“The bodies are gone?” I said with a snap of my tongue. “Where did they go?”

Adwyn was still prodding the tarp in front of us, and still speaking, thinking aloud, “These are sandbags, decoys.”

The orange drake, face hidden behind a dust mask, turned from the cart. When he did, every careless scale had been shed. This Adwyn, I could imagine, was the last thing Raganari had seen before her end. “We have been robbed,” he said.

I looked around, to Digrif and to Hinte, frowning confusion. A moment passed, and my brilles flashed clear. We’d been robbed! I looked up, the confusion cracking and hatching a quintet of questions. How? When? Who? Where? Why?

Hinte only growled wordlessly; while, with excitement befitting any other situation Digrif said, “Brigands!”

I glanced at the warm-gray drake, and then at the dark-green wiver trying to maim him with just the curl of her lips. I started to opened my mouth, but a deep growl beat me speaking.

Adwyn, brushing off Digrif’s excitement, spoke in a voice like stones rolling down a mountain. “This is enemy action. From now until this is resolved, you three will follow all my orders when I give them. This is serious.”

I tilted my head. “What? Why do you think it has to be enemies? Why not just normal thieves?”

Adwyn pointed at the cart. “I’d say ordinary thieves are less likely to bother with such a boring, out-of-the-way cart, in a market like this. And then, upon discovering this cart held human corpses⁠ ⁠—⁠ rather than anything valuable⁠ ⁠—⁠ they make to steal them anyway. And finally, after it is all done, they carefully replace the bodies with sandbags before fleeing the scene. Rhyfel and I deal with enough reports from the prefects to know no thief in Gwmr/Frina operates like this.”

After that, he reeled on me. All of the calculating warmth from earlier was gone, replaced with unadorned suspicion. Once his eyes had interrogated my face, the military adviser spoke, voice venomous.

“It was you.” His tone was half-assertion, half-question.

“I⁠ ⁠—⁠ What! No, I had nothing at all to do with this! At all!” My frills flared and my wings unfurled before I folded them back up.

“Of the six dragons privy to the details of our plans, only the three of you are aware that we brought the bodies here to the market: I trust you the least, and you are the only one here with time unaccounted for.”

I opened my mouth, and closed it. I didn’t do it. Why couldn’t he see that?

I broke from Adwyn’s gaze to look at my friends. Hinte’s features were conflicted, fighting between disbelief and betrayal… betrayal won out, leaving a glare more intense than any I had seen her with before. Digrif was beside her, open-mouth in shock, but he looked to me with measured hope.

Looking back at Adwyn, I spoke slow, saying, “Time unaccounted for?”

“Digrif tells me while I hid the cart, you slipped away from the two of them and returned a ring later. What did you do during this time?”

I bared my fangs, spicy indignance burning on them. “I went to buy some scrolls while Hinte was busy chatting with that weird gemstone wiver,” I said, pointing at my glaring friend. While she was talking with that wiver about crysts or whatever, I’d wandered off to find a book stall, that’s all. All I wanted was up-to-date astronomical tables. Hinte would have been busy awhile.

My tail slipped into my bag and found that slim scroll⁠ ⁠—⁠ and the letter. I pushed the second deeper in my bag, I wouldn’t think of it right now. I had just been relaxing in the shadow of some alleyway, my mind caressing the figures in the book⁠ ⁠—⁠ and then they’d come. I didn’t want to think of about how the plan might be changing. Everything was already wuthering out of control.

“Which stall?” Adwyn moved his head forward.

I told Adwyn the name of the stall I bought my book at, something bland and boring they have such an unlucky name?“

Adwyn kept peering at the dark-green wiver, but he flicked his tongue at Digrif’s words. “Aurisiuf, hm.” The adviser pronounced the name in slow, deliberate syllables. As if it were a name read and not spoken.

“Nobody.” Hinte was looking at the clouds drifting high above us.

The orange drake shook his head. “Which stall, Hinte-ychy?” Adwyn hadn’t looked away from Hinte. His voice had grown another kind of urgency.

“…In the northeastern sixth, fifteen flaps from the Berwem gate. It is Glyster’s Gyms, with a silly ‘y’ where the ‘e’ should be.”

“Glyster’s gums? Glyster’s geems?” I wondered aloud. It wouldn’t work. It could only work if you ignored every rule about pronouncing y Draig, rules I’d labored to learn. It was just… silly. Was that the point?

Hinte didn’t smile, or really change her expression, but she glanced at me, nodding just a bit. “I do not know what she was thinking either. I call it Glyster’s Gems and she’s never corrected me.”

Adwyn gave one last evaluating look to Hinte, then turned to Digrif. “Did you tell anyone about our mission?”

“My parents, no one else at all, at all. And even then, not too much, I promise.”

“I ensured as much,” Hinte added.

I smirked at Adwyn. “What about in town hall? Whatever documentation you produced for this might betray us if someone in the administration is behind this.” Citrusface is up to something. Thanks, Staune.

When Adwyn glanced back at me I let smirk fade⁠ ⁠—⁠ he’d seen it, though. “Oh, not quite. This task is officially nothing more than a favor for the faer. There is no documentation of it.”

“What?” I asked. “Why not?”

“Mlaen likes to steer the ship. Especially when it comes to everything that matters. Between the high guard and the treasurer, the faer would be playing puppet three times removed if she went through official channels.”

“Alright.” I glanced up. “Could someone have been following us then?” I asked, fangs remembering the trickle of shame from Adwyn following me this morning.

The Dyfnderi adviser scratched his chin, and the moment before he spoke, he seemed to shuffle his words. “Not without an elaborate⁠ ⁠—⁠ and conspicuous⁠ ⁠—⁠ system of rotating spies. I watched our backs all along.”

I looked up. Then, brilles clearing, I said, “Well, what if they just had a bunch of stationary spies all over? They wouldn’t have to follow us, just report to someone, and it’d be like we were followed.”

“There still must have been a way for them to discover our plans. Mlaen’s private meeting room is a possibility⁠ ⁠—⁠ but we discussed the matter indirectly. The Gären house is more likely, but there’s still the matter of their knowing when to spy. Which all again raises the possibility of someone betraying us.” Adwyn’s gaze roamed over us, me most of all, seeming even more analyzing than ever.

“I couldn’t have had anything to do with this, though. I collapsed on my bed last night out of sheer tiredness. And then I roused and went to Hinte’s house first thing. And then I went to work until it was time to meet you. There was no room for these schemes. I certainly couldn’t’ve planned this out now while being in your sight⁠ ⁠—⁠ almost⁠ ⁠—⁠ the entire time!”

I caught Hinte looking at me from the side. Her glare had faded to a shadow of anger, but it still darkened her face. Waving her tongue, she turned to Adwyn and said, “Forget about spies for a moment. What abyss swallowed your tongue to make you do something as apterous as leave the bodies here? Without any sort of guard?”

Adwyn’s growl from earlier had reappeared. “Gronte-wyre, remember whom you’re speaking to. I would not make such a careless mistake. I left guards. Whoever is under this had them desert their post, or forced them from it.”

“Why is deserting the first thing you think of?” I asked, tongue flicking.

Adwyn waved behind him. “You must subdue three guards in straight daylight with none seeing or noticing their absence. How do you do it?”

I glanced at Hinte. “Poison? Then take their bodies like they took the humans.’”

Adwyn nodded. “One last question. Why are we still standing?”

“What?”

“If they were to poison the guards, and have enough forethought to plant sandbags⁠ ⁠—⁠ not for the guards, whom they poisoned, but us⁠ ⁠—⁠ why would they not just poison us instead?”

Adwyn waited while I dropped my gaze to the ground and stayed silent. “Thus,” he finished, “Whoever is behind this most probably had them desert their post.”

Digrif hummed. “So, that means we do need to figure out who betrayed us. They had to be at the Gären’s house. It wasn’t Kinri or me, at all.”⁠ ⁠—⁠ I grinned, and Hinte glared⁠ ⁠—⁠ “Maybe it was that Ushra guy. He seems plenty creepy.”

Hinte covered her face with a wing.

I ventured, “Isn’t Ushra the faer’s personal alchemist? And hasn’t he been involved with this town forever? I don’t think he should be our first suspect.”

“If he’s the faer’s alchemist, doesn’t that give him enough sway to do this?”

“Uh no, I don’t think it does. If an alchemist asked you to do something, would you do it?”

Digrif scratched his chin. “Well, Is that alchemist Hinte?” I shook my head. “Well, I don’t think I would.”

“Exactly. Ushra couldn’t do this, Gronte is nice and I trust her, and I trust you two too.”

“If you three are done retreading everything I’ve reasoned in the last few moments, perhaps we could look in a useful direction.” Then, in a voice low enough I half-missed, Adwyn continued “Yet somehow I don’t imagine you are going to have anything useful to say.”

“So we’re thinking they spied on us?” Digrif said, scratching a frill. “But if they did that at Hinte’s house, wouldn’t they have to already know something was up?”

“No, Hinte was in the paper, remember? Our ‘hero of the town?’” I gave a laugh I’d grown and stored some place where it rotted and fell to pieces.

Digrif nodded. “Yeah, yeah you’re right. Maybe they could have been spying as soon as the papers were out. It doesn’t give them a lot of time, but it’s enough, right?”

Adwyn was muttering to no one, “Blind take them and rip their eyes from their skulls.” Then, speaking up, “Of course.”

I glanced at him. “Did you figure something out?”

“Yes. A guess. It won’t help us here. I shall pursue it on my own, when this mess has been painted over.”

Head tilted, I opened my mouth, but Hinte cut in, “What will we do next?”

I glanced at Adwyn. “You said the faer had a reason for not being open about this. Do they suspect anyone in the administration who would do this?”

“If she does, I know not. Mlaen never shares her suspicions with me.”

Digrif’s voice hopped into the conversation much like he hopped up when he spoke. “We could ask a guard if they saw anything!” He waved at the crowds behind us.

That was all Hinte needed to start walking away from us. We walked after her, Digrif sidling right up to her, while I fell into step beside Adwyn. Then I fell into step behind Adwyn. My tail felt Hinte’s oily knife. I gripped it. I released it.

Humming loudly for his notice, I spoke up. “Still,” I started, trying not to speak too fast, too nervously, “I have to wonder what their plan even is. What could they do with the bodies?”

Adwyn looked thoughtful despite his dust mask, brilles acloud, claws tapping his muzzle. “You must see these may be dragons who know of the apes’ presence in the cliffs to begin with. Then, they would want the humans to discover us, for their own reasons. Perhaps they think our plan to frame their death as a accident of the environment will truly blow the search party from the truth, and hence seek to stop that.”

“Assuming this conspiracy exists, and it’s connected to both incidents,” I murmured. But I heard echoes of Ushra’s reasoning from breakfast. Had he really been on to something?

* * *