Not every text seemed relevant. A few important-looking notes circled with red ink were nothing more than personal reminders to meet with an old friend or buy more milk. Kalai had no idea why someone would make the effort to write grocery lists in the old language, but it also upped his curiosity about who might have lived here before.
The guard General Falka had placed outside was a nice older man who had greeted Kalai with a smile and then otherwise left him alone. Kalai had been a little concerned he’d have the guard breathing down his neck until the trial period was up, but he hadn’t even come inside to ask to use the restroom. No books or papers could leave the archive, and Kalai was forbidden for speaking about their contents to anyone but members of the Sky Guard. They were easy rules.
Kalai spent all afternoon and evening among the books, only remembering the second floor when his vision grew blurry and the darkness made the book titles hard to read.
The archive was not done surprising him.
Kalai stopped at the top of the stairs on the second floor and took in the view. The living area was one large room with a bed in the center, and massive floor-to-ceiling windows taking up the entire eastern wall, lending a view of the city rooftops and the starry sky above. At the foot of the bed was a chest, and beside it stood a table-sized, smooth wooden box. The rest of the room was empty.
Walking to the windows, Kalai placed a hand against the cool glass and looked up.
The stars. Ever since he’d been a child, he’d dreamed of the stars.
Arrow had learned to fly while Kalai was still a toddler. When Kalai grew older, he had stood on the roof of his childhood home and watched Arrow ascend higher and higher, until the white of his scales blended with the clouds. He’d been sick with longing, with the wish to follow him up there, close to the stars, above the clouds, where everything was possible. It gnawed at his heart, even now, as if the stars dared him to reach out and join them.
But that wasn’t possible. It could never be possible.
Kalai retreated to the bed, sitting and testing its softness. He had no reason to be sad. Kal Valreus had welcomed him with open arms, given him everything he could have hoped for and more. His journey east couldn’t have turned out better. “I did it, Aunt Iako,” he whispered, letting himself drop back against the soft sheets.
Kalai had only just closed his eyes when hard slams on the door below startled him upright. Straightening his shirt, he took the steps down two at a time and landed at the bottom right as another slam shook the door.
“Who’s there?” Kalai asked, looking around for something either sharp or heavy to wield.
“The Sky Guard! Open up!”
Abandoning ideas of self defense, Kalai unlocked the door and pulled it open.
General Falka stood outside, flanked by two younger guards. He stepped past Kalai without a word, and for a moment, Kalai was certain he was about to be accused of murder and thrown in jail.
“Excuse the late hour, but I’m afraid we have an emergency on our hands.” General Falka gestured to the guards. They rushed inside and straight to the bookshelves, searching.
“What kind of emergency?” Kalai asked. He followed Falka into the main room.
The general glanced around at the floor-to-ceiling shelves and stacks of books on the floor. “How much have you read?”
“Hardly anything yet,” Kalai admitted. He stuck close to Falka as the general ran his hands over random books and picked up pieces of paper full of Sharoani texts he clearly couldn’t read.
“Anything on incubation?”
“Of eggs?”
“Yes.”
“Not yet,” Kalai said, wincing as the soldiers pulled books from his newly organized shelves and discarded them on the floor. “Is that what you’re looking for? How to incubate an egg?”
“I’m afraid we might be beyond that,” Falka said, and finally paused his search to look at Kalai. “Now, we’re just trying to keep it from dying.”
“You have an egg,” Kalai said, “that’s dying.”
Falka sighed. “Yes.”
Kalai nodded slowly. He’d been a baby when Arrow’s egg hatched. He searched his mind for all the books of dragons he’d read in the past, anything he could remember about eggs. “How are you controlling the temperature?”
“With bellows,” Falka said.
“That’s not ideal. What about humidity and rotation cycles?”
Something flickered to life in Falka’s eyes. “You know how to do it?”
“Bellows make for too unstable a temperature,” Kalai explained. “If you use firewood and an adjustable ventilation system, you can better control the temperature drop when—”
Falka took him by the shoulders. “Can you do it?”
“I-I can write it down,” Kalai said, eyes widening.
“There’s no time for that.” Letting go of Kalai, Falka snapped his fingers at the nearest soldier. “You. Ride to the tower and bring it here.”
“Wait, what?” Kalai spun in a circle as the soldier passed behind him on the way to the door.
“There’s an incubation box upstairs,” Falka explained. “With a firewood system just like the one you described.”
Kalai nodded. He’d seen the wooden box beside the bed and hadn’t paid it any mind. His heart raced. So much had happened in a single day. It all felt like a dream.
It seemed like only minutes before the rumble of wheels against pavement announced the arrival of a wagon. The door burst open once more, and no less than six soldiers armed with swords and pistols at their hips carried a large box inside.
Kalai gawked when they removed the top half and revealed its treasure.
The egg was roughly eighteen inches tall, deep red and covered in overlapping scales like a massive pine cone. Kalai had never seen an egg like it in real life, but he knew exactly what it was. He crouched beside it. “That’s—”
“A titan,” Falka said. “We’ve never hatched one before.”
“No wonder.” Kalai placed both hands against the shell. It was much too cool to the touch.
Most people would consider themselves lucky if they ever got to glimpse a wild titan far off in the distance. Often laying only two eggs in their entire life, titans were the rarest of all the dragons. There was a wild titan in Sharoani. A massive female. Once, Kalai had seen it near the mountain, twice he’d heard its thunderous roar.
“Get it upstairs, quickly!” Kalai said. “And get that fire started.”
The soldiers looked to Falka, and a nod from him set them all into motion.
“How in the world did you get your hands on a titan egg?” Kalai whispered, standing back as soldiers gingerly carried the nesting box upstairs.
“We saved it,” Falka said.
* * *
It took Tauran two days to work up the courage to enter the guard grounds.
He knew he was being a coward. That this new place, these new recruits, and the Ground Guard had nothing to do with what had happened at the Solar Tower.
But Tauran’s nerves weren’t so easily convinced.
When he approached the steel gates, he was happy he’d skipped breakfast. He grabbed the string and rang the bell a little too hard.
The hatch in the door opened, and a thankfully unfamiliar face appeared.