A Night of Dragon Wings - By Daniel Arenson Page 0,14

allowed to live. That was more than they would offer her if they knew her true parentage.

The soldier who had first addressed her drew his sabre, and Treale gasped, sure that he would slay her after all. When he swung his blade, however, he slammed its flat end across her backside. She yelped; the pain bit her like a whip.

"Be gone, scum!" he said. "Seamstress? Find a brothel with a bed to warm, or find a gutter to clean of nightsoil. That's all you Osannans are good for. If I see you on these streets again, my sword will slice your neck."

He gave her a second lashing, this one against her legs, sending her scurrying down the street. Treale gritted her teeth, and sudden rage flared inside her. She clenched her fists. A brothel? A gutter? She was a lady of Requiem. She could shift into a black dragon and burn these men dead in a heartbeat. She felt the magic crackle inside her, the ancient power of Requiem's stars. Her fingernails began growing into claws, her teeth lengthening into fangs.

No.

She swallowed, forcing her magic down. It fizzled away, leaving her a mere human. If she became a dragon now, she could kill these men, it was true… and then a thousand wyverns would descend upon her.

Find Mori first. That is what you must do now. Even if you must swallow some pride.

Shame burning across her, her backside and legs blazing with pain, she gave another curtsy.

"Thank you, my lords, you are most kind, and your generous lashing reminds me of my place."

With that, she scurried around a corner, hoping she would never encounter those men again. She walked down a narrow street and pulled her hood down again. She would be wise to keep herself concealed, she decided, especially if she met other refugees from Osanna; she could fool brutish Tirans, but if other refugees of the Undead War encountered her, she doubted her accent was accurate enough to trick them too.

As she kept exploring the city, Treale kept waiting for it to end. And yet, as she walked south, Irys kept sprawling. Was she walking in circles? When she found stairs leading up a temple wall, she climbed up, looked around from a height, and gasped. Irys spread around her for miles.

I've been walking for hours, yet I've only explored the northern port, she realized. Most of the city still lay south of her, a jumble of walls, towers, squares, and countless winding streets. Stars, a million people must live here!

She climbed down the wall and kept walking, barely able to grasp one place with so many lives. Wagons trundled down the street before her, their horses tossing midnight manes. Stalls selling dates, apricots, figs, and spices lined the road, and lush gardens filled the air with a perfume. Children scurried everywhere, peddlers haggled with shoppers, and a woman in motley juggled daggers.

A statue rose in a square—a sandstone man with a crane's head, twenty feet tall. In its shadow, an old man performed with wooden puppets—one puppet of a phoenix, the other of a dragon. Treale's eyes widened. She had sewn hundreds of puppets in her youth; they were her greatest love. Yet when she approached the puppet show and stood among the children who watched it, sadness crept into her. The wooden phoenix, painted bright orange, soon slew the ebony dragon, and the children cheered. Treale lowered her head.

Even the puppets here hate us, she thought, and the silliness of her thought twisted her lips into a smile. With a sigh, she turned away from the show and moved through the crowd.

Besides, I won't find Mori watching a puppet show, Treale thought. She had seen the wyverns carry Mori south. They would have come to Irys; Treale was sure of that. Solina would want the princess of Requiem imprisoned here, in the capital, in the jewel of her empire. How many dungeons would a city this size hold? Or was Mori imprisoned in Solina's own chambers, kept in a cage like some trophy pet?

She would start by searching for the city prisons, Treale decided; it seemed the most likely place to look. She was not sure how she would enter those prisons; she would have to figure that part out next.

She approached a man hawking apricots from a cart. She was about to launch into a story of an imprisoned brother, then ask for direction to the dungeon. Before she could speak, however, great horns blew