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  To Joanne, who dragged me up to Chena Hot Springs,

  where I got to see the Aurora Borealis and

  ride in a dogsled that hit a tree

  Guide to Pronunciation of Kushan Names

  Ajumaq (Ah-yuh-mak). Arctic creature whose touch is deadly.

  Amagjat (Ah-mahg-yat). A hag who preys on unwary travelers in the Far North.

  Klestetstse (Klays-tayts-tsay). More often shortened to Kles (Klays). Scirye’s lap griffin, a gift from Princess Maimantstse.

  Koyn Encuwontse (Koin En-coo-won-tsay). Iron Beak.

  Lady Miunai (Mee-oo-neye). Mother to Roxanna.

  Lady Sudarshane (Soo-dar-sha-nay). Scirye’s mother.

  Lady Tabiti (Ta-bee-tee). A legendary Sarmatian warrior chief.

  Lord Resak (Re-shak). An Arctic spirit.

  Lord Tsirauñe (Tsee-rou-nay). Scirye’s father.

  Nana (Nah-nah). The Sogdian name of Nanaia.

  Nanaia (Na-ni-ah). A goddess worshipped by the Kushans.

  Nishke (Neesh-kay). Scirye’s older sister.

  Prince Etre (Ay-tray). Kushan Consul.

  Prince Tarkhun (Tar-koon). A Sogdian prince and father to Roxanna.

  Princess Maimantstse (My-man-tsuh-tsay). Cousin of Scirye’s father.

  Rapaññe (Rah-pan-nay). Scirye’s clan.

  Riye Srukalleyis (Ree-yay Sroo-kal-lay-ees). City of Death.

  Roxanna (Rok-sah-nah). The daughter of Prince Tarkhun and Lady Miunai who knows the Arctic like the back of her hand.

  Sakre Menantse (Sa-kray May-nan-tsay). A name for the Kushan Empire, meaning “Blessed of the Moon.”

  Sakre Yapoy (Sa-kray Ya-poi). Another name for the Kushan Empire, meaning “the Blessed Land.”

  Scirye (Skeer-yay). Mistress of Kles.

  Taqqiq (Tak-keek).

  Tarkär (Tar-kir). Cloud.

  Tizheruk (Tee-zer-ook). A serpent-like monster in the Arctic.

  Upach (Oo-pak). An ifrit and servant to Roxanna.

  Contents

  1 Scirye

  2 Bayang

  3 Scirye

  4 Leech

  5 Bayang

  6 Scirye

  7 Scirye

  8 Scirye

  9 Scirye

  10 Scirye

  11 Bayang

  12 Leech

  13 Scirye

  14 Bayang

  15 Leech

  16 Scirye

  17 Bayang

  18 Scirye

  19 Scirye

  20 Scirye

  21 Scirye

  22 Bayang

  23 Leech

  24 Scirye

  25 Scirye

  26 Bayang

  27 Leech

  28 Bayang

  29 Leech

  30 Leech

  31 Scirye

  32 Scirye

  33 Scirye

  34 Scirye

  35 Scirye

  36 Bayang

  37 Leech

  38 Bayang

  39 Scirye

  40 Leech

  41 Bayang

  42 Scirye

  43 Leech

  44 Bayang

  45 Leech

  46 Bayang

  47 Leech

  48 Scirye

  Afterword

  Preview: City of Death

  Reader’s Guide

  1

  Mid-November 1941, near Nova Hafnia, Cabot Territory (formerly Nu Danmark)

  Scirye

  Scirye and her companions were thirty miles from the city of Nova Hafnia, located near the Arctic Circle, when they found the battle. Or rather, the battle found them.

  They had flown this far north in search of Roland, one of the richest men in the world, and Badik, a malevolent dragon. Roland had ordered Badik to steal an antique archer’s ring, a great treasure of Scirye’s Kushan people, from a San Francisco museum and killed Scirye’s sister, Nishke, during the theft. Leech’s good friend and mentor, Primo, had also died during the theft.

  Scirye, Leech, and their friends had set out in pursuit, the chase taking them through a Hawaiian volcano where they had fought by the side of the goddess Pele. When Roland had stolen a second treasure from Pele, the goddess had summoned the Cloud Folk to spin a wing out of straw, a triangle about thirty feet at its base and sixty feet long. Small triangles stuck up from its tail and belly like fins to make it more aerodynamic.

  They had been flying for a week and, as usual, Naue was singing his own praises: “I am Naue, whose kindness dwarfs even his awesome strength.”

  Naue was one of the world’s great winds, whom Pele had asked to carry the wing to the Arctic. Though he was as powerful as a hurricane, he had the mind, patience, and emotions of a three-year-old. “I outrace the sun and tickle the stars,” he sang. There seemed to be no end to Naue’s achievements—at least in Naue’s mind.

  “What’s that?” Scirye asked, straining to hear over Naue’s roaring.

  “What’s what, my lady?” Kles yawned. The griffin, only eight inches high, lay curled up on her lap like a napping kitten.

  Scriye cradled her friend in the palms of her hands and deposited him on her shoulder. The lap griffin promptly curved around her neck so that his hindquarters remained on one of her shoulders while his head rested on the other as if he were a collar of tawny fur and feathers. Warm. Cozy. And very tickly.

  Rising, she stepped carefully, because the matlike surface of the wing gave slightly beneath her feet, and got as close as she dared to the edge of the frame.

  The frame was only four slender posts of straw united by crossbeams of the same material, and it sat within the center of the wing. The frame looked flimsy enough, like an unfinished house of straw, or a child’s crude sketch of a house. But it shielded them against the winds and freezing cold.

  This far north, Elios the Sun only lingered for four hours and even then his beams were weak. Scirye strained her eyes as she scanned the clouds below. They looked like the dirty stuffing of an old mattress that had been strewn about below from horizon to horizon. “It sounds like a motor.”

  Koko the tanuki was busy grooming his pepper-colored fur. The fastidious Japanese badger did that at least once a day. “All I can hear is that…” He mouthed the word “airbag” and waved his paw in an all-encompassing gesture to indicate Naue.

  The wing lurched violently and then began to buck as Naue roared, “What did you say, Noisy Lumpling?” All ground dwellers were lumplings to Naue.

  Scirye gripped the frame for support. For a creature without ears, Naue had very good hearing. “Oh, mighty Naue”—the wind ate up praise the way a child ate candy—“my friend is so full of admiration that he can think of nothing else but your magnificence.”

  The wing settled back into a smooth flight. “Well, of course,” Naue said. “Am I not Naue, greatest of winds?”

  Since Scirye’s mother, Lady Sudarshane, was a diplomat, Scirye had heard more than her share of boring speeches at embassy functions. Out of sheer survival, Scirye had learned how to pretend polite interest in anything. “Yes, please, tell us more about your exploits.”

  As the wind started a booming, roisterous song about some race between himself and some Greek zephyrs, Scirye wondered how
her father would have handled Naue. He was the imperial Griffin Master of her homeland, the Kushan Empire, which had grown rich and powerful controlling the trade between Asia and Europe for two thousand years. Scirye was sure her father, more at home in the sky than on the land and more comfortable with the creatures of the air than humans, would have Naue as eager to please him as a puppy.

  Kles pointedly set a claw against his beak. “Don’t hurt his feelings,” the griffin cautioned the badger softly, “unless you can sprout a pair of wings.”

  “Heads-up!” a boy cried.

  Koko barely rolled onto his back in time as Koko’s partner, the human boy Leech, buzzed low over the badger, the flying disks at the boy’s ankles humming. They were metal circles that, when expanded to about a foot and a half in diameter, he was able to stand and fly about on—but he was still learning and practiced every chance he got.

  In a second, though, he came up short against the frame and, crossing his legs, turned himself around in a neat maneuver.

  Koko fluttered a paw at him as if Leech were an oversize mosquito. “Shoo! Go buzz that overgrown lizard.”

  An orphan, Leech had run away and joined forces with Koko, and they had survived in the mean streets of San Francisco with their wits. He had grown up thinking that he was gutter trash until he had met the man named Primo, who had begun educating him. He’d been devastated by Primo’s death until he’d discovered how magical the disks were. Now they made him feel special and let him do what he loved the most: flying.

  “What’s up?” he asked Scirye.

  “There’s a kind of buzzing?” she asked.

  Leech bobbed up and down a few inches while he listened intently. After a moment, he nodded. “I bet it’s an airplane.”

  “I hear it too,” Bayang the dragon said. She was sitting at the apex of the wing, holding on to the reinlike straw rope that guided their woven craft along. Though she could have flown them on her back, she would have been too worn-out for the battle that no doubt awaited them at the end of their journey. Not only could Roland hire an army of human and magical mercenaries, but Badik the dragon would also be there.

  Bayang craned her long neck now and squinted, trying to glimpse the source of the noise that Scirye had heard. At the same time, Scirye leaned against the frame, which was as strong as steel despite how flimsy it appeared. Leech flew over to the opposite side to check there.

  Leech slapped the frame. “There’s the airplane.”

  Scirye followed his pointing finger. She saw light wink off something flat and silvery below. “But is it Roland’s?”

  Scirye tensed, hoping that they were nearing the end of the chase. “I hope so.”

  “I’ll go check it out,” Leech said eagerly, and started to rise out of the frame.

  2

  Bayang

  The stupid little fool was making it so hard to keep him alive.

  It was hard to believe that she had once thought of Leech as her prey, but then the idiot had the nerve to save her life. Even though she had been grateful, it had violated her professional standards as an assassin: Prey was supposed to be hunted, not helpful. It was just like a human not to respect his own place in the natural order of things.

  And when she’d seen Badik stealing the Chinese archer’s ring in the museum, she knew that her clan, the Dragons of the Moonglow, had worse problems than Leech. Badik and his clan, the Dragons of the Fire Rings, had almost destroyed her clan, so she’d joined Leech and Scirye. They were after Roland, who had killed their friends, and she was after Badik, who had slain so many of her kin.

  The strange thing was that during the pursuit, she’d realized that the friendly, trusting Leech was nothing like the monster of the legends, Lee No Cha, who had not only killed a dragon prince but then had also made his skin into a belt. It had been Bayang’s unpleasant task to assassinate each incarnation of Lee No Cha, which she had done diligently until she had met the latest version and she’d become Leech’s bodyguard rather than his assassin.

  The trouble was that he loved to fly as much as she did, and she remembered her own delight when she had first flown. However, that same eagerness made fledglings misjudge the level of their own skills and killed more of them than anything else.

  Stretching out her tail, Bayang wrapped the tip around Leech’s ankle. The disks were so powerful that she almost lost her grip, and she really had to haul at his leg to pull him back to safety.

  “Stay in the frame, you little idiot! How many times do I have to warn you? You’ll blow away if you stray outside it.” She held on to him just to make sure he didn’t try again.

  Leech tried to tug himself free. “You’re not my mother.”

  Bayang stiffened. “Don’t be ridiculous! I’m a dragon and you’re…a…a…” She caught her lip turning up in a sneer as she was about to say “human.” Among dragons, that could be a deadly insult.

  And yet his words, though true, hurt. She hadn’t realized that the hatchling, her former enemy, had become so entwined with her life that she was vulnerable to his insults. When had that happened?

  But he’s right, Bayang admitted ruefully to herself. No mother, dragon or human, would have done to him what you’ve done. I’ve killed all those earlier versions of him. And even if your sins could be erased, you’re of two different species.

  “True,” she said. “So think of me as your bodyguard. In that capacity, I’m telling you that a human couldn’t withstand the force. And even if you could, you’d freeze. If a dragon like me has trouble when I leave the frame to clear the ice from the wing, what hope does a human have?”

  He still looked rebellious. “We’ll never know unless you let me try.”

  She wondered if she had shown as much resentment when her flight instructor, Sergeant Pindai, had held her back. Probably. However, she hadn’t dared talk back to the sergeant. The human hatchlings were the opposite, demanding reasons for orders that were actually just common sense.

  “And what if Badik is in the airplane and comes out to attack you?” Kles asked.

  Leech slapped his other armband. “I’ve got my weapon ring for that.” The armband would expand into a metal ring, stronger than steel.

  “You don’t know enough yet,” Bayang said.

  “Whose fault is that?” Leech demanded. “You made me quit practicing.”

  Koko pointed to his forehead. “For all our sakes. You nearly beaned me on the noggin twice when you were swinging that thing.”

  “And what if you hit the airplane by accident?” Bayang pointed out. “If the airplane crashed, we’d lose the ring.”

  “Yes,” Kles agreed. “From its heading, the airplane must be going to Nova Hafnia.”

  “A plane that size would need to re-fuel,” Bayang reasoned. “When it lands, we’ll see if it’s Roland and Badik. And if it is, we strike.”

  “Okay, okay, gang up on me,” Leech griped, and, folding his arms, he squatted a few inches above the mat.

  “Now you’re being sensible.” She let go of his ankle and sat upright again. Beneath her, the airplane seemed to float along as serenely as a toy and then disappeared beneath a high layer of clouds.

  Her shoulders ached and she was tired, for it was tricky to fly the wing within the turbulent sky currents. She’d been the only one to handle it all this time. Even though a dragon’s power of endurance matched her strength, Bayang was nearing her limits. But she felt the excitement of the hunt surge through her.

  Let’s see if we can get close enough to check on the passengers, she thought. “Oh, mighty Naue, I’ve marveled at your skills. Great is your strength. Swift is your speed. And yet how delicate is your touch? Could you skim just above those clouds below without ripping them apart?”

  “Is not Naue as tender as a moonbeam? As gentle as down?” Naue answered.

  The wing angled downward as the wind began to descend until it was slipping over the top of the clouds, the mist barely rippling along the surface as it flew.

 
With gentle tugs, Bayang skillfully maneuvered the wing until they were as low as they could go and still be in Naue’s embrace.

  After a while, the clouds thinned until they seemed like gauze. They had flown close enough for her to see the airplane was a Ford Trimotor with engines on the wing and the nose. Instead of wheels, though, it had long skis for landing on snow or ice.

  Kles made a hollow growling noise. “I smell falcon stench.” The griffin’s fur and feathers bristled at the scent of his rivals for the sky.

  Scirye quickly reached her hand up to stroke his back. “Calm down, Kles. Calm. We don’t want you going wild on us.”

  Peering over the edge of the wings, Bayang saw two giant falcons climbing toward the airplane. The Danish empire had used them as mounts for centuries and this species had been bred specially for the Arctic. Their bodies were the size of cars and their wings as wide as a small airplane’s, but their great white feathers made them deceptively fluffy. Balls of down hid their eyes, their legs, and their claws and left their beaks half-covered so that they seemed shorter than they really were.

  On their backs were human riders in heavy leather jackets padded with wool. One of them wore a helmet of the Nu Danmark colonial forces, but the other had a leather cap with flaps that covered his ears. Both of them wore leather boots that rose to mid-thigh.