30

Kaoran chose a roofless tower to finish Isolde’s training.

The structure watched over an old route between Cendral and Caleryon. Three walls remained, a staircase, a stone table, and the base of a fire pit. From the height, they could see the commission’s roads. Patrols passed twice during the afternoon and continued toward the valley.

Isolde, Kaoran, Beren, and Oren arrived after nightfall. Rheskan took another route with the black arm. He had chosen to carry it to a cave where the metal of the plates lost strength. He would return when he decided.

The evidence was traveling far from them.

Vena and Elar were leading the survivors of C-0 toward Halver. Rian Dorna was on his way to his mother. The three cylinders kept to separate routes. The central record had been divided into eleven packets.

Varek was hunting a group that no longer had a center.

Oren spread the map on the tower floor.

“The emergency order covers every bridge toward Caleryon,” he said. “Cevran’s searching carts. Leth controls the river.”

“Leth is still wounded,” Beren replied.

“He has men.”

“And a leg under a beam, if his men took too long.”

Isolde looked at Tavra’s crossbow.

Beren had kept to his limit at C-0. The pain still traveled with him.

“How many days until the packets reach the Council?” she asked.

“The cylinder, three or four,” Oren said. “The western accounts will take a week. Neraval will send witnesses from six points.”

“We need to stay clear of their routes until then.”

Kaoran coughed beside the window. The effort at Cendral had left his face pale. Luma’s green ribbon was still tied around his wrist.

“You can go down to the mill house,” he said. “It has water and two ways out.”

“We can,” Isolde replied.

“I’ll stay here tonight.”

“The cold will make you cough.”

“I still owe you a story.”

Beren raised his head.

Kaoran took out Thalyon’s strap. It had traveled in his baggage since the house of wind. The leather was dark, repaired in three places, and burned beside the buckle.

Oren put away the maps.

“We’ll go down to the mill.”

“Stay,” Kaoran said. “The story explains the operation we’re preparing.”

They lit a small fire in a brazier. Wind passed between the tower’s stones. Isolde sat across from her teacher.

Kaoran laid the strap across his knees. As he smoothed it, his thumb found the burn beside the buckle.

“I was twenty-three. We’d spent four winters on the border, and I still kept saying I could stand the snow. Thalyon covered me with his wing anyway.”

Isolde looked at the shoulder Kaoran kept close to his body. He had been cleared to travel; the cold still hurt him. She moved the brazier a handspan closer and sat down again.

“He was born beside the sea of ice,” he continued. “He had a white scale beside his eye. Bells annoyed him because they announced orders. He took the wounded when he chose to and left anyone who tried to climb on without waiting in the mud.”

“And with you?” Beren asked.

“We shared hunger, direction, danger. Sometimes an image. For everything else, he bit my cloak.”

Kaoran smiled as he touched the leather.

“I’d known him since before the army. That campaign was supposed to open a passage for civilians. We pulled a little girl from beneath a roof and ended up taking thirty-two people south. I used this strap to secure her mother, who had a broken leg.”

Commander Sarev had received the list of evacuees on a map of the corridor. He wanted to hold the corridor after the seven-day truce agreed with the House of Ice. The Council prepared an Oath of Custody: the guardians would answer for their dragons and obey orders intended to protect the border.

“I asked who would decide what those orders were,” Kaoran said. “Sarev pointed to my list. He’d given me animals to get the wounded out. He said I could keep getting them if I stayed within the command.”

“You signed,” Isolde said.

“Yes. Thalyon was beside the hospital. Two healers were treating his wing. I came out with the copy tucked against my chest and held the bucket while they finished.”

Isolde followed the cut end of the strap with her eyes.

“He had no idea what you’d promised for both of you.”

“I’d decided I could protect him better with rank.”

Beren looked up.

“Darian still uses that argument.”

Kaoran nodded. He waited before continuing, breathing with one hand against his ribs.

Two weeks later, Sarev ordered him to burn three warehouses.

Thalyon had just flown over them and showed Kaoran the families’ beds beneath the roofs.

He folded his wings. Kaoran cited a wind current that endangered the homes.

The commander sent him to attack the supply road and, three days later, summoned them both to the hospital.

“There was warm water, bandages, and clean straw. Thalyon stopped in front of the arch. I put my hand beneath his white scale and asked him to come in with me.”

The door fell behind them. Chains rose from the straw, and the plates absorbed the dragon’s heat. Kaoran drew his sword. Sarev showed him the oath.

“There was a side exit,” he said. “I lowered the point to take the document. I asked for a doctor. I demanded that they record the children’s presence above the warehouses. An aide kept turning an hourglass, and I kept talking.”

“Eleven minutes,” Isolde murmured.

“During the ninth, Thalyon showed me the beds. During the tenth, the door we’d let them close. In the eleventh, I raised my sword. I wounded two soldiers; the mace struck me before I reached the first plate.”

Kaoran stopped, his fingers resting on a scar in his palm. Beren stopped moving the crossbow.

“I spent three days locked up. On the fourth, Sarev came for me: Thalyon had stopped the convoy. I picked up the strap from the yard on my way out. It was still under the ice, beside the trough.”

Sarev returned his sword and took him to the dragon. Kaoran approached his snout. Thalyon gave him the memory of the yard and turned his head toward a covered cage.

“I wanted to touch him the way I used to,” Kaoran said. “I let my hand fall. I walked beside him when he got up.”

They traveled for nine days. There were blue weapons, two carts holding seventeen prisoners, and a cage where a young dragon from the House of Ice was kept bound.

Oria, the healer, left him a file among the bandages.

Kaoran weakened two links during the treatments; at every stop, Thalyon tested the anchoring of the third chain.

“Three soldiers agreed to help us. Odran, Vesa, and Marel. They rigged a wheel to fail at Selkar. The weapons cart lodged across the bridge and cut off the vanguard. Oria opened the doors. I used bolt cutters on the two filed chains. Thalyon tore the third from the frame.”

“He could leave,” Beren said.

“The north was clear for him. Sarev ordered the second cart set on fire. Thalyon turned back toward it.”

Isolde thought of Rheskan holding up the gallery roof. Kaoran raised his head and found her watching him.

“I ordered him to escape. I pushed the sky through the bond until it hurt me. Thalyon sent back the image of the girl from the roof and tore the cover off the cart.”

They got all seventeen out. Oria took fifteen toward the neutral village. Kaoran stayed beside the bridge with an old man who could barely breathe and a boy who had to be carried. Thalyon opened the cage and freed the young dragon’s wings.

“The young one fell when he jumped. Thalyon held him on the slope. A harpoon struck him beneath the wing; another caught in the chain on his leg. He pulled and tore the winch from the parapet. The beams gave way. We were cut off from Sarev.”

Isolde saw Kaoran press his feet against the floor.

“A ledge fell between us. Then I saw him for a few seconds, flying north with the young one beneath him. He carried the harpoon and the chain. When the storm hid them, I stopped feeling him.”

The brazier crackled. Kaoran stayed listening until Oren asked about the wounded.

“Oria came back with a cart. All seventeen reached the village. She treated my hands, listened to me tell her about the yard, and put me to work changing blankets. At dawn, I looked for a path toward the pines. I expected a wing to cover me as I passed under a branch.”

Kaoran smoothed the strap again.

“The snow fell on me.”

Isolde brought her hand toward the leather and stopped before touching it. Kaoran left it between them.

The army had declared both dragons dead. Later, it revoked Kaoran’s rank. Several families testified; the order against him was eventually withdrawn. They offered to let him return by renewing the oath when he was twenty-four.

“I broke the table,” he said.

Beren gave a short laugh.

“I understand the temptation.”

“My hand remembers it when it’s cold.”

Kaoran took out six worn tokens. He set them beside the strap one by one as he told them what he had searched for afterward.

A fisherman spoke of two dragons over the sea of ice.

Kaoran found a white scale months later; he kept the fragment for years, unable to establish that it belonged to Thalyon.

He eventually gave it to a healing house.

Another report led him to a village where a young female dragon was breaking bells.

She had escaped hunters who used that sound.

The village took down the outdoor bells, and she chose another cave.

The third token bore a chain.

“In Var, I found a record from six months after Selkar: gray asset missing. It proved they didn’t know his position. I kept a copy.”

The fourth showed a mountain. Before Isolde’s battle, a mining crew had heard blows beneath Cendral. Kaoran found test shafts, deep explosions, and plates with codes linked to Thalyon’s convoy.

“Varek appeared later in those papers. The project had passed through other hands.”