They followed Gryll into his tower. The man wearing the dragon-broach approached them but Gryll waved him away.

  “Paperwork!” he said. “That is all.”

  The man wearing the broach narrowed his eyes in distrust but did not question Gryll any further. Evidently, Gryll had some influence in this realm.

  They entered through a stout door, and found a spiral staircase. They climbed and climbed, slivers of the city visible through niches in the walls. Once, more than a thousand years ago, these towers had been used for defence, manned by archers, when the city had been a good deal smaller. Five hundred years ago they had been converted into the new Dragonport.

  The stairwell ended and they found themselves in an open plan circular room. On the other side of the room lay another stairwell. Daylight poured down through it. The heavy breathing of the titanic dragons, just above them, made the hairs stand up on the back of Ylia’s neck.

  Cabinets lined the walls, packed full of scrolls. A huge desk shaped from Sumyrian wood dominated the centre of the room, laden with parchment—flight records, bookkeeping, and letters. Urgal went about the room, sniffing everything. Three windows, each shaped like an almond, allowed light into the room. A dragonling sat perched in each one, all of them eyeing the newcomers with the hope of the underfed. Urgal growled at them, but they seemed unfazed.

  Mounted on one wall was a map of Erethia, probably the most sophisticated and accurate she had ever seen. The sprawl of the immense world she belonged to took her breath away. What surprised her most, however, was how small Aurelia seemed. She had grown up being told Aurelia was the biggest landmass in the world, but Qi’shath easily equalled it, and Memory dwarfed both of them combined.

  Next to the map were two brackets holding up a golden whip. Ylia knew this was the symbol of office of the dragon-rider, ironically a talisman of freedom. She shook her head. In the minds of Yarulians, freedom always seemed to come at the cost of enslaving something else.

  Dragons had given the Yarulians their power. Other nations had learned the art of dragon-taming, but the Yarulians had mastered that art. Where Qi’shathians dominated the sea, and Aurelians had learned the secrets of the Engine, the Yarulians owned the skies. They had also come into possession of the greatest number of dragons. Thus, though a small nation, Yarruk punched above its weight, and even now, long after the decline of the Yarulian Empire, the voice of the Yarulian King still commanded attention on the world-stage.

  Gryll was gathering up his belongings: stacks of paper, bags of coins. He threw a huge, furred cloak about his shoulders that contained many inner pockets and deposited his smaller possessions in these. Others he placed into a huge leathern knapsack which he slung over one shoulder. He grumbled the whole while.

  “I suppose you want me to pick up that wretched cart with all your possessions in it?” Gryll said.

  Qala nodded.

  “And if you deliver us safely into Aurelia, you may have your pick of what’s within.”

  Gryll smiled.

  “Small consolation.”

  “You are lucky to be getting any consolation at all,” Jubal reminded him, darkly.

  Gryll swallowed.

  “So, where to?”

  Telos walked over to the map and pointed a place in the south-east of Aurelia. “Wylhome, Virgoda.”

  Virgoda was north of Tezada, where Ylia had grown up. It was a beautiful place, but she could not understand why he had chosen such a place over more connected and opportunity-rich cities. Perhaps he wants to go remote to stay hidden, she thought.

  “Why Wylhome?” Ylia asked.

  “I just always liked the sound of it,” Telos said.

  “That’s it?” She didn’t trust his words; he always had a grander scheme afoot.

  “Instinct preserves,” Telos said.

  “That sounds like thieves’ cant.”

  “It is.”

  “Thieves, jades, theronts, and traitors,” Gryll muttered, this last one directed at Ylia. “Quite the band you make.”

  Ylia found herself gritting her teeth of Qala’s behalf. “Jade” was a racist term used against Qi’shathians.

  But Qala looked unfazed. “Do you know what the Qi’shathian word for ‘racist’ is?”

  Gryll spat.

  “No. Nor do I care.”

  “It is kur’ryn’veth. Its literal translation is denier of divinity in man. You might wish to meditate on that.”

  “Meditation is for those with too much time on their hands,” Gryll said. “And those who cannot fly.”

  The sound of the gate cracking brought them all back to the urgency of the situation.

  “Now, Gryll,” Jubal snarled.

  “I’m committed, I’m committed,” he said, throwing up his hands and moving to the final stairwell. “Follow me. I’d normally advise you to wrap up warm, but we’re out of time!”

  Gryll took the stairs two at a time, his sprightliness belying his paunch. The others followed hastily. The final stairwell led them up onto the roof of the tower. Ylia stared. She had ridden a dragon once before, ten years ago, when she had fled to Yarruk to start afresh. But the sight was still awe-inspiring. The gleaming, scarlet behemoth was larger than her House had been. His scaled winked and shone like gemstones. His wingspan covered the whole of the city docks in shadow.

  Urgal made a whimpered noise and she stroked his head.

  “It’s alright,” she said. “They don’t eat cat.”

  Urgal growled. Ylia laughed.

  “I dread to think what they do eat.”

  “Cows,” Gryll supplied. “And lots of them.”

  Shouts echoed from below. The clank of armoured personnel on the stairs reverberated like crowsong on a clear summer’s day.

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  “Now, dragon-rider!” Jubal snarled.

  Gryll strode briskly toward the dragon. Ylia had to admire the balls it took to treat a sky-scraping monster as though it were no more than your average horse. A rope ladder descended its nearest flank. Gryll clambered up with surprising agility, seating himself in a proud, horned saddle seated near the place where the dragon’s upper back met its long, serpentine neck. Reins extended from a bit in the dragon’s jaws, which were so full of teeth Ylia wondered a second time how they had ever been tamed. Gryll also bore a monstrous whip.

  Telos was already following the rider, nimbly scaling the ladder and then sitting in one of the passenger seats behind. Each saddle bore a handle at the front made of bone that could be gripped with two hands. Leather harnesses about the dragon’s midriff held the seats in place. A huge, wooden container was lashed to the dragon’s underbelly, large enough to contain several wagons’s worth of goods. Ylia went to go up after Telos, then hesitated. Urgal was growling and whining. He couldn’t climb onto the dragon’s back, nor could they lift him; he would have to go into the cargo hold.

  “Urgal, into there,” she said. The cat showed teeth. Ylia gritted her teeth. She could hear the soldiers making their way up the tower. They were out of time.

  “Sorry, Urgal.” She pushed the cat with all her might, reminded of how she had dragged him from the burning House. With much yowling allowed himself to be man-handled into the wooden cargo-hold. She reached up and pulled down a hinged wooden lid. It broke her heart to slide the bolt across, sealing him in. She remembered the cage in which she had first found Urgal, but told herself this was different. This was temporary and for his protection.

  Jubal and Qala had already climbed into place. As she moved to the rope-ladder, men in armour, with swords drawn and crossbows levelled, stormed up onto the tower-top. At their head was The Warden. His eyes were bloody suns. His teeth were bared. He looked like the image of Death himself. A strange vitality emanated from him that seemed neither healthy nor natural. The redness in his eyes seemed not a lustre, but the final, excruciating brightness of a star before it imploded. His right arm hung dead by his side. She saw that it was mutilated, a chunk of flesh carved out of it and the skin blackened by fire. Poetic justice, she thought, shuddering. His left hand, however, hefted the black Qi’shathian mace with ease.

  “Once again I find you on the wrong side of the law,” he said, recognising Ylia at once. “So you see, my actions were justified after all.”

  Ylia spat.

  “If you hadn’t burned down my House, I would not even be here.” She remembered how he had struck Urgal, nearly killing her beloved pet. She remembered the satisfaction upon his face. In that moment, she was glad he had suffered. And more, she realised that she no longer held Telos responsible. Yes, the thief had led the Warden to her door, but could she really blame him for wanting to escape such a madman? She had fled a madman herself when she had abandoned her Wagemaster and forged a new path in life. She knew what it was to be hunted.

  “Ylia!” Telos called. “Time to go!”

  Ylia ran for the ladder, scrambling up it. An order was barked and the crossbowmen fired.

  The dragon reacted instinctively, protecting itself. Its huge wing swept up and the bolts were scattered like so many matchsticks. A few perforated the leathern membrane of the wing and the dragon growled thunderously low.

  The Warden leapt forward, swinging his mace. It missed Ylia by inches and slammed into the dragon’s flanks.

  The creature’s growl became a furious roar.

  “Woah, there! Woah!” Gryll cried, applying the whip to control the beast; it snapped like a thunder-crack.

  The dragon lashed its head back and forth. Flame materialised from its nostrils and blossomed, a gout of pure, channeled frustration. The dragon’s tail lashed towards the Warden and the city watchmen the way a cat might flick its tail at an annoying midge. Men stumbled backward out of its reach. The Warden, closer, leapt over the sweeping limb and landed nimbly.

  “Time to go!” Telos called again.

  Gryll bellowed. “HIYAH!” He cracked the whip again.

  Ylia scrambled over the top of the rope ladder and onto the dragon’s spine just in time. The dragon beat its wings. She felt the musculature beneath flexing, horrifically powerful. She teetered but Telos’s hand shot out and steadied her. She shot him a look of thanks and lunged for the empty saddle, gripping the handle and pulling herself into position.

  The force of the wing-beat knocked every guard to the floor, one skidding dangerously near the edge of the tower. His friend caught him, preventing him from tumbling to his death below.

  But the Warden held his ground. Ylia watched with horror as he gritted his teeth, throwing aside his mace. As the dragon began lurching towards the edge of the tower, beating its huge pinions, the Warden sprinted.

  The dragon pushed off.

  The Warden leapt.

  Time slowed to excoriating stillness. She saw everything as though captured by an artist’s paintbrush: first the ground far, far below, with startled onlookers, small as mice, staring up at them in horror and wonder. She saw the Warden’s outstretched hand. She saw the sky above them, dazzlingly blue, the clouds within touching distance. Beyond the blue veil of daytime, she knew the golden planet of Nilldoran still shone, somewhere in the Void beyond.

  Just let him fall, Ylia thought. I know that is an evil thought, but so many of our woes will end if he just falls.

  The Warden’s fingers closed upon the rope-ladder.

  Time accelerated once more. The Warden swung, caught in a sudden headwind as the dragon climbed into the sky.

  “My possessions!” Qala cried.

  “We’ll be peppered by bolts!” Gryll bellowed back.

  As if in answer, bolts sailed upward toward them, but the furious winds created by the dragon’s take off rendered them inaccurate.

  Qala shrieked. Now she has nothing, too, Ylia thought, with horror. We’re all being destroyed by this curse.

  Ylia looked down the dragon’s flank. The Warden clung on. Any minute, the wind will dislodge him, she thought. He only has one working hand.

  But she saw the look in his eyes, saw the hatred, like the orange-white glow of steel fresh from the forge-fires. That hatred could not be so easily undone. It did not relinquish its grip on the world. Her old Wagemaster had been the same. His hatred was what allowed him to remain in control, even as the pox took his body, when he should have died many years before.

  The Warden dragged his legs to the ladder, found purchase. Ylia watched the whole thing unfolding the way one watches a wound being cleansed by maggots, with a morbid fascination that swallows even the presentiment of one’s own death.

  Higher and higher into the sky, they climbed. Below them, the immense labyrinth of Gorgosa stretched. All that history, all that memory, all that opportunity, shrinking and shrinking like a waning moon. The yellow-bright sea of Golden Ghosts stretched eastward, roiling with turpitude. The baleful influence of the unseen planet was responsible, or so the meteorologists said.

  But they were flying in the other direction, westward across Yarruk, towards the Winedark Sea that parted Aurelia from Yarruk on the eastern side, and Memory on the western side. Gorgosa was already distant. Farmlands raced beneath them. Then Yestermere loomed like the approach of an army. To her horror, she saw that the immense forest was burning, great swathes of its beauty reduced to molten destruction. Ash blew on the wind and Gryll gave a command she did not understand, but moments later the dragon began to climb. Smoke coiled up from the ruinous forest fire. Her heart ached to see the decimation even as it grew light at their ascent. I’m going to fly on the back of a bee up to the sunlight, daddy. Qala was right; Ylia was born of the wind. This was her home. Why was it she could only see this now, when she had lost everything, when she was in mortal peril?

  But there was no time for overthinking. She saw the Warden was climbing. Slowly. Agonisingly. But with inexorable purpose. He used his teeth to grip the rungs and free his hand to reach for the next one. Each rung gained he risked death and triumphed.

  Ylia looked down at the saddle-grips. An idea struck. “Gryll, can you make the dragon spin?” Ylia cried. “We have an unwanted passenger!”

  “What about your felidae in the cargo?” Gryll bellowed back. “Besides, Pandora’s too unsettled already.”

  The dragon roared as if to confirm it wanted no part in any more theatrics. Ylia cursed. She did not want any harm to come to Urgal, but any moment now the Warden would be amongst them.

  Telos was climbing out of his seat.

  “What are you doing?”

  He looked at her, then at the others. There was something in his eyes, a glimmer of newfound certainty. He looked a match for the Warden, in that moment. Determination had changed the contours of his face, made him less dastardly handsome and more beautiful in the way of an old painting.

  “This is my mess,” he said, having to shout to be heard over the wind. “I’d better be the one to fix it!”

  “Wait!”

  Telos had one foot on the ladder, about to descend. Her word brought him up short. She locked eyes with him, making sure he not only heard every word, but felt her blessing.

  “Good luck.”