As Granduncle Indomitable started digging away at the collapsed palace, I did my best to remain calm. This was not an easy task, as Sandstorm was circling Herald with the curiosity of a cat who’s just found a baby bird on the ground.

  “What does she do?” the dragonette asked, gently poking Herald in the side with her snout. Which, considering Sandstorm’s size, had about the same effect as being headbutted by a medium sized elephant.

  With a guttural, “Oof!” Herald crashed into me, only barely staying on her feet as she half folded over. I reacted completely by instinct, snapping my teeth at Sandstorm and hissing, teeth bared, as I wound around to put myself fully between them.

  Sandstorm wasn’t too bothered. Not at all like when I’d threatened her during our first meeting. “Too rough?” she asked, backing off a little but still trying to look past me at Herald. “Is she so fragile?”

  All I gave her in reply was another hiss, but then I felt the steady pressure of a hand on my neck. “A more gentle touch would be appreciated, Great Lady,” Herald said, her voice thin and her breaths shallow as she recovered. “As for what I do, I am foremost a friend and companion to my mistress.”

  “Oh,” Sandstorm said, focusing on Herald again and actually speaking to her instead of me this time. “What does that mean? What can a human do as a companion to a dragon?”

  “The same things I imagine two dragons might do together, Great Lady,” Herald answered, her voice a little stronger now. “We converse, or sit in comfortable silence. Sometimes we read. At other times we hunt, or search for treasure. I am often with my mistress when she deals with other humans, to show that she need not be a threat if treated with respect.”

  “Read?” Sandstorm asked. “Read… I have heard the word before. It has to do with some kind of markings, yes? Markings with meaning?”

  “Yes, Great Lady. Writing is a system of markings that carry the meaning of language. Reading is to decipher those markings. I have taught my mistress to both read and write in the language we are now speaking, Karakani, and we enjoy reading together.”

  “Oh. You really learned to do this?” she asked, turning to me.

  I was still rather pissy about Sandstorm poking Herald so carelessly, and more than a little worried about her growing interest, but Herald was holding a perfectly polite conversation and I couldn’t very well be worse than my “servant.” So I answered, if a little curtly, “Yes. I enjoy reading.”

  “Strange,” was Sandstorm’s opinion, though I didn’t detect any judgement towards me in the word. That also seemed to be as far as her interest stretched on the topic, as she turned back to Herald and asked, “You hunt together? How?”

  “My mistress with her venom, teeth, and claws, and I with my bow, Great Lady.”

  “Bow?”

  That led to a whole explanation about human weapons, which Sandstorm had either never seen or never paid attention to. She found it hard to understand and believe the mechanics of a length of wood and a string under tension launching another piece of wood with metal and feathers on it, so finally Herald simply offered to demonstrate. She’d left her bow and arrows among the trees, and with our permission she went to fetch them.

  The first time Herald bent her bow, Sandstorm almost shoved her snout into it, she was so curious. Then, when Herald released the arrow, the dragonette jumped, her head whipping around to follow its flight as it smacked dead center into a tree fifty paces away.

  “It flew so quickly!” she exclaimed, trotting over to the tree where the arrow now protruded at a slight angle. “A piece of wood did that?”

  “The bowstaff wants to be straight,” Herald said, repeating part of her explanation from earlier. “When I draw back the string, it bends, and it does not like that. When I release, it straightens faster than the eye can see, and the straightening pulls the string forward. That makes the arrow fly.”

  “And you do this to put these arrows into animals,” Sandstorm mused. “Like a claw or a tooth piercing them from far away. I did not know that humans were so clever!”

  “Humans build cities,” I pointed out. “That takes a lot of cleverness.”

  “Ants build hills and bees build hives,” Sandstorm countered. “And I have seen towers of mud, built by some other small ant-like creature, when I flew north with my father. Are human cities not similar?”

  While I sputtered with borrowed outrage, Herald diplomatically said, “Our cities are somewhat more complex, yes, Great Lady.”

  “Oh. Perhaps I should go see one,” Sandstorm said. “Father never cared to, but he only tolerated humans when they brought tribute. Do your humans bring you tribute, Draka?”

  “In a way,” I replied. Kira had insisted on setting aside a third of what she made from healing for me, and another third for the inn’s finances. It only amounted to a few silver every month, but I’d count it. But that was a tiny part of what I’d acquired thanks to my humans. I just wasn’t sure if Sandstorm would understand about selling priceless relics of Old Mallin and brokering deals with the city’s leaders.

  I settled on, “They also help me get silver and gold from other humans. My hoard wouldn’t be nearly as large without them.”

  “Oh.” Sandstorm considered this. “I never knew you could have humans do that. Father never mentioned it.”

  “If he didn’t like humans, I suppose it might not have occurred to him. But I do. When I was tiny, getting some humans to help me acquire treasure was the first thing I thought of.” I looked down fondly at my sister. “It’s how I met Herald.”

  She craned her head back, looking up at me with a smile. “You were only waist high to me, if that. Mercies, how you have grown since then!”

  “You two are so strange,” Sandstorm said. “I never thought a dragon and a human could covet each other like this. Is it common? I have not met many dragons before.”

  Covet? Conscience commented. That… kind of fits.

  I couldn’t deny it. Herald didn’t comment, leaving it to me to answer. “I don’t think it’s very common. I have a particular bond with humans,” I told her. Which was certainly true, what with me being half human, spiritually. And with what my granduncle had told me, my dragon side might have some kind of special bond with humans, as well. Considering how the Tekereteki dragons seemed to have been able to turn other dragons to their cause, I might have been tempted to think that their hegemony over the humans there was incidental, but I wasn’t so sure. By all accounts, my father had loved humans, hoarding them the same as he did other precious things. If he, and thus I, truly were descended from the Tekereteki dragons—the Soul Dragons, as Okaitireti had called them—it didn’t seem far-fetched to think that they loved humans as well.

  But I wasn’t going to lay all that on Sandstorm, especially not the part about my hybrid soul. I honestly didn’t think that she’d care or, for that matter, understand. Instead I limited myself to the parts I did think that she’d care about. “My mother likes humans. She thinks that they’re very amusing. And my father loved them as much as gold. He surrounded himself with as many humans as he could. I may have inherited it from them.”

  “Hrrrm…” the dragonette rumbled thoughtfully. “You may be right. I do not find myself coveting this one,” she said, gesturing to Herald with her head. And what a relief it was to hear her say that! “Though she is amusing! Are your other humans as interesting as her?”

  “Most of them. You’ll see when Indomitable gets them out,” I replied, looking over to where the old amber dragon had already shifted about a dump truck’s worth of stones during our short conversation. Though it did occur to me that neither of us had any idea where any passage down might be, and he was digging in a practically random spot. Gods, how I wished that I could communicate with them! If I could just ask them to go stand by the stairs, this would be so much easier!

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  “Oh.” Sandstorm really seemed to like that word. She watched her grandfather for a time and seemed to come to the same conclusion as me. “Someone should keep watch, in case the old ruby or one of the others comes,” she said after a while. Then, without another word, she leaped into the sky, where she began circling.

  Indomitable took one look at her, huffed, and went back to work.

  “I think she grew bored,” Herald said, watching Sandstorm.

  “I can’t imagine being bored when you’re here to talk to,” I told her, and she laughed. Then I lowered my voice. “Instinct,” I said, “thank you for not revealing yourself. After how Embers took it…”

  “One could argue that Mother’s reaction is a reason to tell Granduncle Indomitable now, rather than later,” Herald said in Instinct’s voice.

  My heart tripped over itself as over on the ruin Indomitable stopped digging and looked our way. I looked back innocently, doing my best to look like I was just wondering if he wanted something and silently cursing Instinct for not keeping her voice down. After a few moments Indomitable seemed to decide that he hadn’t actually heard anything and went back to shifting rocks.

  “If you’re going to give us away, perhaps it is!” I hissed back.

  “Draka,” Herald said soothingly, “do not discount the idea so quickly. She may be right. Embers may not have taken it as poorly as she did if she did not feel deceived. I think she is feeling betrayed and broken-hearted more than anything else.”

  “Yeah,” I said after far too long of a pause. “Maybe.”

  I looked at the giant lightning-spewing monster who thought I might be descended from a line of mind-controlling dragon emperors. He was not a fan of humans. He didn’t hate them, or anything, but he did seem pretty worried that they may at some point drive us from existence. How would he feel about me, between myself and Conscience, having a full human soul in me? Not great, probably. But would it be better to tell him, or to gamble on him never finding out?

  Gods, what about when Embers returned? Would she tell him? She might. Then what?

  “You really think I should tell him?” I asked.

  Herald chewed her lip, watching Indomitable shift thousand-pound blocks of masonry like they were made of foam rubber. “After he gets everybody out, perhaps,” she replied softly. “When he feels like he’s accomplished something.”

  “Gods, I hope that’s soon,” I said. As I gingerly laid down, though, groaning as the pain lessened with the strain on my right side, I doubted Indomitable would get done in a hurry. The palace, severely damaged though it had been, had still been a large structure. What Behold Her had knocked down had been several stories worth of masonry, and with the footprint being hundreds of feet on a side, all that stone added up. Indomitable’s ability to shift several tons per minute was terribly impressive, but all that stone had to go somewhere away from where he might want to search later, or he’d just be creating more work for himself. That took time, in the form of either carrying the rubble away, or taking more care with where he threw each handful.

  All that to say, it looked like it might take a while.

  “How’re you doing?” I asked Herald. “It’s been a while since you had anything to drink, and you haven’t eaten since that bird.”

  “I am not suffering,” Herald said diplomatically.

  “Not doing great, then?”

  “I could do with a drink,” she admitted. “And something to eat would be nice, though I have no trouble with handling hunger if I must.”

  “That raw bird hasn’t given you any trouble, has it?”

  “I think you would have known by now,” she answered wryly.

  “Probably, yeah,” I agreed. “All right, give me a couple of minutes to rest, and we can at least go fill you up with water.”

  “Do you think Indomitable will acquiesce to you wandering?” Herald asked quite a while later. I took that as a sign that her thirst was starting to really bother her.

  “Only one way to find out,” I replied. I then turned to Indomitable, who’d made an impressive dent in the pile of fallen stone brick. “Granduncle,” I called. “Herald needs water, and I dare not let her wander alone here. We will not go far. Though we may be a short while; I hope to hunt some small animal for her to eat, as well.”

  “Oh?” he called back, and I wondered if Sandstorm had picked that word up from him. “Very well. Do not stray, and take care. I would be most frustrated if I dug these humans of yours out only to find that you perished in the meantime. And if you hear me or your cousin call, do as we say immediately. I may have driven that ruby wyvern off, but I suspect she will not stay away for long.”

  On that, we agreed completely.

  By the time night fell, Herald was properly fed and watered twice over, as was I. We had spent as much time as we could napping, and now we were both bored out of our skulls. So was Sandstorm, who only landed for short rests during which she demanded that Herald entertain her with stories. And Indomitable had still not freed the humans.

  I expected him to make excuses, draconic pride being what it was, but he surprised me.

  “It is astounding that something so easily razed should be so frustrating to get through,” he said, with not a hint of embarrassment. “I had not expected all the little pieces to be so troublesome. They keep tumbling, you see. When I dig, little pieces keep tumbling into the hole, and then I have to dig those out.”

  “So you will not be able to finish tonight?” I asked, careful not to sound either disappointed or accusatory. It didn’t matter how much I wanted my humans out now; I had exactly one dragon available who was willing and able to dig them out, and I couldn’t afford for him to just decide that, fuck it, let the whelp dig them out herself if she’s going to be ungrateful. Hell, for all I knew even Embers might not want to help me, and that was assuming that she returned.

  “I will not,” he confirmed. “It is not a question of stamina, you understand, but of vision. If it were only large pieces I would be able to continue by moonlight, but with all those little bits…”

  “I understand,” I said. And grudgingly, I did. There was no true rush to get anyone out, so why suffer through the frustration of digging hole after hole that kept collapsing in on itself, while looking for a passage into the lower levels that he might not even recognize during daylight, much less in the dark. No, I certainly couldn’t blame him for that. “Will I see you in the morning?”

  “I imagine you will,” he replies, eyes crinkling with amusement. “I intend to take my rest right here, after all.”

  “Here?” I made no attempt to hide my surprise. I’d just assumed that, with the city divided into territories, he’d want to leave mine and return to his own. “That is really not necessary. Not that you are unwelcome,” I added hastily, “I just… I have a place to hide where she cannot find me.”

  “Are you certain, little one? It is true that I would prefer the tree I have claimed for my rest, but it would be a minor hardship to remain here.”

  I weighed my options. On the one hand, having him here should pretty convincingly prevent Behold Her from attempting any more mischief in the night. But on the other, I absolutely wanted to get Herald and myself safe underground, and to do that I had to Shift—something I had desperately wanted to do for some time now, as the pain of my wounds wore on me. But I didn’t want to reveal that ability to Indomitable, in case he was not as trustworthy as he wanted to appear. That meant I would have to find some excuse why he couldn’t follow me to my hiding spot, which would look suspicious no matter what I came up with and would only raise questions.

  I wanted to ask Herald, but I had a hunch that wouldn’t be a great idea in front of the ancient dragons. So instead, I asked the other human present.

  What do you think? I asked Conscience.

  Let the old man rest in his tree, she answered without hesitation. What can Behold Her do that she hasn’t already?

  That decided it. “I am certain,” I replied. “I doubt she’d even think to look for the place I intend to shelter for the night, and even if she did, even if she found it, she couldn’t get inside. I’ll be fine there.”

  Right then Sandstorm came in to land. She growled something, managing to sound sulky even in Draconic.

  “A human tongue, granddaughter,” Indomitable admonished her. “Your cousin does not understand.”

  “What does it matter?” Sandstorm asked in Tavvanarian. “I only asked if it is finally time to leave. I wish to return to the tree, and I have not even hunted yet today!”

  The old dragon looked at my cousin blankly for a moment, before realization dawned on him. “Oh, yes. That is right. You are still so young, I forget sometimes.” He turned to me and asked, “Little Draka, what of you and your human? Have you eaten?”

  “We have, granduncle. Thank you.”

  “Very well. Then, granddaughter, we shall take our leave, and find you a deer or some such creature. Draka, we shall return in the morning.”

  “Do not die during the night,” Sandstorm added. “Herald, I wish to hear more about this ‘theater’ you spoke of. It sounds amusing.”

  Once they were gone we went for a last drink and bushes-break, then returned to the underground chamber. The short time I spent in my shadow form was bliss. I still felt some pain, but it was nothing in comparison to what I'd endured during that long, long day.

  As we settled in to sleep I checked on Mak and the other humans. They were fine. Tomorrow, with any luck, Indomitable would get them out, and then I’d get healed and we could decide what to do.

  Positive thinking, I’d decided, was the way forward. It wasn’t like I had much else to work with.

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