“Take Widow Lessup first,” Rainfall said.

“Sir!” Widow Lessup objected. “My heart will fail me anyway, carried aloft by a dragon.”

He wiped his seal-cutter clean and placed it carefully on his desk next to his ink and quill box. “A Hypatian noble’s first duty—and if necessary, his last duty—is to his servants. Carry her to safety, Wistala. I remain to defend my library and all it stands for.”

He stared so levelly at her, she knew it was pointless to argue. She plucked Widow Lessup up by her apron and housecoat and lifted her up and out of the cupola. The grounds around Mossbell were bathed in light from the furiously flaming hay and meal of the barn.

“No! No! No!” Widow Lessup screamed as Wistala climbed out next to her and extended her wings, flapped them experimentally. The goats had either fled the smoke or blood and dragonsmell.

Wistala peeped over the roofline that was part hill crest, hoping the bush and wildflowers atop Mossbell hid her skull’s outline.

There was chaos in the front by the fountain. The Dragonblade was shouting, pointing at her, and upbraiding one of his men with the back of his hand. The thane was riding in circles, trying to bring together barbarians, many with singed beards, who were running from Mossbell carrying everything from candlesticks to dining chairs.

Other barbarians, under the eye of their chief, stood their ground, waiting for action. Behind them were the Dragonblade’s warriors and archers.

Save for one. The leather-clad youth called Eliam was chasing something around the courtyard. A blur of orange—Yari-Tab, running rather stiff-leggedly, for she had seen her share of winters since coming to Mossbell.

She yowled as the man-boy caught her and picked her up, but not a face turned toward the boy running with an old cat.

Wistala felt her fire bladder bulge as Yari-Tab clawed and bit vainly at the leather sleeve and gloves. He ran across the courtyard, laughing, swinging her by the scruff to pitch her into the fire—

Wistala launched herself, loosing her flame in a shower on the Dragonblade’s warriors and dogs, who scattered or burned. As for the wretched boy, her mother’s medicine would do for him.

She wipped her tail down and lashed him across the face with its scaly tip, knocking him off his feet. She beat her wings madly and gained altitude, a little more loopily than she would have liked, but she banked and turned back toward the roof of Mossbell, where Widow Lessup was running down a goat path with skirts held up.

She saw Yari-Tab dashing into the shadows of the side gardens, and the youth sitting upright in the courtyard, hands held to his face with blood running between his fingers, a sharp shadow thrown by the burning barn behind him.

“Teach you to wear your helmet,” the Dragonblade laughed. “Even if it does spoil your hair and hide that handsome face.”

She swooped in behind Widow Lessup, corrected—

Using her sii with claws tucked in, she grabbed the woman by the shoulders and pulled her into the sky, hearing late arrows fall through the air behind. . . .

Wistala, daughter of Irelia, lurched as she soared, thrown off by the strugging woman. It was a worse flight than even an aging sparrow or a sick bat could manage, but flying she was, better than in any dream.

BOOK THREE

Dragonelle

BEWARE BEGINNING A WAR. WAR TAKES MANY TURNS,

AND MOST OFTEN BACK ON THE INSTIGATOR.

—Torus (the Elder)

Chapter 21

Old muscles newly used tired quickly, and Wistala found herself panting as she circled over the Green Dragon Inn.

The scene below reminded her of a riot she’d once seen outside the Great Arena of Hypat after an underdog victory in a game of Flagstaff when bet payments ran out.

Two houses burned, and through the smoky air, Wistala marked the barbarians as they ran in and out of the other homes in no sort of order. A group of them stood looking sadly at a cart that had lost a wheel after being overloaded with tools and anvils from the smithy. Chickens ran everywhere, to be chased frequently, caught rarely, and then stuffed into sacks and baskets when they weren’t dropped in order to pursue a loosed sow or piglet.

The inn had the most barbarians about it. A long low building in back had been torn almost into planking, and the barbarians dipped helms or hands into the mead vats, to guzzle and swill and then stagger off to find vessels to carry some off before others could drink the brewery dry.

Even if the spectacle below had comedic elements, it was a horrifying sort of comedy. Dead bodies, looking like dropped bundles of washing from the sky, lay in the streets and on the doorsteps. Only one or two of the bodies—in front of the inn’s windows—were barbarian.

They’d had no luck getting through the narrow windows or stout door, and a flung torch or two smoldered on the tin roof. In the road before the inn, barbarians under the shouted commands of still-mounted leaders were piling tarry barrels and cut pine boughs on a wooden wagon, pointed so that it could be run toward the door of the inn. Others were busy chopping down the notice board before the inn stoop to give it a clear path.

Wistala’s back burned like her fire bladder, and she longed to set the Widow Lessup down. The high roof of the inn seemed the safest spot, so she landed—the uncharitable would say crashed—on the Green Dragon’s roof, striking first with her tail and then her hind legs, both from instinct and the desire to protect Widow Lessup.

“Cling to the chimney,” she suggested, but the woman needed no prompting. She reached out, prostrate on the roof peak, and hugged brick, gasping for air.

Wistala folded her wings—such relief!—and licked at the blood running from the wounds from where her wings had come. According to Mother’s tales, the emergence of one’s wings was almost bloodless; just a clear, tangy fluid suppurated. She’d known she’d pay a price for cutting them free, and hoped it wouldn’t be a lethal toll.

More hoofbeats sounded from the road, but Wistala could see little. Blowing smoke from flaming houses—four burned now—obscured all.

“I will try to return,” Wistala said. “If they succeed in burning the inn, slide down to the roof of the well shed and keep clear of the brewery.”

“Ohhhhh!” Widow Lessup wailed. “Don’t forget the master!”

“I go for him now.”

She extended her wings and launched herself off the roof. She left a trail of fire from the notice board to the wagon piled with brush and barrels, which promptly roared into flame and scattered the barbarians. As she flapped up into the sky, she noticed an arrow sticking into the inside of her sii—what difference would this blood loss make when so much ran off her back?

Every flap of her wings seemed like her last. She passed up the road, saw the Dragonblade and his horsemen in a tight formation riding for the inn, but they must have had their eyes to the sky, for they executed a neat turn, dispersing as she passed above them.

But she felt in no condition to face the Dragonblade. Besides, she had her mind bent on Rainfall.

She passed over the outer grounds of Mossbell and saw a throng of men in the courtyard around the statue fountain.

Oh, infamy! They had Rainfall there, hanging upside down from the statue, ropes looped about his ankles and the neck of the representation of law. The barbarians were hurling books—the one household item they saw no use for—at him.

Hammar and his men observed events from a little farther away.

Too tired to flap, she set her wings and glided in, spreading what was left of her fire right and left and scattering the barbarians.

She felt the arrows strike. She never remembered it as a painful feeling, more astonished that she didn’t hear them whirl through the air or hit her, but hit they did. A lucky couple bounced off her sides but others plunged into her scaleless underside. The next thing she knew, she was on the ground, nostrils full of dirt and grass, a neck-length from the fountain.

She heard blood rushing in her ears—no, it was the barbarians hooting and cheering, sharp black shapes against Mossbell aflame.

Her breath came with difficulty, and her vision foreshortened. But Rainfall still breathed. She would die beside him. More arrows and a hand-ax bounced off her scale; she noted the strikes uninterestedly. She made one painful crawl toward him, got her nose on the edge of the fountain, smelled blood and water. One of the goldfish came to the surface and looked at her, mouth opening and shutting as it hoped for a tidbit.

Dully, she saw the column of the Dragonblade’s men ride up. The Dragonblade pulled up, and the black helm waved this way and that as it took in the scene. The man-boy in leather, staggering and with the side of his face crudely bandaged and a medicine vial in his hand, pointed with the unsteady hand of a drunk at the fountain.

Wistala found she had a terrible thirst and drank, causing the goldfish to flee to the other side of the pool. As she sucked water, she watched events in the courtyard with amazing calm. Even Rainfall’s moans as he hung, upside down and red-faced, were just another component of the tableau.

The Dragonblade dismounted. He took off his helm, hung it on the pommel of his horse, and drew a gleaming blade. He strode forward, eyes burning.

This is the end. She wondered what would happen to her head and claws. Would they be sold together, as a set, or separately?