one

When the dragon came back to the Forge, Han knew.

She did not, in any sense, try to give him warning. Nevertheless, he knew.

She came at night, flying above the low dense clouds that presaged storm, and he knew.

She coasted in, as silent as a creature can be whose natural elements are air and water, and he knew.

As it happened, he was asleep at the time, and still he knew.

EVEN IN his dreams, he shared a fraction of her mind, as she did his. He felt her coming, and woke; and ran swiftly up to the peak, and kindled a fire in the ruin of the forge.

Not for a beacon, to guide her in. She knew his whereabouts exactly, just as he knew hers. She could have found him in a fog, in her own fog from deep below. He could have found her in the ocean, except that she would have found him first.

It was a warm night already, sticky with pending violence. But fire is comfort and always has been, that’s written on the bone; and he thought also that he’d like a little light, something to see her by, that was not the glow of her own green eyes.

SHE BROKE the clouds, shadow on shadow, and his head lifted. Her descent was slow and inexorable; he waited, as still in himself as she was the definition of movement, the flow of water, nothing in her that was still.

He saw her eyes from a distance, as others had seen them as they plunged. Tonight he was the one who waited and she was the one who came, but that gaze was just as deadly.

If her mouth was open for him, he couldn’t see it yet.

He shifted marginally in her mind, just to remind her that he was there.

She landed, massively light on her feet, crushingly heavy on the earth. Her head swung toward him, and the fierce salt stench of her was as dizzying as that appalling eye as it blazed, but she made no attempt to swallow.

For a while, indeed, she did nothing, and neither did he.

Then, they talked. In his head, in hers: did it matter which? If there was a difference?

Either way, whichever way, it hurt. Her words cut at him like bitter cold blades, searing where they slashed; her thoughts were rocks and whirlpools, crushing and tearing and engulfing. It was hard to understand, moment by moment, how he could ever hope to survive this.

She herself was easy to understand: bitingly, viciously clear, in that tiny aspect of her being that brushed against his. The rest of her was utterly beyond his reach.

SHE SAID:

Little thing. I find I cannot leave you.

Did he hear it, did he feel it like thunder in his bones, did she write it behind his eyes or burn it directly—characters of icy flame!—deep into his mind? He couldn’t tell. The words were there, and they carried her temper with them: a harsh indignant rage that could never be outmatched by the tickle of curiosity that came with it, how something as mean as him could ever be even the slightest nuisance to something as magnificent as her.

He said—or thought, or envisioned, offered up—the only honest answer he could make. There was nowhere to hide in here, in his head or in hers; nowhere to hide the truth. Deception was beyond him, somewhere else.

Great one. I hope you never do. When you fly, you carry me to wonder.

Flattery was beyond him too. He made no effort to cloak his dread of her, the horror that she was. It was only that the wonder, the majesty broke through; his fear could not stand for a moment, against his awe.

She said, You are like a stone, small and muddy and sharp beneath my skin. I cannot shake you.

She was like a flame in his head, if steel could burn, if mountains could diminish. He wished that she would leave him, he wished that he could let her go; he had tried, once, and yet they were still linked. He would like to live quiet and alone until Tien came back to find him, if she did. He would like not to live with this chilly connection. It was his obligation, he knew—and how would Tien ever come to the Forge if the dragon watched the strait unguarded, if he was not able to keep her safe?—and yet, and yet …

He was weak, and afraid, and in awe. He could hide nothing. What he had, she saw.

He said, I think it is these chains I wear, that he had broken but could not shed: cold iron around his throat and wrists, links dangling. Memories of the big smith, Suo Lung, who had lived in a slow sorrow and died abruptly, whose hammer had set these chains on him, whose scribing tool had marked them for the dragon. He could not shed those memories either, but he could turn away from them, or try to. If they could be cut away from me, I think you could fly free.

Hold still, little thing. I will cut them.

Claws she had, iron-dark and strong as stone; sharp teeth she had, she showed him.

No! He would not let her close. He was in her head; he could deflect her. Apparently, he could deter her. He refused it, and she didn’t try.

I mean, he said, if a smith could cut them from me, with proper tools. We could melt the iron after if we had to, have nothing of them left. What could control you then?

Melt away all Suo Lung’s scratches, betray him utterly, set the dragon free. Han thought it could be done. He didn’t think it should be; he was sure that he should stay here, live out his life as the dragon’s sole restraint. Fly with her, and turn her from the worst that she could do.

But. Weak, afraid, yes, and in awe of her already; he could not face her perpetual anger or the constant abrasion of himself. He would go mad, he thought, if he really tried to spend his life in management of her. Perhaps he was mad already, to think it was his proper task.

She said, I have looked, little thing. I have found people who do that, who melt iron and cut at it with tools.

She showed him, in her mind there, but he knew it already; he had been with her, fractionally, as she drifted over the island, where so many men were working to build he knew not what. A hill all dug over and laid out in terraces and foundations; a vast camp, and hordes of people running; a line of structures that leaked smoke, looking curious from the air but familiar from the shadows that they cast, with blocks of stone or iron close at hand. Those were forges, with their anvils and their quenching troughs. For certain there would be someone there to do this thing for him. Few people liked to see a boy in chains.

Even so: No, he said. No, not on Taishu. There will be people on the mainland who can do it. I can find them. If he freed the dragon entirely, she might make the strait entirely impassable. If he had the choice, he would not willingly be on the wrong side of the water from Tien. But, he said, how would I get there?

It lay between them, obvious and unmentionable, dreadful to contemplate; he was almost surprised that she managed at the last to give it voice.

I could … carry you?

No, he said again. No, you cannot. I cannot allow it. How could I trust you? What, put himself voluntarily in the claws of a creature who only needed to squeeze, to pierce, to crush the life from him and she would be free already?

Or else to swallow him, of course. That too.

They looked at each other, caught either side of a quandary; she said, I do not know, then. What to do.

Can you find me a boat? he asked helplessly. Let a boat come, if it will—but I don’t know how you’d tell the men to sail it here.

I will find a way, she said. Doubtfully. He was astonished to find her suddenly so vulnerable, where she was so immense; and then she lifted into the air and flew away, and he was astonished to find himself standing in the utter dark, because his little fire had failed and he hadn’t noticed, because he had been seeing at least somewhat through her eyes.