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  The dragon stared at the shiny clips, then nibbled at them. One by one, the clips dropped to the sill. With the third clip, the rest of the splint fell away as well. It stretched its wings again, then flapped up to the window latch. A few quiet moments of tugging and pushing, and the window swung open. It slipped through.

  A draft brought Mik and Sura back to the present. “The window!” They looked at each other wide-eyed, then flung it wide and caught a glimpse of the dragon disappearing into the trees, above their path to the river.

  “Fly! Fly free!” Mik whispered.

  “Do you think he’ll be all right?” Sura asked.

  “I hope so.”

  “It’s a long way home for him. Maybe we should go look. If he stays with us, we can take him when we go downriver and set him free at Queensport.”

  Mik thought a moment, then nodded. “All right. We’ll go look. If we don’t find him, we’ll tell the mentor. I hope Kereb chases him all the way back East.”

  Watching the trees above and around them, Mik and Sura made their way down the steep path as Mik paid out the knotted rope.

  “It’s still too cold for him out here,” said Sura. “I hope we find him.”

  “I just hope he’s all right,” said Mik. “If we could keep him warm away from—”

  The rope went slack. Sura gasped and stumbled into Mik, whose footing was already slipping. They fell, sliding and rolling down the steep hill. Finally, scratched and sore, they came to a stop not far above the river.

  “Are you all right?” Sura asked.

  Mik nodded. “You?”

  “I’m all right. What happened?”

  “The rope broke.” Mik held up one end. “How did I hold on to this all that way?” He gave the rope a disgusted look and dropped it. “We’ll have to go to the landing to get back up—”

  “You two are going nowhere.” Ahm Kereb slipped out from behind a tree, dagger in hand. “Your master had my dragon all along,” he said, pointing his dagger at Mik’s heart. “I may not be able to make him pay for his theft, but I will teach him that stealing from Ahm Kereb has a high price regardless.”

  Mik tried to push Sura behind him. “I took the dragon. Leave her alone.” His voice shook only a little. Reason over emotion, he thought.

  “We both took him!” Sura pushed Mik’s arm up and stood with him. She was already thinking, Just a little time. Focus.

  “Oh, you will die for that, boy. But not right away. Soul for soul. You shall come with me, and stand in for the dragon as the sacrifice.” He nodded at Sura. “And she will come too. Her safety will guarantee your cooperation—”

  Something darted through the trees and struck Ahm Kereb’s ear, hissing and biting. Kereb yowled, dropping his dagger and slapping at his head.

  Sura clutched Mik’s hand. “Don’t let go!” she rasped, and everything took on a second edge as she pulled him into the shade of a large tree. By the strangeness of his sight, Mik knew she had concealed them. They would be nearly invisible unless they strayed into the patchy sunlight, or if he let go. “Do something!” she hissed. “I can only hold one spell!”

  “Where are you?” Kereb hissed, snapping his head back and forth, flinging blood from his torn ear. “Your simple spells… I will find you!” He took up his dagger and swung it around him in wide arcs, moving ever closer.

  Something I won’t have to hold, Mik thought. He closed his eyes and reached out, finding Ahm Kereb’s mind. A simple adjustment.

  Kereb stopped and gave a mighty yawn. “No,” he said, swinging his dagger in a slow loop. “No. I cannot…” he stumbled on the uneven ground and went to one knee. “Ah. No.” He yawned again, tried to stand, then fell snoring to the cold leaves.

  “What did you do?” Sura whispered.

  “I adjusted his clock. His body suddenly thought he’d had no sleep for a week.” Mik glared at their sleeping assailant. “Your father taught me the spell he used to put the dragon to sleep—”

  “Mik! The dragon! It attacked him! Where did it go?”

  “See if you can find him.” Mik picked up the rope. “I’ll see to Kereb. Look,” he said, showing Sura the broken rope. “He cut it partway, next to a knot, so we wouldn’t see it.” He took Kereb’s dagger, cut off a length, and got to work.

  As Mik finished tying Ahm Kereb—elbows, wrists, ankles, then all three together—Sura shrieked. “Mik! He—he—” Mik rushed to her side, finding what he feared: the crumpled and twisted body of their dragon. “Oh, Mik.” Sura buried her head in his shoulder, as he lifted the lifeless heap. “He gave himself to save us.” She wept, and Mik wept with her.

  Reeve Tanber and five guardsmen answered Bailar’s distress banner, rowing a skiff straight across the river as if the current were nothing. They debarked to find the sorcerer with his two apprentices, standing over a canoe containing a bound and sleeping man.

  Bailar looked as angry as any of them had ever seen. “An attempt on my own life, I could forgive,” he growled. “But this coward wished to avenge himself on two children instead. I will tell you what I know, but you will want Aborsa to confirm.” Aborsa was the town soothsayer, an honest man who had the power to discern truth. “I charge him with plotting to murder my apprentices, and with rogue enchantments.” Bailar told their story as Tanber took down the particulars.

  “And theft,” said the reeve. “We had a complaint this morning about a stolen skiff. We’ll likely find it upriver. Rogue magic is your purview, sorcerer, but he’ll hang for the rest.”

  “Eh, with the wrong sprouts he tangled,” said one of the guardsmen in a Low Speech accent, and laughed. “Well, a bother he won’t be, snoozin’ the day away, he is.”

  “Oh,” said Mik. “I need to close the spell.” He waved his hands, as Bailar had taught him to do in front of folk, as he reversed his adjustment. Ahm Kereb’s eyes snapped open; he cursed and strained against his bonds.

  The guardsman put his short spear to Kereb’s chest. “Here now, they’s no sort of words, in front of sprouts to use,” he growled. Kereb stared at the spear point and hissed something in his own language.

  To their surprise, the guardsman reversed his spear and jabbed Ahm Kereb in the belly with the butt end, making him gasp and wheeze. “Yar. An ill-mannered brute are ya, such things about a girl-sprout you say. Now you stay quiet. The hangman ya can curse, all ya like.” Two other guardsmen lifted Kereb from the canoe and deposited him in the skiff.

  “You know the Eastern tongue?” Bailar asked, cocking an eyebrow.

  The guardsman grinned and tapped his ear. “An ear for languages I have,” he said. “A fine skill for when foreigners grace our jail!”

  “The three of you must tell your side to Aborsa,” said Tanber. “The prisoner will tell his side, and the magistrate will do the rest. We’ll be off now, no need to keep you from your work.” Tanber waved the guardsmen to the skiff, and they rowed away.

  “Here,” said Sura, pointing at a patch of ground in front of their home. “The sun always shines here. It’ll be warm for him.”

  “As good a choice as any,” said Bailar. Mik nodded, and began digging. They buried their little friend with tears and gratitude.

  And Heaven welcomed home a long-lost soul: a warrior, fallen in battle at last.

  Chapter 3 - On the Wide River

  The life of an apprentice sorcerer could be frustrating. Not the learning: according to Bailar, Mik was born to it, and that was coming along well. Not the chores: he’d had those to do at home, and alongside Sura the work seemed light.

  It was Sura herself who brought the frustration alongside the joy. Last winter, he had started to see Robi as more than the friend he’d known all his life, the one who shared his games and jokes—and then she chose Piet before he could bring himself to say anything. Then came the invaders from Westmarch, and his foolish and successful attempt to awaken an ice dragon. And like cattle, one following another, it all led to his apprenticeship in faraway Exidy. There he met Sura, the first girl
who saw him as more than just a friend. But as a fellow apprentice, and one who was the mentor’s adopted daughter, they had few opportunities to be just Mik and Sura.

  As spring drew to a close, folk began preparations for the High Summer festival, and sorcerers prepared for the annual Gathering of the Conclave. Bailar the Blue and his apprentices boarded the Wide Lady. It was a long barge, the largest craft Mik had ever seen, coming to a point on both ends like a canoe. With a crew of thirty polemen, it carried freight and passengers down the Wide River to Queensport. Mik smirked when he thought of the barge’s name; it reminded him of his aunt. Like his aunt on her ranch, the polemen shouted their Low Speech argot across the barge all day long, cursing over the heads of anyone nearby.

  Freed from their daily chores, Mik and Sura thought they would have time on the barge, and in that regard this trip was more frustration. As big as the Lady was, there was no place aboard where they were not under the eyes of passengers and crew alike. At night, the few women and girls on board were sheltered away in one of the two cabins on the stern, while Mik slept with the men under a tarp fore of the cabins. (Bailar, as a sorcerer, was given the guest berth in the captain’s cabin.) At home, there was at least an opportunity for a brief embrace and a kiss between chores or after learning times.

  Worse, while Mik did his best to treat Sura as honorably as he knew how, Dreaming Mik had no honor at all. But his Dreaming Sura was often just as wanton. What happened in his dreams often left Mik ashamed and excited in equal measure; on this night, it would be the same. The barge was anchored on a stretch of the Wide where no town graced its banks, not even a fishing village. Mik twisted and moaned in his sleep. In his dream, he and Sura lay in the garden, a tingling wave rushing over him as Sura whispered his name.

  “Mik… Mik!”

  Mik opened his eyes. He saw Sura (fully clothed) kneeling over him, one hand on his shoulder, the other holding an oil lamp turned low. He grinned and reached up, still partly the Dreaming Mik, and tried to pull her to him.

  “Wait—no!” she rasped, keeping her arm stiff. “Didn’t you feel it?”

  He was feeling something, or almost, but Dreaming Mik faded. The wave ebbed, and Mik was grateful she didn’t ask him about his dream. “Feel what?” he whispered, getting to his feet.

  “Magic. Someone cast a spell. I couldn’t sleep for… anyway, I felt the power. Close by.”

  “Not the mentor?”

  “No. It didn’t feel like—”

  “Oh!” Mik felt it this time, like a spider racing up his spine. “That?” On the far end of the barge, they heard a thump and scuffing noises. “This isn’t good!” He squinted into the dark. “We need to tell the mentor. And the captain. Maybe you should conceal us.”

  Sura shook her head. “Our cloaks are dark. Besides, they’re already aboard. If we felt their magic, they’ll feel ours.”

  Mik nodded and they got moving, hand in hand, nervous but enjoying that much contact.

  The cabin door was locked, and Sura decided haste was now more important than stealth. She laid her hand over the latch, and it popped open. As they slipped inside, the barge captain stood, a frightening bare-chested figure in the dim lantern light, a scowl on his face and a club in his hand. “’Ere, what’s this breakin’ in—”

  “Sir!” Mik interrupted. “Boarders!”

  Bailar stumbled in from the next room. “What? Boarders?”

  “Nar!” the captain grimaced. “The crew woulda give the alarm by now!”

  “We felt spells being cast, sir,” said Mik. “Your crew could be asleep. We need to do something!”

  The captain glared at Bailar. “If they felt magic,” said the sorcerer, “it was not my doing. Something’s afoot.”

  “Fine, then. But if you two are prankin’, it will go badly for you both!”

  “If we are,” said Mik, stepping forward, “I’ll take my punishment and Sura’s as well.”

  Sura pulled him back. “You will not!”

  Bailar smirked. The captain glared, then softened just a little and nodded. “Yar. Let it be as you say.” He slipped out, Bailar and the apprentices following.

  They reached the first slumbering crewman. The captain hissed and cursed under his breath, trying to shake the man awake. Mik looked at Bailar, who nodded; Mik crouched on the other side. He touched the sleeping man, then looked at the captain. “This is a magical sleep,” he whispered. “I can feel it. Shaking him won’t help.”

  “Well, can ya wake him?”

  Mik nodded and, as he’d been taught, made unnecessary gestures and whispered a nonsense rhyme, as he did the real work of undoing the spell: “The sun is up, the cock is crowing! Time to wake and be a-going!” At once, the crewman’s eyes popped open. Seeing the captain, he gasped.

  “Nar, it ain’t yer lazy bones this time,” the captain growled. “There’s devilment afoot. Let’s take this here sprout of a sorcerer and get yer pals a-movin’!”

  “Sura and I will take the other side,” said Bailar. “Quietly now.”

  One by one, they brought each crewman awake. They roused almost half the crew before the boarders became aware. At the first shout, Bailar brought the False Dawn and twelve angry crewmen set on four boarders. It was over in seconds, the boarders battered and cringing in the open hold.

  A splash, and the captain turned. “More! Gettin’ away, they are!”

  “Stay back!” Bailar shouted, stumbling to the bow and catching himself on the rail. In the light of his False Dawn, he saw a small boat and two shadowy men rowing for their lives. He clapped his hands and threw them over his head. In response, a waterspout formed under the boat, lifting it and its terrified occupants onto the barge. Several of the crewmen subdued them.

  Bailar touched each of them in turn. “How will you deal with these?” he asked the captain.

  The captain looked at the boatload of near-stolen cargo and motioned to the crew to stow it away. “Next town with authority is Mosvil,” he said. “Turn ‘em over there, we will. Let the magistrate deal with them.”

  “Very well,” said Bailar, “but this one—” he pointed to one of the two from the boat— “comes to Queensport with us. A rogue mage must face the Conclave.” Even in the dim light, Mik saw the young man—almost still a boy—turn pale.

  “Well, then,” said the captain, “if ye’ll be responsible for him until we get there, I see no reason to say ya nay. Our food he’ll eat, but knowin’ he’ll get turned into a toad is payment enough!” He barked a laugh and turned away.

  Bailar turned to Mik and Sura. “Fetch me a rope,” he said, “about—”

  A tingle of magic cut his words short. They turned as the rogue mage twisted free of the crewmen and leaped over the side. Bailar and his apprentices ran to the railing, but saw only ripples. They watched for a long while, but he never surfaced in range of the light.

  “Cursed us, he did!” one of the crewmen moaned, shaking his wrists. “Our hands won’t hold nothin’ no more!”

  Bailar examined them. “Only for a few minutes,” he reassured them. “He benumbed you so he could get free. He’s not likely to be back, but all the same, we’ll join you on watch.”

  A huge hand clapped Mik’s shoulder, nearly collapsing him. “Sprouts ya may be,” the captain grinned at the apprentices, “but yer mettle this night, ya proved. Without you and yer master, an empty barge I’d have! What would be a fair reward, think ya?”

  “Thank you, sir,” said Sura, “but our mentor would not let us take a reward. But you can discuss it with him.”

  Mik nodded. He was too embarrassed to ask for the only thing he really wanted: a few minutes alone with Sura.

  • • •

  A steady, drenching rain greeted the Wide Lady as she approached Mosvil. The polemen guided the barge to one of several floating docks, jutting into the river from a high bluff. Within minutes, porters began offloading bronze goods from Exidy, plowshares and the like, along with five would-be river pirates. Mosvil itself p
erched atop the bluff on the west bank, overlooking the Wide River and the low marshy flats on the other side. What few buildings there were on the east bank stood on stilts; this was the Rice Basket of the region.

  Standing under a tarp, erected to shelter the hold, Bailar frowned at the muddy path leading up the bank. The bound pirates were marched up that path, stumbling at times, amid passengers and laden pack mules. The sorcerer looked at his apprentices, Mik and Sura, standing close to each other. While they had discovered and helped to foil the pirates, he knew that life on a barge did not suit them.

  “I’m sure the two of you would not object to having even muddy ground under your feet,” he said. “And we need some provisions, it so happens. Go to the tavern on the other side of town, just inside the gate by the Royal Highway—here’s a list of what we need. If old Enzid is still in charge, he’ll try to give you twice what we need for free.” Bailar counted silver coins into a pouch and gave it to Sura along with the list. “But like magic, accepting such gifts should be done only when necessary.”

  The apprentices trudged up the muddy path, using their staffs to stay upright. Though they were eager to find shelter, they stopped to rest where they could stay out of the way. “Look at that!” Sura gasped during one of their rest breaks, pointing down. Close to the docks, they saw a net-like contraption rising up the side of the bluff, hauled by unseen hands at the top. Several people clung to the sides, like spiders on a web, as it rose.

  “I wonder how much it costs to take that way up,” said Mik. “We should see about it for the return trip.”

  “But we need to get our provisions down,” said Sura. “You’re strong enough to carry them down yourself, right?” She gave him a playful nudge with her free hand.

  “Ha! Maybe this Enzid can help us negotiate the porters’ fees. I suspect hiring a mule would be cheaper than that ride anyway—there are people all up and down this path, and there’s only one of those things.” Mik paused a moment. “Sura? Why did the mentor send us? Sure, it’s our duty, but if this Enzid is such a friend that he would give us everything, why wouldn’t Bailar come himself? He could ride that basket up and not worry about the mud.”