Chapter 352: Those Who Came Back

We reached Orselle in the rain on June fourth.

The gates opened before the leading wagon reached the walls. Someone had cleared the receiving yard, and covered litters waited beneath an awning beside the gate house.

Evelyn stood among the healers.

For one startled moment, I thought I had mistaken another woman for her.

Then she saw me and came forward.

“You came through.”

“With Ilyen and another team,” she said. “Aurelia is at Greykeep. Show me the three you are most worried about.”

I did.

There would be time for an embrace afterward.

For now, she needed to know which soldier had begun shivering despite the blankets and which rescued woman had stopped answering questions during the last mile.

I walked beside her until she had both in sight.

Then I stepped out of the way.

The dragons could not come through the streets with us.

Aurethar and Sovan had brought Kaerun and the red female to the coastal quarry in stages, resting between short flights.

Vaelith had never left her brother’s side.

Ilyra was waiting for them.

So were Arvek and Eryth.

Later, Aurethar told me that Eryth had tried to stand when Kaerun landed.

Ilyra had prevented it with a single look.

Kaerun went to her instead.

“You found her,” he said.

Eryth looked past him toward Vaelith.

“She found me.”

The red dragon asked for water before anything else.

Her name was Saevra.

She repeated it when Sovan wrote it down, then asked to see the page.

The records taken from the valley had identified her by a number.

Sovan crossed that number off his working list and wrote her name larger.

The captured handler gave us his name without being asked twice.

“Master Inscriber Halveth. Acting under the authority of the Court of Order.”

Eliza had come through from Greykeep to receive him. She stood on the other side of the table while a healer checked the binding around his injured wrist.

“You were found operating restraints on prisoners at Bell Quarry.”

“Authorized instruments.”

“We will record your account.”

Halveth looked toward me.

“You understand what you have interfered with?”

I pulled out the chair beside Eliza.

“Tell me.”

He seemed encouraged by that.

“Those dragons were assigned to military service by lawful decree. Their containment was necessary. You have released dangerous creatures into a populated district.”

“The danger at Orselle increased when one of your collars forced a dragon to breathe fire toward its fields.”

His mouth tightened.

“Military necessity—”

“We will get to the orders,” Eliza interrupted. “First, the names of everyone responsible for the prisoners’ care.”

“I have given you my rank.”

She dipped her pen.

“Yes. Now the names.”

He did not become helpful simply because we had captured him.

He gave us titles where we asked for people. He called the fitting frame a treatment apparatus. He insisted that some prisoners had been safer under restraint than they would have been outside it.

Eliza wrote down his words exactly.

When his account contradicted the workshop records, she marked the place and returned to it later.

Caldris joined us long enough to inspect the instrument Thor had taken from him.

Halveth watched him with unmistakable recognition.

“You know what happens when the discipline fails,” he said.

Caldris set the wrapped rod on the table.

“I have seen what happens while it holds.”

For the first time, Halveth looked away.

It was not repentance.

It did mean he stopped speaking as though everyone in the room was too ignorant to understand him.

Baldr found me after the questioning.

He had a map tucked beneath one arm and a list of repairs in his other hand.

“The outer fields are quiet,” he said. “The eastern watch has seen no sign of the remaining enemy dragon today.”

“That could mean several things.”

“Yes.”

He spread the map over a dry section of bench.

Three villages had completed their evacuation. Two others wanted to remain, with enough carts nearby to move their children and infirm if the watch gave warning.

Orselle’s council had opened another warehouse for grain. Its shipwrights were repairing wagons between work on the harbor boats.

There were still disagreements over who could requisition what.

There were also people beginning to recognize one another across the new arrangements.

“Rennick sent twelve men to escort the mill flour,” Baldr said. “They are taking timber back with them.”

I looked up.

“Without asking us to arrange it?”

“The quartermasters spoke.”

I smiled despite my tiredness.

“We should encourage that.”

“I told them to keep records.”

Of course he had.

Evelyn found me before we returned to Greykeep.

There was blood on her cuff and exhaustion beneath her eyes, but she was standing more easily than she had when the litters arrived.

“The three?” I asked.

“All alive. All still being watched.”

I let out a breath.

She stepped close and put her arms around me.

I held her carefully.

“Now,” she said against my chest.

“Now what?”

“Now I can be glad you came back.”

Adriana waited at Greykeep’s gate with Mary.

She looked at Evelyn first, then at me.

“Both of you are wet.”

“A remarkably accurate report,” I said.

She embraced us anyway.

Mary let the reunion last until the next cart needed the space.

Then she cleared her throat.

“There are rooms available elsewhere in the castle.”

We moved.

Adriana kept hold of my hand all the way upstairs.

Julian had been to Westmere while we were gone.

He told me about it after supper, sitting beside Garrick Valewood with soil still dark beneath one fingernail.

“Tobin put the beans too close together.”

“Did you tell him?” I asked.

“His mother did. He believed her.”

Garrick’s mouth twitched.

“A lesson in choosing one’s authorities.”

Julian showed us a drawing of the rows. The four younger children had each been allowed to place a few beans in the ground under close supervision.

Carol had wanted to dig hers up again to see whether they had begun growing.

“I told her it takes time,” Julian said.

“And did she accept that?”

“Not really.”

Evelyn laughed softly.

He turned the page.

“Steward Edric showed us the mill too. The new families are helping repair the wheel housing.”

Then he hesitated.

“Did you bring everyone back?”

The room quieted a little.

I rested my cup on the tray.

“We brought the prisoners we could reach. Both dragons are safe. Two of our soldiers died.”

Julian looked down at the drawing.

Garrick stayed beside him without trying to fill the silence.

After a while, Julian nodded.

“I’m glad her brother came back.”

“So am I.”

He leaned against Garrick’s shoulder and showed us the next page when he was ready.

The enclave’s answer arrived on June fifth.

It came with three dragons.

Vaelith accompanied them from the coast, leaving Kaerun sleeping under Ilyra’s watch. She looked tired enough that I asked her whether she had slept.

“Some.”

“That sounds familiar.”

She ignored the observation and introduced the visitors.

Their senior representative was a broad-winged dragon named Orynd, whose deep blue scales had gone nearly black along his spine.

He remained in dragon form while the others chose human shapes near the edge of the field.

Mary brought the large map board.

Orynd watched the attendants set it down.

“We have argued for several days,” he said.

Thor folded her arms.

“An encouraging introduction.”

“It is an honest one.”

He lowered his head.

“We have seen the collars. We have heard Arvek, Eryth, and Saevra. Kaerun has spoken to two of our elders. This war has reached us whether we approve of its existence or not.”

Aurethar stood very still beside me.

“What has the enclave decided?”

“To enter a defensive agreement with Greykeep and Concordia.”

Nobody cheered immediately.

Orynd had more to say, and we needed to hear it.

The enclave would share warnings and provide refuge for injured dragons. It would send healers and supplies where possible.

Six additional adult dragons had volunteered for patrol and combat duty. They would arrive in stages so the enclave did not leave its own families unguarded.

Those volunteers would take part in planning and accept the command of the operations they joined.

In return, Greykeep and Concordia would support rescue efforts, share what we learned about the restraints, and treat attacks on the enclave as an attack on an ally.

“We will not order the wounded back into battle,” Orynd said.

“Neither will we,” Lexander replied.

Thor approached the map.

“Then we begin with where your first patrol can relieve people who have been flying too long.”

Sareth, resting farther down the field, opened one eye.

“I approve of this agreement already.”

The final wording took the rest of the morning.

Caldris reviewed the obligations without making any of them an enchantment that could compel obedience.

Mary had copies prepared for the enclave and Concordia.

When Orynd finally placed his mark beside ours, Aurethar stepped away from the table.

I followed him a short distance.

“Are you all right?”

He looked toward the dragons waiting in the field.

“I have spent a long time being the one who came here.”

I understood a little better then.

He smiled faintly.

“It is pleasant to be the one welcoming them.”

The afternoon council had an entirely different atmosphere.

For weeks, we had moved the same tired names around the map, asking how far each could stretch.

Now Thor could assign an aerial patrol above the inland road without stripping the harbor of every dragon.

Lexander could plan a relief for Baldr’s forward companies.

Ordel’s engineers could request cover while they strengthened the upstream crossings.

The dragons would need signal practice with our troops. They would need to learn the roads, the landing grounds, and how easily a frightened horse could ruin an otherwise sensible plan.

None of that erased what six more volunteers meant.

“We can begin choosing where to press them,” Thor said, “instead of only where to catch them.”

She placed a marker on the supply road east of Slateford.

“But we rest the Bell Quarry teams first.”

I looked at her.

She looked back.

“Including you.”

Halveth’s papers reached us before the meeting ended.

Eliza brought them in a flat wooden case.

The inscriber’s official authority bore a seal Caldris recognized at once. Beneath it were the names of receiving officers, destinations, and the numbers of restraints assigned to each shipment.

Some had already passed through Neris’s hands.

Others were new.

There was also a separate set of instructions concerning prisoners who could not be transported.

Eliza did not read those aloud in the crowded room.

She placed them before Thor, Lexander, and me.

I read enough to understand why she had waited.

“Copies,” I said. “Secured. Witnessed against the originals.”

She nodded.

“The signatories will deny them.”

“Then we keep the originals.”

Lexander’s voice was very quiet.

“And we warn every rescue team what the guards may have been ordered to do.”

The new patrol markers remained on the map between us.

We would need them sooner than I wanted.

That evening, Adriana and Evelyn found me on the balcony outside our rooms.

They had heard about the agreement.

They had also heard enough about the papers to understand my silence.

Adriana sat beside me. Evelyn leaned against the rail until I took her hand and drew her down on my other side.

“The enclave agreed,” Adriana said.

“Yes.”

“That matters.”

I nodded.

Below us, the courtyard doors stood open. Helena, Mirelle, and Lisbeth were helping the children arrange wooden figures around a cloth spread on the floor.

Julian was reading something aloud while Garrick Valewood repaired a loose wheel on the little horse.

Carol interrupted him to announce that one figure was a dragon.

“It has two legs,” Julian said.

“Person now,” she replied.

There was a pause.

Then Lisbeth laughed.

Evelyn smiled beside me.

Adriana took my other hand.

For a little while, we listened.

The message from Vaelith arrived after we had gone inside.

It contained no request for soldiers or supplies.

Kaerun had slept through the afternoon. When he woke, he asked for food, complained about Ilyra’s treatment, and told his sister where he had hidden the carving he had borrowed.

At the bottom, Vaelith had added one line in her own hand.

He is beginning to sound like himself.

I passed the note to my wives.

Then I went downstairs to tell Julian.