Earlier today, she had watched Heeby hunting. She’d seen the red dragon open her wings and spring almost effortlessly into the air. Her wings had beat hard for a moment, and then she’d caught the motion of the air over the river and lifted. In a few moments she had dwindled to the size of a crow, and then to a hunting hawk. Heeby had circled high over the city, and Sintara had watched her and remembered in agony exactly how it felt, how you cupped your wings just so to capture a rising wall of warmer air, and how you spilled wind from your wings to go sliding down the sky.

She remembered. She knew. She was a dragon, a ruler of the Three Realms, a queen of earth and sky and water. Kelsingra with its wells of sweet silver was just across the river. A real dragon would simply open her wings and fly there.

She had opened her wings and felt the sun on them, felt them warming in the kiss of light. She moved them slightly and felt the wind they made. She recalled how Thymara had mocked and defied her, calling her lazy, even stupid. She recalled all of Heeby’s foolish early efforts at flights. How ungainly she had looked, how clumsy as over and over again she had tried to fly and failed. She’d had no pride, no dignity at all.

She heard a distant cry, the shrill whistle of a hunting dragon. Her keen eyes picked out Heeby as she suddenly folded her wings and stooped on something. Something large, Sintara was suddenly certain. Something large and meaty, something hot with blood.

She shook out her wings to the summer sunlight. The hillside was wide and green before her. And across the river was Kelsingra, city of Elderlings and dragons.

She ran half a dozen steps before she had the courage to beat her wings. Her feet left the ground briefly, and then she crashed down again. But she didn’t fall. Her wings were open and wide and they caught her and cushioned her fall.

“Sintara!” she heard someone shout in awe. “Look at Sintara!”

Another dozen running steps and this time she beat her wings more slowly and powerfully.

And when she leaped, she left the ground behind.

Day the 17th of the Rain Moon

Year the 6th of the Independent Alliance of Traders

From Detozi, Keeper of the Birds, Trehaug

To Reyall, Acting Keeper of the Birds, Bingtown

Enclosed, a formal announcement from the Dushank Trader Family of the Rain Wild Traders, Trehaug, to be publicly posted in the Bingtown Traders’ Concourse, being an announcement of the intention of the Trader family of Dushank of the Rain Wild Traders to accept a marriage offer from the Dunwarrow Trader family to join their offspring in marriage.

Reyall!

And so you are the first to know of the official announcement.

Erek and Detozi

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