Fireborne

by Rosaria Munda

  Inbred little bastards. The kind of slur I’m usually all but numb to, but today causes my mind to burn, as if fevered, with visions of vengeful dragonfire.

  What if I never had to sit stone-faced through such slurs again?

  Atreus hums his dissent. “Let’s not jump to conclusions. We’ll dispatch word to our ambassadors on Isca to seek an audience at the New Pythian embassy immediately. Perhaps Rhadamanthus can be reasoned with.”

  Rhadamanthus ha’Aurelian, the current scion of New Pythos. Atreus turns to an aide sitting at the end of the table. “Summon the two fastest skyfish riders, tell them they’re needed as messengers. That would be—”

  He looks at me.

  “Crissa, Dorian,” I answer, supplying Duck’s rarely used full name.

  The aide bows and leaves. Once he’s gone, Holmes leans forward. “You think diplomacy will settle this?” he asks Atreus.

  “I am bound to consider it if it might prevent a war.”

  Holmes’s face is dark with skepticism. I remember the fleet approaching, the full force of their numbers spread against the sky, and can’t help but share it. Those were not the demonstrations of a nation seeking a diplomatic solution.

  The corridor outside is quiet after our dismissal, its few windows letting in rain-smothered light. For a moment, after we’ve closed the door behind us, Annie and I stand side by side. The foot between us feels like a great distance, and the silence feels loud.

  The past hour is reverberating within me in flashes: the sight of their fleet; the desperate longing; Annie’s voice crying my name and tearing me away. The sound of her voice describing the job I should have done, as if I had done it. And all the while my thoughts straying to dreams of revenge that would mean the betrayal not only of her but of her people.

  She turns and walks away.

  “Annie?”

  But I have no idea what I’m about to say to her, and she doesn’t turn back.

  * * *

  ***

  “That dragon killed my family.”

  For a second he stared at her, not understanding. And then he thought he must have misheard. He asked her to say it again, and she did.

  “You’re lying,” he said.

  She did not expect this. Her eyes widened.

  “My family was killed by a dragon,” she said. “Soldiers locked them in the house and our dragonlord set fire to it.”

  “How come you’re alive, then?”

  She blanched. “Because he made me watch.”

  He remembered the feeling of an adult’s hands on his shoulders, forcing his face toward things he didn’t want to see.

  “That doesn’t make sense,” he spat.

  She seemed to be struggling to find the words to explain herself. It was clearly the last thing she’d been expecting to do. “He said one of us had to watch so they could tell the rest of the village—”

  Her voice was starting to waver. He cut her off, because he didn’t want to hear her crying. “How do you know it was the dragon from the square?”

  “Because it was a stormscourge with red on its wings—”

  “Then they must have deserved it!”

  He practically shouted at her.

  Her head went back against the tree behind her as if he had struck her. For a moment, they just stared at each other, her head tilted back, looking at him with bleak disbelief, him staring down at her, feeling his chest rising and falling and something like hatred coursing through him.

  She spoke first, her voice very quiet.

  “They were killed because we didn’t meet a food quota during the Famine.”

  “There was no Famine,” he snapped.

  She blinked. “Excuse me?”

  “It was a bunch of lies. Everybody knows that. Exaggerated so people could get away with not paying what they owed—”

  “My mother,” she said, “died during the Famine. So did my baby brother. Because we didn’t have enough food. And we lived on a farm.”

  Her eyes were bright, but she seemed so angry now that she was past crying. She pointed a thumb over her shoulder, at the children playing elsewhere in the yard. “And in case you haven’t noticed, the Famine is why most of them are here.”

  She pushed from her knees up, so she slid to her feet with her back still against the tree. Even standing, she was more than a head shorter. She was looking at him as though she’d never seen him before. All the fury and disgust that she had for her tormentors was, for the first time, turned on him.

  “Stay away from me,” she said.

  ANNIE

  My feet take me away from Lee with the force of physical repulsion. If I have to spend another moment in his presence, the emotions that have been simmering will turn to a boil. I need space to think, and I need to do it without having to look at those gray eyes and those cheekbones that are just a little too fine and high.

  Stay away from me.

  Should I have turned him in?

  That’s the question that locks itself in my mind as I walk away.

  I’d be a fool to trust him.

  But all the same, I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

  I don’t blame Lee for spilling over, and I don’t blame him for the look of longing that transformed his face when he first saw them. It doesn’t take a stretch of the imagination to understand what he must have felt. I know the ache of an orphan’s loneliness; I know what it is to crave the comfort of kin. All that was—natural.

  I blame Lee for what followed. For listening to me when I told him to turn around, though it seemed to tear him apart. For sitting beside me as I reported a military threat of dragonlords on the horizon to the leaders of Callipolis and then hoarsely offering his counsel. For giving me the faintest hope that, maybe, I hadn’t just lost him.

  I blame him for the fact that I still want to trust him.

  I want it so hard, it hurts.

  And the fact that I just forwent credit in front of Atreus Athanatos and Amon Holmes for the sake of this fool’s hope makes me sick to my stomach.

  Back in the Cloister, I go to the boys’ dorm in search of Duck, who’s packing. A sealed message has been given to him and Crissa to bear to the New Pythian ambassador on Isca, the sworn neutral archipelago federation on the northwest edge of the Medean Sea. He and Crissa have been told to wait until Rhadamanthus’s answer is returned.

  “Please be careful. Ride fast—”

  “It’ll be fine, Annie,” Duck says. “We’re heading south, anyway . . .”

  But it doesn’t seem like enough, after you realize the skies contain dragons other than your own. Two unsparked skyfish is precious little defense against a hostile sky. Somewhere during our conversation, he took my hands in his, and now, though I know I’m supposed to, I don’t want to let go.

  “It’s time, Duck.”

  Crissa has appeared in the doorway of the dorm, her helmet under her shoulder. Her braid is still wet from the rain; we haven’t been on the ground long enough since the first sighting for it to dry. She casts an eye on our entwined hands but makes no comment.

  “I know.” Duck withdraws his hands from mine. Then he clears his throat. “I’m not sure how long we’ll be gone, but I wanted to say—Midsummer, when we get back. You’ll come?”

  He’s offering more than an invitation, I realize: He’s setting a fixed point on a vanishing horizon, something for me to focus on. The realization nearly brings a lump to my throat.

  “Yes. I’ll come.”

  “Good. And make sure you invite Lee.”

  Lee.

  I think of that silent corridor, standing beside Lee in the rain-thick darkness as he said my name. When I found myself unable to look at him, much less speak to him. The lie comes out as if of its own accord.

  “I already asked him. He said no.”

 
I haven’t asked him. I haven’t even brought up the idea. As far as he knows, we’re spending Midsummer in the Cloister together, like always.

  But that’s unthinkable now.

  Duck’s eyes narrow as he looks at me. Even Crissa looks a little surprised.

  “Okay then,” Duck says. “Just the two of us?”

  He sounds uncertain, but not displeased.

  “Just the two of us.”

  * * *

  ***

  After their fight, the other children resumed the torment they had stopped in his presence. The boy watched them steal the girl’s meals, trip her, tear apart her homework before class so she’d be punished for not doing it. He did nothing.

  All the while, her words gnawed at him. He tried at first to dismiss them as a child’s joke, some kind of willful lie gone too far. He told himself she was little, too little, and had not understood what had happened to her family. But this was not enough. She wasn’t much younger than him, and he knew she was smarter. She understood everything.

  He struggled to comprehend the story she’d told. Even here he protested: She must have been ignorant of something. Even if there had been a famine of some sort, his father would never have punished his people without good reason—

  But this was a dead end, too, because he couldn’t think of any reason good enough to make a girl watch her family burn to death.

  He kept trying to reconcile his father and his dragon with a burning house, a family dying, a girl being held and made to watch. He could not think of anything that could have merited it.

  How could his father have done such a thing? His father had been brave, noble. His dragon made him a leader of men—not just a good man, but a great one.

  These beliefs, taken for granted before his father’s death, were one of the few comforts he had left.

  Now these comforts were stained. Try as he might, he could no longer think of his father without a sickening sense of doubt. It infected all his memories. Even memories of things like dinner with his family and stories before bed were no longer safe.

  He lost his appetite, stopped sleeping, was unable to focus in class. His thoughts went round and round as he tried to find a way of preserving the father he’d remembered before he learned the girl’s story.

  In the end, after their desperate circling, he arrived at a simple solution.

  He could go.

  He had the provisions; he had a plan. He was ready—as ready as he ever would be. New Pythos was waiting. He need not succumb to the girl at all. He need not choose. He could simply leave.

  ANNIE

  It’s beginning to feel like the whole world is tearing apart, and that part of what I’m losing is Lee.

  Instead of dinner and homework, I sit in on meeting after meeting alongside Lee, Cor, and Power in the Inner Palace. At a debriefing Holmes holds for the entire corps, we’re given a new patrol schedule for the northern coast of Callipolis and told that our training will narrow in focus. To air combat, exclusively—and not the kind performed in tournaments. Meanwhile the tournaments themselves have taken on a sinister new significance.

  “In times of peace, the titles of Firstrider and Alternus are little more than honorifics,” Holmes tells us. “But now, we need to be prepared. We need a fleet commander leading the offensive. And an Alternus at his back, defending.”

  Both titles will be determined by the final tournament. Cor and Power straighten with excitement as Holmes says this, and Lee hunches in his seat, like the words press too heavily on him. In the wake of the sighting I’ve begun to notice him as if a line connected us: I hear every word he utters and, even more, I hear his silences.

  Every word and every silence a tally on a ledger I despair of making but know I must.

  Because time and space give me the coolness of resolve that shock did not. If it comes to a choice, I need to choose according to my conscience and my vows. Friendship will not justify treason.

  If Lee is compromised, it’s my duty to report him.

  That night I lie awake, imagining Duck, unsheltered and exposed as he crosses the Medean Sea on dragonback; and I think of Lee, the boy I know better than anyone and at the same time have felt, since the sighting, that I know not at all. I ache from missing them both.

  The following morning our new life starts: Excused from class, we return to the Eyrie for intensive drilling of contact charges, weapons charges, the quick and dirty ways to win when winning means a kill, not a kill shot. When you might not have the benefit of sparked dragonfire to do the job for you. Though a lack of demonstrated dragonfire at the sighting suggests that the other fleet is also unsparked, we must prepare as if they are.

  A steadiness settles over the Eyrie as Goran tells us: This is how you open the throat.

  Not because he hasn’t given us these kinds of lessons before, but because this is the first time we’ve listened and known an imminent reason we might use them. Lee sits silent, head bowed, elbows crooked over his knees as he listens to Goran describe the ways to mutilate and kill an enemy rider.

  Enemy, Goran says. Not opponent. Even the language has changed.

  Lee’s fingers are clenched on his knees so hard, the knuckles have gone white.

  And then we separate by squadrons, as we usually do, and the drilling begins. I rein Aela away from Lee sur Pallor. Instead, I pair with Max, one of the aurelian riders from my halfsquadron. Lee, realizing what I’ve done, pairs off with Deirdre.

  It’s the first time I’ve voluntarily chosen a sparring partner other than Lee in years. Usually, Goran has to remind us to separate.

  Sparring starts. Aela and I get in Max’s guard once. Then again, and again, and again. Max made it into the Sixteenth Order—the upper half of the corps’ flight ranking—but that’s not enough.

  “Dragons, Annie, at least wait for the reset,” he mutters, massaging his arm where I’ve rammed him.

  “You asleep, Lee?” I hear Goran shout from down on the Eyrie.

  Though I tried to claim a spot over the arena far from them, I can still see Lee and Deirdre’s sparring. Goran’s criticism wouldn’t make sense for most riders: Lee is, after all, getting inside Deirdre’s guard and landing hits. But I see the difference, too. Lee isn’t trying. He’s doing the minimum—enough, in Lee’s case, to win. Because in Lee’s case, halfhearted is still good.

  Watching him, I feel my despair shift to anger.

  Goran seems to be sharing my short temper.

  “Aurelian squadron, time out. Annie, Lee, trade partners. Wake him up, Antigone.”

  It’s always while I’m in the air that Goran forgets to discount my ability.

  Pallor and Aela space out, ten meters apart, above the arena, wings spread to coast on the breeze. Lee and I eye each other through the slits in our visors, gripping blunt-headed jousting pikes and fireproof shields. We’ve practiced with both before, but because they’re considered to be a complementary weapon to sparked dragonfire, they’ve never been a priority in our training. Now, with the threat of unsparked fleet engagements, they’re the next best alternative.

  Aela has begun to simmer with my anger herself; she is snorting, eager. Pallor, like Lee, is just a little too calm. Like he’s not really there.

  Goran calls the advance and we charge.

  Our momentum surpasses theirs; the force of our contact ripples through Lee sur Pallor. As they ride out the shock, I lean over Aela’s wing and ram my pike home. Lee moves his shield to block it but not quite fast enough; it skids left and rams, not into his chest, but his shoulder.

  Lee grunts in pain. He pulls Pallor out, to disengage, and as he does, I feel my anger bursting its restraints. Because I know what just happened. I have no illusions about my strength; Lee’s and my abilities are level in traditional sparring, ash against ash; but when it comes to hand-to-hand combat I’m half his size and have half his mus
cle. I should never have landed that penalty at all.

  We slam into each other again, and this time, despite an opening that I shouldn’t have bared, Lee’s pike doesn’t make contact and mine does again.

  Fight back, you bastard. Fight back, you bloody coward, don’t you leave me like this—

  I feel the explosion of anger course from me into Aela, at once a relief and an escalation into greater fury. We’ve spilled over. Through the haze I hear Lee shouting.

  “You are out of order.”

  The world sharpens back into focus, though Aela’s and my shared anger still gives it a liquid edge. The echoes of the words I was thinking vibrate in my ears; that’s how I realize I was doing more than thinking. Lee’s ripped off his helmet, his eyes white-rimmed as he stares at me. Around us, other pairs have paused in their sparring. I can only imagine what they must be thinking if they heard what I shouted.

  “There a problem?” Goran calls.

  “I’ll take care of it,” Lee says. “Ground, Antigone.”

  The sound of my full name at the end of his order snaps me back into my senses, even as the rage changes flavor. I yank Aela’s reins down and descend toward the deserted ramparts that gird the arena walls. We clatter onto the flagstones. I cut the straps that bind my legs to the stirrups and leap off. A moment later, Lee sur Pallor lands beside us. He dismounts, every line of his movement tense with fury, and dismisses Pallor back into the air with a flick of his wrist.

  We glare at each other. Behind me, Aela, still riding my emotions, growls. Overhead, the aurelian squad resumes sparring.

  “What the hell was that?”

  “I should report you. I should have reported you right then—”

  Lee stands perfectly still. For a moment all I can hear is the wind and Aela’s hard breathing at my back.

  “Then why didn’t you?”

  My eyes are stinging.