Adwyn was still suspicious of me, I realized. He flew behind me, and when I looked, he was watching. I hadn’t even done anything wrong yet.

I shook my head, and I cast my thoughts to what we were up against. Thieves! Stealing the human corpses! What could their goal possibly be? In my head echoed Ushra’s theories from breakfast. Now, they didn’t seem so ridiculous.

“Could⁠ ⁠—” I spoke, voice stuttering yet loud in the open air, “Could these thieves be working with the humans somehow? Like Ushra said?”

Gwynt began descending at an angle, letting us all follow.

Adwyn cleared his throat. “It is a⁠ ⁠—⁠ distinct possibility. Not only would it patch over an as-of-yet unaccounted-for hole where their motivation should be, it also gives a justification for the presence of the humans in the lake in the first place.”

“Yeah!” Digrif added, “And think about how quickly they hatched this plan! They must have seen something like this coming⁠ ⁠—⁠ they’re totally in league with the apes.”

My frills deflated. There really was little doubting it. Had some dragon betrayed Gwymr/Frina? Or was this another stronghold’s scheme like Ushra said?

We were coming down just above the food stalls, near where we entered the market. In the crowd below, there were almost twice as many guards moving about. Just as Adwyn ordered, the guards were restricting movement out of the market, turning the crowd into a writhing mass of impatience.

Gwynt circled in on the entrance to the market. As I flew after him, I scanned the ranks of dragons straining to leave the market place. But Gwynt narrowed on a certain cracked pumice cart, carrying fat, fading green sacks. They were inscribed with some simple, rounded glyph you had to descend before making out⁠ ⁠—⁠ ‘seed.’

When the guard landed in front of the cart, its drivers (who held the cart by its reins) didn’t react. One played with the reins or scratched dirt from their foot. The another glanced up as we landed and away just as quick. The cart wasn’t moving, so the drivers and the two ashcloaked dragons, who walked beside it wore bored, impatient looks that might have blended in with the rest of the crowd a moment ago.

Now, though, swathes of crowd turned and gawked at us. They ignored Digrif, and, after a beat, Gwynt too. It was Adwyn and I who held their gaze. There was nothing new in the looks they gave me, but Adwyn garnered a mixture of respect, disdain and⁠ ⁠—⁠ most often, a simple lack of recognition, with a sense that this was someone obscurely important.

I landed by Gwynt and peered at the cart and its contents. I’d seen, in the distance, bags of seed on sale exactly like this, and the drivers of the cart seemed ordinary enough. Were these just dragons who happened to need a cart on the wrong day?

We’d only asked for dragons the guards had seen with carts that might be able to hold a human corpse. Some innocent regular dragons would fit that description, too, right? It might be why Adwyn had chosen this way of carrying the bodies⁠ ⁠—⁠ and might be why the thieves copied the idea.

Why couldn’t these just be normal thieves?

The guard stood right in front of the cart, and they said, “Citizen! We have orders from Rhyfel-sofran himself⁠ ⁠—⁠ we shall search your cart for stolen goods!”

One of the cart’s drivers stomped a foot, and growled. Garbed in a cheap ashcloak, they looked young, plain-dweller, with their features almost cute; but they had to spend long rings tending a farm, and it shone on their features, a worn, rugged look clawing its way onto their face. Their horns were hidden beneath a cowl, but their eyes pierced outward from under it.

When they spoke, it was in the rushed, anxious lit I heard from so many plain-dwellers. “You can’t do this! We’ve done nothing! Nothing!”

Another plain-dweller, older, more distinctively feminine, spoke in a more placating tone. “We’s just out to buy some seeds for youse farm, guard-sofran⁠ ⁠—⁠ we’s done nothing wrong.” Their wings hugged to their body, and their tone and look had an air of resignation to it.

“That remains to be seen⁠ ⁠—⁠ we hope you understand we cannot just make exceptions on whim. Orders,” the cliff-dweller guard said, sagely.

Gwynt moved forward, along with Adwyn, to search the cart. Adwyn said low, waving at us. “You two, keep watch.”

I raised my left wing in salute, and Digrif copied me.

I looked around the cart, taking in the dragons. There was the upset fledgling and the placating maybe-mother, while at a distant stood the ashcloaked dragons, cowled and watching. Through it all, there were two tiny little hatchlings running about. They had their heads low, and hugged their wings to themselves, and tripped over their tails. They seemed scared.

As I watched, they slinked around, probably trying to hide⁠ ⁠—⁠ but the smaller one stopped and poked her bigger sibling. She has an idea, I narrated to myself. She convinced her sibling to move in front of the placating mother. As they stood, the smaller hatchling climbed on the other. Facing Adwyn, she expanded her wings⁠ ⁠—⁠ her tiny little wings⁠ ⁠—⁠ to their full extent. Her fangs were unfolding, and the saliva dewing on them caught the light.

She growled at Adwyn, flapping and swishing her tail. The display lost some of its effect, though, because of the light brown hatchling’s tiny size and the high pitch squeak the growl emerged as.

Then a few things happened at once.

The fledgling was saying, “Ugh, Rhyfel, Gyddah, get down you dolts!” and reaching for the growling hatchling.

The hatchling unfolded their fangs in full, and the air filled with the scent of salty, acrid venom. The next instant, they spat, twin streams of venom flying from the apertures in her fangs.

Adwyn ducked, and not a drop of the venom landed on him.

And the mother shrieked, stepping back.

In a moment the fledgling was picking up the growler with a wing. Adwyn watched with a smirk tugging at his lips, peering at the larger hatchling⁠ ⁠—⁠ the one named after Rhyfel?

The fledgling was holding the growler up to their face, hissing, until she stopped wriggling and hung still, then she was sat with her accomplice on the fledgling’s back, out of sight.

No one was saying anything, everyone was glancing around, and silence settled on us like dustone vitrifying.

The mother spoke up like glass spurting through a crack, “Ah am so sorry! Your honor! Your majesty! Sofrani!”

Adwyn turned to the mother, looking grave. Gwynt had stopped rifling through the cart. He stood, lines of their face tight, alula on the hilt of their club. He looked around, eyes roaming, hard. When he meet Adwyn’s, however, he paused for a beat.

And then they burst into laughter. As the dustone silence crumbled, I started to giggle and Digrif chuffed on the opposite side of the cart.

The plain-dwellers, though, didn’t join us in laughing. The cowled dragons The mother just seemed there, wearing a sad, relieved sort of almost-smile. The fledgling, on the other foot, was glowering, twice as intense as before. If one could brew and administer alchemical poisons with only looks, I imagined we would each drop dead before we could swallow.

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

The guard and Adwyn each returned to their searching. The guard was ripping through and examining the bags of what⁠ ⁠—⁠ to all appearances⁠ ⁠—⁠ really was just seeds and other farming supplies. At that, I followed their example and returned to my own job⁠ ⁠—⁠ minor though it was.

Aside from the two speakers and the two hatches, there were still two others near the back end of the cart. One was the other driver, the other had stuck to the sides, and both had slipped to the back of the cart as time crawled on. Now, they just hung around the fringes. Afraid of the guards? They stood somewhere on the other side of the cart, opposite Adwyn and Gwynt⁠ ⁠—⁠ though Digrif was there, chatting. He stopped and stepped away when he saw me looking.

One of the cloaked stood low behind the cart, still as a rock, gaze upturned to the sky⁠ ⁠—⁠ or the net below it. Both of them wore hooded cloaks, too. That wasn’t odd⁠ ⁠—⁠ cloaks were common fashion among the poorer plain-dwellers I’d seen (they were cheap and simple to repair). But the cowls of these two looked bigger, enveloping their faces in shadows, and the torsos were baggier, obscuring their forms.

One of the cloaked moved, the one standing behind the cart. This one was shorter than the other, maybe. It was hard to tell with the cloaks hiding their body shapes.

The shorter one crouched down by the cart.

“You there,” Adwyn called out, “what are you doing?”

The other cloaked had slinked over to near the first and crouched beside them before Adwyn had even finished.

The cart flipped over! It dumped the unsuspecting guard on the ground, along with tumbling sacks of seeds and other debris.

Adwyn lunged! The mother screamed! I started into motion, falling into a crouch like the cloaked dragons. Maybe it was a guess, maybe it was seeing the cloaked figure looking up at the net, but I leapt into the air, threshing my wings. My timing was just breaths from perfect⁠ ⁠—⁠ both of the cloaked launched into the air, dodging Adwyn’s lunge. So I was flying after them, a few beats before anyone else reacted, even Digrif was down on the ground, helping Gwynt up.

I beat my wings, and anxiety flooded me to my wingtips. The thieves⁠ ⁠—⁠ these had to be the thieves⁠ ⁠—⁠ flew out, over the watching crowd. At first, the thieves sagged, as if pulled by an unseen weight. I dove after them. Then taut cloth wings blasted out from under their cloaks. Gliders. The glider, plus their wings, saw them rising, hurtling for the cliff walls.

Their rise left my dive overshooting, and I pulled out of it low enough to touch dragons in the crowd.

Shouts came from behind me, and then so did Adwyn.

We raced after the thieves like this. For once, I was in the lead, and doing something heroic. For once, I dealt with a familiar, comfortable exertion. You had to fly well in the sky. And it helped that flying was the best.

I grounded my thoughts with a growl and mammoth threshing of my wings. There was no time for the joy of flight, only determination. I had to do my best⁠ ⁠—⁠ this was important.

We flew along, Adwyn and I gaining on the thieves⁠ ⁠—⁠ but at different paces. Our chase, with the guards already on edge, gave us a flock of red and gold sashes trailing behind us with only the slightest idea what was going on.

I was close enough to count the toes on the slowest thief’s foot⁠ ⁠—⁠ they were missing a toe, it seemed. But despite my speed, the thieves reached the net before I reached them. Glider wings folding behind them, each thief clutched the net in their feet, but one left a foot free. That thief pulled something from their bag, passed it to the other, and pulled out an identical second. They made slashing motions after that⁠ ⁠—⁠ knives?

My wingbeats slowed a notch⁠ ⁠—⁠ did I want to confront them and get stabbed?

Their blades tore the net⁠ ⁠—⁠ they had to, with how they swung and swung. Hinte had said the net was just cotton, hadn’t she? Once the thieves tore holes enough to push through the net, they pulled themselves through⁠ ⁠—⁠ and I was there, almost there.

But they were already through, and the one with the knives was yanking a glass from their bag. Contents glistening in the sunslight, they uncorked it and with a fluid motion, threw the glass. The glass vomited out gray goop as it flew.

The goop turned to thick white smoke! It hid the small rips in the netting. Even as I watched, close enough to smell the dead plant smell of the smoke, the cloud heaved, expanding and expanding until it filled my vision.

The wind wuthered the net and clouds, confusing my memory of where the holes were. And if that wasn’t enough, I glanced to the edges of the cloud, where a strange mold crept over the cotton of the net.

I flew away from the cloud, not daring to find out if it were safe or what that mold meant. I glided to the net, clinging with three feet. I stared out as the thieves flew away in a slow bounding flight.

I smiled.

I still had the knife. The knife that Hinte had given me back in the Berwem to bleed the glasscrabs. With the courage and excitement, I tailed the knife fourth from my bag. I could do this! Maybe I would be a hero like Hinte!

The black blood-slick knife was in one foot and the cotton of the net was in the others. I was sawing at the fibers. They split and frayed and split and frayed under the knife. I laughed and wiggled in excitement.

Then the knife caught on a tighter part of the net. My grip faltered⁠ ⁠—⁠ the knife dropped! And it tumbled and spun, dropping to the ground…

I looked over, behind the ropes of the net, and watched the thieves escape in the distance.

The thieves were gone.

* * *