After half a year, Agadart was once again on a train, traveling across an entire nation to a fate mostly unknown. This time, however, she was pretty sure that the destination would be far, far worse than the dragon maids’ training campus at Fort Endestern. She, and everyone she was traveling with, were heading straight into the war that was consuming the eastern edge of Watt off the coast of Ouien.

It would also be a shorter trip. Watt wasn’t even a third as wide as Kaaltendt so the trip would be at most four days, and that was with multiple stops along the way. They had spent exactly forty-eight hours in Allemann and the dragon maids had worked most of the time, helping load the train and sort supplies.

What they did not do was anything remotely related to what they were trained to do, as there were no lairs to clean out or food to transport and prepare. All the dragons from Kaaltendt were currently in their walking forms, resting up during travel in order to shift quickly at the front. While they would get there faster by flying, they would also get there tired which would therefore defeat the whole purpose of bringing them forward.

Admiral Leonteinparre himself was recovering from changing back into his human form in his private coach, with Mani in attendance of course, but he was still having meetings with all of the high-level officers under his command, most of whom were dragons. Agadart knew this because Worthan complained about it when he shoved piles of papers at her, detailing battles that had happened at the front and expectations for what the admiral’s flight was going to be assigned to do. Apparently Worthan would be put immediately to work in the field hospitals already set up for the wounded, and the reports being provided grimly stated those numbers. Worthan had put her in charge of tallying them in a ledger, mostly, she thought, in order to avoid doing it himself.

“This can’t be right,” she said, tapping the latest paperwork in front of her.

“It can’t?” Doctor Worthan asked without much interest, not even looking up from the medical journal he was reading.

“That the admiral has one thousand dragons in his wing.”

“Sounds about right to me. He’s a duke and the prince’s brother but he’s still a low-ranking admiral. Only two talons on his epaulettes, you know. I respect his abilities but he’s not even fifty years old; you can’t expect him to handle much more than thirty to forty flights, honestly.”

She blinked at him. She knew the numbers of Wattish dragons were in the tens of thousands, because she had read as much in her studies of late, but it still seemed like a preposterously large number. There were only a few thousand dragons in all of Kaaltendt, in total. “One thousand?” she repeated.

“Mmm.” He closed the journal. “Ah, I see where you are coming from.”

“From Kaaltendt,” she clarified, raising her eyebrows.

“Right, right. In the same way you were shocked when we came into port at all the dragons in the air. Oh yes, I saw you, staring like a maiden pining for her lost beloved—”

“I did not!” She reared back. Had she? She feared that maybe she had, and that was worse than simply be accused of it.

He laughed but did not confirm or deny. “Such as it is, those numbers must seem unreal to you.”

She nodded. “It’s a bit more of a culture shock than I was expecting, despite my studies.” She sighed and looked out at the craggy, gray-green low-slung mountains they were passing through.

Worthan let her gaze for a few moments. “Are you still experiencing that strange feeling you described to me on the ship, before we disembarked?”

She didn’t pull her eyes away from the beautiful, if harsh, landscape. “Yes. It peaked when I first walked on land but now it is…background noise, I suppose.”

“Hmph. Still odd.”

She paused for a moment, but decided that it was not a secret she had been entrusted with, merely something she had been told. “Mistress Seraphinite has expressed that she felt similarly. I believe it was disconcerting to her.”

He sat up a little at that. “Oh? That’s interesting. Two unrelated dragon maids feeling a dragon-like pull to a foreign land? I would say it is unheard of but, eh, it’s not like we’ve ever had any Kaaltendt dragon maids on our soil before. Maybe it is due to your previous proximity to dragons?” He pulled out a large journal that he seemed to use for random thought collecting.

Agadart almost corrected him, but he still did not know who she was, and her family relationship to the headmistress was definitely a secret she could not reveal lightly. She personally thought their strange reaction when stepping onto the land of Watt might very well be a family trait, she thought as she considered her long-lost uncle. But again, not something she could discuss with the doctor, so she returned to her tallying.

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Despite spending her days in the doctor’s cabin continuing her studies or helping him with paperwork, she was assigned a bunk in one of the rear cars of the train along with the rest of the dragon maids and lower ranking staff. There was a large number of military support staff, some of whom were women and, even more shocking, many of whom were dragons. It seemed like she could not walk ten paces without bumping into a dragon.

She realized that the unique hum of energy she had first experienced in the warrens of Endestern and associated with the proximity of dragons was all pervasive in Watt, even on a moving train, preventing her from singling them out. She had never even needed to try in Kaaltendt. Most of the time she was sure she would never have even known what they were, but they all had distinctive wing markings printed, or sometimes embroidered, on the backs of their uniforms. Sometimes it felt like everyone was a dragon, the magic was so thick around her.

It was late afternoon on the final day of travel, and she had spent a little time repacking what little she had unpacked of the doctor’s library so she decided to break for a late lunch before attacking the last of the paperwork. The train was slinging back and forth through switchback mountains as they gained altitude, and took a turn she was not expecting as she opened the cabin door to go to the staff dining car. She stumbled right into the arms of someone in the narrow hallway as the train shifted on the rails.

“Maid Aegirine,” Admiral Leonteinparre said as apology, setting her back on her feet.

“Your Grace! My apologies.” She stepped away from him, hoping her blush was not as obvious as it felt. Behaving like a young maiden in his presence was the last thing she needed to do.

He looked past her. “Is Doctor Worthan in?”

“I’m afraid not, Your Grace. He said something about a meeting with some junior officers.”

The admiral rolled his eyes. “Probably a game of cards, then.”

She tried not to smirk. “As you say, Your Grace.”

His lips quirked up in the cute not-smile that seemed to be the extent of his humorous expressions.

“Is there something I can help you with?” she asked, looking off to the side, trying to avoid eye contact. They had not been alone together since that night on the ship, and her nerves were jangling with the close proximity.

He thought about it for a second. “Perhaps. I need one of the reports I provided to him yesterday.”

“Oh, that I can definitely help with. Please step inside while I locate it, Your Grace.”

She suspected that he had actually wanted to talk to the doctor, since he could have sent a dozen different runners to get a report, but she was not rude enough to point that out. He sat down in the doctor’s usual chair while she went to the box where she had filed away the report. “Was there something specific you were looking for?”

“With the report? No, I wanted to re-familiarize myself with the numbers of wounded and the types of wounds. We seem to have a high percentage of them. My impression is that the Iskaryyva forces, as brutal as they are, are targeting tail wounds.”

“They definitely are. Especially during midweek.” She handed him the latest report.

“They…are?” He squinted at her. “And you know this?” He paused. “Midweek?”

She nodded. “Right before they get a supply run from the south, according to the reports I’ve read. I assume going hungry makes them vicious, but also weaker? So, going for the tails of their opponents.”

He held the report but did not open it. “My own advisers have not made such a connection.”

She went and pulled out her oversized ledger. “I don’t think they would without looking at the patterns of the numbers.” She opened her ledger to where she was tracking the wounded and several other factors. One side was four columns of lists, and the other a graph she had whipped up out of it. It was the fourth version of it, but she was happy with how the data was easily understandable.

He put the report down and carefully took hold of the ledger. She turned back to sorting papers while he perused her work. He eventually closed the ledger and tucked it under his arm as he stood. She rose to stand as well.

“This is excellent work, Maid Aegirine.” He glanced up but avoided her gaze, obviously trying to hold back from asking how she had learned such skills. She realized he had not made eye contact with her since he entered the cabin, and wondered just what Mani — Matrica Roki, she reminded herself harshly — had told him.

“Thank you, Your Grace.” She bowed her head and lowered her voice. “My abilities with accounting were what led to my discovering my husband’s treason. I am very familiar with how a pattern in simple things can reveal greater weaknesses.”

“Ah,” he said with a slight grimace before recovering, straightening up but still not looking her way. “I am going to share these numbers with my staff, but will have the ledger returned to you by the time we pull in to Suychet,” he said politely, looking out of the windows behind her.

“Of course, Your Grace. It is yours to do with as you see fit.”

“As I see fit,” he repeated, he shifted, tilting his head to look at her directly. Her breath caught in her chest, despite her strange desire to call out to him somehow. She held herself completely still as they stared at each other, his face still and stern but his eyes blazing with something she did not want to name, or acknowledge.

Then he blinked, seeming to come back to himself as he shook his head. “I beg your pardon, Maid Aegirine.” He turned slightly away, once again looking out the windows at nothing beyond. “I must be going. Please tell Doctor Worthan I was looking for him.”

Her breath finally came back under her control. “Yes, Your Grace,” she said far more timidly than she was feeling.

He left the cabin quickly then, and she was glad to be alone as she stumbled back into her chair, exhaling heavily, wondering what had just happened between them.