Dragonslayer

by Tui T. Sutherland

  “Where did you get that idea?” Violet demanded.

  Daffodil shrugged. “I don’t know. She looked like someone I would like, that’s all.”

  “Let’s check the smithy,” Violet said. They clambered over what was left of the wall and Ivy went over to the anvil. It was so heavy, she could see why no one had managed to bring it down to Valor yet. Anyone trying to transport it would be easy prey for dragons.

  Daffodil stuck her head up the chimney and quickly emerged again, coughing. “Blech,” she said. “Pine! Come be tall over here!”

  Pine and Azalea came over the walls as well, but as they crossed the smithy, suddenly all of them heard a piercing shriek in the sky.

  Azalea didn’t hesitate. She dove under a pile of leaves and ashes in the corner and vanished in the first heartbeat. Foxglove came running in, grabbed Ivy and Daffodil, and dragged them into the smithy fireplace. Violet and Pine were already over the wall and hiding in the tumbledown house.

  “It’ll see us,” Daffodil gasped, trying to squish farther into the fireplace. Foxglove crouched and lifted Ivy onto her shoulders; a moment later, Ivy’s head was up the chimney, and Daffodil was pressed to Foxglove’s side below her.

  They were all as still as rabbits caught in the garden when the torches were lit. Ivy rested her hands lightly on the chimney walls and prayed that nothing collapsed on them. She could see a small triangle of gray sky at the top of the chimney. She couldn’t see the dragon — maybe it was up too high, hidden by clouds, or didn’t cross that section of sky. She wondered which kind it was. Was it one of the sand dragons, come back to marvel at what they had done to the village? She heard it shriek one more time, and then again a minute later, a little farther away.

  No one moved for a long time after silence fell. Ivy wasn’t sure any of them would ever have moved, except that it started to rain, big fat drops plopping down the chimney onto her face. She leaned down to avoid them and felt a loose stone in the side of the chimney wall, near where her knees were.

  “Oh!” she whispered. “Foxglove, can you feel this?”

  Foxglove reached up and wobbled it with her hand. “Yes,” she said. “Let me put you down and I’ll check it out.”

  Ivy and Daffodil waited by the anvil, shivering in the rain, as Foxglove levered out the loose stone and carefully placed it beside the fireplace. “There’s a big gap behind it,” she said. “This could be his hiding place!”

  She climbed up into the chimney. Ivy held her breath — had they really found it? How quickly would her father notice that the treasure was missing? Could they get it to the dragons before he realized he’d been robbed — before he banished anyone he decided to blame?

  Foxglove was hidden from view for a long time. Azalea, Pine, and Violet joined them, but nobody spoke. The rain was coming down harder, plastering their hair to their heads and soaking through their green tunics. The feeling in the air was almost unbearable. Ivy wondered what Azalea would do when Foxglove emerged with the treasure. The tension radiating off the banished Wingwatcher was making her very nervous.

  Finally Foxglove ducked out of the chimney and faced them. Ivy felt her excitement dim. The look in Foxglove’s eyes was hollow.

  “I think it was here,” she said. “But he must have emptied it sometime after he found you in the ruins, Pine.”

  “Emptied it?” Azalea cried, rushing over to the fireplace. She climbed inside and crab-walked up the chimney wall to see for herself.

  “It’s all gone?” Pine asked bleakly.

  “Almost,” said Foxglove. She held out something that flashed in the dim light. “The only thing left in the hole was this.”

  Glowing in the palm of her hand was a shimmering blue sapphire shaped like a star.

  In the city, some dragons were still awake and wandering the moonlit streets, but Wren had waited as long as she could, and she thought — she hoped that most of them were asleep.

  She crept out of the trees and down the hill in the dark, through the farmstead, following the same path she’d watched Sky walk earlier that day. A goat bleated huffily at her as she snuck past, nearly giving her a heart attack. But no dragons stirred; the ones who lived on the outskirts seemed to be the early-to-bed types.

  The bridge was deserted, but there were two dragons in the market square, sitting on the steps of a statue and arguing about something. Wren stayed low as she crossed the river, in the shadow of the bridge railing. She had to dart from the bridge to the first stall, now covered for the night, but neither of the arguing dragons noticed her in the torchlight.

  “Don’t be an idiot,” one of them growled. “Stick with Burn. She’s going to win! We all know it.”

  “I dunno,” said the other. “It sounds all right in the” — something about scorpions? — “right now, with the” — something about claws — “in charge.”

  The first dragon muttered a bunch of insults Wren didn’t completely understand, although she would have liked to learn them so she could use them on Undauntable one day. She worked her way around the square, staying behind the stalls, and finally she turned the same corner that Sky had turned.

  More streets. Another square up ahead. Balconies overlooking the alleys, giant windows for the dragons to fly into.

  Wren had no idea where Sky had gone from here. She was a very small human in a very big dragon city.

  But I am going to find him.

  She followed the streets, trying to think like Sky. Would he have wandered down this road because it was lined with flowering garden boxes? Would he have stopped to climb around on the dragonet playground, even though he was probably too big for it?

  It was a little hard to concentrate when every so often a dragon would suddenly swoop out of the sky and she’d have to fling herself into a doorway or under a cart of vegetables to hide. More than once, she had to take a quick, unexpected turn because she heard a whole party of laughing dragons coming around a corner.

  But close to midnight, she came upon something that she knew would have caught Sky’s attention: a courtyard lined with cages. Most of them were covered for the night, but Wren could hear twittering and rustling and a few soft growls. This was some kind of shop for dragon pets, just as Sky had hoped for, she guessed. She peeked under a few of the covers and saw mostly weird, lovely birds. The one closest to the torchlight had bright green, blue, and yellow feathers and a large hooked beak, and it tilted its head at her curiously. Another cage held a kind of desert mouse with giant ears and a long tail.

  Near the edge of the courtyard were three uncovered, empty cages. Wren nearly went right past them, but something caught her eye about the latches on the doors. She stopped to look at the latches on the doors and realized these cages had been broken open.

  Uh-oh.

  Oh no. Did Sky decide to free some of the animals? All by himself?

  I bet the shop owner didn’t like that very much.

  She glanced around, wondering what had happened and looking for clues. Had Sky felt sorry for something adorable? Had he just started opening cages?

  And then … did the shop owner attack him? Or were there guards who might have arrested him?

  In Talisman, the dragonmancers had a few goons with sharp sticks who did all the hands-on arresting, and then the dragonmancers decided on the punishment to follow. In Undauntable’s city, there was a lord and the porcupine soldiers. Was that how this dragon city worked, too? Was someone in charge?

  Wren spotted something on the cobblestones and crouched for a closer look.

  The torchlight turned it black, but she was pretty sure it was a drop of blood.

  That better not be Sky’s blood, she thought, or I’ll be the new dragonslayer in town.

  She searched down each nearby street until she found another drop, and another, a faint trail to follow. The drops of blood led her around a few corners, but she lost the trail, or it ran out, not far from the animal cage courtyard, on a quiet street of what appeared to be family homes. Firelight
glimmered behind a few of the curtains, and she could hear dragon voices murmuring, while others were dark and quiet.

  Wren paced up and down past the last drop of blood, studying the houses around it. Was Sky inside one of them? Did he want to be? Was he hurt? None of them looked like a jail, at least.

  She’d been there a while, trying to peek in some of the windows, when she heard footsteps approaching. Quickly she scrambled up the side of one of the dark houses and hid herself in the greenery decorating the top of the door.

  A dragon came along the street, yawning widely. She stopped at the house next to the one where Wren was hiding, sniffed a few times, and swung her head around with a puzzled expression.

  You don’t smell human, Wren prayed to the three moons above. Please don’t smell me.

  “Hrmph,” the dragon grunted. She shoved open the door beside her and went in.

  “You’re so late!” a voice said from inside. “What took so long?”

  “Paperwork,” the dragon grumbled. “Very annoying. At least we get to eat the —” She said a word Wren didn’t know. “You should have sent someone to clean up out there. I can smell its blood on the street.” She waved one wing out at the dark road, then shut the door behind her.

  “It was too dark,” the other dragon argued, his voice muffled now.

  Wren wanted to break something. All that trouble to follow the trail, and it wasn’t Sky’s blood; it wasn’t even a dragon’s. It belonged to whatever these two were about to eat. Which meant it had nothing to do with Sky at all.

  She was about to jump off the house when the second voice asked, “What happened to that dragon? Did he pay for the lost animals?”

  Wren froze. It was harder to hear them with the door closed, and she wasn’t entirely sure she was translating right, given how wobbly Sky’s Dragon could be sometimes.

  “No.” The first dragon grumbled something for a while, and then her voice rose again. “— very strange, though. Someone offered to buy him from me.”

  Wren dug her fingers into the side of the house and edged closer, resting her feet on the tops of the windows until she was as close to the conversation as she could possibly be.

  “— to cover it?” the second dragon was saying.

  “More than enough. Don’t know what they want with him, though. Weird, scrawny, and obviously a troublemaker.”

  The second dragon said something that Wren didn’t understand, except that it echoed the word weird.

  “Ohhhhh, maybe,” said the first. There was silence for a while, and some clattering that might have been pots or plates. “Kind of feel sorry for him if that’s it,” the dragon added eventually.

  What? Wren thought desperately. Where is he? What is happening to Sky?

  “Maybe the (something) will let him go,” said the other one.

  “We’ll know when we see them fly back to the palace tomorrow,” said the first. She used a word that wasn’t quite palace, but sounded close. “He’ll be with them, or not.”

  “I’ll be glad when they’re gone!” the second replied, sounding a bit louder and more animated. “Marching around the city, knocking things over with their weapons, ordering dragons about. Someone should tell them they can boss around sand dragons all they want, but they’re not in charge of the rest of us.”

  “Ha!” said the first dragon. “It’s not going to be me!”

  They started joking about which of their friends might be brave enough to do it, but Wren didn’t need to hear any more. She was pretty sure she’d figured it out. Marching, weapons — that meant Sky was being held by sand dragon soldiers, wherever they were camped in the city. And if she didn’t rescue him, tomorrow he’d be flown to the sand queen’s palace, for some mysterious terrible reason.

  She slithered back down to the ground and set off running through the city. Her guess was that an army would be camped in the desert outside. But the best way to find out would be to get up high.

  Wren followed her instincts, taking turns that led higher and higher, until she came to one of the towers she’d seen that overlooked the city. It seemed to be a landing station for new arrivals, where traveling dragons could get their bearings before entering the city.

  Of course, there were no stairs, no door inside, nothing helpful for a small human with no wings. But the walls were made of rough sandstone bricks, and she’d been climbing trees her whole life. Wren saw a pair of tiny lizards chase each other up and around the towers. All right, if lizards could do it, she could do this.

  It was quite a bit harder than climbing a tree with lovely useful branches, and it took a lot longer than Wren would have liked, but finally she hauled herself, gasping, onto the top of the tower. There was a little roof here, perched on columns and decorated with carvings of dragon wings. There was also, somewhat hilariously, a large map of the city carved on a smooth block of wood. When Wren stood in front of it, she could see how the shapes of the buildings lined up with the map.

  The map was covered in labels, but they were all in Dragon — odd symbols that looked like claws and moons and flames. It really would be useful to read Dragon, Wren thought. Otherwise, the map was useless to her. She went to the edge of the tower, held on to a column, and peered out into the night.

  It was clear, with all three moons overhead, and she could see pretty far in all directions. It didn’t take her long to spot a collection of tents and large sleeping shapes organized in a pattern around a small oasis on the western side of the river, where the buildings began to shift into farmland.

  It took a lot longer, though, for her to climb down from the tower and run to the encampment. She didn’t like the light gray color the sky was turning, and she kind of felt like murdering the birds who were starting to chirp overhead.

  But finally she came within sight of the tents and saw, with a sinking heart, that many of the sand dragon soldiers were awake. They were hurrying around, rolling up the tents and securing supplies and doing other busy-looking army things. It would be pretty dangerous for a human to stroll in between their talons right now.

  Was Sky really here? How could she find him?

  She crept as close as she could and found a large stack of firewood to hide behind. As the tents were folded down, she watched each one to see if it might have a prisoner inside.

  And then, finally, she spotted him.

  Sky was sitting by the embers of a campfire, his wings drooping dejectedly. A chain locked his talons to a brawny sand dragon sitting next to him. She wore armor and was grinning with a lot of very sharp teeth.

  Oh, Sky, Wren thought, her heart breaking. I’m here. Don’t be sad. I’m here to set you free.

  But she had no idea how.

  A voice started roaring from one of the tents and all the soldiers snapped to attention.

  “HOW ARE WE ALL THIS FINE, FINE MORNING?” the dragon bellowed. He swept out of his tent and spread his wings wide in the morning light. “HA HA HA! AN EXCELLENT DAY TO FIGHT SOME ICE DRAGONS BEFORE WE GO HOME, DON’T YOU THINK?”

  “YES, SIR!” all the soldiers roared in unison.

  Oh NO, Wren thought, staring at the leader of the dragons. She recognized him.

  He was the one who’d attacked the Indestructible City. This must be the army he was planning to destroy them with.

  After fighting some ice dragons, apparently, and taking Sky to the sand queen, maybe.

  “THEN OFF WE GO!” the leader shouted. He leaped into the sky.

  Wait, now? Wren thought in a panic. Already?

  A storm of sand surrounded her as the soldiers began vaulting into the air after their captain. Through the stinging wind, Wren saw the dragon guarding Sky give a yank on the chain and drag him up with her.

  Wingbeats and hollering and wind drowned out everything for several long moments, and Wren had to crouch down with her cloak over her face and her hands over her ears.

  Finally the clamor and the hurricane died down. Wren was able to stand up again, shaking sand off her clo
ak. She blinked around at the deserted camp.

  The general and his army were gone, and they’d taken Sky with them.

  Rowan lunged for Leaf, wrapping her arms around his legs and dragging him back down. The dark red dragon made an annoyed clicking noise and shook Leaf as though Rowan were a troublesome ant. When she clung tighter, it hissed, grabbed her in its other claws, and yanked her away from him.

  “Rowan!” Leaf called, struggling to yell over the edge of the dragon’s fist. “Rowan, when you get to the arena, kill a dragon for me!”

  “Don’t you die, Leaf,” she screamed back. “Don’t you dare get eaten, too!”

  And then the grate was getting dizzily closer and closer, and that was all Leaf could see for a moment, until the dragon soared out of the trapdoor and Leaf caught fractured glimpses of a huge bustling kitchen full of frantic dragons. Dragons chopping fruit; dragons stirring cauldrons of soup; dragons stacking elaborate-looking appetizers on plates.

  It looked a lot like Talisman preparing for a feast, except the vibe in this kitchen was a lot more “someone’s going to kill us if we get this wrong.” Leaf wasn’t sure how he sensed that — something in the way the dragons held their wings in tightly, pushed one another aside to grab things, and scurried from station to station with tense expressions.

  It was all weirdly human, actually. He was probably imagining most of it — thinking the dragons had feelings like humans did, the way his sister Bluebell used to think every butterfly was her friend and truly loved her.

  The world tilted sideways and Leaf was swung upside down as the dragon veered through a doorway and up into the heart of the palace. Leaf remembered copying this from the map, more than once because it was hard and he kept getting it wrong. There was a giant hall in the center, with several levels of balconies all around it, a huge hole in the roof above, and windows open to the night sky everywhere. Fires burned in many of the rooms off the balconies, giving the whole palace an ominous smoky glow and a charred smell.

  The wind rushed past Leaf’s ears, but he could still hear the flapping of dragon wings all around him. Dragons were rushing from level to level. The one carrying him snapped at a dragon carrying a pile of firewood who nearly crashed into them.