Bananas B lets out a low whistle, but it's still enough to set Haley's senses prickling, waiting for someone else to come swooping down on her. "For real?"
"I said what I said." Haley isn't about to repeat her claim here and now. If he hadn't heard her, they'd be having a different conversation right now—or, more likely, not talking at all. He'd be dragging her to whichever dragon he's reporting to for this little side job of his. "If you want more information about that, you have to let me go."
"You offering proof? Or you willing to put more than just your word behind it if you won't?"
"I'm the American Dragon," she repeats forcefully, "and that means my word on this is enough. I shouldn't need to be compelled for you to take it."
"Swear it, then."
"I swear that I am telling the truth about Huntsgirl."
The grin she gets in return is all teeth. "Swear you'll tell me what she looks like."
Haley isn't so sure she wants to do that.
She's not even sure she wants to tell the Council what Huntsgirl looks like.
It's the best card Haley can play. She knows that. She also knows it isn't wise to agree to give this up so easily to someone she's not convinced she can trust.
It's more than that, though.
Her stomach is twisting in knots, and it isn't only worry for Jake that sickens her. Huntsgirl had been kind to her, despite everything. She'd let Haley go. She hadn't even tried to double-cross her.
And no one from the Huntsclan has been looking for Haley since. Not as herself, anyway; they've only been on the lookout for the American Dragon, just like they always are. If that had changed, someone in the magical community would have heard about it.
Still, dealing with Bananas B feels like it has the makings of a devil's bargain. She's not convinced he wouldn't sell her out to save his own skin—especially if he's not supposed to be doing this at all. Unfortunately, Haley doesn't know what the better option is. She could turn around and call his bluff, tell him to march her straight into the Council, but what if it isn't a bluff? This behaviour is hardly going to reflect well on her—and Gramps—and they won't be happy to learn that she eavesdropped on a council meeting.
They won't listen to her when she says they have to find another option when it comes to Jake.
At best, they'll tell her all the reasons why it is the best option for the magical world, and they'll tell her she'll understand their decision once she's older even if she doesn't understand it now. They'll say they're helping her to do her job, protecting the magical creatures within her territory by neutralizing a threat so great it could expose the magical world as a whole or so subtle as to pick off its inhabitants one by one until she notices far too late.
And it's not that she doesn't know Jake has the potential to realize either possibility.
She does.
But the same is true of any rogue magical creature, especially if that magical creature agrees to work with the Huntsclan for whatever reason, but the difference is that Jake might not.
Huntsgirl hasn't, and she has more reason to betray Haley than Jake does.
Especially now.
Not that Huntsgirl will know what Haley's doing unless the Huntsclan has methods Haley's never heard about, but that's beside the point.
"Take me in front of the Council if you want to hear all about it right now." She's trying to sound confident, but her voice trembles, and she has to swallow hard before continuing. "If you're going to turn me in, we might as well go straight to them."
Bananas B gave her a sharp look before shaking his head. "If you wanted 'em to know, they already would."
"You don't know that."
"You told them about the Huntsclan's dragon, didn't ya? No reason to leave out something juicy like this unless you wanted to keep it under wraps."
Haley takes a slow breath, but it shudders out of her like she's in the middle of one of Kulde's infamous Trials by Ice. "I'm not swearing to tell you anything when I don't even know where the information is going. You wanted me to give you something valuable, and I know this is valuable. It's more valuable than you not turning me in right now, so if that's all you're offering, you might as well turn me over to the Council and get it over with."
He cocks his head at her. "You're saying, after all this, you want to see them." He doesn't sound like he believes her.
"I do want to see them." It's not a lie. She had simply wanted to see them on her own terms. Preferably, she'd talk to Gramps first, but she doesn't think she'll get that chance now.
She doesn't need to give up her information on Huntsgirl once she's in front of the Council, anyway.
She can plead with them to involve her in the decisions of Jake's case since she's the American Dragon, and if she can convince them to tell her what they're considering, she won't even need to admit to eavesdropping.
Bananas B can say what he likes, but unless he is working for one of the councillors or someone similarly high up on an official basis, it's her word against his.
Well, it's her word against his unless they decide to take drastic measures to get to the truth of it all, and she can't see why they would bother with something so small. Granted, eavesdropping on private meetings of the Council isn't a minor charge, but it hadn't been intentional. Not at first, anyway. Intent might not factor into it, though, since Chang likes Gramps about as much as he likes her and she'd no doubt delight in having an excuse to dole out punishment, but surely the others would keep Chang in line. It's not like Haley is planning to commit treason.
Though, she is planning to act against them if she can't convince them not to let Jake keep his magic.
(For now, anyway. Once this is over, if he decides he doesn't want it, doesn't want any of this— She might not be able to convince him otherwise, and she's fooling herself if she doesn't think she would still try—how could she not?—but she'd try to accept his decision, too. Later. Much later. Because even if they ask him now instead of ambush him, of course he'll say he doesn't want any part of this. It would be easier for him, and he doesn't know what he'd be giving up. How could he miss something he doesn't realize he has? He can't even fly efficiently. It must be exhausting. And anyone raised in the Huntsclan wouldn't exactly think being a dragon is a good thing.)
Granted, if the Council realizes how far Haley is willing to go, she might not be the only one punished.
Gramps and Fu Dog might both face repercussions for her decisions, even if she hasn't had a chance to act on them.
Fu Dog might lose his magical guardian license. Gramps might be forbidden from being her Dragon Master. She might be deemed unworthy of being the American Dragon.
Worse still, they might all wind up being a family of dragons with no dragon powers to speak of.
It would hurt her, but it would devastate Gramps.
"Right," says Bananas B, "but if you want to go there now, I don't, because I don't trust you."
Haley almost laughs. He doesn't trust her? She shouldn't be trusting him with any of this. "You don't want to see them." That's a relief, really. It means he doesn't work for one of them.
It also probably means he's not supposed to be here.
"New plan," he continues as if she hadn't spoken. "I turn you over to someone else and be sure to delay whatever little meeting you want to have with the Council or you can come with me and tell what you know about Huntsgirl to someone I know will be interested, after which I'll see about getting you back here before anyone asks any questions."
Haley frowns. His tactic still involves more stick than carrot, and she'd thought he'd try to sweeten the pot after she pointed out how much power she had. "You'd need to get me back before the meeting is over." If she goes missing, they'll look for her, and if he doesn't work for one of the dragons on the Council, he can't want them to find any trace of him in their search for her.
"Which is something that ain't happening if you decide to stay here, yo. You might be a dragon, but that doesn't mean I don't have power."
He's not worried that she might be missed; he's thinking that she's worried about being too late to do anything if the meeting concludes before she has a chance to plead her case.
Well.
He's not wrong, exactly.
The meeting isn't going to be a short one. She knows that. They might take a break if they haven't already, but it wouldn't be enough time for Gramps to come looking for her. She won't be missed until the meeting is well and truly over, but she can't afford to be squirrelled away somewhere on the island until all the decisions are made. If Bananas B is going to take her to his boss—or contact or whoever he means—then she can at least decide if it's worth telling them about Huntsgirl (preferably in exchange for something she can use when talking to the Council) or if she's better off plotting her escape from wherever they'd try to keep her.
She's never been spelunking on her own before, but she's been in the caves that riddle the Isle of Draco; if that's where Bananas B plans to take her, it's not the advantage he thinks it is. Finding a way out of there is a Trial faced by most dragons eventually, and if she trusts her magic to guide her—
"Let's go see your friends," she says.
He smiles, but the expression on his face is far from comforting. "Thought you might pick that. Come on, then. This way."
He starts back up the stairs at a frightening pace, pulling her behind him without mercy. She's forced to call out her wings and fly until she can get her feet properly under her, and they're nearly back at the Hall of Remembrance when he stops.
"Is someone coming?" She can't hear anything, but she hasn't had long enough to really stop and listen, so if someone is—
"No, we're just taking a shortcut."
She can't blink her dragon eyes into existence quickly enough to catch his movements, and the only thing she can be certain of is the final stone to which he presses his palms. The section of wall recedes as silently as the last passage entrance did, and Bananas B stepped back with a sweeping arm. "Ladies first."
She ignores the mocking in his voice and steps through. Eye of the Dragon keeps her from stepping off the narrow platform entirely, and if she weren't so short, chances are good she'd have straightened up and whacked her head on the stone above her. She follows its curving path around the narrow tower, looking up and then down, and realizes it's essentially a spiral slide. A steep one. The platform is high enough that someone on the slide needn't fear colliding with it, which consequently means the only way down is to drop into it—or jump for the ladder that stands in the centre. It's supported by narrow stone slotting into it from the sides of the slide, but even with magic, it's hard to pretend that it looks sturdy.
It looks like any weight will break the narrow stone bridges, leaving the ladder with fewer supports each time.
"We're going down," Bananas B says pointedly from behind her. He gives her a nudge. It's not enough to unbalance her, but it is enough to make his point clear.
Still, she refuses to jump when she isn't sure of the landing, and there is precious little room for error if she calls out her wings to guide her. It's too narrow to fly comfortably in here, even for her.
He chitters at her when she moves to sit down but leaps for the ladder instead of retreating into the stairway. She eases herself to the slide below, not releasing the platform until she can touch the slide with her toes, and only slips a few inches before she's able to brace herself against the side of the slide. The slide itself is cool and slick, worn smooth with more than use alone.
More magic.
She can feel it humming in her bones.
The whole island does. It's stronger than any other place she's ever been, centuries of magic layering on each other until it has built itself into a background sort of hum rather than anything she ever needed to focus on to find. Usually, it relaxes her.
This time, it's putting her on edge.
Above her, Bananas B leaps back to the platform with ease, and the last of the natural light vanishes shortly thereafter.
There's…something below, proof enough that there's an end to this, but the faint glow now visible in the depths is of no help to her here. It's nothing more than a hint of blue, a softness reminiscent of the sunrises she remembers seeing on their family camping trips when the sky just starts to lighten, minutes before the first real rays of sunshine pierce the horizon. All she can tell is that below is well below this building, that this passage must plunge into the caverns beneath.
It's nothing she hadn't considered, but something about this feels...wrong.
Even with dragon eyes, it's almost impossible to see, let alone pick out any kind of detail. The remembered outlines of the shapes around her shift in the darkness, trying to trick her into carelessness. She tries to keep her racing heart under control, but even as she's breathing in, she knows it's too quick. She should be breathing in through her nose, not her mouth, but she's not getting enough air that way, and—
She's not afraid of the dark.
She isn't.
She hasn't been since her dragon abilities developed, and this is no different than earlier. It's just another passage. It's fine. It's safe.
Except this time, someone she doesn't trust is at her back, urging her to venture down a passage she's never heard about.
"Let go." It sounds like he's still on the platform. "We're going all the way to the bottom. No need to waste luminescence on this trip."
She is painfully aware that she shouldn't have agreed to any of this. She tries to summon the concentration to protest. "But—"
"Fastest way out is down, so unless you want to me to jump on top of you, you should get moving."
She holds her breath and squeezes her eyes shut, trying to calm herself, before she asks, "How do I stop?"
"Don't need to worry about that on this trip. All the way to the bottom, remember?"
"I'll need to stop at the bottom!" The hiss that escapes her is more panicked than she'd like, but trying to keep her emotions bottled in is like trying to trap wisps of a cloud between her talons.
It leaks out even when she doesn't want it to.
There's a soft thump behind her, fur and flesh suddenly pressing against her back. She can feel her grip starting to slip as she struggles to maintain her position under the extra weight.
Bananas B's breath is hot in her ear. "Worry about that on the other side, sweetheart."
If she resists, he'll just push her. She could breathe out a flash of fire to try to blind him if she moves. She could try to spring for the ladder or heave herself over the side of the slide, calling out her wings before she could fall too far and hope doing so doesn't injure them. She could get back up to the platform and figure out how to open the sliding section of wall from the inside. She could try to talk to Gramps—
But Bananas B clearly knows these passages—or at least this passage—better than she does.
He'll catch up to her.
If he can't stop her, he'll discredit her.
Haley takes another deep breath and lets go.