“What kind of welcome do they call this?” she demanded as soon as she was in human form. “I don’t know about this place, Anders. There has to be another dragonsmith somewhere.”
“Not one that will listen to us,” he pointed out quietly.
Then a voice called to them from outside the fence. “Is that a harness? It looks very well designed. I like the strap that goes between your forelegs.”
There was a woman standing and looking in at them. She had a large shock of curly silver hair and a long, square-jawed face, suntanned from being outside.
“Yes, it is,” Anders called. “Can we come out, please?”
She considered this, tilting her head this way and that, studying them the way Isabina studied things through her microscope. “Who told you how to find us?” she asked.
“Leif,” he replied.
Her rather stern face lit up. “Oh, Leif,” she said. “Barely anyone else visits us. I suppose I should have known it was him.” She hurried around the dome and pulled open a gate using a latch on the outside. “Leif sends us supplies. I don’t suppose you have any for us?”
“Afraid not,” said Rayna. “He sent us because we need a repair.”
“Oh, a repair!” If anything, she seemed even more excited about this. “Nobodyasks for those anymore. Come inside, come inside.” She raised her voice to a shout. “Kaleb, we have visitors. They need a repair!”
Anders couldn’t help wondering, as he followed her in,whether the reason nobody ever came to see them for a repair was that nobody knew where to find them. But he kept his mouth shut.
Kaleb turned out to be an old man with very dark-brown skin and hair just as silver as Tilda’s, cropped close to his head. His face was lined and wrinkled, and his expression gave nothing away as he looked them up and down.
“They’re children,” he pointed out, pressing a button in the wall near the cave’s entrance.
With a series of clanks, the dome and fence folded back down into place, the gray of the metal disappearing against the rock once more.
“Leif sent them,” Tilda told him, as though this excused their age.
“Well, what do you want?” he demanded.
“I’m sure they want food. Guests, Kaleb, we never have guests. We should feed them.”
Kaleb made a dismissive noise, waving away her words with one hand. But despite the gesture, he stomped over to a cupboard against the wall, opening it to remove four plates and one of the most magnificent cakes that Anders had ever seen. It looked to have at least a dozen thin layers, and between each of them was a thick layer of jam.
“Wow,” said Anders, who had not been expecting something that fancy to emerge from so plain a cupboard in the middle of the mountains.
“Kaleb made it,” said Tilda proudly. “We have a lot of free time up here.”
“Not enough else to do,” Kaleb said crankily. “Now. Tell us what you want.”
“This is the Staff of Reya,” Anders said, holding it up. “And inside this cloth is the Mirror of Hekla, though last time we opened it up and looked into it, we all ended up...”
“Seeing everyone as yourself,” Tilda finished for him. She and Kaleb had both gone quite still. “Where did you get these?” she asked.
“They used to be Drifa’s,” Anders hedged.
“Yes,” said Kaleb pointedly, “we know that.”
“Have you been stealing her things?” Tilda asked, all hints of friendliness now gone from her face. “How did you find these?”
“We used a map,” said Rayna quickly, eager to defend them. “We...” She fell silent, and Anders knew she had suddenly realized that if these dragonsmiths knew how Drifa’s map worked, then they would know that the twins were related to Drifa.
“No... ,” said Tilda.
“It can’t be... ,” said Kaleb.
He put down the cake and stomped in closer. Both he and Tilda took a long, long look at each of the children’s faces.
