“Begone, skyrat,” the forest-dweller said. “You are not welcome here.”

Arall was behind us, already walking out of the room, her toes releasing a door handle. She was muttering, “I keep telling her that, and she’s still here.” When released, that stone door paused, about to shut us inside, like a trap soon to snap closed.

At least I wouldn’t be trapped here alone; besides that forest-dweller⁠ ⁠—⁠ “her unholiness”⁠ ⁠—⁠ who right now was raining her ire down on me, there was Mawla, slinking around, half unseen.

We’d come to a resident’s room. And now, not six breaths inside, the plain-dweller wiver was⁠ ⁠—⁠ quietly, stealthily⁠ ⁠—⁠ plopping herself down on the bed. It was the bed of the forest-dweller. The bed of the forest-dweller who was still wearing that necklace of bones⁠ ⁠—⁠ the forest-dweller who had no less than seven knives strapped to her side, and had no less menace than poison with scales. It was the bed of the lady who was known as her unholiness.

Mawla had confidence.

Enough confidence that, as I scented the sweet, spicy venom wafting off her fangs, I decided to straighten my legs, uncoil my tail, and dared to look again into those cool gray eyes glaring.

I told her, “I have a name, and it’s a lot more dignified than ‘skyrat’.” My emphasis sounded definite, and not overcompensating.

“I, too, possess a name, and it is more dignified than aagh, it’s them! Much more dignified.”

She continued to glare⁠ ⁠—⁠ it must come natural to forest-dwellers⁠ ⁠—⁠ and once again I broke eye. Nervous frills were unfurling. Flaring wide. To show⁠ ⁠—⁠ confidence.

The Dadafodd must have thick walls⁠ ⁠—⁠ or at least this room did. Soundwise, it was an entire world apart. Gone were the crwths’ creeping melodies. Gone was the singing and chatter. Sometimes there was a thump⁠ ⁠—⁠ so I suppose if you strained your frills you could satisfy yourself with some flaw, some sound leakage, but...

I shook my head, and my frills waved. My frills, still unfurling, wanted to wilt the more they listened; this room was grim thoughtfulness itself. Stepping into it, the first thing you heard were the metronomes. Three of them, all beside each other, all at different speeds, all ticking away as polyrhythmic percussion. The biggest one, in the middle, had atop it a parrot, beak open, perched.

It had to be a dragontongued parrot⁠ ⁠—⁠ the doctor was forest-dweller, and the bird was the right size. When I first saw it, though, I had thought she kept an owl; the parrot was thicker than Staune, covered in black, and on its head there rose tufts of feathers like mighty horns.

The parrot had their head cocked, and they had affixed me with a sharp, indraconic gaze. Wide open was the beak, crooning the lowest note you ever heard out of a bird. More notes came, and it was a bassline descending chromatically, rough and sludgely, until it took a sudden tritone plunge like a final dark revelation. Then there was silence like slumber. The beak closed. A beat passed. The quarreling polyrhythms of the metronomes fell in synch for a single beat. Then opened again was the beak.

And over all of this there chimed a constant ostinato, whose source you had to glance around for; and moments later you saw it, sitting lonely on a shelf. There, in a corner, whirred a thing of gears and steam, metal arms chiming bells in a quick rhythm faultless. A machine rhythm.

But those bells were tuned to some strange forest key, and, between the unentraining polymeter, the uninviting bassline and the strangely-keyed chiming, this... ‘music’ only disquieted.

Shivering, I lost nerve and curled my frills up again. Brilles clearing, I looked again to her unholiness.

She was a doctor. The doctor⁠ ⁠—⁠ that’s what they called her when they weren’t joking. Her room smelt near-fatally of alcohol and acids⁠ ⁠—⁠ stuff that cleaned, yet stuff no one had bothered to scent palatably. Her black robes were crawling with needle holes and gold threads that lingered where Drachenzunge words had once been sown into the robes, but now were torn off. (I stared long enough to parse clan names, patients names, and philophagers. I stared long enough to know she was called Zelle and the parrot Knocha).

She was a doctor. But I had known doctors only as dragons of brightness and health. Those who erased aches, set broken bones, and told me I couldn’t eat ten kellua apples everyday (for the best, really).

But this dragon, she seemed more like a⁠ ⁠—⁠ mortician, really.

It made me kinda uneasy, trusting Mawla and her injuries to this forest-dweller, “her unholiness”. Why couldn’t the sifter have just swallowed my suggestion of Hinte?

Suddenly⁠ ⁠—⁠ to me, all thought-lost⁠ ⁠—⁠ Zelle jabbed out a foreleg, toe-rings glittering in the lamplight. The stone door behind me, before shut like a trap, now leapt open again, yanked by an unseen force. The foreleg hung there, rodstraight in the air. Zelle’s glare tightened. She was looking at me.

The background music stopped.

“Begone. I do not desire your presence in my quarters.”

“Why! I haven’t done anything at all. You have no reason not to want me here. I’m Mawla’s friend.” A frill⁠ ⁠—⁠ quickly⁠ ⁠—⁠ uncurled to point at that wiver.

Zelle’s gaze followed, and saw the plain-dweller sitting on her bed. “Get up,” she commanded her.

Mawla could have been shoved or yanked, that was how quickly she was on her feet. Shuffling to my side, she draped a wing over me, gave me a single tug closer, a demonstration. She said, “Kinri helped me get here at all. I think she’s fine to sit in here while you work.”

The doctor lowered her leg. She turned subtly, gaze falling to some shelved book. Speaking sidely, she said, “You do not determine that. Watch what you say, or I may simply refuse to service you.”

Slowly and gingerly⁠ ⁠—⁠ I almost didn’t feel it⁠ ⁠—⁠ Mawla pulled back to her side that draped wing. “Kinri,” she started. Then silent moments⁠ ⁠—⁠ she might’ve been thinking, I wasn’t looking.

My forefeet, clenching into fists, scraped the rock with high sharp sounds. I repeated myself, saying, “You have no reason not to want me here.”

If a scowl and a smirk could coexist, they had done so on her face. She said, “I have every reason to recoil from the presence of someone who consorts so freely with the Gären’s spawn.”

“Hinte⁠ ⁠—”

Zelle stamped her leg. “Hinte sits at the source and heart of all the theatrics of the day.” She spoke in the cadence of one who’d found the perfect argument. “Hinte is the student of Aurisiuf⁠ ⁠—⁠ of whom I need say no more. She is the daughter of Feuer⁠ ⁠—⁠ whose incessant warmongering fuels the forests’ self-immolation⁠ ⁠—⁠ and of Haune⁠ ⁠—⁠ whose fetishization of religion had resuscitated long-dead, better dead, dogmas.”

There was a pause for breath where the only movement was Knocha the parrot twisting to preen his feathers.

“And, spawning that Haune, there was Ushra⁠ ⁠—⁠ whose bibliography of horror led directly to the alchemical nightmare that is the war⁠ ⁠—⁠ and there was Gronte⁠ ⁠—⁠ whose treason against the old monarchy is what incited the war in the first place.”

Her look settled to only a scowl. “Cursed, cursed, cursed. Hers is a deeply cursed line, and she has every single indication of intending to walk that same sordid path.”

The foreleg lifted again, this time jabbing right at me. Pushing me back, just a bit, but that could’ve been my doing. Zelle concluded, “And your Hinte will drag you along with her.”

There was a certain truth that rang in her tenor, the sort of verity forged by some extreme of experience.

Zelle said, once more, “Begone, skyrat.”

And I was gone.

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

The Dadafodd sat protectingly over its underground chambers like a mother her clutch. All the guest rooms lay down here, the doctor’s room deepest of them all. I wondered why, before my body gave a telling shiver. A chill lingered down here in the deepest. Would be useful⁠ ⁠—⁠ for something.

Zelle’s words lay in my head, and had settled down for now. I wandered the dark, tight corridors. The diggers couldn’t have had any coordination at all when they carved out the lower floors. The little bit of the layout you could comprehend by just walking the halls drew, in my mind⁠ ⁠—⁠ instead of any sane geometrical layout⁠ ⁠—⁠ the blindly crawling cracks inflicted upon rock after the hammer came down. Some halls had seen more wear and erosion⁠ ⁠—⁠ implying some were older. So you imagined, whenever the Dadafodd needed to expand, the diggers simply brought the hammer down once more.

I wandered. I knew I wanted up⁠ ⁠—⁠ maybe out, too⁠ ⁠—⁠ but the precise path eluded. Just walking through any vaguely inclined hall, as I did, might be working. Or might not be.

Maybe I smelt them. Maybe I was on guard. Maybe I was just too tired to be scared.

Either way, a voice from the shadows spoke suddenly. They said, “You have no idea where you’re going, do you?”

I sighed. This soon after, I hadn’t forgotten the voice. “Ehnym, was it?”

I turned round. He wasn’t pressed slight to the wall or peering covertly from some crevice. He was standing there. The plain-dweller drake shuffled up the hall’s center, enshadowed only from being in the void where the light of two lamps reached for each other.

Tongue flicking, I asked, “Why are you sneaking around here?”

“I wasn’t. Sneaking is a waste of time. I followed until it was obvious you weren’t leading. You never noticed.”

“Of course I wasn’t leading! I didn’t even know there was anyone else.”

The drake rolled his head, exasperated like I misunderstood. With the tone of someone changing the subject, he said, “Chwithach was curious what you were doing in the Dadafodd. Said it was out of character, and wanted me to ask.”

I opened my mouth, but he preempted me.

“I told him your friend got attacked in the cliffs. I told him you walked her here to get seen by the witchdoctor. That sound about right?”

"...Yeah.” But how did you know that? I cleared my brilles fully, looked closely at the sharp-eyed, languid-tongued drake in rag-like clothes. Ehnym wasn’t returning the interest, his gaze wandering.

“Naturally. So the friend is being seen by her now. Now you’re wandering all listless and thoughtful. Zelle told you all about Hinte’s family, didn’t she?”

“How do you⁠ ⁠—”

“She’s telling the truth, Zelle is. But don’t listen to just her. Haune was merely a dreamer, she wasn’t aiming for something political. Ushra is any other alchemist⁠ ⁠—⁠ all of them’ve had their work twisted by the military. All of them. And Gronte? She had her reasons.”

Still shuffling, Ehnym was close enough I could see his face now. He’d delivered the words calm, almost recitingly. Now, though, a smirk played on his lipscales, and life inflected the tone. “Feuer, tho? He can burn alive. Don’t spare a doubt for him.”

I squeeze my expression. “Do you expect me to remember all that?”

The truth, though, was I could. It was more politics, more history. A future zenith had a mind for names and motives, of course she did. And a⁠ ⁠—⁠ once future zenith like me still had a mind for names and motives.

“Where are you going now?” He’d asked in that same topic changing tone, not sparing a syllable for my question.

“Out for some air. I⁠ ⁠—⁠ need to breathe.”

“Aren’t you?” A little wry flick of the tongue.

I sighed, and broke eye with the drake. A sidestep toward the wall, and I was suddenly sliding down to sit leaning against the cold stone. Tired of standing up, tired of walking.

Ehnym only need a moment’s glance before he was my mimic at the other wall.

So we sat there, watching each other, expectant. Ehnym flicked his tongue only from time to time, and lazily whirled the forks. He brilles stayed half clouded, and he watched me only peripherally. He had out a scroll out already, eyes in saccades down the page. He seemed to have a resting thoughtful face.

I was a small dragon. I had to look up to most everyone I met; my trunk had an embarrassing kind of length that left me hoping for one last bit of growth (until then, I wore thick-soled shoes, and sometimes, without trying, found myself standing on toetips). Moreover, my fore- and hindlegs were just strong enough to lift me (hardly a challenge, that), and I had never fought at all till I left sky.

And right now, I was alone in the dark underhall of the Dadafodd with a strange drake of unknown motive. It was not a comforting situation.

And yet.

Ehnym had Sinig’s lankiness without his muscle. He had legs and wings I could wrap a foot around. When a wormrat dodged fluidlike out of the shadows, he’d jumped.

Altogether, this was not a comforting situation. But it could have been scary.

I looked up, watched flickering lamplight play with the ceiling’s crags.

My thoughts turned over a few more times. Ehnym was still here. Still reading, and hadn’t said anything more.

I broke first.

“What do you want?”

“Fifty scrolls and a house somewhere quiet.”

I didn’t laugh. “Right now. Here. Why did you approach me? Why haven’t you left me alone?”

“Why not?”

“You have friends. So surely you have something better to do? With them? Not me?”

“You said you were going out. Surely you’ll do that? I appreciate the chance to rest my legs, but you seem to be waiting for something.”

I almost answered the implied question⁠ ⁠—⁠ but conversation didn’t flow with this drake. He made it... clipped.

I said, “You seem to know the underhalls better than I do. I was expecting you to lead me up.” I wasn’t, but the line had the right feel. An implied accusation.

“Should have said so.”

The plain-dweller drake stood. His scroll already was gone, and he started walking without a glance. But it wasn’t an effort to keep pace; Hinte he was not.

“After you get outside,” he started, “then what?” He didn’t look back to see my tilted head, but must’ve inferred it. “Your friend’s with the witchdoctor. That’s the reason you came out here, isn’t it? What are you doing now? Going home?”

I was going outside to figure that out in the first place. But before I said it, my mind lighted on that prior conversation, outside the tavern. I smiled or frowned, and said, “I’m going to find Hinte.”

What’s one more adventure today? And maybe this one can get a proper dramatic end. Chasing Hinte over the nighttime cliffs. Stopping her right before she reaches the humans. Convincing her to stop right as the suns rose, like a good story’s final confrontation.

(It was a flight of fancy, a proper daydream⁠ ⁠—⁠ I didn’t realize I was that tired, but I could outright see it, in mind. And yet, even in its thrall, a part of me noted how cleanly the daydream steered away from the hard parts: finding Hinte at all, convincing Hinte at all. Whether it was already too late at all.)

I was still in the Dadafodd. Ehnym had said something.

“Wha?”

“I just said ‘thought so.’” He repeated it with such a great sigh. Then, “Here.” A tail slipped into a bag, and held out a glinting metal form.

Red aluminum, like half a seashell. Recognition. It was the magic heirloom Chwithach’d bought, that carried sound. “I don’t⁠ ⁠—”

“Chwithach wanted you to have it, for now. I’ve no idea why, but perhaps there’s something to you.”

I took the metal shell, held it up to my earhole. I heard only the rushing of wind and the beating of wings.

Again, Ehnym hadn’t looked back, but must’ve just inferred. “He’s flying right now. Fleeing. Just keep an ear out in case he’s something to tell you.”

I darted forward, landing beside the greenishbrown drake. “Fleeing? Fleeing? Is Chwithach-sofran in danger?”

“No. No. He’s just leaving Gwymr/Frina at the advising of a friend. It’s for the best.”

As we walked, the inclines grew steeper till we at last came to the stairwall climbing up the Dadafodd proper.

“Here you are,” he told me. “But... one last thing.”

I looked tilted at him. “Well?”

“You’re going after Hinte. Alone? Perhaps I can accompany you.”

I stopped walking. I flew into that daydream once more, but this at, at the site of that sunrise confrontation, Ehnym was there with his wry smile, languid tongue, and clipped, quipped lines.

“No,” I said. “I don’t think I’ll be alone. And no thanks.”

“Why not?”

I gave him another once over. “You’d... no offense⁠ ⁠—⁠ well maybe some⁠ ⁠—⁠ but you’re dead weight. Your wings are like twigs! You’d slow me⁠ ⁠—⁠ us down.”

“Why would speed matter? Hinte is your friend. You think you’ll have to chase her? I think the actual trouble is finding her. I can help with that.”

“Why would you help?”

“It seems you’re meaningfully more interesting than I initially judged.” He tossed his head. “That, and having to give the transmitter to you is a waste of my ability to help. But if I accompany the person I give it to, then I remain able to help.”

I tossed my own head with a snort or growl, and leapt onto the stairwall. Starting up, I glanced back.

Ehnym had a brille slightly clouded, and wore a smile more sincere than wry. He sounded sincere. He said, “I want to help.”

And I don’t want you to.

Maybe another day I might’ve reached for a more kind, thinking part of me. But I’d done it so many times tonight that once more wasn’t anything.

In that airy Specter voice, I sneered, “Maybe you should wonder if you were ever able to help.”

* * *