As She Ascends

by Jodi Meadows

  I pressed my mouth into a line.

  “You didn’t have that the last time I saw you, Mira Minkoba, and I’ve heard nothing about an injury. Seems like a scar on your face, of all faces, might draw some talk. But that looks old and I’ve heard nothing about it.”

  My cheeks burned as I pulled LaLa closer to my chest.

  Hristo took a measured step closer to me. “What happened is none of your business. Don’t presume.”

  “My apologies,” said Azure. “An old man can’t help but feel a bit of curiosity when the Hopebearer, her guard, and her friend show up unannounced. In questionable attire. With a hurt dragon. And evidence of two other major injuries.”

  Our attire was questionable.

  “It’s fine,” I said, even though it felt like undermining Hristo and I actually did appreciate his protectiveness. But we needed Azure on our side.

  “This way to the medical facilities.” He motioned to a building that was large enough to hold two Drakontos rexes for surgery.

  “Do you trust him?” Ilina muttered as we walked.

  “As much as I trust anyone I don’t know well.” I petted LaLa, who was sitting alert on my wrist. “He was nice when I met him before.”

  She nodded. “He never came to Crescent Prominence with Director Bosh and other Hartan keepers. Remember when we held meetings for keepers across the Fallen Isles?”

  “I remember.” During my first visit here, Azure had told me that for most of his life, he’d traveled the farms of Idris, keeping rice fields fertile, but the moment the Mira Treaty went into effect, he left for Harta. He’d toured the island for a year before settling in Val fa Merce. “Someone had to stay behind to take care of the dragons, right?” I looked at Hristo. “What about you? Do you trust him?”

  “I don’t trust anyone,” he said. “Except you two. And I suppose Gerel, Chenda, and Aaru. A little.”

  As we walked, we passed by ten huge carts lined up next to the sanctuary wall. They were covered, with only a few slats in the sides, but the interiors were dark so I couldn’t see what they were moving. Boulders for more dragon mounds, perhaps?

  The other keeper—the one whose jacket didn’t fit properly—slipped between the carts, and when our eyes met for half a moment, he just nodded and edged out of view. Back to work, I supposed.

  Still, something was wrong. LaLa shifted back and forth on my hand, and a strange sleepiness nipped at me, as though I’d forgotten to breathe deeply enough.

  I shook myself back to alertness and looked at Azure. “What are the carts for?”

  He sighed as he pulled open the front door and held it for us. “Sad business. You chose an interesting time to visit.”

  “Our driver mentioned something about a dragon burning farms,” I said when we were all inside.

  “Yes. Tiff. Sort of . . .” His hands shook as he motioned us down a long hall with glass windows along the walls. “She left the sanctuary one morning. It’s not unusual for our dragons to roam, but they generally stay within the sanctuary. This time, I thought she’d gotten lost and couldn’t find her way back.”

  Dragons were smarter than that, though; surely she knew how to get home. “I remember Tiff from my first visit here,” I said. She was a Drakontos maximus, huge and sapphire-winged. “She seemed very calm and well behaved.”

  Azure nodded. “She was calm. Old and powerful, yes, but very calm, at least until this last month. She just seemed more agitated than normal. She snapped at people sometimes. And then she set those farms on fire.”

  “Our driver said that city officials might force the sanctuary to move farther away from Val fa Merce.” I couldn’t imagine how that would be possible, though.

  He sighed. “Yes, there are people trying to force new legislation through very quickly, without proper research into why this happened. They want a larger minimum distance between the city and the sanctuary.”

  “Even though the city wasn’t harmed?” I frowned.

  “Yes. They worry the city will be next. Of course, they also want us to move farther away from the farmland, but Harta, as you may know, is mostly farmland.”

  Harta was all farmland, except for the knots of population collected in cities.

  Worry stung inside me. If the city leaders had their way, it wouldn’t be possible for the sanctuary to take any dragons we brought them. “What will you do?”

  “Perhaps once the farms and buildings are repaired, people will change their minds. A lot of these are the same people who take their children to visit the sanctuary every month. They love having it here, teaching our next generation about the children of the gods and our duty to protect them. But I suppose this is the first time they’re seeing that dragons are not docile creatures meant for our amusement.”

  No, they weren’t.

  “Most sanctuaries don’t allow visitors like that.” Ilina managed not to sound judgmental, but I knew she disliked the idea of random people traipsing about dragon sanctuaries. They were sanctuaries after all, not menageries.

  But Azure was clever enough to hear what she hadn’t said. “Most sanctuaries get funding from their governments. When Harta became independent, we couldn’t afford a sanctuary, but the people wanted one anyway. We all wanted to do our part to uphold the treaty and protect the children of the gods.” A frown flickered across his face. “Visitors pay a fee that helps us recoup the construction and maintenance costs, and only certain parts of the sanctuary are open to the public, and only during certain points of the day. The drakarium, for example, is accessible in the mornings, because that is when the dragons there are most likely to be playing and not care about people staring at them. And visitors are never allowed into the dens of the larger dragons, but occasionally we do have days when we entice big dragons to come to a viewing spot.”

  I’d heard all of this before, and told Ilina, too, but I got the feeling she didn’t care how careful the keepers were—she didn’t approve of dragon exhibits.

  Now, we walked past dragons in recovery wards. Through glass windows, we saw a Drakontos aquis gnawing on a bone, and a Drakontos quintus balancing on a wooden ball. Other dragons simply slept inside small, grassy nooks or on rocky perches.

  At last, Keeper Azure pushed open a door. “Here you are. Use anything you need.”

  The room was a fairly standard small-dragon infirmary, with cabinets full of medical supplies, both a perch and a counter, and a large bowl of treats. There was even a tap with running water, and a scale that measured in Hartan stones. Sketches of anatomy covered the walls, beautifully detailed, and focused on the smaller species that would be treated in this room.

  Crystal immediately hopped off Ilina’s shoulder and went to play with a toy left on the floor—a small rope with knots and frayed ends, and places that looked like they’d caught on fire a few times.

  While Ilina rummaged through the cabinets for the supplies she wanted, I took LaLa to the sketch of a Drakontos raptus skeleton. “These are the bones we’re trying to make better.” I pointed at the wing, and dragged my finger over the long bone on the outside.

  LaLa wasn’t paying attention; the treat bowl had caught her eye and now she stretched her neck as far as it would go, as though she might be able to dive in to steal a slice of dried mango or a sliver of smoked pheasant.

  “After Ilina gets your new splint.” I kissed her head.

  “Impatient little creatures, aren’t they?” Azure chuckled. “It’s hard to deny them.”

  LaLa chirruped and gazed at him imploringly, as though hoping he might be gullible enough to fall for her act.

  “She senses my weakness.” He smiled. “I’ll check on the other patients and return in a few minutes.”

  When the door shut behind him, Ilina said, “It was rude of him to mention your scar.” She tucked a packet of padding under her elbow.

  “It’s hard not to notice, I guess.” I placed LaLa on the perch and moved out of Ilina’s way. “And he won’t be the last one to say something.
”

  “Still.” She frowned as she began removing the old splint from LaLa’s wing. “It’s something to think about. What if other people don’t believe you’re you because of the scar? He’s right that it looks like it’s been there for a long time, and people just saw you in Bopha without it.”

  “No one will talk about what happened in Bopha. Not after that speech.” I touched my cheek; that was the speech that earned the scar.

  “That’s not what I meant.” She felt LaLa’s wing for the breaks. “I meant what happened on the docks. The people who saw you then weren’t the Bophan elite. They were normal people who were excited to see you interact with a Drakontos rex.”

  “Poor Lex.” I closed my eyes, seeing the brilliant red dragon erupt from a galleon, seeing her spit fire and struggle to escape into the clouds. She’d been so beautiful and strong, but the hunger and captivity had been killing her. She’d been wild with rage. “I hope she’s still alive.”

  “I hope so too.” Hristo glanced out the window, but the hall was still clear. “The Algotti Empire must want them alive, so I’m sure whoever the Luminary Council has moving the dragons would have helped her.”

  They hadn’t been able to help the other two dragons on that galleon, though. Their screams would haunt my sleep forever.

  On the floor, Crystal gnawed fibers free of her rope, then tossed them into the air and blew a puff of flame. The strands fizzled before they hit the floor.

  Hopefully she didn’t set the building on fire before we were ready to leave.

  “There.” Ilina finished fixing the splint to LaLa’s wing and stepped aside. “All better.”

  Just as I opened my mouth to ask if they had a strange, gloomy feeling about the sanctuary, a knock sounded on the door and Keeper Azure entered.

  “That’s very nice work,” Azure said, looking at the splint. “Your parents have trained you well.”

  Ilina glanced at me, and as though she sensed what I’d been about to say, she asked, “Do you need help with Tiff? Perhaps I could look at her.”

  He shook his head. “I’m afraid that’s unnecessary.”

  “A second opinion never hurts,” Hristo said diplomatically.

  I offered my hand for LaLa, letting her step onto it. When she was settled, I pulled a small bite of meat from the treat bowl and let her take it.

  “That is true,” Azure said, “but Tiff is being moved tonight.”

  The looming sense of wrongness descended fully, and at once I understood the purpose of the carts outside:

  The residents of the First Harta Dragon Sanctuary were being taken, just like the others.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “MOVED.” MY THROAT WENT RAW WITH THE WORD.

  “How many?” Ilina’s question was a breath, an echo of my pounding thoughts.

  “Ten,” Keeper Azure said. “That’s most of our larger dragons.”

  “Why?” I couldn’t keep the horror from my voice, even though we’d known this was a possibility. Even though I’d known something was wrong here from the minute we stepped up to the gate.

  “There have been smaller incidents for a month: dragons flying for hours without hunting, which isn’t so odd except that three were doing it. One began picking off his scales. Another—” Azure stopped. “I’m sorry. But traveling with Director Bosh, they will be under the best possible care. No one knows more about dragons than he, I assure you. He says they’ve called other experts as well. They will solve this.”

  My thoughts spun with the news. If the Crescent Prominence sanctuary wasn’t the only one affected, then every sanctuary in the Fallen Isles was at risk.

  When I caught Ilina’s eyes, I saw my own fear reflected there.

  “I hope,” Azure went on, “that we’ll be able to keep the sanctuary open with the smaller dragons; no one will be able to dispute their continued presence.”

  Threads of anxiety tugged at me, but I made myself breathe and pull my thoughts together. This wasn’t a surprise, just a confirmation. We could deal with it. We could use it.

  “Where are the dragons being sent?” If he knew the destination, that was where the Chance Encounter needed to take us next. First, we would make Keeper Azure see the truth so that he’d fight to keep the dragons here. Then we would rescue the others.

  “Director Bosh said they are trying to find a cure for what’s making dragons behave so strangely. They need to observe all the dragons in one location.” He pressed his mouth into a line. “I don’t know exactly where they’re going.”

  All the dragons in one location? That meant dragons in other sanctuaries were behaving strangely, too. And Keeper Azure and the director knew theirs wasn’t the only sanctuary being plundered. “Let us speak to Director Bosh.”

  He hesitated, and in that moment, everything was clear: he would deny us, and ten dragons would be taken tonight.

  I tucked LaLa against my chest and lurched for the door. “Ilina, Hristo—come on.”

  “What are you doing?” Azure strode after me, with Hristo, Ilina, and Crystal behind him. “If we don’t follow orders, we’ll lose the sanctuary. The two hundred dragons living here will have nowhere to go.”

  “You don’t understand.” I shifted LaLa to my shoulder and shoved open the facility door. Outside, rain pattered to the ground in heavy drops, and a gray sense of fear flooded the entire sanctuary. I marched toward the carts, my shoes squishing in the mud and grass. “There’s more to this than they’ve told you.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Azure said. “We have to do what’s best for the dragons, and not even Mira Minkoba can stop it.”

  He was wrong. He had to be wrong. What good was my name if it couldn’t influence those with the power to do the right thing?

  I glanced over my shoulder, but he was hurrying toward the rain-shrouded office building—to find help, probably. “We have to do this fast,” I said.

  “Are we just going to open the carts?” Ilina peered at me through the veil of rain. “Don’t you think there’s a better plan? These dragons have been behaving erratically. It’s probably not smart to just let them out.”

  “Probably not,” I agreed, “but Keeper Azure will come back any minute, and who knows what will happen then. We open the carts or we let the dragons be taken.”

  “All right.” Ilina didn’t hesitate. When we reached the first cart, she turned the latch and let the door swing wide open to reveal a Drakontos maior.

  Even sleeping, the dragon was magnificent, with closed eyes as big as my splayed-out hand and fangs that dug into the wood of the cart. He had storm-gray scales, which gleamed in the weak, cloud-filtered light, and his breath was short and fast, punctuated with puffs of smoke. He was stressed, even unconscious.

  “They’ve definitely given him some sort of sedative.” Ilina stood next to me, with Crystal at sharp attention on her shoulder. LaLa was a mirror upon mine. “I don’t know if we can wake him.”

  “You’ll have to do something soon.” Hristo was standing watch behind us, the tendons in his neck straining. “There are four keepers now. It won’t take them long to get here.”

  My heart pounded with uncertainty as I touched the gray giant before me. A jolt of anxiety shot through me, bright with flashes of wings pumping and flying straight up to the sun.

  But just as quickly as they came, the flashes evaporated, and it was just me standing in the rain, my fingers resting on the maior before me. Disoriented, but on solid ground.

  The dragon’s scales were cool—too cool for a healthy dragon—and rough, as though he’d been rubbing his face on stones or trees. “Poor thing.” I turned to Ilina, blinking rain off my eyelashes. “Let’s open the other carts. I don’t know if we can wake them, but they deserve a chance to escape.”

  “And if they fly toward the city or set more farms on fire?” Hristo asked.

  “I—” My head spun with confusion, anxiety, and anger. I clawed my thoughts together, struggling to focus them through the mess. “I don’t
know. But we can’t let the empire have them.”

  “All right.” Hristo dropped our dragons’ basket on the wet grass. “I’ll help.”

  With a firm nod, Ilina was off, running toward the next cart. With one hand on LaLa to help her balance, I went for the one before that. My shoes slipped on the slick grass, but I didn’t slow.

  Cart by cart, my friends and I pried them open to find ten enormous dragons, all sedated into unconsciousness. How long had they been like this? How could I possibly help them all?

  “Step away from the carts!” I knew that voice—he sounded like Director Bosh. Keeper Azure had gone straight to the head of the First Harta Dragon Sanctuary.

  I was behind a cart, so I didn’t see the director yet as I hurried back to Ilina and Hristo. Instead, I came face-to-face with the keeper in the ill-fitting jacket; I pulled back just in time to stop from crashing into him and landing us both in the mud.

  “Please,” I said, just over the rush of rain. “You have to help. These dragons aren’t being taken for their health. They’re being sent to the Algotti Empire.”

  He cocked his head. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes!” I rested my hand over LaLa again. “Please, we can’t let them take our dragons.”

  “Mira!”

  At Ilina’s frightened cry, I didn’t hesitate—I ran straight for her.

  The group of keepers had reached my friends, and one had taken Crystal. His gloved hand was stretched over her back, pinning her wings, and though she could have lashed her head around and blown fire at him, she was too well behaved to defend herself.

  She was shaking, though, shining with rain running down her slick scales. The sight of her in the man’s grasp stopped me, and I drew my shoulder back as though I could hide LaLa. “Let her go.” My voice sounded hollow. Deeper.

  Director Bosh—I recognized his face now—shook his head. “I need you to stop what you’re doing.” He looked at Crystal, a tiny ball of terrified dragon in his hands, and then toward the open carts. “No matter what you do, these dragons will be getting the help they need. You get to decide whether this one”—he held up Crystal—“will be going with them.”