The fourth little ring rung out, and you'd be forgiven for thinking we'd worked on a schedule. Almost on time — but not really on time — the last of the guards lighted down in this little blocked off area. What started as a slow pulse of guards coming in, or (some) leaving — too slow to call it a flow or even a trickle — had accelerated until here came dragons that, if not familiar, had become recognizable after the big gathering earlier. The pink guard arrived with a cowering plain-dweller, looking smug and wearing their best imitation of Rhyfel's savage grin. The pink guard was passing the plain-dweller to another, older guard. I watched that guard, and saw them take the plain-dweller to a closed off area with several other dragons, a mix of brown and one or two red. Ffrom was among them, and so were the fledgling, hatchlings, and the mother from the cart. Jerking my gaze back to the pink guard, I found, standing near them, Rhyfel the younger and Hinte. Hinte's wings — the first thing I looked at — were still covered under her cloak. On her back sat strapped a glider. It wasn't the kind the thieves used: it was brown wood and woven wings of triumphant pale gold and gray. Covering Rhyfel and Hinte, a fine layer of ash and soot sat and blew in the wind. The other guards looked stony-faced, not seeming to have found anything at all. Very few — three, it seemed like — carried anything at all. One didn't even have a human corpse as their finding. Instead, they had a Hägre hog. Maybe it was an easy mistake to make if you had never seen a human. But didn't they at least have a sketchmaster drawing an impression or something? They should at least know what they were looking for. I stared at Digrif, until I had his notice, and directed my gaze back at Hinte. Whatever was going on with him earlier, he got my meaning. Obliquely, Digrif and I moved about, trying to get to where Hinte waited. Rhyfel, clad in black and golden reds, waved for the attention of Hinte, the grinning pink guard and a few others that had the same dusty look about them. Closer, I could make out, right on the high guard's neck, a bloody bandage. If the stains told the whole story, the wound must be a forefoot or two in length. When Rhyfel had their attention, those guards and Hinte started following him over to one of the prim figures. Hinte, in contrast, had one of her cloak's sleeves hiked up, and bandages covered it too. It was the very same leg that had been slashed by the apes in her fight last night. What starless luck. As we crept toward the center of the small crowd of guards, I felt powerful yet faint flapping in the distance. I turned, claws dragging tracks in the gravel. Was it the thieves returning? That messenger returning? It was only Adwyn coming down with the skein of guards behind him. One figure was out of place: one of the thieves… the one who'd already lost their cloak and their human. Without further command, the guards following him split off, collecting around one of the prim figures — scribes, they must be. Adwyn strode over to us, blood on his armor and his claws. He stunk of dead plants. We were only a few steps away from Hinte. With her back turned, she couldn't see us. This, of course, was when Adwyn spoke up. "Kinri. Digrif. Follow me." The orange dragon waited, and lead us off to our scribe. (By coincidence, this had us standing just paces from the alley where this mess started.) Our scribe was a portly cliff-dweller wiver with finely manicured horn scales and eyes a cloudy gray. The scribe was crouched, forefeet gripping a long sheet of papyrus, right alula holding an inkwell that their left wing-digit dipped into it every dozen breaths, even as they weren't clawing. Adwyn was speaking, "Gwynt, Digrif, Kinri, we are going to debrief now. Tell the scribe everything that happened today. Do not worry about repeating things or getting them out of order." Adwyn cracked his neck, and glanced at the one other guard among us. "Gwynt, do you want to start us off?" The guard hitched his wings, not breaking eye with Adwyn. "Sure things." "Excellent. So, this is for the records: what is your name and family name?" "Gwynt of Graig Mras, you know." Adwyn gave one of those half-smiles I'd seen him give Gronte or Cynfe. "Graig Mras, hmm? You all have been here for a while, no? Do you still live with your family?" "Yeah, we live in the old house by those big red-tipped ferns. There with my sibs, parents, gramps, cousins, you know how it is." Adwyn nodded, gaze clouding for a beat before he looked back at the guard. "So, how are you, Gwynt?" The guard scratched the gravel. "What do you mean?" "The excitement of the day is over. It's been tense and tiresome, but things have run their course. How do you feel?" Gwynt glanced away. "Can I be honest?" Adwyn nodded. "I'm spitting confused. Baffled, even. I don't have the simplest idea what's going on, and I'm hoping this debrief might make something of any of this." Adwyn nodded, still with his serene smile. "Would you rather one of the others go first?" "I'm fine. Where do you want me to start?" "Your first observations of the cart, then our finding you after the theft, and everything that happened from there." "There isn't much to say. For all they turned out to be, they didn't seem all that drafty at first. I saw the accomplices slink into the market a few rings before the seventh, and the thieves weren't with them then. I don't know when they came into the picture, maybe if you ask around you can reason it out." I was staring at Gwynt. He seemed okay, but Adwyn, Ushra and even Hinte all seemed convinced someone had to have betrayed us. Could it have been him? I peered, trying to find some tell. He kept scratching the gravel, twisting his frills, and glancing around. But they didn't really line up with his speech the way a real tell would. He just looked nervous. "Um," I said, stepping into Gwynt's slight pause. "Am I allowed to speak during this?" Adwyn turned his serene smile to me, and I didn't miss how it became a smirk. At least that was real. "If you think it will help. This is collaborative, to an extent." "Well, Gwynt, you kept track of the thieves' cart this whole time? How? Why?" It shouldn't sound like an accusation, but I didn't think Adwyn would miss that aspect anyway. Gwynt tossed his head. "It's my job to keep a tongue on things. I didn't just keep track of that cart, there were others, and that's just carts." I glanced aside. "Okay." My brilles clouded while I thought, and I decided there wasn't nothing to lose. "You just seemed a little nervous. I wondered if you were hiding something." Gwynt jerked his head back at me. Then he gave a silly smile and a short chuckle. "I'm that transparent, aren't I? Yes, I am hiding something. It's… I just thought it wasn't that important, it–it didn't have all too much to do with this." Adwyn frowned. "Tell us." "Well, you know those guards talking about Aurisiuf? Well uh. You know, those cloaked wivers had approached me — approached us. We were on break, and they were going to do a small prank. It's all the Aurisiuf stuff was, a prank. It's not like — it's not like he's real, right? So I agreed, and when those guards were chasing the wivers, I helped point them in the wrong direction." There was a sigh, and then, "Thank you for telling us this. You have no responsibility for the brainless abandonment of those three guards, even if you exacerbated it. You did, however, lie to a guard." Looking to the ground, he continued, "Yet I find myself unconvinced of the severity of this, given their circumstance. I'll allow Rhyfel to judge this matter later." The shamefaced cringing disappeared in an instant, becoming a mad grin. "Rhyfel? Thanks, Adwyn." "Don't thank me yet," Adwyn said, and added, "but you're welcome." "Digrif, Kinri?" My brilles had clouded over while I stared at a tentaclesnail crawling over the gravel. Adwyn smiled serenely again. Digrif spoke up first, "I think I can go next." "Excellent. For the record, what is your name?" "Uh, Digrif of — I never really learnt my family." "How are you, Digrif?" "I'm glad no one was hurt, and that we got one of the apes back. And I'm curious what cool things you and Kinri did without me. And, I'm a little anxious to get this talking done so we can get back to our adventure and go to the Berwem." "Scratch that last sentence out." Then, "Digrif, start at the alley." "Okay. So, we got to the alley after shopping for a bit, and then all the ape bodies were gone! Well, I've never seen them, but Adwyn said there were only sandbags now. After that, we walked out of the alleyway, and we were arguing about who did it. Adwyn tried to accuse Kinri of doing it, but she never had a chance to do it, except for this one gap a third of a ring before it happened when no one knows where she was or what she was doing." Digrif looked over to Gwynt and smiled. "Then we found mister guardsdragon over there, and he went to go arrest some of the betrayers and bring back reinforcements. But while he was gone we kept arguing about who did it, and Hinte said I did it! I just bought this sword to defend myself, honest." Scratching the gravel, he continued slow, "Then… then Rhyfel and his skein arrived, and sent us after the thieves' cart. When we got there, the dragons were really spooked, so I tried to talk to them and explain that things weren't so bad. One of the thieves is pretty big into Dim-Fflamio games, but she seems convinced one of the teams that've been losing all season are going to win any day now." Digrif shook his head and clicked his tongue. I narrowed my brow. "So you were talking to the thieves?" "Well yeah, and the mother and her son. Those two didn't have anything to do with what the daughters did, really. They said both of them haven't really been the same since they joined this Dychwelfa something organization, and they don't really get them anymore. So, the mother and son are definitely alright." "But what about the thieves? You said you talked to them. What did they say to you?" "I told you! We talked about Dim-Fflamio. She also wanted to meet up later at this weird pub on the south side, but that seemed kind of drafty." The orange drake asked, "Which pub and when?" "The uh, Dadafodd. She said wait outside at the last ring, and she'd find me." Adwyn nodded to the scribe. "Make note of that." Looking back to Digrif, he said, "Continue." "Well, then the thieves did their cart flipping thing and Kinri and Adwyn chased after them. Kinri seemed to know they would fly off. And, not much happened after that. More guards came and arrested the other dragons at the cart, and then Kinri returned and now we're all here." "Is that all, Digrif?" "I think so." "Kinri?" I looked up at Adwyn. "I don't have that much to add. My story would just be the boring part of everyone else's story." Adwyn shook his head. "You have at least two parts of your own: what happened when you disappeared, and what happened as the thieves were about to fly away." "Um… I told you about what happened then. Hinte was talking with Glyster, and I decided to slip away and buy something for me." I slipped my tail into my bag, wrapping it around the astronomy book. Passing it to my wings, I said, "Flick, I can even show you! Here." Adwyn didn't take the book, frowning at me. "And the other part?" "That's simple. I was keeping watch like you told me, saw one of the thieves looking up at the net and guessed the rest." I stopped there, but Adwyn motioned me to continue. "But that's it. I flew after the thieves, until they got to the net and–and just waited for you, and then flew after him with you until we caught the thieves and they escaped again." Adwyn's frown deepened just a bit. He said, "Is that all?" "Yes." "Then I shall begin my story. Let the record show that I am Adwyn of Dyfns." Adwyn paused for the scribe, then continued, "The incident began much as has been described by others. I left the cart in the charge of Ffrom, Geth, Bydbyd, and once we had returned to it…" I went back to staring at the tentaclesnail. He'd had crawled forward a good bit, and found some ashants he was snapping into his mouth. I picked up a bit of gravel and tossed it smack by him. He startled and sucked all his tentacles into his shell. I looked at Digrif. Someone had to have betrayed us, right? Could it have been cute, handsome Digrif? Who smelt so deliciously? Hinte said it was suspicious that he decided to buy a sword when he did. And he's the only one we can't definitely trust. I'm me, Hinte was there to kill the apes in the first place, Adwyn wouldn't need all of this scheming, and maybe Gwynt was still hiding something, but he only came into the picture after the betrayal had already happened. But why would Digrif do something like that? It doesn't make sense. And the sword doesn't mean all that much, when he doesn't know how to use it and his reasoning for buying it, well, it fledged sense. For him. And who else did that leave? Ushra? He suggested a conspiracy exists. Gronte? Versta? Staune? It was even sparser. Staune seemed trustworthy enough, and Versta probably didn't have a scheming bone in his little bird body. Gronte didn't want a war between humans and dragons. This wasn't going anywhere. I looked up, peering at the scribe. As we delivered our stories, the scribe scratched out the words in a jerky, esoteric shorthand. Y Draig was a very different language than my native Käärmkieli, and despite my extensive experiences with shorthand back in the sky, these austere lines and dots were just about meaningless. Almost, because I was making an effort to learn it, with great difficulty; it helped that I could do scribe work for Mawrion. With enough focus and time, I could decipher the symbols. But that defeated the purpose of shorthand. It lacked the intuitiveness of my first. Even when I cut my losses and wrote out in y Draig's longhand, my wings would always want to switch back to my native script at some of the most inopportune times. Could I never master it? Maybe I never would. I shook my head. I was distracting myself. There was something I should be listening to, someone I should be looking at. I just… really didn't want to. Didn't want to think of it. * * *