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When Lydia and her mother reached the study, Ian was standing in the centre of the room with not one but three laptops floating in the air around him. They seemed to be linked by streams of glowing light and Lyrrekka was sitting and watching.

“How’s it going?” Sonia asked.

Lyrrekka looked up and gave a tense smile. “This is one of the most insane things I’ve ever seen. And I feel rather superfluous. There’s not much that I can do to help with this. It’s remarkable. He’s remarkable.”

“I’ve started with reports from the nearest hospitals,” Ian said. “We’ll want to start there and stabilise the things locally I think.”

“Yes, that’s wise,” Sonia said. “Sarah will be pleased with your initiative when she wakes up from her nap.”

“Mum’s napping?” he asked in surprise. “Mum never naps.”

Sonia nodded. “She is today. She’s worn herself out helping people. And you should be careful not to do the same gathering information for us.”

“I could do with a break,” he said. “I’ve had to start slowing down my grabbing because the information is getting all mushed up in my brain if I work at my normal speed. But I feel terrible when I think about resting. What if something else happens and I could have stopped it if I hadn’t been resting?”

Lyrrekka reached out and gave him a gentle thwap around the back of the head. “You’re being silly. You won’t help anyone if you collapse. Let’s have a break and something to eat at least.”

“Speaking of eating, do you need to feed?” Sonia asked. “You’ve expended rather a lot of effort over the last few days.”

Lyrrekka closed her eyes and pressed her hand to her chest for a moment before shaking her head. “Not yet. I will in a couple of days, but for now I’m fine.”

“How do you judge it?” Lydia asked curiously as they walked back to the kitchen. “I mean if you’re hungry all the time, how do you tell when you need to feed?”

“I have to monitor my physical state,” she replied. “It’s one of the first things dragons learn. Even Shalriya doesn’t stop new dragons learning it, though she doesn’t encourage it. Fortunately her alrari are less broken than she is and know the value of self-control.”

Sonia frowned at her. “So you don’t feed until you detect damage from lack of feeding? That doesn’t sound very healthy, Lyr.”

Lyrrekka stared at her a moment then frowned as well. “When you put it that way, it really doesn’t. But it’s all we’ve got. We can’t just feed indiscriminately so we have to wait until we need to.”

“That’s not right. I’m sure we can come up with some better way for you to deal with it if we think about it,” Sonia said. “If nothing else, if we can figure out a better way for dragons to know when they need to feed it might reduce incidents of them frenzying. But let’s get you and Ian some physical food and talk plans.” She paused. “Did you know that Anthony is on his way?”

“No,”Lyrrekka said. “Though I’m not surprised. This might be uncomfortable, given how Anthony hates dragons even more than Sal.”

“But he always liked you.” Sonia poked around in the fridge and emerged with some smoked mackerel fillets and the makings of salad. “And Sal did tell him about you. We weren’t expecting him until tomorrow but his elder daughter is an ember and she collapsed, so Lucas went to collect him.”

“So he’s coming early to get Sarah to treat her?” Lyrrekka asked. “That makes sense.”

“And to get away from the rioting in Birmingham,” Sonia said. “Hasn’t the government declared a state of emergency yet?”

Ian shook his head. “They’ve been frozen with shock, just like everyone else. Up until the rioting started the emergency services’ own contingency plans were coping surprisingly well, given the numbers involved. I don’t imagine it will be long now.” He poked at the plate of salad Sonia put in front of him. “Thank you.”

They ate in silence for a few moments before Sonia looked at Lyrrekka again.

“We need to talk to Naria, you know. There’s no one to stop her frenzying here.”

“I wouldn’t worry; she has a lot of control. And she and Andrew need to be around each other for the moment. Just keep her away from fights so she isn’t injured,” Lyrrekka said. “And Ystelyan has told Kyle to grab her and bring her to him if she does get close. It’ll be okay.”

“Hmm… but she still could,” Sonia said. “Which we really don’t need right now. We were wondering if it might be wise to ask Ystelyan to lend her to you or Andrew.”

“Oh! That’s a good idea. I’ll send an imp to Ystelyan this evening-” She broke off the sound of someone knocking on the front door reached them. “That must be Lucas and Anthony. I suppose we’d better go and see if he’s going to try and kill me before we do anything else.”

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