“Ha-hem,” she harrumphed back at him, which was her only option other than twining her neck as tightly around his as she could. But if she began the embrace, she and Yefkoa would probably remain in the Sadda-Vale until their joint-scales grew brittle and dropped with age.

“Take this advice,” DharSii said. “Ask permission of someone to enter the Empire. It’s a thin bit of scale, but it may serve to confuse the issue enough for you to. I’m an old hand at exile.”

“Yet you yourself returned.”

“My sympathy for the Lavadome had not quite run out. But with the dragons gorging themselves on the world like Silverhigh of old, I’m content to leave them to their fate.”

Sometimes he could be as cold-blooded as a lizard. The dragons of the Empire might not be worth a blighter’s cuss, but what of the generation still dreaming in their eggs? What gorging had they done?

“I’m not,” Wistala said. “We owe something to the generations not yet born, even if their grandsires are fools.”

“A fair point. Would it be unfair for me to mention the new generation here? They may need you someday.”

“Having you with me will better my chances of returning to them,” Wistala said. “Will you not come with me?”

“I have my own phantoms to chase. While you are away, I’ll indulge myself in a little exploration.”

“More history of the Lavadome?” she asked.

“There are some missing pieces to the Lavadome’s story I’d like to find. I’ve indulged myself too long here. For the first time in my life, I’ve enjoyed the companionship at the Sadda-Vale. I mean you, of course. And your brothers. They’re each stimulating. So alike in their resourcefulness despite their disadvantages. Still, I can’t bear the thought of listening to Scabia without you others around.”

“I wish you luck, then. I will—miss you.”

“One last warning. There have always been powers who want to use dragons, alive or dead, for the strange substances that course through our blood. Our magic, if you’ll forgive the word. Long ago, Anklemere was attempting something with dragons—what, I do not know—and I fear his plans; perhaps even his mind, if you want to look at it that way, lives on. The Dragon Empire may think they rule sky, ground, and tunnel, but my vitals tell me they are being used like puppets. Who or what has the other end of the strings I cannot say.”

Yefkoa had behaved oddly at the Sadda-Vale once she was well enough to meet the other dragons. She bowed low before Scabia, as Wistala had coached her to do, and complimented her on everything from the taste of the sturgeon pulled from the lake to the intricate carvings in the passages.

“You just don’t see workmanship like this except in Imperial Rock in the Lavadome,” Yefkoa said. “Who made it? Dwarfs?”

“There are some dwarfish makers’-marks, but also blighter and human,” Scabia said, dropping out of her usual formal speech in an unusual condescension. “You can tell the difference in the details. The dwarfs will make a support look like rope, or piping, whereas the blighters will be more organic and men imitate leaves and vines of nature, as most of their artisans were probably trained by elves in the days of Silverhigh.”

Most strange of all was Yefkoa’s praise of the Copper. Wistala had forgotten over the years in exile how her brother had been loved by some of those he used to rule. Yefkoa spoke of him in tones of gratitude and awe, and was deeply disappointed that he was away. Wistala knew in a vague sort of way that he’d done some favor or other for her in her youth—had he given her a place in the Firemaids despite her slight frame and thin scale? Well, in any case, here was another dragon who loved her brother deeply. Wistala, when she looked at him, saw only a collection of injuries and an expression that verged on half-witted thanks to the eye injury she’d given him after their parents were murdered. She’d ceased to hate him long ago, but still wondered at the respect such a limping, undersized wretch seemed to inspire in others.

The bat Larb outdid Yefkoa in his praise of Scabia. He declared he’d never imagined such a Queen of snows—she was simply the most breathtaking female dragon in the world. He waxed on about the vastness of the Vesshall, his echolocation quite inadequate. This went on for a full shift of moonlight. Scabia reacted to the bat’s obsequious patter in a way Wistala had never imagined. She let loose with a prrum and invited the bat to eat his fill, complimenting him on his Drakine.

After dinner, when Scabia was amusing herself by telling stories to the youths, Wistala and Yefkoa looked over an old map of the Red Mountains.

“Where shall we reenter the Empire?” Wistala asked.

“East of the mountains would be best,” Yefkoa opined. “The climate is harsher and fewer dragons choose to settle there. Wallander is a possibility. It is on the Falnges.”

“Just above the old works of the dwarfs,” Wistala said. “I know it.”

“The Chartered Company, yes. It used to belong to them. Now it’s just another poor province. An entry there would attract little notice; there may not even be a dragon there to supervise. Probably some Hypatian hireling. It makes Dairuss seem like the Lavadome—a little riverbank squat with a few docks doing some trade with the Ironriders.”

They said their farewells and thanks to Scabia the next day. Larb the bat had been invited to stay as Scabia’s messenger, in the hope that Tyr RuGaard would return and he could go back into “the family service,” as he styled it.

Wistala said she would accompany Yefkoa to the borders of the Empire. Which was perfectly true. She would also accompany Yefkoa all the way to the Lavadome, if need be. She owed her life to Ayafeeia.

She added that she was grateful for the old dragonhelms of Silverhigh. She’d check on RuGaard on the way back.

With a wish of fair spring weather from Scabia, they departed together.

Two more contrasting females in flight could scarcely be imagined. Wistala, heavy and muscular, with an enormous wingspan, set off in a steady series of lifting beats and glides. Yefkoa, slight and narrower of wing, flapped as steadily as a duck migrating.

The frosted plains of the north, visited only by migratory herds and the men and beasts that hunted them, gave way to the low, rolling hills of the Ironrider lands.

Spring had advanced so many horizons to the south and the Ironrider lands were at their most beautiful. Sunflowers were opening and the fields were filled with wildflowers. The ground-birds were already out with this year’s offspring, lines of pheasants and quail poked around the tough bushes clinging to the highlands, and in the lower, damper parts ducks abounded.

Had Wistala been traveling for pleasure, rather than with dispatch, she would have gone south along the coastline of the Inland Ocean. She had friends in the Hypatian north, and it would be nice to see how the descendants of Yari-tab were getting along at the Green Dragon Inn in the old village where she’d grown up under the protection of Rainfall, the old elf gentleman who kept the great bridge and highway in repair. Perhaps she would find time to visit one of the Hypatian Libraries and meet students seeking to become sages and experts—she still held the title of “Librarian” for collecting some of the works of NooMoahk the Black in her hunt for AuRon.

But Yefkoa was on a mission and could not afford to lose days in that manner.

The plains held their own interest for her. She’d never traveled this route south before, though she had taken shorter flights out of the Sadda-Vale to keep herself in training, hunt, and take a break from Scabia’s conversation.

Wistala had explored the lands of the nomadic Ironriders decades ago in her hunt for AuRon and she wondered if the changes she marked now were some seasonal variation or a sign of plague or catastrophe. Before, she’d observed masses of the Ironriders in movement, flowing on their horses like a brown stain across the landscape, with shaggy and woolly herds surrounding the mass of riding and trudging mankind.

This time, the herds were reduced to a few poor animals closely watched by children just outside tents and huts set up out of the wind in some hard-to-find notch in the earth.

The shining armor, the bright, proud pennants, the songs from the tall riders in their woolly, tower-shaped hats—all gone, apparently. Once these warriors had grown such long and cultivated mustaches coated in shining, perfumed fats that they could be seen from the air; now the men were shaggy and unkempt.

Wistala tipped her wings and banked, closing up on Yefkoa, who fell in behind the vastly larger Wistala, riding the air off her wing.

“Aren’t these the lands of the Ironriders?” Wistala asked.

“You would know better than I,” Yefkoa said. “I believe so.”

“Are they off fighting somewhere?”

“The Ironriders? No. The Hypatians took—oh, you don’t know about the great raids.”

“No.”

“It was mostly the Aerial Host with Hypatian troops. They hunted down the Ironrider bands, fought the warriors and made thralls of the rest. They’re mostly gone, but some dwarfish slavers still hunt the area. They bring the thralls to Wallander and sell them to us.”