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Jade paused at the top of the stairs and let the full burst of sunlight coming through the windows envelope her. Glowing in the warmth on her cheek, she looked straight into the slanting rays. Dust motes drifted by her, tiny diamonds floating through the air. She let out a long breath. Energy, soft, warm, radiating, seeping into her veins. The sun was in her heartbeat, pulsing with the same tempo.
She jumped as the wind tore past the house, rattling all the windows in their frames. She tugged her sleeves down over her knuckles and started down the stairs. Her thick-heeled boots, the ones her sister called “black punkers,” thumped on the rough wood boards. She forgot the fifth step sagged in the middle and it bent under her foot, rocking the old milk jug filled with blue cornflowers sitting on the end. She paused, watching it totter on the edge, and then kept going.
Her parents were standing at the bottom of the stairs, her father’s arm pressed tight around her mother’s shoulders. In the parlor behind them, old Jeps the sheepdog was lying belly-up in the sunlight peeping through the lace curtains, legs in the air. He thumped his tail at her upside-down appearance. Her sister glowered in the corner from behind her quilting project.
She didn’t dare to meet her mother’s gaze, so she looked at her father. He had dressed up for the occasion, looking just like he had at their great aunt’s funeral. He was wearing his best button-down plaid, tucked into his only pair of clean pants. He’d scraped the dried manure off the bottom of his boots and polished the toes. One arm clasped around her mother, the other hand tucked into his pocket. He was making a brave effort at a smile, the kind that was gracefully tragic.
“Well.” She hefted her bag higher up on her shoulder, but didn’t find anything else to say.
Her father looked her up and down. “Gonna be warm enough? Wind’s fierce today.”
“It’s always warmer in the City.” She tugged her sleeves farther down, pulling the glossy black leather taut.
“You want Relli’s scarf?” Her mother spun around and whisked it off its peg. “You don’t mind, do you, Relli?”
There was a snort from the corner and the scissors gnashed.
“I’ll be fine.” She took a step back, but her mother lassoed it around her neck and pulled it up over her ears.
“You can’t drive with your neck all bare like that. You’ve got to keep your blood warm, don’t you?” She swallowed hard and retreated to her husband’s steadying arm.
“I guess that’s what happens when you shave half your head!” Relli shouted over the scissors’ snapping.
Jade rolled her eyes as she worked the knitting free of one of her piercings. “Glad you like it, Rell.”
“You have to write as soon as you get there,” her mother said. “An ink-and-tree letter, you got it? A wireless message will never get through in this wind. Nash promised he’d bring any letters straight to me, so don’t worry about the time delay. We can be there in a snap.” Her last words faded to a whisper as her husband tightened his grip on her shoulder, reining her in.
The scissors kept clicking like an angry clock and Jade took a step back. She looked at her parents for a moment, but found there was nothing to say. She turned and walked to the front door. She left the scarf in a heap on the bench.
The wind lashed her with dust as she stepped onto the front porch and she screwed up her face against the grit. She hurried across the broad porch, down the steps, and back out into the burning sunlight. Pulling her sleeves around her fingers, she strode toward the uni-tread parked in the scraggly shelter of a mustard bush.
Somehow Sleppy had sensed that she was leaving today; he had jumped the fence of his pasture and stood beside the uni-tread, sucking on the handlebars with his big droopy lips. She sighed affectionately and set her bag down on the back of the vehicle. She tied it down with crisscrossing green baling twine.
“You know how sticky they get when you do that?” She took the camel’s big nose in both her hands and gently pushed him away. He nibbled at her fingers. “I’m sorry, I don’t have anything for you.” She ran her fingers through the knotty mane on the top of his neck. “Not anything at all, out here.”
He gave a mournful bellow and she patted his neck.
“Go on. Go back to your pasture.”
He lumbered around to face the busted gate of his pasture again, but stopped and craned his long neck around to stare at her with big, dark eyes. He stuck out his lip in a pout. He wanted her to follow him and give him a proper currying. She couldn’t explain to him that she had gates of her own to bust down.
She grabbed his velvety nose and kissed it. “Good-bye, Sleppy.” Then she swung her leg over the seat of the uni-tread and cranked it to life. It rumbled into a roar, shaking her whole body like a leaf.
Above its grumbling, she heard one of the windows of the house squeak open behind her. She didn’t have to look to know that they were all jammed together in front of one window, pressed up against the pane, shimmying their hands underneath to wave. It was tradition, regardless of how soon the person would be back.
But Jade was never coming back.
With a lurch, the uni-tread took off for the front gate.
“Freak!” Relli slammed the window shut.
She shot through the front gate and headed due south. Her ride churned up the dirt beneath its single tread and coughed out a cloud behind her. The flats spread out on either side, empty and pale under the glaring sun. They were a mixture of pale yellow and soft green, almost blue. The sky above them was so large, and empty, and pale that it seemed to glow along the edges. The bluffs rose on the east side, looking smooth from this distance, and far, far in the west were the mountains, snow-capped. In the corner of her eye she could get a glimpse of town, a brown collection among the blue grasses. They would see the dust tail lifting into the air. “Jodi’s girl,” they would say to one another, raising eyebrows or nodding. “Well, it was only a matter of time.”
She stomped on the accelerator. The vehicle coughed and nearly bucked her off. Its roar grew louder, but if it was actually going any faster, she couldn’t tell the difference.
For hours, she flew like an arrow from the bow, always due south. She didn’t see another soul. Then ahead of her rose a plume of mist, a shifting, shimmering tower above the empty steppe.
The City.

Dhu grabbed for his hand as Emba tilted to the right, arcing in a graceful descent. Rhuin wrapped a strong, warm arm around his son’s small body and tapped his heel into the dragon’s side to ease out the angle. They would circle a couple of times instead of heading straight down to the rounded dot below that was his mother’s house.
“I’ve got you,” he said into Dhu’s ear. “Emba won’t let you fall.”
The boy only nestled deeper into Rhuin’s chest, white showing all the way around his chocolate brown eyes.
Rhuin took a deep breath and tried to let his son feel him relax. Up here, clouds inches from their fingertips, the sun setting red in front of them, turning the edges of Emba’s wings fiery bronze, there was no room for fear. Up here, all was beauty, and freedom, and light.
He rubbed his rough, grubby thumb across Dhu’s cheek. “Someday, when you’re grown, I promise, this dragon will be yours, and you won’t be afraid. This saddle will feel as natural as your own skin. You are an atlari. This is where you belong.”
Dhu looked up at him, mouth still screwed up tight, and he could see that he didn’t believe him just yet. Rhuin kissed the top of his soft, windswept head. He would get there. It was his birthright.
The ground was rushing by them now, the details of the house clear to see. Impatient, Emba banked the last hundred feet. Dhu gave a shriek, cowering down behind Rhuin’s hands, but then, with a last gust of her wings, Emba was on the ground and the world was still again.
“See? Safe and sound,” Rhuin said, lifting Dhu out of his lap and supporting him on Emba’s shoulder. Even with the ground only a few feet away, the boy clutched at his arm. Emba held herself perfectly still, head cocked back with an amused expression.
“Elm! Disez nerae?” A thick bar of light fell across the ground as his mother threw open the door and strode across to meet them. Only a single strand of ink black hair, streaked with silver, had escaped from her long, tight braid to dangle down the side of her face. Flour coated her hands, but her apron and midnight blue tunic were immaculate. A comb of elk bone and turquoise stones sat at the crown of her braid and silver bracelets jangled on her right arm.
Rhuin dropped his gaze as his mother skirted around Emba, three fingers lifted in a warding gesture. “We’re here now, annem.”
Coming to the saddle, she reached up hungrily for Dhu. “Sezin acin var?”
A huge grin spread across Dhu’s face as he leapt into his grandmother’s arms. “Vet! Vet vet vet!” he shrieked.
Holding Dhu on one hip, she patted Rhuin’s thigh with a smile. “Come in te home. The dinner I have made. Swift!” She carried Dhu away, chattering to him all the while in alaq.
With a sigh he could barely suppress, Rhuin swung his leg over the front of the saddle and jumped to the ground. “Make yourself comfy out here, Emba,” he said, working his saddlebags loose. “I’ll be out awhile later.” He unhooked the saddle and hefted it onto his shoulder.
Emba looked at him with her coal black eyes and rumbled deep in her chest.
“Yeah, I know. She’s a good woman at heart. You’d love her too… if she would let you.” His hands were full, but he clicked his tongue in a way that he knew she understood, then strode toward the open doorway glowing with light, the spurs on his heels clicking with every step.
Inside his mother and son were chattering non-stop as they laid out the food on the table, the fire roaring on the hearth behind them. Rhuin wavered on the threshold, swallowing past the lump in his throat. The outside of the small, beehive-shaped house was plain mud brown. But the inside was an arching dome of colors, paintings of animals and plants, sky and birds, the stars, and the holy moon crowned above it all. He knew it stroke for stroke. There was his father’s bear, and his brother’s stag, something in the lines and trace of them that was distinctive. They were both gone now, taken by the same dry fever. But somehow they seemed to be more truly here than Rhuin was himself. Somehow, he felt like the one who was missing.
“Gel!” his mother chided him. “Come, and close te door wind against. It is cold te sun after goes.”
Rhuin stepped inside and closed the door behind him. Dropping his gear into a chair, he went around to the fire and stood with his back to it. He let the warmth soak into his bones.
“When will you be back?” his mother asked him in alaq as she poured fermented mare’s milk into two tin cups.
“I don’t know,” he answered in atlarn.
She shot him a steely look, but he held her gaze.
“The Rain Flight could last anywhere from eight days to fifteen.” He paused. “You can look after him that whole time, can’t you?”
She swatted the question away like a fly. “Tva! Of course,” she said in alaq. “I’m star-haired, not senile.”
“He can be a handful, especially at bedtime…”
“Blue Dagger Rhuin.” She wheeled on him, hand on her hip. “The day I can’t handle my own grandson, tip me over the Great Falls and let the river take me.”
He smirked. “Is that an order?”
Muttering insults under her breath that were not for Dhu’s ears, she shoved him aside and, wrapping her hands in her apron, hauled the steaming kettle off the fire. She poured it into the oatmeal and then put it back in its place. “Alright, sit.” She flicked the end of Dhu’s nose with a smile. “Both of you.”
Rhuin and Dhu sat down dutifully. His mother took a pinch of harami salt and cast it in a large oval around the food, the table, and the two occupants. She murmured low and fast in alaq, ancient words of praise, blessing, and warding. Rhuin watched her face steadily. Praise, blessing, and warding: the three tasks entrusted to a mother in an alaqi home. His gaze slid over to his son’s smooth, chubby face and a flash of guilt burned up in the pit of his stomach.
He stood up abruptly, chair scraping against the floor.
“Where are you going?” his mother asked sharply.
“I’ll be back. Later. A bit.” His words came out a muddle of atlarn and alaq. He stumbled for the door.
“We just started dinner!”
“Gotta feed Emba.” He grabbed up a sack and stepped out of the house. It was young night now, the first stars showing overhead and Emba a long, dark blue silhouette. She raised her head as he approached, the rumble in her chest so deep he could hardly hear it.
“Senin acin var?” he asked her. Then paused. He hadn’t meant to say it in alaq.
At least Emba didn’t care. She could understand a bag of food in any language. The spines behind her ears perked up in excitement.
Reaching into the bag, he pulled out an old, bent horseshoe and tossed it up in the air. Emba snapped at it, her great teeth clacking together, and swallowed it whole.
“You’re a bad influence, you know,” he said with a grin as he threw a rusty key toward her. “I’m always telling Dhu that dinnertime isn’t a game, and here you are, leaping around like a frog.”
They kept up the game until the bag was empty. Then Emba flopped down flat on the ground, one long stretch of lizard, her belly slightly plump. It would take her all night to break down the metals and digest them.
He patted her nose, swept his hand under the curve of her eye, and followed the neck down to the warm chest vibrating with a huge heartbeat. He was shaking, though whether it was truly from the cold he couldn’t say. Sitting down, he tucked himself between her leg and neck. She curled around him, purring, and twisted her neck around to watch him, eyes glowing.
He took in a deep breath of her leathery, smoky smell. “I belong here,” he whispered to her.
She wriggled like a puppy at the sound of his voice and a huge grin cracked across his face, the corners of his eyes wet. He reached up and scratched at the pit of her arm where the scales always got the itchiest. “You big silly lizard.”
His mother didn’t understand it, but then, he couldn’t explain it either. The sheer magic of being around a dragon. The feel of her scales under his hand, the lean muscle, the grace, even delicacy in such an enormous animal. She was a part of the wind, wild and fierce, but soft and gentle too. It was all of these at once, and more than that. There were no reasons he could give his mother. It was as simple as breathing. He was made for dragons, and if dragons weren’t for alaqi, then he wasn’t alaqi.
Not that it made him atlari either. If he were atlari, Dhu’s mother would have stayed.

Asla shaded her eyes against the glaring sunrise and scanned the horizon one more time. There wasn’t much to see. The land was a dull beige, broken and crumbling at the edges. It was empty, with hardly so much as a bush. She hated every inch of it.
“Find anything?”
She whirled around with a squeak, hand raised in a warding spell. It was just Spiderlegs, standing behind her, hand resting casually on his dueling pistol. He looked like a grasshopper: long spindly legs in green trousers, wiry torso in a green waistcoat with a high, stiff collar, and a loose white shirt underneath. His pale blond hair fell down over his shoulders, fine as spider webs, the points of his ears poking through. He wasn’t even looking at her; his pale blue eyes were on the horizon.
She drew the spell back from her hand, grimacing as the unspent magic buzzed in her stomach. It would take at least an hour to dissipate. “I don’t believe it’s advisable to sneak up on a companion at the edge of a precipice, Spent.”
He looked down at her. “You’re fine.”
Was she? No, no, definitely not, but it was gratifying to know that she at least looked it. His icy eyes in his stupid perfect face weren’t helping though. She stood, brushing down her dark purple robe. The pale dust of this place was havoc on the material. “I would expect my tactical explosives expert to be more circumspect. You need to think ahead.”
“We’re in the middle of a wilderness and just about everyone else is long gone. Who else do you think it would have been?”
“Refrain from counterargument, Spent.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, straight-faced, and his tone made her want to pull his hair out. He turned and walked back to the cliff’s edge. “Breakfast is ready. And Hammith wants to talk to you.”
She sighed. Yes, of course he did. “I’ll be down,” she called, but Spiderlegs had already hopped over the edge and was scurrying down the rock face. Her stomach churned to look down. Spiderlegs — so aptly named — went down smoothly, ignoring the rope completely.
Worse than the dreadful height was the empty space at the bottom. The camp looked desolate from here, a few bedrolls and some scattered gear. She raised her eyes to the horizon, as if she would be able to see them from here. She hoped they were alright. She had never wanted them to leave. But it wasn’t exactly a surprise.
She turned herself around and took a few deep breaths. Then, teeth clenched, she gripped the rope with bone white knuckles, and backed herself over the edge of the cliff. She did not look down until her feet met the soft sand.
She planted herself onto the solid earth and released the rope from her sticky grip. She took a moment to catch her breath. She straightened her robes, smoothed down her hair, and pulled her shoulders back. Confidence: she had to ooze it. There was no room for weakness or hesitation.
Hmm. She wished she could have done that before the mutiny.
Pivoting on her heel, she strutted into the camp. Hammith was taking the last of the mash patties off the griddle while Spiderlegs had already settled himself against a rock, smoking some letta leaf in his pipe. On the other side of the fire was the nightshade, sitting cross-legged and keeping her iridescent blue eyes fixed on Asla’s face. Asla hadn’t seen her blink yet.
Asla sank down beside the fire and forced a big smile onto her face. When she spoke her voice was a little too loud. “Well, to my dismay, there’s not much to see up there.” She gratefully accepted a plate from Hammith and handed it on to Spiderlegs; she took another for herself, though her stomach was still rocking. She sat down near the elf and forced down a cough at the sickening sweetness of the letta. Ignored the face that he had chosen it because he knew she hated it. “Unless you saw anything, Spent?”
“No.” He didn’t touch the food.
She looked away, back at Hammith. “So, what do you think, my good scholar? Will you be able to communicate with her?”
The dwarf grunted and settled down with his own plate of food and a tankard of coffee. “I don’t like this, Asla,” he said, low and earnest. “I don’t think we should have kidnapped a nightshade. Nothing good will come of it.”
“Captured,” she corrected him. “Temporarily. And the good thing that will come of it is that we will finally find the Mortal Archive.”
“I agree with Hammith,” Spiderlegs said. He drew on his pipe again. “Nightshades are fearsome and ancient even to the elves.” He nodded to her, unperturbed by her staring back at him. “She makes me look like a kid. That’s not the sort of thing to play games with.” He lowered his voice, as if the nightshade could understand them. “She’s an annumortal. Annumortals never forget.”
“Well, that’s sort of the point.”
“I mean, she’ll hunt us to the end of our days if we get on her bad side.”
“That’s not a problem for me,” Asla said with an exaggerated smile. “I’m not going to live very long, not compared to you two, or so I’m told.”
Spiderleg’s eyes narrowed to a knife point and Hammith shifted uncomfortably, eyes fixed on the bottom of his tankard.
“So I don’t need to worry about long-term revenge plots, do I?” She paused; even she could hear the bitter edge in her voice. Right now she needed to be diplomatic. Charming, if possible. “Excuse me, gentlemen, but wandering without a clue for two years hasn’t done us any favors yet. May I remind you our contract is about to expire? If we want a chance of finding the Mortal Archive, we have to be willing to take some risks.”
“I am considered a scholar among my own people,” Hammith said slowly, “but even I don’t know that much about annumortals. There are calculated risks and there are reckless ones, Asla.”
She leaned forward eagerly. “The fact that she’s an annumortal is the very reason she can help us. She dies every year, but regenerates infinite times— as far as we know, she may as well have been here forever. The Mortal Archive has been lost all this time because there are almost no written records about where it was. Well, far better than a written record is the word of someone who was actually there.” She paused. “So it’s our best chance. If you have an alternative proposal, please share it, Hammith. You know I wouldn’t have done this if I thought there was any other way. But we’re running out of options.”
“You forgot one option,” Spiderlegs said. “Fail.”
She gripped the edges of her plate so tightly her knuckles went white. “I won’t do that, Spent.”
“If there was a chance of success at this point, everyone else would’ve stayed.”
Hammith tensed, bracing for a fight, but Asla just sat back and smiled. “Well. You’re still here.”
The elf’s pale cheeks turned pink and he stared at her for a moment before looking away. Hammith’s mouth twisted into a grin and he muttered an affectionate dwarvish swear under his breath.
She looked down at her hands, rubbing the dry, cracked palms together. “We’re close, gentlemen. Everyone else gave up at the crucial point, but you stayed. I appreciate that. And you won’t regret it.” She nodded to the nightshade, still staring at her. “With her help, we’ll find the Archive.”