War.

We all stand there like that, looking at each other, me and Kether and the dragon and all the people arrayed in a ragged arc round the mouth of the alley. I realize the little girl who touched those mirrored scales just a few moments ago has crept close again, mouth wide in awe. From the roar, maybe, or just the sort of thing children remember and we sometimes forget.

"War." Kether's voice makes the word slap down flat in the air between us all.

I just nod.

"Okay, Kella, do you have a plan?"

I'm about to shake my head, but I can't do that, that would be terrible, no matter how much honesty it might show, I've just given a gods-damned speech and talked like I know what I'm doing, what needs to be done. So I hold out my hand, palm-up, the way I used to see my father do when he was talking with someone and wanted to...I don't know, invite them in to his ideas? Ask them to contribute something to what's being said? It feels fake, because I'm not my father, feels like I'm taking this thing from him to help sway Kether, sway everyone. But it isn't, because I do need his thoughts, I need them bad.

"I have a start," I say, and don't realize it's true until I've said it. "We need to take down a stockpile if we're going to have any chance at all. And then we need to hold it long enough to make use of it. And then we need to manage the backlash against any nearby human camps, because it's going to be massive."

Silence at that. War is one thing, as a word it doesn't really mean much to any of us, maybe more to me because I know a lot of the old stories, I've even seen some of them in flickering displays found deep during my searching but still, I've never lived them. War still happens, war is always, so far as I know, but we don't take part. We are ground down, and sometimes we rebel, but we don't make war, because they've made sure of that, all the fey, even as they indulge in plenty of war themselves, against each other, amongst themselves.

War is one thing, shaped-out vague in the murkier reaches of understanding, but "backlash," that's understood, that's right here, right now, that's got scars on the back that still ache when the wind changes. I have a few myself, on my face, in my head, all those weighted-down spaces somewhere deep where friends and family used to be, especially parents and brother and the man and woman who are the two reasons I don't do relationships anymore, not the romantic kind.

I can still see the way the blood trickled down her face, because I refuse to remember the rest, it's obscene.

"Yeah, backlash," I say, soft but it carries, surprised at the confidence and feeling behind my own voice, because I hear her voice too, not my dead girlfriend but my new very strange one, I have her there behind me, and maybe that shouldn't be a surprise because of course we're hanging all this on her, a huge burden on a creature that was only an egg just a day before. "This is going to be hard. This is going to be bloody. But our lives are hard and bloody already, each of you knows that, deeply, personally. And it's going to move faster than you might imagine, because it has to. She won't stay secret forever, we can't count on that, there's no time for waiting."

Kether sighs. It's not exasperation, it's not unserious like that, not dismissive. Just resignation, the recognition of a long road ahead. Because he knows, he's not stupid. He knows I'm right. Maybe we'll fight some on the how and where and when but there will be action taken and it will be taken as close to the now as we can wrangle it.

"Okay. I'll gather the small council. You've made your point, we should get your...our...new dragon friend out of sight. We don't get a lot of air patrols here and we see them coming way off when we do, they'd only be able to see her in the courtyard looking straight down, but still. I won't say we can't afford to take chances, because really we can't afford not to, this whole thing is going to be one chance after another, we're not in a position to take no risks. But we should choose those risks carefully, from here on out. What one does affects us all, we discuss them when that's possible, okay?"

I nod, and I follow him into one of the buildings, thinking. Because of course I took a huge risk, all by myself, just bringing her here, just hatching her, feeding her, even finding her. If I'd been caught before I was ready, before we were ready, it would have been...

...I don't know what it would have been. There's no precedent for it, not in living memory. Once in a while some group here and there will cobble together some half-cocked device from our ancestor's scraps and use it. Explosives, crude cannons, lightning-traps, the occasional very old very dangerous power core, goaded into instability and hurled in hope. That last one just happened once that I'm aware of, they used a trebuchet and got lucky, it obliterated the whole front entrance of a Dwarven mine instead of detonating the moment their siege machine started to fling it.

They took four fingers from each of my grandparents in retaliation for that one, just like they did from every other human within their reach, along with the expected death by torture for the attackers themselves. Rumor had it at least a hundred miners had been killed and the mine didn't reopen for a couple decades.

I'm not sure how I feel about that. The miners were just miners, right? But their ore didn't just make Dwarven crafts and carts and cutlery, it was used for armor. And weapons. Like the ones that had cut off all those fingers so they could be left to rot in neat rows on display in every human camp. The dwarves would make sure of it, if you didn't have your fingers in a prominent place, they'd take more. Creative cruelty. Only after all the people who had lost the digits had died were we finally allowed to throw them away, or rather hand them over to be tossed into forge-fires so we couldn't bury them.

Burying the dead is not allowed, not even just fingers. The dwarves love their elaborate tombs, they believe preservation of the body, at least a piece of it, anchors the soul for a comfortable journey into the next world.

But humans don't deserve a comfortable afterlife.

My thoughts are interrupted by the sight of the council table, old and made of partly sawed and partly scavenged wood, skewed but solid. Solemn all around, looking at me, looking at her, seeming so much larger in this smallish half-ruined space.

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"Kella," one older woman says, face all lines and care and hard-fought wisdom. Maybe some bitterness, too. "Daughter of Ralley and Marda. Ancient of clan."

This is all very formal, and I'm suddenly nervous. Humans have no family names, no clan names. Taken, long ago, like so much else. Legend says we clung a long time to them in secret, over centuries and centuries, but not long enough. Now, we just remember that we had them, once. Ancient of clan.

She senses my apprehension, the council woman; but she catches it also, the dragon, drawing in close to my side.

What is sudden worry? This small after-Empire government, it will do something to you? Operator Kella is deserving of no punishment by duly constituted authority, this council of doubtful authority, DRAGON unit will not allow...

I hope not, now hush, I send back, gently as I can. Her concern, maybe even a hint of her outrage, is touching but at this moment I need to concentrate, need to hear just the one voice.

"Tell us your story," the woman says. "All of it, omitting nothing that might be of interest to this council. Tell us how you found this weapon, and everything you did between then and your arrival here."

There's a hint of decision in her voice already. Not condemnation, that's a relief, but something else too I don't quite like. I take a deep breath, though, because they do deserve the story, and as I breathe out I tell it to them. It takes long enough that somewhere in the middle I am invited to sit, and anxious eyes form a web of thinking-glances across the rough table surface, meeting each other, lingering on me, positively pulled in by the mirror-scale creature-construct sat nearly motionless by my side.

"Thank you, Kella, Daughter of Ralley and Marda, ancient of clan." The old woman's words come soft but dismissing as I finally wrap up the tale. I know what their undercurrent means, and begin to show myself out. It is time for the council to deliberate, and I am not a member.

"You should leave the dragon here," says a hunched-forward man with white-wisp hair and faded green eyes. I suppose this is a reasonable request, but it sends long branching spikes of anxiety down my throat and into my chest. I don't have time to reply, though.

No. DRAGON unit will follow Operator Kella in leaving room, proper hierarchy-of-orders uncertain but operator fitness well within satisfactory bounds, Operator safeguard part of standard duty-set.

Silence.

"We will discuss this later," the council woman says, and there's a careful note of lightness in her voice, pure artifice. I don't like it. "Meanwhile, you may both wait in the common room.

The common room is not too far from the council chamber, but far enough to make eavesdropping a near-impossible proposition. I make the walk, dragon at my side, silent, thinking.

I do not eavesdrop, she sends, something near to primness in her mental tone. I almost laugh. But hearing is passive function for surface-mind sendings. Woman at head of table who did most of speaking sent thought, Kella young/not warrior/not leader should not bear burden of responsibility, wish to appropriate DRAGON unit.

I feel a chill, even as some small part of my brain asks, is that the first time I've ever heard her say "I," assert identity that way? Maybe.

"I got a little of that impression too, yeah," I say. "I can't hear thoughts except the ones you send, and I'm no genius with people, but she's not that hard to read."

She cocks her head, and bumps my elbow gently with her snout. Operator Kella has latent talent for people/leading, unmistakable, DRAGON unit designed to recognize these traits very important in operations, full collapse scenario anticipated by some DRAGON operators meant as possible leader-fallbacks.

"No I don't," I say, but feel a flush I hope she can't see in the interior gloom under the dark brown of my skin. Then I realize that's foolish, she doesn't recognize emotion that way, she can probably read it just fine directly.

Denial is minor obstacle so long as proper decision is taken.

I blink. There's a lot to pick out in there, all kinds of meaning behind the pseudo-words streaming into my head. But I don't have time, because there are running feet down the corridors, and yells, and I run too, unthinking, habits grooved carefully in since I had even the smallest understanding of my tribe's necessary ways. Because I can make out some of the words.

Escape. Rearguard battle stations.

Normally I'm one of the rearguard. I'm no great warrior, but I have no children and no partner and so I am part of the escape militia basically by default. I'm running to my station, only that's stupid, I'm not going to throw rocks down and then fight them off as long as I can with whatever comes to hand.

I have a dragon.

I don't need to say anything to her, out loud or otherwise, not directly. She knows. We dart down stairs, one flight, two, skittering right out into the corridor, then I let her go past me because of course I do, why would I be at the forefront?

Burst out into sunlight, kicking an ancient stubborn door. It's elves. They've already killed two of the rearguard. Everyone else has already fled for the tunnels. One of them sees me, raises her bow.

Screams.

I've seen people burn to death before. It's a favored punishment for humans who attempt to buy or steal or otherwise use any kind of magic, since we can't cast spells ourselves but can make use of enchanted things, sometimes. This is both better and worse. It's much, much faster. She doesn't suffer long.

But her scream is nothing apart from agony, her last moments will be utterly shorn of anything else. Her last moments come almost immediately. The stream of fire is not red, like part of me had imagined even though I should know better. White-hot, almost silver, in a furious light-distorting burst from the dragon's mouth.

The elf falls. No blood, only steam. The only liquid is silvery streams from whatever bits of metal she had on her. Jewelry. Buckles on her hide armor. I look away, partly in horror, partly because the afterimage is so, so strong.

The others are attacking. There are maybe six of them, here in the courtyard, but I can hear more clamoring outside the alley's narrow way.

When I look up there are only elf-shaped cinders and the smell, burnt air, burnt everything, almost too clean for what has happened, as if the sheer intensity-of-heat has scythed every organic scent away.

"Gods." It's my voice, far away.

The dragon leaps into the alley. More fire, more screams. Now, though, I see blood splatter up over the walls, though I cannot see the fighting itself. She is using her claws. Maybe her teeth. It doesn't last long before she runs back into the courtyard and leaps into the air, wings spread.

I look up. Circling griffins. Of course. Can't let them get away to report.

She rises faster than her wings could possibly explain, but of course she does, she is a pinnacle of human engineering, gravity is a thing that can be tossed aside for her.

My mouth is hanging open.

One griffin-rider attacks. Arrogant. Dead. Broken feathery neck, falling rider.

Oh, shit.

She might fall right on top of me. I step back, into the alley with its leaning overhang.

The rider hits the ground right in front of me. Spray of blood, then a seeping pool. The sound of so much broken I can't count. He or she yells on the way down. Not a scream. Defiant, suddenly stopped.

I pant, look up. Dragon is coming back. No sign of the other griffin.

She lands, all light grace. Nothing like the rider, nothing at all.

All enemy forces neutralized. Scouts will not report back.

"Gods," I say again. I shudder. Something occurs to me. I can feel the shock, everywhere in my veins through all my nerves pounding in my head. I push it aside.

"Burn the bodies, please," I say. "All the ones not already burnt. Ours too. Then the whole courtyard. More will come when this force doesn't report back. We can't let them find anything."

She does. I don't watch. I'm thinking, thinking.

It's started, too soon.

It always would have been too soon.

I am not ready. It doesn't matter.

She looks at me, nods. Nothing needful to be said, not right now. I nod back.

We flee for the tunnels.