Soandel was confused at our laughter at first, but once we explained, he saw the humor in the situation.

  Two hundred dragons. That was what he’d arrived at as a reasonable amount to pay us for our pain and trouble; large enough to make a difference, but not so much as to make anyone truly take note. The way he’d chosen it was simple: he’d found out what Mak had paid for Her Lady’s Favor, and figured that paying us the same as a “reward” would appear generous, but not suspiciously so. Of course, since there was no paper trail, he had no idea that we’d squeezed the same sum out of the Tesprils, with pretty much the same reasoning.

  Soandel, of course, actually had the money on hand. It made a dent in his coffers, I was sure, but the fact that he had two hundred dragons lying around that he could just hand over said a lot about his finances.

  Herald didn’t stop grinning the whole time we waited for the palanquin to arrive. I was practically drooling over the bag of gold, even if it was surprisingly small, and Mak basked in our combined happiness and satisfaction. It was a good afternoon. And while the girls traveled in the highest style possible on the ground, the gold travelled by dragon.

  “When are we bringing it to the hoard?” Herald asked once we were back in the inn’s cellar. The gold in her eyes burned with excitement.

  “Settle down,” I said. “Not quite yet. I don’t think I can handle another growth spurt again so soon. And I’m taking half, not one coin more!”

  “What?” Herald actually looked crestfallen at the news that I was leaving them enough gold to live on for the rest of their lives. “But—!”

  “Not up for negotiation! Don’t get me wrong; I’m a dragon, and I love gold. In my heart of hearts, every bit of it in the world belongs to me, and it’s just a matter of time before it comes home. But I’m human, too, and I don’t like that you all keep giving me most of what’s in your coffers. This is an inn, and we all know that business has suffered disruption after disruption. I need to know that you have the money on hand to cover any expenses imaginable. Hell, I’d prefer for you to be able to hire the Wolves for a week, if that’s what you need. You’re keeping half, and that’s final.”

  “But your next Advancement is a Major!” Herald whined. “A third Major! That is… that is mythological hero stuff!”

  “She’s not getting there this afternoon,” Mak said softly, taking Herald by the arms and sitting her down on a bench. “She’ll need… what did we estimate? How many pounds of gold?”

  “Four to six,” Herald muttered.

  “Right. She’ll need four to six pounds of gold to reach her next threshold. We may not gather that much for months, unless the Council suddenly decides to pay her in advance for keeping them safe from Lady Embers. If she wants to be generous, if that makes her happy and lets her feel that we’re safer, let her!”

  “Yeah, but…” Herald heaved a great sigh, then looked away in embarrassment. “I like you getting bigger, all right? I am sure it sounds dumb, but I want you as big as Embers is. I want you to be untouchable. Invulnerable!”

  “You don’t want me getting hurt?” I asked.

  She nodded. “You got stabbed again, and I think my heart stopped. Seeing you in pain is horrible. The idea of losing you… Mercies, I feel like I should be crying, but if I even try to imagine a world without you I hit a wall.”

  “That’s…” I started, then paused to put my thoughts in order. “See, I can imagine losing you all, and it feels like the world ending. To even think of you feeling unsafe or uncomfortable, or of you having to go without anything and it being my fault, it makes me feel a little sick to be honest. But I can’t be with you all the time, and I can’t always take you with me when I have to go somewhere. So could you take this gold and not argue about it? At least to have it in case you need it for something important? Please?”

  Herald snorted. “If you are going to be all sweet about it…”

  “Besides,” I said. “Terna literally couldn’t get past me this morning. That’s how big I am. If you want me any bigger, we’re going to need to look into actually making those plans of getting somewhere with more room a reality.”

  “Or expanding the cellar, somehow,” Mak mused.

  “Or that,” I chuckled. Then I really thought about it. “Would that be possible?”

  “As long as we know where the sewers and storm drains are, I don’t see why not. Might get a little disruptive to the inn, though. We do need the cellar.”

  “Worth considering, at least?” Herald suggested. “We could talk to Tam and Val about it.”

  “Yeah,” Mak said. “Worth thinking about.”

  That evening, Avjilan used his magic to find where Mother would most likely be in three days. It had the same result as before. The following morning he did it again, with no change. Then he checked where she’d be in four days, and got the same direction. In five days, the same direction again.

  “I’m going,” I told the others. I couldn’t hold back anymore. “I have to see what’s going on.”

  “Do you want me with you?” Avjilan asked. He looked excited by the idea, but I had to turn him down.

  “No. Not now, at least. I’m not really ready to admit that I have a way of tracking her, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she could smell her own scale on you or something. If I go alone, I can at least pretend that I’m just flying around looking for her.”

  “As you say, my lady,” he said with evident disappointment.

  “Hey, I might be back for you! Now, you all know how these things go. I might be able to get back before tomorrow morning, but you’d better give me two or three days. Might get distracted, you know? I’ll keep thinking happy thoughts, all right, Mak?”

  “I’d appreciate it,” she said. “And what do you want us to do?”

  “Relax and have a good time? Maybe… That sergeant you liked, Terdam? Do we still like him? He had nothing to do with all the arrest bullshit, yeah?”

  Mak’s skin darkened in a blush. “That’s right. He and his guards were replaced just before. And… yes. We still like him.”

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  “Spend some time with him then, maybe? If he didn’t get scared off yet, I mean. Or maybe see what the Wolves have been up to — I haven’t seen them for a few days. You’re all adults; you’ll figure it out.”

  I said some quick goodbyes to Kira and the boys, Herald asked me to give her love to Maglan if I saw him for whatever reason, and then I was off. And there was something amazing about that to me. I’d never been slow to get out of the house when I was going somewhere, but being a dragon meant that when I wanted to go, I could just go. There was no packing, no keys or phone or anything to keep track of. I didn’t need to catch a bus or keep my tank full — unless Rifts and eating properly counted. I could just step outside and go. I tried not to take it for granted ever since I’d injured my wing and couldn’t fly for a week, but it had become normal to me to the point where I’d chosen to go alone this time rather than wait for anyone to get ready. I was always ready. The sky called, and I could answer at any moment.

  There were times when I missed being human, but they were getting fewer and further apart with every day that passed.

  I managed to make it all the way to the front without getting sidetracked. I was quite proud of myself for that, though I had kept high enough that I couldn’t really see what was going on groundside. I knew myself — intervening was so easy that if I’d seen something, some bandit attack or raid or similar, I couldn’t have held myself back. And I was worried enough about what could keep Mother rooted to the spot for days on end that I’d put up with Conscience being all pissy if it meant getting to her sooner.

  By the time I actually got down there, though, I really couldn’t help myself. There was a skirmish — or some kind of small battle, at least, with a few hundred soldiers on each side — going on at a ford over one of the many rivers that cut through the landscape. The sides were clear — Karakan on the northern side and Happar on the south, thoughtfully color coded by their banners. And just from the size of the formations, it looked like Karakan was losing this battle, and with it, the ford.

  Instinct was excited about a chance for bloodshed. I was curious if I could single-handedly turn a battle. And Conscience would have never let me hear the end of it if I didn’t at least try. Simply moving on was never an option.

  On the northern bank of the river was one line of soldiers; on the south, another. They were separated by fifty feet of shallow, churning water. Behind them stood looser formations of what must be archers, and on the flanks of the Happarans, cavalry milled around. The Karakani had a smaller line, fewer archers, and no cavalry. It didn’t take a tactician to see that it was only a matter of time before they’d have to retreat.

  I chose to hit the Happaran archers first for one simple reason: that seemed to be the easiest way to go. The cavalry were much more scattered and mobile, moving to avoid getting shot while trying to shoot back with their own short bows, which would make hitting them annoying. The infantry were in front of the archers and were being shot at by the Karakani, and I didn’t feel like getting peppered with arrows. Even if my scales could probably take anything they could throw at me, on the assumption that anyone with a magical archery advancement like Avjilan’s wouldn’t be a random schmoe in an archery regiment, getting shot through the wing membranes bloody well hurt!

  So, yeah. I went for the archers first. I put myself about a mile east of them. Then I turned to line them up and dove.

  The way I saw it, if they saw me coming and turned to shoot at me, fine; I’d weather it. They had a pretty dismal chance of hitting me anyway, and any arrow wasted on me would be one not shot at the Karakani soldiers. And some of them did see me — in the handful of seconds that I was in range of their bows before I hit them, a few arrows came my way. None of them came close to hitting me, but they tried. Good for them. It didn’t save them, but good for them.

  I hit the loose formation right around the middle, hard enough that I sent men and women tumbling. I didn’t stick around; as the screaming started I sprayed my venom in a great arc around me, lashed out with claws, tail and wings at anyone nearby, then grabbed the two nearest bodies and took off again. When I circled back, the Happaran backline was in complete disarray. Some were bunching up while others spread out even more. Others still were running, and a blessed few seemed to have stayed ignorant of what had just happened.

  I had most of their attention at least. There were heaps more arrows coming my way on my second run, and I took both a few bounces and a few of those awful papercuts where arrows passed through my wings. My passengers ate one or two, too, but if they were still alive at that point, a few arrows really didn’t do much to change their life expectancy.

  I dumped those two unfortunates into their comrades at the flank of their formation, then laid into the densest bunch I could find. This time I stuck around, but they didn’t. Some of the archers had run after my first attack — more when they saw me coming again. When I didn’t take off after a few seconds and instead went on a rampage of clawing, biting, and anything else I could think to do, few of them stood and fought. Those that did really shouldn’t have.

  Some of the cavalry tried to charge in with their lances, but between my roars and the screams of the terrified and the dying, their horses wanted nothing to do with me. The one man who managed to get his horse moving my way in a proper charge got a demonstration of what real strength looked like when I grabbed one screaming woman by the leg and flung her at him. Spinning through the air, she clipped his horse’s head then knocked him out of the saddle before the poor animal crashed to the ground.

  Doing that brought me out of my rampage for long enough to look around. The archers were routed. My path through their formation was littered with the injured and the dead. I’d done that. There were more running than down, but I’d still broken— what? A company of soldiers? They hadn’t stood a chance, and I hadn’t even used any rocks or trees. There had been nothing human or clever about how I’d fought; I’d pounced on them like rats, and all I felt was fierce pride and bloodthirsty joy. And the battle wasn’t over yet.

  The Karakani infantry had advanced, taking advantage of my presence. The Happarans stood their ground; I couldn’t even tell if that was because they didn’t know what had happened, or because they couldn’t retreat. It didn’t matter. With one huge, wing-assisted leap I hit the middle of their line, and a ragged cheer went up from the Karakani in the water. Cries of “The dragon! Our dragon!” and “The Black Lady!” or even “Draka! Lady Draka!” cut the air as I tore a hole through the Happaran line.

  “Soldiers of Karakan!” I roared back as the Happaran formation fell apart into a mass of desperate soldiers. “Break the bastards!”

  I didn’t care about killing now; once I was among the infantry, the risk of actually getting hurt rose astronomically. I could see magic in more than one of these soldiers, so I avoided them like the plague. Instead I focused on keeping them from getting into anything resembling order, smashing into groups that seemed to lack magic users, bowling people over with powerful gusts of wind from my wings, and roaring and spitting to keep them from daring to approach me. They couldn’t attack me; they couldn’t turn back to face the Karkani infantry. All they could do was run and hope I didn’t come after them and that the Karakani archers wouldn’t shoot them in the back. So that was what they did — by ones and twos and then, when the Karakani infantry hit, by the dozen and finally wholesale.

  They needn’t have worried about me or the archers. I was satisfied with my contribution, and the archers were busy driving off the cavalry. Quite successfully, too — the Happaran horsemen could see a lost battle as easily as anyone and took off before the infantry did.

  When the Happarans fled, they left dozens of dead behind, and more wounded. The Karakani archers had been responsible for plenty of those, but I felt that I’d proven my worth. As Karakani soldiers surrounded me at a respectful distance, cheering my name, in some cases swearing their undying gratitude, I couldn’t help but feel like some great wrong had been set right; that this was how things should be, my enemies laid low and my subjects praising my greatness. It made me wish that I had time to stay and really bask in their adulation, but sadly, I didn’t.

  “I’m always happy to help the brave boys and girls of Karakan,” I told the gathered soldiers. “Are you all going to be all right if they come back?”

  “We will, Lady Draka!” said a graying man with the fancy uniform that marked him as some richer flavor of officer. “Our reinforcements will arrive before they can form up again.”

  “Great! I’ll be on my way then. Don’t forget who helped you out, yeah?”

  “Never, my lady!” The officer turned to his troops and raised his voice. “Right, soldiers? We won’t forget the lady dragon coming to our aid, will we?”

  “No, sir!” and “No, Captain!” the crowd roared, and I sat tall and proud until they ran out of steam. Then I spread my wings, which brought on another wave of cheers, told the captain, “All my best to the general,” and took off.

  The Happarans were scattered in small clumps over the nearby hills and running south. I didn’t bother actually trying to kill anyone. I contented myself with swooping on them, roaring and sending them stumbling with the wind from my wings. As long as they stayed scared and running, I didn’t much give a damn if they lived or died; I was on a mission.

  Well… Back on a mission. I wasn’t going to get sidetracked again.

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