The shrubbery in the corner of the courtyard parted and Tobble popped out, wearing a devious grin. “Good morning!” he said in Low Gnomic. “Heading somewhere?”
“Aye, and you’re coming with me.”
“Aliza!” he shrilled. “We talked about this. You can’t send me home. Chief Hobblehilt will have me cleaning phgethm pots for a month!”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m not sending you back to the Manor. Until this business is all over, I don’t trust the roads, and you’re right, Alastair can’t fly you home.” I put on my most unnerving smile and Tobble wrinkled his nose suspiciously. “Lucky for you, I know just the place for delinquent hobgoblins.”
My hopes of slipping through the city without drawing unnecessary attention were quickly dashed. We made it only to the end of the street. Tobble let out a shriek and my heart skipped a beat as a wall of blue dropped from the roof, blocking the avenue in a flurry of wings and iridescent sapphire scales.
“Well met, Aliza!” Julienna’s dragon Mar’esh rumbled, giving both of us a toothy smile. “And Aliza’s little friend.”
Julienna grinned down at us over his shoulder. “You didn’t think Alastair and I would let you wander the city alone, did you?”
I gave her what I hoped was a sisterly glare. Her dimple deepened.
“Where are you headed? We’ll keep you company.”
Perhaps it was just as well. It’d be foolish enough to run around Edonarle alone when war didn’t threaten; I’d only thought to now because everyone else was occupied with their own tasks. Their own, much more important tasks. Nevertheless, I was grateful for companions.
“Avenue of Gulls,” I said. “Do you know the way?”
Mar’esh laughed. “Aliza my dear, I’d know every roof and alley of this city on a night with no moon. Lower Quarter, Third Circle.”
“Aye, a house on the corner near Galley Street,” I said, accepting Julienna’s offered hand up. It felt strange, sitting atop scales instead of leather, but Daired dragons tolerated a saddle only for long journeys or during battle. Mar’esh was smaller than Akarra too, and I clung to Julienna to keep from sliding off. Tobble in turn hung on to my neck with a strength borne of sheer panic.
“Aliza, are you sure about this?” he squeaked.
“You flew with us from Hart’s Run, and this is what frightens you?”
“I couldn’t see anything in your baggage!”
“Then close your eyes,” I muttered, and Julienna chuckled.
“I’ll go carefully, my little friend,” Mar’esh said from beneath us. “You won’t have to worry. Everyone have a good grip?”
There was much to be said for riding a dragon with all four claws firmly on the ground. Though unable to fly, Mar’esh near made up for it with his agility and uncanny ability to climb almost anything. For such a large creature, he was remarkably graceful. He leapt atop the building next to us in a single fluid bound and set off toward the Lower Quarter.
He needed no directions, weaving through alleys and the narrow spaces between buildings, running lightly along the great retaining walls that divided the city circles, even sometimes on the roofs of the houses themselves. On the latter he used his wings to bear some of our weight, spreading them wide so that we glided from rooftop to rooftop, never landing for more than a few seconds on each. It was a novel way to view the city, above the crowds but not so far away as to lose the texture of the city or the rhythm of its populace.
People on every street gawked at us as we rushed by, though not as many as I would have thought. Julienna, it seemed, was a well-known figure around the Salt Market and the neighborhoods of the Second and Third Circles. Vendors cried their greetings, and one of the fishmongers even offered up a fresh cod to Mar’esh as he passed, which he gratefully accepted, snapping it up whole.
“Saved that man’s boat from a swarm of hagsprites last month,” Julienna explained. “Mar’esh takes this route whenever he can.”
Once we were through the Salt Market, the crowds thinned. Mar’esh bounded through a paved square with a fountain in the center, bubbling anemically out of a basin in the hands of a comely woman robed in white stone and, in obedience to the ancient and solemn traditions of the scholars of the Royal University, a patchwork of crude graffiti.
Tobble groaned in my ear. “Are . . . we . . . there . . . yet?”
“Almost. A few more streets.”
That was a slight exaggeration, but Mar’esh made short work of the Third Circle, coming to a halt on the Avenue of Gulls near Galley Street several minutes later. It was a narrow street, cramped even for a small dragon, and he had to keep his wings folded tightly to his sides to let us dismount.
“Friends of yours?” Mar’esh asked as I knocked on the red door on the corner.
“Family,” I said as the door opened a crack. “Hello, Uncle.”
“Sweet Alyssum?” Uncle Gregory lowered his spectacles, polished them on his shirt, and raised them again. “My . . . my goodness! It is you. And a hobgoblin! And, er . . .”
“Uncle Gregory, you remember Julienna and Mar’esh, don’t you?”
“Who is it, dear?” my aunt’s voice came faintly from inside.
Uncle Gregory laughed and flung the door open the rest of the way. “Lissa, I think we’re going to need another pot of stew.”
Tobble made a miraculous recovery once indoors. Uncle greeted him in fluent Low Gnomic, and after Tobble’s hurried and not at all thorough explanation as to what he was doing so far from the Manor, Uncle Gregory bid him take up residence in their gardens for as long as he liked. Tobble bounded down from my shoulder with a rushed “thank you!” and a cheeky grin in my direction. I sighed. Hobgoblins.
“He stowed away in our saddlebags,” I explained.
“Ah, the antics of garden-folk,” Uncle Gregory said. “The hobgoblins here will make him more than welcome, and I daresay old Chief Grimmelgund will be around to visit before the week’s out. Tobble will have plenty of stories to take back to the Merybourne Underburrow.”
“He’ll have a stern talking-to when he gets back, that’s what he’ll have. But thank you for letting him stay.”
“Of course. Lady Julienna, would you like to join us?” he asked, and I realized Julienna had stayed on the doorstep. She smiled shyly and nodded. “And, ah, you’re most welcome as well,” he said to Mar’esh, “though I’m afraid it might be a bit, er, tight . . .”
Mar’esh chuckled. “You’re very kind, Master Greene, I’m quite comfortable outdoors. Julienna, call for me when you’re done,” he said.
The smell of baking bread filled the house, warm and comforting. I breathed in deeply, savoring the memories that came flooding back. The Greenes’ entire house would have easily fit within the walls of the Daireds’ courtyard, but it had an earthy, lived-in charm that the townhouse, for all its richness, lacked. The small front room served as dining room and sitting room and pantry all in one, with colorful quilts thrown over overstuffed sofas, ropes of drying herbs hanging from the beams overhead, and a cheery fire crackling on the hearth. It was an open fireplace, and through the flames I could see into the kitchen on the other side, where Aunt Lissa bustled back and forth. She stopped abruptly and bent down.