“That’s when we realized scavengers were involved, so we knew they must have come here to steal treasure. Burn was so furious. We finally found the horse tracks,” Smolder went on. “But they had at least two hours’ head start by then. We caught up shortly before they reached their forest home — and then Burn decided we should let them reach their forest home.” His eyes were dark, watching Flower. “Once they led us right to it … we burned it to the ground.”
“Yikes,” Sunny said. That’s a lot of scavengers to wipe out just because three of them did something stupid.
“Burn said we had to stamp out the vermin before they began to think they could do something like that again,” Smolder pointed out, as if he guessed what she was thinking.
“So after you burned the village …”
“We searched for the treasure in the ashes. No sign of it anywhere — not a single jewel or gold nugget. We tried hunting down the few scavengers who’d escaped the fire, but some of them must have slipped through our claws — and one of those must have the treasure, even now, twenty years later.”
Sunny started pacing from room to room. Something wasn’t right about this story. A lot of things weren’t quite right about this story. That much treasure — how could it disappear into thin air? How could scavengers make it disappear into thin air?
She stopped and looked down at Flower again. The brown eyes looked back at her curiously.
“Are you sure the scavengers killed Queen Oasis?” Sunny asked. “It wasn’t maybe just really bad luck that they were there at the same time as some other killer?”
Smolder nodded. “I thought of that. But it was a scavenger-sized spear in Mother’s eye. And — this part is a little weird — they cut off her tail barb and took it with them. We never found that either, but there was a trail of venom drops and dragon blood beside the horse tracks.”
Sunny wrinkled her snout. “Why would they do that?”
“Why do scavengers do any of the inexplicable things they do?” Smolder tossed another banana to Flower. Sunny wondered if the scavenger had any idea they were talking about her.
“Hmm,” she said, studying the rooms. Now that she was here, looking at the space and at a scavenger at the same time, the original story sounded more and more ludicrous. It was crazy enough that scavengers had managed to kill a dragon queen. But then they also stole all her treasure? Without getting caught and eaten?
Her wings twitched with a sudden idea. Maybe the question wasn’t How did they transport all that treasure. Maybe the real question was What else could have happened to it. “Wait,” she said. “When did you check these rooms? When did you see how much was missing?”
“Oh.” Smolder breathed a plume of smoke and squinted at her. “When we returned from burning the den. I remember flying back and thinking that the scavengers couldn’t have gotten much if we couldn’t find any trace of it. And then Burn led the way down here to do an inventory … and we found everything gone. I never figured out how Flower unlocked the doors either.”
Sunny lashed her tail so hard it smacked into one of the doors, sending a shiver of pain through her scales.
“That’s it, then,” she said excitedly. “Someone else took it while you were out hunting the scavengers. Who didn’t go with you to chase the scavengers and burn the den?”
“Lots of dragons,” Smolder said. He frowned thoughtfully at the open doors. “Blister and Blaze both stayed here.”
“Then of course it was one of them!” Sunny said. “The scavengers probably didn’t even get anything before Oasis caught them. They don’t have your treasure. One of your sisters does.”
Smolder was already shaking his head. “No,” he said. “No, that’s not possible. It must be scavengers, or this war would be over already.”
Sunny met Flower’s eyes, then looked back at him. “Over? How do you figure?”
“There’s — I’m not supposed to talk about it.”
“You can’t do that!” Sunny said, flaring her wings. “You can’t tell me half of something and then not tell me the rest!”
He wrinkled his snout, looking faintly amused again. “You are my prisoner, remember?” he said. “It’s a royal SandWing secret, I’m afraid.”
“Oh, aren’t you fancy,” Sunny said. “All right, I’ll figure it out.”
“Don’t do that,” Smolder said with a hint of alarm in his voice.
“A royal secret involving your treasure that would end the war if someone had their claws on it already. Oh!” Sunny said. “I bet it’s something animus-touched. Is that it? That must be it. Oooh, is it some kind of enchanted treasure that’s like, oh, if you’re holding this, you’re the SandWing queen? So a scavenger must have it, because if a dragon had it, she’d be queen and the war would be over. Interesting.”
Smolder stared at her with unfathomable black eyes for a long moment.
“That’s … not it?” Sunny finally asked, nervously.
“That was unsettling,” he said.
“It was just logic,” Sunny said. “My friend Starflight would have figured it out faster.” She stopped and curled her tail around her talons. If only Starflight were here. Or Clay, or any of them.