Dragonslayer

by Tui T. Sutherland

  She didn’t know how many days later it was, but she had just reached a stretch of rocky ground that wasn’t sand anymore — when she looked up to see the whole battalion flying back south again.

  “WHAT?” she shouted as they whipped past without noticing her. “I just GOT HERE!”

  She thought she caught a glimpse of Sky flying with them, but she was sure she recognized that arrogant giant who was leading them and his stupid bellowing laugh.

  She ran after them as long as she could, but soon they banked east and sailed into the clouds, and no matter how fast she ran, they were quickly out of sight.

  “ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH!” she screamed, grabbing tufts of the thin spiky grass from between the rocks and tearing it up.

  But she didn’t have time to be furious. She guessed they were angling back toward the dragon city, so that was where she had to go, too.

  “It’s good news,” she muttered to herself, stamping through the sand in the middle of the chilly desert night. “Sky will be easier to rescue from the city than from the sand palace.” Also, she knew where the city was, and she could get there by following the coast until she reached the river. She had no idea where the palace was. Out in the vast desert somewhere, presumably.

  But when she reached the city, there was no sign of the obnoxious general or his army or Sky. Wren spent a couple of nights sneaking around and eavesdropping until she confirmed her worst fear: They’d landed here for a day and then flown off to the palace.

  In the dragon city, she felt like one of the mice that used to invade her parents’ kitchen, vanishing into the walls the moment the torches were lit, leaving little tracks through the flour and holes nibbled out of the bread. It was easy to find food and restock her supplies; everything the dragons ate was so big, they wouldn’t even notice if she took a fig here, a quarter of a biscuit there.

  But what she could not seem to find was a map to the queen’s palace, or any kind of map of the whole desert kingdom. She wasn’t sure if she was looking in the wrong places, or whether the sand dragons didn’t bother to have one, because they figured anyone could just fly over the desert and find it easily.

  Should she stay and keep looking for a map? Or should she march out into the desert and hope she ran into the palace eventually? Days were passing and poor Sky needed help, and she felt a kind of agony in her chest when she thought about it. But it wouldn’t help him if she got lost in the desert and died out there. Rushing off was what she wanted to do, but it wasn’t the smartest plan.

  If only I had wings. I could fly there in a heartbeat.

  Around the fifth time Wren had that thought, it was followed suddenly by another: What if I got wings?

  What if I kidnapped a dragon?

  She was hiding in the attic of a storehouse, where she’d been sleeping during the day on one of the grain sacks. She crawled over to the window and looked down at the dragons hurrying through the streets below.

  What if I could get a dragon alone and convince it to take me to the palace?

  That would give her speed and a map, in a sense, assuming she found someone who knew how to get there.

  So how do I convince one? With something sharp and pointy?

  Sky would tell her to ask nicely. He’d be quite sure that any dragon would love to help her out. He’d have to be reminded about the part where most of them would rather eat her for lunch.

  But there must be others like Sky. Dragons with hearts; dragons who might listen for a moment before munching on me.

  I just have to find one.

  That night she stole a weapon, just in case. It was probably a practice sword or a dagger for a dragonet; for most dragons, it would be tiny, but for her, it was the size of a real sword, and rather heavy. It took her half the night to figure out a way to tie it to her back so she could pull it out quickly if she needed it, but it would also be mostly out of the way.

  And then she started stalking dragons.

  She couldn’t approach one in the center of the city — even at night, if she found one alone, it would only take one yell for it to summon a whole bunch of friends. She was up for threatening one dragon by itself, not a large group.

  So she worked her way to the outskirts, looking for relatively deserted spaces and hapless solitary dragons.

  Two days later, she found her mark.

  The best part about him was that he was clearly trying to avoid attention. The second-best thing was that he was reading a scroll when she spotted him, which seemed like a good sign. A dragon who was a reader was probably smart and thoughtful and not the sort of fellow who would gobble a person before hearing what they had to say.

  Wren had been exploring an alley that led out of the city, past some abandoned houses with sad little black-and-yellow flags fluttering out front. Her theory was that the dragons who had lived here had gone off to war and not come back.

  The alley opened into a courtyard shaded by fruit trees and smelling of lemons. Under one of the trees, a black dragon was curled up, reading a scroll.

  Wren crouched behind a planter and watched him for a while. She hadn’t seen any other black dragons in the city; in fact, she’d hardly seen any at all in her travels with Sky. She guessed there was a group of them living somewhere secret, but she’d studied her map and wasn’t sure where.

  This one had a pouch around his neck and a scattering of silver scales that twinkled under his wings like stars. Occasionally he’d look up from the scroll and check the sky, then sigh and go back to reading.

  Wren wondered if she was just imagining that he looked lonely. Maybe he’d also lost his best friend somewhere.

  She heard a dragon approaching along the alley, so she swung herself into the planter and then up the tree, to hide among the bright yellow lemons and glossy dark green leaves. The black dragon heard the footsteps, too. He rolled up his scroll and did an interesting fade back into the shadows where he closed his wings, hiding the silver scales, and stood so still in a dark spot that even Wren could barely see him, despite having her eyes fixed on him.

  He’s being careful. Whoever he’s waiting for, he wants to make sure this is the right dragon before showing himself.

  A sand dragon hurried into the courtyard. She kept looking left and right and up, as though someone might pounce on her from anywhere. She had a sly, furtive way of moving and a few frostbite scars along her tail.

  The black dragon emerged from the shadows and bowed his head slightly to acknowledge her.

  “Here,” she said, thrusting a small scroll into the black dragon’s talons. “New assignment.”

  “Hello to you, too,” he said. He broke the seal on the scroll and unrolled it.

  “We’re not here for chitchat,” she hissed. “If you have any questions, send them the usual way. But you shouldn’t. They said it’s pretty straightforward.”

  The black dragon was staring at the scroll as though it had personally disappointed him. “This is … quite a serious assignment,” he said. “Are they sure that’s what they want?”

  “It must be!” she snapped. “I’m just the messenger. And you’re just the —” She said a word that Wren had never heard before. “Let’s both do our jobs and not be annoying about it!”

  “Wait,” he said as she turned to go. “Have you heard anything about where the dragonets might be heading next?”

  “Ice Kingdom is the rumor,” she said. “Two (somethings) down, one left to meet, I guess. Maybe they’ll freeze to death and save you some trouble.” She chuckled and slithered away before the black dragon could ask anything else.

  He sat down slowly, studying the message. Wren was pretty sure she recognized his expression. That was the face Sky made when he’d been told to do something, and he was trying to figure out a clever way around it. Like if she said, “Sky, stop giving our best nuts to the chipmunks! I need them to survive the winter, too!” And then he’d make that face, and she’d have to clarify that he could also not give them to any squirrels, and
in fact to please not give away any of the food she’d gathered to animals with adorable pathetic eyes.

  Poor Sky. She wondered what he was doing right that moment, and whether there were any chipmunks or snails wherever he was.

  I have to act now. This is the dragon I want, and he’s completely alone here. Just be brave, Wren. He probably won’t eat you immediately. Talk fast, be convincing, and if that doesn’t work, be scary!

  Here goes nothing.

  She slid down from the tree and marched across the courtyard, up to the dragon’s feet. The black dragon glanced up from the scroll and leaped back at the sight of her, but he didn’t immediately bite her head off, so this was already going very well.

  “Listen up,” she growled in Dragon. “I need your help.”

  The black dragon’s eyes went very, very wide. He slowly pivoted his head around to check behind him for another dragon.

  “Stop that!” she barked. “Look at me! It’s me! I’m the one speaking Dragon!”

  He swiveled his head all the way back to stare at her.

  “I’m in a hurry,” she said. “Take me to the desert palace. Please,” she added, thinking of how Sky would have asked. He’d made a special point of teaching her that particular word in Dragon.

  “This is impossible. Scavengers don’t speak Dragon,” the dragon said in his rather elegant voice. His accent was different from Sky’s, and a little harder to follow.

  “Obviously I do!” she snapped.

  “Scavengers,” he explained, as though she might be a misinformed hallucination, “generally go squeak squeak squeak and then fall over and die. In my experience.”

  “Well, of the two of us here, who do you think knows more about scavengers?” she asked, using the dragon word for humans. “Listen, I don’t have time to fall over and die. My friend is in trouble and I need you to take me to him.”

  “If your friend was taken to the desert palace,” the black dragon said, actually looking sympathetic, “he has already been eaten by now.”

  “My friend is a dragon!” Wren shouted, making him jump. “So unless there are cannibals there, he’s still alive, but trapped, and wondering where I am!” She didn’t know the word for cannibals in Dragon, so some of that probably got lost in translation.

  “See, that doesn’t make sense either,” he said. “A dragon who’s friends with a scavenger? Doubtful.” He picked up the date cake he’d been eating and studied it suspiciously. “What was in this?”

  “You can pretend you’re imagining me if it’ll make you feel better,” Wren said. “As long as you still take me to the palace.”

  “But then you’ll get eaten,” he pointed out. “Which would be quite a shame if you’re the only scavenger in the world smart enough to speak Dragon.”

  Wren wasn’t sure whether to agree that she was, or argue that she might not be. She didn’t remember any other humans from her village who would have even bothered to try, and Undauntable would have laughed at the suggestion. Maybe Leaf … She’d managed to stop thinking about her brother quite so often after the first year away from him, but sometimes he still popped up in her head.

  “Do you have a name?” the black dragon asked curiously. “I once knew a dragon with a scavenger pet named Rover, but it didn’t last very long. Not his fault; his friends were bad at remembering the difference between snacks and pets. Has your dragon named you?”

  “No! I’m not a pet, and I already had a name,” Wren said crossly. “It’s Wren. What’s yours?”

  He said something that she couldn’t quite figure out. She tilted her head at him.

  “What?”

  He said it again, a string of growls that sounded like two words strung together, but with the meanings a little muddled.

  “Provider … of … Corpses?” Wren guessed in her own language. “That can’t be right. Plague … Carrier? Who would name their child that, even a dragon child?” She thought for a moment, running the sounds around in her head. “Murder Basket!” she blurted. “Wait, Murder Basket? Is your name really Murder Basket?” She tried to repeat the sounds back to him and he looked mildly offended.

  “No,” he said. “Grumble growl roargle grawrf.”

  “Murder … basket,” Wren said. “Yeah, that’s definitely what you said. OK.” She switched to Dragon again. “Mr. Murderbasket, could you please take me to the desert palace right now? I promise not to blame you if I get eaten.”

  “Oh … no, no,” he said warily. “I really can’t. I’m actually rather busy at the moment.” He held up the message scroll. “Looking for some dragons. On a bit of a mission. I’d be in quite some trouble if I took a detour to assist a hallucination. So sorry.” He tried to edge away from her.

  “This is important!” Wren yelled, making him jump again. “Come on! It will take you, what, less than half a day to get me there? It will take me FOUR HUNDRED YEARS to walk there, apparently, based on the evidence so far and the fact that I have no idea where it is. Murderbasket! Listen! A dragon’s life is at stake!”

  “Oooooorgh,” he grumbled, rubbing his head. “I had no idea scavengers could be so loud.”

  “Isn’t a dragon’s LIFE more important than your mission?” she said. “Besides, you don’t even want to do your assignment. I can tell.”

  “That’s true,” he said with a slightly alarmed look. “But you probably know that because you only exist in my head anyway.”

  “What’s the dragon word for a voice in your head that tells you what to do?” Wren asked.

  He said something, and she echoed it back until she got it right.

  “There you go,” she said. “That’s me. Your conscience. And I’m telling you: Don’t do your assignment. Whatever you don’t like about it, your instinct is right. Instead you should fly me to the desert palace so I can rescue my friend.”

  Murderbasket broke the date cake in half and inspected the inside of it for a minute.

  “Would it help if I pulled this out?” Wren said, brandishing her new sword with a flourish. “It’s very sharp.” She jabbed at one of his claws and accidentally stabbed the membrane between them.

  “OW!” he roared, leaping back. A small drop of blood welled up and he pressed another claw to it, giving her a wounded look.

  “Sorry!” she said. “Sorry, it’s really heavy, and I still haven’t gotten — you know what, no. I’m not sorry! That’s what happens when you defy me, Murderbasket!” She pointed the sword at him. “Take me to the desert palace now.”

  “You know, I’ve never understood what happened to Queen (something),” he said. “But now I see that scavengers are tiny ferocious mean little monsters, and it all makes sense.” He examined his injury. “I’m really not imagining you, am I?”

  “Nope,” she said. “Extremely real. Also in a hurry.”

  “Well, put your violence away first,” he said, pointing at the sword. She slid it into the sheath on her back. He wrinkled his snout for a moment, and then he said, “All right. I can take you to the desert palace. But I feel like I should warn you that most of the dragons there won’t be nearly as charming or patient as I am.”

  “I don’t care,” Wren said. “I wasn’t planning on having a tea party with them. I’m going to rescue Sky.”

  Murderbasket held out one leg for her to climb up. It was super strange, climbing scales that were black instead of pale orange. Murderbasket was bigger and more wiry than Sky, and it took Wren a few awkward scrambles to find a spot that felt safe on his shoulder, clinging to his neck spines.

  While she scrabbled around, the dragon tucked his scrolls into the pouch around his neck and finished his date cake. He brushed the crumbs off his talons and twisted his neck around to look at her.

  “All settled?” he said. “This feels very odd. I had a monkey climb on me once while I was on a mission in the Kingdom of the Sea, but it was lighter and a lot less bossy than you.”

  “Maybe you just weren’t listening to it carefully enough,” she suggested.
<
br />   “You’re very sure you want to go to the palace?” he asked. “I can think of some dragons who would love to study you.”

  “Horrifying,” Wren said. “No, thank you. To the palace!”

  “To the palace,” he agreed. He leaped into the sky and Wren held on tight, watching the dragon city drop away below her.

  Hang on, Sky. I’ll be there soon.

  “What if we ride out there in the middle of the night,” Daffodil suggested, “while all the dragons are definitely sleeping, and we leave the treasure in a pile at the front door of the palace with a note that says, ‘WE’RE REALLY SORRY ABOUT THIS! PLEASE STOP EATING US!’ And then we ride home very fast.”

  Ivy leaned all the way back until she was flat on her branch and looked up at the sky. Blue and clear beyond the trees, rimmed with gold where the sun was rising over the mountains. The ripples of sunshine through the leaves, the sounds of birds and squirrels, the smell of green things, anything but cold stone and dirt walls. She was so happy to be outside again at last.

  It had taken forever for her father to relax his rules. She didn’t understand all the reasons why he finally had, but she thought it was partly because her mother had helped fix the gardening problem, and the grounded Wingwatchers had shored up one of the collapsed tunnels, so the citizens of Valor had stopped grumbling quite so much. There hadn’t been any more messages from the lord of the Indestructible City. And then four new baby foals were born, and they were adorable, and now that was most of what everyone was talking about instead of complaining, which made the Dragonslayer happy.

  And once the Dragonslayer was happy, Ivy and her friends had been allowed back on missions. Back to skygazing at least, but she’d take it.

  Foxglove was outside again, too, helping keep watch while a few builders worked on concealing one of the entrances a little better.