“We’ve been looking all over for you,” Ellukka added.
“You thought we’d be in our room, where you locked us in?” Anders asked pointedly.
Mikkel shrugged. “You’re wolves,” he said, as though that explained it.
Ellukka, despite her irritated expression, actually looked away. Maybe she wasn’t quite as unapologetic as he was.
Lisabet cut across his thoughts. “Why is the site of the docks fire marked on your map?”
Ellukka frowned, walking into the room to stand by them and stare up at the map. After a moment, Mikkel followed. He was tall, with a shock of copper hair, long and curly on top, short on the sides, and had fair skin.
He looked a lot like Anders’s wolf friend Sakarias, except that where Sakarias’s eyes were blue and always full of laughter, Mikkel’s were a dark brown—clever, intent, and maybe even unfriendly.
“Right there,” Anders said, pointing. “That’s where a huge fire started just a week ago. It was dragonsfire, I saw it myself.”
“Look,” said Mikkel. “I don’t know what it was, but nobody would have lit a fire in the middle of Holbard. It’s too dangerous.” He sounded sure. “We’d know.”
“Or perhaps they didn’t tell you,” said Lisabet, “because you’re twelve.”
“Maybe someone was investigating the fire,” Ellukka said. “It’s just a map of the city.”
“It’s more than that,” Lisabet replied. “You know it doesn’t look good.”
“What, and you’re looking good right now?” Mikkel snapped. “You just broke down your door and started snooping around Drekhelm.”
Anders stared at him. “We broke out after you locked us in!”
“You’re wolves!” Mikkel replied, voice rising to a shout.
“And?” Anders replied hotly. “That means what, exactly?”
“It means you’re not to be trusted,” Mikkel replied.
“And you proved it by prying into our business at the first opportunity you got.”
Anders growled in the back of his throat. “You can’t seriously be arguing that. We went looking for my sister after you locked us in, and can I remind you again that we found a map marked with your attack plans when we did?”
“Look,” said Lisabet, holding up her hands. “I don’t think anyone’s looking good here. Are we really going to stand around debating things like whether locking us in or breaking out was the worse crime?”
Ellukka spoke up. “We came to get you because Leif is ready to see you. You should ask him what this map is if you’re so sure it’s evidence of something.”
Anders’s heart fell into his boots. They’d lost their chance to get away from the Dragonmeet. Now they’d have to face whatever the dragons had in store for them.
But Mikkel was still gazing up at the map, head to one side, as if he was trying to make sense of it too. “What’s this?” he asked, pointing at Ulfarstrat. “The main street?”
Lisabet turned to see what he was looking at. “That’s right,” she said.
Mikkel was quiet for a little before he spoke again. “What’s Holbard like?” He didn’t sound angry or frustrated now. Mostly, he just sounded curious.
“Big,” said Lisabet eventually. “Big stone walls around
the city, lots of cobbled streets, and colorful houses. They’re mostly two or three stories high, and they’re all painted pinks and blues and yellows and greens, you name it. The window frames are wood or white, and the rooftops are covered in grass—it keeps the cold out. In spring and summer, flowers grow up there, and it’s almost like being out on the plains. And the city’s on the harbor, so the ships’ masts are like a forest of bare trees when the harbor’s full. There are huge metal arches at the port, wind guards. Wolves and dragons made them together, to keep the ships safe.”
“Artifacts so big a ship can sail under them?” Mikkel whistled, impressed.
“There are all kinds of people there,” Lisabet continued. “From just about every country there is. They speak different languages, they look different, they sell different food and play different music, it’s wonderful. The sea’s right there beside the city, so whatever the weather is, we know about it. Sometimes the rain’s so hard it seems like it wants to drive us into the ground, and sometimes you get a warm breeze that feels like it’s come all the way across the ocean from some other country.”
Mikkel and Lisabet seemed to have forgotten Anders and Ellukka were even there. In that moment, Mikkel could have been any of their fellow students at Ulfar.
At first, when Lisabet had said “big” and mentioned the walls, Anders had thought she was trying to make sure Mikkel understood how well-defended Holbard was. But that wasn’t it at all. Lisabet had seen what Anders hadn’t, or she’d suspected it. The young dragons were as curious about wolves as the wolves were about dragons. They probably had their own scary stories to match the ones Sakarias had told around the campfire, come to that.
It was Ellukka who broke the spell. “The Dragonmeet will be waiting,” she said. “And when I left the infirmary, they were about to let Rayna out, so she should be there to meet us in the Great Hall.”
“Good luck,” said Mikkel, sounding like perhaps he even meant it a tiny bit. “I’m meeting Theo in the gardens. I’ll see you later.”
Anders swallowed, then nodded. He couldn’t wait to see his twin, but he had to focus. Since they’d missed their chance to hide, he had to find a way to stay at Drekhelm without betraying the wolves. At least Mikkel’s words made it sound like the young dragon maybe did expect him to stick around, but the cross on the map was a reminder that there was a lot Anders didn’t know about the dragons.
He had to look after the people he cared about. That was what mattered.
Rayna was indeed waiting for them outside the door to the Great Hall, and as soon as she saw Anders, she hurried over to his side, slipping her hand into his, giving it a squeeze. Her touch was familiar, her skin warm.
Wolves didn’t like hot weather—it made them weaker, made it harder to think clearly—any more than dragons liked the cold. But her warmth didn’t bother him now, just as the bath hadn’t the night before. It was very odd. Perhaps something had changed in the wake of the incredible, impossible silver icefire he’d thrown to end the battle the day before? It had been neither the ice of the wolves nor the fire of the dragons . . . but somehow both.
With Rayna on one side and Lisabet on the other, he followed Ellukka through the double doors into the Great Hall, where the Dragonmeet was waiting. It was a huge room with a high ceiling so smooth he wasn’t sure if it had been carved or if some long-ago lava bubble had somehow created it. Enormous doors, big enough for a dragon to fly through, led out to the side of the mountain, though just now they were bolted closed. Below those, the human-size doors through which his classmates had come were also closed and bolted.