Close to the ancient temple, on an overgrown plaza, was a fountain. Even hundreds of years after the city fell that fountain was still whole and still running with clear, sweet water — how, I couldn’t even begin to guess, but my money was on some ancient enchantment, still chugging along. It seemed a fair bet. Except for its age, it was fairly standard for a fountain: round, with a small central basin overflowing into a larger outer one, and three ladies in the center, wearing wraps much like the ones that were still popular in Karakan and holding urns from which the water poured. This was our only convenient source of water, so in the morning, that was where we went for a drink and for Herald to wash and refill her water skins.

  There was an earthy, musky scent in the air that was tantalizingly familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it. It wasn’t until we reached the plaza that I realized what that scent was.

  There, drinking deep from the basin of the fountain without a care in the world, knelt a troll. For a troll, it wasn’t particularly remarkable in any way, but even an average troll was still a force to be reckoned with. Or it would be, to anyone who wasn’t me.

  The last time I fought trolls, I’d still been considerably smaller than they were. Now Herald didn't even come up to my shoulder, and with my long neck, the troll by the fountain was in every way beneath me.

  I gave one long, deep growl, and the troll turned to look at me. I looked back, and we stood like that for about two seconds before the troll turned and tore deep furrows in the dirt getting the hell out of there. I tore after it, but only until the edge of the plaza. There I stopped and roared after it at the top of my lungs before returning, satisfied, to Herald.

  The woman in question was sitting on the edge of the fountain, giggling. “That was the best thing I have seen in weeks,” she said once she’d calmed a little. “It just…” she gestured to the holes the troll had gouged in the dirt in its haste to flee, and broke out in a fresh fit of giggles.

  “Yeah,” I agreed, “that was pretty great, wasn’t it?”

  “Were you going to fight it?” she asked.

  “I wasn’t going to surrender your only source of clean water to a troll, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “Thank you,” she said with exaggerated sincerity as she began to undress. “I do appreciate it.”

  “So will I in a few days,” I shot back. “I’ve got a sensitive nose, you know?”

  She stuck her tongue out at me, I stuck my tongue out at her, we laughed — it was a whole thing.

  The troll came back while Herald was washing. I ran it off again. I considered running it down this time, but if there was one troll, there were probably more, and Herald was literally naked and more or less helpless. I wasn’t about to leave her undefended.

  “We should hunt that troll down,” I told her as she wiped herself mostly dry with her wrung out washcloth. “I don’t like that it came back.”

  “Is that Instinct or Draka talking?” she asked. “It sounds more like pride than reason.”

  I snorted. “Bit of both? It’s insulting that it came back, and dangerous. I don’t want any trolls anywhere near you.”

  “I could just Shift, you know.”

  “Yeah,” I conceded. “Maybe. I still don't like it.”

  Once Herald was ready, it was back to the library for us. It took some searching, but there was indeed a register of the library's contents to be found, safely stowed in a cabinet at the back of the lower floor. Herald immediately went to work translating it. Early results were promising — each entry listed the title, author, and a few keywords indicating what the book was about. Of course, Herald couldn’t translate all of those keywords, or even all of the titles, but she was delighted all the same. She spent pretty much all day doing that with only a few short breaks, and she was nowhere near done when we decided to stop.

  “I have already found some promising titles,” she said, waving some of her new notes at me. “Not the one mentioned in the primer, unfortunately, but some of these should contain names, descriptions, and illustrations of plants, animals, arms and armor, all kinds of things! This one here—” she pointed to a title “— is all about ships and sailing. I hope to find something about art and especially paint for Val, but I think tomorrow I will try to find some of the ones I have already identified.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” I told her. “And I can keep studying your notes. I’ve been practicing the Mallinean letters, see?” I showed her some of my own notes, where I’d scrawled some of the unfamiliar syllabary as I practiced. They were huge and messy. “I think I’m getting the hang of it.”

  “I can read those!” Herald exclaimed. “Do you know what this means, Draka? There may be only two people in the world who can read any Old Mallinean at all, and those two are us!”

  “We should both learn the language properly before we let anyone in on the secret,” I said, lowering my head close to her and whispering conspiratorially. “That way we’d have our own language, even more secret than Tekereteki.”

  “Or you could teach me more of your Inglis,” she said, poking me. “You have been slacking off on that!”

  “That too,” I agreed. “But English won’t let you recover any lost knowledge, will it? It’s not like I know how to make so much as a pencil.”

  “But it is your language,” she rebutted. Then, with a tinge of jealousy she added, “And Mak speaks it.”

  “There is that,” I agreed.

  That evening we hunted, and Herald brought down an absolutely enormous, brown furred squirrel with her bow. The thing was the size I’d been when I first crawled out into the sun, and Herald took care to skin it and prepare the pelt; she didn’t know what to do with it but declared the fur some of the softest she’d ever touched.

  The unfortunate critter tasted pretty good, too.

  The library’s register did not, unfortunately, tell us where each book might be found. And if the collection was organized in any logical way, we had yet to learn it. Scrolls were with scrolls and bound volumes were with other bound volumes, but it looked like people had simply shelved their books wherever there was room: epic poems were next to books on horticulture, and histories were next to fictional romances. Though it did seem like some humor had occasionally gone into it. In one memorable case, a book about the food in some place called Pankoli had been shelved between a book on the treatment of stomach ailments, and another comparing the funeral rites of various religions — Herald brought that book to her desk out of sheer, morbid curiosity.

  It took Herald all morning to find three of the books she’d noted from the register. One about plants, one about animals, and a third titled On the History of the Something Something of Malyon. Herald lacked two of the words, but the name seemed promising enough. We didn’t know if Malyon referred to the city, the island, or all the territory thought to have been controlled by the Old Mallineans; nor did we know if it was about the “Great City” or the “Fishing Trade” of Malyon. But, based on the similarity in sound of the name Malyon to Mallin, Herald declared that it must contain something interesting.

  With those books in hand, as well as the one about potentially lethal Pankoli cooking, we needed to decide what to do next.

  “Do you think we should pack up and return to the city?” I asked. “The papers you took last time were fine. We could even do a test-flight with some book that doesn’t interest you.”

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  “Putting aside the idea of potentially destroying a priceless artifact of the ancient world, I would honestly prefer to stay here,” Herald said. “Just the two of us, until Embers gets here. I am feeling the absence of my servants; I will not pretend otherwise. But it is good for me to practice resisting that worry, is it not?”

  “Nah, yeah. Probably. Not like you can always be around each other. And it’s absolutely not like I don’t want to be alone with you. I’m just a little worried about everything. I know Mak’s almost invincible as long as she only has to fight other humans, and that Tam, Val, and most of your friends are solid fighters, too. It’s just… I threatened the Council, yeah? I threatened to have my mother burn the Palace, or even the city, to the ground, if they didn’t release Mak and the others. And I can’t help but think that there may be some kind of awful consequences. I don’t think the Council are going to try anything — not even Nahasia — but they don’t control everything that happens in the city.”

  “They do not,” Herald agreed, her voice calm and steady. “But there is no reason to think that anyone who could threaten our family would do so.”

  “Maybe not, but then there’s Zabra. And Tammy, too.” I paused. “I really should ask if she has another nickname she prefers.”

  “Not at all. You named her Tammy, and from what I have seen of her, that is her name now. Leretem, or whatever her name was before, is gone. If you want to be kind, if you want to make her happy, keep calling her Tammy.”

  “Yeah, maybe. But, back on track. They were attacked once before, right? What if something happens to them?”

  “You do not like them,” she reminded me. “No more than I like Soandel. You will find out, and you will avenge them, but that will be that. I do not think their loss will burden you overmuch once that is done.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. And this was something I’d thought about in the silent hours; it really worried me. “Listen, it’s like… if someone stole something from my hoard, there would at least be a way for me to get it back, yeah. But if someone died, even Zabra or Tammy…”

  I had to stop there. The thought made me feel physically ill.

  “You could never get them back,” Herald softly finished for me.

  “Right.”

  “But you had no qualms about sending Tammy to risk her life, spying for us. Not until you learned that she was actually in danger.”

  “Yeah,” I said. I had to think about that. “It’s different, somehow. Sending someone to risk their life feels… it was an acceptable risk, I guess? But when she was close, and in actual, present danger, it just wasn’t worth it any more.”

  “You want us to die on your terms?” Herald asked. Not unkindly. Seriously, sure, but all I saw in her eyes was a desire to understand. “Like our lives are yours to spend?”

  “Not yours. Never yours.” If thinking about someone murdering Zabra made me ill, the idea of losing Herald, in any way, was… I honestly didn’t know if I could go on if that happened. “Nothing could be worth that. But Tammy, Zabra, maybe Barro… yeah. Maybe. Can we not talk about this anymore?”

  “That is how I feel about Soandel,” Herald said. “I do not want him dead. He had paid for what he did to us. But as long as he dies furthering our goals… I do not think I would mourn him too much.” She sighed and stared past me for a moment then said, “But you are right. Let us not talk about this anymore. Are you willing to stay?”

  “For you? Yeah. Being here with you, making you happy, that does me more good than worrying does me bad, if that makes sense.”

  Herald smiled fondly. “It makes perfect sense.”

  We ended up staying the rest of that day, and another two full days after that. Herald worked on all three books in turn, switching whenever she got stuck on one and pushing forward became too frustrating.

  During those days we struck an uneasy truce with the trolls. There were three of them that we saw, two females and a male, and they relied on the fountain for water just as much as Herald did. They even did some crude maintenance; when watching them, I once saw one of them removing fallen leaves and other debris from the basin. But they stayed away when we wanted it; as aggressive as the previous trolls I’d faced had been, these were cautious, almost timid. I could only assume that they saw anything bigger than themselves as not worth the fight.

  We, on our part, left nothing out of our sight for long. The first time Herald started packing up her camp in the temple, which was after we saw the first troll, I again offered to go and just kill the creature. Herald, to my surprise, asked me not to.

  “It is not harmless,” she reasoned, “but with you around it may as well be. And it is not such a hardship to pack up. Leave it. If there is anywhere we can tolerate trolls, it should be here.”

  When we spotted a second and third troll, I really wanted to get rid of them, but Herald still asked me to leave them as long as they kept their distance. I couldn't quite wrap my head around it, and she couldn't explain her sudden bout of mercy beyond not feeling threatened. And maybe she was right: the trolls kept at a respectable distance, and when I looked at them they pulled in their arms close to their bodies, crouched low, and looked down — gestures that I could only interpret as submissive. They never tried to get into either the temple or the library, nor were there any signs that they’d tried while we were away; as far as we could tell, they never even went close to either building.

  When Val had first told me about trolls, he’d called them just cunning enough to be stupid. I was starting to suspect that stupidity was a sign of overconfidence. They sure seemed clever enough to show deference to a dragon.

  On the evening of our fifth day in the ruined city, Herald admitted that she was getting more worried about Sarina and Marvan than she could stand, and we decided to go. She left the three books she’d been working on at the library, but we took two others with us: one about the history of some notable family that Herald had never heard of, and one about famous Malyoni art. The second was a bit of a gamble, but there were several similar books, and the one we took was neither the thickest nor the one in best condition.

  We picked the book about art because it was full of beautiful illustrations, supposed to be copies of the famous works it described. We thought the others would enjoy it. The family history came along because we wanted to see what would happen if we added an ancient book to my hoard.

  The plan was that, once we were sure the books would survive as well as her pamphlet had, we'd either return together or I’d come and collect the books on my own.

  “And you're sure about the trolls?” I asked as we were about to leave. “It's not too late. We could take the night to hunt them down and make sure they don't get in with the books.”

  “They were here when we arrived,” she said, “and there was no sign they ever tried to get in. I do not think they will now.”

  “I don't get it,” I admitted, and not for the first time. “What’s this sudden soft spot for trolls?”

  “I am not sure, either. I suppose I pity them,” she said. Then she turned dark. “But if you come back, and they have damaged anything…”

  “One chance is more than I was planning to give them. I’ll deal with them.”

  We topped up our Hearts at a random Rift inside the city walls. Then we returned to my hoard.

  Herald again managed to snooze most of the way.

  I was at once disappointed and not at all surprised that an ancient book on the history of some random family didn’t instantly make me grow a foot and cross another threshold. But it did become part of my hoard, there was no doubt about that, so it must have had some value.

  “Maybe it’s for the best,” I told Herald. “Much less temptation to just move the whole library here, this way. Probably wouldn’t be good for the books.”

  Herald emphatically disagreed. She didn’t say it out loud, but I knew her well enough to know that she was far grumpier about the whole thing than I was. “Does that mean the books are not actually worth much?” she asked. “It hardly seems fair. This is ancient history! Long-lost knowledge from Old Mallin — or Malyon. We agree that is what they called their city, right?”

  “Looks like, yeah,” I agreed.

  “So, any one of these books should be worth as much as the one we sold to Lord Timerisemmon! We do not even know what that one was about!”

  “Wait, are you upset about the gold value itself, or about the… I don’t know, the insult to the book’s dignity, or something?”

  “Both! I can be upset about both!”

  “But we have no idea how my hoard assigns value to anything. I mean, it’s not like gold, which has an objective, intrinsic value; a book’s worth whatever someone’s willing to pay for it, yeah? For all we know, it only values a book as much as the paper and binding, never mind what’s in it.”

  She gave my hoard a sour look. Then she sighed and said, “At least when we sell them, I can console myself with the hundreds and hundreds of dragons we are likely to get.”

  We returned to Karakan late that same evening. Nothing had been set on fire, no one had tried to abduct or murder anyone, and nobody had been arrested.

  It was enough to make a girl nervous, really.

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