Janu was so weak and everyone else so tired that they struggled to make their way back across the lake. Divya, the most rested of all of them, had to near enough swim rings around them to keep the serpents at bay. Whenever Janu managed to keep his head fully above water for more than a moment, it was to the background rasp of her exhausted breath. Even Ilarion was flagging, and Galnai had her hands full dragging Janu.

  Just as he thought they were all going to drown there, barely a stone’s throw from the walls of the palace, Janu spotted movement in the corner of his eye. He began to shout for Divya but stopped when he realised this wasn’t another serpent, but a boat. It slid through the water towards them, punted along by a baby-faced palace servant.

  Two guards crouched at the bow of the boat.

  Instinctively, Janu tried to swim away, but his remaining arm just flailed in the water and his stump hit Galnai in the face. A wave of pain shot through him at the impact. Galnai swore, and Janu’s vision went black for a moment.

  When he came to, the guards were looming over them, reaching out with both arms and suspiciously friendly expressions. Janu couldn’t piece together their words until they were lifting him out of the water.

  ‘—going to hurt you,’ said one in reassuring tones. ‘You’ve been pardoned.’

  And the other muttered, ‘But what if they’s the ones got our lads killed down in the cave?’

  The side of the boat scraped against Janu’s back. He kicked out, not quite sure if he was still trying to get away or trying to help get himself into the boat. It didn’t have either effect.

  ‘That was dragons,’ said the first guard.

  The boat balanced out for a moment as Galnai clambered over the other side of her own accord and the two guards passed Janu between them. They set him down in the bilge between benches.

  ‘Heard it wasn’t all dragons,’ said the second. ‘This lot were—’

  ‘Look, we’ve been told to pick them up, and we’re paid to do what we’re told. You have a problem with that, or do you want to sit around staring down dragons like everyone else?’

  ‘Well, no...’

  ‘Right then. So bottle it.’

  Janu tried to make himself comfortable in the bottom of the rocking boat. Galnai had settled on the bench behind him – her shin dug into his shoulder and the bench itself pressed into the back of his head. Only after a lot of shuffling did he manage to get into a better position. From there, he could take stock of their new situation.

  They were already punting back towards the palace, heading not for the pontoon by the main entrance, but a smaller one by the rear entrance nearer the throne room. A little glint on the wall told him the piece of glass Divya had enchanted to see for them was still there. A little to their right, Divya and Ilarion rested in a similar boat, delayed by the punter having to push a couple of serpents away.

  ‘What have we missed?’ Janu asked, realising only now that the swirl of dragons from earlier had stopped, and all of them had settled on whatever landing spot they could find. His vision swirled a little, as if the dragons’ spirits were still up there, near invisible.

  ‘Damned if I know,’ said the kinder guard. ‘All I saw was one second the dragons were throwing riders off their backs, the next they weren’t. And a bloody great big one landed in the outer courtyard. It talked. I didn’t catch all the words, but it talked. First time I’ve ever heard a bloody dragon talk.’

  The punt made periodic splashing noises, setting the odd quiet to a gentle rhythm. It was peaceful enough that Janu’s eyelids grew heavy. He closed his eyes just for a moment, but must have drifted off, for the next moment with a thunk, their boat bumped against the side of the pontoon. Then he jolted wider awake when Galnai nudged him in the back of his head with her knee.

  ‘Ow!’ Wincing, he sat upright and rubbed his head. The pale stone of the palace walls was far too bright to his eyes, and he had to squint against the glare. The guards blocked it for a merciful second as they climbed out and turned to offer them a hand.

  Janu took hold of one of their hands and let them pull him up, staggering a little off balance. Beside him, Galnai hopped out without assistance.

  In the shadow of the carved colonnades, Janu’s chest tightened. They only had the guards’ words that they had pardons. Now, they had no reason to lie – the thieves had hardly been in any state on the water to put up a fight – but still... Not long ago, he had been imprisoned here. Ilarion had been tortured here. And now all that was forgotten?

  It was too good to be true, surely.

  ‘This way,’ said the guard, inclining his head for them to follow.

  ‘Where will you take us?’ Galnai asked.

  ‘You’re not in trouble. Really. But they said you needed medical help, and... well.’ He gestured to the stump of Janu’s arm, which Janu had to take care not to look at. ‘It looks like you do.’

  Ilarion limped over from where the other boat had moored, his shirt clinging from him and dripping onto the wood below. ‘As long as your surgeon isn’t the same man you had "tending" to us down in the prison.’

  ‘Old Hound?’ The guard’s lip curled. ‘He was got by a dragon. Surprised it didn’t spit him out again. You’ll have someone proper seeing to you, don’t worry.’ And he gestured again to the path through the outer colonnade.

  Divya broke their inertia for them, following the guard without a moment’s hesitation or trepidation. Janu couldn’t fault her courage. No doubt she just wanted to go home. With her water magic, she probably could have zipped away before the guards could catch her. But she had stayed.

  The guards escorted them into the outer courtyard, which was at its narrowest here, barely a couple of dozen yards between the walls of the outer and inner courtyards. They didn’t follow the wide path they had come in on – a pardon didn’t mean they could follow it straight into the inner courtyard and the throne room, clearly. Instead, they took a narrower path through the manicured gardens until they came to the corner of the wall. There they turned left, following the path of one of the streams that ran through the palace grounds.

  An eerie quiet still hung over the palace grounds. Beyond the babbling stream and a faint, inconstant hum of background chatter, only the occasional huff of dragon breath disturbed the peace. But for their size and those breaths, it would have been easy to forget the dragons were there altogether. As it was, they sat as mute sentinels, watching their progress.

  ‘Through here,’ the guard said, and led them across a delicate little bridge to a seating area in the outer colonnade.

  Janu peered over his shoulder as he followed and just caught a glimpse of a great white tail lying across the outer gardens around the corner of the inner courtyard wall. Then it was gone, and some new palace staff were guiding him to lie down on a cushioned stone couch. He complied, his clothes squelching with lake water. Galnai hovered opposite like a nervous dog, shaking off any attempts to look her over, redirecting people’s attention to Janu and Ilarion.

  ‘So,’ Janu said, squinting up at the young man who had started to examine his wounds, ‘your imperial medicine... Can it stick my arm back on?’

  The man considered the question for much longer than Janu had expected for a joke. A worrying glint of curiosity took hold of his eyes. But then he shook his head. ‘I might try if this were fresh.’ And he muttered some gibberish about treatise and studies that Janu couldn’t tell the start nor end of. He finished with, ‘And you don’t have the limb with you, in any case.’ Which was, of course, the problem.

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  Then he poked and prodded at Janu’s stump. With each movement, a wave of tingling shocks ran up Janu’s shoulder and nausea rose to meet it. His head fuzzed. For a moment he couldn’t parse anything in his vision. When he blinked groggily back into focus, the man had gone. Clouds had stolen away a good deal of daylight.

  Janu pushed himself half upright with his remaining arm. He felt heavier than usual. Someone had draped a blanket over him, but there was also a pleasant numbness pervading his body that made his movements a little sluggish.

  ‘—good deal,’ said Ilarion from nearby. ‘If only it hadn’t taken all that it did.’

  The man reclined on another couch wearing a blanket in place of his shirt, his boots drying on the floor beside him, bandages peeking out from the top of fresh trousers. He had a healthier flush to his face than before, though it was still drawn. Galnai perched on the edge of the couch, chewing on a hunk of bread and cheese.

  Between Ilarion and Janu’s two couches, Popilia had drawn up a small wooden stool and sat there, Nazagin’s head on her lap, one hand scratching the downy feathers atop her head.

  Janu groaned the rest of the way upright and asked, ‘What’s a good deal?’

  ‘About time you stopped snoring.’ Galnai huffed out a laugh. ‘Deal’s with the dragons. They’re staying free.’

  Looking about at the rest of the palace – what little he could see of it from this vantage – showed the dragons had all vanished from their perches.

  ‘I’m not sure anyone could have stopped them,’ Janu said.

  ‘Don’t underestimate the imperial army.’ Ilarion grimaced. In his service to the Khunuchanian prince, had he spied on the empire half as much as the dragons? ‘They would have tried, and it would have been bloody enough for both sides. They wouldn’t have got as far as they did, without any dragons of their own to begin with, if they couldn’t hold their own against them.’

  ‘Even Anshar couldn’t save himself,’ said Popilia, sadness threading through her voice.

  Ilarion inclined his head. ‘Critobulus was a piece of work. Most of this was his doing. Most, but not all.’

  ‘So what now, then?’ Janu asked. ‘We’ve done everything we meant to do. It’s all sorted. Can we just... go?’ He glanced to his left, where the colonnade opened up onto the waters of the lake, only a short step down from floor level. The park around its edges seemed strangely empty, and he wondered if the guards had closed it down.

  Popilia nodded. ‘A pardon’s a pardon. You’re all free to go, whenever you like.’ She curled her lip. ‘If it were up to me, I would let you stay for as many days as you liked, but my parents aren’t exactly pleased with you.’ She indicated the bread and cheese Galnai had. There was more on a table by the lake. ‘The most I could do was get you one meal.’

  His stomach clenched now the food had been pointed out, as if it had only been waiting for permission for hunger to strike. So Janu stood and made his way, teetering somewhat under the influence of whatever drug they had given him, to the selection of plates.

  As he picked through the spread, he glanced back to Popilia and raised an eyebrow. ‘So, no chance we can collect on your bounty now you’re back home safe, is there?’

  The princess laughed, her teeth flashing. ‘Hardly. I wouldn’t recommend reminding my parents that you were the ones to kidnap me, after all. Besides, you didn’t bring me back. If anyone should have received that bounty, it was Anshar.’ On mentioning the dragon’s name, her face fell. She shook her head sadly before asking, ‘So what will you do? Ushuene still wants to pay you for your services, so you’ll be home and rich.’

  ‘And without a line of work,’ said Galnai. She brushed crumbs from her lap and shrugged at Ilarion’s confused expression. ‘What? We can’t steal eggs from the empire if the empire isn’t stealing eggs from dragons.’

  ‘You seem to be forgetting the "rich" part,’ he said. ‘You won’t need to steal again, or work at all, I imagine. For my part, my work isn’t over.’ He sighed, and there was a hint of an unspoken question in the sidelong glance he gave Galnai. ‘I have to return to Khunuchan and report to my prince. With all I have seen, with all I can relate to him... I hope he won’t be as set on binding his own dragons now that the empire’s bonds are broken. If he remains set on his course, I don’t know I will be able to continue in his service. And he might not take kindly to my leaving.’

  ‘So just stay here.’

  ‘No.’ He gave a firm shake of his head. ‘Whether or not I gave my word, I need to report back. He will make his decisions without me, otherwise. He may have already started, if any other expeditions returned before mine. No, there are dragons in the wilderness back home, dragons he will try to tame if he finds a way. And I can show him a better way. I can reveal he only need speak to them, to treat with them as with any neighbour. With all I have seen, I have good cause to become an ambassador to such a neighbour.’

  Janu remembered the thick book of notes Ilarion had compiled during his stay in Kimah Kur and said, ‘You just want to keep studying them, don’t you?’

  He flashed a boyish smile. ‘Is that a crime?’ Then he shrugged as if to answer his own question. ‘I miss it there, in any case. Milder weather and not a siren tree in sight. It’s more home than home was.’

  ‘Home.’ Janu chuckled and scratched at his beard. ‘I have to get back and make sure I still have one. If the landlord has kept his word, I’ll certainly have enough to pay him off. It’ll be nice, to own it outright. We won’t be so easily moved at some noble whim.’ He knew that wasn’t quite true, of course. The empire could happily change the rules of ownership, strip them of their land. But he suspected he was safe from that at least as long as he had a friend in the imperial household.

  ‘Well, look at all you with your plans.’ Galnai’s mouth twisted into a rare smile. ‘I’ll just be glad to be out of this mess.’

  ‘What about that little cottage you were after?’

  She shrugged, and Janu could have sworn her face reddened a fraction. ‘Maybe some day, when I run out of other things to do. Might have a holiday first. Work out where I want to build it while I’m travelling.’ Then her expression hardened a little. She turned to Popilia. ‘And you, princess – are you still headed to Khunuchan?’

  ‘That’s a long way off yet,’ she replied, her voice quiet, her hand coming to a halt on Nazagin’s head. ‘I haven’t spoken to my parents about it. Not yet. With luck, the betrothal will be broken anyway – without eggs as dowry, what worth am I? I’m sure they will try to think up something worse for me if that happens.’

  ‘If you like,’ said Ilarion, ‘I could try to help find you a more agreeable match. Someone closer in age, but still of good enough standing. I can’t promise anything, but any proposal would only reach your parents after your approval.’

  Popilia mulled the idea over for a few seconds, then said, ‘I would appreciate that, thank you,’ although the look on her face was still uncertain.

  Footsteps crunched along the gravel nearby. When Janu turned to look, he found an exceptionally tall woman with warm brown skin and flashing golden eyes striding towards them. Her hair was a fuzzy shock of white that drifted in the air like a halo.

  ‘I am glad to see you well, friends,’ she said with a smile on her lips and a familiar musicality in her voice. ‘You may be pleased to know that we think we will be able to save Izimendalla. I have sent shamans down to work upon him – they will try to cut the siren fruit out of his digestive tract. It would be too fine an operation on a human, but at his size, it should be possible.’

  They all took on board her words with visible confusion. Janu’s brow knit together as he tried to recall if he had forgotten some past ally in his drug haze. Only Popilia and Nazagin seemed nonplussed, if curious about the stranger’s appearance.

  ‘Do you plan to go down there yourself?’ Nazagin asked.

  The woman perched on an unoccupied stool, stretching her legs out in front of her. ‘When he is healed, I think I shall accompany him to the surface, yes. He may need help to know himself, and may not be able to fly once he returns to his own body. But for the time being, I have shunned mine simply for convenience. Too many were made nervous by my presence.’

  At last, Janu made the connection between appearance and memory. A dragon in human form: Ushuene-amaak. In the change, she had kept something of her usual form, her regal bearing, her white-and-gold plumage. And the voice, too. Therein lay the most similarity. Slow understanding dawned on the others’ faces, also. Or so he thought. Neither Ilarion nor Galnai questioned their new companion.

  ‘Ushuene,’ Popilia said, confirming his thoughts, ‘I’m sorry about Anshar. I should have found some way to stop them killing him.’ A tremor crept into her voice. ‘I should have—’

  ‘There was nothing you could have done, child.’ Ushuene stood again, the drapes of her white robes spilling along the floor, and walked to the edge of the lake. There she stood, framed by the pale stone of the marble arches, ripples of light playing over her skin where the water’s reflections danced in the sun. ‘Anshar made his choice, and his soul is not lost to us, remember. His memory and experience are in Nazagin’s care, now, and it is her task to hold them to herself, as I hold to myself the two souls I was gifted. It was little enough price to pay for freedom, and one I imagine he would choose to pay again, would he not?’

  Nazagin nodded at the questioning glance Ushuene gave over her shoulder, and the woman gave a satisfied smile.

  ‘The path to this goal may not have been as any of us desired,’ Ushuene continued, shifting her gaze between each of them in turn, ‘but we cannot deny the ending. We are free. Free thanks to you, free thanks to Anshar, free thanks to Izimendalla. There is a long road ahead of us, to made the best of this freedom, to secure it for all our futures. But it is a road I and my kin will gladly travel.’

  A serpent danced over the surface of the lake behind her, neck stretched as if to reach the sky, as if it too might grow wings and soar to its own freedom. And as Janu watched it, a great comfort settled over him. This was peace. This was closure. Whatever awaited him back home, he knew it would turn out okay, that he would be able to meet it fully.

  And yet, there were other dragons out there – dragons hatched from eggs he had stolen, bound, he supposed, by sorcerers other than Critobulus. They would need freeing, too. Perhaps that was a job for younger folk with more arms to their name than he. Perhaps he still had adventures in him. Who could say?