The wind blustered at her back, and the black line of cloud came at a gallop, pulled in from the wild ocean by white horses. She didn’t know what she’d do when she got there. There was a dragon, and she would fight it in the sky, while the rain lashed down and the thunder cracked. She would throw it down and feel her beak close on its neck, her head shaking with its death-throes. And then she would … what? What could she do after that? Find her friends and perhaps find a way home. She thought about that. There was, according to both the wolfman and Crows, no way back to London: but neither of them were the most trustworthy of witnesses, and she’d have to make that judgement for herself, later. The geomancer would have maps of her own they could look at, and once the dragon had gone, she wasn’t going to be able to stop them going through all her things and asking as many questions as they wanted. She flew low over the trees, the rush of silvery crowns a blur beneath her, the mountain rising ahead of her, split in two by the river gorge.
