A/N: Rewrite time! This one's gonna be shorter because I've cut the Glory chapters. I was not and am not equipped to blend what I was doing with Glory and Deathbringer's failing marriage or whatever the hell with funny Jambu times yahoo. This prologue's from Glory's POV, but the rest is all Jambu, baby.

Prologue

Glory drummed her talons on the dusky orange hardwood of the treehouse floor, eyeing the rolled up parchment before her. The dragonet who'd delivered it was long gone, as was the MudWing courier who'd given it to her. She sighed and looked away from it, but there was nothing else around onto which she could affix her eyes. Reluctantly, she returned to the inert paper—inert, but not neutral. There was a reason she was so antsy about the little thing: it was probably a ransom letter.

Not for certain, but the deliverer having been a MudWing embroiled it in a complicated series of events that could reasonably be summed up—and indeed was in this fashion when Glory told it to Grandeur—by the phrase we've misplaced Jambu. Jambu had managed to disappear with little trace and reappear inexplicably in the Sky Kingdom, taking a little trip to the east into the Mud Kingdom before again vanishing into the wilderness. How voluntarythis was Glory did not know, though it coincided with the arrival of some strange SkyWing visitors; perhaps his mercurial little heart drove him to follow them into obscurity, or perhaps he was simply kidnapped. That latter idea was why Glory was dreading the letter before her, for the SkyWings had last been seen in the Mud Kingdom and the courier was a MudWing... perhaps it was an unreasonable leap, but it seemed very likely to Glory that she would soon meet with their estimation of a prince's ransom.

Glory would have liked to had a drive to say no no matter how small the demand was and swoop up there and save Jambu herself, but the stress of the last few days, all the talking and staring at mud and resting among the reeds, had dehydrated her shoulder Tsunami. No, Glory was very much planning to pay the ransom (should it exist), be done with it, and give Jambu a dressing down even if it wasn't really his fault, though that last one would probably evolve into a hug by the time she actually saw him. She did hope that the kidnappers wouldn't ask for much; she was not very rich, what unroyally meagre funds she had tied up in the construction of Jade Mountain Academy, and even the NightWings who weren't actively planning to overthrow her probably wouldn't appreciate—nor pay—any sort of tax at this rebellious moment. Really, her reign thus far had been an utter stream of rebellious moments. She'd researched how other Queens got ahold of their malcontents, and the answer seemed to invariably be by incredible violence, but Glory didn't want to be any more violent than she had to. She had tried that, once, and it only made them hate her more—you really had to go overboard for it to work in a way Glory had been raised since she was hatched to strongly object to.

She was waiting to open the letter until Deathbringer was back from investigating one of these malcontents. She wasn't sure why. She could form a few rationalisations into little clay figures and place them in a circle around her like a magical ward, but none of them were true to how she really felt. She didn't fear that the letter was poisoned or that it would contain some terrible knowledge that she needed to give to Deathbringer immediately—though that one didn't make much sense in any case—she simply feared opening it without her bodyguard. Thinking about it and realising that this was silly, she reached for the terrible thing and felt its coarse paper against her talons. At the corner of her eye, a shadow moved, and Glory turned towards the front entrance to the massive treehouse. Before the orange sky and orient sun, a pure-black silhouette rose and stretched its wings before stepping inside.

Deathbringer stepped towards Glory a lot quicker than she thought he would, startling her somewhat, but this faded when he stopped being a pure silhouette and became a silhouette with a little grin poking out of it. Smiling back, she grabbed the scroll and held it up. She summarised how she got it and its (still potential) relevance to Jambu's disappearance, just shrugging when Deathbringer asked why she'd waited to open it. "Before that, of course," she finished with a barely audible sigh, "how did... what you were doing go?"

"Hm." Deathbringer's smile sank back into the grey recesses of his face. "I found some letters myself. They were encoded as a bunch of numbers without spaces—I'm assuming, I'll admit—so I can't tell if they're addressed to our jailbird or not. I'd ask you if you had any idea what key they could be using, but, you know..." He gestured to the letter. "Little more important."

Glory exhaled. "Okay." Even with Deathbringer here and that strange anxiety quieted, and though it did not at all show, Glory's heart was protesting quite loudly as she shifted to hold the scroll with both claws. On the outside was a red seal, which she noticed now wasn't the seal of the couriers' guild or of Jade Mountain Academy (Starflight had designed the latter, and—while it wasn't terribly complex, just a representation of the two fangs of Jade Mountain—she thought he'd done wonderfully well for a blind dragon). Rather, on the seal was a bear of some kind—if the illustrations Glory had seen were accurate, anyway—with its head turned up to a collection of three stars.

That whatever group had kidnapped Jambu was so formal as to have their own seal—and identify themselves with it as such—was questionable at best and did not lend credence to the idea that this was a ransom letter. Glory felt some of her tension evaporate as she realised this, and any replacements concocted by her ever-hungering anxiety, most of which were to do with the fact that she now again had no leads on where Jambu was, were kept down by her curiosity as to what the letter actually was. She unfurled the scroll all at once and found what unease remained replaced with confusion—a dire, dire confusion—once she finally started reading the thing.

FROM THE OFFICE OF HIS WORSHIP THE MAGISTRATE GRIZZLY OF LILYDEARTH VILLAGE, OF THE SAME TROOP AS CROCODILE AND IRIS AND BORREMOSE

RECIPIENT: QUEEN GLORY OF THE RAINWINGS

RECIPIENT TROOP: JAMBU OF THE RAINWINGS

DESTINATION: THE RAINFOREST

SENT: 4/9/11

The office of His Worship writes to inform you, Your Grace Queen Glory of the RainWings and NightWings, of the arrest and arraignment of a dragon who claims to your brother, one Jambu of the RainWings. He has been formally charged with one (1) count of livestock theft for his unlawful killing of one goat in County Lilydearth in the East Delta Province of the Delta Region of the Mud Kingdom. He is to stand trial on 6/9/11, two days from now at the time of writing. Should he in fact be your brother, he is, by MudWing law, immune to prosecution by courts subordinate to regional courts and will be cleared of all wrongdoing. If he is your brother, please appear at Lilydearth Village Courthouse; no additional proof is needed as your likeness is generally known. If he is not your brother, ignore this message and his trial and sentencing will be held as scheduled. Further information may be provided should you choose to write back.

Signed,

One of the signatures was perfectly unreadable, labelled His Worship the Magistrate, while the other, Who Scratched This Document, was written very neatly in the same hand as the message itself and was clearly recognisable as Borremose. Glory blinked at the letter a couple of times before calmly furling it up, an urge to forget she had ever read it taking shape in her mind. Ultimately, though, she was forced to face the truth. Staring at the rolled-up scroll in her hands, Glory whispered with as much gravity as ever she had: "What?"

"What is it?" asked Deathbringer, moving to peer over Glory's wings. "From the office..."

"Jambu's in jail," Glory interjected, having not really heard Deathbringer start speaking. "He's standing trial tomorrow. For..." She unfurled the paper again.

"Wait, say that again?" Deathbringer said. Again, he tried to read the letter, but Glory was holding it too close to her face.

"Livestock theft." The scroll slipped out of Glory's claws as she turned to face her bodyguard. She couldn't quite tell what her scales looked like; she was trying to keep them as their usual green and orange, but she wouldn't have been surprised if Deathbringer had noticed some little starbursts. "I'm glad he's safe—very glad with all the other things we have on our plate—but it's just... how did this happen?"

"Well, are you sure you read it right?" said Deathbringer, apparently genuinely. "Didn't say thivestock left or anything like that?"

"No." Glory picked up the letter and held it out to the NightWing. "Read it yourself, if you like."

Deathbringer did like and took it. He studied it for some time, or perhaps just stared at the first word; he was good at hiding where his eyes were looking. "At least he's safe," he concluded as he set it back down.

"Not for long," said Glory. "He'll be in jail for, what, a month? How secure are the jails in the poorest part of the Mud Kingdom?" By reflex, she spoke quickly and firmly. "If he really was kidnapped, it'll be a cinch for them to snatch him back."

"I'm not suggesting we dally," replied Deathbringer. His pitch trailed up at the end of his sentence as though to continue, but it was left there until Glory spoke.

"Of course," she said. "Sorry—we're both a bit on edge, aren't we?"

Deathbringer nodded. "At least it's over now," he said. Glory frowned a bit. "Probably," he added. "It's not like they're going to execute him, though. At this point, our biggest worry that we know for certain is a worry is just wondering how he managed to commit a crime while he was away."

"Our biggest worry," objected Glory as she rose her head up from the pool formed by her arms, "is getting there."

"Well, we've done it before," said Deathbringer. "The Mud Kingdom's not that hard to navigate."

Glory sighed. "I have to leave and you have to stay, is what I mean."

"How come?" Deathbringer asked. "Well, I can guess how come, but... I can't just leave you."

"And why's that?" asked Glory flatly.

"You're like a rare gem," said Deathbringer, the tide of a smirk slowly pushing at his mouth. "I've got to keep you safe."

"Bit of a mismatch on the simile there," said Glory, wiping away the satisfaction on Deathbringer's face. "Guess that's why you were an assassin and not a poet."

"No, it's an important skill either way." Deathbringer sadly let his wings droop. "What's an assassin without that roguish warrior-poet charm?" He turned his gaze down to the floor.

"Stop being dramatic." Glory hit him with her own wing. "Listen, with this unrest going on, one of us needs to stay here and deal with it. Now—"

"What about Grandeur?" Deathbringer interrupted.

"Let me finish," Glory replied calmly, suppressing a little annoyed twinge in her chest. "If I leave, whether it's with you or not, and we leave Grandeur in charge, then those rebels are going to take this opportunity to do... whatever they're planning, and Grandeur's not going to have a measured or reasonable response to that. I'm going to guess that the keyword will be standoff."

"Well..." Deathbringer paused. "Maybe you don't have to go; couldn't you send them some proof that Jambu's your brother?"

"What proof?" Glory asked. "It's not like we keep a genealogy. Even if we did, anyone could fake that—I don't have a royal seal or a signature or anything properly identifying."

"You're the only RainWing in the world who can write, though," replied Deathbringer.

"I don't advertise that!" said Glory, who was a bit embarrassed that this was still the case after three months of work since becoming Queen. "And besides, it could very well be a NightWing hypothetically faking it—need I remind you that we're talking about nonexistent proof of my identity?"

Deathbringer folded his arms and hmmed. Something unrecognisable splashed in the black pools of his eyes. "I suppose it is for the best I stay here, then," he said, and Glory felt the satisfaction of being right tickle her heart, even though this wasn't really an argument. "You go and fetch Jambu, I and Grandeur try to hide that you're gone—is that a good idea?"

Glory thought on it for a moment. "Hard to pull off. It's suspicious that I would just stop answering petitioners—if we had a few more days we could gradually roll it back, but..."

"Wait!" Deathbringer shouted, and Glory's ruff flared instinctively. She backed away from him as he half-upstood. "I need to come with you."

"What?" Glory asked. "Why?"

"It's a trap, isn't it?" said Deathbringer. "Not necessarily, but there's a good chance. Think about it: these aren't separate troubles that've happened to coincide. Jambu wasn't kidnapped for ransom. They kidnapped him to lure you into getting kidnapped. Murdered, maybe! And it all lies," Deathbringer swiftly picked the scroll up, "in this."

Glory stared at Deathbringer, who seemed a little overly excited considering what he was saying. Glory understood, though; she, too, enjoyed a good evil plan. Honestly, she couldn't see too many holes in it—she had absolutely no confirmation that the letter had actually come from a courthouse, or even if County Lilydearth was a real place, it did seem to put a lot of weight onto her coming there herself, and the kidnappers had last been seen in the Mud Kingdom. Well, there was one objection...

"I think you might be right," she said, "but if that's the case, why would they say Jambu's committed such a trifling crime? Why not... grand larceny?"

"Maybe they think that killing a single goat is the only crime he could commit within reason?" suggested Deathbringer. "No matter what crime he's supposedly committed, you've got to go get him sooner or later, and that's how they get you. Can't just leave your little brother in the middle of nowhere."

"He's my older brother," said Glory. She pondered on it for a few seconds more, but she'd already made up her mind; the real purpose of the pause was just to distance her next sentence from the correction. "I don't fully believe that this is all a setup, but it's still not worth taking the risk of you not coming with me if it is. I think we can leave Grandeur alone for a few days without her mucking things up too badly."

Later that day, they set off towards the Mud Kingdom. It took a while of flight through rain and sun and the vastly unimpressive villages of the Mud Kingdom, but soon they found that County Lilydearth was indeed a real place and landed at the courthouse there. Glory was initially still a bit suspicious, but the general lack of SkyWings and complete willingness of the MudWing she was speaking with to release Jambu from his cell erased whatever anxiety she still had left. What came now was relief, manifesting as more than a few hugs directed towards Jambu. Unwisely, after asking him if he was okay for the thousandth time, Glory said to Jambu: "What happened? How did you end up here?"

"Oh," he answered, "now that's... complicated. Do you really wanna know?"

"Of course!" Glory answered.

"Well..." Jambu inhaled. "It was a few days ago..."

A/N: The ending is obviously very abrupt, but I don't know how I could fix that without tacking on a lot of unnecessary stuff at the end. Criticism—not necessarily constructive—is welcomed.