Flying on the back of a dragon gave Janu some insight into how Ilarion’s detailed map must have come about, with the shape of each mountain spine and glinting river laid bare below them. Only when they wheeled were such sights revealed. Otherwise, the green dragon’s back was far too broad to offer a clear view of the world beneath. And, Janu found, he rather preferred to keep his gaze fixed on the rippling coat of feathers beneath his hands. The ground should never be so far away as that. To his relief, they spent much of the journey above the clouds, which cushioned the world below.
When they passed back through the clouds, water droplets glistening all over, the dragon began a sweeping curve around the edge of a great lake. Janu couldn’t help but stare at the view now.
Dragons dotted the landscape. They lazed in the doorways of great buildings carved into the orange mountainside or fished and drank in the lake. A peculiar, musical hum filled the valley, wending through the rumbling conversation of its inhabitants. Trying to pick out the source of the music, Janu guessed it must be the series of precise holes and tubes carved into the rock face around them – each time they passed, the hum grew louder. Either they caught the wind or the gust of passing dragon wings. The two were one and the same, really.
They landed on a stone platform set into the ground above the lake, with a clear view of most of the valley. Janu didn’t trust his legs, but managed to stay standing after sliding off the dragon’s side. Galnai’s face had taken in a greenish tinge, but the princess was grinning from ear to ear. Only the hatchling seemed unphased, swaying slightly in its usual manner by her feet.
‘Thank you for—’ Janu began, but the dragon threw itself from the edge of the platform and flew away before he could finish.
That left only the white dragon, Ushuene, who had reclined on a huge bench carved from the same rock as the platform.
‘In the absence of my usual go-between,’ she said, presumably referring to Ilarion, ‘some explanation falls to me. This is Kimah-Kur, the heart of our society on this continent. You will not find its like elsewhere, nor will you find it at all should you attempt lead people to it.’
‘We wouldn’t,’ said Janu.
She fixed him with her golden gaze. ‘Would you not? Your livelihood is the theft of our eggs, of our hatchlings. Why would you not wish to profit from the greatest source of those?’
Janu looked down the slope at the dragons skimming the lake in search of fish. ‘For a purely pragmatic answer: There are too many of you.’ He turned back to her, his tongue dry and heavy in his mouth. ‘Not that long ago, I thought stealing directly from the empire would be suicide. I think I have just readjusted my estimations. Taking any act against your kind, here, would be suicide a thousand times over.’
‘Yes, self-preservation is a powerful motivator.’ She eyed the hatchling – her daughter, Janu remembered – by Popilia’s side. ‘Nonetheless, I will have you remain here until our work is done. There is no changing this. Too much is at stake. And what would be suicide for you would be a dark blow from your empire, with our own kin sent against us.’
Her words dredged the memory of that day in Tanaff from Janu’s mind – all those children separated from their parents for the empire’s own ends. It was a story that always repeated. What the empire wanted, it took. What did not belong to it, it would twist to serve its purpose. Gods, he was beginning to sound like Fraidun. But Fraidun had been right. It almost would have been worth having Fraidun here with them, just to see his shock at the dragons’ intelligence, at the knowledge he had been a cause of injustice for a people all along. That sort of knowledge might have driven the man mad.
Just then, the princess piped up with a question. ‘Why didn’t you tell us? Why didn’t you talk to us?’
Ushuene snaked her neck over to the princess. ‘Why didn’t you ask?’ She left the question hanging for a moment before withdrawing a metre or so. ‘Why is it the assumption that a living thing can be taken and changed before it is understood? Why is it that it must first protest?’ She snorted. ‘If you must know, whatever words we utter matter not. The very first dragon to be taken and bound was an adult. The draklings saw and relayed much of what happened that day. The battle was long, and his voice meant nothing to the sorcerer who bound him. Knowing he spoke did not stop them binding others.’
The princess opened and closed her mouth a few times, at a loss but stronger in the face of Ushuene’s might than Janu would have expected of anyone her age.
At last, when Ushuene had settled back into a comfortable position, the princess managed to ask, ‘What’s her name?’
Ushuene made a questioning rumble.
‘Your daughter.’ She gestured to the hatchling beside her. ‘I don’t know her name. She doesn’t speak to me. I don’t know if she can, if or she should be able to.’
The rumble caught as a hiss. ‘Her name is Nazagin-pa. By rights she should be speaking now, yes, but the bond...’ She shook her head slowly from side to side, and her lips pulled back to reveal the full length of her teeth. ’I know not the extent of its magic. That is why we have taken these actions, why we waited for the bond to be formed before we recovered her. To study it.’
With these words, she again extended her neck and hovered above her daughter Nazagin, as if she could not quite bear crossing the extra distance to touch her.
‘I am sorry, little one,’ she said. ‘This was the only way. We have tried others. Would that you could have known this and consented, before your hatching.’
Janu stood with his hands tucked into his belt, shuffling his feet. The princess was staring at her own, lost in thought, her face pale.
It was Galnai who asked, ‘So what happens now?’
Withdrawing from her assessment of Nazagin, Ushuene rose to her feet and extended one wing high in the air for a few seconds. ‘For now, nothing. You rest. You regain your strength. You stay within the bounds of Kimah-Kur.’ She moved her wing again, this time to gesture in a sweeping arc. ‘You see around you our homes, each carved by our own hands. A few of these homes are currently unoccupied, either to death or to wandering’s call. To you thieves we loan the home of Nazagin’s father, who has returned to the land of his birth in the south east. Ilarion has used it during his time with us. You will be alone there, for now, but not unwatched.’
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Nodding, Janu eyed the entrances in the mountainside around them. With enough space for dragons to enter and move around, he dreaded to think how cold they must be come nightfall. And they wouldn’t have their tents to shelter them until Ilarion arrived with the horses. Unless Ilarion had been allowed to make modifications, they would have to find enough firewood amongst the sparse shrubs to keep themselves warm.
‘What about me?’ the princess asked. Though her gaze had shifted from the floor, her face had grown paler.
‘You will stay with Nazagin in the home of one of our shamans, Anshar-igdagalak.’ Ushuene nodded behind them, and another dragon soared in to land near the princess. ‘He will watch over you and observe the bond.’
This dragon was a mottled ochre and olive, much the same colour as the local dirt and hardy grasses. With all the feathery fronds dangling from his hide, he reminded Janu of an old banyan tree, and the broad scales visible beneath the feathers on his belly seemed like gnarled bark. Four tusk-like outgrowths sprouted from his lower jaw, and spikes jutted sideways from the end of his tail.
Anshar inclined his head to Ushuene. ‘Shall I take them now?’
‘Please do,’ said Ushuene, ruffling her feathers. ‘I would think on our plans in peace.’
‘Of course.’ He turned to the rest of them. ‘Follow me, then.’ Nodding to Janu and Galnai, he added, ‘Your lodgings are on the way to my home. I will show you the path.’
Instead of offering them a lift, Anshar walked off in the direction of the mountains. Janu rushed to catch up, but the dragon kept to a reasonable pace that only demanded a fast walk – more of a struggle for the princess’ short legs than his. Nazagin bounded along beside her like a newborn colt, unsure of the required speed.
When Janu glanced back over his shoulder, he caught Ushuene staring back. He imagined his nieces or nephews being born without a name, a collar put around their neck, their mind bound to the whims of another.
He wondered why the dragons had not yet burned the world of men to the ground.
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Their new home turned out to be well furnished, for humans at least. Janu had no idea what constituted furnishings amongst the dragons, beyond their stone benches. In any case, Ilarion had in his time here built a series of enclosed spaces from timber and cloth. Reluctant to intrude, Janu searched no further than finding tools and his stockpile of materials, which they used to fashion another three spaces alongside his.
Janu did most of the fashioning, in fact. As he shaved and cut and hammered, Galnai wandered through Ilarion’s space, saying nothing, only occasionally rustling a piece of paper to suggest her presence. Clearly she did not have the same compunction towards intrusion as Janu – or her curiosity drove her past it. He did mind, in any case. This work reminded him of long days spent with his family when they first moved to Athon, of all the sweat and love poured into that house. If the dragons wouldn’t let him leave, he wondered, would they let him send his bezin to his family? He doubted it.
In the two weeks before Ilarion’s return, they settled into a routine. Each morning, one of them would forage food to supplement whatever the dragons gave them, and the other would go in search of firewood. At midday they joined the princess for lunch. Janu and Galnai never spoke to her, not really, but they had drifted together as humans seeking human company.
Popilia, for her part, had very little to do. She always looked at Anshar, her feet tapping with the energy of pent-up questions, but never asked them. From what Janu could tell, she spent most of the day clambering over the valley with Nazagin, earning dark looks from the dragons she passed. Nazagin herself had grown. Her wings already had a fluffy coat of feathers – not yet ready for flight, but less scrawny than before.
Galnai liked to walk through the terraced farms the dragons cultivated and watch them at work, digging furrows with more ease than any ploughman could hope for. Janu didn’t see the appeal. It reminded him too much of how easily those claws could slice his own flesh.
They filled the rest of their days with makeshift boardgames they put together from scraps of wood and bone, and they were playing one of their regular games by the entrance when Ilarion arrived at last. They heard the clip of the horses’ hooves first, then their jumbled shadows fell across the mouth of the cave.
‘I see you’ve settled in,’ Ilarion said. He eyed their additions to his space and gave a small nod, apparently satisfied.
‘We haven’t had much choice,’ said Galnai, not looking up from the board.
Ilarion led the horses in and tied them to a hook on the left wall before coming to squat beside them. At some point he had removed his armour in favour of the thick tunic that had lain beneath. He smelled of horse and woodsmoke and damp wool.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘any lack of choice you had ends now.’
Janu perked up. Even Galnai lowered the piece she had been holding and looked to Ilarion for explanation.
Ilarion’s gaze flicked between the both of them. ‘The dragons are happy you haven’t misbehaved in my absence. They want your help with the next stage of their plan.’
They hadn’t paid for the last stage yet, but Janu wasn’t about to point that out now. Besides, he couldn’t shift the feeling of their earnings being somehow unclean, despite the fact their unwitting theft of a sentient creature had, this time, been in its favour.
‘They want us to steal another egg?’ Galnai asked.
‘No, not an egg.’ He withdrew from his belt pouch a small leather-bound book and flipped through in search something. ‘Some time ago, the empire stole an artefact from the dragons – the horns of one of their greatest shamans, long dead and the only dragon whose soul never transferred to another after their death.’
When he found the page he was looking for, he turned the book around and showed them. Janu and Galnai both leaned in to inspect it. Two wide, blade-like horns had been carefully sketched in charcoal, with indecipherable patterns drawn in bands along their length alongside a series of knocks and scratches.
‘This is what they described to me. The horns used to form part of a shrine, of sorts, outside the bounds of Kimah-Kur. The shaman’s apprentices had carved his life story into his horns after his death, in lieu of his memories passing on directly. It became a sort of pilgrimage site. And then the empire took them.’ He flipped the book shut again. ‘The dragons believe they have been using the horns as an amplifier for their magic. Without them, the bonds between dragon and man might be more easily broken.’
Janu nodded. If it helped, why not? ‘Do they know where they are now?’
‘That’s where it gets difficult.’ Ilarion grimaced. ‘The brains behind the binding magic is the imperial high sorcerer, Critobulus Ypsilanti. If he keeps them anywhere, it will be under guard in his main residence, which is the imperial palace in Chorus. It won’t be easy.’
Galnai scoffed. ‘Kidnapping their princess "wasn’t easy", but at least that was out in the open. And it was still crazy. This is outright insane.’
‘We should do it, though,’ said Janu. He kept his voice quiet, scared that anything too loud would shatter his certainty. ‘We’d be doing something good, for a change.’
‘You sound like Fraidun.’ She flipped the bone of her game piece between her fingers. ‘And he thought our stealing was good because it got dragons out of the empire’s hands into others, for the most part.’
‘And for the least part, it bought him all the whores he wanted.’ Janu shook his head, noting how Ilarion had raised his eyebrows at their exchange. But think of it, though: think of what it means for the empire if they can’t bind dragons anymore.’
‘Sounds like war, to me.’
‘Sounds like an equal footing.’
Putting the piece down with a sharp clack, Galnai turned to Ilarion. ‘You said stealing this just makes the bond easier to break, right? It won’t actually solve the problem?’
‘It’s the first step to winning their freedom,’ Ilarion said, and set his jaw in determination. ‘And I’ll be going to retrieve it myself. I’m no thief, but I’ve been around. I can try. Whether the two of you choose to join me or not is for you to decide.’
An unreadable expression that passed between Ilarion and Galnai as they held each other’s gaze, and they left it to Janu to break the silence.
‘We’ll need to get a few more people on board,’ he said, plan-building gears already grinding into motion in his brain. ‘More supplies, too, and local knowledge. And I have a few things I need to sort in Athon first. But you can count me in.’
Galnai nodded to both of them, a mute but steadfast acceptance, and Janu’s heartrate climbed.
This was the big one. The heist to end all heists. If they could pull this off, they could do anything.