“Sak,” he said, “right after the battle at Holbard, you were going to tell me something about the fire down at the port, weren’t you?”
Sakarias’s expression grew serious. The fire at the port had been huge, swallowing up most of the houses that ringed the town square, and each of those several stories high. The flames had been white with gold sparks—dragonsfire—and the wolves had fought them valiantly.
It had been at that fire that Anders had rescued Jerro and his brothers from the roof.
He and Rayna had seen a fire just like this before, only it had been much, much smaller. They had watched a puppet show in one of the small squares of Holbard, and when the dragon puppets had flown in, the twins had marveled at how the flames seemed to be white. If the fire could be faked on such a small scale, Anders had thought after he saw the port fire, perhaps it could be done on a large scale as well.
He hadn’t wanted it to be true, though.
“We went and took a look at it, like you asked,” Sakarias said, his face grim. “It was the next morning. There was a lot of white ash there—it turned to powder when you touched it. And there were piles of this gray dust that seemed like it was made of metal. It didn’t seem right. It wasn’t what you usually see in the fireplace after a fire has burned itself out, but we couldn’t work out what it was. Is that what you were expecting?”
“I’m not sure what I was expecting,” Anders replied. “Do any of you dragons know if that’s what’s usually left behind after your flames?”
The dragons all shook their heads. “The flames look different from normal fire, but the ashes aren’t any different,” Ellukka said.
“Then why didthisfire leave something different behind?” Lisabet asked.
“Um,” said a voice. Sam had raised his hand. “I think we humans might have the answer to this one,” he said. “While you wolves and dragons were off studying magic and battles, we were learning other things, and inventing some too. Anders, you’re thinking of the puppet show at Trellig Square, aren’t you?”
Anders nodded.
“Oh,” said Rayna.
“Right,” Sam agreed. “For the rest of you, there’s a puppet show about the last great battle, and the players like setting up in Trellig Square. They have little Wolf Guard puppets, and little human puppets, and the dragon puppets... well, they breathe fire.”
“How?” Isabina asked, immediately interested in how an invention like that would work.
“Jerro and I made a few coppers carrying supplies for them once, and one of the women told me,” Sam said. “They said that kind of fire is made by using a special kind of salt and iron filings.”
Everyone was listening now, his voice the only sound besides the crackling of the fire. “The salt turns the flame white, and the iron filings make it spit sparks.”
Mikkel’s mouth fell open. “You’re saying it makes it look like dragonsfire.”
“We were framed,” Ellukka said, glancing around the circle as though somebody would be able to explain to her who had done this and why. “Someone lit those houses on fire and tried to pretend it was the dragons.”
“You were framed,” Sam agreed, “and we were almost killed.”
“But who did it?” Rayna asked.
Anders had a horrible suspicion that he knew the answer to that, but it lurked in the corner of his mind, stillhalf-hidden in the shadows. He had no proof, so at least for now, he said nothing.
It was hard to get to sleep that night with everybody staring at them, waiting for him and Rayna to pass out so they’d know whether Hayn’s runes had worked or not.
Every time Anders moved, he felt the scratch of the paper against his chest where it was wrapped firmly around his augmenter, and every time he got settled, he found something else to poke him in the ribs or sit not quite right under his hip.
And then the next thing he knew, he was in Drifa’s workshop.
Was he awake again? Had he been sleepwalking?
Rayna stood beside him, and when he reached out to catch her hand, his passed straight through it. She blinked, stared, and tried grabbing his hand, with the same result.
“Not awake, then,” he concluded.
His voice caused a figure on the far side of the room to move, and Anders’s attention snapped up as he realized they weren’t alone.
It was a tall woman who, even in the dim light of the workshop, looked instantly like an older version of Rayna. Her skin was just the same shade, and her darkhair was tightly curled. It stood out in a ring around her head, as wide as it was tall. She wore a leather apron over her clothes, and it was pitted and scarred with little black scorch marks. It was a dragonsmith’s apron.
“What are we doing here?” she asked, looking around the room, her gaze pausing on the two children.
