“It’s all right,” he said once he was in earshot. “They’re friends of ours. They can help us. Viktoria, the tall guy over there is Ferdie. He’s studying medicine at the dragons’ Finskól. You and he have a patient waiting.”
Viktoria simply nodded and hurried past him—he didn’t doubt she was suspicious, but a patient was a patient.
They all made their way inside, Viktoria, Sam, Ellukka, and Ferdie carrying Pellarin’s stretcher. A wolf, a human, and two dragons working together—that wasn’t something Anders would have imagined a few days ago.
It was only when they all neared the fireplace that Anders realized there were bags and crates stacked in the shadows beside it.
“We brought supplies,” Bryn said, falling into step with him. She was a full head taller than Anders, and more muscular too, her sleek black hair and light-brown skin showing her ancestors must have come from Ohiro. There was something calm about her presence that he appreciated right now. “Ellukka and Theo said you didn’thave anything,” she continued. “There’s food, bedding, and Ferdie’s medical kit, and Isabina brought a whole lot of tools that... well, I don’t know what they’re for. But she seemed confident.” Bryn hesitated, then lowered her voice. “Anders, these wolves—they’re safe, right? Are these the same ones who attacked Drekhelm?”
Anders looked at his packmates, who were matching the dragons, suspicious glance for suspicious glance.
“Yes,” he admitted, “but they’re my classmates. They thought Lisabet and I were being held prisoner.”
He felt just a little tired at the idea of trying yet again to convince the wolves and dragons to trust each other. But then he looked over at where Viktoria and Ferdie were in quick, quiet conversation, leaning over Pellarin and already unpacking Ferdie’s medical supplies, and he felt a small flicker of hope. Perhaps it could be done. Eventually.
A few minutes later they had everything inside, and everyone except the two medics and Pellarin gathered around the fire. They set themselves up nearby, where they could still join the conversation. Bryn and Jai had broken open one of the boxes and were handing around slices of thick, sticky fruit bun with frosting on top that stuck to Anders’s fingers. They cut up Rayna’s giant fruittart as well—she’d made Sam hold it the whole way home, refusing to leave it behind even though it wouldn’t fit into their bags.
The food seemed to make a difference to everyone’s morale, and Anders noticed there were fewer suspicious looks just at this particular moment. Unless he counted Sakarias, whose attention was focused on Ferdie—he didn’t seem to like him talking quite so much with Viktoria.
“Let’s take turns reporting,” Anders said. “Sak, you go first. Anything happen here while we were gone?”
Sakarias turned his attention away from the medical team and shook his head. “All quiet here,” he said. “Cloudhaven behaved itself. We thought we heard something somewhere inside the mountain, but then it stopped. And not all of us heard it. It might have been nothing.”
Anders thought of the room full of mechanical structures he’d seen the night before. Maybe it had been one of the machines?
“I guess we’ll keep our ears open,” Lisabet suggested. “It might have been nothing, but it might have been something.”
Then she, Anders, Rayna, and Mikkel reported on their trip to Holbard. Lisabet showed the others the bigstack of books she and Mikkel had retrieved from the ruins of the Ulfar library.
“With any luck, there’ll be something in here that helps us understand how Cloudhaven was built, and how to control it,” Lisabet said. Her face was even paler than usual, and her words were clipped. She’d loved their school library, and Anders could tell how much it had hurt her to see it destroyed.
Anders and Rayna explained how they knew Sam and Pellarin, and they talked about what they had seen in the city. Sam joined in for that, and all the wolves’ faces grew graver and graver as they came to understand just how serious things were back at their home.
“So almost everyone’s outside the city in the camps now?” Mateo asked. “What about the wolves? Are they there too? If everyone’s blaming them, like you said, is it safe for them to be where everyone else is?”
Sam shrugged. “I haven’t been to the camps,” he said. “I don’t know if they’re with everyone else. I think, if they’re in a pack, the wolves will be safe wherever they are. People might blame one or two wolves, but nobody’s going to confront the whole Wolf Guard.”
“The wolves aren’t the only ones with problems, though,” Anders said quietly. He tried to explain what else he’d seen, that as the dragons and wolves had foughtover Holbard, and over who would control the climate of Vallen, they had left every human in the city without a roof over their head, without any certainty about what would come tomorrow.
Then it was Ellukka and Theo’s turn. They’d come back from Drekhelm with all the books Theo had wanted, but they explained how they’d managed to bring back three Finskólars as well.
“The class was taking turns keeping a lookout,” Ellukka said.
“Well,someof the class,” Theo corrected her.
Anders exchanged a glance with his sister, and he knew they were both wondering what would have happened if the Finskólars whodidn’tlike them had been keeping a lookout instead.
“It was actually quite interesting,” Isabina said, rousing herself from her current daydream. Her brown curls were as wild as ever, and as usual, she had a smudge of black grease from one of her inventions on her white cheek. “There were some fascinating cloud formations. I was just classifying them, when suddenly I saw Theo drop out of the bottom of one. So I transformed straight away and flew up to join him. We all landed a little way down the mountain, which was safer, and swapped stories.”
“Then she came to find us,” Bryn said. “It’s a messback at Drekhelm. Half the Dragonmeet is blaming the other half of the Dragonmeet for what happened at Holbard. Some of them still think that you were fighting for the dragons, and they’re waiting for you to come back and join them again. Others are sure that you were never fighting for the dragons, and that you’re traitors who need to be caught.”
“How’s your father, Ellukka?” Lisabet asked. There was nothing but concern in her voice, and Anders admired her compassion, as he had many times before.
Ellukka’s father, Valerius, had mistrusted Anders and Lisabet from the first time he’d met them. He had made their time at Drekhelm difficult over and over again, but he still loved Ellukka with all his heart. In the battle over Holbard, he had been injured protecting her.
“He’s all right,” Ellukka replied, her relief written all over her face. “He’s still injured, but he’s going to be fine.” She glanced down at the last pieces of her bun, her voice dropping. “He’d probably be finer if he knew I was all right too,” she admitted.
There was nothing anyone could say to make her feel better, and after a moment, Theo spoke, although gently. “Leif’s wondering where we are as well,” he said.
