They decided to move Ilarion after all. Janu could have done without lugging his weight around, but the man made a good point – there was a bed in the labyrinth, and if they needed to spend a while making paint, he could at least be an extra pair of hands. So they left the barracks with him limping between Galnai and Janu again, back into the darkness of the blocked tunnel entrance.

Janu swore. ‘We should have found a lantern to bring with us.’ He couldn’t even tell if the hidden entrance was still open or if the guards had resealed it. Water rushed and lapped at the edges of the stream to his left.

A few light footsteps sounded from where Popilia had been behind him, then she scurried back with a dim oil lamp, one hand cradling its tiny flame. It didn’t illuminate much besides her face.

When she stopped, the footsteps didn’t.

Whirling to face the new sound, Janu reached for a dagger that was no longer there. Then the footsteps stopped, leaving his heartbeat thudding in his ears.

‘Janu!’ The voice was Divya’s, pitched low but full of relief. ‘I had about given up on you.’ Something cracked, and a faint glow sprung to life where she stood, emanating from a small horn bowl in her hand.

‘Divya.’ Her name came out as a sigh. Janu half wanted to go over and hug the old woman. ‘Come with us. We don’t have much time.’

‘What, and get caught in the same spot as you did? Pah! You can’t be serious.’

Popilia took a couple of steps closer to the woman. ‘If we do this, we can free all the dragons at once, and the guards will have more to worry about than us.’

Divya blinked and stared down at the girl, her brow furrowed. ‘So you must be the princess? You have a lot of faith, girl. Arresting us will be far preferable to facing angry dragons, I am sure.’

‘She’s persuasive.’ Janu recalled the odd mannerisms of the guards when she had come to rescue them. ‘Magically so. I trust her.’ And, as he said it, he realised he did – in a wavery, gut sense that his mind didn’t want to agree with.

‘Hmm. So be it, then. I will do what I can, but do not doubt that I will escape again if I must. I don’t have as much fondness for my clothes getting burned off as you do.’

Janu laughed, though her words drew his attention back to the incessant, hot ache of his left side. ‘Let’s get moving, then.’

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

Critobulus had more than enough inks, powders and dyes for Popilia to gather the supplies she needed. Her sheer efficiency in preparing the materials left Divya with very little time to patch any of their wounds, and Janu couldn’t help but feel guilty when they delayed their progress for her to apply a balm to his burns. Relief overweighed the guilt soon enough, though. Coolness, as if from a fresh breeze, smoothed over his skin.

‘Do not go getting burned again,’ Divya told him, wagging her finger as if her were one of her younger family members. ‘I will charge the next time.’

Janu was about to protest, but she took up a pot of paste, swiped her fingers through it and smeared a thick dab under his nose. He recoiled at the stench that struck him – the same scent that had seen them through the waters of the lake without drowning.

‘We’re not swimming anywhere,’ he said as Divya grinned wickedly.

Turning to apply the same paste to the others, Divya said, ‘You told me you needed something for the siren fruit. This is not much, but it is something. When we are in there, breathe through your nose only – never your mouth. While you all dance around trying not to become dragon food, I will go and search for it. If I find it in time, I can seal it away. If I don’t, well, those of us who didn’t eat it can put the other out of their misery, I’m sure.’

A hard lump formed in Janu’s throat. He swallowed it away. He couldn’t argue her point. He had seen a siren tree without ripe fruit, once, parts of a mangled cow skeleton jutting from the flesh of its lower trunk and roots. No one wanted to live through the beginning of that. Anyone faced with it would rather a quick death. The best they could do was give it to them.

‘We should go now, then,’ he said. ‘Before the smell wears off.’

Without waiting for a response, he picked up a candle and started down the corridor that led to the last stretch of labyrinth. A scuttle of claws and light feet told him Popilia and Nazagin had followed straight away. He wondered if they would have been so eager if they had seen the dragon they were about to face.

His candle flickered and danced, barely lighting the way. They would be blind again in there. The only light Popilia would have to paint by would be the flashes of the dragon’s flame as it tried to burn them all.

At the sound of a whispered argument behind him, Janu glanced over his shoulder. Orange light picked out the extremities of his companions’ faces – including both Galnai and Ilarion’s. The man walked with the aid of one of the bed slats they had used to lever up the trapped floor tiles, his face taut with pain but his gaze lucid, if his pupils were a little wide. Divya’s painkiller must have been good.

Well, if he wanted to go with them, Janu wasn’t about to stop him. He focussed on the way ahead, counting the turns in his mind. When they reached the last corner, he stopped and extinguished his candle, plunging them all into smoke- and paste-scented blackness.

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Popilia’s voice broke the ensuing silence. ‘Let us go ahead,’ she said. ‘Nazagin can see a little better in the dark.’

Though he wondered how much good a little better than ‘not at all’ would do them, Janu stepped aside. Air and dragon hide brushed past him a moment later.

‘Follow us.’

Janu followed the sound of their footsteps more than their actual presence. He strained as hard as he could to pick them out from his own steps and those behind him. Only when they neared the end of the corridor did he realise he could see their outlines, albeit indistinctly. Deep scratching and rumbling sounds from further ahead told him the dragon was still awake, and something was splashing in the cavern’s pool.

They filed out into the cavern.

To the left, where Janu had thrown the clay-encased siren fruit into the pool, a half-dozen lanterns lay abandoned on the floor. Their light picked out the form of several guards, stumbling about in the water or at its edge. Their shadows danced across the wall behind them, tall and misshapen.

The dragon strained at the chains that bound it. It hadn’t seen them enter – it only had eyes for the guards, a constant growl-hiss emanating from its throat like a crocodile’s roar. Tongues of flame licked between its bared teeth.

Unfazed, Popilia kept walking towards the dragon, her and Nazagin both dwarfed by its bulk, pots of dye dangling from the makeshift belts and bandoliers they both carried. No questions, no doubts, no second thoughts. Janu envied her courage.

Divya appeared by his shoulder. ‘Leave her to do her bit. Come, while they are all distracted.’

After a moment, Janu tore his gaze away from Popilia and followed the others. They made their way towards the guards, who didn’t pay them the slightest attention. They were too busy scouring the floor around them or splashing through the water, driven to distraction by the smell of siren fruit. Janu had seen its effects before, though only ever from a distance, and he had never stuck around for long afterwards. Every part of him recoiled. Run away, that sight said. Before you go mad as well.

But all he could smell was Divya’s scented dirt. He kept walking.

As she passed the first of the guards, Divya gestured back to them and said in a stage whisper, ‘Take their weapons.’

The guards still didn’t react, so Janu approached the nearest. He had to keep dodging and dancing around the man’s haphazard movements to avoid getting hit. When he reached towards the guard’s sword belt, the man shoved him hard without even looking at him.

Janu staggered back, almost tripping over a lantern. He waited for a moment with only the beating of his heart and the dragon’s rumbling overhead in his ears. The guard just kept searching for the fruit. Janu had just been in the way. So next time, he approached the guard from behind. In a matter of seconds, he managed to unclip his sword from its sheath and tuck it under his arm. The guard continued his eternal search, and Janu moved on to the next.

A scuffle ahead caught his attention. Galnai stood with her hands locked around another guard’s spear, trying to pull it out of his hands. The guard clung on, tugging it as if he had simply got it stuck in a bush, but otherwise paying her no heed.

Casting about on the floor around him, Janu found a hand-sized rock and hefted it. It was about the size of a siren fruit. He had no idea if this would work, but there was no harm trying. He tossed the rock underarm, past the guard Galnai was grappling, into the nearby water.

All the guards’ heads snapped around at the splash. Galnai’s let his spear slip from his fingers and lurched towards the water, shoving one of his colleagues out of the way. Then a sheet of flame lanced down from above. Janu leapt away and landed on his tailbone, his heart hammering, his teeth snapping closed with the impact. Even the guards jumped back, though the hair of one had caught alight. He screamed an all-too aware scream and plunged his head into the steaming water at his feet.

After a moment, the others resumed their attempts to disarm the guards, though they never turned their backs nor took their gazes from the dragon.

Janu sat on the floor still, his stolen sword clutched to his chest, the giant, flame-filled maw of the dragon occupying his entire vision.

Faint green lines glowed in the blackness behind the dragon’s straining head and neck. Their odd patterns and swirls mapped out the lurking bulk of its body. Following them as best he could, Janu eventually found the tiny forms of Popilia and Nazagin, each working on a different line, clinging to the dragon’s hide as it shook and bellowed. Great chains held it back, not budging an inch for its efforts. And on the chain around its neck still gleamed the horn.

Janu got to his feet. The dragon wanted the siren fruit. While it wanted that, it was much like the guards – it wanted nothing else, would react to nothing else.

He started walking, then broke into a jog when it really sank in that the dragon wasn’t paying him any attention. The side of his leg burned despite the balm. Galnai hissed something behind him, but he couldn’t make out the words.

Popilia looked up at the sound of his jogging, but kept painting. She had made quick work of it – the paint almost covered what Janu could see of the dragon’s hide. But gods, how much could he see? To say there were miles of it would have been an exaggeration, but it didn’t feel that way. Its neck stood like the branch of a giant tree above him, stretched as far as it could go. The dark, mottled feathers of its forelegs grew closer. He examined them for handholds, tried to plan his route from claw to ankle to knee to the chain around the base of its neck. It wouldn’t be easy, but it wouldn’t be trying to kill him, at least.

Lightning slashed across the room. Janu cried out and stopped in his tracks, throwing up his arms to shield his face. The next moment he was blind, blinking, eyes seared and watering.

Above him, the dragon keened, a discordant hissing growl that set his teeth on edge. In a moment, a chanting voice thundered over it: Critobulus’ voice.

Janu froze. Another wave of light rolled across the chamber, but this time it stayed. He had nowhere to hide.

A horrible screeching, grinding noise shuddered through the air. Fear gripped Janu’s heart and limbs. He couldn’t move except to look up, to where the chains holding the dragon to the wall were beginning to crack.

That snapped him out of it.

‘Run!’ he shouted to Popilia, then again to the others as he turned, ‘Run!’

He sprinted towards them, not the door, conscious of Critobulus standing there with his staff raised. If they all rushed him at once, maybe they would stand a chance, but he sure as hell wasn’t trying to get past the sorcerer alone.

One of the chains broke with a crack like thunder. Roaring, the dragon surged forwards and broke the remaining chains. Janu threw himself forwards and rolled, catching a glimpse of painted feathers rushing past him. Then with an almighty splash, the dragon shoved its face into the water. A guard screamed, the scream turning to gurgles then silence within a heartbeat.

Janu looked over, holding his breath with trepidation. All was still bar the dragon, which raised its head slowly from the water, dripping crimson blood and green dye.

It licked its lips, savouring the taste of siren fruit, and turned its attention to them.