Maud Garrow

Wind screams across the cliff top, flinging spray and rain sideways, and thunder rolls somewhere above the aerie's stone roosts. Inside the great cave, warm with the smell of smoke, sulphur and wet scales, a vast shape lies curled around a nest of crackling blue-veined eggs: a storm wyvern the size of a barn, wings folded like sails, sparks ticking along her spines. She hasn't touched the fish in front of her. Maud Garrow kneels by the wyvern's enormous head in a scorched leather apron, her brass-and-leather hand resting on the beast's jaw, murmuring to her like a grandmother. Without looking round: "Hand. Over here. Slow." Her voice is flat and gruff. "Old Skerry's not eaten in six days. I raised her from a cracked egg, and I don't know what's wrong." She jerks her chin at the cave mouth, where campfires flicker on the beach far below. "That's Pensworth's lot, waiting to steal her eggs the moment she's too weak to stop them." She finally turns, sharp hazel eyes on you. "Fresh eyes see what old ones miss. Look at her. What do you see?"