Nazagin’s egg hadn’t come from the imperial hatchery, hence why Popilia had had to travel so far for her hatching. The small number of eggs she caught sight of when she reached the bottom of the stairs, each nestled in individual heated alcoves, were reserved almost exclusively for the dragon guard. Wild-born dragons were more prestigious. Popilia vaguely recalled someone telling her that dragons bred in captivity came out smaller and weaker, too.

  It any case, it struck her as an ignoble place to find her parents. She picked them out at the far side of the room, sheltering in an archway. Two of her brothers stood alongside them – her second eldest off to one side trying to appear confident, the youngest held in the crook of their mother’s arm.

  ‘Popilia?’ Her mother looked up at the sound of her approach, a lock of unkempt hair sliding over her cheek. But for that, her parents were much as she had seen them earlier. Only their faces were paler, more drawn, their eyes startled wide with the shock of the unfamiliar.

  ‘It’s so good to see you,’ her mother continued. ‘We had worried...’

  Her father took a step forwards, his jaw set and eyes flashing in a way that sent a spike of panic through Popilia. She hesitated mid step.

  ‘You can’t bring your dragon in here, daughter,’ he said. ‘Take that thing out of here.’

  He had drawn his sword. It nestled there in his hand like a shard of light, eager to flash into motion. She hadn’t even seen him draw it.

  ‘She won’t hurt you,’ Popilia said, and swallowed with some difficulty. ‘And she won’t be going anywhere.’

  ‘Don’t be absurd.’ He stepped forwards. The blade lost the light, darkening, seeming to drink in the shadows. ‘This is no time to try proving yourself, daughter. The bonds between dragon and rider are broken. You cannot control her. You should count yourself lucky she hasn’t already turned on you. We thought she had – we sent out your tutor and the guards, but they couldn’t find you.’

  Nazagin bared her teeth and flexed her wings. ‘You should count yourself lucky that I can’t breathe fire, your grace.’

  ‘Imperial highness,’ Popilia corrected out of habit, then grimaced at the hatchling. ‘Sorry.’ She turned back to her father. ‘You’ve misread the situation. Didn’t you feel it, when it happened?’ She had no idea where his dragon was, whether it had been nearby, if it had tried to kill him and been killed in return or just flown away. ‘The bond isn’t broken, just changed.’

  ‘A thing that does not work is broken.’ He gestured up with the point of his sword. ‘The dragons can choose to kill us. That goes against the point of the bond.’

  ‘You say "choose".’ Popilia took her own step forwards, shoes crunching lightly over scattered rushes. ‘So you know the dragons are capable of choice. You weren’t surprised when Nazagin spoke just now, either. So you’ve known all along: the dragons are just as smart as we are.’

  Her father sighed, and the sound grated at her nerves like a rusty saw.

  ‘Where are you going with this, Popilia?’ he said. ‘We live as we do now because of the dragons. We united the kingdoms because we were the first to tame them. You must understand the logistics of this – if we didn’t use them, someone else would.’

  ‘Did you never even consider talking to them first? What do we do when we find a new kingdom? We don’t make them enemies, but allies – isn’t that what you’re marrying me off to Khunuchan for?’ Not that her family could exactly marry anyone off to a dragon, but the basic concept of diplomacy still applied. ‘You didn’t even try. You just made slaves of them.’

  A muscle in her father’s jaw twitched. ‘Kingdoms are part of civilisation, Popilia. Human civilisation. We deal with them because we know they follow the same fundamental patterns as we do ourselves. There is no common ground between human and dragon, no point in diplomacy.’

  ‘Of course there is.’ Nothing he was saying made sense. She could tell from the tightness in his shoulders, the indignance in his eyes – he was just pulling excuses out of thin air.

  She hesitated before her next words, but a gentle nudge from Nazagin set her into motion. ‘If you don’t see any common ground, it’s because you didn’t look for it. I found it.’ Or she was shown it, anyway – she hadn’t exactly gone looking. ‘My kidnappers took me to the dragons. They treated me well. They seemed well enough part of civilisation to me. You shouldn’t have—’

  ‘Stupid girl!’ her father snapped, his teeth bared.

  Popilia did her best to keep her composure, even when he stabbed the air in front of him with his sword.

  ‘Ungrateful welp!’ he said. ‘What lies have those creatures put in your head?’ The tip of his sword danced towards Nazagin. ‘What lies does it feed to you even now?’

  ‘No lies.’ She couldn’t help her voice shaking. ‘You know how the bond works. There are no lies within it, even now. Especially now.’

  ‘And what have they bid you do here, eh? Did you do all this? Do you know how many good men they have killed?’

  ‘If you listen, you’ll realise you don’t hear fighting anymore.’ They must have been able to hear it all down here, only one floor from the surface. ‘That’s what we did. We asked them to stop, and they did. I wish we could have asked sooner. But they were fighting out of anger and revenge.’ Izimendalla’s rage still lingered at the back of her mind. ‘Some of them have spent their lives with no free will because of what you let Critobulus do to them.’

  ‘And you expect me to be grateful for this?’

  ‘No.’ She didn’t know what she had expected, and she didn’t care what he thought. Or so she told herself. And in the wake of the bravado she dredged up, she had to stop herself saying as much out loud.

  She took a deep breath and continued. ‘Things need to change. You don’t have much choice, now.’

  ‘Don’t I? Critobulus can rework his magic.’

  Nazagin cocked her head. ‘Critobulus is dead. He was killed by the dragon he had chained up beneath our feet for decades. Izimendalla felt every moment of his death through the bond, but that wasn’t enough to stop him. Can you blame him?’

  Remembering an old family tale, Popilia added, ‘Grandfather killed all his captors the moment he escaped the Satharathi dungeons, and hunted down those he couldn’t for the rest of his days. This is no different.’

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Her father drew back as if the mention of his father in the same context as the dragons was a deathly affront. But before he could launch into another sentence, her mother detached herself from her brother and hurried forwards. Laying one hand on his sword arm, she guided it down towards the floor.

  ‘Hear her out, dear,’ she said. Her gaze flicked towards Popilia, but she didn’t smile. ‘See what options they want her to present to us.’

  ‘Hear her out?’ He let his sword hang loose and turned to face her mother, gesturing to Popilia as he did. ‘She should be in irons for her involvement in all this.’

  ‘They’ve just wormed her way into her ear, my love. Perhaps we all would have been manipulated so at her age, no less in awe of speaking dragons. If we had only taught her all we knew of them, she might have been prepared not to be enchanted so.’

  ‘Age might excuse naivety, but not betrayal.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘I have said my piece!’ he snapped. ‘There is nothing more to—’

  Someone clattered down the stairs and a guard emerged, slightly short of breath. He gulped in a lungful of air, eyes darting left and right as he took in the scene, then said, ‘Your imperial highnesses. Your graces.’ He bowed to each group of them in turn. ‘An... ambassador?... has arrived and wishes to speak with you.’

  Her father raised his hands in a shrug. ‘Well? Are they an ambassador or aren’t they?’

  ‘They are... a dragon, your imperial highness. They wish to discuss terms. The captain of the dragon guard is with them also, returned from the mountains you sent him to.’

  The glare that came Popilia’s way could have rivalled Izimendalla’s fire breath. Her mother’s knuckles whitened where she gripped her father’s arm.

  ‘And you sent them on their way, yes?’ he asked the guard.

  ‘Well... no, your imperial highness. The dragon guard don’t have dragons anymore. They’re not attacking us – it would be madness to strike out. Respectfully.’

  Again, the muscle of her father’s jaw twitched. This time, however, he said nothing. After a moment he sheathed his sword and wrested his arm free of her mother’s grip.

  Then he jerked his chin towards the guard. ‘Take me to them. You come with me, daughter, but keep your mouth shut unless I tell you otherwise. Your existing... acquaintance with these beasts may yet prove some advantage.’

  Popilia felt an odd mix of relief and anxiety bounce around in her chest. She wanted more than anything to keep arguing her case, but she knew there was no use. Instead, she followed her father as he took the stairs two at a time behind the guard, his robes lashing out around his ankles.

  I can eat him, if you want. Humour coloured Nazagin’s thoughts, but there was a dark undercurrent to it that Popilia was almost afraid to acknowledge.

  She eyed her father, on the verge of considering Nazagin’s offer, but she shied away at the last moment. Even if she had wanted it, actually following through would consign the both of them to a swift death. Nazagin wasn’t exactly big enough to fight their way out of here. She couldn’t even fly yet. Just thinking that fact made Nazagin grumble with annoyance. But even she had to acknowledge Popilia was right.

  The guard took them back up to the throne room and outside. Over the roof of the inner courtyard, between the small dragons that had come to roost there, the great white head of Ushuene-amaak waited between the four garden minarets. She watched them come, barely moving, her purple eyes glinting in the light. The palace had become her amphitheatre, the newly freed dragons her audience, Popilia’s father her sport.

  The roosting dragons watched, too. Their gazes followed them through the archway to the outer gardens, and Popilia felt them on her back still when they emerged on the other side. Her father paid them little attention and just kept his steady stride. The guard, however, had his shoulders pulled tight to his ears and kept looking this way and that, as if expecting one of the dragons to swoop down and attack at any moment.

  From Nazagin flooded a fierce swell of pride, tinged with awe. Popilia recognised it – the same feelings she had harboured about her own parents, not so long ago. She had surprised herself. Coming here, she thought she would have succumbed to the same feeling again, but it had never reappeared. The awe of a dragon was not so easily matched... or perhaps uncovering all their lies had been enough to put a stop to it.

  Ushuene dipped her head a scant couple of metres. The horns that formed her natural crown shone in the light, and the downy feathers of her head formed a bright halo at the edges.

  ‘Greetings, Emperor,’ she said. Popilia wondered if her voice was loud enough to reach anyone watching on the lakeshore. ‘Would that the circumstances of our first meeting had begun more amicably. Alas, previous attempts at communication met with little success, and no little aggression.’

  Her father stopped before the trunk of a tree that had fallen across the path. Its young blossoms had scattered across the floor at the impact, and the wind sent them jumping around his ankles. His left hand rested on the pommel of his sword, his right on his hip.

  ‘And who might I have the pleasure of greeting?’ he asked, his voice dry and tight with irritation. No doubt he didn’t like having to look up to one he considered his inferior.

  ‘I am Ushuene-amaak, eldest of the dragons, lived of over a thousand years, bearer of two other souls’ long lifetimes. I cannot claim that all dragons will follow or agree with me, but they trust me to speak for them in this moment. So let us speak of how we may go on from here, Emperor. There is much to make amends for, many norms that must need fade for us to find peace.’

  ‘And my captain?’ He nodded to another dragon sat further back in the courtyard, smaller than Ushuene but larger than most of the other dragons present. Fresh claw marks gouged its flank. By its left foreleg, the captain of the dragon guard stood straight-backed with his plumed helmet beneath his arm. ‘Do you bring him here as a hostage in our negotiations?’

  ‘A hostage?’ A deep, humming laugh rumbled from Ushuene’s throat. ‘Nothing of the sort.’

  ‘Your imperial highness,’ the captain called out, bowing. Popilia had to strain to hear him. ‘I simply flew here as escort. The dragons treated those of us who survived the battle well. Once I knew they were intent on diplomacy, well, I considered it my duty to the crown to bring their ambassador before you.’ He bowed again to cap his sentence, and possibly to attempt calming a furious monarch.

  ‘And how did your dragon not kill you as has happened here?’

  The captain’s next words came after a moment’s hesitation. ‘We came to an agreement. And I learned that he is no more my dragon than I am his human.’

  Her father began to shake his head, then stopped himself, squared his shoulders and took a deep breath. ‘Let me hear your proposal, then.’

  Popilia eyed her father, unsure if he was taking this seriously or just humouring his unwanted guest. It seemed he had switched modes with that breath – his irritation replaced with determination, his anger calmed, or redirected. This was the man who had formed an empire from warring kingdoms, who knew how to take any advantage he was given, how to weight the worth of any deal set before him.

  This was business now, not war.

  ‘I am pleased to be heard,’ Ushuene said, a light laugh behind her words – as if anyone nearby could avoid hearing her. ‘My proposals are fairly minimal, and easy enough to enact. First, there will be no more binding of dragons to humans unless both parties should consent to an equal bond. There will be no more dragon guard, I imagine, for no dragon will wish to serve in it. Should any decide otherwise, I will of course not stop them, but I doubt any hold such inclination. Second, any eggs in your possession will be handed over to our care. Third, we will have a representative in your court to speak for our interests and maintain a more civilised channel of communication than we have hitherto enjoyed. That is all.’

  ‘Fourth,’ Popilia said, and startled herself a little in saying it. ‘There is a dragon trapped beneath the palace. He was bound to Critobulus, and he has eaten a siren fruit. Promise you will help the dragons get him out of there.’ To appeal to her father’s self-preservation, she added, ‘Before he grows through the floor. Oh, and the thieves who kidnapped me? The ones you had in prison? Pardon them. They were only helping do what was right. And I was helping, too.’

  When her father turned, his composure slipped a fraction. For a moment she faced the full force of his stern glare. Then he turned back without acknowledging her words at all.

  ‘This is a good starting point for negotiations... Ushuene-ammak,’ he said. ‘Let us see where we can go from here.’

  And all around, the dragons and guards stood mute audience, waiting for whatever agreement would come.