“Smokey? Why spend time with him? And why did he allow it?”
“I’ll answer the latter question first: He didn’t know I was there. Or if he noticed me, he didn’t care. He was too busy with his new student. As for why I spent time there, I should think it would be obvious. Part of you has always wanted to stay in touch. You send him messages by hornet, and you tell him he’s welcome to return anytime. You may or may not love him anymore, but he’s still a part of you. Catherine’s evidence of that.”
“Fair enough. Who’s his new student?”
Tasa widened his eyes. “Who do you think?”
“Jennifer Scales,” she muttered after brief consideration. “No one else would dare.”
“She showed up with her father,” Tasa confirmed. “While they were talking, Smokey nearly saw me—like I said, maybe he did. He didn’t want to train Jennifer at first. Until Jonathan offered to banish himself from the Blaze and Crescent Valley.”
Winona absorbed this, picking at her carcass meal. She paused in her ruminations long enough to strip off a few pieces for Tasa. “So we’ll not see Jonathan Scales again.”
“Not in this world, if he keeps his promise.”
“Which puts Jennifer Scales as the elder of her clan.”
“True. If someone that young can be called an elder.”
“I wasn’t much older when the Blaze did the same for me.”
“You’re defending her. Why?”
“To start,” Winona said with a sigh, “she didn’t kill my parents. She’s no more responsible for that than I am for the death of all those people my mother and brother killed on their outings.”
“It’s only a matter of time. At barely fifteen, she’s admitted to killing a powerful werachnid—twice, if you believe her story of alternate universes—and contributing to the death of her own half-sister. She’s part beaststalker, and she’s starting to act like it.”
“Her mother is a pacifist.”
“Would that pacifist be the same person who killed our good friend Charles Longtail?”
“A long time ago.”
Tasa stomped his foot; had he been a trampler, something would have come out of the ground. “Dammit, Winona, stop defending them! Are you a real dragon or not?”
“I’m still not completely sure you’re a real dragon.”
“You’re Eldest of the Blaze, and you need to show some damn leadership!”
“What is leadership to you, Tasa? Whipping the Blaze into furious killing sprees?”
“How about defending ourselves from the one person who has plagued you from the time you and I first met?”
“Who?” She already knew the answer, and Tasa knew she knew. He gave it anyway.
“Glorianna Seabright! The woman who hobbled your mother, led the carnage at Pinegrove, inspired her student to murder Charles Longtail, and to this day shows no remorse, no compromise, not a vague commitment to diplomacy or reconciliation. The woman who’s about to meet with arachnids to devise a plan to wipe dragonkind off the face of the earth. Yes, Winona. She’s talking to arachnids. That’s the second piece of news I’ve come to bring you.”
Her wings felt like sheets of lead. “What do you mean? How can you know this?”
“I spent time in Winoka,” he explained. “Because part of you also belongs there. You bought a house and hoped to move there. I stayed there for a bit, found the Scales family, looked up others you knew. And Glory Seabright, of course. I was outside her office window when she received a strange communication.” He told her about the messages spelled out on Glory Seabright’s wall, by strange little bugs controlled by an unseen force.
“After they popped in a small explosion, the mayor almost saw me,” he finished. “I slunk away. I knew I had to get word to you, in time for you to do something.”
She shook her head. “Do something? Do what?”
“Winona, you’re over eighty years old—quite on in years, especially for our kind in this day and age. When are you going to stand up and be counted, once and for all, as a dragon? When are you going to lead dragons, instead of pretending to do so?”
“I don’t know what—”
He interrupted her as he ticked off his wing claws. “First, you followed your mother. Then your brother. Then Motega, for heaven’s sake. Then the Blaze that adopted you, then Smokey, then Charles. You’ve let the Scales family dupe you—you gave the Ring of Seraphina to a fifteen-year-old! Even I’m guilty of leading you around by your nose at times.”
“You were my nose.”
“And all this following around—what has it gotten you? Lies, betrayal, death. Now your own granddaughter won’t talk to you.”
“She’ll come around.”
“We could all come around, if you’d lead! Winona, you’ve just gotten the news that your estranged husband is training the Ancient Furnace, probably to replace you. No, don’t look at me like that—how can there be two leaders at once? Who will prevail, when you two disagree? Right. So the Ancient Furnace, daughter of your daughter’s murderer and half beaststalker herself, will challenge you soon. Glory Seabright is doubtless dying to show her how. The town of Winoka, a lasting monument to the worst dragon massacre in history, is about to host arachnids to make a pact to wipe dragons from the face of the earth. So stop listening to me and everyone else, and ask yourself: Who do you want to be? What do you want to do, right now?”
Winona stared at the bloody carcass in front of her. It steamed and sent heat through her nostrils. Her veins caught fire, and her teeth ground against her gums, making them leak hot blood and beginning the whole cycle again.
I’m tired of resisting this. She flexed her wings and let her forked tongue wrap around her teeth and pick up the bits of blood and meat that lingered in her mouth. “Tasa . . . I want to be a dragon. I want to lead them.”
He beamed pridefully as she stood up straight and whistled. Instantly, a fifty-feet-high column of fire hornets descended from the sky and splashed over them, swirling and re-forming their swarm into the shape of an enormous dragon. It faced her, awaiting orders.
“Call the Blaze,” she commanded it. “It is time to burn.”
She allowed two days for the full Blaze to assemble. Crescent Valley was a big place—Ned Brownfoot liked to joke that it was the only “valley” that contained mountains, forests, lakes, and an apparently endless ocean—and not every elder was on this side of the lake. But as she hoped, Winona’s message was urgent enough to fill the amphitheater.
And we have plenty of time to act, she told herself as she looked over the Blaze. If we act today. As the distinguished gathering of scales, horns, and tails rippled with anxious movement and whispered conversation, Winona surveyed the other dragons who had come to watch. There were hundreds of them, perhaps more than she had ever seen at a Blaze. Word had definitely spread that the Eldest was in a smoldering mood.
“Eldest. Do you have a moment?”
Xavier Longtail’s dark features were strained—from what, Winona wasn’t sure. Fatigue? Anticipation? Fear? She nodded for him to continue.
“The popular rumor has it that you are planning something . . . aggressive.”
“I am.” She did not tell him what she had in mind. Scouts had seen him and his great-nephew Gautierre spending an unusual amount of time with the Scales family, since Jonathan’s confession to them both. She would not have believed these reports had Gautierre’s own mother, Ember, not recently come to her in a tearful rage with the same news.
“Eldest, I would counsel caution. You have put Ambassador Scales on a mission of diplomacy. Should your aggression be directed at Pinegrove, it may make her job more—”
“Elder Longtail.” She scratched the back of her skull, amused. “Are you suggesting we not attack the known refuge of the woman who killed your brother?”
His triple-pronged tail twitched. “I have forgiven that woman and her family. Are you suggesting they are anything less than our allies?”
“I’m sug
gesting they’re lying, manipulative sores on the face of dragonkind.”
“They?! The woman is not a dragon at all, and the daughter is our Ancient Furnace.”
“Well, as I live and breathe! It’s been less than a season since you referred to that girl as an ‘abomination’ and nearly immolated her on this spot. Now she’s ‘our’ Ancient Furnace! What a blessed transformation! Please tell me you’re not getting spiritual advice from the gecko.” She pointed at his shoulder, where the sporty red-and-green lizard clung.
“Winona.” This got her attention—he almost never used her first name. “Jonathan Scales has given up his place on the Blaze. He will never come here again. He will never be a venerable. He will never circle the crescent moon. He has done enough to take responsibility for his crimes, and those of his wife. What more do you need of them?”
“I need their town to burn!” The violence that overwhelmed Winona was so sudden, she had to catch her breath. “The fact that he has cut all ties with dragonkind does not restore my faith in him, Xavier. It makes him, if anything, more likely to betray us. Again.”
“He will never do anything to betray his daughter’s people,” Xavier said, and she could tell he immediately regretted his choice of words.
Her crimson eyes narrowed. “Her people?”
“Dragons, I mean.”
“And beaststalkers. Please, Xavier, of all people, you cannot forget. Her people, if she has any people at all, are of two minds. Two histories.”
“Both violent. If memory serves, you studied this sort of thing in college.”
“You honestly think she can stop millennia of violence?”
“I feel she deserves a chance.”
Winona felt her resolve waver. Then she spotted her granddaughter sitting down nearby.
I can’t let her grow up to be as naïve as I was.
“I’ll tell you what, Elder Longtail. I’m going to give Jennifer Scales a terrific chance to stop some violence. If she’s as good as you seem to think she is, she’ll do fine.”
“You think you can convince this Blaze to fight, Eldest? After all you’ve said in the past? They’ll think you’re acting rashly. They’ll think you have a personal vendetta. They’d be right. If they’re smart, they’ll ignore you, like you all used to ignore me. They’ll call you a Roman Candlelight, the sort of Eldest that goes tilting at windmills and sinks into madness.”
“Maybe you’re right, Xavier. Maybe I’m about to make a fool of myself, like the legend of Roman Candlelight. Or maybe this single candle will ignite an entire Blaze!” When he didn’t reply, she gave him a grim smile. “Back when Jada died, you told me you hoped you’d be there the day I understood your point of view. Consider yourself satisfied.”
As she walked away, he called out, “I suppose I’d be happier, Eldest, had my own point of view not changed since then.”
“That sounds like your problem, Elder. Not mine.”
She was standing before the Blaze now, right in the center of the amphitheater, and everyone stopped what they were doing. As she began to talk, she stood on hind legs and lifted her fragile wings to make gestures. As her speech went on, she relaxed her body so that she was comfortably on all fours. Her strong front claws punched the earth on certain words, and she paced back and forth before them all with increasing agitation.
“Members of the Blaze. My friends. My family. I hate violence. As many of you know, I’ve stood in this amphitheater and stopped a good many fight from starting. We’ve got a lot of enemies in this world—some who want to kill us, and others who want to subdue us, and others who’d be happy ignoring us if they could. There isn’t a damn person outside this valley we can call a friend. No one. Not for years. Still, I’ve held my tongue.
“And maybe I’ve held us back,” she continued. At this, she heard murmurs. Approval? Dissent? “Because in all that time, I’ve seen a lot of horrible things happen. As my ex-husband might put it, I’ve just seen too much. Maybe I’ve lived too long. Had too much hope. All I wanted—all we ever wanted—was to be left alone, in our homes and with our lives. I told you if we showed restraint, if we made diplomatic efforts, we could remain a peaceful people.
“I was wrong. Our enemies won’t allow it. In no generation have they allowed it. They have pushed us out of our homes, and murdered our kin, and conspired against us. They have pushed us, and pushed us, and pushed us until even I cannot stand it anymore.
“I am a dragon, my friends. That means something to me. I’ll bet it means something to you, too. The strength and honor of a dragon is legendary, even among those who do not believe in such things. ‘The heart of a dragon,’ some say when they mean a heart that is true, and brave, and willing to stand up for the right beliefs. Everyone here has the heart of a dragon, right?”
This got a good many of them cheering and stomping. She could also see worried faces among the Blaze, but she was not done. “Where is the line in the sand?” she asked. “Where is the point where we say, ‘You go no further’? Have our enemies crossed it yet? Ned Brownfoot—how many family have you lost to Glory Seabright and her thugs? Did they cross the line?”
From his place in the Blaze, Ned shook his head in an attempt to signal her he was not interested in being used to incite this crowd. It did not matter. As soon as the assembled heard the name Glory Seabright, they roared, spouted smoke, and rustled their wings.
“Brenda Kindle,” she continued, finding a more sympathetic elder. This frail trampler lifted her head, flattered at the Eldest’s attention. “You lost all three children at Pinegrove. Then you lost your husband at Eveningstar. What do you think: Have they crossed the line?”
Hot blood erased the trampler’s wrinkles, and she screamed at the sky above. The smoke thickened, and the crescent moon hanging above the amphitheater shuddered.
“Joseph Skinner.” Winona pointed to one of the younger dragons in the audience. This was a creeper who looked after the Scales farm. “You lost your parents to a pack of violent beaststalker children. They and their parents thought hunting your loved ones was fine sport. Ember Longtail.” It was not difficult to spot her, not far from the Blaze itself, sitting alone and glaring at her uncle. “You lost a parent, too, and I a friend. Alex and Patrick Rosespan—you used to have a sister. No one here wants to relive what those goons of Glory Seabright did to her before she died at their hands. When, exactly, did they cross the line with her?”
The Rosespans recoiled, possibly horrified at the way Winona was using the memory of their dead sister. Almost everyone else was going wild. A few of them began to howl, which got some of the nearby packs of newolves going. Sparks littered the sky, mixing with the stars and hanging in violent nebulae.
“Today we draw a bright line of fire, one our enemies will not soon cross again. I have led you in times of peace. Will you follow me into war? Not for war’s sake, but for true peace. Peace for the dead, and peace for ourselves, and peace for those who follow.” She spotted Catherine. It was not difficult to see how hotly her granddaughter disagreed.
“Those of you who do not wish to come need not come! You will suffer no insult. This Blaze needs those who will stay behind and prepare for peace, as much as it needs those who will go with me tonight and fight for that peace. Those of you who would come with me—”
She could not finish. The roars were too loud. Nine out of every ten dragons, Blaze or beyond, were on their feet. A few of them were already taking to the sky, with cries of “To Winoka!” and “Burn it!”
“To the moon elm first!” she cried out, before they could leave. “We do not know what shape of moon we will see in the other world. And for once, we do not need to care. We will stay dragons and burn that town, no matter what the sky holds for us! Follow me!”
Right before she lifted off, she looked at Catherine again. Over the din, she could hear her granddaughter’s pointed question. “I take it you don’t mind if I stay here?”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way.” Then Win
ona Brandfire led the Blaze to war.
CHAPTER 16
Leadership
The sound of air sirens through the crisp night air over Winoka made Winona smile. Good. They know we’re coming.
They had approached the town from the northeast, flying in half-V formations, she leading the front formation close to the ground. Every so often, a trampler would descend and whomp the ground with its massive hind legs. Their weight had cracked the pavement of the highways below, while the dashers and creepers who kept to the air laughed in exhilaration. Exhilaration. That’s why they were all laughing the night Ma got hurt. This is what it feels like to be a dragon. To be free.
Yes, it had been a surprise when the blue barrier appeared over their heads. Since it happened shortly after they reached the outskirts of town, Winona assumed it was a trap. She didn’t care. It didn’t bother her how the most likely source was werachnid sorcerers already in league with Glory Seabright. If they know we’re coming, they know we’re coming. They’ve made a pretty dome of light. Let’s see them stop us from burning down everything inside.
She let loose a few fireballs, knocking down a telephone pole and blasting the roof of the local bowling alley. The center of the sign caught fire. WIN OWL, the remaining letters read.
She urged her army on. Their first true target, they had all agreed, would be city hall. They passed over the newer developments toward the older ones, closer to the east side. Despite the continuing peal of the sirens, she saw little evidence of mobilization. Soon they were flying over the school, and city hall was within sight. So was the tied arch bridge over the Mississippi, well lit at this late hour. There, on that bridge, Winona saw a reason to change targets.
A tiny, familiar figure with white robes and blade drawn stood next to a dragon and a girl. She was sure of Glory Seabright, and she was nearly certain of the other two. “Jonathan and Jennifer Scales,” she muttered, “in my way. Again.”
Her army followed the new course without question. They slowed and found perches within the bridge’s arched latticework. Winona plunged through the gaps and slammed onto the blacktop less than ten feet from Glorianna Seabright. The mayor didn’t flinch, but sighed.
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