Lupi 04 - Night Season

half—of the scales she—”
    In a flash, the great body lifted impossibly—fifteen feet, twenty, more—with the wings extended, the forelegs off the ground and that snake neck arched. Mika’s mouth gaped in a hissing display of teeth. My scales are mine!
    Cynna damned near peed herself.
    Cullen looked up. “Yes, they are yours.”
    Mika didn’t return to four legs, but he did stop hissing. They can’t be not-mine. What you propose has no meaning.
    â€œHumans—and lupi—barter what’s ours in order to acquire something we want. I’m talking about an exchange.”
    What is mine is always mine.
    The mental voice was utterly clear, utterly implacable. Mika wasn’t interested in a philosophical discussion of the meaning of ownership. Cynna looked at Cullen. He frowned, gave a little shake of his head.
    He didn’t know how to get past dragon possessiveness, either. Was there a way to get the use of a scale without…“Copyright,” she said suddenly.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œCopyright law. That’s the model that fits.” She looked up and up at the dragon towering over them. “Humans don’t feel the way you do about objects, Mika, but we do feel that way about some things. Things we create, especially. You, uh—do you know about books and plays?”
    Of course. Lots of disdain in that thought.
    â€œMaybe you’ve heard of Shakespeare.”
    One of your story makers.
    â€œYes, well, we still talk about Shakespeare’s plays. Even though the man’s been dead for a few centuries, we speak of those plays as his because he made them—just like you made your scales. Yet people have the use of his plays. They can perform them, talk about them, quote from them. Books are like that, too. And paintings. Creators own what they create, and that can’t be changed, but creators can grant rights to others in exchange for something they want.”
    Slowly Mika descended. When he had his feet back on the ground, he said, What do you mean by rights?
    â€œWe want you to allow us to use a scale in a spell. The scale is still yours, but we’d get the right to use it. In return, I’d Find all your missing scales and return them to you.”
    You can Find them? All of them?
    â€œI can, if they’re within a hundred miles of me. I guess we should make that one of the conditions. I can’t Find objects farther away than that.”
    The long body settled further. Mika reclined, his forelegs tucked up, the enormous tail wrapping itself around him like a cat curling up for a nap. We will discuss this.
    Two hours and forty minutes later, Cynna’s eyes were teary from the wind. Her face felt frozen, her fingers were numb with cold, and her thighs ached from gripping tightly to the heated body between her legs.
    The rest of her was toasty warm as Mika settled to the ground once more. Leather blocked wind, and both the dragon she’d ridden and the man who rode behind her were warm.
    God, but she loved dragonflight.
    Cullen slid down first, which turned out to be a good idea. When she followed, her legs buckled the second her feet touched the ground. He caught her easily and grinned, his eyes lit with exhilaration to match hers. “Not used to riding?”
    â€œNot this kind.” Cynna grinned back, punchy with exhaustion but still soaring. “You do know how to show a girl a good time.”
    She’d Found seven scales. They’d brought back only five because two of them, it seemed, were no longer Mika’s. They were very small, the size of her pinky nail. Cullen said the magic had drained out of them.
    The other five were larger, including one as big as her hand with the fingers spread. That’s the one Cullen wanted—it still held plenty of magic. Of those five, two had come off there in the park—those had been easy to recover. The other three must have fallen off while Mika was in flight. They found one on a quiet street, another on the roof of an office building. The last one…well, that guy really should have given it to them when they told him the dragon wanted his scale back. It wasn’t their fault he didn’t know better than to look into a dragon’s eyes, and one brief spot of ensorcellment wouldn’t hurt him any.
    You are sure we found them all?
    This was the third time Mika had asked that. “All of them within a hundred miles.”
    Better