Page 56 of Backpacking through Bedlam

“—come and see them later on, after we get everyone settled in, that would be great,” Verity finished, pivoting smoothly. She smiled at Mary. Mary didn’t smile back.

“Sally can share our room,” said Thomas.

Verity looked to me for confirmation. I nodded. Sure, privacy would have been nice, but it wasn’t like I was going to be getting frisky in a building full of unfamiliar cryptids, at least one of my granddaughters, and my newly met great-granddaughter. Given those factors, privacy could honestly wait a little while.

“This way,” said Verity, and beckoned for us to come with her as she made for another of the doors.

We followed.

Thirteen

“Family are the people who, at the end of the day, will find you a bed and welcome you home.”

—Alexander Healy

In a repurposed slaughterhouse, surrounded by dragons and descendants

VERITY LED US TO a hall lined with glass-fronted doors. I assumed the rooms behind them had originally been the slaughterhouse offices, back when this place housed a functional business rather than a Nest of dragons and their allies. Paper had been taped across the glass, creating a fragile sort of privacy, but a few stood ajar, showing small rooms hastily converted into sleeping quarters. None of them were very personalized: this was a refuge, not a home.

“Sorry for the makeshift housing,” said Verity. “We initially moved in here after the Freakshow burned down. Got a good deal from the dragons, and it only got better when they realized that this was going to keep happening for a while.”

“Good . . . deal . . . What?” Sally looked to me and Thomas for an explanation.

She looked so baffled that I explained as we walked, “Dragons need gold to stay healthy. It’s a biological requirement for them. That’s part of why they used to come into conflict with humans, back in the day. A dragon’s Nest is basically a bank with no tellers and no alarm systems, if you can get into it while the dragon’s out scavenging for dinner. Since humans invented capitalism, dragons need money if they want gold these days. Which is why most of them have a reputation for being greedy penny-pinchers who will take the shirt off your back if you let them.”

“This used to be the main Nest,” said Verity. “Before we . . . well, before. It was standing empty after the dragons moved out. They didn’t sell it because they thought they might want to bring their male children here when they got a little older, let them see the sky before they were shipped off to their eventual home enclaves. With the Covenant around, the next generation of dragons is probably going to spend most of their lives in caves for their own protection.”

Thomas grimaced. “Even without the Covenant,” he said. “If we’re ever going to acclimate humanity to the idea that we’re not alone in this world, it would be better to start with something nonthreatening, like the sylphs, rather than going straight to fire-breathing reptiles the size of city buses.”

“Yeah, we’ve been there, and it didn’t work out,” said Verity. “So we moved all the employees from the Freakshow in here, and started getting settled. Then it became clear the Covenant was happy to play war of attrition with us, and the dragons started moving the boys up to join us.”

“Why?” asked Sally. “If they were all underground before, isn’t this less defensible?”

Verity didn’t answer. The cold truth was that moving the children to the aboveground facility made sense if the dragons and their allies were trying to make sure some of the baby boys would survive if the adult male was found and destroyed. Having male dragons at all changed everything for their species, which could continue to reproduce parthenogenetically for an indeterminate period of time but couldn’t make males without having one in the first place. They lost genetic diversity with every generation that was effectively cloned from the one before.

Verity’s discovery of the male dragon under Manhattan had changed everything. And now the dragon princesses faced the possibility of losing him. Making sure their sons weren’t in the same place as their father was probably the smartest thing they could have done.

“Anyway, there aren’t many humans here, but we have two Madhura running the kitchenette, and it’s still pretty safe to go for take-out if you’re careful about it or go with Sarah,” said Verity, stopping at one of the closed doors. “We have to watch ourselves, always, and we don’t come back here through the front door unless we’ve secured the block.”

“Did we put you all in danger today by showing up the way we did?” I asked.

“Mary wouldn’t have brought you in if you had,” she said, reassuringly, and opened the door to reveal the square, barren room on the other side. A queen-sized air mattress was shoved into one corner, and there was a desk and a dresser, both clearly from IKEA. Verity flicked the light on. It didn’t make the room look any less industrial, but it did reveal the hole cut into the baseboard next to the dresser, allowing the mice a clear path into the room. Verity saw me looking, and smiled.

“The dragons didn’t like us making modifications that could impact the eventual sale price of the building, but we had to if we wanted the mice to stop chewing their way out of the walls,” she said. “This was faster, and it’s easier to repair when we finally get to leave.”

“This isn’t open warfare,” said Thomas. “How are we meant to help you?”

“I don’t know,” said Verity, sounding briefly exhausted. “But at this point, anything is going to be better than what we have going on. Standoffs are only fun in the movies.”

“Do you know what kind of forces they have here?” asked Thomas.

Verity looked at him solemnly. “We don’t have a full roster. The only person who might have been able to give us a better sense of the shape of things is Antimony, and she’s been confined to Portland until this is over. Too many current field agents met her while she was undercover at Penton Hall, and they know Timpani Brown is a traitor. They’d be able to follow her right back to us.”

That must have been Annie’s alias while she was infiltrating the Covenant. I nodded, listening intently.

“Dominic and I have been laying as low as we can, mostly focusing on evacuations and support, for a bunch of reasons. Olivia’s one of them. Turns out it’s a lot harder to make myself jump off a building when I’m seven months pregnant.” She rubbed the back of her neck with one hand, looking faintly ashamed of herself. “I’m still getting back up to my normal levels of disregard for my own safety.”

Thomas shot me a look, while Sally snorted.