by Lisa McMann
“And you? Are you also from the line of Taveer?”
Rohan shook his head. “I’m from the other line of black-eyed rulers. The Suresh family. We spent more time in the land beyond the crater lake, where Ashguard ruled. Much of that land is destroyed now.”
Thisbe sank back, still feeling dazed. “How did she take it?”
“Who? What?”
“Maiven. When you told her my mother is dead.”
Rohan was quiet for a long moment. “She was sad.”
A lump rose in Thisbe’s throat, and she blinked back tears. “What does this mean for me?” Thisbe asked quietly, more to herself than to Rohan. “Who am I?”
Rohan lifted his head. “If we get our world back, I suppose that would make you a princess too, pria.”
Thisbe’s face warmed at the familiar nickname he’d given her, though she had no idea what it meant. “Why do you call me that?”
“Are you upset that I do? I’ll stop if you wish.”
“No, but I just want to know what it means.”
But Rohan closed his eyes, a small smile on his face. “One day I might tell you,” he said. “And hopefully by that point it will be accurate.”
“What will be accurate?” Thisbe demanded. It was the only time Rohan had ever annoyed her, and he wasn’t giving in.
“It’s just an affectionate nickname.” Rohan slid to his side and got into a more comfortable position. “Do you hate it?”
“No. I—I like it. What shall I call you?”
“You may call me whatever you want, and I will answer to it.” Rohan smiled and yawned, then rested his head in the crook of his arm. “I’ll collect ancestor bones as soon as Mangrel lets me out. Then I’ll rush to get them to you in the kitchen. So if you can stall a bit before starting your batch tomorrow, I’ll have them for you fairly early on. I found an ancestor crypt that’s much closer to the kitchen than the one I used to go to.”
“That’s perfect, Rohan,” said Thisbe. “Thank you. We’ll figure out a way to get this done without Dev messing things up. I’ve got ideas.” She checked her pockets for components and shifted a few specific ones to the top so she’d have them handy in the morning if she needed them.
After that Rohan went to sleep, leaving Thisbe to ruminate over his latest revelations. Including the part about the affectionate nickname.
A Lucky Guess
Once Mangrel opened Rohan’s door the next morning, Rohan sped as quickly as he could without being seen to the nearest ancestor crypt for bones. Thisbe went to the kitchen as usual to bottle up the dragon-bone broth that had been simmering overnight. She waited for Rohan before starting the next batch, puttering about the kitchen and throne room, organizing the existing bottles, wasting time.
Dev arrived and went about his work meticulously. Thisbe tried to get a good look at his face to see if his glazed expression had changed at all after drinking the ancestor broth, but he kept his back to her so she couldn’t tell. She kept fidgeting as she waited, wanting to get started, so that if the soldiers came again with orders to collect broth for the slaves, Thisbe would be able to provide them with the ancestor kind again.
Finally Rohan arrived and beckoned to Thisbe. She went to the doorway where he stood. “The halls are clear of soldiers,” Rohan whispered, handing her a heavy burlap sack. “I’ll keep watch while you handle Dev.”
Thisbe glanced over her shoulder at Dev, who hadn’t turned to see Rohan enter. He was making it easy for her. Not even needing to use up her precious components, she pointed at him, whispering “Freeze.” Immediately Dev froze in place in front of his cauldron. Hopefully, no soldiers would come for at least fifteen minutes while the spell was active. But Thisbe could release the spell if she needed to once she was finished.
She dumped the ancestor bones into her empty cauldron. Then she fetched buckets of water and poured them over the bones. Once they were covered, she threw in a hearty bunch of herbs to float on top and hide the bone shapes so Dev wouldn’t notice they weren’t from dragons. By the time Thisbe had the fire stoked, Dev’s spell had worn off. He continued his actions as before with no apparent realization that anything unusual had happened to him.
Thisbe went to the doorway and nodded to Rohan to let him know all was good. But as Rohan turned to go, a beastly roar echoed throughout the caverns, making everything shake. Dust sprinkled down from the ceilings. Thisbe and Rohan froze and stared at each other. Thisbe could feel the haunting roar calling to her inside her head, echoing between her ears. It wasn’t coming from the castle—it was coming from Dragonsmarche, and the sound spurred Thisbe toward the elevator. Thankfully the pull was even more muted after her latest dose of ancestor broth, and she resisted it.
Dev came out of the kitchen as if on a mission, with the same destination in mind, though he hesitated momentarily when he saw Rohan and Thisbe just standing there. A confused look flickered on his face, but then it was gone. Thisbe quickly checked her cauldron to make sure the ancestor broth was going strong, then fell in step with Rohan, a few paces behind Dev. They kept their glazed looks and didn’t speak or acknowledge each other. But somehow the walk was easier with Rohan beside her.
Along the way, other black-eyed slaves emerged from where they were doing their various jobs. Prindi and Reza were there, and others whose names Thisbe still didn’t know. They piled into the elevator and waited as one of the Revinir’s soldiers counted them. When the last black-eyed slave arrived, the soldier used the controls to raise them into Dragonsmarche.
Thisbe stared straight ahead. She wanted to look around as they surfaced to see if anything had changed in the months since she and Rohan had flown through here on a ghost dragon’s back. But she couldn’t risk it. All she could see was the scaly underbelly of the Revinir. Thisbe took the opportunity to search the front side of the dragon-woman’s body for weak spots, not having had a good look from this angle on her ride here. The scales were a little sparser on the woman’s elongated neck, but there were no clear spots that looked as though a weapon could penetrate.
The black-eyed children filed out of the elevator into the market square. Thisbe purposely stayed away from Rohan, even though she knew the Revinir had no reason to suspect them of communicating. She stood in the back row, and as she turned, she swept her eyes over the others, counting them. Dev, Rohan, Prindi, Reza, and four others. That made nine of them altogether, including Thisbe. One day soon, if everything went according to the plan, these nine would no longer be slaves. They’d be the new rulers of this land.
Thisbe couldn’t concentrate on that right now, though. She was busy acting as if she were under the Revinir’s mind control. And that task became especially hard when the dragon-woman put her snout directly in front of her face. For the first time Thisbe could see that the Revinir had developed sharp dragon teeth, and her face had elongated to look more dragonlike. Her scorching, rancid breath was enough to make Thisbe flinch, but she fought it and held steady as the Revinir studied her stare and inspected her scales.
“Hmmm,” said the ruler, sounding dissatisfied and suspicious. She moved on to the next slave and checked that person. And then the next. When she got to Rohan, Thisbe’s vacant gaze flickered. His scales weren’t real like everyone else’s. Would she notice this time?
“Why aren’t there more?” the Revinir mused. “There should be noticeably more scales after the last dose. I don’t understand.” She came to Reza and studied him carefully and seemed satisfied this time. Perhaps he’d been the one to get the actual dragon-bone broth. It made Thisbe more determined than ever to not only stop the horrible practice of making her fellow slaves become more controlled, but to reverse this terrible, intentionally administered disease.
When the Revinir had inspected everyone, she stood back and towered over them, looking highly dissatisfied. Smoke floated up from her enlarged nostrils, and her suspicious gaze kept tracking to Thisbe and Dev. Thisbe tried hard to ignore her and held her blank stare.
“Th
isbe and Dev, where did you get the broth that you gave to the soldiers?” asked the Revinir.
Dev remained silent—he hadn’t done it.
Thisbe said evenly, “From the throne room table.”
“Did you choose vials from the right or the left side of the table as you were facing it?”
Thisbe’s heart skipped a beat. Why was the Revinir asking this? In the back of Thisbe’s mind, she could sense what she should answer. “Left,” Thisbe blurted out. It was a lie, and she wasn’t sure she knew why she had said it.
The Revinir seemed satisfied with the answer. “The oldest bottles?”
Again Thisbe got a strange premonition of what to say, though she had no idea if they were still the oldest after so much time away from the catacombs. “Yes, Revinir.” Those bottles on the left might have been the first that Thisbe had placed, back when she was making broth before her and Rohan’s escape.
Then, inexplicably, Thisbe thought, We should throw them out.
“Perhaps there’s a limited shelf life,” the Revinir mused. “The old ones have gone bad. That would explain it. Thisbe, did you do anything to that broth before you gave it to the soldiers?”
“No, Revinir.”
“Dev, did you?”
“No, Revinir.”
“Hmm.” Everyone remained silent as the Revinir seemed to come to a satisfactory conclusion as to why most of the slaves didn’t have visibly more scales than before.
The phrase popped back into Thisbe’s head. We should throw them out.
“Everyone, go back inside,” the Revinir said. “Kitchen staff, pour out all the old vials of broth and start fresh. When your first batch is done today, bottle it up and deliver it to the soldiers for dispersal.”
Thisbe’s heart pounded. It was obviously a coincidence that the Revinir had said what Thisbe was thinking. But this new development of dispersing the broth later today could actually help things along a great deal.
“Yes, Revinir,” said Dev.
“Yes, Revinir,” echoed Thisbe.
“All right. Back to work.”
The slaves filed back into the elevator. As Thisbe waited for her turn to enter, she caught sight of Drock at the far end of the square with a few other dragons, including Arabis and Hux. All three stood perfectly still, even Drock, staring blankly at the Revinir as if waiting for her to tell them what to do next. Thisbe’s heart sank, but she kept moving. Drock was either a surprisingly good actor, or he had somehow succumbed to the Revinir’s recent call. All Thisbe knew was that Drock never stood perfectly still. So this was a bad sign.
On the walk back to the kitchen, Thisbe’s expression was vacant, but her mind was anything but—she couldn’t stop going over the conversation that she’d just had with the Revinir. What had prompted her to lie about the broth? And more importantly, how had she known what to say? Thisbe had never had premonitions like that before. But they’d been perfectly accurate. She’d appeased the Revinir’s suspicion. And she’d even somehow gotten her to say what Thisbe had wanted her to say.
It didn’t seem possible that Thisbe had orchestrated that, but it had been a pretty big coincidence. And as much as Thisbe wanted to assert her own version of mind control on the Revinir, she knew deep down that the dragon-woman had probably already been thinking all along that the broth had spoiled. And Thisbe had simply made some good guesses in confirming it. Maybe Thisbe had had an accurate feeling about what to do for once. And maybe things were just finally going her way. After all, she’d had a lot of unlucky things happen lately. She was bound to get one thing right eventually. Perhaps today was just her lucky day.
An Investigation
Fifer and Sky took a boat to Warbler, with Fifer’s birds accompanying them overhead, carrying the empty hammock. When they arrived, Copper met them in the marina, which was located in the small inlet on the east side of Warbler, a quarter turn from the beach. Dozens of beautiful handmade ships floated around them—the Warblerans had a knack for shipbuilding, and Sky had practically grown up working on boats. To their great shock, one of the ships was a charred skeleton of its former self.
“What happened there?” Sky asked her mother.
“The Revinir and her dragons sent a fire shower down on our island as they passed overhead,” Copper said. “That one caught and quickly became a full-on blaze before we could put it out.”
“What a horrible thing to do!” said Fifer.
“She wanted to spite us. She knows she’ll never run this island again.”
“It doesn’t surprise me that she’d just try to destroy it,” said Sky. “She’s been on a rampage lately.” Sky tapped her lips thoughtfully. She’d feared the Revinir coming to fight Artimé but knew Warbler was just as vulnerable. Maybe even more so because of the dragon-woman’s history. “I think you should prepare for more attacks, Mother.”
Copper nodded her head solemnly. “We’ve already begun to do that.”
Fifer swept her gaze over the ships. They could all be gone in a matter of minutes if the Revinir and her cursed dragons returned. “At least she won’t be able to fit into your tunnels.”
“Her own protective design is flawed in a way that hurts only her,” said Copper with a rueful smile.
The three didn’t linger outside. As they walked toward the back entrance to the warren of underground passageways where the Warblerans lived and worked, Sky quickly explained to her mother why she and Fifer were there.
When she was through, Copper nodded thoughtfully. “I think everything belonging to Queen Eagala has been preserved and stored in her old living quarters. Any journals, maps, and keepsakes will be there. You’re welcome to all of them.” She led them in through the opening and down the long passageway.
They popped in to say hello to Copper’s assistant, Phoenix. He sat at a desk in the room outside Copper’s throne room—which no longer had a throne in it. Copper thought thrones were ridiculous, not to mention uncomfortable. In place of the throne was a simple desk and chair, with a small sofa for constituents who came in to speak with her.
Sky and Phoenix, who had grown up together, chatted briefly like old friends. Fifer watched them. It was nice to see Sky laughing again. Then, leaving Phoenix to his work, Copper led them down another hallway, past rooms where Warblerans were making sails or creating hardware to repair their fleet. The three weaved farther into the heart of the island until they reached a gilded door. The handle and hinges were encrusted with sparkling jewels.
“I would have never guessed this was Eagala’s old room,” Fifer said sarcastically. Copper unlocked the door and swung it open, letting Sky and Fifer inside. Then the woman left them to rummage around as they wished. “Good luck,” she called on her way out.
Fifer and Sky looked around. There were shelves loaded with books and wooden boxes filled with notebooks and loose papers and maps and other drawings. There was also a crate containing gold rocks like the kind that Dev treasured.
Fifer knew from reading Lani’s books and hearing Sky’s stories that the gold had once been used to create long, thin needles with sharp thorns. The thorns were weaved into necklaces that were then embedded into the necks of the people of Warbler to silence them. Fifer knelt beside the crate and ran her fingers through the gold rocks. In their world the gold was worthless. But in Dev’s, this stuff would make a person rich. “We could have used some of this in Dragonsmarche,” Fifer murmured. She picked up a few rocks and examined them.
“Might not be a bad idea to take some with us,” said Sky, picking up a curious-looking book. She opened it and saw it was filled with diagrams and mathematical equations. She turned the book sideways, squinting to read handwritten notes in the margin.
“Are you sure Copper won’t mind?” asked Fifer, scooping up a handful.
“She has no use for them.” Sky put the book down and picked up a second.
Fifer pocketed the rocks, then closed the crate and opened the one next to it.
“The Revinir is definitely
greedy,” Sky said. “It seems strange, living in a world like ours, to be so transfixed on making money. But she and the pirates were trading with other worlds secretly for many years before we learned that other places even existed.”
“So going to the land of the dragons and understanding the monetary system wasn’t such a shock to her.”
“No.” Sky read aloud a few equations, then frowned and searched for a pencil. She started working some figures.
Fifer watched her curiously. “What are you doing?”
“I’m checking her work. She’s got a number of chemical formulas written down here that I’m familiar with. She’s actually quite smart. No wonder she figured out that the whole dragon-bone-marrow-and-broth thing would alter her body’s chemistry.”
“So she already knew she could become a dragon when she lived here?”
Sky wrinkled her nose. She turned a few pages and studied them. “I don’t know about that. Maybe. I wonder if she’d been trying to trap Pan’s young for a long time. I knew the dragons were worried about the pirates capturing and trading them. But maybe they were also worried about Queen Eagala getting her hands on them.” She read a few more pages. “I doubt we’ll ever know. But it’s so interesting, isn’t it?”
Fifer nodded. She rummaged through the second box and pulled out a notebook with a tattered cover and opened it. “What’s this?” said Fifer softly. She gazed at the first page. The date was written in a childlike scrawl. “This is from when she was a child. It’s like a journal or something.”
Sky looked up and went over to Fifer so she could see.
“It’s dated sixty years ago,” said Sky. “I can’t believe she still has this.”
“She was nine,” Fifer said, blowing dust from the brittle pages and beginning to read. “The journal begins on the day that Marcus and Justine sailed away without her.”
“Wow,” said Sky, reading silently alongside Fifer. “And look how she signed the entry. Is that her real name? Emma?”