I thought I looked cool. With my face bandaged up, I was like some fierce war-mistress of the sky! It almost put a skip in my step, but my legs still ached. Hinte had wrapped my sides and face, but there hadn’t been enough bandages to cover my legs, so she lathered them with more Heylpflanze, then used a makeshift bandage from tattered strips of my sifting suit.
Any danger of contamination or infection is unacceptable.”
Hinte. So we cleaned and half-wrapped the wounds of the corpses. Just enough not to drip onto us.
still hadn’t told me how she had fought all of these apes at once. Even two had given us so much trouble. She said they were sleeping or something, right? But that couldn’t be the whole story if she had all of those injuries —??which she did.
dry.
irritated, either from the pain, exertion, or my antics. I liked teasing her, but I wouldn’t want to actually upset her. So I didn’t ask.
weren’t.
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On the cliff walls catwalks stretched along and across, but mostly along. They sat on two levels, the lower being two or three wing-beats above the ground, the higher almost ten or twenty. Dotted in-between the catwalks, the amber lamps lined the cliff faces, sparsely, all the way up to the very top and stretched into the distance. Around them stirred black wisps of moths or beetles, compelled to turn to buzzing ornamentation for the red light. The lamps peered like a myriad eyes staring us down as we dared to enter the town, all suspicious and wary.
He must have been the shadow in the cliff that’d scared me ten beats away and disappeared. He had been with Mawla, so it fledged sense.
right after the dusty, crackling ground in the Berwem. I slid my claws over the stones as I walked, and relished the feel.
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Towering above us stood the mighty Berwem gate, a mostly-stone wall blocking the ravine all the way to the very top of their faces. It bristled with images, and the lamps to make them legible even at night.
and they lived. You two ought to hit up a card game or lottery before you turn in, with that kind of luck.”
story to tell —”
seriously.”
Then, I react. My frills fold over my face.
He’s about to lunge again, I heard, a mental whisper from somewhere distant and old.
They’re all unbalanced, the instincts noted. Even the angry one. Self-disgust curled in my gut, but a plan spread its wings in my head, unperturbed.
All it would take is one. I made as show of scanning the assembled guards. Two others bowed and even the other flinched. And the rest would fall in line.
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The door shut, and I turned to my companion. “What the heck, Hinte?”
good. I hadn’t had anyone — bow to me in a long time.
more suspicious if he came down before then.”
made sense to me, on the same level, in the same sense, that the guards’ dynamic had made sense. But the idea that everyone had an ulterior, some cunning plan to downdraft you? I’d had enough of it back home. If I looked at the world that way, I would find plots whether they existed or not. And surely real, normal dragons weren’t like the walking masks from the courts and parties of the sky? They could be good. They had to be.
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The outskirts of town this late felt empty. We passed only the occasional dragon, always someone dangerous-looking or some poor vagrant. Sometimes, shadows of fliers passed overhead; the ravine was wide enough for a single dragon to fly through.
see the sky. I found Ceiwad again, somewhere in the east, a green-white circle speckled with dark spots. Scanning the rest of the sky, I hunted for the Master and his Serpent, two of my favorite constellations.
* * *