Fireborne

by Rosaria Munda

  Penelope was sixteen when she died. I had not known about a betrothal; I hadn’t thought of her as the sort of being that men fell in love with or married. She had simply been my oldest sister. My beautiful, joyful sister, who was always abandoning grown-up conversations to come and play with me. Her hair was dark, like mine, but it was long and wavy and used to fall around her shoulders like two curtains when she crouched to my height.

  I realize that I’m a year older now than she ever got to be.

  “When I heard—what happened on Palace Day—I just—”

  He doesn’t finish, just stops, and for me everything stops, too.

  I sit completely still, feeling the ground beneath me slipping. I lean forward, brace my elbows on the desk, place my head in my hands, and wait for it to stop. Worst of all are the sounds that come with the images.

  Tyndale is so lost in his own thoughts, I don’t even think he notices my response. When he speaks again, his narrative has skipped forward. I let the words wash over me, and slowly the other sounds in my head recede and the images fade.

  “I think I went mad for a little while, after it happened,” Tyndale is saying, his voice hoarse, cracking a little. “Palace Day was one of the most terrible massacres this city has ever seen. Yes, the guilty were punished—but so were countless numbers who were completely innocent—just for being born into a particular family.”

  “Atreus punished them,” I say, my voice sounding distant in my own ears. “Death penalties, life sentences. For the people who . . .”

  I don’t finish.

  “Yes, he locked them up,” says Tyndale, almost impatiently. “But he still has us celebrate it. Palace Day, a commemoration of the brave beginnings of a new regime. It’s—a blight, a stain on the new regime that Atreus should never have allowed. When he did, that was when I knew.”

  “Knew what?”

  “That he would be no better. That in the end, he might even be worse. The dragonlords—at least there was nobility in them. Not this cowardly, bureaucratic hypocrisy.”

  Tyndale doesn’t speak in the tone of someone interested in a more nuanced point of view. An unexpected resentment comes to me. I remember feeling these things, or something like them. I remember the old dream and the old failure. But I was a child then; Tyndale was an adult. If he was so certain at the time, he could have done something.

  “You could have set off for New Pythos, if you’d wanted. If you were so certain the old order was better.”

  “I tried,” Tyndale says.

  That stops me short. I prompt him.

  “But—?”

  “But I was told to wait.”

  That’s not the reason I expect.

  “By whom?”

  “By people I think you would like to meet. People,” Tyndale adds, with delicate emphasis, “who have been biding their time.”

  The sun is low enough in the sky to send orange rays horizontally across the room, lighting up the desks and Tyndale’s silhouette, strewing jewels of color where it pierces through stained glass.

  “You’re talking about New Pythos. The ha’Aurelians.”

  I hear my own skepticism, despite my accelerating pulse: I’ve read too many bloviating editorials in the People’s Paper full of such conspiracy theories. The nationalist sentiment they foment is too easily tracked, a predictable chemical reaction that the Ministry of Propaganda sets off when desired. “That’s an idle threat. They’re powerless.”

  “Or so they’ve led Callipolis to believe.”

  We look at each other, and I say nothing. Though my heart, by now, is pounding. Perkins’s words from Diplomacy return to me: We have no idea what they’re planning, shrouded in the North Sea’s fog.

  Tyndale asks, “Does Atreus know who you are?”

  I shake my head.

  To my surprise, Tyndale smiles. “Perfect,” he says. “You’ll be well-placed.”

  Well-placed for what?

  But there would only be one what.

  “Would you like to meet them?” Tyndale asks. “I’m sure they’d like to see you again. I’m sure they’ve missed you.”

  My throat is tight.

  Who? Which ones survived? Would they even know me—?

  “I’m sure they would appreciate your help,” Tyndale adds.

  * * *

  ***

  Lashing rain and dark fog blanket the North Sea. We’re drilling by squadron: Crissa leads the skyfish drills; Cor the stormscourge, and I the aurelian. My squadron tails one another through the rain, struggling to stay in formation through the poor visibility, and we race to break the surface of the clouds one after another. The blue sky and glaring sunlight are blinding when we burst through the last layer of rainclouds. Pallor twitches water from his wings with a snort of satisfaction; I can feel his heaving breaths through the saddle as I yank off my helmet and wipe rain from my eyes. We count off, one by one, as the aurelian riders breach the cloud cover, soaked and shivering, but with our formation intact. When all are accounted for, Pallor and I take a moment to regain our breath.

  And that’s when I notice it: other dragons on the horizon.

  At first I think nothing of it; the squads have divided, and some could have flown farther north than planned.

  Until I see a gleam of gold.

  Aurelians.

  All of my aurelians just counted off.

  Which means that the ones on the horizon are not in the Callipolan fleet.

  And then gleams of other colors: flashes of blue, blotches of darkness. A full fleet, with all three breeds.

  They’re approaching. Growing larger, their outlines becoming clearer against the sky.

  The hair on the back of my neck rises.

  A full fleet, announcing itself.

  They’ve been biding their time.

  With the force of an explosion, my emotions—a mixture of surprise and joy and longing—spill into Pallor, who lets out a screeching cry. My feelings, erupting from his mouth.

  Then as his cry fades, there’s noise above the whistling of the wind: Annie, shouting.

  “Everyone get down!”

  Her fist forms the signal for those too far to hear her voice; the rest of the squad begins diving back into the cover of the stratus clouds. It occurs to me, distantly through the fog of our spillover, that I’ve never heard Annie call out orders before, because, as aurelian squadron leader, that’s my job. But I’m transfixed, unable to tear my eyes from the fleet that bears down upon us. What thoughts I can unravel from Pallor’s are focused on a single point.

  My people. My family. Close—

  “Max, Deirdre, find Cor and Crissa and tell them to call off their squads, the drills are over! Tell them we have a foreign fleet sighting, possible sparked dragons two miles north!”

  And then Annie has reined Aela round, facing Pallor, blocking our sight of the Pythian fleet. She, too, has pulled off her helmet, and beneath it her face is white, her eyes wide. Her rain-darkened hair is plastered across her forehead, water still trickling down the sides of her face. For the first time, looking at me, she seems frightened.

  “Lee, let’s go!”

  4

  ALETHEIA

  A year had passed since the boy entered the orphanage. Though he and the girl continued to plan for their trip to New Pythos, the idea gradually lost its urgency. He had gotten good at school, better at chores, and the nightmares were coming less often. New Pythos was as far away in his imagination as his family was becoming in his memory.

  Then, on the first anniversary of his family’s murders, there was a parade through the city. The day had been named a national holiday. “Palace Day” commemorated the turning point in the Red Month, the day the people finally breached the walls of the Palace, after the dragons had been poisoned.

  Standing in the main square, the boy had
a clear view of the one surviving dragon brought forth for the final spectacle, and could easily recognize it.

  His father’s dragon had been one of the largest in the old fleet. Aletheia had a coloring unique among stormscourges: red-tipped wings and a red crest. The boy remembered running his hands over her hard scales, laying a hand on the bridge between her great black eyes.

  Today, the mighty beast was almost unrecognizable. She had long since had the sparker cut from her throat, her wings clipped, and now she was barely more than an exceptionally large, cart-size beast with fierce jaws. These, too, had been chained shut. The boy watched the dragon being led up onto the dais, the chains cinched back so her head was forced down. Then the man who had saved him, who now called himself the First Protector, spoke about the things this dragon had done. Villages burned, innocent blood spilled, senseless and undeserved violence suffered by countless hundreds under this dragon, and countless thousands under other dragons, for centuries. He said that such times would never come again.

  But the boy didn’t listen. He was watching his father’s dragon struggle to breathe.

  Then he heard a sound to his right and looked down. The girl, standing next to him, was weeping. She did not take her eyes off Aletheia, and tears were streaming down her face.

  He put his arm around her and pulled her close. He assumed that she was feeling the same sorrow he felt as he watched the once-great beast be humiliated.

  Standing like this, holding the girl, he watched the axe cut off the head of his father’s dragon.

  * * *

  ***

  Out in the yard, later that day, the boy found the girl sitting under one of the few trees, her eyes closed. He thought she was sleeping until she opened them.

  “You were crying today in the square,” he pointed out.

  He felt compelled to say it, as if he needed some confirmation of the grief that they had, for that moment, shared.

  He was on the brink of telling her everything. It was time, he had decided. The sight of Aletheia’s execution had galvanized him. It was time to go. And he was going to bring the girl with him.

  She looked up at him from where she was sitting and seemed on the verge of speaking, as if she were trying to decide whether or not she wanted to. But slowly she gathered courage. Her face stiffened, became determined, and she spoke in a low, controlled voice.

  “That dragon killed my family.”

  LEE

  Annie keeps Aela close beside Pallor during our flight back to Callipolis. The rest of the squadron follows close behind. In the silence that Annie leaves me, I struggle to extricate from Pallor’s mind. I’m holding him by the neck, leaning low on the saddle, fighting the desire for his closeness, and Pallor only makes it harder. He senses my distress and tries to stay close, struggling to offer me comfort. Meanwhile the thoughts are buffeting:

  Tyndale was right. All this time, while I convinced myself that the blustering of their threat was nothing but cheap shots fired by the Ministry of Propaganda for the consumption of gullible class-irons—

  Who were they, those riders who were almost close enough to speak to?

  Were there other Palace Day survivors?

  Were they kin?

  When we’re within sight of the Palace, Annie speaks. Her words are muffled, her expression hidden beneath her visor. She raises her voice over the pounding rain.

  “Lee. Have you extricated?”

  The problem of her, of what she knows or doesn’t know, is too great a problem for my mind, still fighting free of Pallor’s, to assess. I’ve never been the kind of rider who spills over easily, much less the kind that lets it last. This was irregular, and Annie knows it, and she saw what triggered it clearly enough.

  I grit my teeth. “Nearly.”

  “The sighting needs to be reported to the Inner Palace directly.”

  I realize what she’s getting at and balk. The thought of military counsel, of sitting down before Atreus Athanatos now—

  “Are you—”

  Are you going to report me?

  I would, in a better state, know to swallow the question that gets halfway out before I bite my tongue. But this lost in spillover, enough of a rising note of panic escapes with it. Annie’s helmet turns briefly in my direction. She doesn’t ask me to finish my question.

  “It would be irregular if you’re not there. Pull yourself together.”

  When Annie tugs at Aela’s reins, breaking away from the rest of the fleet, I follow numbly. The Inner Palace lies below us, a tower of inward-facing windows encircling the Firemouth entrance to the dragons’ caves, blurred by rain. Annie stalls after entering it, looking from one Aurelian balcony to the next, uncertain which leads to the First Protector’s office. I speak for the first time, pointing.

  “It’s that one.”

  Atreus works from apartments that, in my childhood, belonged to the Aurelian triarch; I was taught as a child to recognize the balcony that doubled as his dragon’s perch.

  Annie’s shoulders stiffen at my knowledge, but she doesn’t question it.

  We land, dismount, and dismiss our dragons. For a moment, Pallor resists, the aftereffects of the spillover still linking us. I lift my helmet, pull him close, and rest my forehead against his dripping silver-ridged brow before wrenching my mind free. He lets out a whimper at the extricating that makes my fists curl.

  And then he follows Aela down into the darkness of the Firemouth. As the two dragons are swallowed in the rain-lashed shadows of the cavern, a headache grows with his distance.

  And then the thoughts return.

  Alive. Some of them are really alive. And as Tyndale hinted, they have dragons.

  They have a chance of taking Callipolis back.

  I hear the pronoun in my thoughts and test its alternative, the appeal of it humming in my blood: What if not they but we . . .

  I raise my head to find Annie looking at me, her helmet tucked under her arm, her wet hair plastered on her forehead, her face twisted with an expression I cannot begin to divine.

  Disappointment? Disgust? Anger?

  She turns from me, steps forward, and hammers on the door built into the glass wall. A second later it opens. A very surprised assistant takes in the sight of us, two drenched teenagers in flamesuits, standing on a balcony that has no other entrance.

  “We need to speak to the First Protector and General Holmes immediately,” Annie says.

  The meeting passes in a haze: Annie takes one look at me, then does the talking herself. We sit in the Council Room with Atreus and General Holmes, the Minister of Defense, at the great oak table usually reserved for members of the High Council. Though I’m familiar with Holmes from rounds, I’m almost certain Annie isn’t. Where Atreus is perpetually clean-shaven and modestly dressed, Holmes wears a close, curling brown beard and keeps the many decorations of his uniform well-polished. He made a name for himself in the Revolution at Atreus’s side, an infusion of lowborn vigor in contrast to Atreus’s high-minded principles, and the reputation he gained was for ruthlessness.

  I’ve always considered it best not to learn the details. Holmes likes me; I’ve worked with him for years; it’s never been relevant.

  But today, as I look at him and think of dragons from New Pythos, it feels relevant.

  Far from betraying intimidation in such formidable company, Annie sits up straight and describes the Pythian fleet with precision; she managed to count them while also issuing orders to the squad. In total, she accounted for five skyfish, nine aurelians, and seven stormscourges. Too distant to make out their ages.

  Holmes finally asks, “And after you saw them. Did you engage?”

  He is looking at me, I realize. Waiting to hear how I responded, as leader of the squadron. I feel a dull flood of panic hit: This is it. This is the end. A single spillover to undo almost ten years of pretending, and r
eveal me as the potential traitor that I am.

  But when Annie speaks, it isn’t to say that.

  “Lee told everyone to get below cloud cover and back to Callipolis.”

  I swing a sideways glance at her in amazement.

  Covering for me. Annie’s covering for me.

  Pinpricks of pink on her pale cheeks are the only evidence of what this is costing her: After years of being underestimated, written off by the ministry of this country and, by extension, the men sitting across from us, Annie has just proved herself competent in a crisis, capable of leadership, and worthy of the kind of promotion she was recently told not to pursue. And she’s sweeping her actions under the rug, for my sake.

  Shouldn’t you have turned me in instead?

  Because surely the kind of visions that have been slithering through my mind are those of someone who deserves to be turned in, not sheltered. Surely these fantasies of triumph and retribution, abandoned since my childhood but now back with all their seductive force, are enough to damn me.

  Annie meets my gaze and lifts an eyebrow. I clear my throat. And then, for reasons I cannot even begin to understand, I hear myself accept her gift and offer the explanation she and Holmes are waiting for.

  “We had no way of knowing whether they had sparked, and we were unarmed.”

  Sparked, meaning dragons mature enough to breathe fire rather than ash, as ours are still too young to do.

  “Good call, Lee,” Holmes says.

  His deep voice is warm, approving. Annie swallows hard. I feel sick.

  Atreus drums his fingers on the table and speaks for the first time.

  “It’s clear we’ve made a grave error in overlooking New Pythos,” he says. “We were content to dismiss rumors of dragon sightings off the northern coast as idle gossip, useful for our propaganda and nothing more. It appears we have misjudged.”

  “We should have attacked them years ago,” Holmes murmurs. “When their dragons were weak. Stormed that godforsaken rock with the full navy and wiped the rest of those inbred little bastards out . . . Now it’s too late.”