Dadafodd.

Carved inside the widest, tallest, biggest butte I had ever seen in Gwymr/Frina. Opening from a front door wide like three dragons. Made of natural rock blending with dustone and fire clay bricks, and black bamboo supports⁠ ⁠—⁠ which looked less a disparate hodgepodge than a uniting of different materials and constructions. Peering out from glass slabs so thick you could see the light refract through them.

If I were a guard, Dadafodd was the kind of building that would make me nervous. It wasn’t a fortress, though it might’ve been if that weren’t too overt. But as a building it exuded a kind of private confidence. You wondered what went on inside, and expected trouble if it didn’t want you to know.

The tavern Dadafodd towered beaconlike in this blended stretch between the south side and the east side. It was not isolated. Ropy catwalks or bridges carried dragons from atop other buttes or buildings, supporting them across with bamboo rods and hope. Nighttime figures once or twice darted to or from the Dadafodd and the sundry buildings which lay here like saplings around a forest’s first tree.

The ones who didn’t dart⁠ ⁠—⁠ or saunter, or menace⁠ ⁠—⁠ stood around. Leaning against storefronts and sitting on benches, you’d think here were all the dragons we didn’t see walking the way from the south gate.

As dark as it was, we could have walked right into the Dadafodd not even seeing him. But his scent lighted on my tongue, and I couldn’t miss or mistake it: the burnt wood aroma of a certain warm gray drake.

Digrif was here.

Mawla felt me slow. Her voice was still gentle. “What is it now?”

“I smell a friend. I don’t know why they’re here.”

“You never know who shows up to the Dadafodd.”

“But it’s⁠ ⁠—⁠ suspicious. If he’s here, it could be to meet the thieves from the market.”

Blankly, Mawla said, “Ask him?”

Humming with thought, I took a step forward, tugging us into motion again. The scent gradient led toward the entrance anyway; the warm gray drake sat beside it on a bench, twisting another dinder root. The front door, a few strides away, opened beside him.

“Hey.” He dropped the root. “Kinri?”

“Y-yeah. How’d you guess?”

“You err, you smell like crab blood.”

Beside me, a whisper of “So that’s what that was.”

“It was for Hinte!”

“Of course it was.” Mawla patted my back. Then she twisted her head and snaked it toward the drake. “So. What brings you to the Dadafodd?”

Digrif looked between us. Flicked his nervous tongue four times. Finally said, “Well, nothing. I’m here to meet a⁠ ⁠—⁠ friend, is all.”

Mawla grinned, and asked high, “Is that all?”

I threw a wing around Mawla, tugged her a little closer. “Digrif, this is Mawla. I⁠ ⁠—⁠ I trust her. You can say the real reason.”

Mawla glance subtly at me. “You... trust me?”

I grinned. “Obviously.”

She didn’t say anything to that, just looked cloudily at the ground.

“Well...” Head fallen, he started looking at the ground. “You probably already guessed, then.”

“Trying to meet the thief?”

“I wasn’t going to betray you guys, I promise. I just thought⁠ ⁠—⁠ Adwyn and all seemed to not know a lot about the thieves, so maybe I could find something out?”

“Good luck with that,” Mawla said. “But we’ve gotta go. Scream for help if you need it.” She winked a frill. “Worked for me.”

Digrif reached down to pick up the root. Then jolted up, a wing waving out. “Wait, wait! Hinte’s not with you. I thought you two were together. Where’d she go?”

“Excuse me?” It was Mawla answering, not me. “Kinri has more than one friend. Not everything she does melts back to Hinte.”

“Err, I⁠ ⁠—” I started. But Mawla was yanking me away, and Digrif was already replying.

He (inadvertently) interrupted, “Sorry sorry. It’s just, well, Hinte didn’t seem like she wanted to be alone when she left.” He went back to twisting his root in his forefeet.

Mawla said, “Not leaving would have been the obvious way to do that.”

Digrif asked me. “Is she alright? Hinte, I mean.”

“She flew away to do⁠ ⁠—⁠ something. Something I won’t like. I don’t know what she’s trying to do, but my guesses are⁠ ⁠—⁠ bad.”

“Do you think she’s⁠ ⁠—⁠ you know?”

Do you think Hinte is the traitor. Do you think she’s working against Gwymr/Frina.

I looked back as the wiver opened the stone door for me.

I said, “I⁠ ⁠—⁠ don’t know.”

Digrif was still twisting the root; it snapped it half. “Should we, should we stop her?”

I thought of blind Ffrom and the four guards. “Could we stop her?”

“She would listen to us.”

Mawla was still holding open the door, and by now we were blocking people from going in or out. I slipped away, sat on the bench. With what we were discussing⁠ ⁠—⁠ we couldn’t let the wrong dragon hear us, couldn’t attract attention.

Like my silvery cloak sown with gemstones didn’t seal that deal.

“Kinri, we’re so close. C’mon.”

Digrif was continuing. “Or, or should we... help her?”

“If she’s doing what I think, I don’t want to help. I’d have to stop her.”

Digrif tilted his head.

“Avenge Ceian and Ffrom. Hunt down the humans we just made peace with. I’d have to stop her. It’s⁠ ⁠—⁠ it’s what a hero would do. Save dragons, or humans.”

“I⁠ ⁠—⁠ I don’t know. Those humans killed dragons. We could have killed them, but we didn’t. If we could spare them, they could have spared them.”

“Kinri if you don’t get up, I’m just gonna leave you here with your drakefriend.”

Squeak. “My drakefriend?” Blood rushed to my brilles.

“It’s okay, Kinri. Go ahead. I’ll keep waiting for the thief.”

Mawla pulled me and together we fell into the sultry pink light of Dadafodd.

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

Mawla had said she knew a drake. I decided I did too.

We’d climbed the stairwall in the middle of the Dadafodd; she assured me he was one floor up.

Here, pink light floated down from oil burning in tinted lamps, and with it came an aroma of roses and crisp tea leaves. The babble and ruckus of half-drunk dragons came low, as if all held their voice to hear the music.

Over all, the singing of stirring, sinuous strings resounded from the head of the room, the sound rising from the body of twin crwths. They could have been the violins or harps of the sky, between the steady bowing and the delicate fingerings, but the instrument had more of a buzz to it. They played harmony for the stubborn low melody of a pibgorn⁠ ⁠—⁠ some fatmouthed flute.

That was the background, the atmosphere in which our journey founds its end.

Mawla had said she knew a drake, and now, after everything, it was time to meet him. But first, we had to find him.

“Red scales,” was what she told me. “Brownish red scales, glasses, honestly kinda lanky. He’s got a posture like the world is some joke.”

She might as well had said his name. If there were another drake like that in Gwymr/Frina, I wasn’t sure if I could stay here and sane.

“I know just who you mean.”

And she let out a great sigh at that. We had just stepped off the stairwall⁠ ⁠—⁠ I’d half carried her⁠ ⁠—⁠ and she leaned to the wall where the stairs blent with it.

So I walked away like that. The second floor was all sixsided slabs orbiting this stair wall which in the middle of it all rose up and up. The burning pink lamps⁠ ⁠—⁠ bright but not bright⁠ ⁠—⁠ nourished a kind of the dim coziness I liked. My dark scales blent with the dimness, and you could almost miss their hue.

I walked the tavern with new anonymity. There were big watchful dragons at the corners, surveying, who gave me one glance and nothing more. I slinked past one stumbling dragon who got a good look and, eyes unfocused, didn’t react except to yell me out of their way.

When you don’t flinch from the gaze of others, you can see the stuff you’ve been missing. You can see the slabs next to each other whose conversation almost blend, edges lost like in a rendering, and you can see the harsh clashing slabs where the unlucky dragons would sit across the room if they could.

The web of glances and attention guided your eyes like a masterfully composed painting. Dadafodd was a plain-dweller tavern, and you could see the tension around the slabs where the other races sat. Made it easy to tell where any (brownish) red scaled dragon would sit.

My eyes settled on a slab everyone would notice, if they looked long enough. Four dragons, a lithe plain-dweller, a big cliff-dweller, and two mountain-dwellers you’d mistake for one if there wasn’t two of them. Scrolls piled up, one open before the plain-dweller.

None of them were him. I could have, would have, left them alone. I was doing something.

But I knew the big cliff-dweller. A wiver. Awld. The other library volunteer. One of my friends, and yet I’d lost touch with her.

Still, I could have, would have, left that thread loose. Tie it up later, when I wasn’t doing something, for someone.

But like I said, tension was visible. You could read context at the borders between slabs. To their left was a half hooded figure, the hood pulled as high as it could go and leave the frills free. They had a scroll too, an inked claw scratching, and I knew the jerky energy of shorthand.

Something was happening over there, and my feet were quietly carrying my curiosity before my mind had decided it really wanted to know.

Slabs tended thicker, more numerous, toward the walls, and those slabs had lit lamps. My anonimity burnt away before the light. Not just because of my scales⁠ ⁠—⁠ dragons weren’t even looking at them yet.

Even inactive, a Specter cloak catches eyes, and I’d hadn’t taken mine off.

What would you do when everyone could see there was something interesting about you, something that made you worth a second glance, worth a closer watch? When you wanted to just sneak and eavesdrop, then return to your actual task?

I knew walking furtive and creeping, trying to hide from the gazes I’d already garnered, would just underscore suspicion.

So into it I leaned. I lifted myself into a high stand and strood right up to the four dragon’s slab, let the murmurs and raised brows start in my wake.

Corner of my vision, there was the half hooded dragon, head raised. I couldn’t tell but they had to be looking at me. But I hadn’t noticed them, that was the lie I told with my posture. Visibly, I had all my attention on those four random dragons.

My feet erased the distance quick enough. I got there just in time to know whatever they were up to concerned me.

It was one of the mountain-dweller⁠ ⁠—⁠ twins, had to be twins. One of them said, “—⁠ right to his house when all the action was happening! A whole skien of guards!”

The other twin. “And once they left, all day long there were two inquirers breathing outside. Inquirers.”

The plain-dweller responded. He still hadn’t looked up from his scroll, and even speaking, his eyes didn’t stop scanning the page. “Forget the superstitions.” The voice managed dry and bitter even among hot and aromatic tavern air, even under the sweet music. “Inquirers are just investigators. Nothing magic about them. Nothing mysterious.”

Awld now. “Still, magic or not they cannot mean well for Chwithach-sofran. They’s still there when I flew over here. He couldn’t have come by his house all day.”

A head roll. Still reading, they said, “You’ve got a brain, then.”

“Where is he, Ehnym?” a twin asked. “He’d tell you. He tells you everything.”

Awld was looking at Ehnym, and so was the twin who'd spoken. The other twin was staring down front of their mat, where they had a plate and a glass of something sitting on the floor. As if they wouldn’t put it on the slab, for some reason. Ehnym too glanced at a glass⁠ ⁠—⁠ of water?⁠ ⁠—⁠ in front of his mat.

Watching all this, I was standing⁠ ⁠—⁠ seemingly unnoticed⁠ ⁠—⁠ right in front of the table.

But I was reflected in Ehnym’s glass, and my stealth felt incomplete.

Ehnym answered the question, “Hiding out with a friend. Someone who isn’t afraid of inquirers.”

I could think of no better way to break into the conversation: “What’s this about the librarian?” I chose the title⁠ ⁠—⁠ just in case there were another Chwithach who’d had guards at his house.

Awld started a glance over, then started in recognition. She remembered me.

One twin furrowed their brow, the other frowned. One asked, “Who are you to Chwithach-sofran?”

I opened my mouth. Unbidden, the traveler’s⁠ ⁠—⁠ Dieithr’s⁠ ⁠—⁠ words came to me, from what already felt like forever ago.

He speaks highly of you. ‘Never seen one so quick with figures, or clawing so neat.’

Cycles in his tutorship, volunteering at the library, transcribing his thoughts when he needed to think aloud, being the only one whom he could speak to in the sea or mountain tongues⁠ ⁠—

But when it came to speak of me to others, I was quick figures and neat clawings.

It felt petty⁠ ⁠—⁠ it was a compliment, but⁠ ⁠—

A twin was speaking. “I will hazard a guess and say you’re not a friend of his, then?”

I wasn’t controlling my face. Oops.

“It’s⁠ ⁠—⁠ complicated.”

“How?”

“Um, like, I thought I was close with him, right? But maybe I’m not because, um.”

“Because?”

“It’s going to sound silly if I say⁠ ⁠—”

“You’ll waste each of our evenings with this circling moil.” The plain-dweller? I couldn’t see his mouth.

“It’s just when he talking about me to others, he’s just like, he says I’m quick with figures and neat with clawings, but that’s⁠ ⁠—”

“A lie.”

“How do you even⁠ ⁠—”

“You’re Kinri.”

I took a step back. “How did you know?” The question became sound before I could even think. Of course he’d know if he could read. A instant glance at the scroll. He could read.

Even though he was looking at someone for a change, his brilles were clouded. He said, “Chwithach doesn’t talk about you like that at all, at all.”

I tilted my head. “Dieithr said⁠ ⁠—”

“Chwithach says you are a neat dragon. He’s enamored with you, for all that you don’t deserve it.”

“What? I even donate every time⁠ ⁠—”

“Because you can buy affection, is that right? You act⁠ ⁠—”

“Will you stop interrupting me? What’s your name? Who tried and failed to teach you manners?”

The plain-dweller whisked a greenishbrown wing. “Manners are a waste of time that lets idiots protect their egos. I know what you’re trying to say before you finish your first clause. Why should I suffer to hear you prattle on?”

“Why should I suffer to hear you prattle on?”

“When I say something, it matters.”

“Whatever. I just want to know if Chwithach⁠ ⁠—”

Another interruption. This time by that high, strained voice. “Dwylla’s limp dicks, Kinri, you can’t take twelve steps without getting sidetracked and distracted. Dissidetrackted.”

I turned and she was grinning but limping.

“C’mon, I smelt him while you were lookin.”

Mawla was tugging at me again, but I looked back to the four dragons again. Awld was giving me a sympathetic look, the twins had a furrowed suspicion on one side and a confusion on the other, and Ehnym had looked back to his scroll.

“Just so you know, you were being overheard and transcribed.” The half hooded dragon was gone when I looked.

Ehnym shrugged. “They already know.”

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

“Yo, K,” Sinig said. “I thought I told you not to lick after trouble.” He raised a wing and languidly pointed an alula at Mawla. “In case you don’t know, she is trouble.”

“You just told me to be careful.”

“If rumors are the judge, you’ve got one dangerous way of being careful.”

I tossed my head. “It works,” I said. “Anyway, uh, how’s your evening going?”

He had something of a bruise on one cheek, and a cut under one disbudded horn.

A wryness was tugging at his lips, but he did reply. “Won some fights, had some drinks, nothing worth conversation about.” He looked at me. “You went to see Claff?”

I looked away from from Sinig.

On the second floor, at the fringes where the shadows had swallowed the walls, there were little curtained alcoves you wouldn’t have noticed without staring long. Slipping into Sinig’s little alcove, you immediately felt something was different.

The patrons outside sat on mats. Cotton mats. In here you sat on leather. Then you looked to Sinig. His mat had a raised back rest, and the leather was sown with glass hairs. It had a back rest. He lay on his back, one foreleg resting atop of the rest, the other held up to gesture or scratch his chin. He was careless relaxation.

On the slab before us lay his glasses, yet he regarded us confidently. Or rather, regarded confidently the utterly blurry splotches of color; I’d once seen Sinig, no glasses, sidle over and strike up conversation with a flower pot.

On that same slab, three separate fires burned. There was the sultry pink lamp light, a stick of incense burning down and crying ash into a tray, and the dying smolder of a roll of leaves wrapped in paper that left me feeling⁠ ⁠—⁠ odd, even scenting it. Sinig had the manners to set it down when I walked in and hadn’t taken a puff since I sat.

Maybe it was the languid pace of all his actions, maybe it was the way he’d pick up, put down, or just gesture without deigning to look away, or maybe it was something subtler still, but there was something high in his mien. It made all of this feel like Sinig holding court.

He wasn’t the first brownish red dragon who’d come off like this. I wanted to walk him into a locked room with Mlaen and see what happened.

A poke. “Wake up Kinri, he asked somethin.”

I jerked and cleared my eyes to take in the dragons in the room. Sinig. Mawla. Two others, at Sinig’s left and right (even though it really didn’t suit either of them) were Arall and Mawrion.

Arall at least had the dignity to be checked out. In front of her she had a little ferny scroll and scratched ink in it. It wasn’t transcription.

Mawrion, though, you watched the rhythm and angle of his glances and you realized, on some level here, he deferred to Sinig. Mawrion, owner of the Llygaid Crwydro, Mawrion, the boss of Sinig. Deferred to him.

Sinig gave a smile and shook his head. “No, I can tell by the look. But I take it you’re getting impatient with all this smalltalk, M?”

“Yeah let’s cut to the tongue of the matter. Bauume’s just as much trouble as you guessed.”

“I’m not often wrong, but I wish.”

Mawla continued, “He was muttering some nonsense like he knew about the market earlier. You hear about that?”

“Course I did. Everyone did.” The brownishred drake looked back to me, with a small smile. “Heard about what happened after the market, too.” There was a note in his voice, and a hint on his fangs. Pride.

I didn’t know what to do with the feeling bubbling in my gut. I wanted to change the topic. I blurted, “Mawla needs your help.”

Sinig raised his browscales.

Mawla rolled her head, said, “Yeah. Bauume hit me hard in places. Hurts to stand on the wrong leg. Maybe you know what to do about it.”

He scratched his chin. There was some twitch upward in his foot that might have been a checked instinct to adjust his glasses.

Insignificant as that was, it was at that I clouded my eyes and some edge left me. As if seeing a nervous falter in his visage... grounded it. Ground us. This was still Sinig, my coworker, and not a regal changeling.

“M. You think we can spare the expense?”

“Of course,” replied Mawrion. “It is a matter of time, as it always is.”

“Then how far do you think it’d set us back?”

“Half a cycle. A good half a cycle.”

Sinig nodded to the canyon-dweller counting money on his right side. “I can swallow that.”

I cleared my eyes, and licked my fangs, feeling an utterly hypocritical impatience riding up on me. “Are you going to help Mawla, or not?”

“I will, K, don’t bite me.” His other foreleg finally lurched from its resting position, both of them coming up in a defense posture. “After all, I promised I’d take care of her.”

Mawla gave him a smile. “You’re a good drake, Sinig. I like having you there for me.” Her voice dropped like she only wanted me to hear, but she was too naturally loud and the room was too intimate for that to work at all, at all. She was saying, “I don’t know how you manage it all the time, but I like it.”

“All about knowing the right dragons and making the right plays. That’s all it is, M.”

Then, for the first time, Sinig glanced at the wiver on his side of the room, Arall still clawing her fernscroll. “A, why don’t you take our friends to her unholiness. Should still be in her room.”

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

We slinked out Sinig’s alcove quick, Arall high walking like she didn’t care if we followed. Mawla was treading up in front of me, strutting right beside the big plain-dweller wiver. She was grinning, Mawla was.

“Say, Arall,” she started, “since you weren’t doing nothing useful up in that alcove, and since they got both crwth’s back for the first time in what, cycles, how about we go,”⁠ ⁠—⁠ she pointed at the moving throng before the musicians’ stage⁠ ⁠—⁠ “and dance like we used to?”

Arall was silent. She felt beside her the yellowbrown wiver start to poke her and poke her. She finally said, “No.” Then, “Idiot.”

She didn’t stop grinning. If anything it grew, in some way other than growing wider. “Fine by me! It’s not like I need you, obviously.” She slacked her stride just a bit, fell back to where I was. “What about you, Kinri? How about, after I get this leg and everything fixed, we try to dance a little.”

It sounded nice.

I glanced to the the big wiver, who hadn’t looked back. Instead she scanned the second flooring, pathing around the bustle of dragons.

I said, “Why am I the second dragon you ask?”

“I mean obviously I knew she’d say no. She always does. It’s a running joke at this point.”

Arall muttered, “I’m not laughing.”

We were halfway to the stairwall, we all kept walking.

Mawla was still talking. “Well? You didn’t answer.”

I could see the game she was playing. I could still be mad; I could feel used. Did she just want to dance with me, or was it for Arall?

I didn’t really want to, though. It sounded nice.

I said, “Sure.”

So we walked in smiling silence⁠ ⁠—⁠ two of us⁠ ⁠—⁠ through the sultry pink light of the Dadafodd. We made it to the stairwall. Mawla was the first to climb down, some expression of her unswayed desire to finally, at last, get that help we’d been searching for the whole while.

You’d have guess Arall would be next. I had. But instead the big wiver turned and looked at me, in a clearbrilled assessing way she’d never done in the Llygaid Crwydro.

“Never thought I’d see you around these parts.”

“I’d say the same, but...”

“It wouldn’t be true.”

“Yeah.”

Silence for a bit, we were still looking at each other. Interacting in a way⁠ ⁠—⁠ in an acknowledging way, in an equal way⁠ ⁠—⁠ for the first time.

It was long enough that Mawla called up to us. Asking if she’d have to come up and throw us downstairs.

Arall flicked her tongue one last time, and licked her brilles. And she finally said what she wanted.

“You don’t belong here, do you?”

She meant the Dadafodd. She didn’t just mean the Dadafodd.

* * *