“What if she’s right?” said the NightWing with the missing teeth. “What if they don’t want her? What if we expose ourselves and then they just kill us?”
“Strongwings won’t let them do that,” Fierceteeth said, stepping closer to the burly dragon.
They’re a couple, Sunny realized. A really strange couple. Strongwings was nearly twice the size of Fierceteeth, but he kept turning toward her and ducking his head as though he was waiting for her to order him around.
“I know how we could find out,” said the other male. He drew something flat and shiny and oval-shaped from under his wing. In the moonlight, it shone like polished black glass and fit neatly between his front talons. And it stayed perfectly dry; the raindrops seemed to swerve to avoiding raining on it.
“The Obsidian Mirror,” said Strongwings with a hiss of admiration. “Nice work, Preyhunter. I wondered if someone would think to save it.” He leaned in and touched the smooth surface with one claw. “No surprise that it wasn’t Greatness. She was more worried about saving her own scales.”
“She never used it anyway,” snorted Preyhunter. “Even when we needed to know what the RainWings were up to. She said she didn’t trust anything that was enchanted by an animus. Coward. I don’t think the queen knew she wasn’t checking it.”
“It doesn’t work as well as it used to,” Strongwings said. “Everyone thinks Stonemover did something to it before he disappeared.”
“What is it?” Fierceteeth asked.
“A really old animus-touched piece of treasure,” Strongwings explained. “This was one of the most important things we had to save from the treasure room when the volcano erupted and buried that part of the fortress, back when I was a small dragonet. We use it for —” He stopped and glanced at Sunny. “Hmm.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll kill her before she can tell anyone anything important,” said Preyhunter.
Go ahead and try, Sunny thought fiercely. No one else has managed it yet.
He tilted the mirror so it caught the light of the two moons glowing through the clouds above them. The third moon was just a thin crescent, barely cresting the tops of the trees. The rain had slowed to a misty drizzle.
“Show me how it works,” Fierceteeth demanded. She snapped a branch off the nearest tree and set the end on fire, leaves crackling wetly in the flames.
“We just need a name,” said Strongwings. “Uh. Someone important.”
“That RainWing queen, obviously,” Fierceteeth snapped. He looked blank and she hissed at him. “Glory.”
“Glory,” whispered the dragon holding the Obsidian Mirror. He breathed a plume of smoke across the dark glass. The smoke coiled and twisted, winding like a thin snake around the outer rim of the mirror for a few heartbeats. All at once the smoke vanished as if it had been sucked into the mirror, and a moment later, one tendril curled up from the center of the glass, white tinted with purple, curving like a dragon’s neck.
“Mangrove!” the tendril barked abruptly in Glory’s voice. “Make sure none of them have any more of those spears. Jambu, you and Grandeur start counting them — the NightWings, just to be clear, not the spears.”
Fierceteeth grinned, her teeth gleaming whitely in the moonlight. “This is happening right now?” she whispered, and Strongwings nodded. “Brilliant.”
Yes, I can see how that would be a useful trick, Sunny thought bitterly. Especially for convincing other dragons that you have mystical mind-reading abilities.
A pinkish wisp of smoke curled up on the mirror next to the first one.
“You bet, no problem, Your Majesty,” it said. “Except, uh … so, counting. Um. Don’t get me wrong, I’m really good at it. Up to, like … twenty? That’s a pretty big number, right? There probably aren’t more NightWings here than that.”
“Jambu, there are at least two hundred NightWings here,” Glory snapped.
“Hum,” he said. “That’s like … two twenties? Maybe three?”
“I cannot even roll my eyes at you right now,” Glory said. “Find me a RainWing who can count.”
“I’ll do it.” A darker coil of smoke appeared, right next to the first. It took Sunny a moment to recognize the voice of Deathbringer, the assassin who had been ordered to kill Glory but instead helped her escape the NightWings.
“Funny,” Glory said. “Tell me another. I love jokes about trusting NightWings.”
“You exasperating creature,” Deathbringer said. “Haven’t I not killed you multiple times already?”
“I knew it,” snarled Preyhunter, curling his claws around the mirror. “I knew Vengeance was right about him. Deathbringer is a traitor.”
“We’ll take care of him when the rainforest is ours,” hissed Strongwings.
“Fine,” Glory’s voice said. “Go count NightWings. I’ll have Starflight check your numbers when he wakes up.”
“A ringing vote of confidence,” Deathbringer answered, sounding amused. The dark wisp of smoke coiled back into the mirror, as did the pinkish one. Glory’s tendril of smoke twisted for a moment, alone on the glass.