The escape tunnels are crowded by human bodies and scav-donkeys and dogs and small carried pets like cats and salamanders. The passageway stinks of vermin and sweat and fear and the combined-waste scent of the small slow underground river that carried everything unwanted away from our little settlement. It's awful and it's sudden and I hate it.

"Move move move! Move along move along!" Kether cries out from the entrance where he's ushering people in. Everyone is crowded except around me because the dragon and I are given plenty of space. She smells of burning air, strongly enough to ride rough over all the other awful smells. Her scent's not awful in itself, but it is a reminder.

We come around a turn in the tunnels and one of the council members is standing there, holding something. Small green glass orb hanging down on the end of a string. I can feel the queasy violation-of-norms coming off it in waves. Magic. Extremely forbidden. Something kept around at great risk, therefore likely something extremely useful. It hangs motionless as I begin to pass by, but the moment the dragon approaches behind me it bends away from her, string nearly level with the tunnel ground.

"Well," the woman says. "Now that is interesting." It's not, thank the gods, the old woman who questioned me from the head of the table. Younger, friendlier. I search for her name in my battered brain, finally find it.

"Paunea. What are you doing with that? If they'd...was that why...?"

"Please stay here a few moments, Kella," she says calmly. "No, there's almost no way this little trinket is why they came. It's actually quite difficult to find with any of their methods. It's a magic-detecting bauble. An unusual but rather minor one, meant to amuse little Elven lordlings so far as I've been able to tell." She gestures me and the dragon over into a sort of small tunnel alcove across from her. We both go. The orb goes back to hanging straight down.

"Okay," I say. "I guess it does work, I'll give you that, or it wouldn't have been pushed away from the dragon like that." Still sounds wrong, in my head, just "the dragon." She needs a name, she really does. Soon, soon. Other things, right now, gods know that and so do I. "So what are you..." and then I understand, just like that. "Oh," I say quietly.

She just nods. People stream past. They glance at Paunea, down at the little glass sphere hanging down from her hand. Some of them look at me, at the dragon. A few stare, but only for a moment, because no one wants to linger.

Except maybe someone does, because one man comes around the corner and sees Paunea and her bauble and backs up almost immediately. And it's too late, because the string twitches and the orb moves toward him, string pointing his way attracted by some bit of magic on his person and he sees that too, tries to smile, then tries to run, run right past us, ready to shove his way to unlikely salvation.

The dragon reaches out and snatches him by the neck. I gape. It's not a surprise, not exactly. I would have tried to stop him, too, I don't have much sympathy for an obvious spy. None at all, in fact. Except that isn't true, I've been through a lot and there's plenty of scab and callous on my heart but part of me still winces, seeing his eyes bulge like that, seeing him hung helpless, kicking and scrabbling at mirrored scales to exactly zero effect.

And he's human. Part of me thought before, for no real good reason now that I think back, that a dragon would be forbidden from harming a human in any way. Because they were the ultimate human weapon, a possible salvation, even though that salvation hadn't actually worked out at the time because it was already too late, lots of reasons for that, no time to think about it now, but still, still, I thought, well, she'd always be on a human's side.

Except humans aren't always on a human's side. Often we have a hundred different sides, even if they're small ones and we can cooperate when needed, even then. She can't be on all the sides, can she? Did I think she'd spare traitors? What did I think she would do, faced with some fighting force that included human traitors among its ranks? Would she be on their side?

Of course not.

The man's eyes bulge. I've been looking at that for a while now, and the dragon has been looking at me. She has sent nothing, just silent, but I think she's heard plenty. Paunea looks on too, with an odd sort of interest. Waiting to see what I'll do. Because of course she knows what it is I have to do, we can't take prisoners or have a trial or whatever, not right now, and even if we did the result would be the same, this is how it would have to end.

"Put him down," I say, and fight off the sudden urge to add a "please" on the end. She looks at me, just a moment, those white-fire eyes showing something like a touch of color beneath, or maybe just a hint of turmoil, or maybe that's not it at all, maybe I'm just catching something like thought or emotion passing straight through to my mind and I'm imagining something like a human response on her mirrored impassive face.

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She does, but doesn't let him go, doesn't even let up her grip on his neck. He seems almost limp on his feet. "Let him breathe," I say.

Detained subject has sufficient airflow to survive but insufficient for any effective resistance, she sends, but releases her grip anyway, enough for him to take one huge whooping breath, tears running down his ashy-brown face. I get a good look at him for the first time now that the immediate crisis is suspended, albeit suspended over him like a slowly-falling axe. He's mostly unremarkable, ragged patchwork clothes just like the rest of us, improvised pack on his back. Medium height, medium build, medium skin tone. Black hair, brown eyes. Youngish, maybe thirty. I don't know his name. I should know more people's names. Especially now.

"What are you carrying?" I ask him. I don't know why it's me doing this, should be Paunea, right? She's an actual member of the council, a real leader, but I know somehow this is expected of me now, that my place has completely changed, and I can say I don't want that but I remember the sheer galvanic power of the feelings that hit me when I thought they might try to take the dragon away from me, to maybe wash my hands of responsibility for everything that followed from finding and hatching her.

He doesn't say anything, and the dragon noses herself forward, prods him right in the chest. He tries to jump back, but Paunea gives him a casual shove back forward.

Operator Kella has asked you a question. What is it you are carrying?

He stares at her, still silent. Buying time, internal panic, who knows.

It is under his shirt, right against his lower back. His pack hides the shape-pressed-in-cloth.

"Give it to me," I say, and the softness in my own voice surprises me.

He reaches down and behind, under his back. Hesitates.

"You're going to kill me anyway," he says. "And it's not like you have time to torture any information out of me."

"I don't torture people," I say, and decide immediately that I'm telling the truth. I've seen enough of that shit from the fey. And heard about if not seen it among humans. I'm not going to, I'm just not.

He glances back at Paunea, past the people still streaming past, slowing only a little interest. The drama's not worth a delay, to them, not now. They'll get the story later. Paunea just gives him a carefully blank expression. He shakes his head. "Might not be up to you."

"It will be," I say. Can I back that up? I'll have to. "What's your name?"

He hesitates, then maybe realizes how stupid that is. "Jens. My name is Jens."

I give a slow nod. "Okay Jens. We don't have much time, so you'll have to decide quickly. You want to die after helping your people the best you can, even after betraying them? Or do you just want to die as a loathsome memory? Any interest at all in a tiny touch of redemption? Doesn't matter if you're not ready to decide." I pat the dragon lightly on her shoulder, giving her a small mental smile. "Readiness is nice, but right now has the necessity."

It's a nice little speech, I guess, but it doesn't seem enough to sway him. At least not until there's a sharp intake of air from the dragon, and then a very warm exhale that briefly raises the dank tunnel temperature a few degrees and tousles the man's short black hair. He closes his eyes, pulls something sloped and circular out from under his pack. He holds it out toward Paunea first, and her hanging orb is immediately pulled in the object's direction.

She just nods, and the man tosses the thing at my feet. It's small, perhaps a little larger than my own palm, and ugly, like something sculpted by a not-very-talented child, but without any of the misshapen charm. The bottom seems to be flat, resting on the uneven tunnel brickwork, the edges slightly crinkled, the top rising up at the center round a small flattish green stone.

Some kind of communication charm. Has to be. Gods damn him, damn the whole thing I—

The man looks me in the eye as he speaks, and I don't like it. Something petulant there, maybe even spiteful. "A young Elven woman approached me something like six months ago. She seduced me and—"

Lies.

The dragon's voice booms through the tunnel, loud enough I worry it may be audible on the streets above. She seems to realize this too, ducks her head and sends an apology, but doesn't take her burning stare off the man.

Anger flares in the man's face, and the ugliness is definite there now, all the spite I thought I'd seen before, uncovered along with a whole trove of hoarded resentments. "Fuck your ancient machine, it doesn't know—"

"Kill him quickly," I bark. and she does, and I know it's a mercy but immediately I understand that this image will haunt my dreams, the first death I've ever ordered directly, and it's true I've killed once before with my own hands, bludgeoning that elf with the dragon's own egg but that was defending myself, this man is human, he is supposed to be one of my own. The dragon rears up, grabbing the man's head, claws sinking in deep as though his skull was no harder than old leather.

He goes slack immediately, suspended by her claws like a puppet, and there's very little blood until she lets go and then it's pouring out the holes and I look away.

"Good," Paunea says. She's looking me over. It's appraising, and I'm not sure if I want it to be approving, but I also think that yeah, it is. "We'll have to leave the body here." She gestures toward the small magic device still on the ground, then addresses the dragon. "Can you destroy that? He was no doubt using it to contact the fey and it may still be tracking his location."

The dragon cocks her head at the device.

Yes. Anti-magic is one of DRAGON unit's primary functions, but destruction not advisable, could create warning, best to just leave here? Unsure, cannot analyze reality-rule-violating object from within own dampening field.

We all look down at the thing. I try not to see the sheer quantity of blood still oozing out nearby, or too far into the holes in the man's—in the corpse's—head.

Then the green stone gem in the center of the magic item he dropped begins to gently glow. I look up, shocked. Paunea is backing up, face pale.

"Oh shit," I say quietly.

Yes, I hear in my head. A hint of resignation, a rush of determination coming behind. This is an Oh Shit. We are seen. We must hurry. Now has the urgency, Operator Kella. There will be little time.