Flicker began to collect his herbs into a neat pile. Come. We need to find shelter, he told her.
* * * *
As the cool wind whipped the trailing strands of her white-blonde hair across her face, Hualiama shivered. A storm! As a proficient Dragonship pilot, accustomed to navigating these Islands solo in her Dragonship, she knew how suddenly a storm could strike. More than once Lia had been forced to take shelter and wait out a storm. She always navigated carefully around the rim-Islands and never flew straight across the caldera, for to be caught out there spelled certain death. This time, however, safety lay over three hundred feet away along a branch which seemed to grow thinner and more precarious the longer she stared at it. The first hundred feet or so were bare, then came a couple of side-branches, after which the wood grew comfortingly thick as it neared the cliff into which the tree’s huge, gnarled roots plunged with grim assurance, like a drowning man’s fingers clutching safely onto the shore of a terrace lake.
Another day, she might have danced along that branch–well, that was a lie. She would have walked carefully but surely over to the Island’s shore.
The dragonet made an insistent chirruping noise.
Lia rose to her feet, swaying in concert with the branch beneath her feet. “Oh, Dragons’ breath! I can’t do this … I must.”
Quickly, urged the dragonet.
Oh, she had almost forgotten to take the dagger, one of a matched pair of Immadian forked daggers she had received the very morning of Ra’aba’s treachery, a birthday gift from the King. Was this what Ra’aba had used to stab her? Removing her slippers, she thrust them into her belt, along with the blade.
“Come on, Lia,” she told herself. Shuffle. Pant. Gasp, sway. The rising wind made her task doubly difficult. The Great Dragon himself could not have blown that storm in any faster. Hualiama knew that if she had seen that sky while at the helm of her Dragonship, she would have been moored on an Island two hours ago. She and the dragonet were in grave peril.
With enviable agility, the dragonet darted over to the Island’s shore, balancing his load.
Lia inched out onto the bare branch, sweating freely, the pain in her abdomen akin to a red-hot glob of lava stuck in her lower intestines. Her back was little better. She only had use of her left arm, and decided she had never been more thankful to be left-handed, even if it caused dark mutterings among the superstitious. Should she slip, she would have no chance of arresting her fall. Lia gritted her teeth. She had to keep moving.
The dragonet zipped past her again. Even he had to dig his talons into the bark now as the branch tossed in the wind.
Suddenly, Hualiama sank to her knees, crying hoarsely, “Come on, Lia!”
She hauled herself along with her good arm, her legs dangling either side of the branch, inches at a time. She established a rhythm. Pull. Wince. Breathe. Rest. “Come on.” Pull again, paying no heed to the tearing sensation in her stomach. Whatever had begun to knit together was ruined once more. Curse the cloth of her dress snagging on a rough chip of bark. “One more.” Resort to slashing it free with the dagger. “Again.” Pull past that point. Her broken arm jarred. Pain washed over her, leaving her dizzy and enervated. She tucked the useless arm into her belt. “And again.” Pull. Repeat.
Black spots danced on her vision, making her imagine windrocs circling a soon-to-be carcass. If only she could rest, pillowing her head on the bark which seemed as soft as the plumpest palace pillow-roll, the type that Fyria demanded for her comfort …
She summoned scorn. Little Lia. Short shrift, as her brothers sometimes called her, in reference to her unusually diminutive stature for a Fra’aniorian Islander. Naturally, she had the golden Fra’aniorian skin and acceptably pointy ears which betrayed her Isles heritage, but she also had eyes of a rare, smoky green. Queen Shyana said her eyes smouldered as though on the verge of catching fire, especially when she was angry. She remembered Captain Ra’aba’s stinging jibes–for he was right. Despite a royal adoption, everyone knew there was but one real Princess of Fra’anior. Subtly or openly, Lia was daily put in her place by servants and nobles alike. Suitors had only a passing interest in a foundling, insofar as she might provide them better access to