47
CODY
The Emerging is done.
The Fire Scales are all dead, or in their lairs. They’ve bashed the rock to seal themselves in.
Yurka has survived another fifteenth year.
The locals are celebrating, dancing and singing and spilling their frothing tankards of ale. Cody wonders if they ever do anything else.
There are scales set up in the square – mammoth scales to weigh the slaughtered beasts. Wolfe’s red, glittering carcass is the biggest in Yurka. Cody says nothing when Penn claims it as his own.
“You’re not registered,” the registrar says.
“You’ll have the heart then,” says Penn, “as a token.” And the registrar scratches him in.
The king sends word to all the Lair Towns: he wants the First Kill, and the skull of the biggest Fire Scale too – he’ll have it mounted and hung. An
