above them, his face transfigured by what he had just witnessed. The newly released dragon was gone, already far beyond sight, but still the boy stared after her.
'I don't think we should count on her to return and save us. I think that is up to us,' Reyn said pragmatically.
Selden shook his head. 'Oh, I did not mean that. I would not expect her to notice us that much. I expect we'll have to get ourselves out of here. But I should like to see her, just once more. Such a marvel she was. Such a joy.' He lifted his eyes once more to the punctured ceiling. Despite the dirt and muck that streaked his face and burdened his clothes, the boy's expression was luminous.
Sun spilled into the ruined chamber, bringing weak light but little additional warmth. Reyn could no longer recall what it felt like to be dry, let alone warm. Hunger and thirst tormented him. It was hard to force himself to move. But he smiled. Selden was right. A marvel. A joy.
The dome of the buried Crowned Rooster chamber was cracked like the top of a soft-boiled egg. He stood atop some of the fallen debris and looked up at dangling tree roots and the small window of sky. The dragon had escaped that way, but he doubted that he and Selden would. The chamber was filling rapidly with muck as the swamp trickled in to claim the city that had defied it for so long. The flow of chill mud and water would engulf them both long before they could find a way to reach the egress above them.
Yet bleak as his situation was, he still marveled at the memory of the dragon that had emerged from her centuries of waiting. The frescoes and mosaics that he had seen all his life had not prepared him for the reality of the dragon. The word 'blue' had gained a new meaning in the brilliance of her scales. He would never forget how her lax wings had taken on strength and color as she pumped them. The snake-stench of her transformation still hung heavy in the moist air. He could see no remnants of the wizardwood log that had encased her. She appeared to have absorbed it all as she metamorphosed into a mature dragon.
But now she was gone. And the problem of survival remained for Reyn and the boy. The earthquakes of the night before had finally breached the walls and ceilings of the sunken city. The swamps outside were bleeding into this chamber. The only means of escape was high overhead, a tantalizing window of blue sky.
Mud bubbled wetly at the edge of the piece of fallen dome Reyn stood on. Then it triumphed, swallowing the edges of the crystal and slipping toward his bare feet.
'Reyn.' Selden's voice was hoarse with his thirst. Malta's little brother perched atop a slowly sinking island of debris. In the dragon's scrabbling effort to escape, she had dislodged rubble, earth and even a tree. It had fallen into the sunken chamber and some of it still floated on the rising tide of muck. The boy knit his brows as his natural pragmatism reasserted itself. 'Maybe we could lift up that tree and prop it up against the wall. Then, if we climbed up it, we could-'
'I'm not strong enough.' Reyn broke into the boy's optimistic plan. 'Even if I were strong enough to lift the tree, the muck is too soft to support me. But we might be able to break off some of the smaller branches and make a sort of raft. If we can spread out our weight enough, we can stay on top of this stuff.'
Selden looked hopefully up at the hole where light seeped in. 'Do you think the mud and water will fill up this room and lift us up there?'
'Maybe,' Reyn lied heartily. He surmised that the muck would stop far short of filling the chamber. They would probably suffocate when the rising tide swallowed them. If not, they would eventually starve here. The piece of dome under his feet was sinking rapidly. Time to abandon it. He jumped from it to a heap of fallen earth and moss, only to have it plunge away under him. The muck was softer than he had thought. He lunged toward the tree trunk, caught one of its branches, and dragged himself out and onto it. The rising mire was at least chest-deep now, and the consistency of porridge. If he sank into it, he would die in its cold clutch. His move had brought him much closer to Selden. He extended a hand toward the boy, who leapt from his sinking island, fell short, and then scrabbled over the soft mud to reach him. Reyn pulled him up onto the fallen evergreen's trunk. The boy huddled shivering against him. His clothing was plastered to his body with the same mud that streaked his face and hair.
'I wish I hadn't lost my tools and supplies. But they're long buried now. We'll have to break these branches off as best we can and pile them up in a thick mat.'
'I'm so tired.' The boy stated it as a fact, not a complaint. He glanced up at Reyn, then stared at him. 'You don't look so bad, even up close. I always wondered what you looked like under that veil. In the tunnels, with only the candle, I couldn't really see your face. Then, last night, when your eyes were glowing blue, it was scary at first. But after a while, it was like, well, it was good to see them and know you were still there.'
Reyn laughed easily. 'Do my eyes glow? Usually that doesn't happen until a Rain Wild man is much older. We just accept it as a sign of a man reaching full maturity.'
'Oh. But in this light, you look almost normal. You don't have many of those wobbly things. Just some scales around your eyes and mouth.' Selden stared at him frankly.
Reyn grinned. 'No, not any of those wobbly things yet. But they, too, may come as I get older.'
'Malta was afraid you were going to be all warty. Some of her friends teased her about it, and she would get angry. But…' Selden suddenly seemed to realize that his words were not tactful. 'At first, I mean, when you first started courting her, she worried about it a lot. Lately, she hasn't talked about it much,' he offered encouragingly. He glanced at Reyn, then moved away from him along the tree trunk. He seized a branch and tugged at it. 'These are going to be tough to break.'
'I imagine she's had other things on her mind,' Reyn muttered. The boy's words brought a sickness to his heart. Did his appearance matter that much to Malta? Would he win her with his deeds, only to have her turn away from him when she saw his face? A bitter thought came to him. Perhaps she was already dead, and he would never know. Perhaps he would die, and she would never even see his face.
'Reyn?' Selden's voice was tentative. 'I think we'd better get to work on these branches.'
Reyn abruptly realized how long he had hunkered there in silence. Time to push useless thoughts aside and try to survive. He seized a needled branch in his hands and broke a bough from it. 'Don't try to break the whole branch off at once. Just take boughs from it. We'll pile them up there. We want to intermesh them, like thatching a roof-'
A fresh trembling of the earth broke his words. He clung to the tree trunk helplessly as a shower of earth rained down from the ruptured ceiling. Selden shrieked and threw his arms up to protect his head. Reyn scrabbled along the branchy trunk to reach him and shelter him with his body. The ancient door of the chamber groaned and suddenly sagged on its hinge. A flow of mud and water surged into the room from behind it.
CHAPTER TWO – Traders and Traitors
THE LIGHT SCUFF OF FOOTSTEPS WAS HER ONLY WARNING. IN THE KITCHEN garden, Ronica froze where she crouched. The sounds were coming up the carriageway. She seized her basket of turnips and fled to the shelter of the grape arbor. Her back muscles kinked protestingly at the sudden movement, but she ignored them. She'd rather be careful of her life than of her back. Silently she set the basket at her feet. Unbreathing, she peered through the hand-sized leaves of the vines. From their screening shelter, she could see a young man approaching the front entry of the house. A hooded cloak obscured his identity, and his furtive manner proclaimed his intentions.
He climbed the leaf-littered steps. At the door he hesitated, his boots grating on broken glass as he peered into the darkened house. He pushed at the big door that hung ajar. It scraped open and he slipped into the house.
Ronica took a deep breath and considered. He was probably just a scavenger, come to see if there was anything left to plunder. He would soon find there was not. What the Chalcedeans had not carried off, her neighbors had. Let him prowl through the ravaged house, and then he would leave. Nothing left in the house was worth risking herself. If she confronted him, she could be hurt. She tried to tell herself that there was nothing to gain. Still, she found herself gripping the cudgel that was now her constant companion as she edged toward the front door of her family home.
Her feet were silent as she picked her way up the debris-strewn steps and through the glass fragments. She peered around the door, but the intruder was out of sight. Soundlessly, she slipped inside the entry hall. She
