He watched her stride away from him. Then he glanced back at the others gathered at the other end of the hall. They were still deep in their discussion. None of them seemed aware of anything unusual. But Malta had seemed so certain. He stood still and let his eyes close. He reached out, opening himself, trying to still all his own thoughts.

Tintaglia?

Nothing. He sensed nothing. Nothing except the pain of looming death. His pain or a dragon’s pain?

He threw the thought aside and, catching up the cloak Malta had left behind, hurried after his wife and son. In the distance, he heard a dragon trumpet. Another replied, and another, and suddenly a chorus of dragon cries was resounding. As he stepped out into the early evening, the city seemed to light itself more brightly. Dragon cries came from every direction. Malta was a thin figure hurrying toward the centre of the Square of the Dragons, her baby a tiny bundle in her arms. The wind whipped her hair. He looked up to see dragons against the reddening sky of evening, flying in like a murder of crows summoned by the caws of one.

Not much farther.

Hurts too much.

Look. Look there, that haze on the horizon. Those are the lights of Kelsingra, welcoming you home. Think of nothing else, Tintaglia queen. Get there and you will find hot water and Elderlings to tend you and Silver. They were descending into the well to repair it when last I was there.

Silver. There was a thought she could hold to. Silver could do marvels when administered by a skilled Elderling. She had ancestral memories of a drake struck by lightning. He had crashed to earth, his wing a scorched framework of bone and little more. It had taken over a year, but he had flown again. They had healed his burns with a spray of Silver. An Elderling artisan had built him a wing of Silver – light, thin panels that articulated on tiny gears. It had not been his own wing, but he had flown again.

Just fly. I will summon them to meet you. Then Kalo trumpeted an alarm cry such as she had never heard. She heard it taken up in the distance, by dragons hunting on the wing, by dragons roused from sated slumber and by dragons that were on the ground within the city. She thought she heard it echo from the distant hills and then knew that it was no echo. The dragons were continuing the calls as they began to gather. More dragons than ever she had seen in her life were welcoming her.

‘Down there!’ Kalo trumpeted it to her. ‘You see it now, don’t you? You remember it?’

‘Of course.’ If she had not been in so much pain, his query would have annoyed her. She had been here before, even in this lifetime. She’d found it dead and deserted and had left it in anger. Now, it was warm with light and welcoming sounds.

‘Go there. They will help you. I go to hunt.’

She already knew of his hunger. She wondered why he chose to tell her obvious things and decided it had to do with his daily exposure to humans. They were always speaking the obvious to one another, as if they had to agree a thing was so before they could act on it. Below her, she saw the open square. Two Elderlings stood in the centre of it, pointing up at her. ‘Tintaglia! Tintaglia!’ They were shouting her name in voices full of joy. Others were just starting to pour out the doorway of … of the baths. Yes. The baths had been there. Hot water and soaking. The thought almost made her woozy, and then flapping her injured wing just became something she could no longer do. She was falling, trying to swing her body’s weight toward her good wing, trying to spiral down to land gently. Then she realized who it was standing to meet her. The relief that washed through her slacked all her muscles.

My Elderlings. Silver. Heal me. She threw the command at them with all her strength, too breathless to trumpet the words as she plummeted the last bit of distance to the ground. Her once powerful hind legs folded under her as she struck, and then she fell to her side on the ground before them. Pain and blackness swallowed her whole.

‘She has dozens of small wounds. Lots of nasty parasites in them. But if that was all that was wrong with her, I’d say we could clean them up, feed her good, and she’d be fine. It’s the infection and that big injury just under her wing. That’s foul and it has eaten right into her. I can see bone in there.’ Carson rubbed his weary eyes. ‘I’m not any kind of a healer. I know more about taking animals apart than I do about curing one. I’ll tell you one thing, though. If that was game I’d brought down, I’d leave it lie. She smells to me like bad meat, through and through.’

Leftrin scratched his whiskery chin. It was venturing toward morning after a day too filled with events. He was tired and worried about Alise and heartsick about Malta’s child. He had felt a wild thrill of hope when some of the keepers had begun shouting that Tintaglia had returned. But this was worse than the news of her death had been. The dragon lay there in the grand open square, soon to be dead. Malta sat on the ground beside her, huddled in her cloak, her child in her arms.