he asked curiously.

She shrugged. “If they do have some form of Speaking, the tala blocks it. I can’t look away right now, by the way. If I do, I’ll be saying he’s the stronger of the two of us.”