City of Ice by Laurence Yep

floor.
    Defiantly, Roxanna straddled the dragon and wrapped her arms around Leech’s waist. “I’m sorry, Father. Someone in our family has to remember our duty to Nana and our honor.”
    There wasn’t time to order Roxanna to listen to her father. Already Bayang could see some of the servants gathering by the large door to thwart their escape.
    â€œHeads down,” the dragon instructed, and sprang forward, gathering speed as she went. The human barricade lost their nerve at the sight of a ton of scales and fangs and scattered before her like straw.
    They would lose too much precious time if she had to stop and open the door, so closing her eyes, she lowered her head like a battering ram. The impact on her skull made her fangs clack together, but the door fell off its hinges and its lock mechanism spun through the air with a cloud of splinters.
    Bayang skidded as she tried to stop and smashed into the tapestry-covered wall opposite the doorway. She thought the bricks behind the woven cloth gave way as if she had dented the hallway. “Everybody still there?”
    â€œTo your left,” Roxanna said.
    I’ve seen how Roxanna bosses the Sogdian adults around, but now she’s telling a dragon what to do, Bayang thought exasperatedly.
    Bayang turned in that direction, paws skittering along the floor and demolishing a cabinet as she tried to recover speed.
    Kles shot ahead like a tawny arrow. “You’re leaving an easy trail for them to follow.”
    â€œYou try being stealthy when you’re learning how to be a ferryboat,” Bayang puffed.
    Koko’s paws scrabbled on the floor as he followed them. “Hey, wait for baby.”
    Behind them, Bayang could hear people shouting the alarm, but it would take a while for word to spread through a place as vast as the caravanserai and the dragon intended to take advantage of that.
    Then she heard an all too familiar hum. Curling her neck around for a moment, she saw the flying disks spinning under Leech’s feet. Roxanna sat goggle-eyed, watching.
    Leech was smiling self-consciously at having a new audience. “Kles can’t guard your rear if he’s scouting in front of you,” he said, and hopped into the air.
    â€œKles is an experienced flier and you’re”—Bayang could have gnashed her teeth with exasperation as the hatchling almost collided with a hanging chandelier—“still a beginner.”
    Leech left it swinging back and forth behind him, the fire imps flaring angrily.
    â€œThen don’t distract me,” he insisted, rubbing his head as he zipped backward out of reach.
    The elders should never have worried about him, sending her to kill him. The little idiot was quite capable of doing it on his own. Well, she’d save him despite his recklessness—in a purely professional sense, of course, and not because she was a spinster dragon trying to pretend she finally had a hatchling.
    She’d treat this like a job, acting logically and without emotion. There was no question that their relationship could ever be more than client and bodyguard. Even if she carried out the task successfully, there was no way she could make up for assassinating those earlier selves.
    But first things first. “Help us get outside and we’ll leave you there,” Bayang said to Roxanna.
    Any other species would not have dared to defy a dragon. But human hatchlings, as Bayang was discovering, were different.
    â€œDo you know how to survive out on the ice?” Roxanna challenged the dragon.
    â€œDo you?” Scirye asked. “I thought you were cooped up inside the caravanserai.”
    Roxanna’s voice instantly became respectful. “No, Lady. The freebooters have only been a big problem the last few years. Before that, they weren’t organized and wouldn’t tackle a large group.”
    â€œI bet that’s Roland’s doing,” Koko said.
    Roxanna sounded wistful.