The first winter crisis came six months later.
A thunder lizard emerged at the northern wall. From the archive room, Kane offered a single seal and promised to turn the beast away within a minute.
Some members of the Council agreed.
Fear had not gone anywhere.
Instead of using the seal, Mira checked the calculations, the dyers prepared the heated channels and the swarm captains agreed to blind the lizard with smoke. The first plan failed: the wind shifted, and the beast headed for a residential district.
Cole requested a decision from both of the nearest wall sections. One demanded that the inner gates be closed and the outer street abandoned. The other was already evacuating residents and asked for the passage to remain open for another ten minutes.
The Council had no time to convene.
Taya relayed the wind direction, Mira warned that the infirmary had room for only twenty severely wounded people, and Leon proposed using the little dragon to open a brief rift. The beast refused to approach the thunder lizard.
Leon did not ask again.
Two sections of the wall did not wait for a common decision. One flooded the moat; the other dismantled the stone facing and created a false passage towards the river.
A third section opened the storehouse and handed out fireproof cloaks to the residents without the Council's signature. The duty officer's name and the exact number of missing sets were entered in the log. No one called it perfect order.
The operation took six hours and cost two towers.
The Crown would have done it faster.
The city did it on its own.
When I returned to the infirmary, Styx's enclosure was empty. Tiny tracks marked the snow beyond the window.
Lily and I found her on the outer edge of the western wall. The artificial wing lay beside her. A real one had grown from her back, small and colourless.
The same independent captain waited beyond the wall. A free red swarm circled above the field.
Lily did not turn on the transmitter.
Styx touched antennae with the captain and rose after him. The Wildlands held others of her kind and a place where no one remembered the Queen. The city held treatment, expectations and a man who had once decided that no one would ever take her away from him.
I did not call her.
I opened my palm.
Styx circled above the wall and flew out. The red speck grew smaller until it vanished into the winter field.
A minute passed.
I lowered my hand.
Styx settled on my wrist.
She had not returned to my palm. Of her own accord, she stepped onto my open fingers and folded her wings.
No voice announced her rank. I could not feel her thoughts, and I did not know whether she would still be there tomorrow.
The Wildlands lay behind us. Ahead, the city gates opened onto the road home.
I walked with my hand held carefully open.
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