A lot of Gwymr/Frina rose high into the air, buildings that stood four or five stories. The tallest buildings leant against cliffs, among them the inviting curves of the Moyo-Makao, now far behind me.


    old, and in fact more of a small country than a city. They hold the deepest gemstone mines, and they maintain an mighty military with a flawless record of defense. It’s the carrot they dangle in front of any newcoming settlement: We can protect you, make you rich.”


    his???—??it’s right there in the name. If you lived here then, you lived ac Dwylla. So his refusal had been plain jealousy, not wanting to relinquish control of his town to would-be sovereigns.”


    Why? That sounds so frilly, refusing an alliance-jassa sekkyytt???—??err, I mean refusing out of… err, egoism?”


    Gwymr/Frina, the glass of secrecy. Ostensibly, they meant it in the old sense, secrecy being merely set apart, as our faer was so bent on having it???—??but the subtext is there to be read. We had to be hiding something, to dare abstain from joining their protectorate, hehe.” His voice had faded to a murmur. “I’ve begun to wonder if they were right.”


    huge.


    atmosphere grew more sophisticated, more wealth on display. Any occasional panhandlers or starless walking about didn’t???—??couldn’t???—??come here. The roads looked better, not clear of waste; but I could almost feel comfortable walking on it. Almost. The yards stretched open, spacious and covered in mosses or hardy fungi. It tended something of a familiar rolling green look.


    less intact than the nets I had seen on the outskirts of town, over the farms. I flicked on my tongue. Maybe it wasn’t so strange. In town, the nets were images, there to look secure. But in the cliffs, you needed the nets. They protected you every day, keeping pests and predators out.


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    Just moments of flight after that, I was gliding down to the road that led to the G?ren estate, Hinte’s house. It stood low and sprawling???—??and only one story high! A concave roof sloped, way steeper than any other you saw. That seemed dangerous, because ashstorms. But maybe they were braced. They should be braced.


    wood? — there yawned an estate like it had eaten four other yards. You could tell, from just their decoration, that they missed the forests. More flora grew in just their yard than the entire neighborhood. It held had the first trees I had ever seen in the cliffs. Hardy ash willows, a bleached white. I had liked them since I’d first seen them, even when their droopy melancholic look.


    tasted nice! Ferns, massive though they were, just clouded in contast.


    alone.


    He’s a good fellow, Rhyfel had said.


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    Through the first doorway of the corridor, in a room with a knee-high slab orbited by mats, sat another forest-dweller, with jade scales darker than Hinte’s, on the mat just below a window. Through the other doorway, lay a room with some tall, barrel-shaped plant by the window and very comfortable-looking fluffy mats arranged in a triangle. One mat was big enough to hold two dragons, the other two only one.


    cute; but I could never tell her older self that. Well, maybe unless I wanted to dare her to find some way to administer poison with a glare


    was them. Looking closer, I could see an age difference between the likeness and its source. Other than that, the military garb was gone, and they now wore a gleaming locket I couldn’t find in the painting.


    changed things. My next words would feel like a response, and I didn’t know what to say.


    authentic, be Kinri instead of the once-heir of House Specter.


    want to say?


    wanted to say.


    seven times!” I looked down, cringing at the pathetic fraying in my voice. “And about other things, too.”


    * * *