point is that we’re both about to be replaced, and you can stop it.”
Crigo slid bonelessly into the chair, closing his eyes. “Goddess! How much did you give me?”
“Would you rather have woken up dead?” she snapped.
“Too kind, as ever. So you want me to warn her.”
“But, as you say, not too soon.”
Crigo began to laugh. “Poor Palila! Why should I help you? Seeing you go down would be my revenge on you at last.”
“Are you so deep in your drug that you don’t even care if you—”
“Your drug, dear lady, that you gave me and gave me and—” He laughed again, ending in a fit of coughing.
“If Roelstra has her, he won’t need you—and he can’t let you live! Do you really want to die?”
Crigo shrugged. “I can’t see anymore what difference it would make.” He drew in a deep breath, shook his head. “I need moonlight,” he finished curtly.
She nearly moaned with relief and gestured to the windows. “There for the taking.”
“I can’t walk that far. Help me.” As her face twisted in disgust, he snarled, “If you want this, you’ll have to help! You gave me enough to addict ten faradh’im! Damn it, Palila, help me!”
He leaned on her during the short steps to the windows. She struggled to draw aside the heavy tapestry as Crigo braced himself against the wall and caught his breath. Moonlight streamed in over his ashen cheeks, his eyes that were sunken into bruised hollows.
“Do something!” Palila ordered.
“Shut up,” he said roughly, breathing hard. “You gave me too much. I can feel it. I don’t know how soon I’ll be dead, but I know damned well I’m going to die.”
“But you can’t! Not before you—”
“Before I’ve helped you? Sweet Goddess, Palila, do you think I’m going to do this thing for you?” He gave a feeble laugh. “There’s a certain freedom to it, you know—the knowledge that you’re about to die.”
She shrank back from him. He hardly noticed. One last time he gathered his knowledge and his waning strength, one last time to weave the cool moonlight as Lady Andrade herself had taught him years ago, when he had been young and worthy of the rings he earned. He let his own colors form in his thoughts, marveling that the darkness that had dimmed them for so long now had fallen away, as if oncoming death had polished a renewed and youthful luster on gifts he had tarnished. So beautiful, he thought, fingering the strands of moonlight and weaving himself into them, this one last time as a true faradhi, a Sunrunner who could ride the light.
The sweet power rushed through him and the threads twined at his command into a single supple strand. His own colors merged into the moonlight, paled, washed away as he deliberately forgot the pattern of light that was his alone. He no longer cared. Shadow-lost would have been a terrifying death, but Crigo would die on the light. He wove himself into cool moonfire and fled into it, losing himself. The last time—but such sweet freedom on the moonlight, such final fulfilling peace.
Andrade’s rings glinted as she lifted a hand to brush what she thought was a stray insect from her forehead. Her fingers encountered nothing but a loose wisp of hair. She walked faster toward her tent, shaking her head to clear it of wine, and chided herself for succumbing to the excellent Syrene vintage Rohan had provided with dinner. The sensation of something winged touching her forehead came again, and again she wiped irritably at her brow. Then she stumbled against Urival as a deep, flesh-shrinking cry split the night sky.
Dragons. She looked up and saw their spread wings black against the stars, across the moons. “Dragoncry before dawn,” she whispered, staring up at the fierce shapes led by the single sire who again bellowed out his mastery of the sky.
“Don’t tell me you believe that legend,” Urival said, but his voice was not quite as casual as his words.
“Dragoncry before dawn,” Andrade repeated in hushed tones. “Death before dawn. Can’t you feel it?” She shivered, rubbed her face with her hands. But the colors of her rings lanced into her eyes, shattered colors deliberately broken, paling shards of glass lacerating her senses. She cried out and clutched at Urival’s arm. He called her name, but she had no will or voice to reply. Her face turned to the moons, cold white light shadowed by dragonwings, merciless and beautiful. She felt a Sunrunner’s touch,