In that stillness, Corinn saw the figure on the creature's back. Mena. Her sister had ridden the beast. Now she slid down and hit the stones merrily. She grinned ear to ear and, fixing her eyes on her older sister, asked, as if it were the most natural question in the world, "Did you get my letter?"

C HAPTER

Mena had known there were considerable risks, but she thought she and Elya could pull it off. The night sky would provide cover. They would leave Melio and the others in northern Talay and fly high over Bocoum, then low across the Inner Sea. They would approach Acacia from the east, flying over the crags at the back of the palace. She knew the Blood Moon banquet would be in full swing, and that no bows were allowed. There would be no weapons at all among the guests, and the guards were not overnumerous. She had sat through enough of these events herself to know that. Anyway, the guards would rush to protect Corinn before launching any attack. That, she figured, would give her time to make an entrance that would be written down in Acacian official histories.

That was how she had planned it, and that was the way it had played out: a good bit of confusion and shouting and brandished weapons and indignation, yes, but nothing she had not expected. Just why it felt so important to make such an entrance was a complicated thing she had not sorted out in her mind. She did have one answer that justified it, as she explained to her sister early the next morning, when she was summoned to her.

"What was the meaning of that?" Corinn asked, in lieu of a greeting.

When they were apart, Mena had difficulty remembering Corinn as a child or thinking of her as a sibling. It was only the somewhat distant, somewhat frightening queen whom she recalled. But when they were together, there were moments when Mena saw Corinn as the sister she once knew. Moments when Mena recognized the pursing of Corinn's lips as an insecure gesture made when she felt her beauty was not enough.

Mena chose not to let this official summons become as "official" as Corinn likely wanted. She strode in with a pleasant expression on her face and plopped down on the nearest comfortable seat. She stretched, and in so doing discovered that a yawn resided in her throat and wished to be let free. Corinn watched her, standing with her arms folded and her face wearing a scowl of undisguised annoyance.

"Nice to see you as well, Sister," Mena said, once the long yawn had slipped away. "I can't believe Dariel has truly sailed to the Other Lands. Any word from him?"

"No," Corinn said. "No, there couldn't be. Not yet. No messenger birds fly the Gray Slopes. We won't hear from him until he arrives back at the Outer Isles. Just a few weeks, though, if all has gone well. You will be told about it later. Now, what was the meaning of last night's show?"

"I do wish he were here. I thought about him often while I was hunting, and so looked forward to seeing him." She paused a moment, exhaled, and finally acknowledged Corinn's question, though with no more solemnity than before. "What was the meaning of it? That's a funny question, really. I mean, imagine if some adult said that when we were girls." She put on a gruff voice: "'What's the meaning of this, young lady?' We would have laughed him out of the room."

"Have you lost your wits?"

"No, not at all," Mena said. "Just the opposite. I've gained some wit. Corinn, I didn't mean to upstage you. I just wanted people to see Elya before they heard tales of her, just see with their own eyes and realize how gentle she is. Word of it is probably halfway around the empire by now, and I'm glad of it. I want her safe. I want every fool with a bow or with delusions of grandeur about dragon slaying to know that she is not a target. She's under the protection of-well, of the queen of Acacia, right? Tell me you don't think she's lovely. You must come and see her. She slept the night in the courtyard off my chambers. It's so funny to see her here, beside household items. You should see how she acted the first time she saw a mirror-"

"You're not making sense." Corinn's anger had slipped just a fraction toward perplexity. "What is that thing?"

"That thing is my good friend. No harm can come to her. None at all. You're to put word out to that effect. A royal decree. Let everybody know it." Corinn began to protest, but Mena calmed her with a somber change in her tone. "We've started this from the wrong end. Sit with me. Let me explain it all from the beginning, and then come and meet her with me. Properly, I mean, not with all the confusion of last night."

To Mena's relief, Corinn only held her pressed-lip expression for a few more seconds. Then she called for a pot of tea and sat across from her sister as a servant entered with it. When the servant left them with steaming cups, Mena began her tale.

She told it all just as she remembered. Corinn had heard reports of their progress with the foulthings at every stage, but reports were dry things with no emotion to them. The emotion was what Mena wanted Corinn to understand. She wanted her to know how hard it was for her, seeking out monsters and seeing all their foulness and killing them one by one. She may have been marvelously skilled at it. She may have taken risks and planted fatal blows when others would readily have done so in her place, but none of that meant it was easy, satisfying, enjoyable, thrilling, or any such nonsense. Just the opposite. The fact that she had a natural gift for slaughter was a great burden to her.

"We all have burdens," Corinn said. "You don't doubt the rightness of what you did?"

No, Mena did not. She described the bloated vultures and the foraging creatures, the lion with the eyes down its back, the snakes on legs, the monstrosity that had once been a fish but became a ravening mouth. The tenten beast, she said, had stared at her with malevolence different from a mere animal's. It had been changed not just in size and shape but inside its mind as well.

"The Giver's tongue is a foulness," she said. "All traces of it have to be wiped out."

"You're mistaken," Corinn said. "It's not the Giver's tongue that's foul; it's the corruptions of the Santoth. They were banished for a reason, Mena, and the years in exile have done nothing but make them dangerous ogres. If they made the foulthings, it's because they are foul themselves. Remember, though, if there is truth in any of the Giver's story, it begins with him creating the entire earth and all the many good things in it."

Mena eyed her as she sipped her tea. "You seem surer of this than you were before."

"I know more than I did before. You've been away, but I trust you've heard rumors of the work I performed in Talay."

"I heard tales about you bringing water from the ground wherever you pleased. I didn't know what to make of it."

"Make of it that I've been learning ancient wisdom. Sorcery, if you must call it something, although it's not so exciting as that may sound."

"How? Who is teaching you?"

"I'm teaching myself from some old texts. Don't look so frightened, Mena. I haven't gone mad any more than you have. Nor is it dangerous. Just think of it as-as if I were studying medicine or music. I'm learning things that expand my knowledge in useful ways."

"But to make water come out of-"

"Water comes out of the ground all the time. There's nothing more natural. I just help direct it. But go on with your tale. It's more amusing than my study of ancient spells."

Though she was not sure that was true, Mena did want to get to Elya. She had not said the things she wanted to yet. She described the day she had crept up to the lip of the hill and looked down into that orchard and first seen that reptilian head. Some part of her had known that here was something different, but her mind had not grasped it in time. She told of how they had hunted it, shot it through with crossbow bolts, and tried to weigh it to the ground. They had torn shreds in its marvelous wings. None of it was easy to relive: neither her flight clutching its tail nor the battering she took landing nor the sight of what she thought to be the dead creature when she had climbed down to look upon it.