“You’re better with your bad hand than most soldiers are with their good ones.”
While they talked, Ren looked at the place Franciszek had been living for the past two months. There was a campfire and a few goatskins spread out on the rough stone. Two leather-bound notebooks stood next to a small pile of spade-shaped pieces of gold.
Ren picked one up, turned it over in her hands.
“What’s this?” she interrupted.
“Dragon scale,” said Franciszek. “They’re all over. Sheds worse than a cat, this Dragon. Interestingly”—he glanced at Lukasz—“they don’t disintegrate.”
Lukasz raised an eyebrow as he took one of the scales. He looked at Ren.
“There’s a saying among dragon slayers. Bones, horns, and fur. Everything else—scales, teeth, claws—degenerates when it falls from a dragon.”
Ren ran an experimental finger over the edge of the scale. It was razor-sharp, drawing a tiny drop of blood. She was about to respond when a twig snapped behind them.
“Did you hear that?” she asked sharply.
Both Lukasz and Franciszek looked up.
“Hear what?”
Ren turned. The path, hemmed in by hillside and rock, was empty.
“I just—I thought I heard . . . never mind. It’s all right.”
The brothers continued to sort through the provisions the Baba Jaga had given them, Lukasz continuing to tell their story. Ren returned her attention to them slowly. She still felt uneasy. She could have sworn she had heard, in addition to the snapping twig, a soft, faint mewling sound. It reminded her, unsettlingly, of strzygi.
No. She dismissed the thought. There were no strzygi in the Mountains. Her mind was playing tricks on her.
They settled by the fire. The crackling flames made Ren uneasy, but Lukasz put his arm around her, and for all her claws and battles, she found it strangely comforting. She was glad that he did most of the talking. She leaned into the curve of his arm, examining Franciszek closely. He was shorter than Lukasz—perhaps even shorter than she was—and a little slighter. He was also a little more fox-like than Lukasz, with a slightly pointed jaw and hungry eyes. And yet . . . they bore one another a strange resemblance.
She couldn’t help wondering: What is he doing here? Had he really been sitting in these Mountains for two months? Watching the Dragon come and go, watching the sun rise and fall on that armor? Why hadn’t he turned back?
Why hasn’t he tried to kill it?
It annoyed Ren. Franciszek had left his little brother alone, when Lukasz had needed him. And Lukasz had believed the worst—almost died trying to get him back. Despite all his talk of protecting his little brother, Franciszek had let Lukasz suffer for two long months.
And what had he been doing in that time?
Then the conversation shifted to others. To stories of their other, lost brothers. Ren couldn’t keep track of all their names. Their oldest brother, who looked like their father; the wild twins; the one named Eryk, who’d risked his life to save a vila. She thought she’d have liked the brothers. Stories of palace balls, of beautiful cities, of salt mines and dragons with gorgeous names, like Lern?ki and basilisks and ?ywerni and Tannimi . . .
Ren could almost imagine it: round tables, packed together and piled high with crystal glasses. The women would be beautiful, in fantastic gowns—though what those gowns might have looked like, she wasn’t quite sure. In her mind’s eye, ten versions of Lukasz threaded through the crowd. Wolves on the prowl. They might as well have been Czarn and his clan, taking a victory lap in the shadows of a ballroom instead of atop castle ramparts.
These places seemed impossible to Ren. They were filled with humans, with laughter. With roads that were still paved, with kings who still lived. With ten brothers, strangers stranded an eternity from these hills.
One day, she thought, she would like to visit them.
“Lukasz,” said Franciszek, when Lukasz had finished their story and they fell into silence. “Our brothers’ clothes are in that valley.”
The sky had long since faded to darkness. The mountain air was cold and fresh. In the distance, the Glass Mountain had begun to glow an eerie blue color.
Lukasz became quiet for a second. His black brows were very heavy over his eyes. He picked at the tear in his trousers, and when he spoke, the single syllable sounded strangled:
“And?”
“Just uniforms,” said Franciszek helplessly. “And swords. Nothing else. I don’t know where they’ve gone. If they’re dead or alive, or if the Dragon—”