the city guards most of the time, but when there were that many all in one place they made her nervous.
Eastgate should be all right, though. She had never been there, let alone out of the city, but it should be all right.
Grandgate or Newgate might be closer than Eastgate, but she didn’t know the streets to find them. Eastgate was easy.
“Come on, Tharn,” she said, and together they set out along Games Street.
It took the better part of an hour to reach Eastgate Plaza. Sirinita didn’t think the distance was even a whole mile, but there were so many distractions!
Games Street, after all, was lined with gaming houses. There were cardrooms and dice halls and archery ranges and wrestling rings and any number of other entertainments, and there were people drifting in and out of them. One man who smelled of oushka offered to gamble with Sirinita, his gold against her dragon; she politely declined. And dragons weren’t often seen in Eastside, so several people stopped to stare and ask her questions.
At last, however, she reached Eastgate Plaza, where a few farmers and tradesmen were peddling their wares in a dusty square beside the twin towers of Eastgate. It wasn’t terribly busy; Sirinita supposed most of the business went on at the other squares and markets, such as Eastgate Circle, four blocks to the west, or Farmgate, or Market.
The gate towers were big forbidding structures of dark gray stone, either one of them several times the size of Sirinita’s house, which wasn’t small. The gates between them were bigger than any doors Sirinita had ever seen – and they were all standing open.
All she had to do was take Tharn out there, outside the walls, and he wouldn’t have to be killed.
She marched forward resolutely, Tharn trotting at her heel.
Of course, it meant she would have to turn Tharn loose, and never see him again – she couldn’t live outside the walls. Her mother would never allow it. And besides, there were pirates and monsters and stuff out there.
But at least he’d still be alive.
That was what she was thinking when she walked into the spear-shaft.
She blinked, startled, then started to duck under it, assuming that it was in her way by accident.
“Ho, there!” the guard who held the spear called, and he bent down and grabbed her arm with his other hand. “What’s your hurry?”
“I need to get my dragon out of the city,” Sirinita explained.
The guard looked at Tharn, then back at Sirinita. “Your dragon?”
“Yes. His name’s Tharn. Let go of my arm.” She tugged, but the guard’s fingers didn’t budge.
“Can’t do that,” he said. “Not yet, anyway. Part of my job is to keep track of any kids who enter or leave the city without their parents along. If, for example, you were to be running away from home, and your folks wanted to find you but couldn’t afford to hire a magician to do it, it’d make things much easier on them if they could ask the guards at the gate, ‘Did my girl come through here? A pretty thing in a blue tunic, about so tall?’ And I’d be able to tell them, so they’d know whether you’re inside or outside the city walls.”
Sirinita blinked up at the man. He was a big, heavy fellow, with deep brown eyes and a somewhat ragged beard.
“What if I went out a different gate?” she asked.
“Oh, we report everything to the captain, and he tallies up the reports every day, so your folks could check the captain’s list. Then they’d even know which gate you went out, which might give them an idea where you’re going.”
Sirinita said, “My name’s Sirinita, and I’m just going out to find a place for my dragon. I’ll be back by nightfall.”
“Just Sirinita?”
“Sirinita of Ethshar. Except the neighbors call me Sirinita of the Dragon.”
“I can understand that.” The guard released her arm. “Go on, then.”
Sirinita had gone no more than three steps when the man called after her, “Wait a minute.”
“Now what is it?” she asked impatiently, turning back.
“What do you mean, ‘find a place for your dragon’?”
“I mean find somewhere he can live. He can’t stay in the city any more.”
“You don’t have any supplies.”
Sirinita blinked up at him in surprise. “Supplies?”
“Right, supplies. It’s a long way to anywhere it would be safe to turn a dragon loose.”
“It is?” Sirinita was puzzled. “I was just going to take him outside the walls.”
“What, on someone’s farm, or in the middle of a village?”
“No, of course not,” Sirinita said, but the guard’s words were making her rethink the situation. She probably would have just turned Tharn loose on someone’s farm.
But that wouldn’t be a good idea, would it?
“Um,” she said. “I’m going to take him to my grandfather, I’m not going to turn him loose.”
Her grandfathers both lived in the city – one was a Seagate merchant, the other owned a large and successful carpentry business in Crafton – but she didn’t see any reason to tell the guard that.
“Your grandfather’s got a farm near here?”
Sirinita nodded.
The guard considered her for a moment, then turned up an empty palm. “All right,” he said. “Go ahead, then.”
“Thank you.” She turned eastward once again, and marched out of the city.
She wondered what sort of supplies the guard had meant. Whatever they were, she would just have to do without them. It couldn’t be that far to somewhere she could turn Tharn loose.
She looked out across the countryside, expecting to see a few farms and villages – she had seen pictures, and had a good idea what they should look like, with their half-timbered houses and pretty green fields.
What she actually saw, however, was something else entirely.
The road out of the city was a broad expanse of bare, hard-packed dirt crossed here and there with deep, muddy ruts. A few crude houses built of scrap wood were scattered around, and people stood or crouched in doorways, hawking goods and services to passersby – goods and services that were not allowed in the city, and Ethshar was a fairly tolerant place.
A hundred yards from the city the farms began – not with quaint cottages and tidy little fields, but with endless rows of stubby green plants in black dirt, and rough wooden sheds set here and there. The only roads were paths just wide enough for a wagon.
Sirinita was surprised, but walked on, Tharn at her heels.
She was still walking, hours later, when the sun sank below the hills she had already crossed. She was dirty and exhausted and miserable.
She had finally reached farms that more or less resembled those in the pictures, at any rate – not so clean or so charming, but at least there were thatched farmhouses and barns, and the fields no longer stretched unbroken to the horizon.
But she hadn’t reached forests or mountains or even a fair-sized grove. The only trees were windbreaks or orchards or shade trees around houses. As far as she could see, from any hilltop she checked, there were only more farms – except to the west, of course, where she could sometimes, from the higher hills, still see the city walls, and where she thought she could occasionally catch the gleam of sunlight on the sea.
And everything smelled of the cow manure the farmers used as fertilizer.
The World, she thought bitterly, was obviously bigger than she had realized. No wonder her father’s trading expeditions lasted a month at a time!
Tharn had not enjoyed taking so long a walk, either; he was a healthy and active young dragon, but he was still accustomed to taking an afternoon nap, to resting when he felt like it. He had not appreciated it when his mistress had dragged him along, and had even kicked him when he tried to sleep.
And when the sun went down, he had had enough; he flopped onto a hillock, mashing some farmer’s pumpkin vines, and curled up to sleep.
Sirinita, too exhausted for anger or protest, looked down at him and started crying.
