Chapter 348: A Voice Above the Water

Neris asked for a piece of charcoal on the morning of May twenty-fourth.

Eliza brought her paper as well.

By the time Caldris and I entered the room, she had drawn the underside of a dragon’s jaw.

The collar around it was made in sections.

One of those sections had been crossed out.

“That is not where it opens,” she said.

Caldris looked at the drawing, then at the copied illustration from the maintenance book.

“The book shows a fitting here.”

“For the older pattern.”

Neris rubbed a charcoal-stained thumb against her palm.

“The newer ones have two housings. One carries the working. The other is there to punish anyone who tries to interfere with it.”

I looked at the crossed-out section.

“A trap.”

She nodded.

“Did you make them?”

Her eyes moved to Eliza.

“I copied the revisions. I recorded which parts went to which station.”

“And you knew what they were for?”

“By then.”

Nobody spoke for a moment.

Then Caldris pulled out the chair opposite her.

“Show me the revision.”

We did not take her word alone.

The recovered records contained a repeated notation beside the larger fittings. Neris identified it as a change to the maintenance access.

Under magnification, the Castellan found a small matching mark on one of the plates in her wooden case.

Caldris spent the rest of the morning comparing the two patterns.

“She is right about the change,” he told us at midday. “Whether the dragon at Orselle wears that pattern is another question.”

Aurethar studied the charcoal drawing.

“We need to see beneath its throat.”

“We need it to let us,” Thesra said.

“It may not be able to.”

She nodded.

That was the difficulty we kept reaching.

A person could want help and still be forced to strike the hand offering it.

Now that person was large enough to burn a street.

Sareth brought us the next opening.

The collared dragon had returned to the coast twice since the attack on the outer fields. Each time, it approached from the east, turned above the same headland, and withdrew after the harbor defenses answered.

It had not pressed the attack.

“That may mean it is testing us,” Baldr said through his written report.

Sareth thought otherwise.

She came back to Greykeep to tell us herself.

“It warned me again,” she said. “Before it breathed fire. There was time to move.”

Aurethar stood beside the map board in the eastern field.

“What did it say?”

“Down.”

She lowered her head.

“One word. I went beneath it. The fire passed over my back.”

“You think it is resisting.”

“I think it is trying.”

I looked toward Caldris.

He was watching Sareth with a troubled expression.

“Then we should make the next thing it tries less difficult.”

The place we chose was an abandoned stone quarry beyond Orselle’s northern fields.

Its seaward edge opened toward the cliffs. Inland, high walls of cut rock enclosed a broad floor where no one lived.

There was room for a dragon to land.

There was cover for people who could not survive a careless sweep of its tail.

There was also an escape route toward open water.

“It cannot feel cornered,” Aurethar said.

Thor, still recovering, remained at Greykeep. Lexander stayed with her and the home reserve. Baldr would continue commanding Orselle’s defenses.

I would go with Caldris, Thesra, and a small escort.

Aurethar and Sareth would approach the collared dragon. Dorevan would remain between the quarry and the city in case it broke toward the houses.

Nobody liked that part of the plan.

Dorevan accepted it without complaint.

Before leaving, I asked Caldris what he needed from me.

“Time,” he said. “And a way to survive if it cannot stop itself.”

I looked at the quarry drawing.

“I can try to provide both.”

Evelyn found me fastening my coat.

She had already read the plan.

“No freezing the collar,” she said.

“Caldris has made that clear.”

“I thought I would reinforce the point.”

Adriana entered behind her carrying a pair of gloves.

I looked at them.

“You know I don’t need those.”

“For Caldris. He keeps forgetting his when he leaves in a hurry.”

I accepted them.

She stepped close enough to smooth the edge of my collar.

“Do you think it knows we can help?”

“Not yet.”

“Then I hope it listens.”

Evelyn took my face between her hands and kissed me.

Adriana followed her.

When I left, both remained by the door until I turned the corner.

We reached the quarry before dawn on May twenty-fifth.

The sea below it was dark and restless.

Salt gathered on the exposed stone. We checked the footpaths, cleared loose rubble from the working area, and marked the positions where our escort could shelter.

Caldris laid out his tools beneath a canvas screen.

He put on the gloves without comment.

Thesra stood beside him, examining the larger boundary plates they had prepared together.

They had tested them against recovered workings.

They had not tested them on a living dragon.

I looked up at the pale strip of sky above the quarry rim.

Then I began strengthening the cover around the people who would need to stay close.

We waited most of the morning.

The first warning was a horn from the coastal watch.

The second was Sareth passing high above us, turning sharply toward the sea.

A dark copper shape followed her.

Even at that distance, I could see something wrong in the rhythm of its wings.

One beat was powerful.

The next faltered.

Aurethar rose to meet it, calling in a language whose low sounds vibrated through the quarry walls.

The copper dragon answered with a roar.

Fire spilled across the sky.

Sareth dropped beneath it.

Then all three disappeared beyond the cliff.

Caldris picked up the first plate.

My hands were already cold.

When the dragon appeared again, it was coming directly toward us.

Aurethar flew beside it, close enough that their wings nearly touched.

Sareth stayed above and behind.

The copper dragon struck the quarry floor harder than it intended.

Stone broke beneath one forefoot.

Its head swung toward our shelter.

“Stay back!”

The words were clear.

So was the terror in them.

Light flashed beneath its throat.

Its jaws opened.

I raised the wall.

Fire struck ice with a sound that swallowed everything else.

Steam burst upward. The first layer shattered. I drove another behind it and held until the heat passed.

When I could see again, the dragon had turned its head into the rock face.

Its claws scraped deep furrows in the quarry floor.

“I told you,” it said.

Aurethar landed beside it.

“We heard you.”

The copper dragon trembled.

“Then go.”

“We have people who may be able to open it.”

Its head lifted a little.

The collar brightened again.

It slammed one forefoot down, close enough to Aurethar that I stepped forward without thinking.

Aurethar did not move away.

“You do not have to hold still perfectly,” he said. “We will work around what you can do.”

Sareth settled on the other side, leaving the path to the sea open.

“You warned me,” she told it. “Let us try.”

The dragon’s breathing rasped over the stone.

At last, it shifted its jaw just enough to expose the underside.

“Hurry.”

There were two housings.

One was larger and easier to reach.

The smaller sat against a fold of scales near the left side of the throat.

Caldris saw both.

“Neris’s revision,” he said quietly.

I built a low shelter of ice behind a shelf of rock while he and Thesra moved into position.

No ice touched the collar.

Thesra placed the first boundary plate near the smaller housing. Caldris checked the marks before setting the second.

The dragon shuddered.

“Something is coming.”

Its eye rolled toward us.

“I can feel it.”

“A command?” Thesra asked.

“Yes.”

Aurethar pressed his shoulder against the dragon’s, bracing without pinning its throat.

Sareth dug her claws into the stone.

I looked at Caldris.

“How long?”

He did not answer.

His attention had narrowed to the marks beneath his hands.

The collar flared white.

The dragon lunged.

Aurethar was driven backward. Sareth caught its shoulder, and the three of them struck the quarry wall hard enough to throw me from my feet.

One of the boundary plates cracked.

Thesra dragged Caldris behind the rock shelf as a claw passed over them.

I came up with my hammer in one hand and frost streaming from the other.

Stone rose beneath a ridge of ice, giving the dragon something to strike that was not a person.

It tore through half of it.

Then stopped with its head hanging low.

“I am trying,” it said.

Its voice was very small for so large a creature.

“I know,” Aurethar answered.

Caldris reached for the broken plate.

Thesra caught his wrist.

“The tool.”

He looked at her.

“The interruption held for a moment,” she said. “The fitting is exposed.”

The smaller housing had shifted when the dragon struck the wall.

It was damaged, but the recess beneath it remained visible.

Caldris took the tool.

I knelt beside the rock shelf and rebuilt the cover around him as he moved.

The dragon’s eye found mine.

I had no idea what it saw in my face.

I only knew that I could see it waiting for its own body to betray it again.

“A little longer,” I said.

Caldris fitted the tool.

Turned it once.

Stopped.

The dragon gave a terrible, strangled cry.

He held the tool steady.

Thesra spoke a word I did not recognize and pressed her palm against the remaining plate.

The light narrowed to a single line.

Then went dark.

Nobody moved.

The dragon lay with its claws buried in the quarry floor.

Caldris waited, watching the marks.

I could hear the sea beyond the cliff.

At last, he withdrew the tool and tested the fastening.

One section opened.

Then another.

Aurethar helped lift the weight while Sareth supported the dragon’s head.

The collar struck the stone.

Its sound was shockingly ordinary.

Metal falling.

Nothing more.

The dragon did not rise.

It swallowed several times, then lifted one claw toward its throat and stopped before touching the damaged scales.

“Is it gone?”

Caldris examined the severed working.

“The collar is open. Its command path is broken.”

The dragon stared at him.

“Say it plainly.”

Caldris looked up.

“It cannot make you obey.”

For a long time, the dragon breathed without speaking.

Then it lowered its head against the stone and closed its eyes.

Aurethar remained beside it.

Sareth folded her wings.

I sat down where I stood.

Its name was Arvek.

He told us after drinking and allowing the healers to examine the burns beneath his jaw.

He had been captured while searching a ravaged valley for members of his flight.

He was not Vaelith’s brother.

He had seen other dragons in confinement, but he could not give us all their names.

“They kept us apart,” he said. “They wanted us hungry and frightened before the fittings came.”

Aurethar asked no further questions then.

Arvek looked toward the sea.

“I burned the fields.”

“We know,” Sareth said.

“There were people.”

She moved closer until her wing rested near his.

No one offered him a sentence that could make the memory easy.

When he asked whether he had to return to the city, I shook my head.

“You can rest here. We will bring what you need.”

He looked at the open route to the sea again.

“And if I leave?”

“Tell us if you can, so we do not mistake your departure for another attack.”

He studied me.

Then, slowly, he lowered his head again.

We secured the collar for separate transport.

Caldris would not let it near the gate until he had checked every active mark twice.

Thesra stayed with him.

Aurethar remained at the quarry with Arvek, while Sareth returned to help Dorevan cover Orselle.

The second enemy dragon was still somewhere east of the city.

Our success had not changed that.

But as we left the quarry, Arvek called to me.

I turned.

“The smaller housing,” he said. “How did you know?”

“Someone who worked on the records told us.”

His expression hardened.

I waited.

After a while, he looked away.

“Then she told you one true thing.”

“Yes.”

He said nothing more.

At Greykeep, Neris listened to the report with her hands clasped beneath the table.

Eliza sat opposite her.

“He is alive?” Neris asked.

“Alive and free of the collar.”

She bent her head.

I could not tell whether she was relieved, ashamed, or both.

“The other stations,” Eliza said after a moment. “We need to go through the revisions you remember.”

Neris wiped her face with the heel of her hand.

Then she reached for the charcoal.

The next morning, May twenty-sixth, a message arrived from the quarry.

Arvek had slept.

He had eaten.

He had asked for the names of the people treating his wounds.

Aurethar had written those three facts before anything about the war.

I read them aloud to Evelyn and Adriana over breakfast.

Evelyn closed her eyes briefly.

Adriana smiled at her plate.

“That is good news,” she said.

“Yes.”

For once, I let the words stand without immediately adding everything still wrong.

Julian intercepted me outside the schoolroom later that morning.

“You cannot go in.”

I stopped.

Behind the door, something fell over.

Carol announced, very loudly, “Not broken.”

Garrick Valewood said something I could not quite hear.

Then came the scraping of chairs.

I looked at Julian.

“Should I be concerned?”

“No.”

He considered that.

“Probably not.”

Helena appeared at the end of the corridor carrying a folded cloth. Mirelle walked beside her, smiling at something Lisbeth had just said.

All three stopped when they saw me.

I looked from them to Julian.

“Something small?”

“It is,” he said earnestly.

From inside the room, Seraphina demanded more blue paint.

I decided not to ask.

Julian began to close the door, then paused.

“The dragon is really free?”

“Yes.”

His smile changed.

Less secretive now.

“Good.”

He shut the door gently.

I stood outside for a moment, listening to Garrick explain that paint belonged on the wood before it belonged anywhere else.

Then I went to work, leaving them to their plans.