“C’mon, Kinri.” Mawla’s leg wriggled beneath my slimy feet. “I want to actually get somewhere before tomorrow. I’m getting done waiting here with you.”

“I’m done waiting too! I promise!” I put my foot down⁠ ⁠—⁠ a mistake. Now I had dirt stuck into the slime. “I want to be sure you’ve got all your injuries wiped down. Do you?”

“Twice.” She pulled the leg away, shook it. “My leg still doesn’t like it when I stand on it the wrong way.”

“But...” I scratched the gravel a little bit. Now the other foot was dirty, and I took to wiping them on each other. I gave up, and looked back at Mawla, and looked away. “Nevermind. Um.”

“What? Don’t nevermind me.”

“It’s just... I was wondering if it’s enough for you to come with me to the librarian’s house.” I looked away. “Or maybewalkhomeonyourown.”

“I obviously could just go my way alone. I want you there with me. You’re sweet.”

I lifted my head. “So you’ll come with me?”

“Uh, why even are you going the librarian’s house?”

“To look for Hinte.” I saw Mawla twitch at that, and watched her sigh silently.

She turned around, toward the gully wall. “Leave her to lick whatever mess she’s stirred up.”

“She’s going to ruin everything I negotiated with the humans!” I jerked upward just a bit saying this, and felt a stirring in my bag. Staune chirped sleepily but did not rouse.

Shaking her head, advancing toward the wall, the sifter said, “I don’t want to even smell enough whiff of that high guard. Smells like rotten tomatoes. With rank Dyfnderi perfume on top.”

“Mawla, don’t you get that this is important?”

“Yep. That’s why we’re leaving it to the important dragons.” She started climbing the wall, and like a mirror of yesterday night she said, “Let the glass fall on someone else’s head.”

“So you just want me to leave the humans to die?”

Mawla tossed her head. “Why not? They can take care of themselves.”

I open my mouth, and it stayed that way for a bit. What did you say to that? It wasn’t how a hero thought.

Mawla didn’t walk off. She sat herself up there on the gully wall, looking down on me with a smug smile.

Eventually, I ventured, “Should I have heard you yelling, and thought Mawla can take care of herself?”

Smile gone, she bit her lip. Slowly she said “You know me.” Wings drawing tight. “I’m a friend, aren’t I?”

I jerked up again. “You are, but⁠ ⁠—”

“I’m your friend. I’m a dragon. Why would you go out of your way to help those creatures? Is an animal worth as much as a dragon?”

“Obviously,” she said. No, but it was her voice.

I twisted my head around, and saw Staune poking her head out of my bag.

Mawla laughed, a little clicking chuckle. “That parrot is something.”

“She has a point though. Dragon-tongued parrots are like dragons. Why can’t humans be too?”

She settled, and looked level at me again. “Flick, Kinri. It’s Ushra. It’s Rhyfel. It’s whoever else they want to call in. I don’t want to sound tart, obviously, but be clear with me: what do you add to that?”

“I know Hinte? She trusts me.”

“More than Ushra?”

“I negotiated with the humans.”

“Is there going to be time to talk between Hinte trying to kill them?”

“I can⁠ ⁠—”

“Kinri, I get you. You want to look helpful. I get it. But no one watching, and better yet, no one asked. They were standing right there airing all their problems and they didn’t even pause to think you might melt into their plans. They don’t want you, Kinri.”

Mawla leapt from the top of the gully, splashed onto the gravel beside me, and nudged me shoulder to shoulder. She said, “But I still need someone walking with me so I get to Dadafodd with all my coins in my pocket. They sound sweet to you?”

Try to save the humans from Hinte, or escourt Mawla to the Dadafodd.

Help look for Hinte, or keep Mawla safe.

Hinte, or Mawla.

I didn’t like this choice.

But, remembering the darkgreen wiver arguing me away while she plotted secret murder, I realized Hinte had already made the choice for me, really.

She’d tell me tomorrow. I could forgive her, and myself, tomorrow.

“Let’s go, Mawla.”

----------------------------------------

Out of that gully, we walked side by side down into the thickening houses and rising buttes of the south side. Here at the very edge of town hollows dotted the fringes, packed mounds of ash or dustone, maybe skeletoned with bamboo. If you looked up, you’d see big holes dug into this or that butte, but you had to look to find them. Sometimes out of them a dragon looked back at you.

Quick strides took us toward the thickly cobbled streets, where light fell out of lamps and left fewer shadows, fewer spots for strangers to hide in. I was nudging Mawla toward them, and she was nudging me; we had had the same instincts.

Sometimes on restless nights, whether from the heat breathing down my neck or a sudden pang of something missing, I’d walk and wander the nighttime streets of Gwymr/Frina. Meanwhile on the rooftops and the streets, guards would patrol with red lanterns and the promise of protection.

Like I would any other night, I looked all around here, and it was twenty six strides of this before I found, atop a tall, tall butte, a cleareyed guard staring down the neighborhood, seeming lonely and sleepy.

It didn’t put you at ease. The presense just underscored an overall absence.

In the end I just tailgripped my new club tighter, and threw a wing over Mawla. She wiggled a little closer, the smooth scales of her wingarm gracing my own.

We walked east. Gwymr/Frina was a town that sprawled. All the way on the other side, a canal cut off the verdant west end from the rest. Even the north side had a sheer drop that kept the east side out. But, between the south and east side, you slipped from one to the other without realizing.

The dustone hovels built like igloos was always a tell, or the dinder roots struggling to life in gardens, or the purple eye orbited by rainbow rays. They were sparsed but still appeared, the south side reaching into the east side and holding it close.

Sprouting out from the street were little alleys, dark and gravid. In each one you expected something, even if just an unwanted fern rising up, a tattered glider someone’d thrown out, or a darned wildcat jumping and yeowing. The alleys were just the size for dragons to lurk in, and that kept you checking every one.

But never satisfying the suspicion, of course: the earlier crowd had all gone by now, and only little droplets of dragons trickled through. Furtive and quick. No real reason to linger in the south side at night.

Which made conspicuous the cloaked figure standing under a amber lamppost, lingering.

Mawla jerked to a stop. I felt both of us breathing, both of us pulsing.

There were other roads. We could slip into an alley. We could turn around.

The head craned a bit. Snaked forward. Saw us.

“You can run if you want, Kinri. I’ll eat my odds alone.”

“No.”

The figure had started striding toward us: slow, easeful steps.

“Should we run? Together?”

“Wouldn’t want to show fear.” She flexed her wings beside me. Was she trembling, or was that me trembling against her? “Running wouldn’t do much for me anyways. If they can fly they can find me.”

I looked back at them. They’d been a stone throw away to begin with, and by now maybe twenty strides stood between us.

“If they can fly, then why are they walking?”

She peered hard, brow furrowing. “Could be an act, stoke some fear. Or maybe they want to see what we’ll do.”

“Or maybe we’re silly and they’re just out to walk?”

“That’s silly. Now shush.” Mawla tapped an alula against my lipscales, and the other wing came up beside her mouth. She yelled, “Hey you! What’s your deal here?”

Moments trudge by metered out by the rigid stride of the cloaked dragon.

High standing before us, they looked at me and not Mawla. They said, “Omoù ptèromai, Kinri. I see you have been busy.”

I took in their cloak, their accent, their golden eyes. "...The miser? Um, hi again.”

“Chwithach told me you’d been asking about me. I appreciate the curiosity.”

Mawla was looking between us. “You two friends?”

There was a noncommittal noise rising in my throat, but the miser interrupted whatever I would have said.

“We have mutual friends. But we have met only today.”

“Gotcha,” said Mawla. “But what you doin out here? Obviously this isn’t chance.”

“Indeed. I came to offer my congratulation on Kinri’s work in the market and the fires.” To me, “You’ve done much to keep this town safe. I appreciate that.”

“Were you spying on her?”

“News travels quickly for those who listen.”

“So you aren’t going to tell us, gotcha.”

A smirk rose to my lips, in memory of that extra cryst he’d tried and failed to hide from me in the shop. I ask, “Why try to be so mysterious when you couldn’t even keep a lie straight?”

The shadows of his hood shifted, frills rising like a smile. “It was no lie, fledgling. It was part of a test.”

“Of what?”

Those frills curled back again. “I shall tell you if you ever pass.” He inclined his head. “I hope this Dychwelfa attack has impressed upon you the need for secrecy and the preciousness of information.”

Mawla growled. “Or, in plain y Draig, I won’t tell you because you’re not important enough to matter. Spit off, you miserable miser.”

He nodded to Mawla and stepped back. “I shall. I merely came to present my congratulations for her accomplishments. Regarding the humans⁠ ⁠—⁠ but also regarding her befriending of Adwyn. Quite a valuable ally, he is. Keep him safe, Kinri.” He dropped to a murmur, “For you know who wishes him dead.”

The miser turned around, but looked back to say, “But more than all, do not forget the alchemist’s granddaughter, Kinri. She is infinitely more valuable to you.”

A cloud passed before the moons and the miser was gone.

“What’s that venthole all about?”

“I don’t know.”

Mawla shook her head. “Well, let’s keep walking. Dadafodd ain’t far, now.”

It was a few steps before she nudged me. The sifter said, “He’s a peg-leg, you know.” She scrunched her face. “Or a peg-legs.”

“How can you tell?”

“I’ve seen the gait,” she replied with a nod. “Stiff, oddly balanced. You notice something’s off but not everyone’ll pin it down.” She saw me staring head tilted and tossed head, adding, “You see enough dragons losing shit to the fires. Your leg slips too far into the maw, ain’t much the phys can do”⁠ ⁠—⁠ she gives a half-growl, half-laugh⁠ ⁠—⁠ “or can afford to do.”

Mawla leant forward and swings a foreleg at my own, toes splayed, and it hit firm. “So they have to chop off your bits, and now you’ve obviously got to buy a peg-leg or teeter over. And with shit like that, you adapt to it more than it adapts to you.”

The plain-dweller was nodding over to where the miser had stood. “His bits were a bit more bendy though, so probably it’s just his feet or something. He didn’t sound like a sifter.”

----------------------------------------

Going even a bit further east, and you started passing more dragons. Sometimes they met your eye, sometimes they turned down the next alley. Sometimes they have a winghand over a long sharp thing strapped to their foreleg and they only turned away when they glanced at Mawla’s face and sparked recognition.

I started carrying the club conspicuously in my wing.

The absurdity of the situation really got to me. “Stars, what is going on anymore.”

“What’s up?

“It’s just⁠ ⁠—⁠ one of those moments where you stop and wonder just what the heck is going on. Yesterday and today have been such a mess.”

Mawla nodded. When she looked down, she reached and fixed my grip on the club just a bit. So on I walked, brandishing that club.

It didn’t help when a dragon sauntered out from an alley, waving at the sifter beside me.

“Yo Mawla!”

The sifter jerked a gaze over. “Who is it?”

“It’s ya boy.” He slinked over in a few hoppy steps, passing by a lamp on the way, and the sifter relaxed. They spoke quiet: “Listen. New supply is in. You want some of this?”

Mawla’s voice become her deep growl. “Didn’t Lili tell you I quit it? Spit off.”

The dragon backed up before Mawla hissed harshly and they back up faster.

“What was that all about?”

“Some dealer.”

“Of what?”

A wing wavely vaguely. “There was this cute powder that popped up a few cycles back. It was fun for a while, but I know a drake who knew one of the suppliers⁠ ⁠—⁠ not that snek, obviously, a cooler one⁠ ⁠—⁠ and told me what it was made from. I decided to quit, obviously.”

“Is it something nasty?”

“Not really, just those little bugs that cling to those glowing stones in the lake. Give me the creeps. Rumor’s they’re haunted by ghosts or demons or something. Spooky stuff.”

I bit my lip. “Uh. Is there any harm in like, just eating the bugs?”

She hitched her wings. “How’d I know? I’m no mixer, obviously.”

“I guess.”

We walked on a few steps. I was thinking of things to fill the silence, my mind pacing over everything that’d been said. A memory hit me and I almost stopped.

“Hey, didn’t Rhyfel say Mawla ac Aludu Dymestl? What’s up with that?”

“Hm? Oh yeah, I am scion of Aludu Dymestl. But we’re nothing now, though⁠ ⁠—⁠ everyone is.”

“Wait, so you’re of the high houses?”

“Obviously.”

I sprung into an excited grin, but the sifter cut me off quick.

“But it’s a joke. Maybe half the dragons in Gwymr/Frina could put themselves in two of the houses if they tried hard enough.” She whisked her other wing. “There were like fifty of them before Mlaen told ‘em to spit off.”

“So many dragons heirs to high houses. You’re like the third or fourth I’ve met.”

She popped her tongue. “No one cares or tracks it anymore. Like, who’s going to stop you if decided to walk around saying Specter was secretly one of the founding families all along? I mean, no one would believe you, but you get the idea.”

After that silence was rearing up again, but I liked the smalltalk. “What was Aludu like?”

“Who knows. Most of em were dead or exiled by the time I hatched. My family’s just a bunch of symbols I can’t read.”

“So they didn’t leave you anything?”

“Who’d tell me if they did?”

“Still, I just can’t imagine having nothing of your family.”

“Eh, well, there’s this old wayhouse in the cliffs⁠ ⁠—⁠ real fancy, built like a warturt, right on top of one of these old volcanic vents. Has a slick little sauna and pool there that just poisons you anymore.”

“You live there?”

“Haha, no. Nobody lives there anymore.”

“What happened to it?”

“Lousy with big ol’ lava slugs since a bunch of gyras ago. And after that, the ridges came in and pretty soon they bought the land it sat on.” She flicked her tongue. “I still drop by from time to time⁠ ⁠—⁠ but it’s trespassing now.” She tossed her head.

I tapped my chin, running through other questions I could ask. “Who owns it now?”

“Don’t know. It prolly shuffled owners six times, and it’s properly none of my business anyways. Maybe the faer owns it, or one of the sifting companies, or maybe those Dychwelfa ac Dwylla vents.”

I nodded.

“Whoever got it obviously isn’t doing anything with it. Maybe it’s the slugs or maybe it’s... I don’t know.”

I nodded. There wasn’t much I could really add. There was probabbly a better topic I could have picked.

“Point is, there’s a place I can lay myself if I want an itchy night’s sleep.” Mawla scratched the ground. “Want to talk about anything else? I’ve got too many memories of the old house and I hate the place.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Whatever comes to mind? There’s this one scar I got four times. Wanna see?”

* * *