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“This is all your fault, Small.” One of the elephants came into view, shaking its head and tugging at the lead that the woman held in her hand. It could have easily swept her off her feet, but she pulled sharply, speaking to it sweetly, and it followed.

The first man held the lead of another elephant in his hand, following behind the woman. He turned to the stocky man. “Don’t take the old one. She needs her rest. I don’t think she’s doing well.”

The stocky man nodded. As the other two led out the elephants, he looked down, muttering, “I don’t think any of us are doing well.”

He moved into the cage, and as the metal clanked, a third elephant said, “If you try to wake Eldest, I will crush you like a bug.”

But the stocky man was imperial, and he didn’t speak elephant; he didn’t speak any animal, so he just said, “I’m sorry. I’m tired, too. Just a little longer, and we can all have a rest.”

He led the last elephant out, and when they were gone, I put my hand on top of Tallu’s, looking up at him. I jerked my head in the direction of the elephants. Tallu shook his own head, but I smiled at him.

With his mask on, I almost couldn’t read his expression, but his eyes softened in the corners, and he let me go.

I slipped out from behind the last stack of wood.

A large metal cage sat far enough away from the wood that I doubted even an elephant with its long trunk could reach a piece of lumber from inside.

It didn’t look large enough for four elephants, and there was one lonely elephant left inside the cage.

I saw troughs for food and water in the corner.

I frowned. Hadn’t Bemishu brought back five?

The massive elephant’s wrinkled skin hung loosely from its frame. It sighed.

“Have you come for me, too?” she asked, clearly rhetorically.

“No, Eldest. I haven’t.”

At my words, the elephant’s eyes snapped open, its head turning toward me. It raised its trunk but didn’t make a sound. “You are not one of our captors. You are not one of the desert people.”

“No,” I agreed. “Do they treat you well here?”

“What a question. Do they treat you well here?” I could hear the amusement in Eldest’s voice. Her ears flapped. “Why are you here?”

“We want to know what they’re doing. The people who captured you.” We could just walk outside, but I already knew what we would see. Bemishu was building the airship, and he was using the elephants to put the massive pieces together. How large was this ship going to be?

“Building something. I have built many things for the desert people in my life. Houses. Full cities. Now, I build something I have never seen before. And likely, I will die doing it. I am old. In the desert, they would let me off my harness at this age. I would be allowed to raise our young, and teach them, and die in comfort when it was my time.” The elephant dragged her trunk on the ground.

“Now, I will die far from my family and leave these poor calves to themselves in this strange land where there is no desert, as did Gray.”

“Who was Gray?” I reached out to touch the bars of the cage—it seemed like I might be able to slip between them—but before my palm could make contact, Tallu grabbed hold of my hand.

He reached out, eyes closed, and I smelled lightning and blood as he pulled the electricity out of the bars and into himself.

That was how they were keeping the elephants in line. An electric fence for animals that had never seen one.

“Gray was old, like me, but he was big and strong. They didn’t let him sleep.

He died, and they…” Eldest sighed. “You know, in the desert, they leave our bodies to the sands. They call down a storm to strip our flesh and then use our bones for their houses and their sacred objects. How is this different?”

“They left him out?” I asked, horrified.

“I suppose they don’t know what to do with a creature of our size here.” Eldest dragged her trunk on the ground again.

I squeezed between the bars before Asahi could stop me and approached the elephant. Carefully, I removed my mask so she could see me. She reached out with her trunk, the damp end of it snuffling over my face as though scenting me like a wolf might. “I’m sorry.”

Her breath blew over my hair. “Are you? Did you do this to us?”

“No, but I will stop it. I promise.” I ran my hand over her leg. The flesh was warm and paper-thin under my touch. Prickly hair scratched over my hand.

“Airón,” Tallu said.

I nodded and patted the elephant one last time. “Don’t give up. Don’t let the rest of them give up.”

“I have survived longer than you or your mother have been alive. I will not die quite yet.” She ran her trunk over my hair affectionately.

I turned away, putting my mask back on, glad I could hide my feelings underneath it. As soon as I was through the bars, Tallu electrified them again, and we slipped out of the warehouse.

“Do you want to see what they’re building?” Sagam whispered.

I looked at Tallu, who hesitated before making a quick motion of assent with his hand. We crept around the edge of the warehouse.

Brilliant lights illuminated the outdoors.

A dozen people were working, and the three handlers were using the elephants to move massive pieces of wood into position.

They called out to each other using a common language that seemed more like slang than a true version of Imperial.

To the side, one of Bemishu’s commanders was leaning over a table, examining plans.

It was almost identical to the model but larger than all three elephants combined.

The sides of it curved upward, its hull unfinished.

If I hadn’t seen the model, I would have thought it merely a warship they were building on dry land.

A mast towered over the partially completed hull, and two wings flared out from the hull, unbalancing the ship enough that they’d used enormous trunks to prop it upright so it didn’t tilt onto the ground.

The warship that brought Eona? and me south was the largest ship I’d ever seen, and this was at least that large. What weapons could this flying horror bring to bear against the free nations?

To the side, I noticed a smaller ship the size of a fishing boat. It was tethered to the ground by a long rope. Without the rope, it would fly off into the sky. Someone accidentally bumped into it, and it drifted off the ground before resettling onto the dirt.

Sagam inhaled sharply, but the sound was so quiet no one else heard. Asahi was frozen in place, his hands lax at his sides.

Tallu touched each of us on the shoulder and gestured backward, the way we’d come. With a last, lingering look, I followed him into the dark. The trip back to the horses was silent, and we avoided a patrol by pressing together in a shadowed nook behind a half-wall.

None of us spoke, even when we remounted the horses and rode them back to the palace, the only sound the metal of their bridles and saddles clinking together.

Back at the palace, Asahi led us circuitously back up to Tallu’s room as Sagam returned the horses to the stables, coming back a few minutes later when we’d just reached the top of the window.

Inside the room, Tallu took off his mask and the Dogs’ clothes that Sagam and Asahi had provided.

He wrapped himself in his robe, his expression thoughtful even as his hands pulled the fabric around his waist. I was slower to remove mine.

The two Emperor’s Dogs waited, clearly unsure what to do next.

I walked over to the couch and threw myself onto it, shirtless and letting the sweat dry on my skin. I stared up at the ceiling. Of course. I should have guessed why Bemishu had brought elephants, but it still seemed so fantastical.

“Was that all, Your Imperial Majesty?” Asahi asked finally.

“It isn’t a normal boat, is it?” Sagam asked. “We have shipbuilders and a harbor more suited to boats that float on water.”

“No,” I answered when Tallu didn’t. “It’s not a normal boat.”

“An airship,” Asahi said.

“Like in the fairy tales,” Sagam said. “Like we’re all about to meet the spider or the forest bears and find ourselves with a mythical task.”

“Less mythical tasks,” I said. “More murder. Or less murder, depending on which fairy tales you listened to.”

Tallu stepped to the door stiffly, letting the Dogs out and then closing the door behind them, the mechanism locking automatically.

Then he moved over to stare out the window in the direction of the Sunrise Estate.

“He’s much closer to completing it than I thought, and he’s right .

If he shows it at the one-month celebration, I wouldn’t have a choice but to order more built. ”

“So we make sure that when he shows it at the one-month celebration, it goes so wrong that no one ever tries it again.” I waited, and Tallu turned to look at me, frowning.

“How?” he demanded. “How could we possibly do that?”

“Easy,” I said. “We blow it up right when he flies it over the Mountainside Palace.”