Voices of Dragons

Was it hers?

“Mrs. Wyatt, I’m extremely sorry for your loss.” He spared Kay a quick glance.

“Thank you,” Mom said. Kay marveled at how calm her mother was.

Between them, the general and Mom’s boss introduced everyone, but the names went right past Kay. She couldn’t process. They all nodded respectfully and murmured words of sympathy. But the blood was rushing in Kay’s ears. They were going to ask why she did it, why she and Artegal were even friends. And she didn’t have a good answer.

General Branigan started by saying, “Miss Wyatt, is this you in these photographs?”

Kay wanted to laugh because she didn’t think of herself as Miss Wyatt. She didn’t know how to be formal back at him. She was wearing jeans and a thick wool sweater, not a suit or skirt.

Her voice scratched when she answered, “Yes.”

He stared at her for a long moment, and the other men—they were all men—followed his lead, letting the silence grow heavy, weighing on her.

Co

“Would you like to tell us how this happened?” General Branigan nodded at the picture.

“It was an accident,” she said, her voice small. Mom squeezed her hand. “We weren’t hurting anything.”

The general put on a fake easygoing smile and spoke in a condescending voice. “Now, nobody says you were. We just want to understand what you’ve been doing.”

Kay decided she hated the guy. That gave her confidence. She sat up a little straighter. “We just talked—”

“You talked to it? It talks?” Branigan said.

Mom spoke up. “General, we know from the Silver River Treaty negotiations sixty years ago that some of the dragons will talk to people.”

The general settled back, but his expression was sour.

“Go on,” Mom prompted her.

“We got this idea about flying.” Kay was a little vague on that. She wasn’t ready to give up the book. “I do a lot of rock climbing. I used some of the gear. It worked.” She shrugged. Maybe if she played out the sullen teenager thing they’d leave her alone.

“But what was it doing that close to the border?” Branigan asked.

It took her a moment to realize he was talking about Artegal. “He was curious. He wanted to find someone to talk to.” She made sure to emphasize the he.

“So it was spying?”

“No—” But she realized she didn’t know that for sure. Maybe Artegal had been sent to spy. “If he was spying, I’m pretty sure he didn’t find out a whole lot from me. I don’t know anything.”

Then they started talking as if she weren’t there.

“Maybe it thought it could use her to gather information—”

“Or it misjudged how much access she had—”

“If it could trick her into flying away with it, they’d have a hostage—”

“So did they think she was a source of information or a hostage?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. She knew she was right; they were wrong. “He was just curious. He just wanted to talk. We’re just friends.”

The group of men stared, disbelieving and speechless.

If she told them about the book, would they believe her? Would they believe a girl and a dragon could be friends then? Or would they take it away and keep ignoring her? She thought of Dracopolis as hers, and she didn’t want anyone to find it.

She especially didn’t want them to find the page with the map and coordinates slipped inside it. They’d go looking for whatever was there, and she wanted to keep that secret safe. She wanted to be the one to find it. She and Artegal should be the ones to look for it.

Her mother squeezed her hand again. She hadn’t let go all this time.

“We just talked. Really. He isn’t a spy,” Kay said.

Branigan smiled that awful fake smile again. “We know you’d like to think that. Tell me, Miss Wyatt—why did you cross the border in the first place?”

“I told you, it was an accident. I fell in the creek and he—the dragon—pulled me out. He saved my life.”

“I hate to start making accusations,” Branigan said, but Kay got the feeling he was all too happy to make them. “But it sounds like if you managed to get close enough to the border to fall over it, the local Federal Bureau of Border Enforcement may have gotten a little sloppy.”

“Now wait just a minute,” Mom said, straightening and glaring across the table.

“General, if I may,” Captain Co

“Nothing bad happened,” Kay said again, pleading. “We weren’t hurting anything.”

“Young lady, we’re at war here,” Branigan said.

“That’s your fault,” she replied. She continued, before he could yell at her. “What’s going to happen to me? I broke the law by crossing the border, I know. I knew it then. I’m the one who crossed, not him. So what’s going to happen to me?” Whatever it was, she just wanted to get it over with. She wanted it all to be over.

Mom’s boss, the regional bureau director, should have been the one to answer that question. There were no cops in the room. It was his jurisdiction. But he, her mother, everyone, in fact, looked at General Branigan. Kay didn’t want him to decide what happened to her.

“None of us is out to get you, Miss Wyatt. The situation we’re in right now is a little too unusual to be worrying about something like that. But I think what you’ve given us here is an opportunity. I think you may be able to help us, if you’re willing. If not—well, you’re right. You’ve broken the law. Pretty spectacularly.”

Mom’s hand clenched even more tightly around hers. Branigan’s meaning was clear. She’d help, or she was screwed. Kay didn’t see how that was any choice at all. She had to play their game. She had a bad feeling she knew what he wanted.

The general said, “If we asked you to, do you think you could get in touch with this dragon again? You see, Miss Wyatt, you probably know more about the dragons than anyone else in this room. And we need to find out as much as we can about them. I think you can help us do that. Miss Wyatt—Kay—think about your father. Think about what they did to him. This is your chance to do something about that. Do you understand?”

Except that her father worked to keep the peace, that was how he saw himself. He wouldn’t have wanted her to take revenge. He’d wanted to keep the peace. He’d always said keeping the peace was easier when you made friends rather than made threats.

“Well?” Branigan said. “Will you help us?”

“It’s just talking,” Co

That was it, then. Artegal may not have been a spy, but Branigan wanted to turn her into one. She didn’t know more about dragons. She just knew Artegal.

Kay’s head really started swimming, but her response was mechanical. It wasn’t much of a choice at all. She nodded, agreeing, because she would have done nearly anything to get out of that room just then.