I drifted up the ramp to the second floor, doing my best not to collide with my fellow officers.

What’s with that look? Oh, you’re wondering why we’ve got ramps instead of stairs. Let me educate you, since apparently urban planning in Sliberberg is a mystery to outsiders. By law, every building has to accommodate all species that live here — which includes those with paws, hooves, claws, wings, tentacles, or, in the case of my cousin Thistle, a tail that’s basically a whip. Ramps are standard. Doors have to be operable without hands. Ceilings must be tall enough for anyone over six feet or sporting a full set of antlers. It’s equality, Sliberberg style: overengineered, overregulated, and occasionally useful.

I zipped along, weaving between a centaur traffic sergeant arguing with an elven detective over a citation, a human constable carrying a box of confiscated magical trinkets, and an orc in plainclothes who smelled faintly of last night’s lager.

My destination was the northeast corner — door marked Dispatch. Someone, probably one of my underlings, had “improved” it with sparkly star and heart stickers. Cute. I’d have to find out which one of them did it and remind them that this is a professional workplace, not a boarding school dormitory.

I dropped to the floor and went through the pixie-sized door. Immediately, a wave of warm, stale air hit me in the face like a blanket that hadn’t been washed since creation.

The dispatch center occupies the second floor of the bell tower. It’s always been here, back when “communications technology” meant bells, pigeons, pixie runners, or, on a slow day, pixies riding pigeons. The room is cathedral-gothic — vaulted ceiling, pointed windows, and a shaft of light from the belfry above.

Up there, in that dusty sunlight, were Frank and George — our hunchbacked bell ringers. The only two souls on day shift who take their job as seriously as I do. George, in particular, has this awkward sweetness about him. Pretty sure he’s smitten. I haven’t decided if that’s endearing or dangerous.

Around me, the swing-shift girls were still manning the “dispatch organs” — our affectionate nickname for the tangle of speaking tubes that’s our answer to whatever magicless contraption you lot use for field communication.

They do look like pipe organs — all those brass and copper pipes, dials, and buttons lined in neat rows. If you’re wondering how they work, well, so was I five years ago.

That’s when I cornered Skaz, HQ’s resident kobold technician and lover of all things with pipes. He was half-buried inside the machine at the time, scaly legs sticking out, muttering in Draconic about a misaligned valve. I asked, “So, Skaz, how does this sound-doohickey actually work?”

He popped his goggled head out like a lizard emerging from a log. “Sayy what?” he hissed.

“The console,” I clarified. “How’s it work?”

His grin said I’d just invited him to talk about his favorite child.

“Each call booth in the city’s got a brass mouthpiece and earpiece, each with a tube of loudwood — amplifies sound a hundredfold. The tubes run through the sewers, sealed tight, lined with lead pipes inside rubber sheathing. Loudwood repeaters every hundred feet. Sound pressure from a voice down the line triggers the whistle you hear when a call comes in. You plug your headset into the matching pipe, loudwood in the mouth and earpieces does the rest. Simple as that.”

“Fascinating,” I replied, in my best I’m only half-mocking you voice.

Don’t get me wrong, I like Skaz. In fact, I like most kobolds — assuming they’ve escaped whatever dragon tyrant raised them and settled somewhere civilized. They tend to be diligent, mild-mannered, and almost offensively competent. Which is more than I can say for most of my colleagues.

The swing shift kobolds were still scrambling to finish paperwork between calls, their claws flying over forms while they jammed headsets into pipes. Meanwhile, I floated toward the one thing that made mornings here survivable — our coffee maker.

And that’s when I heard it. The giggling.

I sighed.

No. No, I had left early to avoid this. Yet, like some kind of cursed fairy tale, there they were: Lilly, Buttercup, Anna, Sparkle, and Dazzle. Five pixies who could be the poster girls for every lazy stereotype about Dispatch.

Lilly’s hair — long, green, and styled — tumbled over her shoulders like she was auditioning for a shampoo ad. Buttercup had unbuttoned her blouse and jacket enough to turn heads in three precincts. Anna wore her uniform to regulation but had gone so heavy on the makeup that one glance could stun a man in traffic. Her hair was braided in the “Rapunzle style” favored by Her Eternal Majesty, Queen Aoibheann. Sparkle had dumped pink glitter into her vibrant purple hair and was wearing high heels so non-regulation it was almost performance art. She’d ditched her jacket entirely, blouse straining at the seams of her ample bosom.

And then there was Dazzle. The only one who dressed remotely like she worked here. Still, even she had a cutesy hair clip and stockings more suited for a night out than an eight-hour shift.

They were all crowded around the coffee machine, chirping away about the latest royal decree from Princess Kaida of the Grand Duchy of Silverwings — a silver dragon with all the restraint of a sugar-fed toddler. She announces something ridiculous every three days, minimum.

Honestly, I think the only reason she’s so popular down here is because she’s Queen Aoibheann’s “bestie for restie.” Their words, not mine and my underlings were at that age where (normal) ladies cannot get enough of her supposedly cute airheaded sweetness and not stop talking about it. There’s only one guaranteed way to break them out of the cloud of gossip that surround them and I keep it in my pocket like a blessed talisman: one of Dad’s old whistles. A shrill little monster of a thing that could probably crack crystal if I really leaned into it.

I pulled it out, took a deep breath, and let loose the sharpest, most soul-piercing toot you’ve ever heard. Instant magic. The chatter about Modern Baroness’s “exclusive” coverage of Princess Kaida’s new cake ordinance died mid-sentence. Heads snapped toward me like owls spotting a mouse. Even the swing-shift kobolds winced. My crew of glittered-up layabouts, meanwhile, gave me the collective Oh, come on, Miss Tilda glare—the same one schoolgirls give a teacher who insists, yes, the homework will be graded. I savored it.

“All right, ladies,” I said, puffing myself up, “since we’re all here, time for roster assignments.”

“Whatever you say, Sergeant Prude,” Sparkle muttered to Anna, not nearly as quietly as she thought. Anna, in a rare flash of sense, kicked her in the shin. Sparkle’s still new—she’ll learn.

I floated over to the counter, reached for the little drawstring bag, and pulled it open. “Draw lots, girls. Fate decides the wards today.”

Lilly fished one out. “Dock Ward,” she announced.
“Buttercup grinned. “Alteburg.”
“Underberg,” Anna said, as if she’d just won the lottery.
“Ugh, Schwarzrauchgasse,” Sparkle groaned.

The giggles that followed were vicious and immediate. Schwarzrauchgasse meant factories, slums, and the fragrant bouquet of both on a hot day coming through the tubes. Punishment enough for her “Prude” crack, I decided.

“Market Ward for me,” Dazzle said, tucking her lot away like it was treasure.

That left me with Kronenhöhen, the city’s lofty crown. Half-empty this time of year—most of the nobs were already at the shore—but my post doubled as interwatch switchboard, fire brigade dispatch, and emergency healer coordination. Because of course it did.

The swing shift bolted for the exits, and my crew scattered to their stations. I slid into the leather stool at Kronenhöhen’s beast of a console, the pipes and tubes hissing faintly like it was already annoyed at me. Headphones on. Clock struck nine.

And the flood began.

Anna took the first call worth sharing, and her voice rang out across the room before the echo of her headset hitting the counter had faded. “Imos McDum just tried to rob the Summer Rose—and got flattened by every bounty hunter in the SBHU!”

The giggles erupted like fireworks. Imos McDum could get himself arrested trying to shoplift his own boots, so this wasn’t entirely surprising. The Summer Rose was the headquarters of the city’s bounty hunters’ guild. Anna piled on the details—apparently he was delivered personally by Countess Cassidy Rose herself (redheaded hobgoblin, pistol crossbow lover, actual countess if the rumors are true) and her orc shadow. Sliberberg, folks.

After that, the calls blurred into the kind of chaos only summer heat can conjure.

• Gridlock at the North Gate as half the middle class decided they, too, needed a beach day.
  
• A wizard polymorphing a nob into a donkey in Slibermond.
  
• Cockatrice Street wandering off again—its seventh sabbatical this month.
  

“Bulletin?” George’s voice rumbled from the belfry when I called it in.

“Bulletin,” I sighed.

Bells thundered overhead in the code for street missing itself.

Sparkle’s voice cut in: “Sergeant, The Comedy Factory is on fire. Exploding cigars.” Of course. I patched through to Martyrs’ Way firehouse like it was just another Friday—which, for us, it was.

The rest of the morning was more of the same:

• A market ward signpost collapsed from heatstroke, yes a metal signpost collapsed from standing outside in the heat.
  
• A young locomotive dragon derailed in Tannery Row and had to be soothed like a toddler who had skinned her knee.
  
• A magical water fight in Slibermond (apprentice wizards + decanters of endless water).
  
• Goblin Market Master Nib calling us for help with a djinn–dao spat, sign of the apocalypse if there ever was one
  
• A snail-racing gang takedown by centaur traffic cops—jockey was a nob.
  
• Skinny Jenny frontman Aelwyn O’Malley stuck in a tree (dispatch girls in collective swoon).
  
• A funeral escort for the late Lady Fill-in-the-Blank—yes, her actual name.
  
• And the pièce de résistance: a probationary mermaid officer nearly drowning a drunken sailor who groped her. Lilly went pale at that one.
  

And that was before the mother of all calls came in at 10:20.

Dazzle took off her headset, brow furrowed like she’d just been asked to recite the goblin tax code from memory. “Hey, Sarge,” she said, “what’s the protocol for giant rampaging wyrmlings?”

I blinked. “Pardon?”

The rest of the girls swiveled to stare at her, equally lost.

“A bunch of baby dragons—big ones—are loose in Market Grove Bazaar,” Dazzle explained. “Making a mess of the place. Do we send animal control?”

I sighed, Dazzle joined the force a year after me and our last incident like this was before her time. I plugged into HQ’s internal comms, and went into autopilot. This wasn’t my first rodeo with baby dragons, and unlike most rodeos, these ones could level a city block.

I plugged straight into HQ’s system. “Sergeant Tilda requesting riot,” I barked. “Repeat, requesting riot.” Then I called Arcane, then Animal Control, then the EMH, and finally Market Street Watch for a detail. That’s right, the whole bloody circus.

My girls were staring at me like I’d just asked for catapults.

“What?” I snapped. “A feral wyrmling— while yes, they’re technically babies—comes in at about pony-sized, bear-strong, and breathes whatever color Mama gave ‘em. You want to send one nervous kobold with a net after that? No. We send Riot to herd the brats, Arcane to bind them, Animal Control to cart them, medics for the idiots who get in the way, and a detail to keep the gawkers out. That’s called procedure.”

Cue the rumble of riot wagons out of the bailey and the broom-and-carpet brigade from Arcane taking to the skies.

Now, Riot and Arcane get all the toys—like fancy two-way crystal balls direct to dispatch, courtesy of the city artificers. Officially, they’re for bulletins and coordination. Unofficially, they’re for my girls to gather round and treat live operations like Constable Blooper Theatre.

Sure enough, the moment the riot lads rolled in, my crystal ball flared to life. I could see three scaly toddlers tearing Market Grove to ribbons while Riot and Arcane flailed around like clowns at a circus. The girls clustered around my console, hooting and giggling, until I chased them back to their posts with the sort of look that makes recruits cry.

I’ll admit it, though—I snorted. Wyrmlings are slippery little bastards despite being as big as a horse. Took half an hour before Riot managed to collar each one with a shrink-cuff, pop them down to puppy-size, and stuff them into a wagon bound for HQ. Standard drill: hold the brats until their caretakers turn up with paperwork and a bribe.

Whats that look for, oh you’re wondering why a city has a protocol for this—welcome to Sliberberg. We’ve got five hundred dragons, give or take. A dozen adult metallic dragons who sit on civic councils and never leave their villas, eighty or so spoiled teenagers with wings, and the rest are “pets” and “adopted children” to elves, gnomes, and anyone else with a long lifespan and bad judgment. For some reason, native-born dragons here never age past “teen,” which means we get a steady supply of wyrmlings. Every month, a few wander off. Every month, we round ‘em up before they burn down a bakery.

By the time the wagon rolled back into the yard, the bells were chiming eleven. Lunch break. Blessed, blessed lunch break. I stretched, hopped into the air, and zipped toward the door with visions of a grilled veggie wrap dancing in my head—only to plow chest-first into Commander Ironshoal’s breastplate.

Recover, salute, look contrite. “Sorry, ma’am, didn’t see you there. Sorry.”

Ironshoal, bless her, is a mountain of a dwarf with a jaw like a cliff face and more medals than sense. Ex-army, real soldier’s soldier. Exactly the sort of commander I wish I’d been born tall enough to become.

“At ease, Sergeant,” she said in that dignified rumble of hers. “I was looking for you anyway.”

That perked me right up—until she continued. “As per protocol, those wyrmlings fall under protective custody. And since you’re the only women on the eleven o’clock lunch, you’re tasked with keeping an eye on them.”

The giggles from the girls behind me could have curdled milk.

I deflated like a popped bellows. Of course this would land on my desk today. “Permission to grab my wrap from the caf first, ma’am?”

“Of course.” And off she went, dignified as a granite obelisk, leaving me with three puppy-sized dragons and a chorus of snickering underlings.