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estates someday! You really are attracted to them, though, aren't you?"
    Rena just nodded. Lorryn, now—if he were here, she knew what
he
would be asking the girl about. The Elvenbane; he was as obsessed with the halfblood wizard-girl as Rena was with dragons. Never mind that it was forbidden to even mention the name of the Elvenbane to the slaves, and that if they were overheard, the fact he had done so would get
Myre
in serious trouble!
    Not that Myre would ever get herself in jeopardy; she's too canny for that
. She always made sure that there was no one to overhear any of these conversations. Still, Lorryn took risks
she
never would..
    But Rena would rather hear about dragons, a safe enough topic even if there
was
someone to overhear.
    "What's a
dursan
, anyway?" Myre asked, as she took a comb and carefully rearranged Rena's hair to disguise the fact that ornaments had been removed. "And what's Evelon?"
    "Evelon's where we came from," the girl replied absently, her own thoughts caught up in a vivid image of a dragon sculpting a mountaintop into an image of itself. "I don't remember it, of course, and neither does Lord Tylar, because we were born here, but all of the really old High Lords of the Council do—like Lord Ardeyn's uncle. It's supposed to have been a dangerous place, so dangerous we had to leave or die."
    "Dangerous?" Myre persisted, her eyes narrowing. "How?"
    Rena shrugged. "Lorryn says it was all our own fault. Every House had at least a dozen feuds on the boil, and they
didn't
fight those feuds with armies of slaves or with gladiators because there aren't any slaves there, there aren't any humans. Houses train their children as assassins or have magic-duels, or create horrible monsters to turn against other Houses, only half the time those monsters get away and become dangerous to everyone. Some of the Houses got their emblems from the monsters they created. The
dursans
are something like a dragon, I suppose; they look like huge lizards, but they don't have wings, they'll eat anything in sight, and they breathe fire. They made dragons too—only the dragons flew away entirely. The
dursans
began to have magic, fascination magic, so the histories say, and that was one reason why they became more dangerous than before.
    "Huh." Myre smoothed Rena's hair, but she wore a closed, inward-turning expression. "So was that why you all left this Evelon in the first place?"
    "I suppose so. Mostly we left because we could." Rena didn't blame her grandfather for leaving either, if Evelon was as terrible as Viridina had said it was. "Lorryn thinks the Houses that left were probably the weakest, the ones with the least to lose by trying somewhere else. He says that's why there are so many lords here with very little magic."
    "Every once in a while your brother makes sense," Myre replied sardonically. "So the weak ones fled and left the field to the strong—who will probably destroy themselves and everything around them as they fight each other. I don't think I would care to live in Evelon either."
    "You sound like Lorryn now," Rena observed, with a tiny laugh. "That's the kind of thing he'd say."
    "As I said, every once in a while he makes sense." Myre put down the comb and examined her handiwork. "So I take it that's the reason why no High Lord will ever have a direct conflict with another, why it's all done through intrigue and battles with armies of slaves or gladiators?"
    Rena nodded. "It's not a law so much as an agreement—in fact, in the old days, when we were first building our estates, the High Lords would all join power so that everything was done quickly. Now, though—" it was her turn to grimace "—well, pigs will don court-gowns and play harps before someone like Lord Syndar would lend his power to help Lord Kylan. I hope that the dragons are better at working together than they are."
    "I've been told they are," Myre offered. "I've been told they lend their powers to each other, and that there are never any