There were so many eggs. Eggs of all sizes and colors filled the vast cavern, and xiyi wound their way through them. Almost all of the female xiyi had stubby wings, which were barely able to carry them more than a few feet or slow their descent if they were to fall from some great height, but they fluttered around, wings fpping ineffectually. There were a few males with wings, as well, and Snen had expined that these usually remained inside their home, since they, like the females, became infertile if they left.

  “That’s it,” Snen said, coming up beside her. His voice revealed his exhaustion, and his clothing was bloodstained, but his shoulders were straight. He no longer bowed every time he saw her, which was probably just as well, but many of the other xiyi still did, which made speaking to them awkward.

   she asked. The xiyi queen had refused to submit even after learning that both Jianying and their son, Ganring, were dead. Li still wasn’t clear on whether Ganring was physically the offspring of the great bck dragon, Jianying, but Guaruka was definitely his mother, and definitely very unhappy that her son had been killed.

  Snen nodded, lifting his hands. He no longer held a bde, but he didn’t really need one. His thick, powerful cws were enough, and blood had dried in the furrows between his scales. “Her court is broken, her clutch destroyed.”

  These words were spoken with sadness almost as deep as his weariness. The xiyi were a dwindling race, thanks to the great number of eggs that simply didn’t hatch, but only Jianying’s - or perhaps Guaruka’s? - bloodline could control the qiu stones. Leaving the queen’s st clutch alive was a risk the kus - which meant something like ‘revered elders’ - had decided they could not take. Li didn’t entirely agree, but she wasn’t a xiyi, and thus it was not her decision to make.

  “The kus have removed and destroyed almost all of the qiu, along with a hidden room full of thousands more of them that was discovered in the queen’s home,” Snen went on. “We’re still looking for any more caches, but we hope that was all of them.” He stopped and looked around, pain written on his face for anyone who was able to read it.

  Guaruka had been holed up in this cavern for months, apparently waiting for her clutch to hatch. Only one in five xiyi eggs produced viable hatchlings, and the survival rate was even lower for the dragons they raised. Fortunately, both xiyi and dragons id several eggs in each clutch, but unfortunately for Guaruka, Ganring was her only offspring to survive to adulthood.

  Eggs that remained in the cavern for at least the first half of their incubation time were significantly more likely to be viable, so Guaruka had been watching over her own nest when she learned of her son’s death. After that, she refused to leave, even going so far as to threaten to break the dragon and xiyi eggs that were kept here if anyone else tried to enter.

  Turning to look out over the hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of eggs in the cavern, Snen lowered his voice and asked, “Can you tell which eggs have living young in them?”

  Li had known the question was coming, but she still flinched from it. She felt the warm touch of Kaz’s mind on hers, and knew he was with her, though he was busy dealing with the city in the mid-levels. Again.

   Li said. She was all but certain, in fact, because the little cores forming inside the eggs burned like small embers.

  She thought she finally understood what Heishe meant when she said the various types of kobolds were ‘difficult to see’. Li couldn’t see mana as well as Kaz, but the power in this cavern was nearly palpable. Inside the gray fog of mana, the little xiyi eggs were like voids, their shells forming a barrier between the cycle of the world and their tiny occupants. She could tell mana had managed to seep into some of them, but others could be empty, for all her eyes would tell her.

  Snen’s tail thumped against the ground. This was something he’d only recently begun to do, and at first she’d thought it was unintentional. Then she realized it only happened when he felt strongly about something, but for the most part he hid it, much like Kaz sometimes held his own tail still to conceal his emotions. She was fairly certain the fact that he did it when she was nearby meant that he really trusted her now, and she had even figured it out before Kaz told her that was what it meant.

  As if drawn by the noise, several of the nearby females looked towards them. They immediately bowed toward Li, and she could hear them murmuring the little chant they always said the first time they met her. If she had to listen to one more xiyi ask for her forgiveness, she might start biting them.

  Snen looked toward the females as well, and she could see him brighten as he saw one of them. His neck straightened, and the very tip of his tail twitched. “Zhihs! Egg-sister, it’s good to see you.”

  Li stared at the small female as she approached, hopping over eggs and using her wings to carry her across with the ease and comfort of long practice. Snen had spoken of his sister a few times, and Li was fascinated to find that the female was a smaller, winged version of her brother. Her scales were perhaps a bit more copper than bronze, and the small horns curling up from her forehead were shorter, but it was obvious they were closely reted.

  Zhihs bowed her long neck, her own tail twitching as she said, “Snengriak, I heard you had returned, but I was trapped here. It is good to see you with my own eyes.” Those eyes shifted to Li, and her long neck sank even lower. “This one begs you to forgive her. In our haste and our pain, we inflicted upon you the same sorrow-”

  Li’s cw shot out, and rather than biting the copper-scaled female, she poked the sharp tip of her forecw against Zhihs’ snout. she said crossly.

  She and Kaz had talked about this a lot, and besides the fact that what she said was true, they didn’t think the xiyi and dragons could learn to be friends with this hanging between them. And given what the future held for both races, it was really best if they liked each other.

  Zhihs opened and closed her mouth a few times, stealing gnces at her brother as she did so. Snen gave the xiyi version of a shrug, his head swaying side to side on his long neck, and she straightened. As she did so, Snen’s eye caught on something glittering at her throat, and his tail gave a startled thump.

  “You took a mate! Without telling me?” There was no missing the distress in his voice, and Zhihs started to bow her head again, then threw back her shoulders and stared at him defiantly.

  “Chekdrusk isn’t the only male who has been chasing me for a long time,” she said, reaching up to grasp the pendant dangling from a delicate chain. “When you were reduced to guard, I knew your status wouldn’t protect me any longer. I made my own choice, so one wouldn’t be forced upon me.”

  Snen shook his head. “Who would force you? Females are allowed to-” He stopped. “Ganring?”

  Zhihs sighed. “While you were a hunter, even Ganring hesitated to push too hard. I suspect that his interest may be one of the reasons Queen Guaruka demoted you for such a small failure. Ganring said he would give me one more chance when he returned from the human nds, and then there would be consequences if I didn’t make the ‘right’ choice.”

  Snen’s hiss was filled with pure fury, and Li wished she could bite Ganring again. It was almost too bad that he was dead.

  “So you took a mate while Ganring was gone,” Snen said, drawing in a deep breath. When he spoke again, he sounded proud. “Even Guaruka couldn’t force mates apart. Who did you choose?”

  Now Zhihs looked almost embarrassed. “Szemcirg.”

  Snen’s head shot back. “Ssss-zem? We grew up with him! He’s practically-”

  “He’s not our brother,” Zhihs said. “And I love him. He’s a good, kind, and caring mate, and will be a good father to our hatchlings.”

  “Hatchlings!” Snen excimed. The poor xiyi looked like his sister was hitting him with a particurly rge and pungent chouchou.

  Zhihs gave a hissing xiyi ugh. “I id my first clutch the same day Queen Guaruka heard Ganring was dead. That’s why I was here when she took over the clutching cavern.”

  “Are your eggs-sss-” Snen hissed to a halt, and Zhihs nodded, though she lost much of her humor.

  “Safe,” she confirmed. “Though many of us lost at least a few, and several dragon eggs were broken as well.”

  It was Li’s turn to look around, worried. She hadn’t noticed any sign of broken eggs. She knew Guaruka had threatened to break them, not that she had actually done so.

  Snen saw her reaction and said, “In the center of the cavern. The closer a nest is to the center, the more likely the eggs are to hatch. The higher a family is ranked, the closer their nest is to the center. Guaruka’s eggs were right next to the xin, and so are the eggs she broke.”

   Li asked.

  The two xiyi exchanged gnces, almost as if they were afraid to say more, but then they both bowed their heads to her. “I told you Jianying was somehow able to create a pce where we can reproduce, and that’s why we stayed with him. That pce is here, and it’s called the xin, the heart of our people,” Snen said, motioning for her to follow.

  Li rose into the air, flying over the heads of the xiyi as more and more of the dragon-people poured into the cavern. It seemed like everyone had a clutch of eggs they were checking on, but they all stopped to bow as Li flew by, murmuring the words of their apology. She would definitely need to do something about that, preferably before she freed too many more dragons of their runes. She was a very patient dragon, but who knew how the others would feel about it.

  As she flew, it felt like the air grew thicker and thicker around her, dense with mana that began to glitter with motes, then streams of blue, white, and yellow ki. She had only experienced something like it a few times before, and even as she settled down next to the crystalline mound in the precise center of the cavern, she had a feeling she knew what she was about to find.

  “This is the xin,” Zhihs said, brown eyes almost glowing with devotion as she stared at the intricate patterns of ki-crystals. There were only three colors of crystals there, but they burned as brightly as they must have the day they were pced.

   Kaz asked, his attention apparently caught by what he could see through her eyes. Li leaned forward, staring deeply into the rgest crystal within reach, but saw only pure white ki that threatened to burn her eyes.

   Li told her kobold as she blinked away the dark afterimage. She still thought it was funny that Kaz - possibly the only person in the world who could see the runes in the crystals without help - was the one with the ring that revealed them. It also copied the st rune it ‘saw’ into any crystals pced within it, however, so it sped up Kaz’s repairs in the mountain significantly, which was worthwhile. Until that was done, Kaz wouldn’t leave.

  Li lifted a cautious cw and tapped at a space without any crystals. Both xiyi flinched at the small sound, and Zhihs csped her hands together in front of her as if physically preventing herself from trying to stop Li. Li asked them.

  They shook their heads. “The kus might have some idea,” Zhihs said nervously, “but no one is even allowed to touch it.” Her tone held a definite note of accusation as she stared at Li’s cw, which still rested on the xin.

   Li asked Kaz over their bond.

  He sighed.

  Li sent hopeful agreement, but she was very worried about what this might mean for the xiyi. If she and Kaz were right, and the missing cores of the st of the Twelve rested inside the xin, she had no doubt that Heishe, Fengji, Tu, and Hu would want to release their siblings right away. She couldn’t even bme them for that, in spite of the fact that it might mean the end of the xiyi race. After all, the world didn’t recognize the xiyi, and none of the Twelve had cimed them. Yet.