King Fangbreaker laughed. “I joke, of course. Let’s get this over with, Ragwrist. It’s too nice a day for tents and incense.”
The party left, and Wistala sagged. Her spine had been tightening, her body closing on itself like a telescope all through the audience, yet she could not account for her fear.
“Shall I read your fortune?” a tiny voice squeaked.
Wistala looked down to see Iatella crouching between brazier and piles of pillows, cradling Intanta’s old, saucer-shaped crystal in her lap as though it were a very fat doll. The girl was on the fire-keeping staff and had come along to work the camp kitchen and get road experience.
“Certainly. Practice away,” Wistala said.
The little girl stood before her gravely, then knelt, all seriousness as is the manner of hominid children when hard at play. She drew designs around the crystal, then found something wrong with its placement, and inclined it a little so it faced her better.
“I see tragedy in your life,” Iatella said.
This was no great secret to anyone with knowledge of Ragwrist’s circus, but it showed the girl had some skill, for you always wanted to start out on firm footing.
“Wonderful,” Wistala said. “I’m most impressed.”
“Elves, dwarves, men—you have seen a good part of the Hypatian Empire,” Iatella went on, pulling at her lip in thought.
“Amazing,” Wistala said.
“Birds, too,” she added. “Birds and death.”
How . . . Where was she going with this?
“I see you. Something in shadow, a dragon with a scarred face the color of an old soup-pot. And one of many colors, turned white as snow. You thought him dead when he turned white.”
How was this possible. Auron? How on earth could she know about Auron, or that morning on the mountainside she thought him frozen to death?
“Oh,” she said, and her voice was no longer that of a little girl, but something older and croakier than even Intanta. “A terrible reckoning. Three dragons, opposition, and the fate of worlds in the balance.”
And then she screamed, such a scream that it seemed to shoot right through Wistala’s body, the tent, the soil itself, and fainted.
A circus dwarf, one of Brok’s staff, and a pair of the Wheel of Fire dwarves rushed into the tent.
“What happened?” the circus dwarf asked, after a dwarvish expostulation from the others.
“We were playing a game. I coughed,” Wistala said. “I think it frightened her.”
They patted Iatella on the cheek, and her eyes fluttered open. She claimed no memory of what caused her to faint, and picked up her crystal and fled.
Ragwrist entered next, and the same questions were asked and answered. The dwarves wandered back out, leaving her and Ragwrist alone. “No matter. The bargain was easily struck. You have been ‘freed’ by the generosity of King Fangbreaker, Wistala,” he said, untying the azure band of silk.
“Dare I ask the price?”
“I kept it low, saying that his good opinion would one day be worth more to me than any gold, and he looked pleased, though I think sometimes dwarves wear those masks as much to hide their emotions when bargaining as to keep out the light. I or others may visit you at any time, though the dwarves, as always, hold the right to decide who will be admitted to their city, and you are free to fly as you will. But I wonder. He told me to strike off your collar, by the way. All that effort wasted.”
“Ragwrist, you are good to run this risk,” Wistala said, quietly.
“Ha!” he said, patting her shoulder, and her scales were happy to have a memory to replace the embrace of King Fangbreaker. “You still hold Mossbell’s lands, should true Hypatian law ever be reestablished across Whitewater. It’s the land I’ve got my eye on. So having let you know my true motive, will you take this last opportunity to turn back? This is no arguing council of dwarves. If Fangbreaker senses a threat, he will deal with you . . . harshly.”
Wistala ran her tongue along her teeth. “Then I will share the fate of my family.”
She crossed the Ba-drink in splendor, on the dwarves’ largest cargo-barge, pushed and pulled by smaller barges filled with lines of rowers.
The blue silk stood in place of her collar, the long sash tied loosely so as not to grate on her scales more than was unavoidable. Her little triangular diadem of the librarians dangled at the front of her fringe, sparkling in the mountain sun.
King Fangbreaker stood beside her as they approached the Thul’s Hardhold and Tall Rock. Tall Rock stood sheer-sided all around where it met the finger of water, but Thul’s Hardhold climbed more gradually like some sort of fantastic staircase. Only to the east, where it faced Tall Rock across the Titan bridge, was it as sheer as its companion.