The children of Eteer, exiled from their home upon the coast, wailed under the whips of their Gosharian masters. Clad in rags, their backs striped, the slaves climbed the mountainside, some moving across scaffolding, others clinging to the bare rock. Their picks and chisels worked at the stone, forming the shape of a great statue five hundred feet tall—the goddess Shahazar, her breasts bare, her navel shining with jewels, her head that of a serpent.

At the feet of the statue, more Eteerian slaves toiled. They were digging a tunnel between the statue's feet, raising columns to flank it, and carving a great staircase that led from the desert to the entrance. This was more than a statue, Issari realized; the granite Shahazar was guarding a temple being dug into the mountain.

All across the work site, the Gosharian masters patrolled. They whipped Eteerians, laughing as they bloodied the slaves. One old woman collapsed, spilling the basket of rocks she carried. The masters kicked her and snickered as she wailed. A child pleaded for mercy; the masters beat him, lashing his chest, his arms, his face. The cries of Eteer rolled across the mountainside, cries of agony and of hope.

"Issari! Issari! The white dragon rises!"

"You cry to me," Issari whispered, gliding above. "And I hear your cry, Eteer."

Tanin flew up to glide at her side. "What's the plan?"

She gave him a wry smile. "To show Goshar the might of dragons."

And then fly home, she thought. To Requiem. To Laira. Her eyes stung, for she missed her family, and she missed her home in the north, but she would not abandon the children of Eteer, not while blood still pumped in her veins and her wings still found her sky.

Across the mountainside, the Gosharian masters shouted and pointed at the approaching dragons. Some fired arrows. Others fled. Issari and Tanin glided closer.

"The overseer is there." Issari pointed a claw. "He stands upon the head of the statue."

Tanin nodded. "Right. We burn him, then get everyone out."

Issari shook her head, scales clattering. "We speak to him. We will speak reason. We might not need to burn anyone; enough have died today."

She cringed inwardly to remember those guards she had burned in the palace. She felt no guilt for slaying the obese abina, but what of his men? Had the palace guards truly held her any animosity? And yet she had shifted into a dragon, and she had burned them dead, as Tanin had burned soldiers upon the walls outside his prison. Issari liked to think of herself as a creature of starlight, pure and good, yet perhaps she was more a creature of fire and blood. Perhaps dragons were creatures both noble and terrible, and for the first time, Issari thought she understood why so many feared the children of Requiem.