"We need to contact Cinira."

"Yes," Ashur agreed grimly. "This changes things."

We left the trespassers with guards to watch them and headed back over to Ashur's building.

This whole thing had just blown up in a way I hadn't at all been expecting.

Cinira had called it, hadn't she? She'd said that Emberich was simply giving the conspirators enough rope to hang themselves with. And that was exactly what had happened. She just hadn't predicted that he'd use that rope to go after their flocks as well, whether or not they'd been directly involved. She'd underestimated Emberich's brutal nature. Just like the rest of us had.

We went up to Ashur's office to send a message over to Cinira saying that we needed to have another meeting. We didn't bother hiding that there were issues happening with Emberich's phoenixes. We could conceivably have found that out from our own sources rather than from Sven. We didn't think Emberich knew where the chickens who'd flown the coop had come to roost and we wanted to keep it that way. It might give us an advantage we might sorely need.

Even us we hit send on that message, Enzi burst into the room, slightly out of breath. Ashur got his feet.

"What is it?" he asked sharply.

"There are reports coming in from other skeins," he said, frowning. "Reports of phoenix refugees asking for asylum."

Shit. Ashur and I looked at each other. Cinira responded back right then, the ding of the incoming message drawing our attention.

Things moved fast after that.

This time, Ashur held the meeting here in his territory. No one was going to say no now that the problem had literally arrived on our doorsteps. Though I had no idea how the actual meeting was going to go. Was it going to be another bust? After the last one...

When everyone arrived, they were immediately escorted to a meeting room in Ashur's building. None of us had dressed up for the occasion, coming as we were. It made a lot more sense to me, though some of the other Dragon Lords still took the time to dress in more formal clothing, including Cinira. I was just happy not to have to worry about a dress while worrying about actual problems too.

As soon as everyone was seated, we got right down to business.

"I have about twenty-five people who showed up earlier this morning," a young Asian man with perfect, pale skin said. "What am I supposed to do with them?"

"We're already at eighty," the young Indian woman who'd spoke up about Sven in the last meeting interjected. "And there might be more coming."

"Refuse them entry," a hard-faced man with dark hair and a matching goatee said. "They wouldn't help us if we needed it," he said harshly. "Don't let them into your territory, and there is no problem here."

"That's easy for you to say," a large man with long blond hair retorted. "You're not faced with women or children or the elderly who are coming to you for aid because they literally have no one else to turn to." He looked around the table, his eyes sad. "Those people look like they've been through hell."

"If you're getting soft in your old age, that's your problem, Ragma," the goateed man said, not moving an inch.

"Be careful who you call soft, Heavener," Ragma said quietly, eyes narrowed.

"That's enough," Ashur spoke up, interrupting the beginning of a fight. "We're trying to find a solution to this problem, not bicker about it," he said harshly. "Try to keep that in mind."

"Yes," Tanar agreed. "My skein has taken in phoenix refugees as well," he continued. "We cannot simply turn people away in their time of need. I will not turn children away," he said quietly. "It is not who I am, and it is not who we should be."

"Respectfully, I must disagree. I think everyone should think long and hard before taking anyone in," the older black man who had been very vocal about what he thought about phoenixes spoke up. "Emberich is threatening any skein who takes his people in with retaliation. That is not to be taken lightly."

This was news to me.

"Bruno is correct," Cinira said, speaking up. "I received just such a message a few minutes ago from Emberich himself," she confirmed. "But are we the type of people to bow down to a bully like Emberich? Especially when he's out there butchering people? We have a duty to fight back, to use the power we have and stand firm."

"It is very easy to be self-righteous before you've felt the actual repercussions," Heavener interjected, murmurs of agreement following his statement. "I, for one, am not willing to risk my people for phoenixes, no matter what the reason. It is simply not going to happen."

He looked around for agreement and got a significant amount of it, though it wasn't the majority. That gave me some hope.

"It is also very easy to look the other way when you do not have refugees upon your doorstep," a woman in her sixties with a bright cap of white hair returned, her sharply featured face set off with sharp, intelligent eyes.

"I believe Heavener is correct," a man of some type of mixed heritage said, his bland face neither young nor old. "I have turned away people," he said, meeting eyes as he looked around the table. "Being on the edge of phoenix territory, we have had more than a few skirmishes with them. We have sustained losses in those skirmishes," he added, his jaw tight and his gaze far away, as if remembering those losses. "If they want help now, they're not going to find it with my skein," he said. "And nobody can tell me or my people any differently."

That was a difficult position to be in. I could even sympathize with where he was coming from, even though I thought it was wrong to turn people away in this context. Though I also didn't know what he'd been through with those phoenixes near him.

The arguments continued to go back and forth, with both sides progressively becoming more heated about what the right thing to do actually was.

"This isn't just going to affect the phoenixes," Ashur said in a frustrated voice. "Even if you just want to think about us, or just your own particular skeins. You know that a civil war among the phoenixes, especially a long-drawn-out one, will affect both dragons and humans. We are all interdependent as much as we play at being separated."

Heavener stood up, his chair scraping against the floor with a grating sound.

"I don't care how interdependent we are. We were able to survive without either the phoenixes or humans before, and we will be able to survive without them afterwards. These are not good or convincing arguments for getting involved in a messy civil war that has nothing to do with us. A war in which we would likely lose people, many people. I am not willing to put my people at risk for the possibility of perhaps reducing the length of a civil war that has not even begun yet. That just does not make any kind of reasonable sense." Murmurs of agreement followed that statement. "And I do not care one way or another whether your girlfriend sits on the phoenix throne." He looked over at me, sneering. "How do you even know what side she's on? Her blood is tainted by both phoenixes and humans." He spit on the floor. Lovely. "She's a mutt with no real allegiance."

Ashur slammed his hands down on the table, the sound loud enough and sudden enough that it startled everybody.

"That is enough," he growled, his eyes locking with Heavener's. "If you cannot see past your own prejudice to the heart of this issue, you are being willfully blind. This affects us whether you want it to or not, whether it's convenient or not. And that has nothing to do with Mia." He looked like he was genuinely holding himself back from doing more. "Do not bring her into this."

"I am not bringing her into this. You and Cinira are," Heavener countered. "I do not know why you think that is wise. And it no longer matters. Because I am done with this discussion. If you would like to embroil yourself in an unwinnable war, that is your business. But you're not dragging my skein down with you."

I couldn't stay silent anymore. The insults against me rolled off my back—I'd heard worse. But this went beyond me. There was a right and a wrong decision here.

"Do you really want to be known as the cowards when this is all remembered later?" I finally spoke up. He was already about to walk out. I couldn't make the outcome any worse here, and maybe I could convince him otherwise, or at least convince someone listening that he was wrong. "The ones who weren't there when they were needed?" I shook my head. "What you decide on now will be what you will have to live with later, after the dust settles. And people don't forget."

Wasn't the fact that all of the races had such animosity against each other proof of that?

"Too bad," he sneered. "I'd rather have my skein live than die as martyrs. And I hope that any who buy into your pipe dream do not end up regretting it later. But I believe they will."

As he stepped away from the table, others stood as well. They nodded to us, some of them not even meeting our eyes as they turned to follow Heavener out. They weren't all proud of their decision to bail, but they'd still made it. We were two for two on people walking out of important meetings. Not a streak I wanted to foster.

But when I looked back at the table, I realized we were in a much better position this time. There were about two-thirds of the Dragon Lords still left.

Progress?

I was willing to take anything at this point.