It wasn’t a great plan. It was barely a plan at all. And it’d be far easier with Crows’ help than his recurring lament that he’d already fought his battle and lost.

The wind on top of the mountain was starting to batter her and make her cold. She decided that she’d go away and think about things again. She had one last look, and the more she looked, the less likely it seemed that she’d be able to get anyone out at all. Maybe one or two, if they were quick and quiet, hidden beneath shadow-cloaks woven from her own fingers.

That wasn’t going to be good enough, though. She wanted everybody: her lot, and anyone else who would come, free of the person who’d enslaved them.

She glanced behind before she backed up.

And saw a dragon, perched on a rock near the summit, staring at her with its hard, black-marble eyes.

There was nowhere to run to, and nowhere to hide. The only way down the mountain not barred by a giant winged lizard was straight over the cliff.

‘Fuck. Me.’

Crows hadn’t warned her about this possibility, and he really should have. Or perhaps he had, and she hadn’t been listening. Though casually mentioning that there might be dragons ought to have got her undivided attention. It flexed its wings and blotted out the half-moon. The gust of wind it caused raised a hail of grit, and she had to blink it out of her eyes.

Its scales glinted in the silver light as it loosely folded its wings against its sinuous body. Its two clawed feet rasped against the joints of the stones, and its snake-like head danced on its neck, tasting the air with its tongue.

She placed her hands firmly on the rock and shuffled around on her knees to face the beast. She had no idea what to do. The East End had many dangers. Massive fuck-off dragons wasn’t one of them.

Perhaps it would just fly away. Perhaps it didn’t see her as food, and if she wove a shadow-cloak around herself and crawled away, it’d leave her alone. Perhaps it was a tame dragon, and she could coo to it until it let her scratch it behind its ears. She couldn’t see any ears, though. Its head was smooth and dart-shaped.

In the absence of anything else to try, she swallowed hard against the brick in her throat.

‘Good dragon?’ She knelt up, very slowly, holding her palms out in what she hoped was a calming, non-threatening way. She was a fair way away from it, and if it got lairy, she could stop and back up again.