The Lost Heir (14 page)

Tsunami twisted around, hoping to see something familiar.

To be honest, hoping to see Riptide.

But the ocean was dark and wild, and it seemed like every thing alive had gone into hiding until the storm passed.

So I figure it out myself.
Tsunami set her jaw. She patted the egg through the harness.
Don’t worry. I can do this.

They’d ridden a current most of the way here. Did she have to fight it all the way back? She swam slowly forward until she felt the water try to shove her away. Maybe she could just keep a wing tip in the current and follow it that way.

Several wingbeats later, she pulled away from the current to rest, exhausted and confused. Why was this so hard?

Riptide, where are you?

Perhaps she could find her way back in the air instead. She just had to look for the island shaped like a dragon skeleton — how hard could that be?

Tsunami lashed her tail to power to the surface. She burst out into a pounding cacophony of thunder and roaring waves. Rain crashed down on her scales like hailstones. The wind immediately tried to grab her and carry her off.

She fought to stay balanced and fly straight, but she was already lost. She could see an island to her left, but she didn’t know if that was the one close to the Deep Palace, or if she’d been swept to another, and whether it was on the way back to the Summer Palace or not.

A dark shape on the surface of the water caught her eye. She rubbed her snout, shaking off the raindrops.

Riptide?

She flew lower.

It wasn’t a dragon. It was some kind of odd vessel, like a large bowl, floating on the water. And huddled inside of it were two scavengers, scrawny and soaking wet.

That doesn’t help me at all,
Tsunami thought.
I’m not even hungry right now.

She beat her wings to soar upward again, and one of the scavengers looked up. Its eyes were as green as Glory’s, in a smooth face the same brown color as Clay’s scales. Tangled dark hair snarled around its shoulders.

Tsunami had seen a few scavengers up close before — one in the mountains and two in the SkyWing arena. It struck her again how dragonlike their eyes were. It was sort of unsettling, really.

She wondered if they could breathe underwater or swim, because these two were about to get swamped and end up at the bottom of the ocean.

Unless I help them.

As if I have time for that!

She hesitated. Maybe all scavengers looked that way all the time, but if she had to guess, she’d say their expressions were terrified.

On the other hand, I might as well help
somebody
. Maybe it’ll give me luck.

Tsunami swooped down and snatched up the vessel in her talons. It was heavier than it looked, and she immediately dropped it. The two scavengers let out their long, piercing bird shrieks as the vessel smacked back into the water.

Oh, calm down,
Tsunami thought. She flew around in a circle, fighting the gusts of wind, and wrapped a front talon around each scavenger. They both shrieked some more and banged uselessly against her claws.

How do scavengers accomplish anything?
Tsunami wondered, flapping toward the island.
They don’t seem to have any useful dragon qualities. And yet they manage to steal trea sure and occasionally kill a queen and start a war.

That’s right,
she remembered, giving the scavengers a little shake.
I’m mad at your kind. It’s your fault all of this is happening.

They screamed in a satisfyingly terrified way.

On the other hand, it’s pretty unlikely that it was these exact scavengers who killed Queen Oasis and set off the SandWing war of succession.

So I suppose I’ll let them live.

She dropped them on the island beach. They staggered to their feet and fled up toward the trees and the caves without a backward glance.

Pathetic little creatures.

Tsunami’s wings ached from fighting the storm. She had to try going back underwater.

She dove in with a splash and spun, searching the dark water again for Riptide. Had he given up on her? Was he hiding from the storm, like a smart dragon would, figuring she’d be safe in the Deep Palace?

Well, there was one thing that had gotten his attention before. She opened her wings and lit up all her stripes, like she had done in the tunnel. The glow blazed through the water, and then she shut them down again and waited.

Nothing.

She tried again. It gave her a bit of a head ache, lighting up all her stripes like that, and left her dazzled blind for a few moments afterward. She’d done it sometimes for the other dragonets when the caves got too depressingly dark or Kestrel tried to punish them by taking away all the torches. Glory hated that the most. She couldn’t stand the dark.

Tsunami thought about the Summer Palace, where there was no fire allowed except in one cave, and all the light came through the canopy up above. Not much light could be filtering down from the sky in the middle of the storm. Her friends were probably sitting in the dark right now, listening to the water climb up the beach toward them.

I have to get back to them,
Tsunami thought, blazing all her stripes on again.

Right in front of her, Riptide flung up his wings to shield his eyes.

Tsunami grabbed his claws and turned down her stripes. She jabbed her talon in the direction she thought the Summer Palace was.
Oh, why don’t I know how to say anything useful?

He rubbed his eyes and squinted at the egg attached to her. His expression said, “Something you forgot to mention?”

She whacked his tail with hers and pointed again. She remembered the pattern for
urgent
and lit it up.

Riptide nodded and began paddling toward the surface.

We don’t have time to chat,
Tsunami thought, frustrated, but she followed him because she had no choice.

But before he reached the air, Riptide swung around and slid into another current. As far as Tsunami could tell, it went in the direction of the Summer Palace. He beckoned her after him, and Tsunami ducked into the current as well.

All right. I suppose I could have looked for one of those.

Maybe traveling the sea wasn’t about being strong and fighting with it all the time. Maybe it was about trusting the currents and knowing where they were. Maybe it would just take time before she figured them out.

She lashed her tail to keep up with Riptide as they swung around islands and dodged billowing clouds of translucent jellyfish. The current sped them along, but the journey still felt endless, and Tsunami couldn’t stop thinking about her friends.

She should have fought harder to make her mother accept them. How could anyone not trust Clay? Every thought he had was written all over his big, sweet, goofy face. And Sunny — those two were the most trustworthy of the bunch. Tsunami didn’t think Sunny had ever had a negative thought in her life. She did what she was told, and happily. She believed the best of everyone, even Kestrel and Dune.

Which didn’t say much for Sunny’s judgment or intelligence, but the point was, the littlest dragonet would never hurt or betray anyone — not even a bunch of SeaWings she barely knew.

Starflight was the opposite of Sunny: very smart, totally unreliable, terrified of the world. He tried so hard to know every thing, just so he could be useful in some way. He wasn’t brave. He wasn’t a good fighter. He didn’t even have any useful NightWing powers yet. Most of the time, Tsunami felt sorry for him . . . at least, when he wasn’t trying to steal her position as leader of the group.

But if Queen Coral would give him a chance, she might see that his intelligence could be really useful, especially in fighting the other tribes. He probably knew more about the war and the different tribes than any other dragon in Pyrrhia.

Glory . . . well, Coral didn’t know it, but Glory was probably the least trustworthy and most dangerous of all of them. Her secret venom proved that. Tsunami curled her talons in. In the SkyWing palace, why had Glory waited so long to save her friends? If she’d used the venom on Queen Scarlet earlier, Tsunami wouldn’t have had to kill her father.

Plus she always talked like she didn’t care about the prophecy, then got mad when other dragons pointed out that she wasn’t in it. It was hard to figure out what she really wanted.

And Tsunami could definitely live without her sarcastic comments.

But Glory
had
saved them all, in the end, in the Sky Kingdom. She’d killed to protect her friends.

And I notice nobody seems all mad at her about that,
Tsunami thought bitterly.
Instead
I’m
the crazy impulsive one. Like that’s fair.

Still, if Glory would do that for them, then Queen Coral should learn to trust her, too.

When Mother gets back to the Summer Palace,
Tsunami thought,
I’ll talk to her. I’ll make sure she treats them like my friends, not prisoners.

No matter how mad they made her, Tsunami didn’t want anything bad to happen to any of them. And after two days of SeaWings, she had to admit she kind of missed them . . . even Starflight and Glory.

The spiral horn rocks loomed out of the dark ahead of her, with the golden sea grass curtain behind them. Riptide paused at the rocks, swimming backward as if he was going to leave her there.

Tsunami wound her tail around his and faced him.
Come,
she said, wishing she knew the patterns for “please” and “I might need your help” and “the queen is far away and won’t return until the storm is over.” But all she could say was
come
.

Apparently that was all she needed to say. Riptide nodded and gestured to the curtain, letting her lead the way. She unwound her tail and ducked through into the tunnel.

The current in the tunnel felt faster and heavier than before. She splashed out into the Summer Palace cavern and turned toward the beach.

The white pebbles had been swallowed by the rising water, and the cave mouth was already partly underwater. There were no SeaWing guards, and no sign of her friends outside the cave. Tsunami looked up, wondering if they’d been moved to a higher cave. But all she saw was a few curious SeaWing faces peering down.

Most of the dragons had taken refuge out of the way of the dripping canopy. Being all wet was wonderful, but having your head splatted one annoying drop at a time was not as much fun.

Tsunami paddled over to the beach and felt the pebbles scrape under her claws as she climbed up to the cave. The water was only up to her underbelly, but she could tell it was rising quickly. It lapped around the egg, chilly and unwelcoming, and Tsunami remembered that she was supposed to keep it warm.
Hang in there, little sister,
she thought.
Not much longer.

“Hello?” she called into the cave. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness, and she saw one giant lump of shadows piled near the back.

Her heart lurched.

No.

Were those her friends’ bodies?

Had she come too late?

A small head lifted up from the top of the lump. “Tsunami?” squeaked Sunny’s voice.

“Are you all right?” Tsunami blurted. She waded over and realized the bottom of the lump was Clay, stretched out in the water, half-submerged. Lying on top of him was Glory, and on top of her was Starflight, and at the top of the pile sat Sunny, well out of reach of the water.

“This is a terrible strategy,” Tsunami pointed out as her friends opened their eyes, one by one. She covered her relief that they were alive by scolding them. “Seriously, whose idea was this — Starflight’s? Look, once the cave fills with water, you’ll be stuck in here, and even if it only covers Clay, he can’t hold his breath for the entire storm. Why haven’t you moved to another cave?”

“Oh,” Glory said icily. “The SeaWing princess has time for us all of a sudden.”

“It’s only been a day,” Tsunami said uncomfortably. “Mother’s kept me busy.”

“Well, we feel so blessed that you found time to visit. Please do impart some more incredibly brilliant wisdom on us.” Glory wriggled and twisted her neck to glare up at Starflight. “Get your honking great claws off my wings before I bite you.”

“We can’t go anywhere, Tsunami,” Sunny said as Starflight hurriedly adjusted his position. “We couldn’t leave Clay.” She pointed down at Clay’s talons.

Clay lifted his front talons with an apologetic expression. Silver chains ran around each ankle and were bolted to rings in the floor. He had them around his back talons as well.

Shock stabbed through Tsunami, followed by fury. Had her mother ordered this? If so, she must have known Clay could drown in the storm, and she didn’t care. She’d
lied
to Tsunami that her friends would be all right.

But maybe she didn’t know. Maybe this was Shark’s doing.

If that’s the case, I’ll rip him apart.

“I knew you’d come for us, though,” Sunny said. “I mean, I thought you’d come yesterday. Or this morning. Or when the storm started. But I knew you would come. Eventually. Well, I was pretty sure.”

“I was sure you wouldn’t,” Glory said. “Don’t you have a feast or a coronation or a beheading to attend?” She squinted at Tsunami. “Is that an
egg
? Wow, they work fast in the Kingdom of the Sea. Who’s the lucky father?”

“Glory, stop sniping at me for TWO SECONDS, please,” Tsunami said. She slung the harness off and carefully passed it up to Sunny. “Sunny, I need you to take care of this. It has to stay warm, and you’re the only one who can keep it that way.” She hoped the natural warmth from a SandWing’s scales would be similar to what the egg would have in the nursery.

“Me?” Sunny’s voice was filled with delight. “You want
me
to do something important?”

“Really important,” Tsunami said. “That’s the very last female dragonet Queen Coral may ever have. Somebody wants it dead, and we’re going to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

Sunny wrapped the harness around herself twice and nestled the egg into her warm scales. When Tsunami glanced up, she thought she saw a pulse of dark blue moving inside the egg. “So keep it warm and safe, and for goodness’ sake don’t break it, and don’t let Clay anywhere near it in case he accidentally sits on it.”

“I would never!” Clay protested. His stomach growled loudly.

“Haven’t they at least
fed
you?” Tsunami asked.

“We got some breakfast leftovers this morning,” Clay said with a sigh. “Very extremely tiny small crabs.”

“I am going to claw someone,” Tsunami snarled. So was Lagoon lying to Queen Coral? Or was she ne glecting the dragonets on the queen’s orders?

Tsunami crouched to study the chains. “Did you try melting them?” she asked Sunny and Starflight. “Like you did when you freed me, under the mountain?”

Starflight leaned over and pointed at a few blackened sections of the chain. “We tried,” he said. His voice sounded more deflated than usual. “It didn’t work. This metal must be like the SkyWing wires, reinforced in some way.”

Tsunami heard splashing behind her and whirled around, but it was only Riptide.

“How do we get these off?” she demanded.

He rubbed his snout ner vously. “You’ll need the key from the guards,” he said. “But they’ll never give it to you.”

“We’ll see about that,” Tsunami growled. “Hide if you need to,” she said to Riptide. “I might have to bring a guard back with me. By force, with my claws through his ears,” she muttered as she stomped out of the cave.

SeaWing faces disappeared all over the palace when they saw her glaring around. But she remembered the lower pavilion level where she’d seen guards resting and drinking from cauldrons. She could see a few huddled shapes there now. Perhaps they assumed they could watch the cave from over there, out of the rain.

Tsunami flapped over to the pavilion and landed next to a large cauldron that bubbled and smelled like green tea. Four guards were clustered around a low table, playing a game that involved rolling fish bones. They all froze when they heard her talons thud down. Slowly they turned toward her, and she guessed by their guilty faces that they weren’t supposed to leave the cave.

She couldn’t tell if they felt guilty about leaving her friends to drown, too, or if they were only worried about how the queen would react when she found out Tsunami had sauntered right into the dragonets’ cave.

“Give me the key,” she growled.

“Uh,” mumbled one of the guards. “What key?”

“Don’t make me bite you!” Tsunami shouted. “The key! Right now!” She stepped forward, lashing her tail threateningly.

Although all four of the guards were larger than her, they quailed backward. She wondered how many of them she could hurt, if she attacked quickly.

“We can’t!” protested a second guard. “We have orders!”

“Orders from whom?” Tsunami demanded.

“Our — our commander,” said the first guard.

“Shark?”

They all nodded fervently, as if they were hoping she’d now go away and yell at him instead of them.

“Too bad for him,” Tsunami said. “Key.” She held out her talon.

“But we
can’t
,” said the second guard again.

Tsunami studied his scales, looking for weak spots. She knew she was fast and strong, and she was pretty sure she could knock two guards over the side with her tail while she clawed a third in the face with her talons. Perhaps she could use her teeth on the fourth —

She remembered the feeling of SeaWing scales sliding under her claws and shuddered. She’d looked at Gill this way, too, in the arena, sizing him up so she could defeat him. What was she about to do? Hurt more dragons, just for being in her way?

Dragons she didn’t even know — dragons who could be her brothers, her cousins — dragons who had families, who were more than nameless guards to somebody.

Maybe her friends were right about her.

The guards looked terrified, as if they were waiting for her to attack them. But they also knew what Coral was capable of, and surely Shark as well. Tsunami couldn’t think of anything scarier than what her mother had done to Tortoise. She didn’t really want to try.

So if she couldn’t be more scary than her mother . . . maybe there was another way. Maybe she could convince the guards, instead of fighting them.

She remembered the dragons in the SkyWing prison, singing the song about the dragonets coming to save the day. Maybe these guards were like those dragons — believing in the prophecy, wanting it to come true. Maybe she could use that instead of just hitting them with her tail like she was tempted to.

“Listen,” she said fiercely. “Don’t you know about the prophecy?”

The guards exchanged glances. She guessed that the prophecy had been talked about plenty since the dragonets arrived.

“Great. So do you remember anything in the prophecy about a group of octopus heads letting the MudWing drown before he could save the world? Did I miss that part?” She lashed her tail. “Do
you
want to be the ones who ruined Pyrrhia’s only chance of stopping the war?”

“No,” blurted the third guard. “The war
has
to end.” He ducked his head. “You saved my brother today when you sent him to have his wounds tended. She would have kept him standing there for the rest of the Council meeting.”

Tsunami was shocked into silence for a moment. Was that true? Did Queen Coral let soldiers die like that? For no reason?

“Which one was your brother?” she asked.

He indicated his throat — the one with the gash and the blood coming from his gills.

“Oh,” Tsunami said. “What happened to his friend?”

All the guards shook their heads. “Too late,” said the first guard. She crushed the fish bones between her front claws and looked away.

“We want to help you,” said the third guard. “But if we support a new queen before the challenge is even made . . . it could go really badly for us.”

So somebody
does
see me as a potential queen,
Tsunami thought, pleased.

“I told you, she can’t be our new queen,” said the first guard. “The dragonets in the prophecy have to be
outside
the war to stop it.”

“Besides, Anemone is supposed to be our next queen,” growled the fourth guard.

“You don’t know what the prophecy means,” argued the third guard. “Maybe they’re all supposed to rule their tribes and stop the war that way.”

“That’s not possible,” insisted the second guard. “Two of them are male.”

Tsunami got the feeling they’d been having this argument for a while.

The third guard turned to her suddenly. “You tell us,” he said. “What’s your plan? If you really are the dragonets of the prophecy, how are you going to make it come true?”

Tsunami shifted her weight on her talons. That was the question she couldn’t answer. The Talons of Peace hadn’t taught them what to do. Nobody seemed to know. As much as she liked to talk about how the dragonets would choose the next SandWing queen, she couldn’t imagine how that would work. Who would listen to them? Even if they went around the whole continent saying “How about Blister, we like her. Let’s have Blister win,” what good would that do? It wouldn’t stop Burn and Blaze from fighting.

But some dragons believed in the prophecy — soldiers exactly like these four. She couldn’t let them see that she had no idea what she was doing.

“Listen,” she said. “I don’t know if I’m supposed to be the next SeaWing queen or not. Sometimes I think Queen Coral is doing every thing right, and then sometimes —” She stopped, remembering Tortoise. Would Anemone be a better queen, one day when she was old enough? Would Tsunami?

“But I do know this,” she went on. “We
can’t
fulfill the prophecy without Clay. He’s the heart of our group. Without him, the rest of us will fall apart, and we won’t be worthy of any destiny at all.”

She stepped toward the first guard, whose expression was wavering between belief and worry. “I know you don’t trust MudWings. I know you obey Shark in every thing. But we’re talking about the end of the war. You thought nothing you ever did could bring peace or save the dragons you care about, but right now you can make all the difference.” She took another step closer. “Just give me the key.”

The guard twisted her talons together and looked at the others. Two of them nodded; the fourth looked away, her tail twitching, as if she wanted to be left out of the blame.

“I’ll do every thing I can to protect you,” Tsunami promised.

The first guard reached into a niche in the table and pulled out a pair of heavy silver keys. She placed them carefully in Tsunami’s talons.

“Thank you,” Tsunami said. “What are your names?”

“Snail,” said the first guard. She pointed at the others. “Flounder, Herring, and Kelp. Please.” She paused. “If you do become queen, please remember us. Whatever she does to punish us, please take care of our families.”

“And stop the war,” Herring said fiercely. “Whatever you have to do.”

Tsunami stepped back, curling her claws around the keys, and saluted to the guards. She took off from the pavilion and flew back down to the cave.

The water was nearly up to her wings by now. Clay was standing, watching the rising water unhappily, with Sunny still perched on his back. Glory and Starflight were in the water with Riptide. They both looked tremendously irritated at how wet they were.

“Hooray!” Sunny yelped when Tsunami held up the keys.

“Wow,” Glory said. Swirling waves of bright yellow shifted through her scales. “I did not think that was going to work.”

Tsunami plunged her head under the water and lifted the shackles around Clay’s ankles. She found the lock for the front talons quickly, inserted one of the keys, and freed him. The other key unlocked the chains on his back talons. Clay kicked them away and shook out his wings as Tsunami stood up again.

“All better,” he said, grinning at her. His stomach roared in disagreement. “Well, almost all better,” he amended.

“Let’s find somewhere dry, and I’ll see about food,” Tsunami said. She herded them out of the cave ahead of her. Riptide paused, still in the shadows, and she turned to him.

“Thank you,” she whispered. “You saved my friends.”

“I didn’t do much,” he whispered back. “I could never boss anybody into doing what I want. You’re really good at it.”