Burch leaped from the platform to the airship and grabbed the gangplank. He thrust it over the gunwale, and as soon as it touched down Kandler and Xalt bore the unconscious Sallah onto the main deck.
Before Kandler could turn around to tell Burch to take the wheel, the shifter had already done so. Monja leaped down from the bridge and dashed over to inspect the knight.
“What in the names of the spirits happened in there?” the shaman said as she bent over the knight.
“You didn’t see the red dragon?” Kandler asked.
Monja peeled open Sallah’s eyelids. “Of course, I had her son out here to keep me company.” She felt her neck for a pulse. “He took off as soon as he saw her fly out of the top of the tower.”
Kandler grimaced. He wanted to blame the halfling for not doing something, but what could she have done? None of the others had been able to stop the dragon queen either. Even trying would have probably cost Monja her life too.
He realized he should probably have been grateful that so many of them had survived their meeting with the dragon queen. He just couldn’t manage to muster that feeling up.
“Can you help her?” Kandler asked.
“Give me some room,” Monja said.
As Kandler stepped back, the halfling spread her arms wide and looked up toward the sky. She chanted a heartfelt prayer to her people’s spirits, and a warm, golden glow flowed around her arms. She reached forward and laid her hands on either side of Sallah’s forehead.
The pleasant glow flowed off of Monja’s hands and surrounded Sallah instead. As Kandler watched, the woman’s breathing grew steadier, and the creases of pain in her brow smoothed down.
As Monja sat back to examine her work, Kandler knelt down next to Sallah and took her hand in his. After a moment, her emerald eyes fluttered open, and she smiled up at him.
“Did we do it?” Sallah asked.
Kandler swept the woman up in his arms and clutched her to his chest. Gratitude that she would be all right washed over him then, and sobs wracked his body.
“Oh, no,” Sallah said softly as she began to weep with him. “Oh, no.”
Monja glanced at Burch with a questioning look, and he gave her a grim nod. She covered her mouth with her hands, stifling an exclamation of grief. The shifter knelt down and reached out for her, and she buried her face in his shoulder.
Xalt stood watching over the others. “Never before in my life,” he said, “have I wished I could cry.”
After a moment, Greffykor lumbered out of his observatory, framed against the light spilling out through the archway. Kandler loosened his grasp on Sallah and kissed her on her full lips, light and tenderly. Then, arm in arm, they got to their feet.
“What is it?” Kandler said. “Come to tell us that the dragon queen has changed her mind?”
For an instant, he hoped she had. He felt like the one thing he wanted at the moment would be to die trying to pull the dragon’s eyes from her head with his bare hands.
Greffykor’s snout swung from side to side. The dragon didn’t say a word. Kandler thought the creature’s shame in failing to stand up to the dragon queen might have silenced him.
Then a small shape detached itself from the dragon’s silhouette and ran toward the ship.
61
As the figure approached, Kandler froze in Sallah’s arms. Then he grabbed her hand and pulled her along with him as he rushed down the gangplank. The others raced along behind them.
There on the edge of the wide, flat landing platform— her bright-eyed face lit in warm tones by the airship’s ring of fire—stood Esprë.
Kandler and Sallah pulled up just shy of the girl and stared at her. With the tears he’d cried for her still wet on his face, he couldn’t believe his eyes. He reached out with an unsure hand to touch her.
“Are you … ?”
He’d just seen her incinerated. She couldn’t be real. Perhaps her ghost had come back to haunt him for his failure to protect her. He knew he deserved no less torment than that.
When his fingers reached her face, though, he felt no chill spirit but warm flesh. At his touch, she grinned and leaped into his arms.
Kandler reveled in the moment, refusing to let her go.
He kissed her cheek and felt her giggle with laughter and relief, and he joined her. He shamelessly wept fat tears of joy.
“How?” he said eventually, letting her go enough that he could look her in the face.
Esprë shook her head, still groggy. “I don’t know. The last thing I remember was fighting with Te’oma. Then I woke up in one of the cabinets near the doorway. I had to knock for Greffykor to let me out.”
The girl looked around at the others staring at her. “What happened to the dragon queen?” she asked.
Kandler gasped. He knew.
He held Esprë tight and told her how Te’oma had taken her place.
The girl nearly collapsed in his arms.
“How?” Esprë said, stunned. “Why?”
“She told me once she had a lot to make up for,” Burch said, calling from his spot at the wheel.
“She said that to me too,” said Xalt. “I thought she meant to apologize for stabbing me when we were in Construct.”
“By the light of the Flame,” Sallah said. “She redeemed herself.”
“May the spirits bless her,” Monja said before she headed back for the bridge, “wherever her soul may now rest.”
While Te’oma might have won Kandler’s respect and undying gratitude with her death, he could not suppress how he felt about the results. “The dragon queen thinks you’re dead.”
Esprë grinned and hugged Kandler with all her might. “Does this mean it’s all over?” she said, her voice filled with wonder.
“I am afraid not,” Greffykor said.
All eyes turned toward the dragon, who had loomed silently over the joyful reunion until now. Burch trotted up to stand beside Kandler, a loaded crossbow in his hands. The justicar flexed his empty hands, remembering that his fangblade still lay where he had cast it aside in the lower level of the observatory.
“I plan to take my daughter and fly out of here,” Kandler said. “You’re not going to stop me.”
“No,” Esprë said, standing away from him. “I will.” Kandler narrowed his eyes at his daughter. “Explain.” “The dragon queen thinks I’m dead. She will probably spread word of that far and wide.” The girl looked to Greffykor for confirmation, which she received.
“That’s just what we want,” Kandler said.
“It won’t last,” said Esprë. “How did the Lich Queen know where to find me? Or the Keeper of the Flame?”
Sallah frowned. “The emergence of your dragonmark alerted those who keep their fingers on the pulse of the world.”
“Would they be fooled by what they’ll see as a rumor of my death?”
“Got a point,” Burch said ruefully.
“So we go back to the original plan,” Kandler said. “We confront the bastards behind this brewing conflict and put an end to it.”
Monja cleared her throat then blushed as the others turned to look at her. “Well,” she said, “that was never all that much of a plan, was it?”
Kandler bristled at the comment, mostly because he could not deny it. “Did anyone have a better idea?” he asked.
“Not at the time,” Xalt said, “but I think Esprë does now.”
Kandler’s heart sank as he looked to the girl. “You seem older,” he said. He wasn’t sure who’d changed, though, him or her.
“I hear coming back from the dead can do that to you.” She offered him a weak smile, and he clung to it.
“Tell me,” he said.
Esprë frowned, and Kandler braced himself.
“I have to stay here,” she said. “Forever.”