Stammel dictated his letter to a scribe, speaking of “good friends” who had found him a home and asking release from his oath. Then he gave the dragon his uniform, folded into a neat bundle, and the dragon walked away from the town to change and fly away.

Stammel strolled about the market with his stick and bought himself a sweet pastry at one stall and then a tankard of ale. He felt emptied of his old life, the shape of himself waiting for something else to fill it. He sat on a bench listening to ordinary people talking about weather and crops and the market for wool and answered a few questions about himself with pure invention, feeling no guilt for the tale he spun. He would never be back here. Someone offered him another mug of ale; he accepted it and then followed his nose to a stall where he bought two rolls stuffed with fried mushrooms, onion, and ham.

It was evening before the dragon returned, walking up to him in man’s shape there in the market square.

“You are sure?”

“Yes.” That empty feeling still made him ache, but he also felt certain as stone that his decision was right.

“Do you want to know what he said?”

He did and did not, but only one answer would serve, in courtesy to both the man and the dragon. “Yes.”

“He released you,” the dragon said, “and said you had a home there if ever you chose to return. He gave me a ring for you to show, should you have need.”

“He is a good man,” Stammel said. Into the empty feeling came another, a lift of joy. “I hope he does not worry.” He knew Arcolin would; he knew he had to bear that.

“Are you ready, then?” the dragon said without answering the implied question.

“I am,” Stammel said. They walked out of the village, a distance away the dragon chose, then the dragon shifted into his own form, and Stammel walked into the dragon’s mouth until the tongue moved beneath him, drawing him in to the same comfortable place he had sheltered so many times since he’d left the Company.

He slept away the time—whatever time it was—until the dragon woke him, and in his mind the voice said, “We are here.” Beneath him the surface moved, lifting him, pushing him toward the open mouth. Scents rushed in—not the delicate scents of a northern spring but summer smells he remembered from here and there in Aarenis: oilberry trees, pungent herbs, roses, a whiff of goats and pigs, the tang of the sea … a strong breeze carrying all of that and more. Here it was warm, as warm as the dragon’s mouth, with sunlight he could see as a bright blur though he could see nothing else.