The Hidden Kingdom

by Tui T. Sutherland

  “Right. It’s built mostly of ice, so she wouldn’t even be able to use her fire there,” Starflight mused.

  “So here’s what I’m thinking,” Glory said. “I’m sure Mangrove saw this place, too. He’ll head right for it, probably camouflage himself and sneak in looking for Orchid. So I’ll go after him and bring him back, while you guys hide somewhere Deathbringer won’t find you, and then we all fly south as fast as possible.”

  “Wait, by yourself?” Clay said. “Can’t one of us go with you?”

  “Who?” Glory said. “Who else can disguise herself as an IceWing?”

  Her friends all looked at Jambu, who blinked sleepily.

  “And be helpful,” Glory added.

  “I can be helpful,” Jambu said with a yawn. “I bet I’m better at spotting camouflaged RainWings than you are.”

  Glory hesitated. That actually did sound useful. She wasn’t really sure how she intended to find Mangrove on her own.

  “You can do that?” she said.

  “It’s a game we play starting when we’re dragonets,” Jambu said. “One dragonet camouflages herself, and whoever sees her first, wins. So no guarantees, but it’s probably more practice than you’ve had.”

  She thought for a moment and shook her head. “It’s too dangerous. I can take care of myself, and I don’t need any help.”

  “Glory,” Clay said in a sort of amiably threatening voice. “You take him, or we’re all coming with you.”

  Glory could tell by the looks on their faces that this was true. Stupid heroic we’re-a-team idiots. “All right, fine. We’ll go in camouflaged, but I want to make sure you can look like an IceWing, too. Try matching what I’m doing.” She let her scales shimmer back into her IceWing disguise.

  Clay winced, and she guessed he’d recognized which dragon she’d used as a model. Watching Fjord die in front of him couldn’t have been any easier for him than for her.

  “Now make your scales a bit whiter,” Glory said to Jambu, “so we’re not exactly the same. And shift around the fake icicle horns.” She stepped back and studied him. “I think that’ll do. Can you remember that if we need to become IceWings?”

  “Sure,” he said. He held out his wings and looked at them. “This is a pretty cool color. I’ll have to remember it once we’re home.”

  “We also need IceWing names. You be Penguin; I’ll be Storm. That should be easy to remember.”

  “I still think one of us should go with you,” Tsunami interjected.

  “MudWings and SeaWings are the enemy here,” Glory pointed out. “And no offense, guys, but it’s not like Starflight or Sunny would be much help.”

  “No offense?” Sunny squeaked. “How am I not supposed to be offended by that?” She lashed her tail and scowled.

  “We’ll get in and out faster if we just keep our scales hidden,” Glory said. “Don’t worry. We’ll be back by tonight.”

  “What if you find the missing RainWings in there?” Clay asked.

  Glory flicked her tail, letting her scales shift back into the color of the rocks. “We’ll free them and come storming out in a big invisible herd. All right?”

  Clay and Tsunami nodded reluctantly.

  “Come on, Jambu,” Glory said. “The rest of you stay hidden. I mean it.” She sprang into the air with her brother beside her and let her scales adjust to the sky around them. As they beat their way north, she glanced back once and saw Sunny staring after them while Tsunami waved her talons bossily.

  “It’s still cold,” Jambu moaned. “Even with my wings beating. I think it’s even colder.”

  “Well, we’re up in the air,” Glory pointed out. “And the wind probably isn’t helping. But this will be over soon, don’t worry.” She pointed to the building ahead of them. “Just to warn you, there will be snow. But hopefully the SandWings keep the inside warm with their fires.”

  “Snow!” Jambu said. “And fire! You know, I’ve never seen either of those.”

  “I’ve never seen snow up close either,” Glory admitted.

  “It looks fluffy,” said Jambu.

  * * *

  It wasn’t fluffy. It was wet and piercingly freezing against their talons as they landed outside the walls. Jambu let out a yelp of pain, and Glory nearly tackled him to shut him up.

  “Who’s there?” called a voice from above.

  They both froze, their scales the color of the white ground below them.

  A SandWing head poked out a window. “Did you hear that?” he asked.

  Another SandWing head wriggled out beside his. “No. And I don’t see anything. You’re imagining things again.”

  “When Burn’s army shows up to crush us —” growled the first dragon.

  “We’ll see them coming from miles away,” said the second. “And they’ll be frozen and weak from the cold, and we’ll have IceWing backup by the time they get here. Stop interrupting our game.” The second guard withdrew into the room. The first glanced around suspiciously, his gaze trailing across the snow where Glory and Jambu crouched. Finally he huffed out a snort and retreated back inside.

  Glory flipped her tail into her brother’s talons and led the way, slipping around the thick stone walls until she found a dragon-size door. Locked, of course. She glanced up, but she’d already seen from above that there was no inner courtyard or openings anywhere on the roof, other than the chimneys, which were too small. The windows were all too narrow for a dragon to squeeze through as well. This was a proper fortress. She wondered if it had been built early in the war, when Blaze first came to Queen Glacier for protection and an alliance.

  This was a pretty generous gift for Glacier to give to her ally — a whole fortress right in IceWing territory. Deathbringer’s words came back to her . . . Blaze had promised Glacier all this land if she won the war.

  Glory thought of the other two SandWing sisters. She wondered what Burn had promised the SkyWings and MudWings. And whether Blister had promised the SeaWings anything, or if she’d just manipulated Queen Coral into supporting her.

  “I’m not seeing a way to sneak in here,” Glory whispered. “Do you have any ideas?”

  She felt Jambu shrug. “Sorry,” he said. “I’ve never done anything like this.”

  They tried circling the walls one more time, but there was only the one door. Glory couldn’t see any gaps in the fortress’s defenses anywhere. Their only choice was to wait for that door to open and hope they could slip inside . . . but who knew how long that would take?

  The sun was finally drifting up the pale blue sky, reflecting off the glittering snow. Glory did not want to stand out here all day. For one thing, Jambu would probably freeze to death. She didn’t like the cold either, but he’d never been out of a tropical environment before.

  Same goes for Mangrove, she realized. In fact, how would he have gotten inside the fortress? Maybe he wasn’t there at all. Maybe he was lying in a snowbank somewhere, slowly disappearing into the ice.

  Glory shook her head. Mangrove wasn’t the type to give up, if she read him right. And neither was she.

  “We’ll have to go in as IceWings,” she said. “Just follow my lead.”

  Jambu’s head appeared, nodding agreeably, as his scales shifted color. Glory let her scales change as well, then turned in a circle to check herself as best she could. It wasn’t a perfect disguise by any means. But hopefully these SandWings wouldn’t look too closely. And between her camouflage scales and venom, she felt like she had a pretty good chance of escaping even if they did catch her.

  She marched up to the door and rapped smartly.

  “Try to look like a soldier,” she hissed at Jambu, who was slouching and rubbing his neck behind her.

  “I don’t know what that looks like,” he whispered back just before the door swung open.

  A heavyset SandWing with broken claws on o
ne talon peered out at them. “Eh?” he muttered.

  “We have an important message for Queen Blaze,” Glory announced. “Take us somewhere we can wait until she returns.” Surely, like her sisters, Blaze would be off leading a battle somewhere. Once they were shown into a waiting room, they could change back to camouflage and search the fortress for Mangrove without being seen.

  “Eh? Until she returns?” The SandWing looked at her as if she were mad. “Blaze is here. She’s always here. I can take you right to her.”

  Uh-oh, Glory thought.

  “But it better be good news,” said the SandWing, stomping around and heading into the fortress. “She doesn’t like hearing bad news, and we don’t like her hearing it either. Queen Glacier needs to figure that out and stop sending all these gloomy reports.”

  Glory and Jambu exchanged glances and hurried after him. The door thudded shut behind them and another SandWing guard followed close on their tails. Slipping away was not going to be easy.

  Blaze’s fortress was not much like the glorious, extravagant palaces of Queen Scarlet or Queen Coral. The halls here were narrow and nothing was open to the sky. A fireplace held a roaring fire in every room they passed, so the heat was almost stifling, and yet cold winds still rattled through the small windows. There was no trea sure adorning the walls, no gold or pearls embedded in the floor.

  Instead, the stone walls were hung with thick woven tapestries. Each tapestry had a bright yellow sun blazing at the center of it, surrounded by patterns of images from the desert — sinuous lizards, prickly cacti, palm trees, camels. White and green and blue covered the dull gray walls almost from corner to corner.

  They miss their home, Glory realized, and was shocked to find herself feeling sorry for these SandWings. They’d come here to support Blaze — probably they’d fled alongside her when Burn tried to claim the throne — and now they were trapped in this icy world that was nothing like their own.

  Kind of like growing up in a cave instead of a rainforest.

  “Cool,” Jambu said. He pointed at a tapestry covered in rioting green lizards. “That one’s really wild. I like it.”

  The SandWing soldiers stared at him. “Really?” said the one in the lead. “Our IceWing visitors usually make it pretty clear that they think our hangings are — how do they put it? — garish and gaudy.”

  “Well, they’re not our style,” Glory said, stamping on Jambu’s foot. “But we can still appreciate the artistry.”

  “Huh,” said the first SandWing. “Never heard that from an IceWing before.” He turned and kept walking. Glory shot Jambu a glare and he wrinkled his snout at her.

  They reached the center of the fortress — or so Glory guessed, since there were no windows here — and stopped in a small antechamber outside a pair of giant wooden doors. One of the SandWings knocked twice and they all waited.

  As the silence stretched out, Glory realized that there was something huddled in a corner of the little room. It looked like a dirty pile of prey fur at first, but when she peered closer, she realized there were two scavengers in there. They leaned against the wall with their arms around each other, shivering.

  “What are those?” Jambu whispered to her, spotting them at the same time.

  “You’re one of those IceWings who’s never left the queen’s palace, aren’t you?” guessed the second soldier, overhearing him. “I hear they rarely see scavengers that far north.” He prodded the furs with one sharp claw, and the two scavengers let out tragic little whimpers. “We found one of their hidden dens near the mountains and gathered up whatever we could catch. They’re faster than they look — we got only six of them, when there must have been at least twenty.” He shook his head. “These two are what’s left.”

  “You’re going to eat them?” Jambu said. Don’t sound so shocked, Glory thought, lashing her tail. But she could understand what he was feeling. With their big eyes and strange arms wound around each other, the two scavengers looked like overgrown, less cute sloths. She couldn’t imagine eating them either. The thought made her feel weirdly queasy.

  It didn’t help that one of them was staring at her in the same plaintive way Silver did when she didn’t want Glory to leave her behind.

  “Of course,” said the guard. “We wreck any scavenger dens we can find and eat as many of them as we can. Glacier’s orders. She thinks one day we’ll find where they buried our trea sure.”

  “If it still exists. Who knows what scavengers do with trea sure,” muttered the other guard. He knocked again, and this time the door swung open under his talon.

  The room on the other side was larger than any they’d seen so far. The smooth stone floor was covered in sand, and the tapestries on the walls here were more intricate, with images of dragons and crowns and jewels surrounding the yellow suns.

  Giant wine-red pillows and camel-hair carpets were piled in a loose nest in the middle of the room, and sprawled across this was a strikingly beautiful SandWing.

  She had her chin propped on one talon and was gazing listlessly into a mirror on the sand in front of her. Her tail coiled gracefully across the pillows, with the poisonous barb touching the floor. Her wings were folded, and her scales shimmered like white gold against the red backdrop.

  Blaze lifted her dark eyes and saw Glory and Jambu in the doorway. She forced a smile and reached her front talons toward them in a welcoming gesture.

  “Oh, wonderful,” she said. “We haven’t had visitors in so long. I was hoping Queen Glacier would send us news.”

  Glory bowed and Jambu imitated her. “If this is a bad time, Your Majesty, we can wait until later . . .”

  “No, no, please come in,” Blaze cried. “Ocotillo, please bring us some tea. Oh, and some of those dried lizards if we have any left.”

  “Of course, Your Majesty,” said the first guard with a respectful bow. Both SandWing soldiers backed out of the room, leaving Glory and Jambu alone with Blaze.

  I’m guessing it wouldn’t be this easy to get a private audience with Burn or Blister, Glory thought. Blaze was not as cautious or suspicious as her sisters. But then, she had no reason to suspect a pair of IceWings.

  “Is it about Queen Scarlet?” Blaze asked, leaning forward. “Did we find out if she’s dead? Are the SkyWings still following Burn? You know, if Glacier would let me go to the Sky Kingdom, I bet I could convince the SkyWings to switch alliances to us. I can be really convincing. Everyone likes me.”

  Or they could throw you in prison, Glory thought. Or hand you over to Burn.

  “I know what you’ll say,” Blaze said restlessly. “What Glacier always says. Stay put and let her handle things. I know all that military stuff is too confusing for me. But I think I could be useful with the talking part. Other dragons like hearing me talk.”

  “I’m sure that is true, Your Majesty,” said Glory politely.

  “So?” Blaze said. Her pitch-dark eyes were too eerily similar to Burn’s and Blister’s; they gave Glory the creeps, even though she knew a very different brain was behind them. “What’s your important message?”

  Option one: Make up a lie.

  Option two: Run for it.

  Option three . . . tell a version of the truth.

  Glory took a deep breath. “The dragonets of the prophecy want to meet you.”

  Blaze sat up fast. “The dragonets?” she cried. “Glacier found them?”

  “They’re looking for you,” Glory hedged.

  “Well, bring them here, bring them here!” Blaze said. “We can have a feast! Or a party! We haven’t had one of those in forever, because, you know, Queen Glacier disapproves of that kind of thing, but for something like this I’m sure we could! Oh, we’ll definitely need more dried lizards. We even have a pair of scavengers we could share! Maybe we should roast a camel — one of them’s a MudWing, right? He’d probably like that. We don’t have anything for SeaWi
ngs . . . maybe Queen Glacier can send us some fish, or a penguin, or do you think she’d like a walrus?”

  “Wait,” Glory said. As tempting as a feast sounded — and she knew Clay would collapse with joy if he were offered a roasted camel — she wasn’t about to walk her friends back into another queen’s clutches. “There’s a catch. They’re not willing to risk coming inside. They need you to go meet with them.”

  Blaze flung herself down on the carpets again, looking petulant. “But what about my party?” she said. “And I don’t like going outside. It’s too cold and it makes my scales all dry and ugly.”

  “You won’t have to go far,” Glory said. Jambu was twitching in a weird, distracting way. She poked him with her tail. “And isn’t it worth it if the dragonets end up choosing you to be the next SandWing queen?”

  Blaze worried one of her claws between her teeth, thinking.

  Jambu poked Glory back and cut his eyes toward the far corner of the room. Glory squinted, but all she could see was sand and stone walls and tapestry.

  Except . . . then the sand moved, and for the briefest moment, a pair of eyes blinked out of the wall, then vanished again.

  Mangrove is here.

  “I should wait for Queen Glacier,” Blaze said. “She wouldn’t like my going off alone. I’m sure she wants to meet the dragonets, too.”

  Glory already did not like the sound of the IceWing queen. She’d bet that Glacier was exactly the kind of dragon who would love to lock up five dragonets.

  “Actually,” Glory said, “she sent us to tell you that it’s a good idea. You should go ahead and meet with them, and you can tell her all about it afterward. There’s nothing to fear from the dragonets, and besides, um, Penguin and I will be there to protect you.”

  “Oh,” said Blaze. “That is reassuring.” She gave Jambu a concerned look, and he managed to stop twitching for a moment.

  “Do you think they’ll really choose me?” Blaze asked hopefully, turning back to Glory. “Oh, who am I kidding. I’m sure they will if they meet me! All right, I’ll do it.”