Escaping Peril

by Tui T. Sutherland

  “But Cliff —” Ruby started.

  “He’ll be fine,” Scarlet said. “Safe with his loving grandmother. For now. At least until this whole misunderstanding is quite cleared up and the balance of power is right back where it should be. Guards,” she added commandingly, “take Ruby to the prison in the Great Hall — the one where we kept Kestrel. Lock her in, and then notify all the cowards in this palace that it’s time to come out and swear their allegiance to me.”

  There was a long, dreadful pause that felt like someone taking a dragon wing and stretching … stretching … stretching it just … beyond … its extension …

  Scarlet hissed dangerously. “Or,” she said, “we can all watch this little prince burn to death, followed by every disobedient dragon in this room.”

  “Do as she says.” Ruby turned to the soldiers behind her. “Whatever it takes to keep Cliff safe. You two — I want you to be the ones to lock me up.”

  “But, Your Majesty —” one of them began, then stopped as Ruby shook her head.

  “It’s done,” she said. “Let’s go. Cliff, I love you, little one. Don’t be scared. You’re still going to change the world, all right?”

  The dragonet nodded, his wings drooping forlornly. He looked back at Peril. “Can I give Mommy a hug?” he whispered. “I think she need a hug.”

  Peril shook her head. “Sorry, little friend.”

  Cliff watched Ruby walk out of the throne room, her head held high, and he did a little shake with his wings as if trying to imitate her stance.

  “Clear out!” Scarlet snarled at the other soldiers. “I don’t want to look at you anymore.”

  Someone muttered, “The feeling is mutual,” as most of the SkyWings filed out. The one MudWing gave Peril an anguished look as he followed them.

  “Try to remember Clay,” he whispered. “Please.”

  Soon they were gone, and Peril was left alone with her father, Queen Scarlet, and the little prince.

  “Who is Clay?” she asked the queen. “Should I remember him? Do you?”

  Scarlet shrugged. “Barely. He’s some nobody who thinks he’s a hero. Don’t worry about it.”

  “They seemed really sure that I knew him,” Peril said slowly. “Ruby said I saved his life — but I don’t remember ever saving anyone’s life. I would definitely remember that, wouldn’t I?”

  “Maybe she’s got you confused with some other dragon,” Scarlet said. “This conversation is ever so boring. I’m going to tour the palace to see what other damage my dreadful daughter has done. Vermilion!”

  The red dragon poked his head in the door immediately, as if he’d been hovering a clawstep away. “Yes?”

  “Are my prisoner towers still in place, at least?” Scarlet demanded.

  “Er,” he said. “Uh … ”

  “I’ll take it that’s a no,” she said. She let out an enormous, aggrieved sigh. “Those took ages to build and they were genius. I’m going to have to kill at least seven disloyal traitors to cheer myself up. Fine — you two,” she barked at Peril and Chameleon. “Take this dragonet to the tallest spire of my palace and stick him on the highest ledge you can find. Wait. Lizard, can you fly yet?”

  “My name isn’t Lizard, is Cliff,” said the prince boldly. “And … not so much? I practice lots! But I falled lots, too.”

  “Good,” said the queen. “As long as he can’t fly away, he’ll be stuck up there. Keep an eye on him until I get back.”

  She swept out of the throne room with Vermilion, leaving Peril with the bewildering impression that the queen had just run away from an awkward conversation.

  Chameleon picked up Prince Cliff and perched him on his back. “Hold on tight,” he said. The prince obligingly threw his arms and wings around Chameleon’s neck and buried his face.

  They flew out the open wall and soared in a circle for a moment, assessing the palace. Peril realized that the tallest spire she could see was the chimney for the crematorium — a long, long tower that carried the smoke of burning bodies as high and far away from the rest of the palace as possible. But sitting on top of it would put them right in the middle of the smoke and the smells, and Peril had a feeling that might be a little traumatizing for Cliff, plus not much fun for her and Chameleon either.

  So instead she chose the second-tallest spire, a lookout for guards near the outer wall of the palace. At the top of the tower was a small pavilion with room for five or six dragons to fit comfortably. A shallow hole in the floor was intended as a fire pit, for heating the tower when it was cold or for cooking prey. The walls were open on all sides, but the position of the tower was clearly directed west, to watch for attacks from IceWings or SandWings.

  Cliff slid off Chameleon’s back and began to prowl around the pavilion. “There’s no things to play with here,” he complained.

  “Use your imagination,” Chameleon said unsympathetically.

  The prince snorted, flicked his tail at the fire pit, and curled up in a small ball with his wings flopped out to either side. If his intention was to make a point by sulking, it didn’t last long, because he was asleep a few minutes later.

  Peril sat at the edge of the tower and looked down at the Sky Palace. It still seemed very … quiet. Usually there were dragons flying from tower to tower, or coming in with reports, or sailing out with messages. Usually the palace fluttered with activity and wingbeats filled the air.

  But not today. Today an eerie stillness suffused the clouds. The mountain peaks looked frozen in time.

  Where was everyone?

  A light rain began to fall. Peril glanced up and saw darker storm clouds rolling in, thickening the fog around the palace spires. The daylight had a smoky green tinge to it, as if the sky, too, knew that something was wrong … something was unbalanced in the world below.

  Even the sky rejects the old queen, she thought. The sky itself chooses Ruby.

  She shook out her wings, trying to dislodge the unfaithful thought.

  “How are you feeling, daughter?” Chameleon asked. Peril glanced at him, wondering whether she should call him Soar while he was a SkyWing, or if it was all right to keep just one name in her head for him. He was fiddling with the sheath on his chest as though he were trying to avoid her eyes.

  “Great,” Peril said. She stretched her wings — her safe, touchable wings — and thought for a moment. Was she still feeling great? She’d been so happy yesterday. But the pretending, and the hatred from Ruby, and Cliff’s drooping wings, and this weird feeling of holes in her brain — it was all kind of making her happiness flicker and dim. “A little worried,” she admitted.

  “Don’t listen to those other dragons,” said Chameleon. “You’re essentially the second in command of this palace. I wish I’d had that much power in my tribe. I’d have made everybody regret every moment of disrespect, every mocking laugh and disgusted whisper.”

  “Why were they mocking you?” Peril asked. “I thought RainWings were all mellow and calm and friendly and sleepy all the time.”

  “Ha,” Chameleon said bitterly. “As long as you aren’t too different, sure. But I had the one problem the tribe couldn’t understand: I can’t change my scales. You saw my RainWing color. When I’m a RainWing, I’m stuck that way. The same green all the time — no camouflage, no flamboyant emotional outbursts, no self-absorbed displays of clever special effects. I could never play their little RainWing games.”

  “Oh,” Peril said. “Weren’t there any other RainWings like you?”

  “Not in living memory,” he said. “The healers guessed that it was because of my sleep problem — as myself, I can never sleep for longer than a few minutes at a time, an hour at most. They thought it affected my scale-shifting abilities. But knowing that didn’t help. Everyone still teased me … and then whispered about me … and then avoided me. Finally the queen banished me, saying I was making everyone uncomfortable, and perhaps there was a better tribe for me outside the rainforest somewhere.”

  “Ouch,” Peril
said. “That seems … really unfair, to throw you out for something you couldn’t control.”

  “Exactly,” he said. He brooded for a moment, staring down at the fog with hooded eyes. Then he let out a bark of laughter that made Prince Cliff shiver in his sleep. “The joke’s on them, though, isn’t it? What I can do now — my shape-shifting power — it’s far more magnificent camouflage than anything a mere RainWing could accomplish.” He held out his orange talons to admire, humming softly with pride.

  Peril studied him out of the corner of her eye, wishing she could think of a clever sideways way to find out what she wanted to know. But that wasn’t her — clever or sideways.

  “How does it work?” she finally asked. Flying at the question directly was the only way she could think of to attack it. “How did you get your shape-shifting power?”

  He flicked his tail and looked at her thoughtfully. Peril tried to arrange her face to look deeply, immensely trustworthy.

  “Not even Scarlet knows this,” he whispered. He glanced back at the prince, who was fast asleep.

  A quiver of excitement ran through Peril. A secret! She never got to be the only dragon who knew a secret! Oh, I forgot to tell Queen Scarlet about the SeaWings having an animus! OK, later, I’ll have to remember next time I see her.

  “You can tell me,” she whispered back. “There’s no one I would tell anyway.”

  “Not even Queen Scarlet?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “You’re my father,” she said. “You changed my scales and made me safe and normal. My loyalty is to you first, her second.”

  “Hmmm,” he said. “Very interesting. You have a stronger personality than most, um, most dragons I’ve met.”

  She wondered what he’d been about to say. Most what? “That is one of the many things most dragons don’t like about me,” she admitted.

  “I like it,” he said. “It’s something we have in common.” He touched the metal sheath around his chest, fiddling with the lock for a moment before it clicked open.

  Inside the sheath were two things: a small pouch that seemed to be full of coins or jewelry, and a scroll wrapped in a black leather binding.

  Chameleon laid them carefully on the stone between him and Peril, shifting so their backs were to Cliff and spreading his wings so the prince wouldn’t see the objects if he woke up.

  He tapped the pouch first. “In here are my other shapes. Each piece enchanted with someone new, all my beautiful faces I can take on and off whenever I want to. I have one for each tribe. You’ve met one of them before, actually.”

  “I have?” Peril said, her scales prickling.

  “Cirrus the IceWing,” he said. “Remember him? Queen Scarlet’s spy in the Talons of Peace. Perfect because there are so few IceWings in the Talons that they never figured out how little I knew, or that I’ve never been to the Ice Kingdom. I made him cold and calculating and not much of a talker.”

  “That’s when you first found out about me,” Peril realized. “That conversation about Kestrel. You were standing right in front of me.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Scarlet had sent me to find out if the Talons knew where those dragonets went — the ones who stole her prisoner. They didn’t, of course. The Talons have always been remarkably useless, in my opinion, apart from gathering the dragonets of the prophecy, and giving Cirrus excuses to practice killing.”

  He spoke casually, but his words sent a chill down Peril’s spine. He was looking for Moon and Qibli and Winter. Would he have killed them if he found them?

  Would I kill them now, if Queen Scarlet told me to?

  She frowned at her claws, hearing that echo in her head again: I don’t kill dragons anymore.

  But why, but why, but why?

  “And then I followed you,” Chameleon went on without noticing her distraction. He touched the pouch again, fondly. “In my NightWing form. That one’s my favorite. I call myself Shapeshifter — isn’t that a perfect NightWing name?”

  “A bit on the nose,” Peril offered.

  “Exactly,” he said. “Like all NightWing names. I’m quite proud of that shape.”

  “And then you found me,” she said. “But I still don’t understand how you make these shapes at all.”

  Now he touched the scroll, carefully, reverently. “This,” he whispered. “It’s the strongest magic in the world.” He undid the binding and slowly rolled the scroll open. As he did, Peril could see that the first third of the scroll had writing on it, while the rest of the scroll was blank.

  “I’ve never read the whole thing,” he said. “I still don’t really like reading. I had to find someone to teach me to read so I could understand the scroll in the first place. But then I only had to read the beginning to realize what it could do.”

  Chameleon rolled it to the end, where it looked like some of the scroll had been torn out.

  “And then I had to learn how to write,” he added wryly. “That was frustrating.”

  Peril remembered Osprey teaching her how to read and write, although she couldn’t hold a scroll or any writing instrument, so it didn’t do her very much good. She could read street signs and scrape out messages in the sand, if necessary; that was about it.

  Oh! she realized. That can all be different now! Without firescales — I could read every scroll in the world if I want to!

  That cheered her up quite a lot. She leaned toward the scroll, giving her father her eager attention.

  “I write my enchantment here,” Chameleon said, brushing the paper with his claw. “I describe the shape I want to shift into, writing the magic into that piece of paper. Then I tear off that part of the scroll and hide it in something — usually an item of jewelry, like a necklace or bracelet.”

  “Or an ear,” Peril said, suddenly remembering a disembodied head changing shape in front of her. Where was that?

  “Uh — yes,” he said. “Only that once, though. I don’t use this very often. I’ve told Queen Scarlet that I have a limited animus power to transform dragons and that it’s dangerous for me to do it very much. I don’t want her to know about the scroll.”

  “Why not?” Peril asked. He looked at her in alarm, and she quickly added, “Don’t worry, I still won’t tell her. But why would you help her as much as you do and not tell her everything?”

  “If she knew about this,” he said, “she would take it away from me.” He started to roll up the scroll again. “And once she didn’t need me anymore, she would probably kill me. Besides, I want to be in charge of what this scroll does. It’s mine. If Scarlet knew I had unlimited power, she’d make me do much more terrible things than anything I’ve done so far.”

  He stopped and looked at Peril. “I’m not an evil dragon, Peril. I like the security of having a queen who will pay me handsomely for my services, and I love the luxury of so much treasure. But I’m not going to give anyone all this power, especially not Queen Scarlet. I’m much too smart for that.”

  “Oh,” Peril said. Her mind was spinning a little. Was he implying that Peril wasn’t that smart? Would she have given Scarlet that scroll without even thinking about it? Wasn’t that what loyalty was about? And if he didn’t trust Scarlet completely, why help her at all?

  “Have you done anything else with the scroll?” she asked. “I mean … couldn’t you use it to make your own treasure, somehow, instead of waiting for Scarlet to pay you?”

  Chameleon opened his mouth, closed it, and blinked at her for a moment.

  “I suppose I could,” he said slowly. “Scarlet hired me before I’d gotten very far with using the scroll — she caught me transforming and gave me the option of explaining how I did it, or coming to work for her. I chose option B, obviously. And I haven’t wanted to do anything risky that she might find out about.

  “I have a very nice life, though,” he said quickly. “And so can you, once this kingdom is all sorted out. We’ll be her right-claw dragons, and we’ll be together. Maybe you can help me come up with clever uses for the scroll. I
t’ll be nice to have family at last.”

  “Yes,” Peril agreed. Family — that sounded amazing actually. She’d barely had a chance to meet Kestrel before her mother died. And if there were any other dragons related to her in the Sky Palace, they’d never introduced themselves.

  But something new was starting to bother her. “Wait,” she said. “If you’re the one who’s been helping Queen Scarlet all along … does that mean you’re the one who put Kinkajou in the hospital?”

  Chameleon stared at her for a long moment, the muscles in his jaw tensing and moving like little snakes crawling over one another. He picked up the scroll and the pouch, locking them back in his chest sheath before answering.

  “You mean that RainWing who was traveling with the IceWing prince?” he said finally. “She’s not dead?”

  “You actually were trying to kill her?” Peril said, appalled. “Really? She’s just a dragonet.”

  “She’s a RainWing,” he hissed. “She’d laugh at me just as much as any of her tribe, if she’d met me before I found my power.”

  “Wow,” Peril said. She tried to picture the tiny, brightly colored RainWing. “I’ve never met anyone who hated RainWings before. They’re so inoffensive. It’s like … hating caterpillars.”

  “I’m not terribly fond of caterpillars either,” Chameleon observed. “Nasty crawly things.”

  Of all dragons, Peril thought, I should be the one who can understand fury and vengeance and wanting to lash out whenever someone hurts me. He’s my father, and she’s a dragonet I don’t even know. I should be on his side.

  But still … it seemed as brutal and unnecessary as the idea of hurting the little SkyWing prince.

  She glanced over her shoulder at Cliff.

  Or rather, at the space where Cliff used to be.

  She whirled around, her eyes tearing apart the empty pavilion, but there was no mistake.

  The SkyWing prince was gone.

  “Cliff?” Peril cried. “CLIFF?”

  Chameleon flared his wings with a horrified expression. “Where did he go?”