Meya hoisted her aching buttocks up to the topmost terrace of the Falls. Earlier climbers had formed two loose, ragged circles around the glinting statue, their clothes fluttering gingerly in the hushed murmurs and light breeze.

Meya spotted a shock of curly black hair to the right. Tightening her grip on Lady Agnes's hand, she tiptoed along the edge of the terrace until she came up on Little Lord Frenix and Lady Amara in their colorful masks, and Lady Heloise. Like the rest of the gathering, they were staring, transfixed, at the chough statue. Its head was partially obscured by the tousled hair of the tallest men, its polished jet facets flashed fiercely in the high noon sunshine. The jewel in its beak emitted a familiar, acid-green glow.

A sense of foreboding stirred in the back of her mind. Meya tore her eyes away, glancing between Frenix and Heloise in amusement.

"Haven't you said you'd race to the top and down, your graces?"

Amara whipped around for a blink then turned back to the statue, her plump wee fingers twisting deeper into Heloise's chemise. Frantic whispers slithered back and forth between fellow strangers. Horror and disgust gushed through the metal grille over their mouths, flavored by their various accents.

"Whose is tha'?"

"What in ze zree lands are zey zinking?"

"Horrid taste of decor!"

"Musta been fairly recent. Dun recall seein' nuthin' last year."

Meya scoured the crowd, trying to pinpoint the source of each piece of gossip. A shadow swooped over the terrace from a cloud that had drifted before the sun. Agnes snatched her arm.

"Oh, Goodly Freda! The beak! In the beak!" She gasped, jabbing a trembling finger at the statue. Meya peered up at the troublesome sculpture once more. This time, the sight knocked her knees from beneath her like a hammer whack.

The sun's blinding white glare had been blotted out, revealing a metallic sphere rippling with rainbow shimmers and marked with intricate carvings. At the front face of the ball was a sliver of white, almond-shaped sclera. And, in the center, a ring of glowing green iris, with a heart of shiny black nothingness. Meya thought for a second she was staring at her own eye.

That was a Greeneye's eye—a dragon's eye. Taken from a Greeneye. Dead or alive, she didn't know. By force or willing, she was sure it was the former. Simply to be slotted into a statue, like a fallen enemy's head on display.

Fury, grief and humiliation bled from her heart into her blood, like poison pumped into her limbs then her fingertips. It spread into her stomach and her head, stirring the nausea at bay. Her feet faltered under the weight of her head. Meya barely felt Agnes's hands on her arms, keeping her from plummeting to the rocks below.

"Tis a gum farmer's boy, guardsman here's sayin'."

A tourist man nearby offered his two latts to the pool of folk wisdom. As faces turned to his, he motioned towards a burly man a little way away. Judging from the light-brown skin around his mouth, he was a Jaisian local, concealed in the signature black Jaise cloak. He shook his head, sighing through the metal grille on his mask.

"Poor boy. His rotten father lost big at the gamble-house. Owed the landlord here all his worth, so he pawned off his son's eye."

Gasps rented the air. A petite Aquarian woman with olive skin and straight black hair in a pinned bun raised her shaking fist.

"Greeneye or not, this is outrageous!" She cried, "I wouldn't sell the smallest toe of my girls, no conditions! I say that father goes straight to the Lake!"

A chorus of murmurs and nods rose in agreement across the terrace. Then came a challenge,

"Agh, lass. Take it easy on yer poor heart." The elderly man lowered the brush-broom he had been scrubbing the chough statue with, leaning his veined, knobby arm upon its handle. He met the woman's taut lips with a sagging grin and a dismissive wave of his hand.

"The boy has one eye left. He sees fine. Didn't hurt when they took it out of him neither. Popped straight out with nary a drop of blood or tear. I was there when they did it. The socket's pure silver metal, lady!"

"But still, putting it on show? How do you expect us to bathe with that staring down at us?"

Another woman, a blonde westerner, jabbed a pudgy finger at the eye. Hearty laughter rang from the other end of the crowd from a heavy-set Jaisian woman with copious locks of shiny black hair flowing to her knees.

"Agh, foreigners. There's a lucky charm, ain't it? Our glassblowers and blacksmiths wear them around their necks. Protect them from burns, see. Hang one from your doorframe, and not a tongue of fire will ever cross the threshold."

"You're on a waterfall, for Freda's sake. What d'you need charms against fire for?" A pale, hulking Icemeet man called out.

"Well, of course, there's more than that." said the old statue cleaner. All eyes traveled back to him, except the one on the statue. Meya wished it would, if only to relieve these foul Jaisians of some of their cocky cheer.

The old man's grin only seemed to stretch wider. He relished the attention folk of his station rarely enjoy from the affluent tourists, at the expense of Greeneyes.

"You pale people bury your dead, don't you? Well, we burn them here, see. Dun have land to spare. And those Greeneyes when they die, shoulda seen them pyres—"

The old man leaned in, and the enthralled tourists mirrored him. Meya resisted the urge. From the way her brain was oscillating in her skull, she'd spill her guts on the redhead in front if she did.

"Takes a lot to burn a Greeneye. First, the undertaker's gotta bleed them out. Their blood puts out the fire, see. Curst hard to set alight. Fetch good gold in the market, though. Best fireproof paint ever. But once you got the flame going, it's bright green like their eyes. And when the fire dies, that's when the crowd rushes in."

"For what?" A young man blurted out, breathless as Coris staggering up the Keep stairs to his room. The old man cackled,

"The bones and the eyes, of course!" Agnes' fingernails dug into Meya's flesh as she frantically hissed her name—Meya must have staggered. Her head was spinning so bad, the old man's voice was a tinny echo in her ears.

"Their bones are metal, lad! And those eyes, they never burn. They never dim. They never rot. For hundreds and hundreds of years! The smart Greeneyes? They'd tell their children to pluck out their eyes first. Or the undertaker might keep them for himself!"

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

The astounding revelations dealt blow after blow to Meya's battered heart. Perhaps, if all these had been unearthed by a fellow Greeneye or an ally, with Meya to witness it firsthand, it would've come as less of a shock, or even become a source of wonder and delight.

But here, delivered callously for entertainment. To learn that the flesh, blood and bone of her kind were resources to be harvested. Lucky charms. Fireproof polish. Metal to feed furnaces. How long had this been going on in this town? And the whole of Latakia? Would she walk into glowing eyeballs mounted over a doorway in Safyre or along her way to Easthaven, too?

"And those desert men. The obsidian and Borax pickers, they go trekking out into the Sands, and they find glowing green eyeballs all the time. Buried under the rubble of the scree. Rolling on the dry lakebed. Shining bright as when them devils were alive. They're magic, they are. You give those eyeballs to the blind, they can even see again!"

"Now that's a heap of horse dung."

"It ain't! Even the Lady Jaise loves them. Them desert men give her Ladyship a new pair every year. Paid for their concession, it did."

Lady Jaise.

The words chilled Meya to the bone. Lady Jaise. The woman ruler she'd assumed to be just and compassionate. An avid collector of dragon eyes? Coris was at this moment having an audience with her.

It was beyond what she could stomach. Meya tore through the crowd towards the pine woods behind the statue, barely registering the stares and protests of those she'd left behind or batted aside.

The solid brown of a tree trunk hurtled towards her. She slammed the flat of her hand against it. The feel of its jagged surface carving welts into her palm grounded her. The tang of acid mingled with the bitterness of bile as her lunch squeezed itself out of her belly, then poured out of her mouth onto the soil at her feet.

A stab of pain, like her head splitting in half, sped up her face. Meya slumped against the tree, shaking feet scrabbling at loose earth and fallen leaves to keep herself upright.

"Meya!"

Agnes's scream joined the turmoil in her head. Groaning, Meya flapped a feeble hand to ward off her concerns.

"I'm fine, Haselle, I'm fine. Dun bother."

The effort it took to speak sent her head spiraling again. She gritted her teeth and pressed down on her lunch, whatever was left of it, keeping it where it belonged.

Heloise's flowery perfume flooded her nose as the lady reached around her head. She extracted her mask, then took off her Lattis medallion. Gusts of chilling wind lambasted her cheeks. Someone was fanning her, while someone hovered salmiac under her nose. Hands fussed about her, throwing back her braid, tugging at the collar of her chemise, lowering her against another tree.

Having been an elder sister ever since she could remember, and impregnable to the runs and fevers her human siblings occasionally came down with, Meya rarely enjoyed this kind of mothering. Even as a babe, she wasn't nursed. On a normal day, the tender attention would have greatly touched her. Now, the burden on her oversensitive nerves added to her misery.

"I'm fine. Leave me be for a moment. I need air." She grumbled, swatting blindly at the hustle and bustle, and they obligingly provided her space to breathe. She heard rustling as someone slumped down beside her. Judging from size and body heat, it was Lord Frenix.

"You may be—but I'm not," said Frenix. His voice sounded further then, directed to the others,

"So, what next? We'll go down for a hot bath and leave that eye there?" His tremors waved the hairs on Meya's bare arm, "Eh, Lo?"

Silence answered him. Meya creaked open her eyes. Lady Heloise's unmasked face was cast in shadow by the sunlight trickling through the pine needle canopy. She held her hat at her lap, her fingers twisting its wide brim until her knuckles shone bone white.

"We—we can't be rash, Frenix." She said, her voice shaking. Frenix bristled, and she flinched at the sight,

"We don't know the laws of this land, how much influence the landlord has. The Pearly Falls is an important source of income for Jaise. We're here as Lord Hadrian's retinue. Whatever trouble we cause goes right back to Coris."

Frenix spat on the ground. Little Amara scurried to hide behind Agnes's legs as young Lord Pearlwater sprang to his feet, fists balled at his sides.

"You're pathetic, Lo." He seethed through gritted teeth, then exploded, "Always! The boldest and loudest of the pack. Always! Except when it counts!"

Heloise's cheeks blanched, then flushed bright red. Meya watched dumbly, too shocked by the happy-go-lucky Frenix's outburst and too drained to join in. Amara curled into a ball behind Agnes, who seemed dangerously close to screeching out, torn between stepping in to shield Heloise and keeping her cover intact.

"All we have to do—" Frenix prowled the no man's land between them, arms flailing, "—is pluck it out when no-one's looking, and swap it with some glass marble. We'd be halfway through the Sands by the time they noticed. And even then, they'd be none the wiser who did it anyway."

"And what next?" Heloise sneered. She hadn't taken off her Lattis bracelet, yet her emerald eyes glinted malevolently. Frenix blinked as she loomed tall and dark over him,

"We don't know who to return it to. We can't ask around or it'll look suspicious. Worst case scenario? The landlord suspects the boy's father and goes after him! Who's the pathetic one now, Frenix?"

Heloise hissed, her nose an inch from Frenix's. The boy chomped on his lower lip to vent his frustration. As much as it galled her, Meya must admit Heloise was right. There wasn't going to be a simple way out.

Meya peered through the trees. The old man was still posing by the statue, chatting animatedly. More spectators summitted the Falls and coagulated around him, plugging up gaps where disenchanted listeners had vacated, as she watched and seethed in helplessness. She'd dealt with Nostran dragons, for Freda's sake! Wasn't there anything she could do for that poor one-eyed boy?

Lady Amara edged out from behind her human shield, then. Still gripping Agnes' dress, she glanced warily between the three Greeneyes,

"C-C-Can't we just b-buy it from the landlord? H-H-How much would it be?" She stammered.

Of course! How had she not thought of it?

Meya sprang to her feet. Agnes and Heloise reached out, expecting her to sway and fall, but Meya only had eyes for the little Lady Hyacinth.

"You're right, Lady Amara." She gave the small girl a taut smile, then glared at Heloise and Agnes, "I'm Lady Hadrian. I'll write him a bill under Coris' name. I dun care how much that debt is. I'll give up my whole allowance if I have to."

She snatched her mask and Lattis medallion from Agnes's slack hand and strode off. Harried footsteps pounded the ground after her.

"Meya!" A hand snatched her sleeve—Lady Agnes. Meya didn't slow. "Meya, wait—Meya!"

"Let go, Haselle." Meya warned icily. One whiff of that look and that voice, and her brothers would've known enough to back off.

"You just need—to calm—down!"

Agnes cut across Meya then pinned her against a tree. Heloise and the two kids caught up, then, but it seemed Agnes couldn't care less. She tugged off her mask, revealing her mangled left half.

Amara squealed. Frenix shushed her. Heloise gawked at Agnes' good eye, now locked with Meya's in a battle of wills.

As Meya gazed deep into the mesmerizing ocean-blue, the raging world settled into serenity. Agnes also had that calming influence of Coris. It compelled her to pause, listen, contemplate.

"If a usurer accepted something in place of the gold he's owed, that means it has value for him. Commercial, sentimental—we don't know." Agnes shook her head, her grip tightening,

"Depending on how you approach him, he could call for a much higher price or trick you into a contract you can't get out of. This man isn't like Gillian. He has no principle, qualm nor scruple. He has an eye for weakness, and he'd try to wheedle as much gold out of you as he could. You mustn't lose your composure. You must be careful."

Agnes shook her arms, whispers becoming hisses. Tamping down a sudden wave of fear, Meya pursed her lips and gave a jerking nod. Agnes's lone eye lingered, searching her face for signs of recklessness. Satisfied, she let go and moved back.

"There's also the boy's father." Heloise added quietly, "If we return the boy's eye to him, how can we be sure his father won't just pawn it off to fund his gambling habits again?"

The underlying issue they were well aware of in the back of their minds. How to give the boy back his eye and protect him from his own father? They needed a permanent solve—they wouldn't be here to bail his eye out every time his father fell short on gold.

Meya propped her hands on her hips and paced, admiring the pine needle-strewn ground as she plodded. She felt three-and-a-half pairs of eyes searching her face, hoping for a glow of sudden inspiration. Their trust was a warm balm of dawning sun on her shoulders.

The skeleton of a scheme assembled in her head. Meya turned first to Lord Pearlwater. Frenix had never bothered with Lattis. His green eyes glowed unapologetic as he earnestly awaited her command.

"Lord Frenix, are you sure you can pull off the swap?"

Frenix's face lit up as if hit by sunlight. He smirked, restless with anticipation,

"I have an idea for a distraction. All I need is a marble and some paint."

Meya forced out a smile. Beads of sweat oozed in her jittery hands at the thought of her elaborate scheme, and how poor Coris would react to it.

"You won't be needing those."