So much gets lost in a story between the initial drafts and the finished piece, and one that really vexes me is the subplot surrounding Doctor Quinque “Quinn” Magbantay of ThreeClaw’s Hoarde. I struggled hard to find a way of exploring that story on the page, but the harder I tried the more I realized that most of it wound up being backstory and memory, which was sharply at odds with the pacing and tone of the rest of the series. In the end I realized if I was going to spend that much time on the past, I could either do Nadia’s backstory or Quinn’s, not both, and I chose Nadia.

Technically speaking his subplot still happens (for the most part), but it’s built into the mechanics of the world, rather than spelled out directly. Sometimes, though, you’ll see it referenced in moments like these:

I didn’t even look up. “According to their family’s taxonomy, poludnica are a subcategory of fae, which they refuse to deal with as a consequence of an incident with French faerie in in the seventeen sixties. The details should be in the reading.”

“Yeah, but according to Quinn’s Index, poludnica aren’t fae.” She sounded entirely too proud of herself for that piece of trivia, like she expected a reward for doing the bare minimum expected of her.

“Just because his research is considered the standard here doesn’t mean it’s universally accepted,” I said.

“Then have Quinn talk to them,” she said. “He’s the head doctor. That’s like double authority figure status. And he can convince them to use his Index so they don’t keep calling you things you’re not. Everybody wins.”

(Book 6: Aglaeca)

So here’s a little look into the story that wasn’t told:

The First Follower

Thanks to the Order’s influence, there’s a constant need for secrecy among non-humans. When your continued survival depends on passing for human, you’re not going to do anything that might out you– and that includes things like going to the doctor. Consequently, medical and biological knowledge of non-humans falls far behind any kind of modern standard, with most of it being an amalgamation of guesswork and folklore, and those few non-humans who dare to do research in secret, mostly among friends and family that they could trust.

Enter young ThreeClaw. This was in the mid-sixties, and she had recently been rendered permanently left-handed after a fight with another dragon. She was aware that she was significantly smaller and weaker than similar dragons, and self-conscious of that fact, but unwilling to bring that up to anyone. Rather than ask directly, she trawled through medical schools until she found a recently graduated non-human among the upcoming graduates who fit her needs. She settled on an Aswang named Quinque Magbantay, and hired him to answer that question for her in the most roundabout way she could manage– she couldn’t ask him what was going on with her, because that would imply that something was wrong with her, which it was not. So she instead had him conduct a medical survey on as many living dragons as he could manage without getting eaten, taking their measurements and vital statistics, and generally figuring out the basics of their biology.

But of course, she couldn’t have him focus exclusively on dragons, because that might lead him to think that there was something she was insecure about. So she instead had him conduct this survey on all surviving species of non-humans. To supply the foundation for this survey, ThreeClaw broke into several Order strongholds and stole what research they had, most of it compiled from vivisection and post-mortem study. The information was largely limited by its focus on methods of killing non-humans and ways of utilizing their parts, with almost no research done into things like how to keep a non-human of any given species alive or healthy.

During those heists, ThreeClaw liberated several of the Order’s victims who had been kept alive specifically for the purposes of that research. She turned the survivors over to Quinn’s care for treatment, and he began to annotate the stolen reports with data he gathered while providing care. Some of those survivors left once they were well enough to set out on their own, but a good deal of them were reluctant to leave the protective influence of a dragon or the unprecedented access to medical care (particularly when so many of them were left disabled by the machinations of the Order). ThreeClaw had already started using the spoils of war and the magical doorways, her own invention, to commission the construction of what would become the FellDeep. It was intended mostly as a place to stash her stuff, but Quinn persuaded her to adjust the plans to include living quarters for the refugees, creating the beginnings of the Hoarde.

The Hoarde

ThreeClaw’s raids on the Order continued, partly in search of more information, partly to steal their resources to provide for her ever-growing follower base, and partly because they just plain pissed her off. It wasn’t long before refugees who were able to fight offered to join her on the raids, though with mixed results. Even as a small dragon, ThreeClaw had size and natural armor on her side that most of them didn’t, and the casualties were high. Meanwhile Quinn started turning his research skills toward more efficient ways of healing, and through a lot of trial and error and collaboration with other non-human sorcerers and chemists, he was able to create Styx, a regenerative substance that could bring people back from anything short of total cellular death. He immediately wanted to share the formula, but ThreeClaw put a stop to that– it was too powerful and too dangerous to be in anyone’s control other than her own, and too new to be administered by anyone other than Quinn. Thanks to the invention of Styx, ThreeClaw and her ragtag Hoarde very suddenly became a force to be reckoned with, both by the Order and by those enclaves of non-humans who’d accumulated enough power to protect themselves. Most of those enclaves were fairly small and insular, many of them either family clans or those small groups of people under the protection of other dragons, though none of them had the same sheer size and diversity of the Hoarde.

Quinn encouraged that growth, citing the ever-growing population as a source for more data. Other non-human doctors and researchers were eager to share their own research that had been conducted in secret, and patients were eager to submit to study, many of them hoping for answers to questions they’d long been pondering in silence. The end result was Quinn’s Index of the Inhuman— a sort of Gray’s Anatomy/WebMD-style encyclopedia spanning more than a dozen volumes, detailing how members of the various species functioned and why. Quinn naturally headed this research, as well as the Hoarde’s medical department, such as it was, and took over a good deal of de facto leadership of the Hoarde in general.

Meanwhile ThreeClaw was steadily losing interest in the organization. She already had the answers that she’d originally sought from Quinn– stunted growth as the result of severe childhood malnutrition– so there was no real reason to keep up the framework that made the Index possible. From the beginning she’d felt discomfort in the center of a group, often leaving the Felldeep without a word when she didn’t want to deal with it all, and coming back only out of a sense of duty. The idea of being perceived to be overwhelmed or negligent was unthinkable, and so she cultivated an air of aloof mystery, saying very little to anyone about anything. Even her identity as a dragon was the subject of some debate– in order to avoid letting people know how small she really was, she avoided letting herself be seen in full scale unless absolutely necessary. The gaps in her leadership and erratic behavior were shored up by the lieutenants around her, particularly Quinn, Nadia, and Ivan, who divided up the management of the Hoarde and the Felldeep amongst themselves based on her vague instructions.

As ThreeClaw’s personal doctor and oldest follower, Quinn was aware that something was up, but he was at a loss for how to do anything about it. She was a dragon, she was his boss, and she wasn’t exactly the kind of person who would take kindly to being told that she might be suffering from mental illness, and so he kept quiet and told himself that her melancholy was just a quirk of her personality, rather than anything that needed to be addressed. He observed some improvement when she accepted Nadia’s bid for a relationship in the late nineties, but even that was marked by distance and secrecy, and ever longer disappearances. When ThreeClaw finally vanished in 2007 and didn’t return, he privately feared that she’d succumbed to her depression.

The Unwritten Chapters

Here’s where we get into the events of the book, and elements that made it in weave together with plot threads that got cut.

When Arkay arrived on the scene seven years later, Quinn determined to make up for his earlier failings, and he tried to act as a sort of mentor to her. Especially early in her tenure as the Hoarde’s new(ish) leader, she spent a good deal of time in his office, complaining to him about her frustrations about Nadia and her duties, and he did what he could to facilitate communication between them.

Before Nadia warmed up to Arkay, Quinn was her primary advisor and mentor, and answered what questions he could about her past, but ThreeClaw’s penchant for secrecy meant that there was little he could actually tell her. It was enough, though, for Arkay to put together just how bad ThreeClaw’s mental health had been– something she’d been picking up on pretty much from the moment she first stepped into the Felldeep.

This place was built like the inside of an Egyptian pyramid: a hidden entrance, a long tunnel, a grand gallery with its assortment of booby traps. Following that pattern, I could expect the very top to have the pharaoh’s chamber.

No self-respecting dragon would settle for any less.

(Book 5: Forest of the Damned)

She confronted Quinn about his failure as a doctor and friend to do anything about it (and about the Hoarde’s lack of decent mental healthcare in the first place)– and he finally voiced his frustrations at ThreeClaw’s reticence and pride, and how ThreeClaw’s refusal to ever show vulnerability made it impossible to help her even when he tried.

This confrontation happened right before a separate confrontation involving an oracle and some deeply unpleasant revelations about Arkay’s fated future, which left her badly shaken. This time around, though, Quinn was able to reach out and be there for her, and Arkay was able to accept his support and actually face what was coming.