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CHAPTER 1

*** ATHENA ***

One year on Dobromia had taught Athena Livingstone three things. The air would never stop tasting like a struck match. The politics would never stop trying to kill her. And there was no problem in the universe that couldn't be improved by hitting something with a stick.

She was working on the third one now.

"Left guard," she said, and swept Thessok's legs out from under him.

The commander hit the practice mat hard enough to rattle the equipment racks along the wall. Four hundred pounds of dark red scales and wounded dignity lay on the stone floor. He looked up at the cavern ceiling with the expression of a man reconsidering several life choices.

"You always say that after," he pointed out.

"I say it before too. You stop listening around round two."

"Round two is when it stops being instruction and starts being personal."

"It's been personal since March." She offered him her hand, and he took it, and she braced her whole body to haul him upright because the alternative was getting pulled down on top of him. "Get up. We're going again."

"We are not going again."

"We're going again."

"Ambassador." Thessok rolled his shoulder, testing the joint where her staff had landed. "I have commanded warriors for thirty years. I have fought Drogs in open terrain and in canyons and once, memorably, inside a supply cavern with the lights out. I am telling you, as a professional, that I am finished."

"That's a very dignified way to say your ribs hurt."

"My ribs are excellent. My ribs have never complained about anything." He paused. "My ribs would like to file a complaint."

She laughed. It came out easier than she expected, bouncing around the training cavern and drawing looks from the two warriors sparring in the next ring. Athena had learned a lot of things about Weredragons in almost a year, and one of them was that they were funny in a way the briefings never mentioned. Dry, deadpan, deeply committed to the bit. Thessok could deliver a joke with his face flat as stone and hold it there while you figured out he'd made one.

"Same time tomorrow," she said.

"Same time tomorrow." He collected his staff from where it had skittered against the wall. "Bring the light one. I want to see if you're fast because you're skilled or fast because you're small."

"I'm fast because I'm both, and I'll bring whichever staff I want."

"That is the correct answer. Gorvath would be pleased."

Gorvath was watching from the cavern entrance, the way he watched most mornings, one wing folded against the scarred ruin of his right side. The old training master never said anything. He arrived, he observed, he left. In eight months he had spoken to Athena exactly four times. The fourth time he'd said, "You do not waste motion." She had privately decided that was the nicest thing anyone on this planet had ever said to her.

He nodded once as she passed. She nodded back.

That was their entire relationship, and she wouldn't have traded it for anything.

* * *

The communal hall at breakfast was the closest thing to home she had.

Two thousand seats carved into a cavern the size of a cathedral, warm amber light pooling in the hollows of the stone, and the enormous layered noise of people eating together. Weredragons arguing about work rotations. Humans arguing about the same thing in a different language. Somebody at the far end laughing hard enough to be heard over everything else. A year ago, the hall had gone silent when Athena walked in. Now nobody looked up.

She'd never been so grateful to be ignored.

"You're limping," Garcia announced, dropping into the seat across from her with a bowl of porridge and the relentless cheer of a woman who had found her life's work in an alien grammar.

"I'm not limping."

"You're favoring your left leg."