“I’m not hungry,” Sunny said. “Um … when do you think Burn will be back?”
Smolder shifted his wings in a shrug. “I never know. She prefers not to discuss her plans.” He lifted his claws and studied them thoughtfully, shaking out sand that was caught between his scales. “The real question is what to do with you. On the one talon, I assume she’d rather find you alive when she gets back, so she can kill you — or interrogate you and then kill you — herself. On the other talon, if I lock you up and you somehow escape, which I’m sure you’ll try to do, I’ll be in far worse trouble than if I just kill you right now. But on the third talon, if I successfully keep you captive, she should be quite pleased. It’s a risk, though. You’re guaranteed not to escape if I kill you.”
“But on the fourth talon,” Sunny said hurriedly, “how will Burn find my friends if she can’t ask me questions? Or use me as a hostage? Think about how valuable I am alive.”
“Hmm,” Smolder said with a little smile. A tiny brown mouse crept out from under the table and made a dash for the nearest wall. Smolder flicked his tail toward it, but stopped at the last minute and let the mouse vanish into one of the cracks. He looked back at Sunny. “All right, you talked me into it. You can live for now, but I’d appreciate it if you’d keep your escape attempts as feeble and ineffective as possible.”
He started toward a doorway at the far end of the hall and Sunny followed, wondering if that was supposed to be funny. Smolder had this odd way of talking that kind of made everything he said sound like a joke. But then, Sunny’s life and death didn’t seem particularly hilarious, at least if you asked her.
There were five doors leading off the main hall, plus a staircase that led up to a balcony with two more doorways. Sunny considered trying to memorize the layout of the palace, but as soon as they stepped through into the dark, winding passage beyond, she knew it would be hopeless.
The corridors of the old palace crisscrossed and twisted almost as often and confusingly as the streets of the Scorpion Den, and they were sometimes barely wide enough for two dragons to squeeze past each other. Short flights of steps kept taking them up to new levels and then down again, and every other turn brought them to a spot that looked exactly like something they’d just passed. Sunny almost wondered if Smolder was messing with her head, except that he seemed to be calculating something under his breath and barely paid attention to her as they walked.
The stone floors were worn smooth with the passage of many dragons, and the walls and ceiling were flat and usually bare as well, so Sunny felt as if she was walking through long, narrow boxes. It was eerie and claustrophobic, with no space to fly, except for the occasional glimpses of sunlight from the upper levels. And three times they passed open, sunlit courtyards, where dragons were lying with their wings spread wide, soaking in the heat.
I haven’t seen any treasure, Sunny realized. No gold talonprints, no pearl-studded pools — not even anything like the beautiful flowers that decorate the RainWing village, unless you count the tapestries. I wonder if that’s because the SandWing treasure is really all gone. Or perhaps sparkly things aren’t Burn’s style.
She spotted a few carved statues of SandWings here and there, most of them with their wings tilted back as if they were about to take flight. After their experience in the Kingdom of the Sea, Sunny had to admit that all statues made her a bit nervous. Any of them could be animus-touched, enchanted to do something sinister.
“I think I should put you in the weirdling collection,” Smolder said after a while, as if they’d been discussing her placement the entire walk. “It’s as safe as the dungeon, but more comfortable. Also more psychologically destabilizing.”
“What?” Sunny said.
“The idea that you might actually belong somewhere like that,” Smolder said. “It’s driven a few dragons insane.”
“Oh,” Sunny said. “Sounds charming.”
Smolder rumble-chuckled and turned a corner, finally leading her out of the labyrinth into one of the inner courtyards. This one was surrounded on three sides by colonnades and balconies, with a pit of sand in the middle. Sunny slid her claws through the sand as she followed him, thinking, What if this is the last time I ever feel sand under my talons?
The far wall of the courtyard was curved, and when Sunny looked up, she realized that it was actually a windowless tower of red sandstone soaring up toward the sky. It had grooves stretching the whole length of it, like claw marks, and bands of carvings, all of hideous dragon faces. There were no holes in the tower apart from one door at the bottom, and Sunny was seized with a fierce, desperate longing to stay as far away from it as possible.