Chapter 1
Snow had fallen again over Lanyue, soft and relentless, blanketing the narrow paths and rooftops of the tiny northern village. The cold had lingered far too long this year. It seeped through the walls, through skin, through the heart.
Young Meiran wrapped her shawl tighter around her shoulders as she trudged into the forest, her breath ghosting in the chill air. She knelt by a rabbit burrow, the snow crumbling under her palms in soft, icy avalanches, and coaxed a clump of pale roots free with the careful patience of someone who had spent her life learning how to take only what would give back. The herb—yarrow, the healers called it, or something close enough to mend a fever before it could take hold—grew where the hibernators made their nests, the village elders said. It was said because only a fool stayed at home during a snow like this and expected to find anything at all.
Seventeen years had taught Meiran how to be stubborn where it counted. The village's storerooms were threadbare, the midwife's satchel nearly empty of tinctures, and her mother coughing through the nights. Becoming the village healer had once been a quiet wish—learning poultices, learning how to steady hands in the dark—but winter turned wishes into errands. She worked with the single focus of someone practicing mercy on a town that could not repay her.
She ought to have turned back an hour ago. The sky had grayed and the first hard sleet began to lace the air. But there were legend-thin pockets of warmth under certain den trees, and there were ways the cold-root showed itself if you listened closely to the soil. Meiran tapped the ground with the toe of her boot and whispered a sort of counting-song the old women used when bending the earth — not the spells of scholars, only the small, patient rites used by folk healers who learned from roots and bones. Her breath came out in white ghosts and she tasted iron on the back of her tongue.
A voice then, smooth and low, drifted out of the trees ahead. "You're walking where wolves have their dens, girl. Where do you go in a storm like this?"
Meiran started, the little song cutting off in her throat. For a flash she thought of the empire's mounted patrols, of taxmen and temple-singers and the distant capital with its tiled roofs and high-prowed dragon banners. There was no one who would patrol these woods; only the rangers of other villages and the traders who dared winter passes. She squared her shoulders. "Searching," she called, steadying her voice. "For cold-root. My village—"
"Ah." Another voice — rougher, younger, with a laugh like a thrown stone. "We know a spot. We know where the burrows are cozy. Come on. You look frozen to the bone."
They stepped out between two pines as if they'd been waiting: three men in patched leather, faces windburned and grey with smoke, each carrying a bundle that bowed like a hunched back under his arm. The taller of the three tilted his head, eyes crinkling into a grin that did not meet his mouth. There was nothing in him for Meiran to trust, not the way the woodcutter over yonder would have looked — blunt, used to honest work. Still, their breath showed good humor. In a winter like this, strangers could simply be strangers, not thieves.
She followed, because the storm had quickened and even if a quarrel was afoot, a stranger's fire at least meant warmth for a night. They led her deeper until the pines grew close, the ground a sheet of pale glass. One of the men stooped and tapped a thin patch of exposed earth. "There," he said softly. "Cold-root. Quick now. Don't waste it."
Meiran slid to her knees, glove on the soil, and felt the small twitch of life beneath. Joy warmed her chest — ridiculous, simple — and then a blow to the back of her head took that joy and the world with it. The forest tilted and went to a thin, bright point. Her last impression before black was the smell of damp wool and the feel of someone's hand closing on her throat.
When she woke, she tried to make her hands move and found them tied. The gag was rough against her lips. For a panicked instant she thought she might be still in the woods: the dim light of a lean-to, the dull thud of a distant wind. A woman's voice cut through the low chorus of the men—sharp as a chisel, but later softened by warmth.
Voices cut through the air. Not the rough amusement from earlier. This one was softer, outrage threaded with a tone that suggested someone both amused and annoyed. "What is wrong with you lot? You can't just kidnap a girl because you fancied a hunt."
Meiran kept her eyes closed. If she could not be seen, perhaps she could not be asked questions either. Pretending to sleep was a shield she had worn since childhood; it saved her from men and mockery often enough.
Meiran held still. Her heart drummed like a trapped bird. The men who had knocked her out shifted their weight; one of them muttered, the others answering in low apologies. The lady of the scolding moved close enough that Meiran could see the edge of a cloak and a braid knotted down the woman's back. When the cloth fully cleared, the woman crouched, her boots planted in the dirt as if she had been born to hold ground. Her face was weathered and narrow-cheeked, and her eyes were a steady, dark gray that measured Meiran like a potter appraises clay.
There was a rustle of fabric and the scrape of boots stopping. A pair of hands — rough, but surprisingly gentle — moved to undo her bindings. The woman's voice was closer now, an apology in every syllable. "You're not a thing to be taken. I'm sorry, little one; I had thought you—" She hesitated, then smiled, but didn't offer the small thing that would have been a name. "I'm sorry. These men mistake anything at dusk."
Meiran kept her face still as stone. Her throat moved once with a dry sound and the woman pressed something to her lips — a wedge of bread and a spoonful of stew so warm it steamed against Meiran's lips. She sipped; the heat unfurled like a small sun inside her ribs. The woman, who introduced herself only as the boss of the group and offered her apologies for the mistake, smoothed Meiran's hair as if petting a child.
"You'll stay the night," the woman said finally, as if that were settled law. She did not introduce herself, only bowed with a small apology. "We thought you a beast—there are such tales of beasts in human skin. For the mistake, I apologize."
She moved with the easy authority of someone used to being obeyed; she directed the men to mend ropes, to stack more wood, and to keep their laughter quiet. Meiran accepted the apology as one accepts a threadbare cloak—better than shivering at the road.
"We didn't mean no harm," the tall one said quickly. "We thought she was one of them—"
The woman cut him off with a look. "You thought wrong. Take care of the girl."
They did. Meiran watched them with the wary gratitude of someone who has been both a child and a patient in the folk-huts of the village: rough hands that fumbled, but hands that could hold a wounded limb the way a parent holds a scraped knee. They covered her with an extra blanket, fed her half a rye cake warmed over coals, and insisted she sit close to the fire. A scraggly-haired fellow cracked jokes that made the other men hoot; one of them, a boy not much older than Meiran herself, shared his cloak without ceremony. The leader — the braids — sat a little apart, her jaw set as if defying the cold itself.
"We'll see you to your village in the morning," the woman promised, though the wind outside had grown into a roar and the trees bowed like supplicants. "No point risking a girl on a slope in this whiteness. Especially not for herbs. Winter takes more than it gives."
"My village is short of medicines," Meiran whispered. "People are sick."
The woman's jaw softened. "Then you did a good thing, child. Just don't do it where you can be trussed by a bunch of fools with better luck than sense."
Meiran nodded, tired, thankful, the food filling the hollow where fear had been. She let the warmth creep in, let the ruffians' voices dim to a low, comfortable murmur.
At the camp — a sheltered hollow ringed by boulders and a stout fire — the ruffians set about making room. Blankets were offered, a patchwork of coats folded into cushions. One of them, the one with river-silt eyes, produced a dented tin and a spoon with a flourish more theatrical than needed; he insisted Meiran take the seat of honor by the flames. They were clumsy with kindness. They asked her about her village with a curiosity that had no malice, traded bits of dry humor about the cold, and one, a broad-shouldered fellow named Han, spent half the night telling a story about stealing a pie from a farmer's window as if recounting a battle of legend. The woman — the boss — watched him with an indulgent expression. When Meiran tried to protest that she should sleep by herself in the corner, the man named Nolan scoffed and shoved a spare fur at her. "You're human like us," he said, blunt and warm. "We don't leave our kind to freeze."
That small phrase — "human like us" — lodged in Meiran as if it were both a comfort and a warning. She let it warm her, because warmth in the belly made the cold of the world more bearable.
Night thickened. The snowstorm made the world into a white drum around them; the canvas sides of the camp strained and fluttered like lantern-skins. The men began their talk: stories pulled from their travels, the usual mix of bragging and fear. They spoke of waystations, of a priest who charged coin for blessings, of a trader who had lost his horse to the same ice Meiran's village feared. No mention was made of dragons; in the capital, dragons were the province of temple historians and imperial banners. Even if a common man saw a dragon feathered across the sky, he would know not to speak of it in the wrong company.
Then a different sound: the dragging of something heavy. The laughter stopped. Boots crunched. A cart, or perhaps a sled, ground into the circle and two men hauled something wrapped in wet canvas to the center. Bits of fresh blood dotting the snow looked very bright in the lantern's light.
Meiran's stomach plummeted. Her hands, freed from their bonds, went white as she gripped the blanket. The men of the camp gathered, eyes gleaming in the fire glow. The leader — the braided woman — slid a hand to the haft of the axe at her hip as if instinct would be a better weapon than words.
The thing was not the size of any dog or wolf Meiran had seen. It was long, the limbs knotted and thick with muscle, a row of low ridges down its spine like the low waves of a peninsula. Scales, not feathers, caught the firelight in dull, bruised blues. Its head had gone down as if in sleep — closed, broken lids — but as the covering loosened, one eye cracked open with a slit of orange and a gleam like embers.
"The western kind," one of the ruffians said with a cold amusement. "Worldly dragon. From beyond the passes. Worth a few coins for its hide. Worth more if you butcher it at market."
They mocked it then, at first gently, poking the dragon with the butt of a spear as though it were a carcass. The creature hissed, a loneliness of sound that made Meiran's whole chest ache. Its breath steamed in the cold and it turned its head, throwing back the corner of its mouth to bare teeth long and crooked.
Meiran's throat closed. The men who minutes ago pressed bread into her palms now prodded the dragon with sticks, laughed when it whimpered. One of them—who had tied the rope around its neck—spat something mean and hard. Their jokes were teeth-on-wood cruel. Meiran felt a hot dissonance like a struck chord: hands that could be soft, being cruel for sport.
The dragon—young, narrower in snout than the trade drawings, tongue flicking—stared at the woman. For a heartbeat, its eyes caught the firelight and were only—only—curious. Then it tried to draw itself up, and the ropes bit, and one of the men, with a broad back and dark hands, laughed as he swung his knife until a red eye shone on the blade's edge.
"It's only a beast," he said. "Not like the sky-dragons. Let's finish it. No coin for leaving it alive."
The woman's jaw set. She took a step forward, as if to stop them, but the leader of the band—her voice harder now, the apology dropped like an empty cup—clapped the broad man on the shoulder. "We're in need," she said. "It'll fetch fat coin in the south. Not everyone gets to be a fool about beasts."
Something inside Meiran trembled and screamed, but she remembered what her grandmother had told her: in this world, to be different was to be hunted. Dragons were hunters and hunters—by law and lore—would turn on anyone who showed them softness.
The creature lifted its head. Its eyes, rimmed in a color that reminded Meiran of the dark night sky in the moonlight—fixed on her. For a second there was no animal and no man; there was a sentient look that found the one small human lying closest. It twisted its chained body and lunged, breaking its binds.
For a moment the world narrowed to that gaze. It was not the carved, distant majesty the capital's tapestries taught children to revere; it was dirtier, wounded, and immediate. In its glance Meiran found, absurdly, an animal's humiliation and an intelligence that belonged to something older and deeper. Its head dropped low; it drove itself forward and hurled its bulk at where she sat.
It struck her squarely, crushing wind from her, the world tilting and becoming pain. Scales rasped against her cheek; heat — a living, fierce heat — licked at her skin in a way that made the hairs along her arms stand up. The dragon's mouth opened and its breath was smoke and iron and the smell of burning resin. Meiran tried to scream, and a single, keening sound tore from her throat that was not entirely human and not entirely animal. A burning, alive thing pressed into the bone of her sternum — a small, sharp flare, like a coal embers' sting in the chest.
She could not breathe through the sound, only press her palms to the place where the heat blossomed, where it burned and then, shockingly, spread as if answering a word. The dragon's roar scraped at her ears until her teeth ached. For a heartbeat its gaze held hers—not hunger but recognition—and in that sliver of time the beast's luminous eyes went dull, like coals smothered by an uncaring hand.
The moment did not last. The woman — the boss — moved with a swift efficiency; one motion with her blade, bright and clean, and the dragon's shoulders slackened.
The men went quiet in the aftermath, breathing in the rhythm of those who had done what must be done. The river-silt fellow clapped once, a crude sound swallowed by the storm's first high wind. "Good," he said. "One less thing to hassle our paths."
Meiran stared down at the dragon's still form and the bright smear at its flank where the boss's blade had touched. The warmth in her chest flared and then retreated like a tide — receding but leaving her with a dragged, hollow ache and the residue of that strange fire. She tasted iron as if she had bitten her tongue. The boss dropped the blade into the snow with a soft thunk and looked at Meiran as if assessing a patient for whom the words had already been decided.
Meiran could not think. The burning in her chest had not left; it lingered as a bruise of heat beneath her ribs, as if the dragon had left something inside that refused to cool. Her palms slickened with sweat. The world refracted, and she felt her knees go loose.
"Easy," the boss ordered one of the men, and her tone had cracked into something like command and care at once. "Help her up. Wrap her. If she faints, do not wake her with cold water."
The last thing Meiran registered before blackness crept over the edges of her sight was the boss kneeling, pressing a cloth damp with broth against Meiran's lips. The boss's hands were steady. Near them the rogues argued about hides and coin — practical crassness in the face of death. Above it all, snow fell, persistent and indifferent, burying footprints and bloodstains alike until all that remained was an even white that hid the world's hard edges and, for a moment, made everything seem possible to mend.