Then the wind turned and I caught the smell of the sea. In an instant a thousand small childhood memories I hadn’t realized I’d forgotten came flooding back: Uncle Gregory guiding me through the maze of Nan’s Menagerie, teaching me wood-wightish herblore in the wilder sections of the Royal Park, hunting for shells on the breakwater rocks outside the Low Quarter, Aunt Lissa and I reading in front of the open windows at their kitchen table and laughing as the wind tried to make us lose our places. They were fleeting images, rolling and tumbling together before sinking back into the past, but for one instant each shone bright and sharp, drawn vividly to life by the salty tang of the ocean. I wiped the sweat from my brow and squinted ahead as Akarra topped the last hill. I could not forget the danger hanging over us, nor the terrible events that had brought us here, but no amount of ghastradi could keep me from this little moment of joy. I had missed this place.
If the vista of Edonarle was breathtaking when approaching from the ground, then there were no words for the sight from the air. The Bay of Nan spread out before us, blue and sparkling in the sun. Distant wyverns dived and gamboled over the water, their scales flashing like jewels as they snapped at passing seabirds. From the shore rose the walls and towers of Edonarle, stronghold of the kingdom, oldest of Arlean cities, ancient seat of kings and queens. Centuries of architecture built and razed and built up again had formed a hill sloping up from the harbor, with the city fit around it in roughly concentric circles. As Akarra swooped low, I tried to puzzle out the places I knew through the haze of smoke hanging over the city like an industrious blanket.
“What’s down there?” I cried, pointing to a quarter near the harbor where the roofs took on a jagged quality and what few streets I could see were clogged with foot traffic.
“Salt Market,” Alastair called over the wind.
I looked again, fitting the sight from above into what I knew of Edonarle’s famed Salt Market. Aunt Lissa had taken me to visit at least once every summer, but by the look of things it had grown significantly since my last stay, with the vendors’ tents and merchants’ carts spilling over onto the tree-lined avenues of the Royal Park.
With the arm not wrapped around my waist, Alastair pointed south. “The villas are down on the water,” he said in my ear. “That’s where Cedric and your sister will be.”
I turned my head to follow his finger, but Akarra banked and carried us out of sight before I could fix the place in my mind. We were descending rapidly now. The highest towers of the palace and the looming edifice of the Gray Abbey rose above us, while Akarra’s tail just cleared the roofs of the houses below. I began to hear noises beyond the ever-present rush of wind and wingbeats. Shouts drifted up from the streets we passed, happy, familiar shouts of recognition and welcome. A half-dozen wyverns rose from one of the lower streets and flanked Akarra for a few seconds, squawking their greetings in Vernish before shearing off to play in the winds over the harbor.
Quite suddenly Akarra’s wings stopped beating, and my stomach flip-flopped as we tilted downward. I gripped Alastair’s arm. Walls of warm stone and red-tiled roofs shot up around us on all sides, and it was all I could do not to shut my eyes.
With a thud and the crack of talons against tile, we landed. Savoring for a moment the sensation of not being impaled on the nearest weathercock, I blinked and looked around. We were in a deep, ivy-covered courtyard in the First Circle of the city, high enough for the patch of sky overhead to be free of the smoke and haze that hovered over the lower circles. Alastair swung off and offered me his hand with a grin. “You didn’t think we were going to crash, did you?”
“A little warning would have been nice.”
“There’s an art to it,” Akarra said. “I won’t tell you how many tiles I took off our neighbors’ roofs when I first visited the townhouse.”
“Yes, and the Chief Magistrate still hasn’t forgiven us.” Alastair nodded to the house rising on our right as he helped me down. The tiles on the eaves nearest the courtyard were a slightly different shade of red than the rest.
Akarra laughed. “You know the magistrate is secretly proud of it. Now, what are your plans for tonight?”
“We need to see Cedric and the rest of the Riders in the city,” he said. “They’ll be able to tell us what’s going on.”
“Will you need me?” she asked.
He unbuckled her saddle and pulled it free. “Not tonight.”
“Good, because I need to hunt. The deer population in the forest west of the city always needs thinning.” She spread her wings and crouched as if to spring, but at the last moment checked herself and cocked an eye in Alastair’s direction. “Are you sure you won’t need me, khela? I can’t put a talon on it, but there’s something here that makes me uneasy. The city is restless. I can’t help but feel we’ve arrived just in time for the storm to break.”
“I feel it too.”
“I can stay,” she offered.
“No, you need to hunt. It’s been a long flight and you need your strength back.”
She lowered her head and looked at us solemnly. “Just promise me you’ll both be careful.”
“We promise,” we said together.
Alastair patted her neck and added something in Eth, which seemed to reassure her. She touched her snout briefly to his forehead in a dragon’s kiss and took to the air in a swirl of wings and dust and dead leaves.
Absent one dragon, I was able to take in the full extent of our surroundings. Ivy wreathed the walls all around us, still trembling in the wake of Akarra’s departure. The noises of the city sounded dull and distant here. With the afternoon sun radiating off the pavement and the walls holding it in like a great marble cup, the courtyard was warmer too. Stairs at one end led to a balcony, or rather a series of balconies, which in turn rose into the splendid edifice of the Daired townhouse. I had to tilt my head back to take in the whole sight: carved marble balustrades glowing in the westering light, staircases ascending from pillared colonnades, great metal doors adorned with iron scrollwork, windows shuttered in rich wood panels sheathed in silver, and everywhere the living, fluttering colors of late autumn ivy. Beyond the house I caught a glimpse of the Gray Abbey’s belfry, but the towers of the palace were hidden from where we stood.
A man in the dragon-crested livery of House Daired appeared at one of the upper balconies. “Ah, my lord! Welcome home.”
“Caldero,” Alastair returned his greeting. “Our steward here in the city,” he told me as we started for the stairs.
The interior of the townhouse fit what I’d come to associate with typical understated Daired splendor: wide corridors and patterned halls in mosaics of a thousand colors, marble dragons guarding pillared doorways, everywhere the faint but rich scent of dragonfire and—
“Is that kaf?” I asked, sniffing.
“There’s always kaf nearby when Julienna’s staying here. Which reminds me. Caldero,” he called to the steward, who appeared at the top of the stairs, “where is my sister?”
“In the armory, my lord.” He bowed deeply to me. “By the by, it’s an honor to meet you, Lady Daired.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“And my aunt? Lord Edmund?” Alastair asked.