We had to enter Saveah's house from the back door. The front was still locked tight. I rushed in first, half expecting to see the interior trashed the way Zasen's had been after the first fight. Instead, it looked just like it had when I'd left.
"Saveah?" I called out. "It's us!"
Zasen chuckled at that. "And now she yells in the house."
Ignoring him, I hurried up the hall, trying to jog on my lame leg, and quickly pulled the bookcase aside. In the little closet, a single candle in a jar was burning on the top shelf. It made a soft golden glow that showed Taris sleeping on a pile of pillows. Tamin was coloring in a book, but he looked up. Across from him, Saveah was watching me.
"Kanik?" she asked nervously.
"Fine," I promised. "It wasn't him - and the Moles are gone."
"So it's safe?" she asked.
I nodded. "They left. We ran them out."
"Good."
Saveah leaned forward to take the coloring book from Tamin, then pointed to the door. Obediently, the boy got up, but Zasen and Kanik had followed me up the hall. As soon as Tamin was out of the closet, Zasen swept him up to sit on his hip.
"Hey, kiddo," he told the boy. "Did you stay nice and quiet for your momma?"
"Yes, but I gotta pee!" Tamin whined.
"Then let's go do that," Zasen said as he carried the boy away.
Saveah chuckled, but passed Taris to me. Kanik turned me so he could snag her from my arms.
"I'll put her in her crib, Saveah," he promised.
So I offered Saveah a hand. She'd been sitting there a while, in a somewhat cramped space, so I had a feeling her legs would protest. Accepting the offer, I pulled as she stood, which made her lurch upwards, almost into my chest.
Her eyes dropped.
Her body stilled.
Then she grabbed the leather throng at my neck and pulled. "Where did you get this!" she snarled, pulling again.
"It's my sign die," I explained, trying to grab the leather above her hand.
So she yanked, and hard. The knots slipped, the leather lengthened, and then I felt pain as it snapped behind my neck. Saveah's eyes were on the ring. Pulling it off the cord, she dropped the leather and hurried into the kitchen.
"Did a Mole have this?" she demanded. "How are they getting our signets?"
"No!" I gasped. "That was my mother's ring."
But I was chasing my sign die as it rolled across the floor. That thing meant so much to me. It was proof I was a Dragon. I couldn't lose it. I needed that!
Saveah gasped in a way that sounded more like choking. "Where the fuck did you get this!" she screamed, rage tearing through her voice.
"Saveah!" Zasen said, rushing into the room.
"What's going on?" Kanik asked, emerging from the other side of the house.
So she thrust my ring out. "It's the Serpent! It's a fucking signet. How did the Moles get it?!"
"That's my mother's ring," I insisted, clutching my Phoenix die tightly to my chest. "I wore it here!"
"That's what's been on your finger?" Zasen asked as he moved towards Saveah to see it.
She showed him the flat side. It was a small thing, barely big enough to make out any more than a little groove shaped like an S in the middle. But Zasen looked closely. He stared in silence, and then turned to press it onto the bar of soap beside the sink.
At the same time, Kanik was lighting the lanterns, adding light to the darkened house. Zasen simply lifted the soap and moved it to the end of the counter where a band of light could shine down on it.
"That's definitely a sign," Zasen breathed. "This is an old-style signet ring," he said, tilting the soap so Saveah could see.
"They stopped making those a long time ago," Kanik said.
"My father had one," Zasen told him. "When he was young was when they were phasing them out."
"It's just a ring!" I insisted.
"No," Saveah said, her voice determined. "This is not just a ring, Ayla. It's an old form of how Dragons used to use our signs!"
"It's not from a Dragon," I assured them, reaching for my mother's ring in Zasen's hand, but Saveah had more to say.
"Then where did your mother get it? Why does she have Dragon jewelry?" And then her voice turned fierce. "And why does she have my mother's ring!"
"I don't know," I admitted. "My mother always wore it on a string around her neck," I explained. "When she died, my father kept her things. Each of us - her children - was allowed to pick two items when we turned twenty. I picked that because I remembered how much she loved it."
