Chapter Four

Fuck yeah!" crowed Duckers as his bolt slammed into the tin can for the third time in a row.

Not even twenty-four hours had passed since they'd gotten the enormous weapons, but Duckers was already head over heels in love.

Frank gawked at the crook of a heartnut tree outside the barracks where seconds ago the can had perched. "Holy Three Mothers."

Duckers smoothed his thin mustache. "I'm a good shot."

"I'll say. Twy. You're up."

Twyla was enjoying crossbow practice far less than her compatriots were. She wasn't sure which was more unnerving: using the lever to heave the massive string into the nut or the terrifying power of pulling the trigger and unleashing the bolt. This was why she was relieved to hear Hermia's meek "Hello-o-o? Mail delivery?" from behind them.

"Ope, I guess we'd better pack this in," Twyla said, happy to hand her weapon to Frank.

It took a staggeringly long time for the diminutive hedgehog to cross the clearing in front of the barracks. Her oversized blue rubber boots didn't seem to help matters. She was puffing so hard by the time she reached the marshals that she had fogged up her glasses.

Twyla itched to pick her up and snuggle her. "Hello, Hermia. Good to see you," she said.

The nimkilim wheezed in reply, but it was a pleasant wheeze. "Report," she panted. "For you." She panted again. "From the." She panted. "Chief." She reached into her satchel and pulled out a letter. The envelope snagged on one of her quills, ripping open the flap as she handed it to Twyla. "Oh dear," she said sadly.

"It's all right."

Hermia nodded, but her eyes welled up all the same. She took a rumpled hankie from her pocket and blew her adorable upturned nose.

"Maybe tip her extra?" Twyla whispered to Frank.

"It's a ploy, I'm telling you," he whispered in reply, but he forked over two coppers anyway.

Hermia grasped the coins, one in each little hedgehog hand. "Thank you, Marshal Ellis. Oh!" Suddenly, the nimkilim began to look about frantically. "Oh no! Where did I put my mailbag?"

"You're wearing it," said Frank.

"Oh!" Hermia drooped in abject relief. "Thank goodness. Okay, bye then."

"Bye," said Twyla.

"Bye," Hermia said to Duckers.

"Bye," he replied.

"Bye," she told him, as if she hadn't already bid him adieu.

"Please don't say bye again," Frank begged his companions under his breath.

"Bye," Hermia said one last time before straightening her glasses and stumping away in her rubber boots.

"She's so pathetic," Duckers murmured as they watched her leave. "I love her."

"Not you, too," said Frank. He nodded toward the message in Twyla's hand. "What's it say?"

Twyla took the note out of the torn envelope and read it aloud:

Coroner's report states cause of death was traumatic brain injury, caused by a blow to the head when Herd fell. Lab results for substance found on Herd's body were inconclusive. Samples have been sent to the labs of the Federated Islands of Cadmus's Bureau of Investigation for further analysis. Since you three are the marshals of record on the coroner's report, at least one of you will need to take the body to the undertaker. I may be out of the office when you come through the station, so I want to make sure you're apprised of the situation. Reminder: this is classified information sent through secured nimkilim post. Destroy after reading. More from me soon.

—Maguire

"It doesn't help Herd, but at least his death was an accident," Twyla commented as Frank lit a match. She handed him the note so that he could burn it.

"Who wants to take in the body?" he asked.

"I'm in," said Duckers.

"Why don't we all go?" Twyla suggested. "It's not like we've seen criminal activity around here in weeks, and if a huge flying animal decides to stop by, I wouldn't mind not being here for that. Plus, we could grab lunch at the Salt and Key."

With everyone in agreement, they rode to the West Station, where Frank's autoduck was parked out front with a thin layer of Bushong dust coating it. But while many marshals used their own vehicles to transport a body, neither Twyla nor Frank relished sticking a corpse in the same hold where they put their groceries. Unfortunately, the only company autoduck available at the station was an old boneshaker with a single bench, so they wound up crammed together with Twyla at the wheel, Duckers on the hump seat in the middle, and Frank squeezed against the passenger-side door, all of them jouncing their way to Eternity. Twyla hoped poor Herd's remains survived the drive without further damage. By the time they arrived at the loading dock of Mercy's Undertakings, Twyla's teeth ached from all the rattling around.

Duckers rang the dock bell, and Mercy Birdsall herself, dressed in dungarees and a floral blouse knotted at her waist, hoisted up the gate and welcomed them with a wide smile.

"Pen!" she cried, pulling him in for a hug. "Hi, Twyla. Hi, Frank."

"These are my new partners," Duckers told her.

"That's wonderful! I hate to say it, but I didn't like seeing you with Marshal Herd."

"That makes two of us."

"Why did you split with him?"

"Um, well, he's in there." Duckers indicated the hold with a jerk of his thumb, and Twyla cringed in sympathy with Mercy's evident mortification.

"Oh," said the undertaker.

Twyla stepped in to change the subject to something far happier. "Getting excited about the wedding?"

Panic painted over Mercy's face. From the office down the hall, her sister, Lilian, shouted, "Do not say the w-word in Mercy's presence! She's stressed out about it enough as it is!"

Now it was Twyla's turn to say, "Oh."

It had been thirty-four years since she had gotten married, and her mom had been the one who had handled most of the planning. At the time, Twyla had bristled at her mother's meddling, especially since neither of her parents had been thrilled to marry off their nineteen-year-old daughter to her high school sweetheart. She felt a pang of remorse about that now. Poor Mercy—whose own mother had passed away many years ago—had to figure out the logistics of her wedding while running her own business.

"It's fine. I'm fine," said Mercy. She pushed her red cat-eye glasses up the bridge of her nose with an anxious giggle that bordered on hysteria. "You're in luck," she told Duckers. "Zeddie stopped by. He's in the kitchenette. Zeddie! Pen's here!"

A sound that could only be described as a squeal came from the direction of the aforementioned kitchenette, followed in short order by Mercy's brother. Zeddie Birdsall was a tall, golden-haired paragon of good fashion, but at the moment, he was little more than a blur as he raced to the loading dock to tackle Duckers in a hug.

"My dearest darling Ducky!" he cried jokingly before laying a loud smack on his boyfriend's cheek.

"You're ridiculous," Duckers informed him, although he was grinning like mad.

"You all catch up," said Twyla. "We'll take care of Herd."

"Are they friends or something?" Frank asked Twyla as they strapped Herd's sailcloth-wrapped body to a dolly and wheeled the remains toward the boatworks.

"They're dating."

"Really?"

Occasionally, Frank amazed Twyla with his utter cluelessness.

"Zeddie laid one on Duckers in front of your eyeballs. They've been together for ages. Where have you been?"

"Well now, how was I supposed to know?"

"By existing in the world?"

Frank grunted in annoyance.

By now, they had reached the boatworks, and Twyla helped Frank get the corpse onto the prep table. In the next day or two, Mercy would sing the incantations of the dead as she salted the body and rewrapped it in fresh sailcloth. She would build the boat that Herd had selected when he bought his funeral package at Mercy's Undertakings, and she would place him inside and send him home to his loved ones.

They lingered at Herd's side, a pall falling over them. Frank doffed his hat and held it over his chest. "I hope there's someone to mourn him."

Twyla was suddenly worried that there might not be anyone to grieve for the man at all. He had been far from perfect in life, but it was unbearably sad to think of him being alone in death.

"Mercy will help his soul sail the Salt Sea to the House of the Unknown God," she said to comfort herself as much as Frank. He nodded, even though she knew he wasn't terribly religious. For her own part, Twyla was a praying woman who went to temple every Allgodsday (when she wasn't on tour), so she considered the dropping off of a body at an undertaker's a solemn, reverent part of her job, her way of helping souls move on to the next life beside the Unknown God in the Void Beyond the Sky.

Frank put his hat on. "We'd better be heading back."

They returned to the dock to bid their farewells to the Birdsalls. Zeddie took his boyfriend's arm, rolled up his sleeve, and kissed the stoppered bottle inked on his skin.

"Salt Sea, they're cute," rumbled Frank.

"He literally kissed Duckers's soul." Twyla clutched her heart. She had long since convinced herself that romance was something that occurred only in the pages of a book and in the imagination of the lonely. Yet deep down, she suspected that such affection might actually exist in reality for the lucky few.

Twyla was not one of the lucky few. She had come to terms with this years ago, but every now and again, she yearned for an arm to hold her in the night, a reminder that someone loved her and maybe even lived for her a little. If she lost her appendix, she wouldn't mind having someone kiss the tattoo that contained her immortal soul.

After a quick lunch, they bumped their way to the West Station in an autoduck with no shocks to speak of, and Twyla knew her aging body would feel the journey in spades tomorrow.

Frank drove this time, leaving Twyla free to notice that Duckers appeared less cheery than usual. "What's wrong?" she asked him.

He gave her a one-shoulder shrug, and she figured that leaving his boyfriend behind to hang out in Sector W-14 with boring middle-aged people must be disappointing. She patted his knee. "It's not easy having a love life with this job."

"Oh, yeah? Have you had a hard time dating?"

In fact, Twyla had not dated anyone in the past thirteen years. She'd had no love life at all since Doug died. Frank saved her from having to answer Duckers by grunting his own discontent with his love life.

"Stop grunting so much. You sound like a pig at a trough today."

He grunted again, this time with humorous theatricality.

Twyla gazed out the window, watching the arid Bushong landscape pass by. No one could see her grin as she sang, "He leaves wet towels on the bathroom floor."

"Don't make me grunt again," threatened Frank.

"And tracks in mud right through my door," she sang, louder, adding in extra twang for kicks.

"What is happening right now?" demanded Duckers.

Twyla reached across him to nudge Frank's shoulder until he relented and sang the next line.

"But when I scold him—"

Duckers put his hands over his ears. "Am I in Old Hell?"

"I just want to hold him!"

"Aaaaargh!" Duckers screamed as, together, Twyla and Frank sang, in full-throated glory, "My man's a pig, but his heart is big."

"What in the House of the Unknown God was that shit?" asked Duckers in the aftermath of Twyla's and Frank's laughter and self-congratulatory clapping.

"The finest music in the history of the Federated Islands of Cadmus," answered Frank.

"No. Nuh-uh. New rule: that travesty to musickind can never happen again in my presence."

"All in favor of Duckers's new rule, say aye," said Twyla.

Duckers raised his hand and said, "Aye!" When he saw that he was the only aye, he raised both hands.

"All opposed, say nay," said Twyla, and Frank joined his strident "Nay!" to hers.

"You are overruled, Duckers," Frank declared smugly.

"Oh, wait. We're supposed to call him Pen now."

Frank shook his head. "Can't do it. He's clearly a Duckers."

Twyla realized that she had reverted to thinking of their new partner as Duckers roughly five seconds after he told them his name was Penrose. "Definitely a Duckers," Twyla had to agree.

Duckers snorted. "Told you."

By the time Twyla, Frank, and Duckers returned to Tanria, the sun was dipping below the horizon. As they approached Sector W-14, there was barely enough light to see a group of riders on the ridge to their northeast, silhouetted against the indigo sky as they dashed headlong in the direction of the Mist. The three marshals reined to a halt to assess the situation.

"Are they ours?" asked Duckers.

"Unknown," answered Frank.

Twyla squinted at the riders as the sounds of galloping began to drift toward her. "Think they need help?"

"I don't see a flare."

"Uh, guys?" Duckers aimed a shaking finger at a large creature that appeared to be following the riders.

At speed.

In the air.

Backlit by the dim twilight, the scene became a shadow puppet show playing out before their eyes. Twyla felt like a spectator, safe in her saddle, as a fantastical story unfolded in front of her.

"Tell me one of you has a reasonable explanation as to what that is," pleaded Frank. "And don't say dragon."

"I think it might be a dragon," Twyla heard herself answer.

"Other than a dragon."

The creature was a distant shadow in the sky, but that shadow had bat-like wings and a long serpentine body and the shimmer of scales that reflected what little light remained. And it was big. Salt Sea, was it big. Twyla was so stunned by the sight that she could swear her internal organs were disintegrating.

"Holy shit! That's a gods-fucking dragon!" cried Duckers, who was about to launch out of his saddle like a bottle rocket.

Frank barked an exultant laugh as a similar elation filled Twyla's chest, the kind of sensation a person experiences at the top of a Ferris wheel—a heady combination of terror and excitement.

"We should probably save those people," Twyla suggested. She turned to Frank, who shot her a wolfish grin, and she knew she wore the same expression. How long had it been since they'd seen this kind of action on the job? Months. Ages. Gods, it felt good.

Still grinning, Twyla took off, urging her mount to a gallop. Frank and Duckers each gave a whoop and bolted after her. She could barely make out the sound of her partners' equimares moving at full speed behind her over the sound of her own mare's webbed feet, slapping and sucking against the earth with each stride.

Why are you riding toward a possible dragon? Twyla's inner voice of reason wondered, but instincts honed through eight years' service with the Tanrian Marshals pressed her to help those riders any way she could. If she had to make a guess, she'd bet they were smugglers hoping to escape through a pirated portal in the Mist. An illegal portal was probably how they'd gotten into Tanria in the first place.

Luck was on the marshals' side when they hit an ambrosial runnel snaking its way south between a couple of foothills. The equimares' webbed feet were made for this, and the water horses surged north against the light current. Duckers let loose an exhilarated cheer at the increased speed as Frank, riding Saltlicker, took the lead.

This is why he loves that godsawful stallion so much, Twyla thought as she watched the equimaris and rider fly ahead of her through the ambrosia, outpacing her and Duckers by a good ten lengths. He was the first to catch up to the riders, about a mile from the Mist.

"Pull up!" he ordered them as he rode alongside them.

"Fuck you!" a man shouted back, his eyes wide with panic.

"You're going to break your necks!" Twyla hollered over the cacophony of equimaris feet as she and Duckers closed in on the galloping scrum. They were quickly running out of room to pull up before hitting the Mist. From outside, the Mist was a thick, churning cloud covering Tanria in an oblong dome. But from the inside, it was as clear as a windowpane, so that the Old Gods could look out at the world and see either what they had done to it or what they were missing. But invisible though it might be, it was as solid as granite, and smashing into it while riding full speed on an equimaris was sure to lead to injury or worse.

"There!" hollered Duckers, and now Twyla could see the illegal portal that had cut a temporary hole in the Mist to the world outside. Like most pirated portals, it was only large enough for one person to crawl through at a time, which meant the alleged smugglers would have to dismount to escape. If they made it that far to begin with.

They didn't make it that far.

The dragon was on them. It butted the first rider off his mount with what appeared to be antlers, scattering the rest of the equimares in all directions. The water horses gurgled with panic. Twyla's mount shied and reared, and it was all she could do to stay on. As soon as the equimaris's front feet hit the ground, she made the snap decision to slide out of the saddle rather than risk being thrown, a decision that proved wise when her mount fled pell-mell from the scene the second she was off. She could find Duckers nowhere in the chaos but caught sight of Frank astride Saltlicker, reining to a stop next to the portal and shouting, "Out! Out!"

It felt counterintuitive to Twyla to let a pack of smugglers escape the same way they'd illegally entered Tanria, but when it came to a choice between saving them or arresting them, the marshals needed to prioritize life. She ran to the rider who had been butted off his mount and helped him to his feet.

"Go, go, go!" she shouted as the goons converged on the exit. They didn't need to be told twice.

The dragon came tearing in again. Twyla thought it was going to crash into the Mist, the way songbirds sometimes tragically hurtled themselves against the glass of her picture window at home, but it seemed to sense the physical presence of the barrier and wheeled in a wide arc above them before it circled back again, a huge shadowy silhouette closing in on them against the purpling sky of dusk. It landed ten feet away from them, threw back its head, and…

Chirped.

It was not at all the sound Twyla would have expected to come out of something that big and that terrifying, and it was oddly more disturbing than a roar or growl.

Meep-meep-meep-meep-meep, chirrup! it cheeped as another criminal ran for the portal, clutching a strange round object to his chest.

Frank dismounted and ordered "Leave it!"

Twyla thought the man intended to barrel his way past Frank. Instead, he thrust his burden into Frank's arms, crying "We didn't know what they were!" before he hurled himself through the portal to safety.

Twyla saw two more of the strange objects on the ground where the goons must have left them, like a pair of marbled blue-green bowling balls. Except they weren't perfectly spherical. They were oblong. Egg shaped.

Eggs.

Her pulse thundered in her ears as she watched Frank help a crook through the portal with one hand while holding on to the egg with the other. The dragon cocked its wings and ran at him on its two enormous feet, calling a battle cry of Meep-meep-meep-meep-meep!

"Frank! Let it go!" yelled Twyla, but he either didn't hear her or wasn't listening.

Duckers ran up beside her. "Oh, shit!" he cried, echoing her own frantic thoughts. He tore the full-sized crossbow from his back and fumbled the bolt into the tiller.

The dragon pulled up, and its throat went sickeningly thick.

"Oh, shit! Oh, shit!" Duckers cursed as he tried and failed to lever the string into the nut.

"Drop it, Frank!" bellowed Twyla.

The last goon turned toward their shouting in time to see the dragon's threatening posture. With a squawk of terror, he dove for the portal and shut it down less than a second before the dragon hurled a jet of slimy glitter from its throat. The sparkly jettison smashed against Frank, a direct hit, knocking him spread-eagle against the Mist. The egg dropped to the ground with a sickening crack.

The dragon screeched in outrage and heartbreak at the damaged egg, matching the desperate scream that tore through Twyla's throat. Everything around her faded into oblivion, even the rampaging dragon. A whole future passed before Twyla's eyes, a life she'd have to get through without Frank Ellis by her side. No more equimaris ranch off the coast. No more bed-and-breakfast to run together. No more laughs or inside jokes. No more dinners made together or beers shared on their front steps. No more comfort in knowing him and being known. It was like standing on a beach, looking out on the vast gray ocean, only it was grief and loneliness and despair that made her feel small and useless rather than the sea.

"Shit! Shit! Shit!" Duckers chanted, even as the string finally clicked into place behind the nut.

Frank slid limply down the Mist until he landed on his knees.

And to Twyla's amazement, he held up one hand and called, "I'm good," even as he rubbed his sternum with the other hand.

Alive.

He was alive.

Duckers hoisted the crossbow up and took aim. Twyla's instincts moved her body before her brain had a chance to catch up. She pulled on Duckers's arm as he fired, sending the bolt plunging into the earth three feet from the dragon's feet.

"The fuck?"

"She's a mom. She's doing what moms do," Twyla said calmly, hoping her tone would somehow convey her meaning to the puffing beast before them. It was full dark now, and the creature was nothing more than a black smudge against the darkened sky. It shuffled past them, bent its head, and snuffled at one of the eggs left behind by the goons. A second later, it leaped into the air and spread its wings, covering the stars for a good ten feet to either side.

"Fuuuuuuuuck," said Duckers, fumbling for another bolt, but Twyla put a hand over his to stop him. The dragon reached down to pick up the egg with one foot, then swooped sideways to pick up a second. They both stared after it, Twyla nearly asphyxiating with her held breath until the creature faded out of view.

And then she realized that Frank had come to stand beside her on his own two feet to watch the dragon fly away with them.

"Frank?" she asked, so many questions wrapped into one syllable.

"I'm fine."

Twyla burst into tears. These were not softly falling, quiet tears. These were booming tears. Stentorian tears. The kind of tears that came with wheezing gasps for air. Her entire body sobbed. She'd thought this kind of weeping came only with grief. She had no idea a person could wail with relief.

"Aw, darlin'." Frank reached for her but seemed to think better of it, given his current state. "Duckers, care to do the honors?"

"Hugs, Banneker!" Duckers not only wrapped her in his arms but picked her an inch off the ground and jostled her. If there was one thing that could get her to stop crying, it was being picked up and rattled by an overly exuberant guy in his early twenties.

"Thanks, Duckers," she half cried and half laughed. "You can put me down now."

He dropped her and whooped. "Woo! Woooooo! Did you see that? Dragons! In Tanria! Who was right? I was right!"

"You were right," Frank agreed, bemused.

"In your face, Ellis! Haaaaaaa!"

"You're sure you're not injured?" Twyla asked Frank as Duckers danced to a song of his own devising, an entire ditty about dragons and being right and how everyone else could suck it.

"Not a scratch on me," he assured her.

He stood so close to her now that the heat of his living body drifted her way, making her heart turn over with gratitude.

"Hello-o-o? Mail delivery?" A familiar voice cut through the darkness—as much as a breathy, pathetic hedgehog voice could be said to cut through anything.

"Salt Sea, are you kidding me?" Frank groaned, and that was how Twyla knew he really was okay.

"Goodness me, it's dark." They could see Hermia's silhouette as she rummaged inside her bag. Seconds later, she pulled an already lit lantern out of its depths and held it up. "There, that's better. Oh!" Her black eyes went large when she caught sight of Frank. He looked bizarre—almost godlike—in his glittery state. "Did I come at a bad time?"

"No, perfect timing," Frank said with an irony that the nimkilim wouldn't be able to catch with a ten-foot net.

"Let's get a good look at Captain Sparkles over here," declared Duckers. He swiped the lantern from the hedgehog—who yelped, "Oh dear!"—and held it up. Frank shimmered into focus. His back was relatively unscathed, but golden glitter covered every inch of his front hemisphere. Even his lips and hair were coated in glitter, and his eyes looked strange, peering out of all that brilliance.

"Dang," breathed Duckers.

"I could go for a bath," Frank admitted.

"Does it hurt?"

"No, just feels weird."

Duckers burst out laughing and gestured to Frank in all his sparkling glory. "I've been to clubs where you come home looking like this. Glitter cannons everywhere. You look like you've been having yourself a real good time tonight."

Frank's glitter-coated lips thinned. "I suspect the clubs are more fun."

"No way. That was the most fun I've had in a long time."

"Happy to amuse you," said Frank, but by now, he was laughing along with Duckers.

"Excuse me?" squeaked Hermia. She flapped a letter in the air. "Mail delivery?"

"Right." Twyla fished a coin out of her pocket and tipped the nimkilim. "Thanks, Hermia."

"Um, may I have my lantern, please?"

Duckers handed it to her, but the hedgehog didn't seem to be in a rush to leave. She set the lantern on the ground, rummaged once more inside her bag, and retrieved a bottle of grape soda.

"Do any of you have a bottle opener?"

"Not handy," said Twyla.

"Oh. Okay." The nimkilim set the bottle of grape soda next to the lantern and went about digging in her satchel yet again.

"Salt Sea," Frank muttered before stalking over to Saltlicker—the one and only equimaris that hadn't completely abandoned them—to light his saddle lantern and retrieve his own bottle opener. "Here," he said, thrusting the tool at the nimkilim.

"Thank you." Hermia blinked up at him in gratitude. She tried to open the bottle on her own, but her hands were too small to hold the bottle and open it at the same time.

"Mother of Sorrows," Frank breathed, and Twyla was fairly sure he wasn't praying. He snatched the bottle opener from Hermia, opened the bottle for her, and placed it into her hands. "Thank you. Goodbye."

"Okay, bye."

"Bye from all of us. Group goodbye." Frank was understandably at the end of his rope, so Twyla nudged Duckers, and they both bid Hermia their farewells before the nimkilim could prolong her exit.

"Bye," said the hedgehog one last time before disappearing into the night.

"We should have dashed off a quick note to the chief to send with her," Twyla said, staring in the direction the nimkilim had gone. And then she remembered that she was holding a note, probably from Maguire. She tore open the envelope and read aloud:

Will be coming by the barracks sometime tomorrow morning. Bringing an expert with me to assist with investigation.

—A.M.

Twyla folded the note and put it inside Frank's saddle lantern to burn. "I guess we don't need to send a report after all."

"Hey, look," said Duckers, squinting toward the Mist, where a splotch of glittery gold slime oozed downward toward an egg, the one that Frank had dropped when the dragon spat on him. Twyla grabbed the saddle lantern from its pole, and the three marshals cautiously surrounded the mottled blue-green shell. Frank bent over to get a better look as Twyla held the lantern over it.

"Be careful," she warned him.

"It's cracked," he observed.

Without warning, something launched itself out of the egg and latched on to Frank's torso, sending him toppling to the ground. He landed on his back with a pained "Oof!"

"Fuck me, Grandfather Bones!" exclaimed Duckers.

Twyla rushed over and fell to her knees beside him. "Frank! Are you hurt? Talk to me!"

"Not hurt," he grunted. "What… what is it?"

He gazed at Twyla, his eyes dark and pleading, as if he couldn't bring himself to look at the thing clinging to his front. The creature was a soft pastel pink in color and about eighteen inches in length from the tip of its tail to the top of its head. It had its limbs tucked against Frank's stomach and its face buried in his chest. Its wings wrapped around his trunk, the tips out of sight behind his back.

"Gonna go out on a limb and guess it's a baby dragon," said Duckers.

"Not helpful!" Twyla hissed at him.

"Them's the facts!"

"Can you get it off me?" asked Frank.

"We can try." Twyla knelt on one side of Frank, and Duckers crouched on the other. A discussion ensued about where exactly to grasp the baby and how much force to exert.

"Let's give it a go, folks," said Frank with a panicky edge to his voice.

Twyla took hold of the creature with one hand at its shoulder and the other under the lower flap of its wing. The hide felt cool and scaly to the touch, not entirely unpleasant. She looked at Duckers. "Count of three?"

He nodded.

"One… two… three."

They pulled gently but firmly, trying to dislodge the baby. Twyla felt it go tense beneath her grasp.

"Don't get it off! Don't get it off!" cried Frank.

Twyla and Duckers released the creature, and it appeared to relax its grip.

"Can you sit up?" Twyla asked Frank.

"I think so."

She and Duckers helped him get into a sitting position. The baby dragon gave a huff of annoyance, then nuzzled its face more firmly into Frank's sternum with a satisfied chirp.

Duckers shook his head. "Dang, Frank, this has got to be the worst day of your life."

"I've had worse." Frank finally let himself look at the pink baby latched on to the front of him. "But not by much."

Saltlicker cantered into their midst, tossing his huge head and snuffing the air. He turned a black eye on the cotton-candy-colored baby clinging to Frank and gave it a derisive snort. The baby puled softly into Frank's chest. The three marshals stared at it for several long seconds, but it didn't move or make another sound.

"Guess that's our cue to get out of here." Frank got to his feet, refusing a hand up from Twyla or Duckers. "Better not touch me, if you can help it. We don't know if this glitter stuff has any harmful effects."

Maybe he was right, but now more than ever, Twyla wanted to put a hand on him, to feel the reassuring solidity of him beneath her touch and to reassure him in turn.

Duckers took the lone equimaris by his bridle and hooked on the saddle lantern. "Saltlicker's the only mount we have left. Why don't you ride him, Frank. Twyla and I can walk."

Twyla could see that Frank was about to default to the gentlemanly manners his mother had instilled in him, but she cut him off. "Get in the saddle, for gods' sakes."

He acquiesced, but he insisted on mounting up without assistance, whether there was a baby dragon stuck to his torso or not. When he set Saltlicker moving east, Twyla called him to a halt.

"Where are you going? The portal's south."

"I think we should go back to the barracks."

Twyla and Duckers trotted to catch up to him.

"We need to get you to the infirmary," Twyla insisted.

He pointed at the dragon. "Pretty sure this is classified, which means the station is out. Going to W-14 is our best option." He clicked his tongue and got Saltlicker moving again.

Twyla looked to Duckers, who shrugged. "He seems fine. I mean, as fine as a person can be with a glitter-barfing baby clinging to him."

"We need to get him some help."

"Maguire's coming in the morning. And, honestly, I think the sparkly guy with the baby dragon should get to call the shots on this one."

When they straggled into the barracks in W-14, Duckers took charge of Saltlicker, and Frank flopped face up on his cot, glitter and dragon and all. "Let me be unconscious for a while," he begged Twyla before she could say a word, and he closed his eyes.

She sat on the thin mattress by his side and took his hand in hers so that she could feel his warmth—his life—even through a layer of shiny dragon spit.

"You shouldn't touch me," he murmured, but it was half-hearted at best.

"Shut up," Twyla told him. An intense emotion that she could not name surged inside her as she watched his chest rise and fall, and she found it difficult to catch her own breath. Tears pooled in her eyes, but she brushed them away with her free hand before they could fall. Frank didn't need her going to pieces. He needed her solid. But that emotion—that confusing intensity—continued to roil in her stomach.

For a time, he held tight to her grasp, brushing the back of her hand as her heart kept time with the motion of his thumb over her knuckles. But then his fingers went slack and his thumb stilled, and she knew he'd conked out.

"This is so messed up," Duckers said when he returned from the stable. He busied himself at the stove, lighting a burner and setting down the kettle.

"Please tell me you're making some more of that medicine."

"Extra honey and extra whiskey."

"The Three Mothers bless you."

They spoke in low voices, like parents tiptoeing around a sleeping child.

"What are we going to do?" asked Duckers as he placed two mugs on the table.

Twyla came to join him, inhaling the medicinal scent while she waited for hers to cool. "I think we can assume that thing will eventually peel off him. Dragons don't spend their lives attached to other dragons."

"As evidenced by the big-ass dragon that just about made us shit ourselves."

"Let's hope this expert Maguire is bringing with her can help him."

"I'll drink to that."

They clinked their mugs together.