An hour later Dev had caught, cooked, and eaten a fish. He found a couple of buckets, which could come in handy for fishing in the future. And he stumbled across a well in a corner of the courtyard that had a hand pump. After a few minutes of pumping, the water turned clear and tasted good. He didn’t even need to go all the way to the river to get a drink. That seemed like a luxury.

Soon he returned to the center turret and climbed up to the bulbous library tower. He looked around more thoroughly and began to count the volumes of books, but gave up after a few minutes. Then he tried out all of the sofas to see which would make the best and softest bed and beat the dust out of it. While the dust settled, Dev went over to the corner to check out all of the instruments and tried playing each one. He made a loud racket but didn’t care.

Before sunset he looked through an entire section of books and found several in a language he could read. As he settled down on his sofa, facing the window that looked to the east, he smiled contentedly. This broken-down mess of a palace was all his. Not just because he’d decided to stay since he felt a calling to this place. But because his inner sense told him he was the rightful owner. Dev was of the line of Suresh—there was no question in his mind anymore. Ashguard had been one of his ancestors, perhaps even his grandfather. The ancestor broth that Thisbe had fed him told him so.

Sure, there was a lot of work to do if Dev ever decided to restore this land and these structures. But he didn’t need a whole palace, or even very much of it. And he didn’t need to fix anything at all if he didn’t want to. He had everything he could ever want: a river, a sofa, and books to be his friends.

As he stared out the window, watching the sky lose its light, he saw a spot like a fly on the windowpane. But it grew larger, and more spots appeared. Dev got up and went to the window, then squinted through it. Was it a flock of birds?

They grew larger still. Very big birds? Some of Fifer’s falcons, perhaps? Had she sent them with a message? What was happening?

The darkness fought against Dev’s vision, but soon the spots in the distance grew large enough for Dev to recognize without the need for direct sunlight.

They weren’t birds.

His chest tightened and his breath ceased. It was a posse of dragons, with the Revinir in the lead. And they were coming straight for Dev’s palace.

An End of Something

The long day stretched into night in Artimé, and Fifer and her team were hard at work in very different ways. By the time all of the dissenters had been moved from the lawn to the confines of the hospital ward, other things were progressing as well.