Taylor doesn't want to go home.
She should be at the Docks with Dad, learning his work as a Rat-Catcher, but never quite managed to play the songs that would let her lure rodents away from the ships, and since Mom died, Dad hasn't really been teaching her. She doesn't think he'll even notice her absence.
Taylor lost her pipe today, and a part of her thinks Dad will be angry, but another, larger one is scared he won't care, and she doesn't want to go home and find out.
The waitress from the inn got sick and Melanie, the innkeeper, told Taylor she would pay her to take her place until she got back on her feet. Maybe she can use the money to get a new pipe before Dad notices the loss of the last one.
The work is tiring, and a few men bothered her at the start, but Melanie made it clear she wouldn't tolerate that kind of behavior, and Taylor gets to overhear stories from travelers.
"…the dragon, at Cawthorn?" says one of them, and Taylor focuses on him, because it sounds like bad news. "Keeps children there, God knows what for."
"God, or the Devil," says another man, and Taylor has to suppress a wince.
She knows of Ahane Kenta and his men, of course. She's seen the distrust toward anyone who hails from the Far East, the assumption that they are working for them. She's aware of his tendency to take people away, especially women, lost a friend to him that way.
She's heard that he can turn into a dragon, that he becomes stronger the longer he is fought.
The worst part, Taylor thinks later, after she's gotten back home to a father who barely talked to her, is that no one will dare go against the Dragon himself.
No one will come for the children.
