Brightest Oleuni reigned high above, and was pursued by Enyswm. I climbed high above the hot air of the sifting town and again wandered the line to Hinte’s house. I didn’t rush, and relished the wind under my wings. Flight was luxuriating, and⁠ ⁠—⁠ while it was completely cloying to say⁠ ⁠—⁠ it lifted me after a morning in the Llygaid Crwydro.

From the sound of it, you wouldn’t think I was moving quick, but I still made it to the house before the fourth short ring chimed. Coming down on the white wooden estate, you saw two little dots walking away, one cloaked black and another near-gleaming warm gray. I touched down lightly behind them and slinked forth with small steps and short strides.

“Greetings, Kinri,” came the wiver’s voice. Hinte didn’t even turn.

Digrif, at least, had the decency to be surprised: he turned left, right, then up and down before he finally caught me behind him. He startled like that, wings flaring out and near-gasping, “Gah! Kinri!” as some kind of greeting.

Clicking my tongue, and sidling up beside the drake on the other side of the humorless wiver, I jabbed him with a alula. “Hi Digrif, and hi Hinte,” I said, and smiled at Digrif. When I glanced at Hinte, though, it faltered. Which story do you think Gwymr/Frina would rather hear?

Hinte stood there in her dark cloak threaded with blue and pink, while Digrif wore plain white clothes. His clothes were in that mountain style, split into an upper shirt and lower ‘pants.’

I was still my Specter cloak, and naturally I looked better than either of them.

“I trust your winds were fair?” Hinte asked, and she started forward as she does, spurring us on behind her.

I looked up, feeling the wind on my face, and said, “Well, I did get some strange customers today.”

Digrif said, “Oh?” at the same time in front the wiver said, “Strange how?”

I flicked my tongue and caught a rotten stench. I grimaced and started, “There was this odd dragon in a cloak and an accent I’ve never heard before. They knew about crysts and had a weird device for muting them.” I glanced at Digrif. “And they’re apparently a mage too.”

The words were the kindling to light a reaction⁠ ⁠—⁠ Hinte’s was freezing midstride, but her face was hidden; Digrif’s was jumping slightly, and his face was drawn in fear and curiosity.

I smiled at Digrif, and I added, “But he seemed okay, if a little weird. The librarian knows him.” My gaze craned higher, away the rotten stench, and I was thinking with my tongue, “I wonder what color their scales are? All I saw were golden eyes, and they’re obviously not local…” Could they be another exiled sky-dweller, like me? The Constellation was big and I couldn’t have heard every aloft accent.

When I looked, Hinte had slowed and looked down, glancing at the big giant ferns dotting the roadside. Following her gaze, she was peering at some claw-sized ash-ants devouring a poor skink. Five of its legs were already bone. So that was the stench.

Digrif asked, “Why do interesting things always happen around you two? And I’m never there for any of it.” His tone had the air of a private grievance.

“You should be sweet that you weren’t there. Today is the worst day to work at any shop that isn’t the east market. A whole day of almost nothing!”

“Oh.” Digrif’s frills fall a bit. “But didn’t you say you had more than one weird customer?”

“Well um, not quite. The miser” — Hinte glanced back — “was the only really weird customer I had, but there was that sifter from last night, Mawla and she tried to thank me for Adwyn meddling with the sifting teams.” Hinte tossed her head, muttering something that probably didn’t matter.

Digrif lowered his head and turned to look in front of us again. We’d reached the canal by now, where two robed cliff-dwellers marched a stinky caterpillar cow toward the bridge. After Digrif pointed it out, we hurried across the bridge, me complaining of sore legs and Hinte saying, “Apterous rockwraiths,” under her cowl, but with enough force I could hear her.

“Oh! But I did meet one other interesting character,” I said, looking up and around⁠ ⁠—⁠ everywhere except to the road beneath us “There was this one mud-dweller who⁠ ⁠—”

Hinte coughed, mumbling, “plain-dweller.”

I tilted my head, and say “Huh?”

“They prefer to be called plain-dwellers, not mud-dwellers.”

“I thought all Gwymri were cliff-dwellers,” Digrif said, in an accent that mangled the town name. He said ‘gwee-mer-ee.’

“Gwymr/Frina,” Hinte said, enunciating the proper ‘gwuhmr vree-na.’ (How was her pronunciation so much better than mine?), “is a mix of plain-dwellers, cliff-dwellers and canyon-dwellers. It is why the natives here are a mix of browns, reds and oranges.”

Digrif’s head tilted. “But, we’re in the cliffs, dwelling in the cliffs. Wouldn’t that make us all cliff-dwellers?”

“No.”

My voice was a whine, that affected whine. “I was just being descriptive…”

“You can continue with your story,” Hinte said, giving the rotting skink one last look.

“Okay, well. So there was this odd mu — plain-dweller dressed in silky robes. He has this odd accent. It reminded me a bit of some of the older houses in Tädet/Pimeys.”

“Is it odd hearing something so refined down in the mud?” Hinte muttered.

“Yes. I mean, no! It is just… not something I expected.”

The black-cloaked wiver turned away and Digrif winced, lifting his wings.

I groaned and just tried to continue, “Well, they were just sort of there, waiting for me. They asked a few questions, and left.”

Hinte turned back to me, a glare forming. She tilted her head and asked, “What questions?”

“Just who I was, where I lived and hmm…” I said, and trailed off. “They also asked about you, your sifting and the crysts we were looking for.”

“And you just told them?” Hinte asked, voice rising.

“Sorry, I guess? But what was I supposed to do! He seemed nice enough. I didn’t see the harm in it.”

“Kinri.” The dark-green wiver glanced back at her house. “Did you not hear a word of my grandfather’s concerns? There is a group in this town conspiring with the apes. You may as well have gift-wrapped that information for the enemy. Tongueless idiot!”

“Assuming such a conspiracy exists! Rhyfel and Citrus — Adwyn don’t seem very convinced.”

Hinte started to say something, but Digrif tilted his head at me, breaking her view for a moment. He said, “Citrus-Adwyn?”

My frills folded. “Uh-ha, that. It’s what Staune called him, Citrusface. It’s fitting.”

Digrif hissed a laugh. “And now I’m going to be thinking of oranges the next time I see the highest Dyfnderi adviser.”

Hinte cleared her throat. “Do you think this dragon just tracked you down and waited for you out of pure sweet-fanged curiosity?”

“Why not? You saw the papers this morning. Both of our names were in them.”

Digrif scratched his neck. “Were you in it, Kinri? I don’t remember seeing your name.”

I couldn’t help the cringe that rippled across my features at that, so I looked up. “I was in the Gwymri Times. The Cyfrin Report just called me an acquaintance of Gronte-wyre Gären.” Hinte gave a low hiss at that.

“Ooh, okay. So in others words you think they just wanted to meet the names of the day?”

“Names?” I emphasized the plural.

“Yes.” Hinte growled, “that conspirator met us not too long after you left. I was back in the workshop with Opa, so Digrif and Gronte met with them first. As it seemed he wouldn’t leave, was when I came out to run them off.”

I looked up. Above me, pterosaurs and dragons flew about. The sight made my wings twitch; but I glanced back at Hinte’s wings⁠ ⁠—⁠ covered by her cloak, but beneath that, they were bandaged. That was my fault, my useless cowardice. I slipped farther behind Hinte as we walked.

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

A short ring later, we crossed the canal, climbed a cliff-face and crept toward the lake. It gave us some privacy and something close to a sense of moving fast enough⁠ ⁠—⁠ if only to me.

We also chatted along the way, Hinte most of all, and it helped distract from the tortoise’s pace that we kept. But it soured for me the more the conversation leant toward my conversation with Dieithr, and, just once, Hinte’d brought up me running off on my own in the lake when the conversation strayed back to last night. I’d growled and stomped in front of them, putting the dark-green wiver all out of my sight, and I’d still walked a little in front since then.

Below us, along the ravine that rode into the Berwem, the bulging stalls and tents of the east market crawled into sight from behind the cliffs, and, standing at the very edge of the market, a stone gate towered.

The Berwem gate, framed with the abundant bronze and aluminum sifted from the volcanic lake itself or dug up in the pits, sat wedged mid the ravine that wound directly into that lake. Several guards, garbed in Gwymri red and yellow, stood before that gate. From up here, they looked like little geckos.

The stalls and tents filled the clearing from last night, and edged away all of the desolation the night had hinted at. Instead, with the wafting scents of food and the low rumble of hundreds of conversations, it seemed cheerful, or at least calmly collected.

I glanced above, along the jagged clifftops that leant toward the lake, and there were the tortoise-mounted guards doing guard stuff all along the clifftops. Adwyn’s words, the restrictions on entering the Berwem, seemed to echo then, and I made to leap down into the market, my wings already flexing.

Someone — Hinte — yanked my tail. I was halted in the air, and floundered for one tense breath before scrambling for my feet and some balance against the cliffwall. My fangs were cloying and I sputtered awhile before spitting out a coherent objection:

“Eww, eww! What the heck, Hinte?”

She only tilted her head.

“You just touched⁠ ⁠—⁠ yanked my tail! You do not just do that!”

I climbed to my old spot on the cliff, and glared hard at Hinte all the while. She just gave me a nonplussed look, eyes cleared and tongue flickering.

“What? Is this more sky-dweller residua?” she said after a short moment. “It is just another limb. I do not taste what the problem is.”

“Gah!” was all I said and stomped away again.

You heard Hinte’s footsteps approach and smelt her scent getting closer.

“What,” I started before she said anything, “did you want, Hinte?”

“You cannot just fly down into the market.” She had a dark-green alula pointed at the market below us. “They have a net above it. It’s cheap cotton, but still a net. We have to go through one of the main entrances.”

“Why?”

“The guards keep an eye on everyone that goes in and out of public spaces like this. Especially here, given how many valuables are on display.”

I snapped my tongue. “So we have to trudge through the market to get to the lake?”

The black-cloaked wiver didn’t answer, instead starting down the cliff-face herself. I followed her with another snap of my tongue and a making an exaggerated expression, fangs unfolded and frills writhing, that drew a laugh from Digrif. Together, he and I stepped off the cliff.

I walked down the cliff wall head-first while Hinte climbed down backward, her body pointing up but her head looking down, the goggles around her neck bouncing. Digrif, on the other foot, jumped down toward the ground, at least to start, beginning at the most solid, most easily gripped outcroppings of rock and leaping to another and another. Then he missed and skidded down the face and hit smack the bottom.

I waited until I had asked, “Are you alright?” before I laughed. Hinte just tossed her head and kept working her way down, cloak billowing around her. I was halfway, and she was only a third down.

Lines of dragons waited in front of the market — three of them. They weren’t slow lines, it turned out; it was the sheer volume of dragons entering and exiting that created the line. It was enough that you heard that murmur of crowds rising like smoke.

Almost a dozen guards stood up front, watching everyone that entered. I peered, brilles clear and tongue waving. There were three guard groups here, one for each line, and every once in a while they would stop someone⁠ ⁠—⁠ maybe they had a visible weapon, or a suspicious face, or sometimes nothing obvious to me⁠ ⁠— and while they didn’t, dragons slinked inside in almost fourfold bursts. As I watched, the guards rotated out, one at a time. This interrupted the rhythm, but it was tight, considering everything.

A long ring chimed and shook the crowd below us. We only sped up our climbing just a hitch. After we all got to the ground⁠ ⁠—⁠ me having helped Digrif up and then together waiting together for Hinte inching down⁠ ⁠—⁠ and as we slinked toward a line, some tall black-clad dragon strode up to us.

They wore a wary half-smile and unmistakable eye-paint. This was Adwyn, for all that the black schizon helmet he wore hid it.

He had ditched his red dress from earlier for this utilitarian, almost military garb similar to Rhyfel’s armor from last night, with black bamboo plates sown in and black cloth covering the whole of his stocky legs, tail, and neck. There were no glyphs inscribed on the plates, though, and it didn’t look custom-made like Rhyfel’s, but it did look good.

“You are late,” he said, in an almost unnoticeable lilt. Now some seriousness like a mist was arising in his tone, now.

“Late!” I said. “You said to meet you at seventh ring.” I never lost count of rings, but I didn’t even need frills to know the seventh rung just breaths ago.

Adwyn’s smile faltered, and I almost believed it. “Oh? Are you that reluctant to join me?”

My fangs vitrified. Was this a ploy? Unbalance me with his proposal, give me a day to stew and demand a response when I couldn’t avoid it?

“We had to walk all the way here, Sofrani,” Digrif said, the only one who had thought to bow to the highest Dyfnderi adviser. Or was the only one forgot not to bother. “It was slow.” I glanced at Hinte, and the wiver mercifully didn’t react. Unless those scores in the gravel by her feet hadn’t been there before.

“Ah, but one never knows what will go wrong; earliness is humility. And you fledge no eagerness to get started, do you? But it isn’t every day that you get to stop a war with a Dyfnderi veteran⁠ ⁠—⁠ or if it is, you lead much more interesting lives than I know of. I expected you all to jump at the opportunity.”

There was something about the way his tone danced and wavered. He was acting —⁠ that much was obvious⁠ ⁠—⁠ but what was underneath it? Why harp on this point and not just get the job done?

I shot in the dark. “A veteran.” I let wonder light my tone. “What are you a veteran of?”

Adwyn smiled again. “Plenty. Dyfnder/Geunant is protectorate, and our name isn’t just a title, unlike some countries. There is no end of threats to some orbiting stronghold, or militant insurrection menacing our freedom. More impressively, I served in the skirmishes against the spiders in the caves far up north of the canyons, and grounded the Ragan Mountain back when the Constellation was still making trouble.” He flared his frills and licked the wistfulness from his tone. “Of course, what I do anymore isn’t the same kind of interesting.”

The affected wonder dropped with a snap. “Are you talking about the Raga rebellion? That mountain was rogue! They defected from the Concordat of Stars! We⁠ ⁠—⁠ the Constellation has been peaceful for hundreds of gyras!”

“Hmm. Is it not funny, then, how consistently the sky gets these so-called rogues? Or how sky never deals with these defectors on their own?”

“We — they are stretched thin! The Constellation is five times larger and twelve times sparser than any land nation. By the time they knew of Raganari’s betrayal, her mountain had already been grounded. There was nothing we could do.”

It was true. The Severance of Earth and Sky promised that no sky-dweller would land on surface-dweller land, and no surface-dweller could enter the skycities.

Exiled sky-dwellers — like me — were exempt from the Severance, forced to tromp around in the mud. We were never allowed to return to the sky. Ever. This many great dances after the Severance was signed, exile had waned to something of an archaic, cruel punishment. Some cities still used it, even overused it, but Tädet/Pimeys wasn’t one of them. I was exiled on request.

When Hinte’s voice reached us, she had already begun stalking toward the gate, and the market. “It does not matter.”

“Ah yes, Gronte-wyre sees the idea. Let us set off,” Adwyn said.

This time, Hinte turned back to say, “Do not call me Gronte-wyre. I am Hinte.”

Adwyn gave a small bow, motioning his alulae out. Some Dyfnderi curtsy? When he rose, he was smirking at me. Why? I had nothing to do with that.

“If I may take the lead, Hinte?”

She only grunted, and Adwyn high-walked to the front of us. I nudged him when he passed, Chwithach’s fernpaper note fell to his grasp. The adviser gave a motion of his head that could be read as a nod, and was smiling.

We were led to where he’d appeared from. There, we found a yellowish pumice cart covered by a bland tarp. The pumice looked sanded down, but the stone’s surface still swarmed with holes, like someone in the last stages of a blood lice infection. I shivered. I’d had little brother, once, and we hadn’t even realized until his scales were pockmarked with holes and crawling with wriggling, blood-fattened insects.

A few guards stood around it, vaguely enough that it didn’t become clear they were watching until Adwyn motioned them away.

Under the tarp, the ape corpses looked only bumps in the bland beige. Adwyn took the reins of the cart himself, rolling it behind him.

He said, “We aren’t in any kind of a hurry. Ushra was right, at least, about how time is more of suggestion for this mission.” He looked back. “Do any of you regularly go to the east market?”

I lowered my head, and said, “I’ve never been.” Crowds made my scales peel — I got too many stares whenever I went out.

“Yes,” said Hinte.

“No,” said Digrif.

Adwyn smiled at that, and I had to work to see the draftiness hidden underneath. “Ah, let us shop, then. We can prepare for the journey into the cliffs. I love this market⁠ ⁠—⁠ it is where I bought this armor, see.” He wiggled a bit, showing off.

Hinte stepped toward him, examining the material, eyes clear but lips frowning.

“It is schizon?” she asked. “I don’t know many weavemasters who work with this outside of the forests.”

“Indeed. But we have Saumsanra here, some a traveler who once took up residence in Cyfrin ac Dwylla in the early days. He’s in Anterth anymore, gray season and all, but still trades with us quite a bit.”

Hinte’s head jerked up in the way she would when I spotted a cryst in the lake, or that one time I found a rainbow slug in a flowerpot. “The Saumsanra? My Oma speaks of him as if he were dead.”

“Of course, who else? He has enough students at this point, and we have no shortage of competent weavemasters, only lacking the forests’ abundance of schizal roots. So schizon cloth is a luxury⁠ ⁠—⁠ for now.” Adwyn gave Hinte a look. It might have been the look he had when he gave me his speech to me, but my angle wasn’t very good.

Instead of waiting in line Adwyn walked right up to where the guards watched the crowds. The schizon-clad adviser withdrew a silver-green coin from a pouch. He showed it to the guard. Their frills expanded, and the guards that weren’t occupied with the crowds lowered their heads in curt bows.

The lead guard said, “Sofrani Adwyn,” and stepped aside, allowing him to pass. Before he did, the orange drake waved his wing over the three of us. We followed, me smiling at the guards whose expressions of indifference had turned to courteous regard⁠ ⁠—⁠ except for one familiar muddy red face that didn’t look anywhere near us.

There was a short pink-scaled guard that broke away and scurried up to us. They had a big grin that didn’t sizzle at the heat of Adwyn’s vexed scowled.

“Hi? Who are you?” I asked the pink-scaled guard in sown-together rags.

* * *