The Lost Heir (22 page)

But there wasn’t time to say all that. Tsunami flashed one of the patterns he’d taught her.
All right.
Then she added
squid-brain
, and Riptide smiled before turning to fly away into the heart of the battle.

Webs and Tsunami swerved south together, wings beating side by side.

But other wingbeats were close behind them. Tsunami twisted just in time to see Blister lunge out of the canopy and seize Webs by the tail. She yanked him back toward her and stabbed her poisonous barb toward his heart.

With a yell, Tsunami barreled into them, knocking the SandWing off of Webs. Blister fell back toward the palace, hissing.

Tsunami grabbed Webs by his front talons and towed him after her.

A few wingbeats later, Webs groaned softly.

“Did she get you?” Tsunami demanded.

“She missed my heart,” he said, “but —” He lifted his wing to show an oozing graze near his tail. “It’s still poisonous,” he said.

“We’ll find a way to fix it,” Tsunami said. “Just keep flying until we get to land.”

She looked back again and saw Blister hovering in the air, watching them go. Her cold, glittering black eyes seemed to follow Tsunami all the way to the edge of the sky.

Tsunami was on a beach again.

This time it was dark, long after sunset, and small stars shone in the sky like the silver scales on the underside of Starflight’s wings. Tsunami stared down at the waves lapping over her talons.

She wondered if she’d ever see Riptide again. Or Anemone, or Auklet, or her mother.

“I know it’s dark,” Starflight said uncomfortably behind her, “but —”

Tsunami sighed. “But we should stay under the trees.” She stood up and followed him into the woods, shaking the sand off her talons. “I’m
trying
to be more like you, you know,” she said to him. “I’m trying to stop and think and use my head and all that smart stuff, but it drives me a little crazy sometimes.”

Starflight stumbled on a tree root and turned to stare at her. “Be more like me?” he echoed. “Why would you want to do that? I wish I were anything like you! Especially brave.”

Tsunami brushed his wings with hers. “You’re all right the way you are,” she said. “Someone has to be the thoughtful, careful one. And you made Blister pretty mad — that took some courage. Besides, I don’t think this group could handle two of me.” In the moonlight, she caught a half smile flitting across his face.

Webs lay on a patch of moss, breathing in a nasty shallow way. Sunny was curled up beside him so her scales could give him a little warmth. Clay was peering at the scratch near his tail, which was still oozing and starting to turn black around the edges.

“We need help,” Clay said. “I have no idea how to fix this.” His expression was woeful.

“Who would know how to cure someone of SandWing venom?” Sunny asked. “SandWings, I guess,” she answered herself. “But I don’t know where we’d find one we could trust.”

“The Talons of Peace?” Starflight suggested doubtfully.

“I can’t go back there,” Webs said. “And you shouldn’t either.”

Tsunami tilted her head at him curiously. After all these years of being a good Talon foot soldier, obeying their every command, suddenly he’d changed his mind?

“If Crocodile was an infiltrator,” he said, catching her look, “there could be others. I don’t know who’s safe for you and who’s not.”

“Seriously. Even the ‘good’ dragons all seem to have plans for us,” Tsunami said, thinking of her mother.

“
Gosh
, I hope Blaze is better than the other two,” Sunny said fervently.

Starflight winced, but didn’t argue with her. “We can probably find her with the IceWings,” he said, “but we’ll have to be very, very careful this time.”

“Yeah,” Clay agreed. “I vote for not getting locked up
ever again
.”

“Maybe we should try a different approach,” Glory suggested. “Maybe this time we could
not
barge in yelling, ‘We’re the dragonets of destiny! We’re awesome and special! We’d make terrific prisoners!’ Just an idea.”

“Do you know what we’re supposed to do?” Sunny asked Webs hopefully. “Did the Talons have any plans about how we could fulfill the prophecy?”

“If they did,” Webs said, “they didn’t share them with me.”

“Awesome,” Glory muttered. Tsunami glanced at her. The RainWing’s scales were shades of black and dark green, blending in with the dark forest around them. An idea struck her.

“I know who might help Webs with the poison,” Tsunami said.

“Who?” Clay asked.

“The RainWings,” she said. Glory twisted around to give her a sharp look. “Think about it,” Tsunami went on. “They have venom, too, obviously. They must know something about what to do when you poison the wrong dragon.”

“True,” Starflight said. “Even if it’s a different kind of venom . . . that’s still a good point.”

“And then we can look for Glory’s family,” Tsunami said. “Which I think is only fair.”

Glory’s face was expressionless, but small puffs of rose pink were blooming in her scales. Tsunami guessed that meant she was happy, since it wasn’t a color they saw very often on her.

“Are you — are you sure?” Glory said. “That’s what we should do next?”

“Absolutely,” Sunny said. “We should definitely go find your home, Glory.”

“I bet it’s beautiful,” Clay said in his sweet, earnest way. “And your family will be so happy to see you.”

Webs let out a small groan, but when they turned to look at him, he closed his eyes as if he’d fallen asleep. Tsunami was sure he was pretending, but what they did next wasn’t up to him anyway.

“It’s also closer to here than most of the other tribes,” Starflight pointed out. “We have to cross the outskirts of MudWing territory, but the rainforest should be basically due southwest of here.”

“I know that,” Glory said crossly. “You’re not the only one who can memorize maps, Starflight.”

“Perfect,” Tsunami said. “That’s what we’ll do.”

“After we rest?” Sunny asked hopefully.

Tsunami thought she could keep flying, all night if she had to. She wanted to put as much distance between them and Blister as possible. She wanted to shove all the other dragonets ahead of her all the way to the rainforest without stopping.

But she looked at Sunny’s tired eyes and Starflight’s drooping wings, and she settled herself close to Webs’s tail. “After we rest,” she agreed.

Sunny lay down again with a relieved sigh. A few moments later, Tsunami saw her back rising and falling in deep sleep.

Clay flopped down next to Tsunami, his tail draped over hers. “I’m sorry about your mother,” he said. “And the palace. And Blister. And Whirlpool. And Riptide. And —”

“All right, I get it, thanks,” Tsunami said, cutting him off with a nudge.

“I hope they all make it through the attack,” he said quietly.

“Me too,” she said. “But they’ll be safe in the Deep Palace. At least they have somewhere else to go.” She thought for a moment. “And I think Anemone will be a good queen one day. She has Coral’s good qualities, but she thinks for herself, and she’s still young. She’ll get stronger and more in de pen dent as she gets older.”

“If she’s anything like you, ‘in de pen dent’ will be an understatement,” Glory said. She tucked herself along Clay’s other side and he put one wing over her. Starflight had tentatively nosed in beside Sunny, and now his eyes were closed as well.

“The Kingdom of the Sea wasn’t the right place for me anyway,” Tsunami said, partly to convince herself.

“What about your great royal destiny?” Glory teased. “What about how you’d be the greatest queen of all time?”

“Well,” Tsunami said with a shrug, “I guess I’ll have to settle for being the boss of you guys.”

“Ha!” Glory said, but not in her usual sarcastic way. Amused yellow bubbles floated through her wings, and she reached over to nose Tsunami’s shoulder. “You can certainly keep trying.”

I will,
Tsunami thought,
but not because I think I’m the greatest and everyone should listen to me. I’ll keep trying to lead you because it’s the only way I know to keep you all safe. And maybe sometimes I’ll have to listen, the way Mother listens to her Council, and sometimes I won’t be able to do exactly what I want.

But even when she was mad at her friends, she knew she could trust them. And she had to be the kind of dragon they could trust as well.

She glanced up at the moons, two of them glowing pale and ghostly beyond the trees.

There were more important things than becoming queen.

Stopping the war was one of them. If the five of them were the only ones who could — then maybe that was what they had to do, whether Tsunami believed in destiny or not.

She wriggled closer to her friends. All of them were sleeping soundly now.

So the Kingdom of the Sea wasn’t home after all,
she thought.
I wonder if anywhere ever will be.

“Well,” Morrowseer said. “So that didn’t go as planned.”

“You ne glected to mention a few things,” said Blister calmly. “Such as the fact that your five dragonets are remarkably annoying.” She draped her barbed tail pointedly over her talons and folded her wings back.

“Yes,” said the NightWing. “True. But you might have tried to be a little less sinister at them.” He stared down at the charred ruins of the Summer Palace. Fires were still smoldering on a few floors of the pavilion. Three days after the battle, nothing remained but smoke and corpses.

“At least Webs is dead,” he said.

“Should be by now,” she answered, flipping her tail up and down.

“Queen Coral survived?” he asked.

“And both her brats as well,” said Blister. “It wouldn’t be convenient for me if she died.” She bared her teeth and hissed softly. “Of course, now she’s hiding in her Deep Palace where I can’t get to her. And she insists that my secret weapon will be no use to me for years still. She’s gotten all squeamish about animus powers since finding out about her first daughter — like she’d rather waste that little one’s magic just to keep her from turning homicidal.” Blister sighed a small burst of flame. “It’s not been my favorite week of the war.”

She batted away a piece of smoking foliage. “So, NightWing, I hope for your sake that you bring me news I want to hear.”

“There is another option,” Morrowseer said, “but I’m not sure you’ll like it much better.” He spread his wings and beckoned to a green shape circling in the sky overhead.

The SeaWing landed carefully on the cliffside, vines crumbling to ashes below his claws. He glanced down at the palace and shuddered. Morrowseer noticed that he stayed well away from Blister. Perhaps he’d heard — or guessed — what had happened to Kestrel.

“This is Nautilus,” Morrowseer explained. “One of the leaders of the Talons of Peace. Nautilus, explain your backup plan to the queen.”

“Possible future queen,” Nautilus corrected, then jumped back ner vously as Blister raised her poisonous tail. “Er,” he said quickly, “we have a . . . a set of
alternatives
.”

Blister’s black eyes glittered with interest. “Alternatives?” she said. “Really. My, my. I had no idea the Talons of Peace could be so devious.”

Nautilus frowned. “We prefer to think of it as planning for every contingency,” he said. “We have to do whatever’s necessary so the prophecy will come true.”

“Or true-ish,” Morrowseer interjected.

“Of course,” Blister said. “Dragonets can be so unpredictable. You are very wise.”

“Well,” Nautilus said, pleased, “it
was
my idea.”

“Of course it was,” she said. “Very clever. We are talking about false dragonets, yes?”

“But,” rumbled Morrowseer.

“Yes,” Nautilus said. His tail twitched. “But. They’re, ah — not quite perfect.”

“Hmmm,” said Blister. “Worse than the originals? Is that possible?”

“Well . . . different. Or else they’d be plan A,” Nautilus said. “Obviously.”

“All I want to know is whether they’ll do as they’re told,” Blister said.

“Um.” Nautilus wrinkled his snout and stared at the sky. “Maaaaybe?”

“This does sound promising,” Blister said drily. “I can’t wait to meet them.”

“Perhaps we can take the best options from each group,” Morrowseer said. “Kill the RainWing, obviously. We can probably work with the original MudWing.”

“Your NightWing is useless,” Blister said. “Worst traitor I’ve ever seen.”

Morrowseer shook his head. “That is very disappointing. We don’t often kill off our dragonets, but . . .” He sighed. “If we must.”

“Uh,” said Nautilus, “you might want to meet our other option first. I mean, not to interfere. Just a suggestion.”

“And we’ll definitely kill the SeaWing,” Blister snarled.

Nautilus flapped his wings, backing away in a hurry.

“Not you,” she said impatiently. “Well, not right now.”

“I thought Tsunami had some potential,” Morrowseer muttered.

“Potential to annoy my tail off,” Blister growled. “No, she definitely has to go.”

“We have dragons working on it as we speak,” Morrowseer promised. “Recruiting assassins is surprisingly easy in the middle of a war.”

“Good.” Blister flicked her tail menacingly. “Those dragonets need to know they’re not as valuable as they think they are. Anyone can be replaced.” She smiled with all her teeth. “After all . . . there’s more than one way to fulfill a prophecy.”