Author note: Sybil and all the other Discworld characters belong to Terry Pratchett, not me. However, the style is mine, because there's no way I could imitate his.
Big thanks to grainweevil and RedSkyAtNight for wise comments and beta-ing, and to anyone who reads and reviews!
Lady Sybil looked reflectively at the congealing remains of her husband's dinner and allowed herself a small sigh.
On the whole, she reminded herself, Sam hadn't done too badly this evening. He had arrived home by six, as he did without fail, and read Where's My Cow? to Young Sam; he had taken his uniform off, had a bath, and joined her for dinner. He had even managed to eat most of it before Willikins had announced Captain Carrot. But at the news of some possible difficulty with the death of a dwarf down in Rime Street, he had mumbled his apologies, thrown his uniform back on, and headed out as he always did.
Since the startling discoveries at Koom Valley a few months before, inter-species tensions within Ankh-Morpork had been much reduced. While feelings between dwarfs and trolls could hardly be said to be amicable, there was a mood of hiatus, a breathing space in which each group sought to assimilate the new view of history which had been thrust upon them. In consequence, Sam's nocturnal call-outs had generally returned to their former causes: the usual muggings, burglaries and murders which made up the seamless tapestry of life in the city. But there was always the possibility that a small incident might flare up into something more serious, and Sam took no chances. When Carrot had brought the news that a dwarf had died in so far unexplained circumstances and that his grief-stricken relatives were starting to bandy inter-species accusations, Sam had muttered something about "Gods save me from politics" and gone to see for himself.
The result was that Sybil was looking at another evening alone. Not that it bothered her, of course – she had become well used to solitude in the years before she married. "Just as well", she murmured to herself, a little wryly. The practice had certainly come in useful since.
"That's enough, Sybil,"she told herself sharply. It was ridiculous to feel self-pity when she was really, very, jolly lucky. No, this peaceful evening was something to be grasped, an opportunity to get on with something that needed doing. It was a task which she knew had been overdue for some time: something that she used to do every few months, but was now over a year behind. She didn't quite know how that had happened, but what with looking after Young Sam and one thing and another, she always seemed to be so busy nowadays. Even with a cavern-girl and a nursery-maid to help her, the time just flew by. Well, she had let things slide for long enough. It was time to update her dragon-breeding records.
She rang the bell to summon Willikins, and asked him to make up a fire in the library. The evenings were drawing in and the weather becoming chilly as winter approached, while the famed Ankh-Morpork smog had begun to hang over the city once more on still nights. Sybil sat in the dining room and sipped her coffee, allowing twenty minutes for the fire to take effect before she rose, went through the hall and opened the large, creaking door on the other side.
The library was a large, square, high-ceilinged room, with tall sash windows which looked out, in daylight, onto a terrace in the garden. Now, however, the heavy velvet curtains were drawn, giving the room a cosy feeling which was heightened by the fire flickering in the grate and the soft glow of the lamps. Three of the walls were lined with bookshelves, the leather spines of thousands of volumes bathed in the warm light. Above the large stone fireplace hung a family portrait, too cracked and blackened by age to be recognisable, while around the room were spread a number of worn old leather chairs and sofas, a bureau, a couple of sets of library steps and a monumental leather-topped desk made of dark old wood. Various piles of books on the floor and elsewhere, most of them sporting tattered strips of paper to mark significant pages, and a number of faded pictures of deceased family members and pets, indicated that this had never been a room meant for show, but always one which had been used.
Sybil paused for a moment on the threshold, breathing in the musty scent of crumbling leather and old paper with nostalgic pleasure. It really was too long since she had been in here. It had always been one of her favourite rooms in the house, right from being a child, probably because it was her father's favourite, too. She could picture him now, sprawled in his particular chair by the fire, deeply immersed in some tome on military history or duck shooting. As a young girl she would often creep in here, settle herself on a stool by his feet and open her own book. He would acknowledge her presence by ruffling her hair, nothing more, and the two of them would sit close together, reading in companionable silence. It was one of the best memories of her childhood.
Rousing herself from her reverie, she closed the door behind her, crossed the room, and selected a heavy and well-used volume from a shelf. Next, she seated herself at the desk and reached for a pen. To her right stood a handsome writing set bearing the inscription "Presented to Brigadier Ramkin on the occasion of his retirement, by the Officers and Men of the 107th Regiment", but the ink in the silver ink-well had long dried up. Sybil opened the top drawer of the desk, rummaged around for a moment, and extracted a plain but beautifully-made fountain pen. Then she opened the volume.
This was her stud-book, in which she had kept the master breeding records of her programme ever since she began. Each dragon had a page to itself, sometimes several pages, headed with its name in large copperplate script, after which followed a plethora of information about the individual. This comprised a summarised pedigree and date of birth, observations on the creature's health and development, any particularly good or bad aspects of conformation, lists of show winnings, and of course, records of its offspring. These copious notes were written in a hand which started off in the same studied copperplate as the titles, but tended to get more untidy as Lady Sybil picked up speed and enthusiasm.
Muttering "Right then," – talking to herself was another legacy of spending so much time alone – she settled down to work, adding in the new clutches of youngsters to their dams' records. The number of these made her quite grateful that at least there were no show results to write up: since marrying, and especially since having Young Sam, she had neither the time nor the inclination for showing that she once did. There were, however, some dragons which had been sold, or given away or exchanged with friends, and these transfers were noted also. Lastly, she recorded the fate of those dragons which had come to an unfortunate end due to self-combustion, as several of the cocks did each spring without fail.
The better part of an hour went past as Sybil sat, absorbed in her work, head bowed over the large volume. When she had finished she sat back a little, rubbed her nose absentmindedly and stared thoughtfully at the volume, a slight crease of consideration wrinkling her brow. It was obvious from the work she had just done that she had a
quite sizeable number of young homebred dragons which were now approaching sexual maturity and ready to be mated for the first time. For most of these, she realised, she had not yet written out a full pedigree, the necessary first step for planning their breedings. Only by looking back over their ancestry could she choose mates for them which would be likely to result in the best quality offspring.
Accordingly she stood up, went to the bureau, and extracted several blank parchment pedigree sheets. Then she settled herself back at the desk, smoothed out the top sheet, and turned to a page in the volume to which she needed to refer. Taking up the pen, she made an effort to revert to the neat copperplate script as she began to write: Mabelline Marshland Moonpenny IV, hatched 19 Grune…
She worked steadily for more than an hour this time, writing out sheets for all the young dragons, while the fire crackled quietly in the grate, the atmosphere in the room hanging as soft and enveloping as the velvet curtains. Eventually she put down the pen, stifled a small yawn, and stretched to relieve the cricks in her arms and shoulders. Then she spread the completed pedigree sheets across the desk in front of her and studied them with an appraising eye, her breeder's mind analysing and evaluating the various bloodlines, pondering the next course of action. Moonhaze Lady Talonthrust of Ankh; Everglades Anastasia II; Lemondrop Brightscale Moonglow VI…
Surveying the finished pedigrees, Sybil had to admit a truth which had been gradually dawning on her as she wrote them out: she did not have suitable mates in her own kennel for the younger generation of hens. All of her cocks were too closely related to them, being the hens' own fathers, brothers, or at best, first cousins. And while such close crosses could work very well, there was a limit to how far you could take them. Line-breeding to Dewdrop Mabelline Talonthrust the First had served her very well in improving and fixing the quality of her stock, it was true, but she sensed that she had done it enough. The Talonthrust line had always had a tendency to sickle hocks and a
certain coarseness around the matlock, both considered faults in the show-ring, and any more crosses to the same bloodline would only intensify them.
In-breeding could be bad for the animals' health, too. The resultant stock were never as vigorous, their flame was thinner, scale more brittle, and they were more prone to infections such as black snurt and scale-worm. Sybil knew that a wise breeder should never run such a risk. There was only one solution. What she needed was a young male of a completely different bloodline: an outcross.
Of course, it would in theory be possible to send her young hens away to stud, and bring in new bloodlines that way, but she had so many of them that it would be a complicated and expensive exercise. Moreover, there were certain practical difficulties in transporting dragons. Their packaging crates needed to be insulated, to keep the dragon warm, but also ventilated, or it would suffocate on the noxious gases which it exhaled. Most importantly, of course, they needed to be fireproofed as much as possible, either by an alchemical mixture sprayed into the wooden lining, or a layer of damp straw enclosed between the inner and outer walls of the crate. Any attempt to transport a dragon without such precautions would result in the crate being reduced to ashes, the carrier's cart charred, and the dragon released to an uncertain freedom, the shock of which usually killed it.
Even when every possible care was taken, the survival rate was not good. Swamp dragons were so neurotically sensitive to any change in their environment, temperature or food, or simply to the jolting of the average carrier's cart, that they were more than likely to experience a fatal internal combustion and simply explode inside the crate. Taking one or two of them to shows was made possible by allowing them to ride with Lady Sybil in her own carriage, but she found the prospect of any more large-scale exercise impossible to contemplate. In any case, the risks were well-known and it was quite hard nowadays even to find a carrier who was willing to undertake the work.
No, by far the best thing to do would be to buy in a young cock of a line completely unrelated to hers. She would have to write to Brenda and Jennifer and a few other friends, asking if they had anything suitable. Also it might be worth scanning the advertisement columns in Dragon-Breeder's Monthly and The Cavern, and generally keeping her ear to the ground in order to hear of any promising animals before they came up for sale.
Tomorrow, though. It was getting late, the fire was burning low in the grate, and she was feeling decidedly tired. With a larger yawn this time, she closed the volume, tidied the pieces of parchment into a pile, and put them back in the bureau. Then she damped down what remained of the fire, put out the lamps, and went back into the hall, gently closing the door behind her.
The hall was in semi-darkness, lit only by one lamp to the left of the huge front door. The light reflected from the chequerboard marble floor, casting shadows around the ancient umbrella-stand and the pile of well-worn boots. The kindly gloom hid the dust which lay in the folds of the curtains, and on the frames of the pictures lining the walls. Everything was just as normal.
Sybil crossed to the foot of the heavy oak staircase and started to ascend, worn crimson carpet muffling the sound of her steps. For some reason, her eye was caught by a large, faded parchment in a frame, hanging on the wall to her right. She passed it every day, had done so since childhood, and rarely gave it a thought, although she knew what it was without looking. It was the family tree of the Ramkins, emblazoned at the top with their coat of arms, recording the lineage of her family for the last five hundred years or more. Roundels displaying the name of each individual were linked to others, indicating their relationships – marriages, parents, siblings – while smaller versions of the Ramkin arms, quartered with others, indicated the other titled families with whom they had intermarried. Sybil's gaze fell on her own name at the bottom, written in by her father, more years ago than she cared to think about. Next to it, her own writing, in ink not yet faded by time, proudly recorded her marriage to Sam and the birth of Young Sam.
Suddenly it occurred to Sybil that, quite unconsciously, she had done for her family exactly what she now deemed necessary for her dragons. By marrying Sam, she had brought in a complete outcross. "And not before time," she murmured to herself, surveying the complicated branches of her family tree, criss-crossing lines which marked the myriad connections. There were really not many surnames on there, she reflected. The Ramkins had interbred with other aristocratic families for quite long enough. Sam had brought an infusion, not only of fresh blood, but of a fresh outlook on life, and she was quite certain that her family would be all the better for it.
Not, of course, that she had done it deliberately – the thought of anything so calculating in regard to human relationships horrified her. It was just that most of the aristocratic young men to whom she had been introduced at the fashionable parties and balls of her youth had not seemed terribly interested in her. She was under no illusions as to why. She knew that her physical appearance had been – well – not exactly been what most of them were looking for. At the coming-out ball hosted for her by her parents, it had been somewhat galling to see each potential suitor dutifully dancing one dance with her for politeness' sake, before moving on with undisguised relief to the happier hunting grounds of prettier, wittier and above all, thinner girls. The few who had seemed keen, it had not been difficult to work out, were in fact much more interested in the fortune she stood to inherit than in any of her personal attributes. Fortunately Daddy had seen it too, and soon sent them packing. As time went by, she had pretty much resigned herself to the spinster life, occupying herself with dragons, doing the things required of one in her station in life, and most of the time, refusing to feel sorry for herself. Until Sam had come along, and she had dared to hope that what seemed to happen to most other people might also be possible for her. Because with Sam, everything had just felt so right. And it still did. She was so lucky.
With a slight smile on her lips, she climbed the rest of the stairs to the galleried landing. Lit only by one candle at the far end, it was darker than the hall, but Sybil did not need light to find her way. The door to Young Sam's room was ajar and she entered softly, the warm, sweet-smelling darkness enveloping her. Soundlessly the crossed the room and stood by the cot.
In the shadows she could just make out her sleeping son, huddled under his blanket, Where's My Cow? still clutched firmly in his fist. She stood for a little while, listening to his regular breathing, admiring his perfect little form as her eyes gradually adjusted to the darkness. Then she bent down, inhaling the scent of his clean, downy hair, and gently kissed the soft, dark head good night.
Returning to the landing, she allowed herself a wry smile at the comparison she had made earlier. It really didn't do to think of one's husband in the same terms as one's dragons – and yet, the principle seemed to hold true. If the slumbering child in the cot was an example of what an outcross did for you, then the future, she had no doubt, was in safe hands.
Sybil went to her own room, quickly changed into her nightdress, and got into bed. As she did so she heard the sound of the front door opening and closing, and a quiet commotion which signified the removal of boots. Good. Sam was back. Back from saving the world, or at least the city, again. The present, she reflected with a smile into the darkness, seemed to be in pretty safe hands too.