Dragon and Phoenix by Joanne Bertin

He’s not invoked lightly. The mad are his children, and he’ll hunt you down if you kill one of them. All the stories agree you’re lucky if you take only a few years to die in his domain. I’ll let one of those who understand trade explain the emperor’s grants.”
    Smirking at Linden, Raven began an answer, but jumped in his seat and shut his mouth again. He darted an angry glare first at his great-uncle to his left and then across the table at Maurynna. Linden generously hid a satisfied grin behind his mug of tea.
    Maurynna said, “For the most part, the Dawn Emperor doesn’t interfere with the great trading Houses. It’s the Council of Ten which, as my Assantik ‘cousin’ of sorts complains, writes the laws and causes all the problems. But sometimes an emperor will, for reasons best known to him or her, grant a House the rights of trade for a particular commodity, or with a particular port.
    “My family is allied with House Bakkuran for trade, Lleld, and that same ‘cousin’ once told me that a very, very long time ago, the empire of Jehanglan closed itself off from the outside world.”
    Jekkanadar nodded agreement. “A long time to truehumans, yes; it was not long ago as Dragonlords reckon time. It happened in my father’s time; he was a child but he remembered. Even at the campfires of the lowest was told the tale of how an emperor of Jehanglan closed his land against the world and became the first Phoenix Lord. No one knew why. From what I understand, it’s still not known.”
    Raven whistled. “You Changed that long ago, my lord? But that’s—”
    “A little more than a thousand years ago,” Jekkanadar finished. “As Dragonlords go, I’m still considered young, my friend.
    “The realm of Assantik was in chaos from decades of the Wars of the Witch Kings, the armies still battling back and forth across the land when I first Changed. I was only a goatherd then, but even the most humble of us were
caught in the fighting.” Jekkanadar paused and absentmindedly fingered the thin scar running along his dark cheek. “It was almost a hundred years later that one man took the throne and his children and children’s children held it after him. That was Nerreklas the Black, first emperor of the Third Dynasty.
    “Nerreklas’s great-great grandson tried to break Jehanglan’s isolation. He was greedy, and the tales of Jehanglan’s wealth had not lost in the telling over the years. He raised a navy to conquer them. That navy was destroyed.
    “Only one sailor returned from the Straits of Cansunn. Tied to a spar, he was found by a fishing boat and brought before the emperor. He lived long enough to pass on the message he had been given, then died.”
    Jekkanadar stopped. His last words hung on the air.
    “And?” his soultwin demanded at last.
    “What was the message?” Maurynna asked at the same time.
    “Oh, well done,” Linden heard Otter whisper under his breath. “Give me this man and I’ll make a bard out of him.” The words were so soft that only the unnaturally keen hearing of a Dragonlord would have heard them. From Jekkanadar’s wink, Linden knew he’d heard them as well.
    “The message? Let me see if I can remember … . Ah! I have it!”
    Good thing, too, Linden mindspoke Otter, or else Lleld would have had his hide for boot leather, the tease.
    Jekkanadar continued, his voice low and menacing, “From the tales I heard when I went back to Assantik many lives of men afterward, it was plain that the man was under some spell, kept alive until he could deliver his message. For he said, ‘Those who challenge the Phoenix, shall die by the Phoenix’s might,’ and fell dead, the flesh rotting from his bones in that instant.”
    “Eeyahh,” Lleld said with a grimace. “That’s gruesome.”
    Her soultwin smiled, pure wickedness. “That’s how I heard it. It’s best told around a campfire in the dead of night, though. One can imagine all sorts of awful things then.” He hitched