Not long after midday, the perfectionist himself granted us a rest.
It was a minor miracle, and I accepted it without comment.
Benedict upended an entire canteen of water down his throat with the single-minded dedication of a man who has just crossed a desert — which, in the most literal sense, he essentially had. The others were in similar condition, sweating even in the shade the tent provided, their faces carrying the particular exhausted resignation of people who have been systematically defeated by the weather.
I was unbothered. A useful side effect of being a dragon, I was discovering, was a comprehensive indifference to temperature extremes in either direction. The sun that was currently dismantling everyone around me registered to my senses as merely present rather than punishing.
Reichert had discarded his upper clothing at some point during the morning's work. He stood with his back to me, studying the progress on the fire posts, arms crossed, sweat rolling down his back in rivulets.
I found, with some resignation, that I had a front row seat to whatever category of experience this fell into.
The tattoo caught the light differently when wet — the serpent coiled around the heart seemed almost to move, the individual scales rendered with such extraordinary detail that I had to consciously remind myself it was ink and not something living. The level of craft in that piece was genuinely impressive. Every scale was distinct, the texture of each one worked with a precision that felt less like illustration and more like documentation.
I drank from my own canteen, which I had not thought I needed until I found that apparently I did.
That was when I heard it.
A wingbeat. Distant, barely there, somewhere above and north — but present to my sharpened senses in the particular way of something carrying magic. Since the transformation I had learned to manage the overwhelming range of what I could now perceive by narrowing my active attention; fully open, the scale of sensory information was genuinely disorienting. But I kept one channel always listening for magic in the vicinity, a standing filter rather than a constant effort.
Something magical was in the sky.
I looked up.
A small shape, very far away — barely a dot against the pale blue. It grew as I watched. The wingbeats resolved from sound into visible motion, and the shape expanded steadily until it was unmistakable.
I wasn't the only one who had noticed.
Reichert was looking up. Benedict followed his gaze. Sheriya and Phoenix saw it next, and their reactions were considerably less neutral — both of them producing sounds of distinct discomfort, low and instinctive, before grabbing each other's arms and retreating into the tent with the decisive speed of creatures that had good reason to dislike whatever was coming.
The creature descended, growing clearer by the moment: two broad, powerful wings, a sharp curved beak, brown feathers shading into gold above — a large eagle, the size of it becoming genuinely impressive as it drew closer, and threaded through with the unmistakable signature of magic.
A magical eagle. An old one, from the feel of it.
It was heading directly for us. Or rather, I realised, directly for one of us.
"Is that Gratina?" Benedict asked, shading his eyes.
"It is," Reichert said, without taking his eyes off it.
"What's Her Highness's bird doing in Selon?" Benedict murmured, just low enough that an ordinary set of ears wouldn't have caught it. Mine did.
The eagle completed one smooth, assessing circle above the stall, apparently evaluating its options, and then Reichert raised his arm without being asked. The bird dropped from the arc of its circle and landed on his forearm with surprising delicacy, folding its enormous wings with the practiced ease of something that has done this many times.
It let out a sound that was unmistakably pleased — a high, sharp note that carried affection in it as clearly as a word would have.
"Gratina." Reichert's voice had changed entirely. The cool precision of the day, the exactness that made every crew member slightly anxious — all of it had simply gone. What replaced it was unhurried and genuine, the voice of someone speaking to a creature they are simply glad to see. He raised his free hand and touched the eagle gently near its face, and the bird pressed into the contact with closed eyes.
I watched this with considerably more interest than was strictly professional.
It was remarkable, in the most straightforward sense of the word: this cold, exacting, perpetually dissatisfied man had a soft spot, and a golden eagle had just landed on his arm and revealed it completely.
"How is Zaria?" he asked the bird, as though the question were entirely reasonable.
The eagle opened its eyes, considered him for a moment, and then extended one leg with calm deliberateness. A small roll of paper was bound there, secured neatly.
Reichert freed it one-handed with the ease of long practice, shook it open, and read.
Whatever he had been expecting, it wasn't this. A frown arrived between his brows and settled there.
"What does the princess say?" Benedict asked.
"She says: 'I'm coming to Selon, brother.'" He said it flatly, in the tone of someone reading a sentence that has produced more questions than it answers.
A beat of silence.
Then work resumed, because there was still work to do, and the nature of Reichert's relationship to deadlines had been established very thoroughly over the past day and a half.
The eagle — Gratina — showed no intention of leaving. She rose from Reichert's arm and found her own position at the peak of the tent's central support, folding herself there with the settled authority of something that has decided it lives here now. Her sharp eyes moved across the fair grounds below with the attentive calm of a creature that is watching everything and missing nothing.
The fair's visitors noticed her almost immediately. People stopped, pointed, tilted their heads back to get a better look, and exchanged comments in the appreciative tones reserved for things that are genuinely impressive.
Their eyes followed the line from the eagle to its master without much difficulty, and Reichert — standing below with his discarded shirt still off, the tattoo visible, Gratina's feathers catching the sun above him — collected a fresh round of attention from several directions simultaneously. Sighs. A few sounds that were something between admiration and something less dignified.
I turned away and pressed my lips together.
---
The afternoon brought more conversation between Reichert and Benedict than the morning had, and I listened to it with the careful, unobtrusive attention of someone who is very busy splitting wood and not paying attention to anything else at all.
The picture assembled itself gradually, piece by piece.
Zaria was Reichert's sister. This much emerged directly. What emerged less directly — through Benedict's occasional slips into 'her highness' and 'the princess', quickly glossed over but not quickly enough for my hearing — was that she occupied a position considerably above ordinary.
Which meant he did too.
Yegney Zaren. A name given in darkness, in a carriage, by a man who spent his days operating under a different one. 'Reichert Dorken' — guild leader of the Silver Eagle, merchant, the name that appeared on trade manifests and bureau paperwork and introductions in construction yards. The name for daylight.
'Zaren' for after dark.
I turned a log over and brought the axe down, and the pieces fell apart along the grain.
A merchant by day. A prince by night.
The two names suddenly made complete sense, and made everything else about him considerably more complicated.
I stacked the split wood and reached for the next log, and kept the realization entirely to myself, and found that it had deepened my curiosity about him to a degree I was not entirely comfortable with.