Darkness of Dragons

  “Finally I decided I’d had enough. The chaos of that giant NightWing arriving distracted everyone long enough for me to kidnap this little idiot, who would have been perfect leverage to get me through the gates and past her general father so I could kill Thorn in her sleep. But no. Apparently I have to wait again for some other convoluted plan to take shape.”

  “I know you’re getting impatient,” Vulture said soothingly. “But successful plans take a little time.”

  There was a crash and some muffled shouting outside. Now everyone looked up at the sky.

  “What is it?” Vulture barked at the hooded figures.

  “Someone tryin’ to see you, sir,” answered one of the Talons. “Won’t take no for an answer. Already got a bit of ’is tail blown off charging the wall, but still comin’ strong, bleedin’ and everythin’.”

  “Great snakes,” said Vulture calmly. “If he’s that intent, let’s have a look at him.”

  “Yes, sir,” the guard said, ducking her head. She flew away and returned a few moments later, escorting a dragon along with three other Talons. Two of them had their hoods torn and tossed back, and the third had a long scratch on his side, but the newcomer was in far worse shape: bleeding from several wounds and with his tail ending in a bloody stump instead of a SandWing barb.

  “Sir!” he cried as soon as he saw Vulture. “I have an urgent message for you! I’m not allowed to stop or rest or do anything else until I give it to you!” He collapsed on the marble floor as the guards dropped him in front of Vulture.

  “Intriguing,” said Vulture. “Go on.”

  “There’s a new king of the NightWings,” the dragon gasped, letting words spill out breathlessly. “A giant dragon, the biggest you’ve ever seen. He caught us in the rainforest and took the other four prisoner. But he sent me back to tell you it’s not the right time to kill Queen Glory. He said he knows about your plan to replace Thorn and he’ll help you if you help him. He said he’ll be in touch soon and not to do anything until he sends instructions.”

  The last sentence whooshed out of the dragon in one garbled rush, and then at last he took a breath and closed his eyes and fell, unconscious, at Vulture’s feet.

  Qibli whirled toward Winter. This was proof! Proof that Darkstalker was working against their allies — that he couldn’t be trusted. Surely Winter had to see him as he was now.

  But the IceWing prince looked unaffected. He was watching Vulture with a politely curious expression, but he certainly didn’t look as though an enormous revelation had just been dropped on his head.

  Vulture, on the other talon, absolutely did. He stared down at the messenger, his tail lashing so his cloak shifted from side to side, rustling along the floor.

  “A new … king of the NightWings?” he enunciated slowly.

  “Must be that big guy I told you about,” Onyx said with a shrug.

  “But … king?” Vulture said again. “The NightWings agreed to this? Queen Glory just … handed them over? To a king?”

  “Why would she want them?” Onyx demanded. “Bunch of lying grumblers. I’d give them away, too. Focus on my own tribe.”

  “Your tribe …” Vulture mused, and in a flash of insight, Qibli guessed what he was thinking.

  If one tribe can have a king, why not another?

  Why be the power behind the throne, when one could be the power on the throne?

  Why bother installing Onyx … if perhaps the time has come for a SandWing king at last?

  This was bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. Vulture scheming behind the scenes was terrible enough; Vulture openly trying to seize the throne for himself would be a new kind of threat to Queen Thorn. Especially if he was collaborating with Darkstalker to make it happen.

  Qibli felt sick. With Darkstalker’s magic, they could kill Thorn anytime, from anywhere, with barely a thought.

  I have to get to her. I have to take her an earring, right now; I can’t wait another moment.

  “I’ll take your gift to Queen Thorn,” he blurted. “Like you wanted me to. Whatever it is. I’ll take it today, if you let Ostrich and Cobra come with me.”

  Vulture gave him a sideways smile, a smile that said I see you seeing me. “Oh, but that’s not all I want,” he said. “Remember? You’re going to tell me all of Thorn’s secrets first. Passwords. Secret stores of treasure. Closest allies. How to kill them all.”

  Ostrich gasped and shoved Qibli’s shoulder. “You’re not! You wouldn’t!”

  Vulture slid a blank scroll out of one of the racks under the star charts and unrolled it on the floor in front of Qibli. He weighed down the corners with pillows and a little ink pot. “You may get started now,” he said. “Take your time. Apparently I’m waiting for … instructions.” He made a little face at that word, just a small one, but Qibli noticed it and it gave him a tiny spark of hope that Darkstalker and Vulture wouldn’t be the perfect collaborators they might think they would be.

  “We could use that big NightWing’s help,” Onyx mused. “I mean, he’s got magic. He can read minds. See the future. Useful stuff, if it’s on our side.”

  “Indeed,” Vulture said, spreading one wing toward the open dome. “Let’s go discuss exactly how useful.”

  His Talons scooped up the unconscious messenger and they departed, leaving Qibli with Ostrich, Cobra, and Winter. And the five guards still watching us, he remembered.

  “Don’t you even think about it, Qibli,” Ostrich threatened, baring her teeth at him. “I will stop you. I will burn that scroll to ashes! Rawr!” A small burst of flames shot out of her mouth, setting one of the carpets on fire. Winter leaned over and exhaled frostbreath all over it to put it out.

  “I’m going to get some sleep,” Winter said to Qibli. “In the hopes that we’ll only be here a short while longer.”

  “Good idea,” Qibli said, nudging one of the blue cushions toward him. Winter dragged it into a far corner and stretched out across it. Soon his spikes were rattling softly as his chest rose and fell.

  “I’m not going to tell Vulture anything,” Qibli promised Ostrich quietly. “But if I don’t do this, we need another way out of here.”

  “Pretend to start writing.” Cobra brushed past him. “I’ll look for weapons.”

  Ostrich’s eyes lit up. “I have one!” she whispered. She huddled into Qibli’s side, pretending to read what he was writing, and flicked her tail around to reveal that she’d been keeping her tail barb bent down, concealing something in the small fold. As she slipped it out, Qibli saw a thin line of blood where it had scratched her.

  “I stole this from my guard,” she hissed softly. She hid it quickly under a pillow and slid it over to Qibli.

  It was a small round disk with a bladed edge around the outside, sharp and sinister-looking. Qibli had seen these in the market, in his mother’s armory, and among the Outclaws, but he’d rarely practiced with any himself.

  “A chakram,” Cobra whispered, leaning over Qibli’s shoulder. “Be more specific here,” she said loudly, for the guards’ benefit, pointing to a spot on the scroll while she palmed the disk. “Your grandfather will want to know exactly how many advisors attend the queen’s morning meeting.”

  Qibli glanced down at the scroll, where he had been filling space by writing: There are lots of loyal Outclaws. So many loyal Outclaws. Lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of dragons who think Queen Thorn is awesome because she is.

  “I can take out one of the guards with this,” Cobra whispered, “but that leaves the other four.”

  “I can make more chakrams if you distract the Talons,” Qibli offered. He took the pieces of Turtle’s bowl out of his bag, concealing them under one of the pillows, and slotted them together, then nodded at his mother.

  “Has your handwriting gotten worse since you were a dragonet?” she spat, sounding scarily like the mother he remembered. She snatched the scroll out of his talons (dropping the chakram in the bowl as she did) and stormed around, glaring at it, until she was blocking him from
view of the guards. “And your spelling is atrocious. What self-respecting SandWing can’t spell Capybara? I swear you’ve gotten stupider since I sold you.”

  Qibli knew she was making a scene and didn’t mean any of it. But it was still hard to quash the urge to defend himself (I wasn’t trying to write capybara! My spelling is fine! Other dragons know what I mean!).

  He leaned over the chakram in the bowl and whispered, “Twice as much, please. Twice as much, please. Twice as much, please.” Eight scary-looking disks glittered in the bowl.

  Ostrich goggled at the multiplying disks in the bowl, then up at Qibli.

  “How did you do that?” she breathed, awestruck. “Are you magic?”

  He shook his head ruefully. “Not me,” he said. “Someone else.” He checked the slate again, while he had a moment. Still blank. What was Turtle doing? Had something terrible happened to him? Or had he forgotten about Qibli, waiting anxiously for any news?

  Ostrich tented one of her wings out a bit so Qibli could hide the bowl of weapons underneath.

  “Try harder,” Cobra spat, flinging the scroll down in front of Qibli again. “Remember your grandfather has very high standards. He wants every detail. Spelled CORRECTLY.” She sat down behind Qibli again, every inch the looming, grammar-correcting mother the guards might expect to see.

  “Most impressive,” she whispered when Ostrich tipped her wing to reveal the chakrams. “Now we just wait for dark … and then, we escape.”

  Thwip — thunk!

  Thwip — thunk!

  Thwip — thunk!

  Cobra threw three chakrams at once — two with her talons, one with her tail — and they struck three of the Talons perfectly in the throat, cutting off their vocal cords and killing them at the same time.

  She seized the next two disks and threw them barely a second later, so the last two guards didn’t even have time to turn around in confusion before all five were falling through the dome roof, their hoods fluttering like tent canopies as they fell.

  Qibli stared up at the now-open sky, misted with the sparkling fog of galaxies. None of the moons were full tonight, which was lucky. They were lucky, too, that Vulture had not returned yet to examine the scroll and realize that Qibli was stalling. (Example: And then there’s the palace, which used to be Burn’s stronghold, which is, whoa, so big, like, really big, like, just the biggest, definitely not an easy place to break into, I mean, with the walls … and the bigness …) Perhaps the guards that had traded places with these guards at dusk had reported that Qibli was working diligently, and that had been enough for Vulture, for now.

  He bent quickly to the fallen Talons and tugged off their hoods, handing one to Cobra and one to Ostrich and pulling another over his own head. Winter was hopeless; it was too obvious that he was a sparkly IceWing and in no way a Talon of Power. They would have to pretend he was a prisoner if they were stopped.

  “Stay close to me,” Cobra hissed. “Don’t touch anything or step on anything if you can avoid it.”

  “Won’t the traps and grounds be different from what you remember?” Qibli asked her. “If you’ve been imprisoned for so long?”

  “I know my father’s tricks,” she said grimly. “I’ll keep you safe.”

  Keep me safe. Protect me. Because she loves me.

  Qibli shook himself and followed her to the roof, where they flattened themselves to slither along the outside, watching for more guards. Ostrich was close behind Qibli, with Winter taking up the end of the line.

  The night air smelled of burned coconuts and Grandfather’s perfumed oil, and of the oasis pool not too far away. Qibli could hear members of the Talons of Power toasting one another in the garden pavilions. The hood was heavy around his face, obstructing his peripheral vision; he wondered how the Talons could stand them.

  They slipped down to the ground and hurried single file along one of the tiled paths, carefully stepping only where Cobra stepped, although Qibli thought the center of the garden should be safe to walk in, at least. It was the outskirts, where the walls were — where they were going — that were dangerous.

  A small fortress loomed out of the dark ahead of them, bristling with long spikes. Qibli stopped, glancing around.

  “This isn’t the way to the outer wall,” he whispered.

  “I need to stop in here for a minute,” Cobra whispered back, flicking one wing at the fortress.

  “In Grandfather’s treasury?” Qibli hissed. “Are you insane?”

  “He has something that could ruin all our plans,” Cobra growled. “I must take it from him, or everything we do is doomed to failure.”

  “But — of all the places definitely rigged to kill you,” Qibli said, “this will do it in the most painful way.”

  She grinned, her teeth glittering in the dark. “I know where he hides his key.”

  “You mean, where he hid it,” Qibli pointed out. “Years ago.”

  “This he won’t have changed,” she whispered. “Stay here. Stop worrying.”

  “No,” Qibli said firmly. “Tell me what we’re stealing. If you want us to trust you, you should be able to tell us that.”

  “Fine,” she said, exasperated. “Ever heard of the Obsidian Mirror?”

  “I have,” said Winter, unexpectedly. “Legend says it gave the NightWings the power to eavesdrop on any conversation happening anywhere in the world.”

  “Whoa,” Qibli said, feeling that shimmer of envy he always felt anywhere near an animus-touched object. You’d know everyone’s secrets. You could hear what dragons are saying about you — although, would I want that? I don’t think I would want that. But imagine the power to anticipate everyone’s next move! It would be so easy to keep tabs on your enemies … or your long-lost grandson. “That’s how he knew everything about me and Winter,” he said. “That’s how he knew we were coming here.”

  “Exactly,” said Cobra. “So we have to take it with us or else he’ll always know where we are and what we’re doing. Get it now, lizard?” she snapped at Qibli, then seemed to catch herself mid-snap. She closed her snout, took a deep breath through her nose, and said, “Sorry.”

  Sorry. Qibli was momentarily dazed. He wouldn’t have guessed that his mother knew how to say that word. At least, not to one of her offspring.

  “No, I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re right, we can’t leave that in Vulture’s talons.”

  She gave him a surprised look, as if she hadn’t thought he knew the word sorry either.

  “How did Vulture get the mirror?” Winter asked. “How long has he had it?”

  “He must know so much about Thorn already,” Qibli realized with a sense of mounting horror. “What does he think I can tell him that he hasn’t already overheard?”

  Cobra shrugged. “He hasn’t had it long, I think,” she said. “He found it, out in the desert, only a few months ago.”

  “Only a few months ago …” Qibli said thoughtfully.

  She glanced at him. “I heard the guards talking about it, walking over my prison.” Her wings folded back and she pulled the hood farther over her face. “Now stay here and stop chattering on. I’ll be right back.”

  Before he could say another word, she sprinted toward the treasury, darting from bush to bush in the dark.

  Qibli gestured Winter and Ostrich back into the shadows of a covert of trees. It was the best he could do while still staying on the path, and it felt horribly exposed. Talons of Power could come by at any moment. Vulture could saunter past at any moment.

  Grandfather’s been spying on the queen for months, Qibli thought. Thorn will have to change all her passwords. Recode the secret message system, just in case. Change everything she’s done, in case he’s overheard it and can use it against her. He rubbed his forehead, his brain starting to explode with all the implications.

  Long minutes ticked by, and each one felt like a dagger Qibli was personally thrusting into his queen’s heart. The Obsidian Mirror was a terrible thing for your enemies to have — but Darks
talker’s power was even more dangerous. Thorn needed protection from Darkstalker right now, and he was just standing here in the dark, waiting for his mother.

  Maybe we should go, he thought, crossing to the edge of the shadows so he could study the silent treasury. But she’s the one who can navigate us out of here. What if we just flew for it? Lifted off and tried to fly away as fast as we could? We’d be spotted but maybe they wouldn’t be able to catch up to us. Maybe their arrows would miss.

  I can’t risk Ostrich that way.

  What if Mother doesn’t come back? What if she’s already lying dead on a pile of gems inside? Will we still be standing here when morning comes?

  He turned back toward the others and had a small heart attack.

  “Where’s Winter?” he whispered, nudging Ostrich with his wing. She sat up and looked around with blurry confusion.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “He was here a moment ago.”

  Qibli twisted in a frantic circle and spotted a white shape flitting through the pear orchard. He couldn’t shout out to Winter without alerting the whole compound. Qibli growled softly.

  “Stay here,” he whispered to Ostrich. “Stay as hidden as you can. We’ll be right back.”

  She nodded, folding back into the shadows.

  Qibli hurried after the IceWing prince and realized that he was aiming for another small building in the center of the pear trees. This one was built low to the ground, with large windows on all sides; candlelight flickered in the dim interior. The outside was decorated with a turquoise-and-amber tile mosaic of snakes and lizards chasing one another endlessly.

  Winter slowed down as he got closer, and then veered around the building toward a shed that appeared to be a storehouse for food, judging from the smells Qibli could now identify coming from it. He smelled cinnamon and dates and coconut, smoked ham and a few live pigs as well, some kind of the fancy smelly cheese Vulture loved, lemons, scavengers, dried fish, live ducks …