“The bodies need to be guarded,” the pink-scaled guard was saying to Adwyn, “don’t they? You’re plenty big and strong sure, but I can watch your back.”

Didn’t they hear me? “Who are you?” I asked again, a bit higher. I stood somewhere behind Adwyn, beside Digrif, but I knew they could hear me.

The short, mouse-like dragon at last glanced over, frowned, and tossed me a, “Ceian,” before turning back to the schizon-clad adviser.

Hinte stood beside the orange drake. “Do we need a little fledgling slowing us down?”

The guard glanced at her, and his frills popped open and there may have been a gasp or mutter. “You’re the alchemist’s spawn!” they said, and stepped back.

The wiver declined her head so that the shade ate her face, and at her neck the amber goggles were regent eyes. “My name is Hinte.”

You saw a pink head tilt. “Why do you have a name like that?” They had the look and stance of some traveler guarding against a strange wraith that wanted tea and dancing.

The fledgling alchemist said, “Because my mother — why do you care?”

By now I was stomping up beside Hinte, saying, “Will no one tell me who this weird little guard is?”

The guard turned a narrowed-brow gaze to me a breath before they laughed, and Adwyn only sighed.

“Some orphan drake Mlaen’s fond to, whom Rhyfel also has taken a shine for. Quite the graspingly ambitious sort, which looks impressive from a distance as much as it does nothing to endear him to me.”

Ceian scoffed with his tail flicking and a forefoot smacking the gravel. “And you’re the sort who thinks he can bundle up a dragon in a few breaths, Sofrani.”

The adviser only smirked.

“Chance you could deign to inflict the same on this⁠ ⁠—⁠ colorful cast here? Never seen these jokes.”

The orange drake looked back at my night-blue face, at the warm-gray drake behind me, and at the dark-green wiver beside me. He sighed and plainly he spoke:

“Back there is Digrif, an orphan without your luck. He works harder than he acts. Beside me is Hinte. Ushra’s daughter. A wiver raised by money and the absence of limitations. And the other one is Kinri. She’s a sky-dweller if you omit everything that make sky-dwellers noteworthy.” He paused. “Which is a compliment.”

Hinte looked at the orange drake, but shade still had her face; meanwhile, Digrif, with sweet-tinged fangs, was back there softly kicking bits of gravel. I didn’t react: if I didn’t act like a sky-dweller, it was all a part of the act.

Over there Ceian was nodding vaguely at Digrif, but he settled on Hinte and said, “She doesn’t look bloated, or dress bloated. I’d even hazard she doesn’t act that bloated neither. Too jagged.” His tone wavered between unease and nothing in particular.

“She lives in Gwymr/Frina,” said the adviser with a laugh. “That sees something of a damper on that sort of thing.”

Ceian flicked his tongue, brows narrow, but I saw him stop it and pull it into his mouth.

Brightly he said, “So Sofrani! We decided you needed someone to guard the cart with you, right? And as you can see:”⁠ ⁠—⁠ the pink drake waved at the guards letting the crowd into the east market, like a strainer; where Ceian had stood among them someone had ran to fill his place, and now glared at the drake, who was continuing⁠ ⁠—⁠ “my spot has been filled.”

Adwyn tossed his head and said, blankly, “You have raised a gray point.” A forefoot had been lifted and tapped his horned chin. He nodded once.

“No,” Hinte said. “We will be slow enough as it is. We do not need another drag.”

“He’s nice, though.” Digrif slipped up beside me, looking at the wiver. “He’d make sharp company.”

“Maybe, maybe not.” I shook my head at the warm-gray dragon. “This is a serious mission, Digrif. You can’t just bring someone along because they seem nice.”

Hinte gave me a look.

“What?”

Adwyn said to Ceian, “It’s a gray point, but I am entertaining my own solutions.” He turned, regarding us and our little brewing argument. “And alas, you’ve stirred a certain discord we could do without. It’s nothing against you, you must see. It’s only Hinte is awful when she doesn’t get her way.”

With a starfallen pink drake behind us, with Hinte scowling and Digrif frowning, with Adwyn lugging the weight of the holey pumice cart on, and with waxing unease curling onto my fangs, we marched forth wordlessly. I could look at the silly side of things, find something to cheer someone up.

I glanced at Hinte, and shook my head. I was walking behind everyone now, Digrif between me and Hinte or Adwyn.

We entered the market proper like that.

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The first thing you saw in the market was food, our food.

This was the start of the gray season, and now almost all of the foods on sale had grown here, been prepared here, without owing more than their names to something outside the cliffs. After all, no merchant would trudge through the Berwem, through dust clouds and eruptions, just to sell in the land of glass and secrets. To Anterth/Gwirion? Maybe. To Dyfnder/Geunant? Of course. But to Gwymr/Frina? The only dragons who would care to were the mountain-dwellers, and they had better things to sell than crops or livestock.

In a word, Gwymr/Frina was obscure — and because of that, I’d decided to settle here instead of the skip mountains or the hovering shores. Most exiled sky-dwellers ended up in either of those, and I knew why. I loved the Constellation’s open skies, its immense heights, and everything. I just couldn’t live where I would be reminded of them everyday. Nothing could compare to the sky, so I decided it would be better to forget about it, if it came to that.

So I had fallen to the cliffs. Yes, my brother had suggested it, but I decided it.

Rubbing the singed scales around my headband, I glanced at the stalls around me; they were simple things, easy to build and tear down, and, being made of rough paper drapped over bamboo rods, they sat somewhere between flimsy and not. They weren’t ugly; but I didn’t look at them, either.

Each stall around us wafted some delicious aroma. Gwymr/Frina’s clifftop outskirts were dotted with small farms; and there they raised cliff goats, gigantic land snails, fourteen-legged caterpillar cows, Hägre hogs and tidbit chickens. And dillers and turts, too, but you shouldn’t eat those. Here, meat from those animals scented the air with a lure restrained only by their price tag.

And one stall, it sold fish! I waved my tongue, yet before I could slink after it, Hinte’d broken away herself and slinked over to that stall selling Hägre hog pork. Before I’d even unclouded my eyes she’d bought a whole roast. Being from a smaller kind of hog, about knee-high and half as long as a dragon, it sat clumsy and tottering in Hinte’s cloaked wings. She tried to place it in her bag, but it wouldn’t fit.

She kept trying, so I giggled, stepped over, and said, “Just put it on the cart, Hinte⁠ ⁠—⁠ is too big,” I said, waving over to where Adwyn carried the cart.

Rust-orange eyes peered at me from under her hood. She flicked her tongue once, but took my advice. She placed the roasted hog on the cart, away from the tarp-covered bodies.

Hinte broke off two of the hog’s six legs and offered one to me. I took it with a murmured thanks, even as I turned away to bite into it. It was polite, but Hinte didn’t really have a sense of those things. I took another bite and tasted again the crisp, almost-sweet flavor of roasted Hägre hog.

“Hey!” Digrif said. “What about me?”

Hinte hissed. I prodded her with a wing (or rather, tried to prod her, failed, tried again, failed again, then finally turned around to aim true). With Hinte’s attention I nodded at her. She snapped her tongue at me, but relented. Returning to the cart, she broke a third leg off and passed it to Digrif. I looked at Adwyn, tilting my head and raising the hog leg in my foot.

He shook his head. “I am not hungry,” he said.

“And I would not have given one to you if you were,” Hinte said between bites.

I gaped at her, but Adwyn laughed. Shaking my head, I settled into step behind everyone else again.

We walked on for a bit, roaming the stalls and crowds. I’d seen larger crowds before, at House parties or Constellation assemblies, but none in Gwymr/Frina. It didn’t take twenty steps to remind me why I avoided them; scattered gazes all around lingered or stared, some almost glaring. I kept my head down, and tried not to scratch at my scales⁠ ⁠—⁠ they felt like they were molting.

At one point, Adwyn stopped suddenly, saying, “Allow me to find somewhere to hide this cart. I won’t be lugging it around.”

The orange dragon turned and strode toward one of the cliff walls. Digrif and I trailed after him, but he brandished a wing at us. “Go. I am not your minder, and this diversion is as much for your own benefit as mine.”

I flattened my wings and stepped away at once.

Foots sounded, and I glanced at the warm gray dragon coming up at my side. “Hi, Digrif,” I said.

“Huh? Hey Kinri.”

Looking away again, fangs damp, I found Hinte a ways behind us. When did she get there? Then I moved my gaze to her wings – she’d doubled back to wrench her roast from Adwyn’s cart. Roast in wing, she was low-walking away. With another prodding glance to Digrif I shot up and half-glided, half-flew to Hinte. I planted down beside her first — no question of that — but Digrif wasn’t more than a few breath cycles behind me.

Together again, I walked between the two friends. I brushed my wings against them as we waked, but that only pulled brief, puzzled glances from each of them, so I sighed and looked around at the crowd, then back at Hinte, then around again.

Surrounded by the gazes of strangers, I curled tighter in on myself. No one noticed.

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The crowd writhed and spilt over itself. Like pillars in the chaotic mass, wherever we looked there were guards in high-stands or high-walks, each one looking purposeful even if I only saw them stop and question a plain-dweller twice. The crowd flowed around them; for some⁠ ⁠—⁠ often cliff-dwellers, often clad in halfrobes⁠ ⁠—⁠ it was because they stopped and inclined their heads in respect, and for others⁠ ⁠—⁠ often plain-dwellers, often clad in ashcloaks⁠ ⁠—⁠ it was because they stopped and slinked around the guard, disappearing into the crowd.

Rising even more pillar-like, even more purposeful, some guards prowled around on crunching red tortoises, their shells painted in blaring golds. Where the crowd flowed around the guards, it parted around the turt-mounted guards.

One of those guards walked by us just now, and the parting of the crowd let me glance at the stalls around us. Here, weaponry and armor lined the counters and crates. There was even a stall with two suits like the one Adwyn wore⁠ ⁠—⁠ each with its own unique touch, of course. I glanced at the signs below and⁠ ⁠— woah, that was expensive.

I asked Hinte, “How much would a suit like that cost back in the forests?” She had been staring at me⁠ ⁠—⁠ waiting for me to stop looking and start moving again? I took a step forward.

Most of Hinte’s face was shadowed in her hood, but you knew Hinte wrinkled her snout at me. “Anywhere from a only quarter to only half of that. The forests are big. Not everyone is sitting on a field of schizal roots, Kinri-gyfar.”

“Hey,” Digrif butted in, “are those schizal roots anything like the dinder roots they build their houses with back in the mountains?” He was smiling at Hinte.

“You cannot build houses out of schizon, Digrif,” Hinte said, slow, and Digrif cringed a bit.

“How do you even build a house out of roots?”

Digrif twisted his head, and the cringe turned to a smile. “Dinder trees get big! Real big⁠ ⁠—⁠ and they have to regrow themselves⁠ ⁠—⁠ the blastwinds in hurricane season usually sever their crowns⁠ ⁠—⁠ sometimes even their trunks!”

“Huh,” I said. I lifted the tip of my wing to my chin. “You know a lot about their trees…”

“Yep! I’ve harvested the roots with my dad — I even built some houses with him before we came back to Gwymr/Frina.” His frills fluttered, and honey pride scented the air.

The crowd beside us cleared again for a heartbeat, and I glanced among the stalls they’d blocked. One, with a fernpaper covering painted colorful and jaunty, was a jeweler’s stall⁠ ⁠—⁠ the sign above it read, ‘Glyster’s Gyms.’

Hinte had already walked away from us, standing in front of that stall, tearing off pieces of her roast for the stallowner and chatting with smiles and fluttering frills. Her hood was down just a bit, but a wing by her snout hid her scales and gave her conversation a secretive edge.

Digrif and I were padding closer.

“—⁠ Glyster. How have you been? Are you ready for the ash?”

“Of course, I’m ready, darling.” Glyster’s voice was a saccharine hiss, and seemed to click her tongue once with each pause for breath, giving her words a giggly undertone. “You know mining always picks up when the lake grows so savage. And more mining means more gems. I’m excited!”

Glyster paused to brush a jingling frill with her gleaming scaled foreleg. The frill looked weighed down with the number of piercings it had, and half of them had gemstones embedded. “And you? I can’t imagine you’ll have all that much to do with the lake in the throes of the gray season.”

“I am worried about things other than ash and sifting, right now.” Hinte twisted her frills. “And you forgot one of my questions. How are you?”

“Oh, a notch disappointed.” Glyster lowered her head, holding it in her forelegs. “Aurisiuf usually brings me fresh crysts this day of the cycle. Have you seen him at all, at all?”

Hinte glanced back at me, then at Digrif, and said, “No, I have not.”

“Oh well.” Glyster lifted her head again, mending her smile. “Now say, do you…”

I glanced away from Hinte’s conversation and spun my gaze over the crowd. It felt like every second face I saw was staring at me. Not always long, but gazes lingered in a way that made me so very aware of how out of place I was on the surface.

I needed a break from this. I turned away from Hinte and her conversation with Glyster and started away. I glanced back for Digrif, and saw Glyster beckoning him over. I sighed, and walked off.

I’d step away, get things in order. No one would notice, anyway.

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A short ring passed. I finished a small errand I wanted to run, acquired a scroll I’d was searching for, an astronomical table. I flipped through it⁠ ⁠— in an alleyway. Nothing else of note happened. I made to return to Hinte and Digrif.

* * *