I was a half a head taller than anyone else here, with longer legs and a much stronger purpose propelling me. Koltar and the three guards leading the group moved maddeningly slowly. After treading on the hem of the black robe of the guard ahead of me for the fourth time, I hissed in vicious annoyance. He stiffened, but did not look back at me. And I supposed it was not really his fault. He was behind Koltar and Koltar walked with what almost felt like aimlessness. Ambling along like we had nothing to do and nowhere to be.

“Calm, Skallagrim,” Jolakaia urged quietly from close on my left side.  “We are nearly there.”

“We had better be,” I snapped, loud enough for Koltar to hear me, though he did not appear to register the words.

It became clear fairly quickly that the city was arranged in looping circles, built outwards from something at the centre. This must be the temple, I thought as we reached it.

The temple appeared to have been built around two of the largest trees I had ever seen. Their trunks were so thick at the base that even if someone with a wingspan as large as mine stood opposite me, we would not have been able to reach our wings around and make contact with each other. The trunks tapered smoothly up into the star-dappled sky, their puffy, metal-threaded tops looking as large as clouds above. The two trees marked a sort of entrance – like an archway that did not bend and meet at the top. They were two natural pillars behind which a beautifully constructed, multi-level building sprang up.

Passing through the trees led us into a walled courtyard. The claws of my feet clicked as I walked. In here, the ground was smooth and hard with interlocking river stones, gold-veined blue. Ahead was an obvious entrance into the temple, a large, rectangular opening with cotton curtains hanging, illuminated by golden light behind them, somewhere within.

Wordlessly, I started walking faster, forcing everyone out of my way as I did so. Jolakaia yelped in surprise, and I heard several sets of running feet behind me.

“Skallagrim! You must be robed in cotton to enter the temple!” Jolakaia gasped. “You cannot-”

With a bit back sigh, I adjusted my hold on Suvi, freeing one hand just enough so that I could snatch at a curtain as I passed it. I ripped it down with one fierce tug without halting my forward motion. I slung it over one shoulder as I walked, tossing part of it back between my wings and sliding the other part gently under Suvi, creating a billowing, untied sash. Apparently, my sash was not good enough, judging by Jolakaia’s stammered complaints behind me, but at this point I did not give two immortal stone sky shits. The fact I’d bent this far to these people’s will at all was beyond the realm of comprehension.

Something told me that, once upon a time, I never would have done any of this.

I would have flattened this place in an instant, the first moment the guard raised a weapon to me.

If it had not been for Suvi.

“Take me to the healers,” I barked at no one in particular. I kept walking through the large space, curtains behind me (what remained of them, at least) and the smooth wood walls of the inner temple ahead. Two small figures – older children or young teenagers – who had been crossing the room nearly jumped out of their scales, swivelling their heads to me.

“Not you,” I hissed at them. I already felt like I was dealing with children all around me right now. No need to make it literal.

Thankfully, Jolakaia seemed to have somewhat recovered from her conniptions over my lack of dress. Sounding rather harried, she said, “This way,” pulling ahead and leading me through another set of curtains on the right. This took us into a windowless hallway. Despite the lack of windows, it was still very well-lit by intricate sets of narrow tubes built into the hall’s ceiling.

“We are heading towards the medical wing of the temple,” she told me. Her robes jumped and fluffed about her ankles as she jogged just ahead of me. “I think it would be best if she were ensconced in one of the private rooms.”

“Of course, she will have a private room!” I snapped. Why in the endless stone sky did Jolakaia think I’d possibly allow Suvi to be shoved into some common sickbay? Fools. Fools everywhere I bloody turn.

Fools behind me, too. While it was not the whole group who’d escorted us, two guards were trailing us through the hall, claws clicking in rapid succession on the stone floor.

Suddenly, Jolakaia stopped directly in front of me, and it was only the refinement of my reflexes that kept me from completely toppling her. She slid open a set of doors I had not noticed and we stepped into a small room.

It was a plain rectangular space, also windowless, as I could tell it was situated well within the temple. But like the hallway, tubes of light along the ceiling kept everything softly bright. There was a door at the other end and a bed in the centre of the room, surrounded by various contraptions of metal, glass, and wood that I had no names for.

“Put her on the bed,” Jolakaia urged me.

“Where are the healers?” I growled. It was still only Jolakaia with me in the room, the guards standing in the doorway.

“I am one of them,” she said brusquely. She waved her claws towards her robe. “A red robe means I’m one of the Mother’s Hands. Put her down.”

I did not want to relinquish Suvi. My heart chanted, hoard, hoard, hoard, but I forced my muscles to unlock and laid her gently down. She moaned when I let her go, like my little star did not wish to be parted from me, either, and that tore at me. Her head lolled towards me on the cotton sheets, her eyes cracking open and looking dazed.

Instantly, without even realizing I had fallen, I was on my knees before her. I bent my head, levelling my gaze with hers.

“I am here, Suvi. I am here with you and I will not let you die.”

Her lips, cracked and pale instead of their usual smooth pink, parted, but she made no sound besides panting breath.

I did not know when I’d started touching her again. My hands skimmed shakily over her forehead, her cheeks, her jaw. Jolakaia buzzed around the room, rolling contraptions this way and that. She struggled to attach several tiny cotton circles attached to flexible metal tubes to Suvi’s chest, then hissed in frustration.

“Everything I have is for Bohnebregg biology. These sensors are supposed to be held in place between scales.” She tossed them onto a tray. “I’ll skip the diagnostic and monitoring equipment entirely since it won’t tell me anything useful. She obviously has points of infection on her feet so I will treat them like Bohnebregg wounds and hope that it works.”

“What do you mean, hope?”

“I will do what I can and I will pray to the Mother,” was all she said in reply. She rolled over another contraption then met my eyes above its metal surface, her expression grim. “I suggest you do the same.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Skallagrim

Jolakaia kept her promise. I heard her prayers, murmured under her breath as she positioned her machine. This contraption was a large, upright ring of metal lined with sections of tubing on its inner side. It had hinges in three places, like the ring could be unlocked and opened up, two sections sprouting out from the centre one like wings. Jolakaia did not open up the ring, merely positioned it at the foot of the bed. She rolled up the sleeves of her robes and fastened them at the elbow with unseen clasps, grass-green scales on her forearms gleaming in the room’s gold-hued light from the tubes above.

“First, I will use the Mother’s Light on her feet.”