“No,” said Theo. “But I think they know he’s been talking to us. Or to someone, anyway. I only got there at the end of it, but four of the Wolf Guard were marching him out of his office, and right before they made it to the door, another one threw a blanket over the mirror.”
“They wouldn’t do that unless they thought he’d been using it,” Lisabet said.
“This is bad,” said Ellukka.
“This is really bad,” agreed Mikkel.
“We have to assume he won’t be back,” said Lisabet. “If they sent four guards to take him wherever he’s going, they don’t think he’s on their side. They won’t give him another chance to speak to whoever they think he’s speaking to.”
“Then we have to find some other wolves to help us,” Anders said. “We’re not going to find what we’re looking for here at Drekhelm. If it’s anywhere, it will be in the library at Ulfar.”
“Agreed,” said Lisabet. “But it’s getting harder and harder to get away from here without anyone noticing.”
“And...” It was hard to say, but Anders made himself. “I don’t know if our friends at Ulfar will help us. They barely, barely trust us.”
“We don’t have any choice but to ask them,” Rayna said, but she slipped her hand into his, squeezing for comfort.
“I don’t think we can talk Leif into leading a class trip to Holbard,” Ellukka said with a dark smile, her concern for the Drekleid showing through.
“Then we have to find a way to get to Holbard ourselves,” Lisabet said. “And convince Viktoria and Sak to help us. Without Hayn we’re on our own, and the Dragonmeet’s undermining Leif. It’s up to us to do something, and it has to be soon. It has to be tomorrow.”
“Can it wait even that long?” Mikkel asked, biting his lip.
“I think it has to,” Lisabet replied. “You’ve just flown all the way from the waterfall. You can’t fly on to Holbard tonight, you need to rest.” Reluctantly, the dragons all nodded. “And we’re going to have to find a way to speak to our friends,” she said. “It’s difficult to get in and out of Ulfar. When Anders and I were trying to find Rayna, we had to wait until our rest day to get outside. You can’t just come and go like dragons do here at Drekhelm. Sakarias and Viktoria got out to see us the day we got the map, and they probably got in a lot of trouble for it. We’ll have to hope they can do it again. But first, they’ll have to know we’re looking for them. Let’s all get some rest, and Anders and I will try and think of a way to get in contact with them.”
They parted ways, the four dragons leaving to take their plates back to the kitchen and head for bed.
Anders and Lisabet talked long into the night, pulling together worse and worse plans, and discarding each one in turn. The memory of their last visit to Holbard weighed heavily on them—the extra guards, the chill in the air, the sense of a city so wrapped up in tension that anything could happen. The walls of Ulfar had never seemed so high as now, when they were outside them.
By the next morning they had the beginnings of a plan, but no chance to share it with the others at breakfast. Nico and Krissin had taken up their place right beside the group’s table again, and this time they had company. Among the adults in the breakfast room was Torsten, and he eyeballed Anders and Lisabet for a long moment as he walked over to join Nico and Krissin.
“They’re not even pretending to support Leif,” Mikkel whispered, fuming. “And they’re Finskólars!”
“We’re not even pretending we like Torsten,” Ellukka pointed out.
“But Torsten’s against their own classmates,” Mikkel replied, his voice low and fierce. “Finskólars stick together.”
“Don’t be overheard,” was all Lisabet said, spooning up her porridge as if nothing was out of the ordinary. Anders tried to follow her example, though his stomach was turning flip-flops even thinking about the day ahead.
They had no chance to tell the others what they had in mind once they got to class either. This time the disruption wasn’t Nico and Krissin, but rather almost every member of the Dragonmeet, filing in the door in ones and twos to interrupt Leif every time he began to work with any of the students. Clearly there had been important discussions while he was away—and just as clearly, going away had been a miscalculation.It would be just their luck, Anders thought,if the Dragonmeet finally managed to make a decision right when it was least convenient.
At lunchtime, Leif simply gave up. “I think our work has been disrupted enough today,” he said, with a sigh. “There’s no need to return after you’ve eaten. If you wish to take your lessons elsewhere, please do so. If you would like the afternoon off, then please enjoy the time. We will attempt to resume classes tomorrow.”
Everyone filed out in worried silence, and Anders and his friends grabbed sandwiches and retired to the map room, gathering together on the far side of it and keeping their voices down, in case Nico and Krissin had managed to work out where they were and were listening at the door.
“We have an idea about how to get a message inside to our friends,” Lisabet said. “Ellukka can pretend she’s come from Sakarias’s family’s village and deliver a letter to him. We’ll have to hope they’re willing to answer and to help us.”
“If we go now, do you think there’s a chance we could get back before dinner?” Rayna asked, not sounding very hopeful.
“Not really,” Anders admitted. “We don’t know how quickly he’ll send his reply. And then, if he and the others will help us, it will take time to find the information we need, though Lisabet has some ideas on where they could look in the library.”
“It’s going to take alotlonger sending people in instead of doing it myself,” Lisabet said with a grimace.
“Lisabet’s kind of our library expert,” Anders explained. “Anyway, by the time we get a note in and out, and meet them, explain what we want, they find it, and they tell us the answer... someone here at Drekhelm is going to have missed us. Maybe everyone. So we think that if we can find the answer in Holbard, we need to go straight to where the piece of the scepter is hidden. And maybe even the place after that, if there’s a fourth piece. Once the Dragonmeet knows we’re gone, it might not be safe to come back until we’ve found the Sun Scepterandused it.”
Everyone’s faces were grim. But it was clear nobody had a better idea.
“It’ll be dangerous in Holbard, spending all that time there,” Ellukka said. “They have posters up with your faces on them, so we’ll have to stay almost completely on the rooftops.”
