Chapter 16: White Flag Back

Wystan was on the wall beside me before I'd turned round.

He'd come down from the sky so fast he'd shifted mid-step and was still steaming.

"She's alive," I said. "They're dragging her. You don't drag a dead dragon."

His eyes were going white at the edges.

I took hold of his face in both hands and hummed until they cleared.

"If you go down there," I said, "they'll have two Hawksleys instead of one."

"Then what?"

"Then I go."

He stared at me.

"Under a white flag," I said. "I'm not a drake. I'm not a clansman. And I was their Voice for nine years."

"They've charged you with theft."

"So they'll want to talk to me."

He argued until dark.

Dorrit argued too.

She wanted to go with me.

"They know your face," I told her. "They'll hang you for the cart."

"It was a terrible cart."

I went down the pass alone in the morning, with a white shirt tied to a spear.

The King's camp filled the road for a mile.

Tents, cookfires, horse lines, and the great crossbows dragged into a row, two of them still black from Bettris's fire.

Soldiers came out of every tent to look at me.

Somebody shouted "witch."

Somebody else shouted something worse.

At the first picket, a drake of the Wing was waiting for me.

He was in blue and silver, but there was no Marshal's badge on his coat.

Only the Marshal's sword still hung at his side.

"Drystan."

"Alys."

He looked older.

There was a cut over his good eyebrow now to match the scar through the other one.

"The Chancellor took the Wing off me the morning after the quarry," he said. "For the war, he said. I still have the sword. I command nobody."

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