She could feel the dragon thrumming beneath her, sense the adrenaline coursing through her fiery veins. Beneath them, through the wisps of white cloud, the great pyramid of Aram soared high above the Amedda River, which bustled with its thick wide bridges, heaped with hovels and shops. There were men on the palace balconies, Talasha saw, and on the high city walls as well, all gesticulating and shouting to one another as they saw the dragon in the sky. On the high towers built along the battlements, great scorpions were being manned and loaded as well.

Choas, the Princess of Agarath thought. One small dragon, and it brings chaos to theCity of Eagles.

Cevi was seated in the saddle behind her, clinging hard around Talasha’s waist. “Will they attack, my lady?” the girl called out, shouting over the rush of wind. “If we try to land, are they going to fire on us?”

They may well, the princess thought. They had no white flag to raise, no way of showing themselves as friend, not foe, and would likely be peppered with bolts and arrows should they dare try to land within the walls. “We’re not going to give them that chance,” Talasha called back, turning her head so the girl could hear. “Don’t worry, Cevi. Neyruu knows how to stay out of range. We’ll land beyond the walls.”

Talasha leaned low as Neyruu turned in a high wide circle, gliding above the palace. East, she thought, and Neyruu straightened out, passing over the wide waters of the river, over the bridges and the hills on which the noble Lightborn had their estates. To the south, the great harbour of Aram teemed with ships, moored along a hundred jetties and wharves; cogs and carracks and caravels, galleys and galleasses and galleons, massive men-of-war anchored in the bay. Of sailors there were plenty there, but below her the streets looked quiet. The market squares and courtyards and broad avenues, usually bustling with life, seemed almost deserted to her eyes.

The reason became apparent a moment later, as they flew through a swirling banner of cloud, and the eastern districts of the city came into clearer view. They were scorched and blackened, the buildings burned down to rubble, the plains beyond marked and pitted. Further off she saw evidence of an abandoned warcamp - no, two - a pair of them separated by an open stretch of barren land with nought but a single pavilion sitting lonely between them.

There was a great battle here, Talasha realised. No wonder the city is on edge.

The easternmost gate was a blackened ruin, though still standing, and down there Talasha saw soldiers outside the gatehouse and watching from the wall walks. That gate was called the Cherry Gate if memory served, though if there had been cherry trees there once, that was no longer the case.

“What happened here, my lady?” Cevi called in her ear. “It’s all burned. Do you think they were attacked by dragons?”

It was one possibility, though not a likely one. Aram was no northern city, not so well fortified to fend off dragons as a Varinar or an Ilithor, but all the same, it remained formidable. If dragons had done this, one or two would surely have fallen, felled by bow and bolt, but she could see no sign of dead dragons down there. And those warcamps. They painted a different picture.

She shook her head. “The city was sieged, Cevi,” she called over the wind. She saw the damage now to the walls, the broken stone and smashed crenellations. And the trebuchets, half seen through the dusty haze outside, lined up in front of the twin camps out on the plains. “We’ll land out there.” She pointed beyond the walls. “The soldiers have seen us. Someone will come.”

They continued beyond the gate and walls, out toward the ruin of the abandoned warcamps, far beyond the range of the city defences. As she drew closer, she saw men out there, picking through the wrecks. They looked up, hearing the thump of the wings, and took off running at once, throwing down whatever they had found, scampering away into the plains.

“Are they soldiers?” Cevi asked.

“Scavengers,” Talasha said. That was obvious by their garb. “These camps were likely abandoned a while ago, Cevi. The soldiers of Aram will have taken the best of the loot.”

They came in to land near a collapsed trebuchet, its great wooden scaffold shattered, huge swinging arm lying aside in a tangle of ropes and rigging. Beside it, several wagons were laden with rocks, mined from the nearby hills, she guessed. A great cloud of dust rose up as Neyruu beat her wings, landing with a heavy thump upon the barren earth.

Talasha stood from the saddle, unfastening the straps, slid down Neyruu’s wing and onto the ground, then helped Cevi dismount. Above the red and rugged plains beyond the city, a thick shimmer of heat burned atop the rocks. Cevi breathed out at once, grimacing. “It’s so hot, my lady. There’s not a breath of wind down here.”

Flying was much cooler, there was no doubt. “You grew up on the Drylands, Cevi. Aren’t you used to this sort of heat?”

The girl shook her head. “I’ve never felt heat like it, my lady.” She was beginning to sweat already, a sheen glistening on her brow. She wiped her forehead with the back of her loose, linen sleeve. “Don’t you feel it too?”

“Not as you do.” Talasha was born of fire, able to regulate her temperature in extreme conditions, but even so, this heat was hardly pleasant. “Take shade beside Neyruu. It should be a little cooler there until we find a more permanent solution.”

“It’ll be cooler in the city,” the handmaiden pointed out. “I saw pools on the terraces at the top of the palace. I wouldn’t mind a swim, my lady. And a bath.” She sniffed herself, cringing. “I smell worse than a privy.”

Talasha laughed. “Don’t we all.”

Neyruu raised her long, serpentine neck, peering toward the city. They’re coming, Talasha knew at once. She looked west, saw the figures riding out of the gates, a blur of motion distorted by heat and distance. “Wait here,” she said to Cevi. “I will walk ahead and meet them.”

“My lady? Are you certain it’s safe?”

It was hard to be certain of anything anymore, though whoever was riding out to her would be wise to keep things civil. “We have Neyruu,” she said. “If they want to start a fight, let them. Neyruu will finish it.”

She stepped away, hardy hunting boots crunching on gravel and bits of loose stone. There were some scratches on those boots now, tears in the leather, as there were on her tunic as well. And my chin. She had a gash there too, and cuts to her hands, from her mad dash through the woods of the Western Neck, in flight from Tarran and his men. It would leave an unsightly scar, she did not doubt, but it could have been a whole lot worse if Neyruu hadn’t come. Tarran, Jantor, Humghor and the squat man whose name she did not know had all been slaughtered. Only the washerwoman Santhra had managed to escape, but only because she had been lagging behind. I’ll bet she turned around and ran the other way when she heard the chaos atop that hill. It might not matter either way. The wilds were no place for a woman alone, and that old crone would not last long.

The men were approaching quickly, led by a Sunrider in a white feathered cloak. Two others bounced along in the saddles of enormous camels. Paladin knights, she knew. They wore feathered cloaks as well, silver and black, with scalemail of the same beneath. The last of the host were Aram City Guards, riding fleet-footed horses. Upon their heads were eagle-crested halfhelms, and at their backs capes in the shape of eagle’s wings billowed and whipped as they rode. Their bronze shirts of mail glittered in the waning sun, and at their hips were the scimitar swords - with eagle-wing cross-guards - that all the men of the order bore.

A cloud of red dust was kicked up at their coming, moving south to north on the faintest of breezes coming from the sea. Talasha stopped, some hundred or so metres away from Neyruu, deeming that far enough. She could feel the tension in the dragon’s limbs, even from here. Calm, Neyruu, she thought. They mean me no harm. Be calm.

The procession spread as they neared her, the Sunrider taking the lead, the knights to either side, the half dozen city guards spreading to left and right. All remained in the saddle but for the Sunrider, who swung a leg over the back of his hulking wolf and dismounted, stepped forward.

“Who are you?” he demanded, speaking in his native Aramatian tongue. “Why have you come here to Aram?”

Talasha knew the language well, as she did a dozen tongues.

A dream, she might have answered. A dream about a half-remembered memory. Instead she said, “I wish to speak with the Grand Duchess.”

“By whose authority?”

“Mine.”

“And you are?”

“Princess Talasha Taan of Agarath, granddaughter to King Tellion the Proud and niece to his son King Dulian.” She paused, waiting for laughter, but there was not so much as a snicker from the men.

“Princess Talasha,” the Sunrider repeated. He looked at her long and hard. “Why are we to believe you? You are not known to ride a dragon.”

“The dragon is newly bonded to me.”

“And this garb? You look more like a huntress than a princess.”

“That is a story too long for the telling right now. It is hot, and we have flown a long way to be here. We need water, food, fresh clothes if possible. And an audience with Safina Nemati.”

“This I cannot grant. The Grand Duchess is sick, and not taking visitors.”

“Even royalty?”

“Alleged royalty.” He looked past her. “There is another with you. A girl. Who is she?”

“My handmaiden. Her name is Cevi.” Talasha kept her voice perfectly even. “You have our names, Sunrider. Now I will have yours.”

He lifted his chin proudly. “Samir of House Santali,” he said. “Noble vassals of the Moonhouse Hasham.” He peered past her once again. “Your dragon…is it named?”

She nodded. “Neyruu.”

“A female?”

Another nod.

“How is it she came by that cleave on her flank?”

“By the claws of a brother,” she merely said. Let him mull on that. There was a small part of her that wondered if Eldur’s leathern reach had managed to stretch out here, that he had taken the people of Aramatia as thralls as well, but that did not seem likely. Safina Nemati was no Patriot of Lumara, no enemy of the north, and the Fire Father, in all his godly power, had no tool with which to take the Lightborn into bondage.

The Sunrider seemed to sense that she did not want to treat with him further, and nor was it his place to do so, if she was indeed who she said. Perhaps he is starting to recognise me? She had come to Aram several times in her life, the last occasion only a few years ago, and it was possible he saw her then. The face of a princess was not one soon forgotten, especially one so exotic and comely as hers. She was dirty, though, a little bedraggled from the flight, and that cut on her chin wasn’t helping. But all the same, anyone who had laid close eyes on her before would be likely to remember. “People recall the heavenly and the hideous,” her brother Tavash used to say of it. “Nothing in between.” There was probably some truth in that, the princess supposed.