The Brightest Night

by Tui T. Sutherland

  Thorn folded her wings back and ducked under a low archway. “Eight years ago, I met a dragon, out in the sands not far from here, actually. His scales were like the desert sky at night and he was always nervous, in a sweet, worried way, like no other dragon I’d ever met. Remember, I grew up in the Scorpion Den. There you have to be tough and cutthroat all the time, or you’re dead. I liked the way Stonemover fidgeted and the questions he was always asking, and I liked that he wasn’t pretending to be scarier and meaner than he really was. He was just himself. And he was very smart.”

  “He sounds a lot like Starflight,” Sunny said. She wondered if that meant anything. If she was like her mother, did that mean she would end up in love with a dragon who was like her father? Was that her type? Was that her destiny, her and Starflight together?

  She had many thoughts about that but no idea how to sort them out.

  “He gave me this,” Thorn said, touching the moonstone around her neck. “I asked him why he was here, and he said he was trying to save his tribe. I liked that, too,” she went on. “He really, really cared about saving his tribe. I’d never seen loyalty before, because there was nothing like the Outclaws back then, not in the Scorpion Den. He said he was doing something essential that nobody else could do.”

  “Oh!” Sunny gasped. “The tunnels! He must be the animus who built the tunnels!”

  Thorn looked at her curiously. “You know about that? Wait, tunnels, as in multiple tunnels?”

  “Two of them,” Sunny said, “as far as I know. Those are the only ones I’ve been through anyway.”

  “You have been around,” Thorn said with a hint of admiration in her voice. “I only knew about one tunnel. He was here every day for a while, trying to pick the right spot and working up the energy to create it. So I kept coming back to bother him, and finally I guess he fell for me, too.”

  Who wouldn’t? Sunny thought. “But,” she said, “didn’t anyone care that you were from two different tribes?” If Burn thinks it’s wrong, I’m guessing she’s not the only dragon who feels that way.

  What if it were me and Starflight? She realized she didn’t really know what dragons in the outside world thought about inter-tribe relationships. It had never come up in any scrolls, and the guardians under the mountain had never talked about it — but they never talked about families or love at all.

  “No one knew except Six-Claws and my friend Armadillo,” Thorn admitted. “Stonemover was my secret. Of course, I didn’t have a whole lot of other friends back then.”

  “If they knew now,” Sunny said slowly, “would you lose the Outclaws?”

  Thorn stepped in front of Sunny and put up her wings to stop her in place. “Listen to me,” she said. “I don’t tell everyone about my past because I like my privacy, and there isn’t much of that when you lead a band of outlaws. But I’m not ashamed of you or of where you came from. If other dragons have a problem with it, that’s their problem. It’s not against the law to be with a dragon from another tribe. It just … hardly ever happens, that’s all. Usually each tribe keeps to itself. Which makes you rare but not illegal or taboo or horrifying or anything like that. Don’t ever let any dragon make you feel like you shouldn’t exist. You understand?”

  Sunny nodded. She thought dragons should be allowed to love whoever they fell in love with, but at the same time, she couldn’t help thinking, Look at me, though … no natural weapons, no powers, scales that mean I don’t fit into any tribe … I’m kind of a walking argument for avoiding inter-tribe relationships, aren’t I?

  Her mother looked as if she could read Sunny’s thoughts on her face. She brushed her front talons over Sunny’s head and horns and cupped her snout. “Sunny, you are perfect the way you are.”

  “So what happened to Stonemover?” Sunny asked. She didn’t want to think about her weird looks anymore, at least for a little while.

  “He disappeared.” Thorn let go of her and blew out a breath with hints of fire in it. “I came back one day and he was gone. Morrowseer was there instead. He said it was my fault, whatever had happened to Stonemover, and never to look for him or try to speak to him again. Pompous worm-faced snob-head camel turd.”

  “Mother!” Sunny said, nearly shocked into laughing.

  “That’s what he was,” Thorn growled. “Morrowseer. I dream about wringing his neck all the time.” She sighed, and her claws scratched across the stone as if they were frustrated, too.

  “We didn’t like him much either,” Sunny admitted. “So that was it? Didn’t you ever see Stonemover again?”

  “No, but of course that wasn’t it,” Thorn said, turning to walk on again. “I looked for him everywhere. I went through the tunnel, but it led to the rainforest — isn’t that odd? I thought it would lead to their hidden kingdom, but no. I searched the whole place, but there were no NightWings there, only some very sweet, rather bewildered RainWings. Very confusing. I never understood how that would save his tribe.”

  “I’ll explain it to you later,” Sunny said. “Did he know about me?”

  “No,” Thorn said. “We were fighting, a little bit, when I found out I was with egg. I planned to tell him once he apologized. But he’d gotten very strange and cold, so maybe he wasn’t going to.”

  “That’s what happens to animus dragons,” Sunny said. “Whenever they use their magic, they lose a little bit of their soul, or something like that. They get meaner and colder and a little more crazy. From what I’ve heard anyway.”

  Thorn stopped again and stared down at her, worry filling her dark eyes. “I didn’t know that. That’s what was happening to him? I wonder if he knew…. He must have known. Why didn’t he tell me?” She flicked her tail thoughtfully, furrowing her brow.

  “So then —” Sunny prompted her.

  “So then I was afraid the NightWings would come after your egg if they knew about it. That’s why I buried it in the desert; that’s why I asked Dune to help me look after it. I had no idea he was with the Talons of Peace — and even if I had known, I wouldn’t have guessed that would make him steal my egg. Would you?”

  “Here we are,” Smolder called, and they realized he’d stopped in the tunnel ahead, next to a dark wooden door. He selected a delicate gold key and unlocked it, then had to shove hard to get the door open.

  Sunny realized why as they squeezed inside behind him. He wasn’t kidding about the mess. Piles of scrolls had toppled over to block the door, and there were papers and glass paperweights and small carved onyx lizards scattered all across the small, square room. If there had ever been any system of organization, there was no way to tell now.

  “This is not Burn’s favorite place,” Smolder said, stepping around the piles gingerly and still knocking over several more with his tail. “I can’t guarantee she’s ever been in here, in fact. And our mother wasn’t the most organized dragon in the world either. I tried once to put it all in order. As you can see, I was wildly successful.”

  “Hmm,” Sunny and Thorn said, the same noncommittal noise at the same time.

  Smolder gave them an amused look. “And while I was organizing, I discovered that we have a system for intercepting messages that go across the Kingdom of Sand. Well, Queen Oasis had a system. Again, I’m not sure Burn knows or cares about it. But we have dragons who pose as messengers and other dragons who are instructed to attack real messengers, and so a fair percentage of the letters sent in our realm come here instead. Presumably so that we can scan them for hints of rebellion or assassination schemes, which, clearly, we are keeping careful track of around here.” He waved his claws at the disaster-strewn library. “I guess that’s how it seemed like my mother always knew everything. I keep it going in case we need it one day, even though no one has time to review all this. In any case, I thought I saw one marked ‘Thorn.’ Which I carefully filed somewhere useful, I’m sure.”

  Smolder dug his talons into a pile of scrolls and Sunny realized with a start that there was a desk there, underneath the drifts of paper. “H
elp me look?” he suggested.

  Thorn and Sunny waded in and began peering at scrolls and mini scrolls and thick papyrus notes with scrawls of black ink on them. Sunny’s wings toppled over a stack of thin, scraped stone tablets that turned out to have messages carved on them as well.

  “Are you sure about this?” Thorn asked after they’d searched for a few minutes. “Maybe you remembered wrong. Or maybe it wasn’t anything important.”

  “Maybe,” Smolder said, lifting a bowl filled with dried leaves and peering at the papers underneath. “I’m pretty sure I remember it looked important, though.”

  Sunny wished she had time to read everything in here, or a way to bring it all back to Starflight. So many scrolls. So many scraps of dragons’ lives, moments and messages caught in between sent and never received. I wonder if the world would be different if some of these letters had gotten to where they were supposed to go.

  Claws scrabbled on the stone in the hall outside, and Smolder went to the doorway to poke his head out.

  “What is it?” he called as two guards rushed by.

  “A wing approaching from the northeast,” one of them called back. “Might be Burn.”

  Sunny’s head snapped up and she flapped her wings at her mother. We have to get out of here.

  “Oh, great moons, at last,” Smolder said. “Sorry about this, you two.”

  “Sorry about what?” Sunny asked, turning toward him just as he jumped out of the room and slammed the door on them.

  “NO!” Thorn roared.

  Sunny leaped over the scrolls and grabbed the door handle, but she could hear the key turning in the lock already. She threw herself against the wood, but it was solid and only bruised her shoulder.

  “Smolder, don’t do this!” she shouted through the door. “Don’t give us to Burn! Please!”

  “I can’t let you waltz out of here,” he said, his voice faint and muffled. “I saw what Burn did to my brothers. I know how to stay alive. Like I said, I’m sorry.”

  Sunny pounded on the door. “At least give us a fair chance to fight her! Smolder!”

  But she could hear his tail slithering away into the palace.

  He was gone.

  Leaving her and her mother locked in, trapped and waiting for Burn.

  Thorn picked up an onyx lizard and hurled it across the library. “Blood-red eggs and fireballs!” she shouted. “I’m going to flay that dragon alive!”

  “Won’t your Outclaws save us?” Sunny asked, wading through the papers to the desk. She ran her talons all over it, but there were no drawers and no place for a hidden extra key.

  “If they’re smart, they’ll fly for the hills the moment they hear that Burn is coming,” said Thorn. “They’ll expect me to run and meet them at the Scorpion Den. Act smart, stay alive, stick together but don’t be an idiot — those are our basic rules.” She picked up a scroll and ripped it furiously down the middle.

  “All right, so we do that,” Sunny said. “We figure a way out of here. I know we can.” She twisted to look around the library, searching for anything she could use to pick the lock. Not that she had any idea how to do that, but she’d read about someone doing it in a scroll once.

  There were no windows, so no way to call out for help. The light came from a small chandelier of hanging oil lamps high above them. The ceiling was tall but made of solid stone. The door was the only way out.

  “What about your SkyWing friend?” Thorn said. “Might she guess what’s happened and come looking for us?”

  Sunny shifted her wings and shook her head. “I doubt it. If she hears Burn is coming, I’m sure she’ll free Scarlet and run, too.” She stepped back and stared at the door. The wooden door. “But if she could burn down this door, we should be able to do the same thing, right?”

  “Wait!” Thorn cried as Sunny drew in a breath. She spread her claws at the mess around them. “It’s not safe. If you set the door on fire, it could spread to the papers in here. The whole room could be in flames in a heartbeat, and we’d burn to death before we made it out.”

  That was a horribly good point. Sunny guessed that that had occurred to Smolder as well. He was more cunning than he looked, perhaps as cunning as Blister. He’d also cleverly found a way to separate them from Peril.

  “Well,” Sunny said, “I suspect I’d rather burn to death than end up stuffed in Burn’s collection. But I think I can do it carefully — I’m pretty good at aiming small flames. Let me try, all right?”

  Thorn hesitated, then nodded. Sunny was pleased. She was pretty sure her friends wouldn’t have trusted her to do anything this risky.

  She swept papers away from the door with her tail until it was surrounded by a half circle of clear stone floor. Then she leaned forward, opened her mouth, and hissed, letting fire build up in the back of her throat. It felt fierce and hot, like she’d swallowed the sun, and she never liked using it for long. Aiming carefully, she breathed a small jet of flame in an arc around the lock.

  The thick wood turned black where the fire touched it, and smoke curled from the gash left behind. Nothing burst into flames … not yet anyway.

  Sunny did the same thing again, trying to trace the same line, over and over, four more times, until she saw a glimmer of light on the other side. She jammed her claws into the blackened wood and twisted them around, digging and slashing until the whole lock came loose and thumped into her talons.

  “I did it!” she whispered to her mother as the door swung a few inches open.

  Sunny turned and found her mother holding a folded square of thick papyrus paper, with the word Thorn scrawled across the front in black ink.

  “There is a letter for me,” said Thorn curiously. “He wasn’t lying about that part. How odd.” She flipped it over and opened it.

  “Mother, we really have to go,” Sunny said, but her voice trailed off as she saw the expression on her mother’s face. “Mother? Thorn?”

  “It’s from him,” Thorn said, glancing up at Sunny. “From your father. Listen: ‘Dearest Thorn. I can’t keep doing this. I can’t use my powers for the NightWings any longer, or I’ll lose myself completely. So I’m running away, and I’d like you to come, too. Meet me at Jade Mountain. I’ll wait for you as long as I have to. I love you. Stonemover.’ ” Her voice trailed off.

  “Jade Mountain!” Sunny cried. “There’s supposed to be a dragon who lives there — maybe it’s Stonemover! Oh, maybe he’s still waiting for you, after all these years! Isn’t that romantic?”

  “That frog-faced blob of camel spit!” Thorn shouted abruptly, making Sunny jump. She crumpled the paper in her front talons, threw it to the ground, and smashed it with one of her feet. “All these years? He’s alive, he’s not a prisoner, and he’s known exactly where I was this whole time, but he never once came to look for me or tried to contact me?”

  “Well,” Sunny faltered, “maybe he thought you got his letter but didn’t want to be with him.”

  “So send me another letter!” Thorn cried. “Try a little harder! Don’t be a jerboa-head!” She stomped past Sunny and into the hall, checking in both directions. “Come on, let’s run for it. I saw a courtyard this way.”

  They bolted down the long stone corridor and swerved to the right at the end. Sunny could see a patch of blue sky up ahead, beyond a wall of dark red columns. She started to unfold her wings as she ran.

  “The prisoners!” a voice shouted behind her. “Prisoners escaping!”

  Sunny’s heart plunged.

  “Uh-oh,” Thorn muttered. They skidded up to the courtyard and found several SandWing soldiers milling about there, preparing their weapons as if they were getting ready for battle.

  The soldiers all turned and stared at them.

  “Go!” Thorn shouted, flaring her wings. Startled, Sunny hurtled into the sky. One of the soldiers roared and leaped after her; she felt the wind of his talons slashing just short of her tail. She twisted away and looked back in time to see her mother blast the soldier in the face
with a burst of flames. He shrieked and plummeted to the ground.

  The other soldiers were slower to react, and faster to catch on fire when Thorn blasted the rest of them as well.

  She soared up out of the shrieking and mayhem and smoke and circled Sunny. “What are you waiting for?” she called. Thorn banked around and headed for the main courtyard. Sunny followed close behind her.

  “I hope they’ll be all right,” Sunny said, glancing back at the flames.

  “I hope we’ll be all right,” Thorn said. “Oh no! Moonlickers! Six-Claws, you idiot!” She swerved suddenly sideways and Sunny saw what she was aiming for: a cluster of battling SandWings on the stones below, with Six-Claws and Qibli in the center of it.

  She heard Six-Claws roar, “Where is Thorn?” And then Thorn snatched a loose brick from the nearest wall and lobbed it past his head, clocking the dragon behind him in the snout.

  “I’m right here, snails-for-brains!” she bellowed. “Let’s go!”

  Without a moment’s hesitation, Six-Claws and Qibli and twenty other dragons leaped aloft, kicking off their opponents and swinging their deadly tails wildly behind them.

  “Where are the others?” Thorn called to Six-Claws as they all veered south, flying as fast as they could.

  “Fled already,” Six-Claws said tersely. “Cowards.”

  “Following orders,” Thorn reminded him. “As you should have done.”

  “We weren’t leaving without you,” he growled.

  “Yeah,” Qibli piped up. “I didn’t trust that Smolder dragon. I knew there’d be trouble! Didn’t I say so? Can’t trust a royal, that’s what I always say.”

  “Because you’ve met so many royal dragons in your life, have you?” Six-Claws demanded.

  Thorn shook her head, but didn’t argue, saving their breath for flying.

  Sunny risked a glance back, but nobody was chasing them yet. She guessed the stronghold was disorganized chaos right now, with no one sure whether they were still in a surrendered stalemate, whether Peril was still lurking around to kill them all, whether it was really Burn on her way, or whether Smolder was still in charge.