Chapter 1

Chapter 1

The pale fire tongues of the dragons’ realm flickered away as the warmth of the rite receded into the offering place, into the earth. The heat between their bodies flowed into the place where he could never follow. Thorat gazed up at the eggshell dome as he reached out to run his hand along Iola’s smooth back. The trance was leaving her, too, leaving them alone together as themselves, at last.

“I’ll send for tea,” Iola said.

Instead of answering, Thorat pulled her closer. They had so little time together.

She draped the red robe around her shoulders to go out to the garden to summon her attendant. When she danced, that robe became a river of molten fire, but now it was just very fine clothing, separating him from her and reminding them both of her calling. As ambassadress, she had dozens of petitioners, princes and guild masters, wealthy merchants, the governor. He’d come to bring the Defenders’ offering, but he wished that he could come just for himself, to be friends again, even ordinary lovers.

When she returned, she went to a quiet alcove, far from the altar where he lay. He pulled away from the last thin traces of dragonfire and went to sit beside her, holding hands, human again. When he edged closer, she pulled away and turned to face him, letting only their feet touch.

“Tell me: what news do the Defenders bring this year?”

“We haven’t been down to the shrine yet. I should have waited until after that, but Sunna said that you wouldn’t be able to see me after tonight,” Thorat said. “There aren’t enough of us to go to all the gates every year, either, but those we saw were quiet.” The worst news wasn’t news at all. They hadn’t had a single new apprentice in years. Dragonsight was dying out, and the Defenders with it.

Iola nodded. “The princes tell me that the dragons guard their own gates now, or so they must be doing, to keep the foreign miners away.”

“I don’t know what keeps them away, but I’m fairly sure it’s not the princes.”

“Surely, they wouldn’t let their trading partners steal the heart of their lands.”

Was she so isolated here that she believed that? “At least the foreign miners can’t find the gates on their own, so there’s that much to keep the dragons safe, even when we can’t go,” Thorat said.

Iola looked down at her hands and frowned. “Unless a priestess helped them.”

She was not utterly ignorant of what was happening beyond her marble walls, then. A long moment stretched between them, and he was about to reach out to hold her hand when she spoke again.

“Who is the Enatel?” Iola asked. “He can’t be dragon-blind, so why does he send you rather than come to me himself?”

Thorat hesitated. It seemed hard to believe that after all these years, she still didn’t know who the Enatel was, but he’d seen no reason to tell her, and apparently no one else had either.

“Of course I want to see you, more than I want to see anyone else, I really do.” She bit her bottom lip. “It’s only that I wonder.”

Thorat took a deep breath. There was no reason not to tell her. “The Enatel is a woman now, even though she’s Enat’s heir, so of course she can’t come.” Sovara was a thin, gray-haired woman who had nothing good to say about priestesses in general, stealing offerings meant for the dragons, lazy in their luxuriant temples.

“She did send our offering, though,” he said. “She made it herself.”

“She could come to me,” Iola said. “The rite is not dependent on the petitioner’s sex, you know.”

“It isn’t? I don’t think she knows that. I’m sure I didn’t.” He didn’t much like the thought of Sovara lying with Iola, though it wasn’t as bad as the thought of the governor heaving over her, understanding nothing.

“Most priestesses aren’t willing to draw from another woman as they would from a man, if they even know how, but you’re right; I would rather see you, while we can,” Iola said. “Show me now: what did she send?”

Thorat handed her the package and she leaned against him as she unwrapped it. She smiled with appreciation as she held it up to see, a double-edged blade, wider than most, with an intricately worked handle.

“A dragon-grooming dagger. How lovely,” she said.

There was a quiet clatter of cups and plates as Iola’s attendant set the tea tray down outside. Iola brought it in and placed it on a low table between them. She poured Thorat a glass of wine, then filled her own cup with tea. She reclined, her raven hair flowing down over the crimson robes and alabaster skin. He reached for a cake.

“The Aralel wants me to retire, but I can’t,” she said.

“Why not? You’ve been ambassadress a long time now; what is it, five years?” Most ambassadresses didn’t last nearly that long. The journey to the dragons’ realm wasn’t easy for a human, but then, Iola was closer to the dragons than anyone else he’d ever met.

“Six years. This will be my seventh descent.”

“There must be dozens of priestesses who’d want to be ambassadress, despite the danger.”

Iola shook her head. “Dozens of foolish, dragon-blind girls. It’s not that there aren’t enough; it’s just that they’re not the right ones. A few of them might survive one voyage, but no more than that.”

“I wouldn’t think it would be so hard to find priestesses.” The Defenders couldn’t find apprentices with dragonsight, but that was different. After all, his order wasn’t supposed to exist, while the priestesses offered wealth, power, and as many of Theranis’s best cakes as a person could want, every day. They were very good. He took another.

“The oracles say that there’s a scrappling this season who might be fit to journey to the dragons’ realms. There was one last year, but they missed her. I hope they don’t miss her again this year.” She looked up at Thorat. “You’re out on the streets. If you find that girl, the one with dragonsight, could you bring her to me?”

“I’ll do what I can,” Thorat said. “Anything for you.”

Iola half-smiled. “They all…” She stopped herself, but Thorat knew that he’d said something foolish, something that made him sound like just another lust-addled petitioner. He drained his cup.

“If you retired, you could leave the temple,” Thorat said, another absurd idea. The only place retired priestesses went was to the hills, and there were bandits in the hills, lawless, violent men. He shuddered at the thought.

Of course, Iola laughed. “Not yet, not yet. Besides, I’ll be a creature of the temple and the dragons as long as I live.” Her face shone in the lamplight. It was true, but that didn’t make him want her less.

“Darna and Myril left the temple, didn’t they?” Thorat said, as if Iola were like them.

“They never wanted to be priestesses, not as I did. I am this.” Iola indicated the room around her with its rich carvings, draperies, jewels, and the offering place. It was foolish to try to imagine her in a mountain hermitage wearing flea-ridden furs.

In the outer courtyard, a bell rang.

“I told them, no more tonight,” Iola said, sounding suddenly tired. She grasped Thorat’s hand, then wrapped her arms around him. He held her, wishing that the moment could go on forever.

“It could be the new Slaradun prince,” she said, pushing him away. “It would be good to have some taste of Salara before I see her again. In any case, you have to leave. After Midwinter, come see me as soon as you can. Promise it. Swear it.”

“I will. I do.” Thorat let her pull him back into the bath chamber, the way he came and went in secret. “Be safe; be well,” he said, though it didn’t seem like enough. “Send my love to the dragons.”

Iola glanced to the outer doorway, then ran back and kissed him, full on the lips.

“Now go!” She pushed him toward the secret passage.

Thorat hurried away before any more foolish pledges of love could fall from his lips into that unforgiving splendor.

§

Eppie woke under the still-cool shade of the bridge. The traffic of feet and carts grew noisy on the bridge above and the sun beat hot on the canal bank. The others were still sleeping beside her. She sat up carefully, not wanting to wake them yet. Mist rose from the canal in delicate feathers, fading into the air. The dragonlet—if she was not only a figment of Eppie’s imagination—hid in the crevices between the stones, her green scales blending with the moss-green rocks and twining into the earth, as dragons were said to do.

“Hey, lazybones,” Eppie whispered, prodding one of the sleeping boys.

“What?” Squid grumbled.

“It’s morning.”

“’Course it’s morning,” he said. “I’m going back to sleep.”

Squid had gone to the taverns the night before to pick pockets and look for an apprenticeship. Mostly to pick pockets, though; that was what he usually did when he wasn’t fighting. Eppie was nearly his equal in both pursuits – pickpocketing and fighting – but he was better known. Probably that was just as well. Squid left a trail of confusion in his wake, like ink, like the darkness he disappeared into. If he’d ever had another name, it was long forgotten.

“They’ll run out of bread,” Eppie said.

Squid half sat up. “I don’t need the temple hens’ bread. You go.”

He rolled over as if to go back to sleep while Eppie wormed her way out of the blankets. Squid was always grumpy in the morning, but today he was more talkative than usual.

“D’you think the dragons will kill her this year?” he asked.

“The ambassadress? I don’t know,” Eppie said. “Do you think we’ll get real apprenticeships?”

Squid shrugged. “I got a lead. I might go on that Ganatean trader; able-bodied seaman, they’d call me.”

Eppie hesitated. Squid was prone to bragging, but he’d never come close to getting an apprenticeship before. “That could be all right,” she said, thinking of sailing the seas. “I’ve got nothing. D’you think I could join up too, be a sailor?”

Squid shook his head and sank back down under the blankets. “Not for a girl. They don’t have girls on their ships, not as sailors anyway. Just as cargo, they say.”

Eppie shuddered.

“Go on to the temple,” Squid said. “You know they’ll take you, and at least you’ll eat. Otherwise, there’s the foreigners’ brothel.”

Eppie shuddered at that as she walked away. No one wanted to go to the foreigners’ brothel, over by Merchants’ Wharf. There was no dignity in it, and you didn’t even learn to read. In a way, though, it might be better than the temple, where the walls seemed to close out every sound of the outside world, where the silence stifled everything, and where she’d never seen a dragonlet, not that they showed themselves often by the docks, but she’d glimpsed them there sometimes. In any case, she didn’t want to go to the temple, but Squid would never understand why. She could talk to him about almost everything else, from fighting to scavenging and which of the green-knees would last the season, but never about the dragons. Like most people, he didn’t see them, and he thought that those who did must be drugged or just crazy.

Eppie followed a side street around to the back of the temple to get her share of festival bread, keeping to the shade as she went. In two days’ time, the ambassadress would go to the dragons again, maybe forever. On that morning, she would see Anara again, and could look at her without worrying. She always did, at festival times, and then she wouldn’t have to pretend not to see, since everyone else would be pretending that the

could

see, for a change.

Behind the houses, the white marble walls of Ara’s Landing stood closed to the outside world, unbroken by windows or ordinary doorways. The temple was self-contained, like an egg, indifferent to the fate of anything outside its walls, except that they did give bread to the scrapplings, the Children of Anara, until they found their work or else fled back to the dragon-forsaken provinces. That suited Eppie fine for now.

The temple’s towers reached high above those closed-in walls, their gilded roofs shining above the city. Eppie looked up at them, as she always did when she was close to the temple. She told Squid that she thought the watchmen went there, looking for scrapplings trespassing on rooftops, but he said that was ridiculous, which of course it was. The priestesses would never let a watchman so deep into the temple. The truth was more ridiculous, or would be to Squid. Once, she’d seen Anara there, and not even at a festival time. As far as Eppie knew, the only other person who saw dragons anymore was the ambassadress, and she was hardly an ordinary person. Sometimes, guildsmen or soothsayers claimed to see Anara as a shadow at crossing times, when everyone was drunk, but no one believed them.

Even without Anara spreading her wings over the gilded towers, the temple was beautiful. It was as big as the governor’s palace and far outshone the columned shrine that the Cereans were building to their philosopher gods at the far end of the harbor, facing away from their brothel, of course. The dragonlets seemed to shun the temple despite its beauty, as if Anara didn’t trust it any more than Eppie did.

She joined the pack of ragged scrapplings outside the back gate. There were young ones from the near provinces and a few others she’d seen the year before or the year before that, newly returned to the city, trying their luck with the guilds again.

“Hey, Eppie,” one of them called. “What are you still doing here? Not an apprentice yet?”

“Shut up, lapper,” Eppie said. “I bet you’re going home to your mama again this year, too.” She hadn’t, not once, even though it was only two days’ walk to her home village. Sure, she’d been tempted that first winter, but she wanted to stay in Anamat, not get stuck back home, herding goats, with no chance of anything more.

The priestess at the gate let the scrapplings in one at a time, counting them, measuring them. She turned away three of the older ones. Eppie willed herself to look smaller. She wore boys’ clothes, and so far, the priestesses hadn’t seemed to notice that she was a girl underneath. She was starting to wonder how long that could last, but her tunic was shapeless enough to cover her for now. She slipped through the gate with the rest, some two or three dozen of them, and shouldered her way to the front of the crowd.

A red-robed priestess sat beside the old one who tended the oven. She looked sadly at the scrapplings. “It seems to me,” she said to the elder priestess beside her, “that when I was on the streets, there was enough for everyone.”

“Now, now,” the elder said. “You’re not as old as all that. When I was young, the guilds even begged for apprentices, none of this nonsense about fees you had.”

Eppie stared despite herself. Imagine, the guilds begging for apprentices!

“It’s true, my son,” the elder said to Eppie. Then she winked. “But you’re here for the bread, and maybe the ambassadress’s blessing.”

Eppie’s face fell. “Oh. Is that today?”

“Of course it is,” said the younger priestess, who was rather beautiful, if a bit weary-looking. “We seek our novices, but you—” She looked into Eppie’s eyes. “You’re not a boy, are you?”

“Not gonna be a priestess, either,” Eppie said.

“We’ll see about that.” With that, the younger priestess sashayed away, winking back over her shoulder in a way that Eppie didn’t like at all.

§

After early training at the sword hall, Thorat found that he couldn’t fall back asleep, even though he knew that he should rest. It was the morning before Midsummer Eve, and Iola would be blessing the scrapplings. Hoping for one more glimpse of her, he took a walk back down to the temple. Ragged youngsters crowded the street. The land was drying up, and the people were getting poorer, especially the scrapplings.

“Why go now?” the gate priestess was saying to one scrappling. “She is almost here for the blessing. You could find an apprenticeship.”

The scrappling shrugged. “I don’t need her blessing. Anyway, the guilds all say they don’t have room for our kind.”

Thorat wondered how true that was. He had to spend a great deal of time away from Anamat, but it

had

been hard to place their last apprentice in the swordsmiths’ guild, despite the Defenders’ long clandestine association with them.

There was a stir in the courtyard as the ambassadress emerged. Iola stood on a small stage, veiled in silk and incense. Through it, even from outside the temple, he could still see that she glowed with what they had shared together, the heat of the earth, the glory of the dragons. A gong sounded. Thorat bowed his head and began to pray.

“O great ones, who rule the bounty,”

they began together.

Out of the corner of Thorat’s eye, he noticed a small movement. The scrappling had slipped the key away from the priestess on guard and was opening the gate, just wide enough to squeeze through. Thorat turned his attention back to the ceremony. Even the scrapplings who had been left on the street outside paused in their scuffles. They listened, even if they didn’t know the words well enough to speak the prayer themselves.

“For Anara’s wings bring sun and storms,

Her tail sows marvels in its wake,

Across the seas and in the –”

Thorat’s sword hand moved reflexively to stop the fingers reaching for his pocket. He twisted the wrist before he even looked to see who the pickpocket was.

“Ow!” the scrappling said.

It was the same one who had just left the temple against the priestess’s orders.

“Stay,” Thorat commanded. The scrappling tugged, but he had a firm grip on the wrist. The prayer droned on and he mumbled along, tightening his grasp now and then to keep the pickpocket near.

As the prayer drew to a close, the novices surrounding Iola rang a chorus of bells. Thorat looked up into her eyes. Every time he saw her felt like the first time they had met on that mountain path, the first time he had come to save her. His heart yearned to do it again, to save her forever.

The thief slipped out of his grasp. Iola wasn’t supposed to be looking at him, anyway, wasn’t even supposed to know him. Thorat grabbed at the twice-escaping miscreant.

The scrappling would have gotten away, but just then, a dragonlet scurried along a wall, and he – or she – stopped to watch. So did Thorat. The dragonlet’s crossing gave him just enough time to reach the pickpocket and grab an arm. Thorat watched the dragonlet go. A look of confusion crossed the scrappling’s face.

“What are you looking at?” the scrappling demanded.

Thorat studied the face, dirty and thin. The scrappling had short, ragged hair, and was a little too tall to have no whisper of hair on the upper lip, if this were a boy, but too sharp and awkward to be a girl. But then, some girls were sharp and awkward.

“I believe I was looking at the same thing you were,” he said.

“I wasn’t looking at nothing!”

“I think you were,” Thorat said.

“You can’t arrest me,” the scrappling said. “You’re not even the watch. You’re just a palace guard. Governor’s toady.”

Thorat sighed. He hated even looking like the governor’s toady even when it was only for a day or two at Midsummer, and he hadn’t officially been hired. It stopped people from asking questions—stopped most people, anyway. The youngster squirmed.

“No, I can’t arrest you,” he said. “You should be more careful whose pockets you pick, though. I’m just a poor guardsman. Besides, I used to be the best pickpocket in the East Market.”

The scrappling snorted. The gate was open now, and the ones who had gotten their share of festival bread were hurrying out to take cover in their own corners of the city.

The dragonlet reappeared, dancing along the roofline of the building opposite, one of the weavers’ warehouses. It glinted red and gold, dancing on the red-brown tiles of the roof, then disappeared. When Thorat looked down, the scrappling was still following some motion there with her—or his—eyes.

“Is it still there?” he asked.

“What?” the scrappling said. “Let me go!”

For a moment, their eyes met. He knew, they both knew, what they had just seen. “I believe that only a very few of the priestesses would have seen that,” he said quietly.

“I won’t be a priestess,” the scrappling said.

“Can’t be, or won’t?”

“What’s it to you?” she said.

“Nothing much,” Thorat said. “But if you don’t want to be one, you’d better find something else to do, and soon.”

One of the red-robed priestesses was talking to the one at the gate, pointing at the scrappling girl whose wrist was locked in his grip.

“I’ve got to go,” the girl said, pulling away.

“I have work for you,” Thorat said. “Meet me at the top of the first bridge over the east canal at sundown.” A worried look crossed the girl’s face for a moment, quickly replaced by affected nonchalance. She nodded, and he released her. She ran full tilt toward the east canal, her festival bread held tight against her chest.

“I have an aunt who needs help with her housekeeping,” Thorat shouted after her, not that she would believe him.

§

Eppie didn’t even feel like detouring to the east gate to pick pockets. She’d been caught. No one ever caught her. If she was getting that clumsy, maybe she

should

let the governor’s guardsman turn her over to the watch. She couldn’t believe it. It was common wisdom that you couldn’t pull off every heist, that they’d get you sooner or later and send you back to the provinces or lock you up in jail, but for three years, she’d dodged them all. Three whole years and a few moon-rounds, and she’d dodged them all, until now.

A stupid palace guardsman had caught her. But he wasn’t just any guardsman. He saw dragonlets. He’d even seen her seeing a dragonlet. It made no sense.

No one

saw dragonlets, and if anyone were going to see them, it would be a priestess, or a soothsayer, or someone like that. Maybe a valley farmer, at festivals. Certainly not the governor’s thug. Worse, he’d wanted to meet her there, on the very roof of her home shelter. It was as if he’d known, as if he could read her mind.

Eppie scaled down the rocks and hid in the shadows to eat. The others had all woken while she was away and had gone off to do their begging or thievery for the day. Even the dragonlet was nowhere to be seen. Dragonlets didn’t like midday; they preferred twilight and rain. Eppie found the water jug in a cranny in the stones and took a swig. It was a bit stale but not too bad. The festival bread more than made up for it. Eppie bit into the soft dough, tasting an apricot, spices, and honey. If only she had some tea, it would be perfect.

As she ate, her heartbeat calmed. The water shimmered dully in the heat, and a few scraps of kitchen garbage drifted down toward the harbor. Under the surface, a fish swam. Above, the road across the bridge was quiet. Flies buzzed. Everything was just as usual, but that man, that stupid guardsman, had seen her in a way that no one else had seen her, and he was coming to get her. She felt that she ought to get away – he’d caught her trying to pickpocket him – but where would she go? She knew well enough that she couldn’t go on the foreigners’ ships, even without Squid telling her so. She wouldn’t go back to Lemirun, that was for sure, and of course the guilds wouldn’t have her. Whatever the guardsman was offering, it had to be better than the silence of the temple, the suffocating silence of it, the absence of the dragonlets.

Now that she was a little calmer, a little safer, now that she was alone, she could think. The man was quick and he could see dragonlets. He was handsome, too, with shining brown hair and clear eyes, crinkled at the corners as if always ready to laugh. He was the kind of man that girls gazed at wistfully, especially girls who weren’t pretending to be boys so they wouldn’t get pulled in to the temples or worse. At least the priestesses had their dignity and the power of the dragons to strengthen them. A man didn’t go to a priestess to feel his own might; he came to honor hers, or at least that was how it was supposed to be. But because men didn’t see dragons, didn’t know what they were coming to honor, they mostly just leered and spilled their seed anyway. No, she did not want to be a priestess. She’d rather fetch water and sweep floors for that guardsman’s aunt, or whatever it was he wanted her for. She could do worse.

§