After dark, the exiles would spar with each other. Few were in fighting shape; fewer had ever been skilled enough to bring down anything more devious than an aurochs. Comonot did not seem worried. He demonstrated techniques, gave critiques, and repeated time and again, “Your minds are your surest weapons. Fight like a Porphyrian fisherman. Fight like a merchant. They’ll never know what hit them.”
After two weeks of walking by day and fighting by night, one evening all the adult dragons reduced themselves to human form. Lalo noticed me staring and said, “We’ve reached the fork of the Meconi, which means we’re near Lab Four. We need to refine our next move, but two hundred dragons make for a very loud conversation.”
I followed him and the other saarantrai into a narrow side valley, almost a crevasse between abutting mountains. Comonot waited at the head of it, stern Eskar beside him; the rest of the saarantrai crouched or sat on the gravelly ground. Lalo pulled me along with him, picking our way through the crowd, until we were almost at the front.
“I need volunteers to accompany Eskar to Lab Four,” said the Ardmagar, cutting to the heart of the matter. “She used to work there; she believes the lab’s quigutl will help our cause, but we can’t risk sending everyone until she has made contact. Once we’re sure of internal support, we divide our force in two. The strongest fighters storm the front gate, while the rest sneak through an escape tunnel at the back of the mountain—”
Someone raised a hand. The Ardmagar blinked irritably, then said, “Yes?”
“You seem to have made this entire plan without us,” said the saar, a thickset old man. “We were promised a vote on—”
“Not on this,” said the Ardmagar. A disaffected grumbling arose. Some saarantrai stood as if to walk away, but Comonot bellowed: “Stop. Sit down and listen to me.”
The saarantrai sat, arms folded skeptically.
“Do you know why the Censors exist?” he said. “Because there are those who believe that without strict emotional repression, we will fall into anarchy. They think dragons will be so swayed by what they feel that they will disregard their logic, their ethics, and their duties.”
At the back of the crowd, I saw Brisi squirm.
“I have been trying to understand the truth of it for more than half a year, living in human shape, walking the razor’s edge of feeling,” Comonot continued. “My opinion has changed over time; emotion is not always the liability I once believed it to be.
“Now we prepare to strike the Censors themselves. Not the Old Ard, but the supposedly neutral organization that enforces our repression. Like the Old Ard, the Censors want to take us backward, but I think we’ve come too far for that. I think you exiles—you who have lived two lives and seen both sides—are the stronger for it. You are our way forward, toward continued peace with humankind and the renewal of dragonkind.
“But I need you to show me that I’m not a fool to consider disbanding the Censors. Show me that two hundred emotional dragons can keep discipline, follow orders, and work well together. That last one—cooperation—is what our opposition lacks, and that, I think, is surely where feeling makes us stronger.”
The exiles were sitting up straighter, whispering excitedly among themselves. Comonot had appealed to their emotions, of all things, and it had worked. He had a new tool at his disposal, and it was formidable indeed.
“Now,” said Comonot, “who’s going with Eskar to reconnoiter at Lab Four?”
Lalo, beside me, raised his hand at once.
“Lalo, son of Neelat,” said the Ardmagar, scanning the crowd. “Two more.”
“Seraphina must come with us,” said Eskar.
“Done,” said Comonot, not bothering to solicit my approval. If Eskar wanted me there, it surely had some connection with Orma. I didn’t argue.
Sounds of disagreement grew at the back of the group. I looked behind me and saw Brisi arguing with her mother.
“Is there something the hatchling would like to say?” called Comonot, looking down his nose at them.
Brisi sprang to her feet, shaking off Ikat’s grip. “I volunteer to go with Eskar!”
“You have caused enough trouble!” shouted her mother, tugging at Brisi’s tunic.
Ardmagar Comonot exchanged a look with Eskar. She shrugged minutely. “If the hatchling wishes to redeem herself,” said Eskar, “this would be a prime opportunity.”
And so it was settled.
Eskar, Lalo, and Brisi unfolded themselves as the first sliver of moon rose over the distant peaks. Each time I dreaded flying a little more; each time my neck was sorer and my rib cage more bruised. Flying was fastest, even if it was harder to stay out of sight. We kept below the mountaintops, skimming the bottoms of valleys and faces of glaciers. I reached my hand down once and grabbed snow, that’s how low we were. We flew until the predawn aurora was visible in the east, at which point Eskar spotted a cavern. She entered first, killed a bear she found there, and let the rest of us come in after her.
My companions ate the bear. I found I had no appetite.
We waited out the daylight. I was supposed to sleep, but the floor of the cave was rocky, and my companions, three full-sized dragons, snored, stank, and gave off terrible heat. I crouched in the cave entrance, where the air was fresher, dozing against a boulder when I wasn’t working out the snore harmonics. They made a weird quintal chord, these dragons, or sometimes a diminished …
A change in the chord startled me awake. There were only two dragons snoring now. I looked back and saw Eskar shrinking down. She rifled through my bag without asking, took out my blanket, and wrapped it around her waist. Then she sauntered up to the cave entrance and sat a little apart from me.
“I can’t speak quietly in that shape,” she whispered. “I have things to tell you.”
I straightened up and nodded, expecting her to delineate the plan for tonight, but instead she said, “Your uncle and I were mated.”
“Indeed!” I said, embarrassed by her wording. I did not require more details along those lines. “Does that make you my aunt?” I asked, trying to joke.
She considered the question in all seriousness, staring out the cave entrance toward the glacier, and finally said, “You may call me that without inaccuracy.” She was silent for several beats more, then added, with unaccustomed softness in her tone, “I never thought much of him as a dragon. He’s small. A tenacious fighter, granted. A decent flier, considering his wing was once broken, but he could never have kept up with me. I’d have bitten the back of his neck and sent him on his way.
“But as a saarantras …” She paused, a finger to her lips. “He’s something extraordinary.”
I pictured my uncle’s shrubby hair and beaky nose, his spectacles and false beard and angular limbs, every detail absurd and dear to me. My chin trembled.
“These human eyes seemed weak at first,” said Eskar, still staring away from me, scratching her short black hair. “They detect fewer colors and have terrible resolution, but they see things dragon eyes cannot. They can see beyond surfaces. I don’t understand how that’s possible, but it happened incrementally as I traveled with Orma: I began to see the inside of him. His questioning and gentle nature. His conviction. I’d glimpse it in something as incongruous as his hand holding a teacup, or his eyes when he spoke of you.”
She turned her needle-sharp gaze on me. “What is that inner being? That person within a person? Is that what you call the soul?”
According to Southlander theology, dragons don’t have souls; she knew that. I hesitated, but surely there was no danger saying this to her now, not after what had already happened to Orma. “He had a mighty soul, my uncle. The greatest I ever knew.”
“You speak as if he is dead,” she said sternly.
The tears finally came; I could not reply.
She observed me closely, her dark eyes dry, her arms wrapped around her knees. “The Censors took a risk, entering Porphyry clandestinely. They were supposed to have petitioned the Assembly, and I have determined they did not. In my day, we would have run such a risk only if someone very important wanted Orma quickly. It gives me hope that this isn’t the usual capture of a deviant, that they may have brought him in not for excision but for some other purpose.”
The word excision chilled me. “What if the deed is done?” I said, drying my eyes. “Will he still be himself?”
“It depends what they take. Usually they only remove memories. Those neural pathways are largely the same whether we are in dragon or human form.” She spoke as neutrally as if she were describing her breakfast. “The emotion centers of the human brain overlap with dragon flight centers; it would cripple him to remove those. They wouldn’t permanently deprive him of flight, not the first time. They would remove his memories, put him on an emotional suppressant—a tincture of destultia—and give him a second chance.
“Plenty of us undergo excision at some point. Look.” She bent her head forward and parted the hair behind her left ear, revealing a white stripe of scar tissue. “When I quit the Censors, they removed my memories of working there so I couldn’t reveal their secrets. But I am still myself. I was not irreparably damaged.”
I recoiled, horrified. “But—but you remember working for the Censors!”
Her mouth flattened. “They informed me afterward that I had been in their employ so I wouldn’t reapply. But I also made myself a mind-pearl so I could remember why I quit. That was important to me.”
“Why did you quit?” I asked.
“Several reasons,” she said. “They would not reprimand Zeyd, the agent I authorized to test your uncle, for threatening you with harm in the course of that test.”
I put a hand to my heart, touched. “You didn’t even know me!”
“I didn’t have to know you.” Her black eyes flicked toward me. “Entrapment is an unacceptable testing practice.”
So the wrong had been in attempting to trap Orma into an emotional reveal, not in dangling me over the edge of the cathedral tower. I sighed and changed the subject. “My mother left me mind-pearls. Are they difficult to make?”
Eskar shrugged. “Mothers make simple ones for their children. To encapsulate a lot of memories, and hide them well, requires outside help. There are saarantrai who specialize in clandestine meditation, but it’s illegal and expensive.” Her eyes unfocused. “You’re wondering whether Orma did such a thing.”
I held out my hand and wiggled my pinkie, showing her my pearl ring. “He sent me this in Ninys, along with the words The thing itself plus nothing equals everything. I think he was trying to tell me he’d done it.”
Eskar took my hand and brushed the pearl lightly with her thumb; the spark of hope in her eyes was almost unbearable. “Perhaps he was,” she half whispered, “but I don’t know when he could have had it done. Not while I was with him. He might have made a simple pearl on his own with a few bare facts, brief images, your name.”
I took my hand back and twisted the ring on my finger.
“Mind-pearls can be difficult to retrieve if you don’t know the trigger for locating and opening them,” Eskar said, standing up. She hesitated, then added, “He will always be your uncle, whether he remembers he is or not.”
She swooped down, kissed the top of my head lightly, and then headed toward Lalo and Brisi at the back of the cave. “Four hours until sunset,” she called over her shoulder. “Sleep.”
I leaned against the boulder and closed my eyes.