Kalo folded his wings. He did it slowly, and slowly was how he turned away from the gathering dragons, to face downwind of them. If he was attempting to make it appear he was not obeying Mercor, he failed, thought Sintara. But she kept the thought to herself, for she too wished to see if he could, indeed, spit venom. All of them should have been capable of it since they emerged from their cases, but none had achieved reliability or potency with that most basic weapon in a dragon’s arsenal. Had Kalo? She watched his ribs swell as he took in air. This time, she saw him work the poison glands in his throat. The muscles in his powerful neck rippled. He threw back his head and snapped it forward, jaws opening wide. He roared and a visible mist of bluish toxin rode with the sound. It drifted in a cloud over the water. She was not the only dragon to rumble in amazement. She watched the toxin disperse and heard the very soft hiss when acid met acid as it settled on the water.

Before anyone else could react, Fente propelled herself out into the open river. She shook herself all over, opened her wings wide, and threw back her head. When she launched her toxin with a trumpet like a woman screaming, the cloud was smaller but more dense. Again and again, she shrieked it forth, until on her fourth try there was no visible sign of poison. Nonetheless, she turned to all of them and proclaimed, “Make no mistake. You may all be larger than I am, but I am just as deadly as any of you are. Respect me!”

“It would be wiser to save your toxins for hunting rather than making a show of them,” Mercor rebuked her mildly. “You have no way of knowing how long it will take you to recover them. If you saw game right now, it would escape you.”

The small green dragon spun to face them. Now the layered fronds of her immature mane stood out stiffly around her neck. She shivered them, a move more serpent than dragon. “Don’t preach to me about wisdom, golden one. Nor hunting. I do not need your advice. Now that I have my poison again, I am not sure that I even need your company.”

“Or your keeper?” Ranculos asked in mild curiosity.

“That remains to be seen,” she snapped. “Tats grooms me, and it pleases me to hear him praise me. I may keep him. But having a keeper does not mean I must stay in company with you or those other raggle-taggle keepers. Nor do I need to be near keepers so disrespectful they speak of butchering a dragon as if he were a cow.” She beat her wings, stirring air and spattering water. “I have my poison and soon I will be able to fly. Then I will need nothing of anyone save myself.”