Two dragons fought, wings out but not keeping them aloft, as they were clawing at each other. They spun and fell, grappling, heedless of the fall. Just before they hit the water they seemed to realize their danger and broke the embrace of combat. Once separated, she could make out Fespanarax, and another dragon almost as large whom she couldn’t be sure of in the darkness but might be Mnasmanus.
Fespanarax turned his fall into a dive. He closed his wings and splashed into the water like a shot arrow. Mnasmanus, who it seemed had the worst of the encounter, tried to bank above the lake but suddenly tipped and went in, throwing up a great wave in the moonlight.
“The one under the water!” Ileth shouted. “It’s Fe—”
“I know,” Aurue said, so excited that he spoke Drakine.
Aurue was fast, even faster on the descent. Ileth clung on with both arms and legs as best as she could, the Borderlander’s big coat flapping in the wind. It was Mnasmanus, she recognized his wings, swimming with Dun Huss clinging to his saddle.
Ileth spotted another swimmer in the water, clinging to a barrel.
“Who is that?” Ileth shouted. “Get me closer!”
It was Yael Duskirk, as she’d suspected, sputtering in the water.
Fespanarax shot out of the water like a leaping dolphin. Hanging in the air at the top of the jump, he opened his wings and began to gain altitude. His saddle hung on his back, askew and empty.
Aurue veered away in shock and turned over. If Ileth hadn’t been clinging so tight thanks to not being on a saddle at all, she’d have fallen off and been hanging from her tether. As it was, it took her a moment before she regained her orientation and Aurue was climbing again.
The shriek of a dragoneer’s whistle cut the night. Ileth looked back; Hael Dun Huss was clinging to his saddle as he pointed. He shouted something—perhaps it was “eggs.”
“Get that barrel,” Ileth yelled.
Aurue went for the barrel, grabbed it with his rear limbs, and flapped hard—it began to come out of the water, the wet swimmer holding on for dear life.
Fespanarax turned. Ileth saw him coming, jaws agape and claws out.
They didn’t stand a chance. But Aurue refused to release the barrel.
A white female flashed down like a thunderbolt. She seemed intent on flying right through Fespanarax. At the last instant he sensed her and closed his wings to protect them. She raked him across the back and Ileth saw droplets of blood and entire sheets of scale fly as Fespanarax spun from the impact.
But he was a tough, canny old dragon. Fespanarax opened his wings again and beat hard, gaining the advantage of altitude and turning east for the Galantine lands.
The white dragon turned and also climbed, kept turning, guarding Aurue with the barrel by circling. Aurue pulled it into the air, and water poured out—it must not have been closed and sealed, for it had flooded quickly. Good thing they’d gone for it when they did.
Yael still clung to the barrel, somehow. Flapping hard, Aurue made for the western shore of the Skylake.
They made it to the lakeshore under the loom of Heartbreak Cliff. The lights of Vyenn and the Serpentine glimmered in the distance. Aurue set the barrel (and Yael Duskirk) very carefully down as the white dragon, whom Ileth presumed to be the Borderlander’s Catherix, circled above.
Ileth dismounted, ignored the sputtering and shivering Yael, and opened the barrel—one end was closed by waxed canvas tied around it, so no wonder it had flooded. Canvas could keep out rain, but not a dunking in a lake.
Behind her, the hurt Mnasmanus emerged from the lake, dripping water and dragging a torn wing. Dun Huss was still in his saddle, soaked to the skin.
The eggs were intact, as far as she could tell, packed in with salted fish. She supposed there were worse cushioning materials.
“I’ll get help,” Aurue said to the other dragons, in Drakine. “I am the fastest.”
“Tell them it’s Fespanarax, flying hard for the Galantine lands. He’s hurt, they might catch him,” Mnasmanus told him. Aurue flew off.
“Duskirk, sit right down there. Don’t compound your mistake,” Dun Huss warned. He ignored Ileth and bent to check the condition of the eggs and rearrange them in their drenched container.
Fespanarax was a vanishing dot, just visible in the moonlight. He wasn’t coming back. Catherix splashed gently at the edge of the lakeshore and walked up to the humans.
“I will not leave the eggs,” Catherix said. She spoke Montangyan with a thick accent, even for a dragon. “Not until they are hatched or returned to their mother, if Vithleen lives.”
“I don’t know what would h-have happened if you hadn’t been alert,” Ileth said to the dragon.
Catherix just blinked at her. She was like her rider, a little hard to read.
Dun Huss finished resecuring the eggs.
“How did you know the eggs were stolen?” Ileth asked.
Dun Huss finally seemed to notice her. “I didn’t. I guessed when I heard the ‘dragons up’ signal. Unhatched dragon eggs are worth their weight in jewels. Saw Fespanarax with a barrel under his saddle; handy that he just happened to have those fittings. I decided it had to be the eggs in there and went at him.”
“Can we catch him?” Ileth asked.
“He’s fast, big, and smart. Now that he’s been found out he’ll be extra careful. In daylight we might have a chance. Not now.”
Dun Huss questioned Yael Duskirk. He confessed, and things were much as Ileth suspected. He’d poisoned Vithleen using a tasteless substance he put in her food, but Fespanarax said it was just a sleeping draft. Duskirk believed him; Fespanarax was a relative of Vithleen, after all. Fespanarax had promised him a Barony and all the wealth he could spend in the Galantine lands if they managed to bring the eggs over. “He worked on me—gave me expectations. He said Galia had mentioned me, said I wasn’t wealthy enough to tempt her. It sounded believable when he said it.”
Ileth regretted all the small talk she’d engaged in with Fespanarax. She thought she’d been cheering him up with news of the Serpentine. He’d been gathering intelligence.
Yael continued his story: when they splashed into the lake, the dragon shrugged him off. Duskirk had kept his wits and clung to the barrel, cutting it loose while Fespanarax turned. It had enough buoyancy to float for a moment, and Fespanarax didn’t know it was missing.
Duskirk, having made his confession, seemed lightened by it. “What’s going to happen to me?”
“Do you have the knife you cut this line with?” Dun Huss asked.
“I lost it in the lake,” he said, pointing out to the deep water.
Dun Huss examined what was left of the line that had fixed the barrel to Fespanarax’s back. “I’d say the line parted on its own.” Dun Huss took out his own knife, cut the rope, and cast the frayed end into the lake. “There. Now it looks cut. You clung on to the eggs, anyway. That’s something in your favor. Hopefully it will go to your credit in front of a jury. The question now is, will Vithleen live?”
For days Yael Duskirk’s life stood in jeopardy. Vithleen was in a deep, senseless sleep and could not be roused. The jury, including the Master of Apprentices, a professional assignee from Vyenn with knowledge of the law, and—incredibly to Ileth, who didn’t know dragons could serve on juries—the dragon Jizara, pronounced him guilty (no great matter of decision, he had confessed). They suspended sentencing for thirty days to see if Vithleen would recover. If she died, he would die a poisoner’s death.
Apparently, it wasn’t an easy death. Every time someone tried to give her the details, Ileth clapped her hands over her ears and begged to be spared the particulars.