“Ouch!” Sunny yelped as someone rushed past and stepped on her tail. She tried to sidestep a pair of quarreling dragons and got smacked in the face by a sandy wing.
These streets are so narrow … and there are so many of them…. They must accidentally scratch each other with their tails all the time. She looked more closely at the stalls around her and realized that many of them sold the cactus that was the antidote to SandWing venom. As far as she could see, it was nearly as popular as the giant camel-hide pouches of water being sold by every other merchant, or the tiny blue dragons and shiny black spheres that also seemed to share all the tables with other merchandise.
A wooden signboard caught her eye: three dragons’ faces carved under the words wanted. Sunny twisted to try and stare at the faces as her guard hurried her past. She could have sworn one of them was Dune … and one of the others was … but surely it couldn’t be …
Her guard steered her through the tangles of dragons, keeping one wing firmly settled against her back. Other dragons jumped out of his way when they spotted him, or ducked their heads as he went by, or slipped into shadowy corners, hissing. Soon Sunny realized that the same wooden wanted sign was posted everywhere, hung from walls, pinned to tent flaps, and nailed to the stallboards. She got a chance to peer at one more closely when they paused to let a cart of gold-painted boxes clatter by.
It really does look like Morrowseer. Morrowseer, Dune, and a NightWing I’ve never seen before. But why? And who’s looking for them?
There was small print below the pictures, but Sunny didn’t get to read it before her guard hurried her on.
Nearly all the dragons she saw were SandWings, although she also spotted a couple of scarlet SkyWings and even, once, the pale blue scales of an IceWing, who must have been miserable in this heat. She also noticed a lot of war wounds: dragons with missing talons, mangled wings, clawed-up snouts, or ripped ears, many of them huddling in the spaces between the stalls, skinny and wretched.
Although she was sure the Scorpion Den was a dangerous place to live, she guessed that a lot of dragons came here to hide from the war — either before they could be pressed into service, or after they’d been so badly injured that they couldn’t bear to fight anymore.
One SandWing limped up to them and did an odd half salute to Sunny’s guard. “Going off-duty, sir.” He paused and squinted at Sunny, and she realized that he had a long scratch across one of his eyes that had also torn up part of his nose. There was something vaguely familiar about him, but she was sure she would have remembered that scratch.
“Addax, quit reporting to me all the time,” the guard said. “That’s not how the Outclaws work. Also, I told you to stop calling me ‘sir.’ ”
“Yes. Right. Right.” The dragon coughed, clearly swallowing another “sir.” “Uh, who’s your guest?”
Sunny sidled closer to her escort, wishing Addax would stop staring at her. Her guard seemed to sense this; he casually spread his big wings to shield her from view.
“Just a visitor for Thorn,” he said. “Carry on.”
Addax bobbed his head and shuffled off into the crowd.
“Some of these former soldiers have a hard time breaking their military habits,” the big SandWing said to her. “But Addax is harmless, don’t worry.”
Sunny twisted to look back and saw that the limping SandWing had stopped in the shade of a stall that seemed to be selling poisons. His black eyes stared through her, and even when she ducked behind her guard’s wings again and after they’d crossed several more alleys, she still felt a prickling, creeping feeling along her spine, as if his gaze were following her.
They wound their way toward the center of the city, stooping under torn canopies and tripping over uneven cobblestones. Sunny could smell something new up ahead, like exploded fruit, and she caught a glimpse of dark green through the gaps ahead of her, incongruous against the sand-colored buildings, faded orange tents, and red or black brick walls.
A dragonet suddenly stumbled in front of Sunny, holding out its front claws.
“Hungry!” he bleated.
His pale yellow scales were slathered with dirt, and he was tiny, with bony ribs sticking out along his chest. His black eyes caught Sunny, and she stared down at him helplessly.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t have anything.”
The dragon beside her leaned forward and caught the dragonet before he could run off again, casually pinning the little one’s tail to the ground with one talon.
“Don’t hurt him!” Sunny cried, but the guard didn’t even look at her.
“Where’s your guardian, squirt?” he asked the dragonet.