the soldiers pulled books from his newly organized shelves and discarded them on the floor. “Is that what you’re looking for? How to incubate an egg?”
“I’m afraid we might be beyond that,” Falka said, and finally paused his search to look at Kalai. “Now, we’re just trying to keep it from dying.”
“You have an egg,” Kalai said, “that’s dying.”
Falka sighed. “Yes.”
Kalai nodded slowly. He’d been a baby when Arrow’s egg hatched. He searched his mind for all the books of dragons he’d read in the past, anything he could remember about eggs. “How are you controlling the temperature?”
“With bellows,” Falka said.
“That’s not ideal. What about humidity and rotation cycles?”
Something flickered to life in Falka’s eyes. “You know how to do it?”
“Bellows make for too unstable a temperature,” Kalai explained. “If you use firewood and an adjustable ventilation system, you can better control the temperature drop when—”
Falka took him by the shoulders. “Can you do it?”
“I-I can write it down,” Kalai said, eyes widening.
“There’s no time for that.” Letting go of Kalai, Falka snapped his fingers at the nearest soldier. “You. Ride to the tower and bring it here.”
“Wait, what?” Kalai spun in a circle as the soldier passed behind him on the way to the door.
“There’s an incubation box upstairs,” Falka explained. “With a firewood system just like the one you described.”
Kalai nodded. He’d seen the wooden box beside the bed and hadn’t paid it any mind. His heart raced. So much had happened in a single day. It all felt like a dream.
It seemed like only minutes before the rumble of wheels against pavement announced the arrival of a wagon. The door burst open once more, and no less than six soldiers armed with swords and pistols at their hips carried a large box inside.
Kalai gawked when they removed the top half and revealed its treasure.
The egg was roughly eighteen inches tall, deep red and covered in overlapping scales like a massive pine cone. Kalai had never seen an egg like it in real life, but he knew exactly what it was. He crouched beside it. “That’s—”
“A titan,” Falka said. “We’ve never hatched one before.”
“No wonder.” Kalai placed both hands against the shell. It was much too cool to the touch.
Most people would consider themselves lucky if they ever got to glimpse a wild titan far off in the distance. Often laying only two eggs in their entire life, titans were the rarest of all the dragons. There was a wild titan in Sharoani. A massive female. Once, Kalai had seen it near the mountain, twice he’d heard its thunderous roar.
“Get it upstairs, quickly!” Kalai said. “And get that fire started.”
The soldiers looked to Falka, and a nod from him set them all into motion.
“How in the world did you get your hands on a titan egg?” Kalai whispered, standing back as soldiers gingerly carried the nesting box upstairs.
“We saved it,” Falka said.
* * *
It took Tauran two days to work up the courage to enter the guard grounds.
He knew he was being a coward. That this new place, these new recruits, and the Ground Guard had nothing to do with what had happened at the Solar Tower.
But Tauran’s nerves weren’t so easily convinced.
When he approached the steel gates, he was happy he’d skipped breakfast. He grabbed the string and rang the bell a little too hard.
The hatch in the door opened, and a thankfully unfamiliar face appeared.
“Tauran Darrica,” Tauran said, “here at General Falka’s request.”
The doors swung open with a groan.
And then he was inside.
The atmosphere was such a stark contrast to the gloom brewing in Tauran that he had to pause and take a moment to adjust. It was as if Tauran’s memory of the guard had frozen in the time after the Battle of the Broken Wings, that stunned period full of fear and sorrow and rage.
But in the four years since Tauran had last been surrounded by the guard, it had recovered.
Young recruits ran past him shoulder to shoulder on their way to the first lesson of the day. A pair of older men, captains, judging by their uniforms, sat bent over a table, spending their break playing a game of Isutagi. At a table behind them, a woman with her sleeves rolled up past her elbows focused all her attention on the pistol she was cleaning. Black and copper uniforms dominated the outdoor space. The Ground Guard had always outnumbered the Sky Guard, but the difference seemed even more stark, now. A brief glimpse