Page 41 of House of the Iron Reaper

“Oh.” I look at my hand, before repeating the gesture back at him. “My thanks for your condolences.”

“Fast learner.” Ronan grins. “In Swordstead, we call folk like you keen-eyed. Only need to watch something once, and it’s in their head forever.”

“Keen-eyed,” I repeat. “That makes me sound much shrewder than I am.”

Ronan laughs boisterously.

“Well, we can’t all be of scholarly inclination, I suppose. I’ve known a fair few folk in my time who knew the world by page, but not by foot,” he says with a grin. “Anyway, how do these straps work, then?”

Bemused, I let Ronan take one of the sled straps from my shoulder.

“It hooks around, like so.” I show him the other strap.

“Aha.”

Ronan slips his meaty arm through the loop and secures the strap onto his own shoulder. We stand side-by-side, one strap each.

“Perfect!” he declares. “So, where are we heading?”

There is a long, quiet moment where we simply stare at each other.

“We?” I ask eventually.

“I assume you were going somewhere?”

“Yes, I was…” I look at Ronan, and then down the street, and then back at Ronan. “House Iron.”

“Splendid, I’ve never been. Left foot first then?”

Overwhelmed in the face of Ronan’s utter confidence, I only nod and do as he says, putting my left foot first. The load is considerably lighter with Ronan pulling one half, and I nearly fall forward.

After a few stumbles, we find our rhythm. Ronan matches my pace, step for step, as we make our way down the street.

“This reminds me of moon-running!” Ronan says with delight. “Every full moon, a pack of us transform so we can pull great sleds rife with goods across the mountain. We run together, side-by-side in pairs of two, and oh the speeds we get to! It’s wonderful stuff.”

Ronan chatters as we walk in tandem, and I am content to listen to him. His stories of Swordstead are interesting enough, I barely notice the usual burn in my muscles—“Did you know there’s an old dragon arena in Swordstead? We use it as a council chamber for the Five now!”—and his glee at the small, dragonesque things we pass is infectious.

He points out the shrines scattered across every street, some towering high with spiralling roofs and coloured glass in the windows, some small and simple, with just a place to kneel. The murals painted across each spare space on the walls, some of them Saints, some of them Ascended dragons. I explain to Ronan that the murals closer to Houses are often of Ascended dragons who were born there—if he should visit House Obsidian, he will find the mural to Aythora nearby.

“Those fellas in the blue,” he comments, nodding at a Baidu as they pass. “They deliver messages?”

“Baidus,” I tell him. “And yes.”

“Why not a letter?” he enquires, eyeing another Baidu.

I squint at him.

“A letter? What is that?”

“Ah,” Ronan clucks, taking a moment to swipe the sweat from his face. “It’s like a… like a message, written on paper.”

I scrunch my nose, trying to picture it.

“Like a book?” I ask.

I have only ever seen one book in my lifetime, owned by a siren merchant who read behind her stall. There is a library on the upper-tier, managed by House Obsidian, but that is because a lone Obsidian dragon hoards books, not because dragons use them. I know of a written dragon language and can recognise it by sight—like the word inked on the back of my hand—but I have never known enough to write it.

“Of sorts,” Ronan replies. “Like one sheet of a book, specifically to pass on a message.”