Wren and her ride arrived at the palace after dark, which was Murderbasket’s idea. He might be a bit of an idiot about human intelligence, but he was clearly an expert at skulking around. He approached on a quiet glide down from the clouds, avoided all the guards, and landed in a deserted courtyard.

“All right,” Wren said, sliding off his neck. “I’m impressed.”

“You’re welcome,” he said, looking pleased.

“With myself,” she said, “for picking exactly the right dragon for this job.”

He looked down his nose at her. “Hmmm. You’re still welcome.”

“You are also welcome,” she said. “For my excellent advice and for the part where I did not stab you with my dangerous weapon.”

“You DID stab me with your dangerous weapon,” he objected.

“Oh, barely,” she said. “Imagine if I’d been doing it on purpose.”

He shuddered. “I’d rather not.” A distant roar cut through the silent night, and he turned his head toward it, then looked back down at her. “Are you sure you want to be here?”

“I definitely do not,” she said, “but I have to find Sky. And probably stab all the dragons who took him. In the EYEBALLS! They’ll be sorry they stole my friend and made me walk all over the desert! Mostly the first thing.” She pulled out her sword and brandished it at the shadows. “Watch out, evil dragon eyeballs!”

“Three moons,” he said. “I think you’re the most violent dream I’ve ever had, and considering what I do for work, that’s saying something.”

“Your eyeballs are totally safe with me,” she said, patting his claws reassuringly. The sword overbalanced in her hand and jabbed his talon membrane again, in a different spot this time.

He jumped away from her with a hiss, shaking a new drop of blood off.

“OK, I’ll admit that was terrible,” Wren said. She put the sword away. “This time I’m really sorry.”

He let out a small disbelieving laugh. “No one has managed to draw my blood in years,” he said. “And now a tiny scavenger has done it twice. I have this great idea: Let’s both never, ever tell anyone about this.”

That is a good idea, Wren realized. She didn’t exactly want gossip spreading about the sweet fireless dragon she was going to steal back from the desert queen.

“Agreed,” she said. “Don’t you ever tell anyone about me.”

“No one would believe me anyway,” he observed. “I hope you find your friend, that you both survive this place, and that you never corner me in a dark alley again.”

“Thank you,” she said. “I hope you decide not to kill whoever it is you’re supposed to go kill.”

“How did you — no, never mind, I don’t want to know,” he said. He spread his wings to go and she stepped toward him, suddenly wishing he could stay, although she would never say so out loud. He was her new second-favorite person, easily outpacing stupid Undauntable.

“I mean it,” she said awkwardly. “Thank you, Murderbasket.”

“Murderbasket,” he muttered, shaking his head. He gave her an exasperated smile and then lifted off into the clouds, as silently as they’d come.

Now I just have to find Sky, Wren thought. In a gigantic dragon palace. How hard could that be?

She started as she did in every new place, by getting a sense of the geography. For one thing, there was a giant wall around the outside of the palace, specially designed to be impossible for humans to climb, as far as she could tell. Which meant probably the only way she was getting out of here was on Sky. Also, she discovered in the morning, it had several dragon heads on spikes at the top of it.

That was a little unsettling. Despite everything she’d read about dragons, she still believed they weren’t as awful as humans, and she didn’t like seeing evidence that they might be. She forced herself to check each of them for pale orange scales, but none of them were Sky.

Most of the palace was a labyrinth of winding hallways, lined with tapestries, which opened onto courtyards and enormous ballrooms and feasting halls. Here, again, it was very easy to find food and survive on the dragons’ crumbs and leftovers. The hardest part was actually moving faster than the mice and oversized ants who wanted to get to them first.

Twice she found herself caught in an unfamiliar room with not enough hiding places when a dragon walked in. Strangely, though, each time the dragon barely glanced at her, muttered something about overwatered plants (Wren thought), grabbed whatever it was looking for, and left, even though she was sure it had seen her.

Am I just a giant mouse to them? Not even worth eating or squashing?

As she crept through the palace, she could hear a particular dragon roaring with fury, and she finally followed the sound to a tall tower that radiated creepiness. Someone was trapped in there, and they weren’t afraid to let everyone know how displeased they were. Sometimes the prisoner roared words — “I’LL MURDER YOU ALL! YOU’LL BE SORRY! I’M GOING TO START WITH YOUR TONGUE AND EAT YOU ALIVE!” — and sometimes she just roared pure fury.

Wren had initially been inclined to feel sorry for whoever it was, but the more violent her threats became, the more Wren felt like perhaps the world was better off with this dragon inside that tower. But it did make her wonder — was this where they kept prisoners? Could Sky be in there, too? Trapped with the angry dragon? Probably with his talons clasped over his ears and his wings over his head, wishing he were a snail and had somewhere to hide.

There were no windows, so there was no way for Wren to get inside. But she found a safe spot to spy on the tower for a couple of days and she studied the food that went in and out. It was almost all meat, and it was mostly all picked clean when the plates were removed. It didn’t seem like enough for more than one dragon either — there would be only one bowl, for example, or a single tray of charred grasshoppers, or something like that.

So if he wasn’t in there, where else could he be?

She scouted the palace until she found where most of the soldiers slept: in the low buildings nestled against the inner walls of the main entrance courtyard. Armored sand dragons went in and out of their barracks all day long, doing drills in the hot sun.

Wren needed a spot where she could watch the soldiers, and she found it in a closet full of dusty linens that had a small hole in the back wall looking directly out over the courtyard. There was a strange monument out there, a tall black obelisk with carved words painted in gold on it. A large circle of sand surrounded the obelisk, but the rest of the courtyard was lined with white stones that reflected the glare of the sun.

The closet was a good place to sleep and hide during the busiest parts of the day, while Wren waited for some sign of what the soldiers had done with Sky.

Two days later, the loud giant appeared, whooshing in the front gate like a sudden thunderstorm in the mountains. Wren thought of him as the general, although she didn’t know whether dragon armies had titles like that. He shook a vast quantity of sand off his wings and bellowed a name. Soldiers clattered in behind him and he waved them off to the barracks, then shouted the name again. The name was something like what fires do when they’re burning low — Smolder? Wren thought. I’ll go with Smolder.

Finally a dragon came out of the central palace and slowly paced across the courtyard. He had black diamond patterns along his spine, like a snake, and a lot of keys and pouches on a ring around his neck. Wren noticed that he skirted around the circle of sand to reach the dragon who’d stolen Sky.

“Prince Smolder,” the general said, inclining his head in a way that was somehow perfectly respectful but also conveyed an ocean of contempt at the same time.

“Sandstorm,” said the new dragon in a similar tone, eyeing the mess the soldiers had made coming in the gate. “Anything to report?”

“Nope,” said the general. He puffed up his chest and lashed his tail. “Any word from Queen Burn?”

“No,” Smolder said with a sigh. “But don’t worry, I’m sure she’ll be back soon and you can give her your gift the moment she arrives.”

“YESSSS,” Sandstorm said with a smug grin. “Still alive, is he? I think she’d like him better that way. For now. HA HA!”

Smolder winced. “Yes, he’s fine. Why don’t you have your dragons clean this up, and I’ll go make sure food is ready for them.”

“I want that cinnamon drink!” Sandstorm bellowed after him. “The new one from the kitchens, like last week! Tell them to make me another!”

Wren wasn’t sure who was the boss of who here — she would have thought the prince would be in charge, but the general seemed very comfortable ordering him about. Prince Smolder turned back to the palace with an expression that suggested he had several thoughts about that question, too. Unconcerned, or perhaps unaware, Sandstorm strutted over to the barracks to shout orders at some soldiers.

Wren was sure they’d been talking about Sky, although she didn’t know why he’d be considered a “gift” for the queen. But that meant he was alive, and he was here. And he belonged to Sandstorm, it sounded like, until this Burn character returned. So surely Sandstorm would want to check on him as soon as he could …

She thought for a moment, then slipped out of the closet and hurried down to the courtyard. By the time she got there, the general was done ordering the soldiers about and was striding toward a low door that led to some of the kitchens.

Wren followed him, carefully but as fast as she could. It was lucky that most of the doors in the palace were always open, covered by long billowing white curtains to let the breeze through. She’d also found a few where she could crawl right under the door, but there were others that were too thick or too close to the floor, and a few that seemed to have special, spiky anti-human flaps added on at the bottom for some mysterious reason.

Sandstorm marched through the kitchens, laughing his annoying hearty laugh and shouting jokes at various dragons as he went by. Wren didn’t think she was just imagining it; she was pretty sure from their eye rolls that they all found him annoying, too. He yelled at someone to bring his drink to his room, and then he clattered on through and up a flight of stairs.

Dragon-sized stairs were a pain, but better than the parts of the palace where dragons just flew from ledge to ledge and left no way for a human to follow. Each step was about as tall as Wren’s shoulders, so she just had to pull herself up and then run to the next and do it again, one after the other.

At the top, Sandstorm had disappeared, but she could hear his obnoxious voice chatting away in one of the rooms off the corridor. She tiptoed along the passage until she found the right one. The door was ajar. Wren peeked inside.

Sky was sitting in a corner of the room, chained to the floor, with his wings puddling dejectedly around his talons, watching Sandstorm talk. He had on one of his hopelessly sweet expressions, the one that said he was sure he could befriend that angry grizzly bear if he smiled at it enough.

“Not much longer!” Sandstorm was saying. The general dropped some of his armor with a clank that reverberated through the stones under Wren’s feet. “This will be so great! I’ve never brought her anything for her —” something Wren didn’t understand. “Bet this will get me a new command.”

“But aren’t we on the same side?” Sky said. “My tribe and your queen?”

“For now, more or less,” Sandstorm said with a snort. “You weren’t with any army, though; I’d wager you’ve never fought a day in your life. So I’m guessing your queen — or whoever is queen over there now — won’t miss you too much.”

A sound on the stairs warned Wren that someone was coming. She slipped through the door, staying low so the bed would hide her from the general, and crawled under one of the loose blankets on the floor.

One of the kitchen dragons came in, set a cup down on the table, bowed to the general, and went out again. Sandstorm drank it with a lot of loud smacking noises, and then sauntered out the door.

Wren waited until it was quiet in the corridor outside and Sandstorm’s booming laugh had faded away. Then she threw off the blanket and ran over to Sky.

“Wren?” he yelped, his eyes as wide as they’d been the day he found the turtle.

She jumped over his chains, climbed up his leg, and threw her arms around his neck. He wrapped his wings around her and they stayed like that for a long moment, together, the way they always should be.

“I’m sorry, Wren,” he said. His voice trembled with tears. “You were right about the dragon city.”

“No, don’t be sorry,” she said. “It’s these awful dragons who kidnapped you who should be sorry. Who will be sorry, when I’m done with them.” She let go of him and hopped down to examine the chains.

“How did you find me?” he asked.

“I’m extremely clever,” she said. “And you’re my best friend, so I was definitely going to find you eventually, no matter how long it took. How do I get these chains off you?”

He lifted one arm to display a wrist cuff and dropped it again. “There’s a key, but General Sandstorm always has it with him.”

“What does that blowfish want with you anyway?” Wren asked, kicking one of the chain links. It did not promptly collapse under the weight of her wrath, as she’d been hoping it would.

“The queen here collects weird things,” Sky said mournfully. “And apparently I’m a weird thing, because no one else is this color, and SkyWings are supposed to have fire.”

“You’re not weird!” Wren objected. “I mean, you are, but you’re perfect weird. Like me.” She grinned at him, and he smiled back. “Can I get the key while Sandstorm is sleeping?”

“I don’t think so,” Sky said. “It’s around his neck. I’m afraid he’d wake up and kill you.”

Wren folded her arms and frowned at the chains. That windowless tower with the furious dragon — that was probably where the queen kept her weird-things collection, or at least any live parts of it. Which meant she might put Sky in there, and then it would be even harder to rescue him. It would be better if she could get the key and free him now, as soon as possible, before the queen returned.

And she could think of only one way to do that.

“Well,” she said to Sky, “then I guess I’m going to have to kill him first.”