“And we could just as easily do that during the day,” Lisabet pointed out. “With a mirror or something.”
Torsten looked very thoughtful. Anders could have kicked her.
“So you’ve thought about that?” the big man asked.
“No!” Lisabet replied. “I’m just saying—”
“How long have you been out there?”
Just then Mikkel came running into the Great Hall, using an entrance behind the two Dragonmeet members. He skidded to a halt, and Theo slid through the door, coming to a stop up against his roommate.
“Hey, there you are!” Mikkel said, with exaggerated cheer. He could clearly tell they were in the middle of an alibi, and just as clearly didn’t know how to back them up. “How was—”
“Stargazing!” Anders and Rayna said together, before he could finish.
“Stargazing,” he agreed, nodding hard. Torsten turned and looked over his shoulder at him for a long moment, and Mikkel stopped nodding.
“We were just outside,” Ellukka said. “We’d have heard you if you called for us. And we weren’t long.”
“That’s right,” Mikkel agreed. “They had dinner with us just before.”
“Are you sure?” Valerius asked, looking at the redheaded boy and then back at his daughter.
“Father!” said Ellukka, indignant.
Anders flicked a glance to Torsten. The big man was staring at Anders’s chest.Was the map visible? Had it somehow edged out of his pocket?He looked down and saw that the bright pink-and-gold waistcoat he’d been wearing as part of his disguise in Holbard was there on show, looking nothing like the clothes he’d been taking from the dragons’ store cupboards. Torsten had to be wondering where it had come from. Anders realized with a chill that Rayna still had a green-and-gold shawl tied over her skirts.
“Time we started getting ready for bed,” Rayna said, with a polite bow to first Valerius and then Torsten. “Good night!”
“Listen, I—” Torsten began.
But Rayna grabbed Ellukka’s hand, hurrying off down the nearest hallway, and a moment later the others were all piling in after her. Nobody called them back.
“Let’s talk in our room,” said Anders.
“With food,” Rayna added.
“I’ll get it,” Theo volunteered. “But don’t start without me!”
Anders, Lisabet, and Mikkel settled in on his bed, Rayna and Ellukka side by side on Lisabet’s.
Mikkel shook his head sadly as the others shed some layers, warmed up, and waited for Theo. “Leif asked if you were back,” he reported. “I said yes, and last time I saw you, you were eating dinner, so he went off to look for you. Then I saw him again later, and he hadn’t found you, of course, so I sent him to the classroom. It was kind of a mess.”
Theo showed up then with a tray piled high with thickly buttered slices of brown bread, two big bowls of stew—one for each bed—with six spoons, and a bag of apples tucked under his arm. “Okay,” he said, distributing the food. “Go.”
As they hurriedly ate, they told Theo and Mikkel everything that had happened that day. Anders could tell almost straight away that, like Ellukka, Mikkel could see in the Sun Scepter the possibilities for beating the wolves once and for all. Theo didn’t look as enthusiastic about that idea. Dragon he might be, but he’d only left his family in Holbard a few weeks ago, and of course he still loved them.
When they were all done with the story, Anders spoke into the silence that followed. He knew what he said next was going to be very important, and he’d chosen his words carefully on the way back from Holbard.
Now he felt as if he were leaping out into the air, trusting Rayna to soar out beneath him and catch him. Trusting her to back him, as the two of them had always backed each other, no matter what. He hoped she’d meant what she’d said before, about being both wolf and dragon born.
“There’s only one way we’re going to use the scepter,” he said, making his voice firm.
“What’s that?” asked Mikkel.
“We’re not going to use it to help either side win,” Anders said. “If we can find it at all, we’re going to use it to keep things equal between the wolves and the dragons. There can’t be more battles, no matter who has the advantage. We’re lucky nobody was killed last time.”
To his intense relief, Rayna nodded. “Anders and I are the only ones who can use the map to find it,” she said. “So that’s the deal.”
