The faer had walked from around the slab, and stood a few strides from me. Without the host of dragons falling in line around her, the faer’s presence was merely intimidating, and not dominating.

Examining me, the faer spoke, a tone of suspicion in her voice. “Hinte’s story,” she started, “is it the whole truth?”

My frills worked as I thought. A few beats passed before I cleared my eyes, venturing, “I think so, my faer.”

“You may call me Mlaen-sofran if you wish.”

“Okay, my Mlaen-sofran,” I said, before looking down.

She clicked her tongue, and waved a wing. “And you were saying?”

“I was guarding the first corpse while Hinte tracked down the others. But it is not like her to lie. I believe her⁠ ⁠—⁠ completely.”

“Yes, Gronte reared a fine granddaughter. But even the most honest of dragons sometimes shape the truth in their image. Between my Cynfe’s teasing and Rhyfel’s flattery, I feel she had something to prove, and suspect perhaps this influenced her retelling of events.” She paused, rubbing an eye. “But you do not know, so let us be rid of the topic.”

Mlaen-sofran walked near the corpses, and gave them a peering look. “I still have a few questions for you, though,” she said, and I nodded. “Mind shutting the door over there? Thank you.”

When we were alone, closed up in that room, the faer asked me, “Did the human speak a dragon tongue?”

“I — what?”

“Y Draig, perhaps. Did it speak?”

“Uh, it did. It was all garbled and solecistic, though.”

The red wiver nodded. “I see. Did the humans have anything particularly… interesting on or near their bodies? A warm, heavy rock, perhaps?”

“Not that I — oh! I don’t know if this counts, but they had this alchemy orb… thingy that smashes open and blinds you for a bit. It’s very harshly bright.”

“I see, I see.” The faer snaked her head a little closer. “My final question: were there any other dragons in the lake?”

My legs tightened with a jump. “Well, um…”

“Thank you. What are their names?”

“They–they were just sifters, out late in the lake. They weren’t up to anything.”

“You’ll understand that I don’t trust that. What are their names, Specter-eti?”

I had to look up to meet her eyes. “I’d rather you didn’t call me that. I’m Kinri now, my family doesn’t want anything with me.”

“You’re rather obvious for a Specter, you know.” She gave a sharp breath that might have come with a smile, were this a smiling sort of thing. She asked, “Again, what are their names?”

“I don’t want them to get in trouble!”

“You aren’t helping their case, thinking they’ll get in trouble. My inquirers can question them within the night. If they’re as innocent as you’re convinced, what is there to worry over?”

“…Mawla and Wrang. Their names are Mawla and Wrang.”

“Mawla?” The red wiver frowned. “That is a familiar name, and there are precious few good reasons for my being familiar with a name,” she said. “Be wary, little dragon, if those’re the sort of friends you’re making.”

I looked down.

Mlaen-sofran was sighing. “And did I hear that last name aright? Wrang?” A nod. “Wrang of Llosgi Hoddi? What is a Llosgi drake doing sifting…” The faer shook her head. “That renders things⁠ ⁠—⁠ difficult.”

I turned away from the faer, toward the window.

“Wrang and Mawla. Thank you, Kinri. Trust in the law, and not whatever impressions they’ve given you.” I didn’t see whatever expression she had.

I saw the faer slinking toward the door, and waving me after her. “Walk with me,” she said; and we left the meeting room like that, room light still lit.

Walking back down that corridor wasn’t any easier or less nerve-wracking. There were hints of distant activity, though⁠ ⁠—⁠ a tinge of new scent, the dull thudding of vague movement⁠ ⁠—⁠ that only made the feeling of not belonging loom higher.

As we walked, Mlaen-sofran’s next words were measured and weighed, holding a faint whiff of accusation. “I know why Specter sent you here, Kinri, exile or no.”

That would make one of us, then — if you believed her. I smiled to even entertain such a familiar tactic.

She was continuing, “And I hope you don’t think what you’re doing somehow escapes their plans.”

I padded along after her. Mlaen-sofran didn’t lead; but she didn’t walk beside me, either. I asked her, “Why?”

She had looked away. She was looking up somewhere, gaze distant. “Gwymr/Frina was always supposed to be a place to escape the past. It would be a shame if you only remained shackled to your history.”

I asked her, “What does Specter want — in your estimation?”

“What does any foreigner want? It’s in the name⁠ ⁠—⁠ the land of glass and secrets. There’s so little else here.”

I rolled my head and said nothing. We’d rounded the corner back into Mlaen’s throne room. The red wiver murmured to me, “I suspect you’re working up the courage to ask me for some position in my administration, one of these days.”

She’d stop walking, and I turned to face her, standing high. “Well, yeah. I’d like a job better than sitting at a counter in a shop. And I used to be a scribe and secretary for my⁠ ⁠—⁠ mother.”

“And it gives you perfect avenue for influencing the faer, as per your family’s agenda.”

“I don’t work for my family, I came here because my brother asked me to.” He still had hope for me, and I still had hope for him. It was something I didn’t even share with my sister…

“I’m not going to tell you no. Just know that I won’t consider it until this business with the humans is over.”

I nodded, and glanced over at the corridor leading out of the throne room.

The red wiver caught my glance, and asked, “Do you sleep soon?” I nodded, and she added, “Alright. Regarding this human business, Adwyn-sofran will meet with you and Gronte-wyre sometime tomorrow, to arrange a plan with the corpses.”

Then with a bit more light in her voice, she added, “I hope you don’t mind another day in the lake. Until then, take care to not to start any more wars.”

I waved a wing at her and didn’t wait to slinked from the throne room, off the pumice-doored lobby.

Behind me, I heard, “May Balance keep you, little dragon.”

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Toward the lobby, I waved my tongue, and sifted through the flowers and precious metals wafting around for that holly smell I’d tasted when we entered.

My head turned around until my tongue lighted on the gradient. I slinked up that corridor the secretary had first appeared from. As I walked that gradient, I found an office.

The walls of the office held paintings, of towering cliffs in a stark lighting; of Mlaen-sofran, smiling, not wearing her faer robes; and of Cynfe herself, form messy and unfamiliar, standing over a dead, hunted boar. Below them sat a desk, piled with colored scrolls, inkwells, and stacks upon stacks of fancy dillerskin parchment. Between the desk and the shelves by the window, the same three colors repeated again and again. Were the scrolls color-coded?

Cynfe lay at that desk, holding a flat-tipped pen, sliding that pen over the page at a slug’s pace. Her pen lifted. Blood flushed to Cynfe’s brilles, clouding them. Her mouth parted, drawing two breaths. Her mouth closed, her eyes cleared again, and her pen descended.

“Hi!”

There came a jerk and deep growl. Salt scented the air. When she looked up with her wings spreading, frills flared and her fangs prominent, we had disappeared from the town hall. We stood on some plain, and Cynfe had become a massive, lethal raptor, where I was a tiny skink entrapped in her gaze.

I squeaked.

“What,” her voice sang, high, mellifluous, saccharine, “do you want?” Her claws didn’t slide closer. Her fangs didn’t glint. I didn’t tremble. Even a little bit.

“I — um, I just — I’ll — I’m sorry.”

“Well~?” her voice shifted pitches, mid to high, and it didn’t sound artificial or do anything but magnify the mood of the room.

“I sorta, well, I kinda wanted to chat?” My voice stuttered and whined, and I didn’t feel in control of that anymore. I reached for the commanding clarity of my Specter voice. But I stopped. The guards had bowed to me, and my gut had squirmed as I watched.

I swallowed another breath. But no, that wasn’t what stopped me. Cynfe would just laugh off any intimidation attempt of mine. I was nothing underneath her.

I licked tart venom from my fangs.

“It–it just struck me, I guess. Your scales I mean. Are you, err, from sky? The forest? Something else?”

Her frills winkled back and her eyes clouded. “Do you think I could possibly be from sky? With scales like these?” Her brilles clouded. “You must have molty eyes or glass between your frills.”

“But… It’s just, well, you aren’t a cliff-dweller? Like me. I thought we might have that in common.”

“I have nothing in common with you. I hatched in these cliffs. I fledged in these cliffs. I am a cliff-dweller.” She looked back to her page. “Something you’ll never be.”

“I⁠ ⁠—”

“Go stick a blowpipe in your vent and crawl back onto whatever dung heap you awoke on. I have work to do.” She folded up the page on her desk and fed it to a wastebin.

I coiled my tail around my leg, lowering my head as I scrambled away from the doorway to Cynfe’s office. And like that, I was alone, again. My wings hugged tight to my body.

As I slinked away from Cynfe’s office, a cringing figure in prim black and gold ducked into a room just down the hall. I kept walking but glanced back⁠ ⁠—⁠ the other secretary was peeking back out, and they jerked their head back out of sight just as they caught me looking.

I rolled my head at their antics and walked to the pumice-doored lobby. Nothing but to go home now, I guess.

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

I would have called them a plain-dweller if they’d looked anything like one.

He had creamy-white scales, immaculately overdesigned robes (I could count more than twenty colors if I tried, all of them arranged in a chaos of patterns and shapes), with a fatness that reminded me of the proudest sky-dwellers, who could afford to be flown around instead of fly (even if he wasn’t all the way there), and his pink eyes crowned above a broad muzzle with lips smiling beatific.

These all conspired to limn him as some rich and foreign dragon. He had a youth to his features telling that wealth was inherited instead of earned, and though he looked rich and foreign, he wasn’t a mountain-dweller (there wasn’t a touch of gray on him), and he wasn’t an ash-dweller (his eyes weren’t black). And he definitely wasn’t a cloud-dweller.

If you ignored all the evidence against it and only looked at his broad muzzle, wide frame, and bulbous tail, you’d find it easy to call him a plain-dweller.

If you didn’t… then well, he was an enigma.

His heavy hurricane of a voice was speaking, saying, “The Specter, aren’t you? Of course, you are. I saw you and your pet alchemist stumble like a ring ago.” He gave an exaggerated tapping of his alula on his chin. “I’d pondered just what you might want, this close to the faer.”

I stopped gawking and tilted my head. “Something happened, it —”

“I know something had happened. But I do not believe in coincidences. If you’re here, it is because you desired to be here. You will tell me why.”

I worked my jaw. What could I say to satisfy this dragon? “Well, I was talking to Mlaen about a position in this administration, that’s all.”

“And interrupting Cynfe-gyfar’s delicate archival work.” The drake grinned at me, as if catching me in lie.

“Err, I —”

“So, you want to be a secretary, I take?” he said, flicking his tongue.

“Well, yes. I don’t have much skill for any —”

“Or, you have an ulterior.”

I bared my fangs at the drake. Stop interrupting me! But I licked my fangs and swallowed the thought.

The drake laughed. “Think about it. You flick once at Cynfe-gyfar and there’s all the motivation you’d ever need,” he said, throwing up a wing. “I have to call her Gyfari, for dewing out loud! Me!” He was tossing his head. “I heard some idiot looked at her the wrong way and lost an eye for it. On the cloudy faer’s own bloody orders!”

My brilles paled, and my tongue found its way to my eyes, as if I might lose them in a moment. I didn’t choke down my squeak.

“It isn’t hard to imagine some one scenting out that, and deciding they wouldn’t mind acquiring such treatment as well.” The creamy-white drake’s gaze snapped back to me, accusative brown eyes peering and coming to rest somewhere deep inside of me.

He clicked his tongue, and leaned in closer. “But that isn’t it, is it? You want the influence, having the faer listen to you.”

“It’s not —”

“You were in that meeting room. You saw how she acted. A secretary, a scribe⁠ ⁠—⁠ whom dragons listen to? Who can mock the faer and get a smile rather than a noose?”

He let the question hang.

I would have, too, but my brilles cleared and I asked, “I was in the meeting room. But you⁠ ⁠—”

“Know her history,” he said quick. “She is predictable.” Looking dead at me, “It makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”

He let the question hang again, and I let it hang too this time. Then, like dropping a fluttering page, he added, “It is almost as though she isn’t just a secretary, no? I shall allow you to ponder that.” He leaned back away from me.

Salt gathered on my fangs. “What do you want? You’re holding me up.”

A hallow smile. “I like to keep a tongue on what happens in my administration.” He released a breath. “Truth be told, you couldn’t influence the faer whether you did ever become a secretary or not.” Looking at me again, his tone was light, “I just don’t want your kind in my administration. We’ve got enough gray scales, Dyfnderi, and whatever the flames Cynfe⁠ ⁠—⁠ gyfar is.”

He glanced up. “Would you believe I am the only native with any kind of power in this town? That cloudy faer dropped all the high houses from the administration, and somehow no one else with plain-dweller scales ever makes it this far in the administration. Ponder that.”

“But you don’t have plain-dweller scales.”

“That’s because I’m noble. I have the blood⁠ ⁠—⁠ the last remaining heir of the eternal faer, in fact. Bariaeth ac Dwylla. Remember that name.” He smiled beatific. “Though, you will not need to in a few gyras.”

“Um, that doesn’t really explain it. Or anything.” Taking a breath, I asked again, “Don’t all natives have brown scales? Or brownish scales?”

“Leucism. Dwylla and his children have native blood, but we’ve always stood above the rest, always were special.”

“So if you’re the first faer’s heir, and this is your administration, why aren’t you faer?”

“I,” — he cleared his throat — “We do not know. Care for a story?”

“Um, I asked.”

Another laugh. The laughs were the one thing honest about him. “The story goes that at the height of the his power, Dwylla’s wife became gravid.” His face was a scowl. “But instead of welcoming his coming heir, he ordered her to take her egg, as far away from the Berwem as your wings will take you. He said to take the heir and never think of him again.”

He stabbed a gaze back at the center corridor, where Mlaen-sofran had disappeared to. “So Dwylla made some spiritless, boneless cliff-dweller faer instead of his own scale and blood.”

Looking back at me, with triumph and the tone of practiced finality, “But, at generations’ last. We⁠ ⁠—⁠ I⁠ ⁠—⁠ have returned, the rightful ruler of Gwymr/Frina. Now, it’s a matter of waiting.” He gazed at me with a gleam in his clouded brilles, a triumphant smile that asked you to revel vicariously in his achievement.

Instead, I frowned. Something bout his behavior touched a note that echoed. I brushed a frill against my headband.

For all that it was going so awfully, I did have mission here in the cliffs. Here was a chance. Lowering my head in acknowledgment, folding my frills in submission, looking up in pleading, I said, “I don’t suppose you could make me someone important when you become faer?” My tone wavered just enough to notice without grating.

Bariaeth was nodding at me, his smile taking on a haughty quality, of a noble that might condescend to help me. I breathed out in small relief. I hadn’t done anything like this in a while.

He said, “I meant what I said when I told you I don’t want your kind in my administration. But you’ll be kept around.” His smile faded, having stayed its purpose. The husk of the smile didn’t leave his face, though. “After all, It’s not often you find someone in this game whom you can so easily read. Not like Adwyn or Ushra-sofran.”

In my mouth, cloying salt dewed my fangs, but nothing betrayed that on my face. I nodded in rhythm with the drake and watched him.

He turned around, saying, “I don’t trust dragons. Do you?”

Looking up slow at Bariaeth, I frowned. As I peered at the noble dragon in his immaculate robes, his creamy white scales, his eyes laced with intelligence, all that struck me was how alone he looked. Here was the rightful faer of Gwymr/Frina, sole heir of the eternal faer. And… was there any one for him to share it with?

“Um, don’t you have siblings?”

A beatific smile. “Of course not.”

“A partner? Close friends?”

“What would be the point? I have other things to focus upon.”

My frown deepened. He worked alone. And⁠ ⁠—⁠ he saw me come in with Hinte, and talking with Cynfe, with Mlaen⁠ ⁠—⁠ yet he only deciding to speak with me with I was alone, too.

How different would I look in his eyes — in anyone’s eyes? Clawing for a little wingful of power, scheming and making a mess of things. Here was the rightful heir of Specter, sole sky-dweller in all the land of glass and secrets. But… I had Hinte, I had Digrif, and Uvidet and Awld⁠ ⁠—⁠ and maybe Mawla too.

Do I trust dragons?

What else could I say? “I do.”

“And that is why I shall be throned, and you shan’t even draw close.” He turned away from me. “You cannot trust. Incentives are better than trust. And I know what you want, what incentives you’ll need, in time.” He glanced back just to smile, and said, “But for now, here,” tossing a coin back at me.

A pure electrum piece. One hundred forty and four aris. Five cycle’s pay at the Crwydro Llygaid. I looked up, and Bariaeth ac Dwylla was gone.

* * *