She looked at the sheer walls of Thul’s Hardhold. Many were the balconies that hung black banners, mourning their losses.

Djaybee joined her at the thin window slits.

“I think you should know, there’s a dozen of the king’s guard at the base of the tower. They don’t want you to leave,” Djaybee said. Yellowteeth hung about the passage down, as if fearing a rush of footsteps, but what he could do other than slicken the steps with shovelfuls of dragon waste she did not know. “Hard words passed between us, and I was cautioned against keeping counsel with you. I fear another night of knives is coming.”

“Night of knives?”

“As there was when our noble king, a curse be upon his name, claimed all power. Those who opposed him never woke again, but were found dead behind their bedcurtains.”

“We’d best take turns keeping watch,” Wistala said.

Her sleep was uneasy that night, and the tower went cold, for Yellowteeth was too terrified to descend the stairs to get more coal. Wistala finally let him sleep in the corner farthest from the door while she and Djaybee took turns at the stairs.

She awoke to a tickle behind her chin, dreaming that Jizara was poking her with her tail-tip. She opened her eye and froze.

Yellowteeth stood next to her neck, his shovel handle somehow transformed into a spear pressing against the interstices between her scales above her neck heart.

“Greetings from the Assassins’ Guild,” Yellowteeth said, his Parl-pigdin markedly reduced. “The king has a message for you as you die: Where is the crown of Masmodon, Oracle? Where is my crown?”

Chapter 28

Wistala smelled blood in the tower room.

Near the stair, Djaybee sat hunched over, a dark stain soaking his back. He’d never more gaze at the stars and draw maps with their aid.

Yellowteeth might have been a good assassin, but he hadn’t learned all he could of dragon anatomy.

She twitched and lowered her griff above the spear point in an eyeblink, knocking it aside as Yellowteeth threw himself off balance trying to ram it home. The point scraped across the floor instead of burrowing into her neck.

She helped him off his feet by lashing him between the shoulder blades with her tail as she came to her fours. She put a sii down on the back of his head, grinding his face into the geometry of the floor.

“In my experience, a good courier always asks if there is to be a return message,” Wistala said. “Will you be good enough to carry an answer back for me?”

“Mmpfh,” Yellowteeth snuffled.

“How thoughtful of you. Tell Gobold to come himself and try to break my fangs, if he wishes to deliver death. Now run, before I breakfast on roast blighter.”

She let Yellowteeth up, and he made better time for the stairs than he ever had running coal. If nothing else, he would muddy matters below, and he might even claim the job was done in order to effect an escape from the Wheel of Fire.

A fine cold morning of clean air and mists clinging to the Ba-drink had begun outside. She would not be taken like a rat in a mountaintop cage. The only passage out was down, but she did not want to fight her way through tunnels filled with dwarves, where she would run out of foua before they ran out of spears.

She needed the sky, and to learn if Ragwrist hovered at the edge of the siege or not.

On other days she’d examined her tower room, there were hours of leisure to do so, and the stone was most worn to the northwest, where the wind blew coldest in winter and ice accumulated. There were a multitude of tiny cracks in the masonry between the spaced windows.

She went to her water cistern and took a full mouthful of water, and imitating the unpleasant DharSii, spat it up and down around the masonry, did it once more with a fresh mouthful until the stone was well-wetted.

Then she employed her foua on the wind-chilled stone.

Loud cracks sounded through the flames. Wistala breathed through another window and smashed her tail against the wall, over and over again, as Auron had in the escape chimney, only this time a thousand times the strength was behind it.

A great piece of wall fell away between the two windows.

She could not quite squeeze through yet, but it was far easier to open it wider by pulling at the broken edges and exposed brickwork. A few more bruising tail strikes and she was out, even as footsteps sounded on the stair.

Wistala took wing above the city of the Wheel of Fire.

She roared and dived between the Tall Rock and Thul’s Hardhold, aiming for the Titan bridge. She extended her claws and tail as though to land, then stopped herself with swift beats of her wings just above the bridge.

A highpoon trailing chain, fired by a mighty war-machine, shot across the bridge. As it fell the chain caught and Wistala slipped sideways to grab the chain. A second highpoon lanced out from the other side, but she was watching for it, and reared out of the way.

Father, your pain was not wasted, even if your head now sits on a war-machine.

She flew into the air, as hard and as fast as she could, as other spears whizzed toward her. One pierced her wing, another glanced off her saa, but scale thickened by dwarf gold kept the worst of the damage out.

She swung the round iron weight at the end of the chain, back and forth, back and forth as she rose, with each swing building momentum. She let it strike the Titan bridge, breaking off a massive chunk which spun as it fell into the Ba-drink.

She flew off, flying oddly, fighting to the counterweight on the end of the chain, but her wing muscles were equal to the weight. She smashed a tower on the Hardhold where dwarves fired crossbow bolts. Two swings of the ball, and the shattered tower collapsed and slid down, smashing balcony, gallery, and garden on the way to the wharf.

Wistala noted that there were arrows sticking out of her scales and wing-leather, but in the heat of combat, she felt no pain.

She carried her burden to the far side of the Ba-drink and let the weight go at the flat part of ground by the landing. She flew over the lines of dwarves. Their war-machines were hurling missiles down the mountainside at a wave of barbarians coming up.

“Dhssol! Dhssol!” she wailed as she passed over the lines of dwarves at the wall. “All is lost! Dssol!”

And so she called over the lines of dwarves until she spotted Lord Lobok, standing with a few nobles and commanders on a prominence behind the wall at arrow-shot.

“Oh, Dhssol!” Wistala mourned as she landed. “I have seen it. There are too many! All is lost, see how they approach. You must fall back to the city, we are surely defeated on these slopes.”

“Terrible thought,” Lobok said, wringing his hands as a few ineffective arrows flew over the wall and landed near them in the rocks. “It goes badly for us, Battle Commander! These dwarves are the Wheel of Fire’s last hope.”

“Who needs a last hope when there’s a battle being won? Your imagination has you counting each one thrice,” the commander said. “Step back and let veterans command the fight. The closer they come, the more we kill, see? Our losses are but few.”

But some of the troops had been unnerved by Wistala’s cries, and were running for the barges.

“Hold hard there,” the battle commander shouted through a speaking trumpet. “Groundholders, get those skulkers back in line. To the line!”

“Nothing can stop them, Oh, Dhssol!” Wistala said, as a mass of barbarians came up the hill. Many to the front fell as the dwarves fired, but others behind came on. . . .

“Shut up!” the Battle Commander insisted. “Someone muzzle this fool lizard.”

“The Oracle is right,” Lord Lobok shouted, lifting his own speaking trumpet. “They cannot be held here! Back to the barges, dwarves—we must fall back to the city!” He set an example to his soldiers by hitching up his robes and running toward the barges as fast as his legs would carry him.

The dwarves, many untested in battle, agreed with the sentiment, and the lines fell away like laundry carried off by a strong wind. Dwarves of all descriptions ran, even as the more experienced ones at the war-machines shouted and gesticulated at them.

The battle commander reached for his ax, and Wistala thought it best to take wing. Pebbles flew up into the eyes of the commanders and nobles as she took off.

They, too, ran for the barges as the barbarians leaped up the wall with wild cries.

The battle paused for a moment as the barges pulled away, firing crossbows at the barbarians, who fell back from the water to the wall and continued to hoot.

Wistala flew down to Ragwrist’s gargants. She saw Lord Hammar there, in a thick fur coat that hung to his bootheels, helping with the blasting kegs being handed down from gargant back.

“Place them to either side of the spillway, and on those two supporting columns, right where they join the dam,” Wistala said.

“I hope this works, Wistala,” Ragwrist said as the circus dwarves and riggers went forward with climbing poles and lines. “These casks weren’t cheap.”

“And good morning to you, too,” Wistala said. “Would you rather have King Fangbreaker hunting you up and down the Inland Ocean?”

“The risks I run for my circus.”

“Stop running risks then. I give Mossbell to you, if Hammar agrees.”