text: "I don't mean to disintegrate Jyothky's plans in the darkness of my breath," said Ythac, "But Trest is not being an example that hovens are better off under our rule. Not yet." He lashed his tail. "I don't think it's the fault of our rule. The hovens aren't cooperating very well."
  
  I waddled over and leaned against Ythac's side. "I know. Tarcuna gives me no end of misery about it. But your troubles are the best evidence that a direct military conquest won't work properly here. If you don't mind telling us?"
  
  Ythac put a wing over my flank. "I don't mind telling you. Llredh conquered Trest for me as a wedding present..." He told the story of the conquest in cold Grand Draconic, without an inflectional marker of how he felt about it.
  
  "That's certainly a more classic form of conquest than insidious insinuation. In some texts, it is the best form of conquest, when it works. It is quick. It preserves the value of the country, which conquest by flame does not." (That's burning a few cities, destroying the army, and demanding surrender of whatever is left. The dragons of Hasqueth conquered by flame, and notoriously burnt up a vast treasure of peerlessly carved bone and wood, and caused an economic collapse which cost them two-thirds of their subject population over the next duodecade.) "If the leader is hated, as Shuvanne seems to have been, it may engender less resentment than conquest by flame, as well."
  
  Ythac flicked his tail. "I haven't lived inside those texts, though I certainly read them. Trest obeys us, Trest is conquered. Trest does not obey us well. I have commanded vast public works; they are not being built, or not fast or skillfully. I have proclaimed beneficial laws; they are not enforced, or not very often. I have revealed the peril of cyoziworms, with plentiful evidence from hoven scientists; the populace does not believe me. Dragons are feared in Trest, but not respected and certainly not loved. Chevethna and Arthane have better control of Ghemel than I do of Trest, and never mind that I've been at it much longer."
  
  "You have my sympathy, and if I could figure out how to support you, I would," I said, and hugged him again. "But I think I understand something of the hoven psyche by now. They are not an easy people to conquer. The mhelvul were easy; they lived as slaves of their paingods in any case. We simply took the place of the masters, and the mhelvul obeyed us. Hovens... some hovens are slaves, to be sure. Mostly they aren't, or not exactly. The peasants in Damma can vote for the rulers of their country, though their votes are often ignored and generally bought. The citizens of Trest had much more say about the government of Trest than the peasants of Damma. Having had this taste of power and autonomy, hovens react very badly to being conquered by greater force. Oh, and the greater force is a problem too; they have killed a dragon, once."
  
  "They killed a dragon after we had weakened him greatly and broken his apotropaics," said Csirnis. "I am not sure how even their greatest guns would work against, say, Boruu and his quotidian protections."
  
  "True. That matters a great deal in a war. If we get impatient and try to conquer by force, we will have to worry about that extensively. But in the minds of hovens, we are not unkillable near-gods from beyond the universe. We are monsters of considerable power, yes, but we can be defeated and killed, and they know it."
  
  "When were we ever unkillable?" asked Gwixion. "Mhelvul must have killed nearly a dozen of us."
  
  "Unprotected children and careless adults were killed, much after the conquest. When nineteen dragons came to Mhel with flame and magic, a grand of mhelvul gods died, but not one dragon," Ythac said.
  
  "Not so on Hove," I said. "We have lost one already. I do not intend that we lose another. So the theme of our conquest of Hove is this: In regular conquests, resistance to us seems impossible and hopeless. When we move to conquer Hove, resistance to us shall seem short-sighted and pointless. Hovens will not fight us. They will choose us."
  
  Arthane cheered and crashed his wings together. The rest of my friends smiled, more or less dubiously. Boruu, who is not particularly my friend, rolled his eyes. "You're not planning to rule for a gross of years, or two, or three, are you? Hove doesn't have a single world-wide government, and if it did, they certainly wouldn't abdicate in your favor any time soon."
  
  "I think I could endure simply being wealthy, powerful, much-loved by a medium-sized country, and, of course, frequently found in the company of my husband. Speaking as someone who had intended to rule Hove, and still might at some point," said Chevethna. "This will come about over the next year or two."
  
  "Exactly. We'll rule Ghemelia, or we sort of do already. We'll fix it up, and then we'll have a home country for the first while," I said. "We'll pick up a few other countries here and there too. We don't need to conquer Hove all at once: one country at a time, as convenient. That's the 'insinuation' part of the plan."
  
  Boruu shrugged. "I don't suppose I had any big plans for the next grand of years. None that Chevethna and Arthane hadn't already dashed, anyway."
  
  "This isn't the last planning meeting we'll have," said Ythac. "In a duodecade, or twelve, we can change our minds and conquer the place by flame and magic. What is harder is to start off conquering by flame, and then switch to insidious means. I know that rather too well." He disentangled from me and embraced Llredh, rather shyly. "Though I do not reject or resent my husband's present in the least."
  
  Arthane hissed to me, "They really are in love, aren't they? I do not understand that. I do not even want to understand that."
  
  I hissed back, "Well, I don't understand how anydragon can be in love. I don't need to understand it, I just need to pretend it made any sense and that the dragons involved care about it."
  
  He didn't speak for another dozen minutes, chewing on that.