Excerpt

Yesterday

Tollar could make water do anything she wanted, but she never expected to have to boil it under a stolen dragon egg while rafting upriver for five days straight. Her feet shifted on the water's surface as she balanced behind the egg, steam billowing warm on her face, the rapids propelling them both down the river and closer to safety. Tollar was safe enough anywhere she had a decent sized body of water to work with. But this egg? It needed fire. And it needed to stay hidden until Tollar could come to grips with the enormity of what she'd done.

She inhaled the cool night air, closed her eyes, and focused on the rush of water beneath her. The roar through the canyon drowned out the sizzle around the egg, but the sound pitched to thundering fury ahead.

"Wait, what?"

Even leaning way out, Tollar couldn't see around the enormous egg. Only the dim shape of rock walls loomed high in the darkness at her sides, so she crouched on the water, submerging her fingers to extend her senses into the river.

To where it dropped.

"Shit, already?"

She kept her hand in the water, feeling the river like an extension of herself—another long, meandering limb—feeling when the water under her tipped over the edge of the rock shelf like sliding one leg over the edge of the bed. She bent her hand level with the horizon and splayed her fingers, holding the water stable under her and the egg, letting gravity do the rest. Like she had once already. Like she'd have to do once more after this. And never mind the two sodding waterfalls she'd had to go up.

"Another drop," she called to the egg. "But I've got it."

While she and the egg plummeted on her little half-boiling water shelf, the rush of air lifting her long dark braid to stream above her, Tollar extended her senses to the river below. Making a fist in her mind, she held the water, stopping it from flowing away so that it piled up beneath, defying the riverbanks. Until her water shelf hit the surface below, and she unclenched, letting the river flow naturally.

Like that time she and her oldest brother, Jarku—back when they'd still believed he was a girl—had piled every last cushion against the side of the house and jumped off the roof.

A corner of Tollar's mouth curled up at the memory. So few of her memories were good ones when it came to her family that she cherished them when they surfaced.

But the water under her feet lurched and sagged, like some exhausted beast collapsing. Tollar's brain buzzed behind her eyes, and she closed them until it stopped. She gasped as she lost her balance and nearly tumbled into the river. Again. The water around her calmed and the egg sank.

"Gah!"

Her thoughts skipped along the surface of her mind like a stone across a pond. This was too much and it was too late. Gritting her teeth, she solidified the water under her feet, pushed more water under the egg to get it on the surface, and began the painstaking process of heating that water up through absolute stubbornness. Flapping her hands like she fanned a fire.

As the river glided around her stationary water island, Tollar scanned for a place to stop. Jumbled boulders loomed out of the dark on both banks, the silhouette of the viny jungle canopy reaching across the gap to obscure the night sky. Ahead, on the inside curve of the river, the land flattened out, looked grassy.

"It'll have to do," Tollar muttered to the egg, rubbing her hands over her face. She'd never heard a dragon talk, but she knew they listened.

The current carried her little water barge to the bend, and she stepped off the water, her boots thudding over solid ground. Dead and boring and unmoving. When she focused, the water moving between grains of sand sang out to her like her people sang on the solstice to welcome the rains and a cycle continued.

Tonight she did not have that kind of focus and was glad she wouldn't sink into the ground if she didn't think hard enough about it. Not having to think about sinking for the moment freed up some brain space so she could strongarm the river's current, using wide stirring gestures to guide her focus, and use it to hollow out part of the bank where she left the egg sizzling in a boiling pond.

"We're almost there, little friend." Tollar glanced at the egg and then stared downriver. "One more waterfall. A couple more hours. But not tonight."

She considered lying down with her gear and longsword strapped to her back.

"Never get any rest that way," she groaned, unbuckling everything and dropping it to the ground. She sprawled on the grass, not bothering with her sleep mat, and used her gear as a pillow.

She had to keep the water boiling to keep the egg's inhabitant warm. She'd done it for four nights. But she really didn't think she could do it for very many more. Spending the first two days going against the current had taken far more out of her than she'd anticipated.

"I don't know what those raiders wanted with you, but I'll keep you safe."

In reply, the egg sat silently in its gurgling, steamy puddle. Whether the egg—or more specifically the baby it contained—heard and understood her, it seemed right to reassure it the best she could. Hopefully her efforts and the boiling water were enough.

It was a far cry from where she'd found it, in a lake of fire with a half dozen other dragon eggs next to a pen of chained and captive dragons, all inside a guarded compound. Keeping dragons captive was something she hadn't thought possible, much less by the people she'd gone there to fight—the raiders who'd taken over the port and laid waste to half the harbour.

Tollar had friends in the port, ones she hadn't been able to locate. It was probably too much to hope that they were still alive.

The gurgling pond rolled to a furious boil as Tollar's pulse throbbed in her ears. She pressed her fists against her forehead and took a long, slow breath before raking her fingers down her face and exhaling a groan.

"What a sodding mess."

She hated that she hadn't been able to do more. Dragons didn't belong in chains. Port Sawulxo and her friends deserved better. She'd have taken all of the eggs and freed all the dragons if she could. Would have stolen every last grain of salt those raiders had if that would have actually done some good. Instead she'd done the only thing she could—taken this one egg and run.

There was only one safe place to go. Only one place where she could trust people until she made sense out of what she'd seen in the port four days ago. That was, if being stuck exposed on this stupid plateau didn't doom them both. Tollar was half asleep despite the cool air but watching the night sky all the same, waiting to see if any dragons would spot her with this egg she wasn't supposed to have.

So far the night was full of the usual chatter of monkeys and birds, the buzz of insects. Nothing indicated something was lurking, waiting to pounce. No mountain cat lurking nearby to make a meal of her in her sleep.

But the quiet in the skies was odd. She really had expected to encounter dragons by now. There was a whole blaze of them living in these mountains.

Sleeping in the wild again hadn't been part of her plan. She'd meant to sneak into the farm a little later in the night and be tucked away somewhere safe. Safe and next door to her best friend. Tollar smiled up at the sky.

Stars glittered overhead, sharper and clearer than she'd seen in nearly a year, and the moons either hadn't risen yet or were both set. She never paid much attention to their phases. This trip, she'd spent most of her time in damp, turbulent places where the stars were blurred if not totally obscured. And they were different stars than the last time she'd bothered looking up at the night sky. She wasn't entirely sure how long it had been since she'd crossed the equator, heading south and not far inside the borders of Upalint, her home nation, but these were the constellations of her childhood.

She tried not to think too much about that.

But Beenala would be home—she was rarely anywhere else—and that was something to look forward to. And Tollar would have somewhere quiet and out of the way to stash this egg until the right sort of dragons got her message and came for it.

Hopefully it wouldn't take long. Tollar rarely stayed home long, and Beenala wouldn't be thrilled about having a dragon egg around.

Tollar sighed. Dropping in out of nowhere like this—she always dropped in out of nowhere, but it was the part about the dragon egg that would be interesting—had all sorts of potential to go very wrong. Tollar didn't like the idea of disrupting the carefully cultivated routine of the only proper friend she had.

"Nothing for it."

Couldn't go back and didn't have the energy to get much further.

She shifted closer to the riverbank, as close to the heat of the boiling water as she could—the water itself wouldn't hurt her if she fell in, it was the boiling part that worried her—and let the warmth of it lull her.

Just a bit of rest and then she'd finish the trip home, away from raiders or big animals sneaking up on her, where she'd be safe.