Fireborne

by Rosaria Munda

  “How many of them speak Dragontongue? We all know who tests Gold. With their hoity-toity Lycean Ball and all their old-regime traditions . . .”

  Crissa sets her chicken bone down to make a dividing motion with her hands.

  “Speaking Dragontongue does not make them triarchists.”

  “It makes them patricians from the Janiculum Hill, which is as good as triarchist—”

  Crissa snorts. “The Janiculum brought down the triarchy. Then it purged the patricians who’d stood in the way.”

  “The people brought down the triarchy,” Mara insists. “It was a people’s revolution.”

  There are a few cheers of affirmation from the other cadets at this. Crissa waves them off.

  “Oh, spare us the class-iron propaganda sheets,” she snaps. “It was an inside job. Who do you think poisoned the dragons? Farmers and fishermen? The Red Month came about through servants, advisors, courtiers. Atreus’s peers, the patricians who speak Dragontongue. The mob was only let in at the end.”

  At the end means Palace Day. Pressure is building in my temple.

  There’s silence after Crissa’s pronouncement, and for a moment all we can hear is the chirping of cicadas. One of the cadets, a jocular second year named Gaven, takes it upon himself to dispel the tension Crissa’s passion has left behind. He raises his glass, sparkling in the candlelight.

  “To Palace Day!”

  I should have seen that coming.

  The toast goes round, and I raise my glass like everyone else, though I imagine smashing it into the table and ramming it into Gaven’s neck.

  I’m expecting that to be the end of it, but then Gaven leans back and says, “What it must have been like to have been there that day, you know? Making history. The glory of it.”

  There are nods around the table. Crissa is the exception; her nose wrinkles as if she’s caught the scent, yet again, of the work of the People’s Paper. Because in the Cloister and the Lyceum at least, the narrative of Palace Day is not glorified.

  For the rest of the class metals, it’s touted as the proudest day in our history.

  “My brother was there,” Gaven goes on. “The stories he tells about it—”

  Crissa lifts up her palms, as if to ward something off.

  “If this is the part of the conversation where we start sharing Palace Day stories,” she says quietly, “let’s just not.”

  “No, let’s,” I say unexpectedly.

  Crissa swings around and looks at me, her face full of surprised disappointment that the long shadows of the candlelight accentuate. In other circumstances I’d appreciate her decency, but mention of Palace Day puts me past appreciating anything. I grin back at Gaven, so wide it feels like my face is splitting.

  “Let’s hear it. Tell me, Gaven, about your brother’s glorious achievements on Palace Day.”

  Gaven tells me.

  Three hours later, I’m in Cheapside.

  * * *

  ***

  I haven’t been back to the slums since the year and a half in Albans, but my memory of the walking route between the orphanage and the neighborhood school is just enough to get me to the alley where I know the Drowned Dragon to be. It’s strange to navigate in the dark, on Midsummer, with nothing but blurry childhood memories to guide me. Fires are lit here and there among the crumbling buildings, clusters of class-irons gathered at tables set up on street corners and alleyways to drink and feast through the night. None of them takes notice of a cloaked figure passing through the shantytown.

  Now that I’m on my way, it seems incredible that I could ever have considered not coming. The path can’t be taken fast enough; anticipation fills me with unbearable impatience.

  Until finally, I’m there.

  The tavern is so poorly lit that, when I first enter, I have to let my eyes adjust. A few candles light the tables here and there for the handful of patrons with nowhere better to be on Midsummer night and the solitary barman who barely looks at me as I enter.

  And in the back, in the booth farthest from the door, sits Julia.

  Her long dark hair is loose around her shoulders, her riding cloak still pulled around her. But even shrouded and seated in shadow, it’s plain to see that like her handwriting, Julia has grown. Nothing drives home how many years have passed like seeing the child I remember turned into a young woman.

  Nine years, I realize. It’s been nine years since I last saw kin.

  Tightness has taken hold of my throat.

  “Julia,” I say.

  She rises.

  “Leo.”

  There’s a moment where we stand looking at each other; and then we both take a step forward. When we embrace, the tightness closes in my throat and I choke on it. Julia tightens her embrace and makes a low, murmuring sound. Somehow it’s enough to convey comfort, and at the same time a shared understanding of a bone-deep sorrow. The grief that I’ve grown so accustomed to quieting alone rises from forgotten depths. I have no strength to fight it.

  When we finally break apart, she’s smiling, her eyes wet.

  “I thought you wouldn’t come,” she says.

  “I thought I wouldn’t, either . . .”

  “Come, let’s sit . . .”

  The booth is tiny, so that even seated across from each other we’re still leaned close. Julia has reached across the table and taken my hands again, like she can’t bear the thought of letting me go. I return her hold tightly.

  “You’re all grown up,” she murmurs, her eyes raking my face. “You look like them . . . Leon, of course, but there’s also so much of Niobe . . .”

  It’s the first time I’ve heard my mother’s name spoken aloud since the Revolution. I want to beg Julia not to talk about her, and at the same time, to keep talking about her and never stop.

  We’re speaking in Dragontongue, I realize. I hadn’t even noticed.

  “How did you get out?” I ask.

  I hadn’t meant to ask it first, but now, sitting across from her, it’s the only question that matters.

  Julia’s fingers squeeze mine.

  “We hid,” she says. “Ixion and I. Until it was . . . over.”

  Palace Day. She’s talking about Palace Day. Not as an exultant revolutionary, like the cadets from dinner, but as another survivor. Her voice is steady, the pain muted, as if she’s had practice talking about it, and the talking helped her. The kind of practice I’ve never had.

  “We could hear—everything. Well, Ixion could hear everything. Ixion”—her voice trembles and rises higher—“covered my ears. He’s never really been the same since that.”

  I remember Ixion as someone who had everything before him, and knew it.

  “He got us out afterward, to New Pythos. I can’t remember it very well. We don’t really talk about it.”

  It’s my turn to tighten my fingers over hers.

  “And you?” she whispers.

  And me.

  Nine years of silence stand between me and the memories like a wall. The words come out in the only way I can think to say them.

  “We didn’t have time to hide.”

  Julia’s slow breathing, her hands in mine, her gray eyes liquid. The parting of her lips as she swallows.

  I try to say more. For once in my life, I want to say more. For once in my life, it’s safe to say more. I’m with kin at last, with the one person in the world who would understand—

  But I can’t.

  I’ve hit upon the spot where the words stop, and there’s no penetrating it. I look up at her and shake my head, and she understands this, too.

  It’s strange, after years taking refuge in silence, to suddenly feel trapped by it.

  “Oh, Leo . . .”

  Her voice is soft as a caress, and for a moment I think the sound of the name I lost, uttered with such sorrow, wi
ll be enough to send me over the edge. I drop my head and wait for the waves of grief to ebb, feeling the steady pulse of her hands in mine. One of them pulls away and returns with a handkerchief, which she slips into my curled palm.

  Softly, anticipating my shame, she quotes the Aurelian Cycle:

  By my own pain’s knowledge will I comfort the sufferings of men.

  It strikes me how often I used to hear the Cycle quoted in conversation, in our conversation—and how rarely I do now.

  I dry my face downturned, return the handkerchief, and raise my head. “Thank you.”

  Julia nods, tucking it away. “Should we speak of other things?”

  “Yes.”

  Julie smiles, the lines of worry easing from her face. The next words she offers me like gifts she’s prepared.

  “I was at your last tournament, Leo. You fly beautifully.”

  No compliment has ever filled me with such warmth.

  “That was when you first recognized . . .”

  “Yes. Or at least, that was when I first hoped I did. It wasn’t until the tutor contacted us that I knew for sure.”

  Julia’s hands are burn-smoothed, her cloak partly disguising the leather of what can only be a flamesuit. I offer, in return, the only conclusion that makes sense.

  “You ride, too.”

  Julia nods. The corner of her lip quirks as she looks at me. A smirk I remember. The smirk Julia has when she’s won.

  “The families started allowing female riders?”

  “Desperate times,” Julia says mildly.

  But her lifted shoulder doesn’t bely the fact that she moved a mountain, and the smile that plays at her lips shows she knows she did. There’s something gladdening about the realization that, after all we’ve lost, this at least Julia gained.

  The next question is stranger, but I can’t fight my curiosity. “Have you had a ranking tournament, or . . . ?”

  Julia hesitates for the first time, then nods. “I’m Firstrider.”

  Again, the careful nonchalance, and beneath it a pride born of years of anger to which I stood witness. As my thoughts return to the old Julia with her scratched knees and her torn dresses and her stubborn defiance as she stared our brothers down, a smile breaks across my face.

  “You did it,” I say.

  Julia’s mouth curves with triumph. “Yes. I did it.”

  But then, like a settling cloud, I remember what it all adds up to—if I do what I’ve committed to and the set trajectory continues as planned.

  Because Julia’s ranking will not just have made her Firstrider, it will have made her commander of the Pythian aerial fleet. Sworn not only to go into battle against Callipolis but to lead those who do.

  Our hands have remained entwined throughout the conversation. Julia seems to have the same wakening discomfort as I do; she shifts, in the guise of pulling her cloak tighter around her, but it doesn’t seem coincidence that our hands pull apart and neither of us moves to rejoin them.

  Julia breaks the silence first. “The families sent me, Leo. You can imagine what they want. The tutor told us about your reservations. Rhadamanthus wants me to help you see reason. Before it’s too late.”

  For a moment I only register her words with a distant pang of longing. The families. Who else—?

  And then I hear the rest of what she said.

  Too late.

  I find my hands reaching forward on the narrow table, seeking hers again in desperation. “Julia, I can’t—you have to talk to them. Please—whatever they’re planning—”

  But then Julia’s fingers take one of my own reaching hands in hers and lifts it to press my own fingers against my lips. I fall silent.

  “I told them I’d come for that,” she whispers. “But the truth is, I haven’t seen you in nine years. There will be time for those conversations. Do we need to have them so soon? It’s Midsummer, and I’ve missed you, Leo.”

  I’m stopped short. “I’ve missed you, too.”

  It suddenly hurts, the force of how much I’ve missed her. Them. All of it. Surely that’s allowed, for a little while—just to miss them?

  “Let us spend tonight talking of other things,” Julia says.

  I see her request for what it is: an offer to pretend together one last time.

  And as it was when we were children, the force of her believing is still enough to make the real world fade, for a little while, to nothing.

  ANNIE

  I’ve always loved Duck’s house—bustling with children, full of laughter, never quiet or calm, but welcoming to you even if you are. It’s the kind of place that feels so immediate that it makes everything else seem less real. The concerns that consume me in the Cloister—the threat of New Pythos and classes and training and that godforsaken list of morale visits on which my name was so noticeably absent—feel like problems from another life. Even the guilt I’ve felt since Duck broke our Midsummer plans to Lee becomes distant. I’d meant to invite him, after we reconciled. I’d been planning on it—

  But I’d delayed. Delayed because, if I’m honest with myself, the thought of a weekend with Duck’s family, Lee out of my mind and my sight, was what I wanted more.

  I’ve been coming to the Sutter house on leave days since I was nine. It was the first home I’d come to since the Mackys took me to Albans. At first it was overwhelming. All the ways it was good made it hard. Family meals, children screeching and laughing, parents telling you when to go to bed—they were things I’d forgotten I missed. As if sensing my discomfort, Duck buffered. Kept me busy, so the memories couldn’t crowd in. Made sure I was laughing, because when I wasn’t laughing, I wanted to cry.

  It got easier over time. Not for Lee. He came once and never again.

  Tonight, the house is less full of joy than usual. Ana is packing bags for a new life in the boardinghouse attached to Fullerton’s, where she’ll start in a week. When we talk about it, briefly, in the morning, Ana is matter-of-fact. It was a better posting than most, and she’d never expected to test well. Some of her friends’ postings were worse. All the same I sense her reluctance to meet my eyes. The greater resentment comes from Mr. Sutter, whose anger hangs over the Midsummer dinner like a cloud with the comments he can’t stop making to Cor: What’s the point of our daughters going to school if this is what they get? Before, we’d just have found her a suitable match . . .

  Cor drinks long and deep from his cider and lets his father’s dissatisfaction roll over him in waves, the lines growing between his eyebrows as the night wears on. He doesn’t attempt the rebuttals that we’ve learned to such complaints, and I don’t blame him. The arguments justifying class-iron labor postings are offered patly in class—but when you look at Ana, imagine her toiling in a workhouse because she answered a few questions wrong on a test, words like the good of the state begin to make less sense.

  After the long dinner outside has finished and the table’s been brought back in, Ana, her father, and Cor sit down to go over her preparations for Fullerton’s.

  “Let’s go over your rights as an Iron worker again. I want to make sure you know them.”

  “Cor, really—”

  “Really.”

  Duck has lured his younger siblings out of their hearing; he’s roughhousing with Greg and Merina on the rug between the sofa and the fireplace. A strained line is barely visible between his eyebrows as he distracts them. I watch their scuffling from the sofa, an old quilt pulled up to my chin.

  “It’s past their bedtime, Dorian,” Mrs. Sutter calls from the kitchen.

  “Can I read them a story first, Mum?”

  Duck has leapt without warning onto the sofa, which creaks as he adds his stocky weight, and scoots close to tug the quilt over both of us. His hair is disheveled from Greg’s yanking on it.

  “Budge up, you blanket hog,” he tells me.

 
I’m suddenly conscious of Duck’s body pressed against mine beneath the quilt. Merina plops down on the sofa next to me and tugs the quilt over herself, too. So there are bodies warm on either side of me, and I’m in the middle.

  I’d almost forgotten what this feels like.

  The book Greg fetches, entitled Tales of the Medean, is one of two books his family owns; the other is Atreus’s Revolutionary Manifesto. The fairy tales are illuminated, images of dragons and lords and ladies alternating with text.

  “I learned how to read with this,” Duck tells me.

  He shifts his weight so he can see better, and as he does, his arm goes around my shoulders to steady himself, and then when he’s steady, I wonder if he’ll remove it or if I want him to.

  His arm remains around me. He begins to read.

  It’s not reading aloud like you do in class: It’s a style I’ve never heard before. Duck reads each character with a different kind of voice, some low, some high, some raspy, some thunderous. This is something parents must do with their children, I realize. Parents who know how to read.

  Merina and Greg are giggling with delight and within minutes, I am too. By the end of the story Greg has fallen asleep and Merina’s head is slumped against my shoulder. Duck surveys them and then looks at me.

  “I should probably put Greg down.”

  “One more,” Merina demands sleepily.

  Duck resumes reading, more quietly this time. Beneath the quilt, the fingers of the hand not wrapped around my shoulder find mine and slip into them. The patter of my heart as I listen to him read becomes something I can feel and hear.

  These feelings—happiness, safety, warmth beside Duck—what do they add up to?

  Do they add up to something more than that?

  Do they add up to something more for him?

  Merina has fallen asleep, too.

  “I’m off to bed, dears. You’ll put Greg and Merina down?”

  Mrs. Sutter is on her way upstairs. Her eyes are crinkled permanently at the corners, the same that form around Duck’s when he smiles. She kisses Duck on the forehead, and from Duck’s long-suffering expression I sense this is a nighttime routine he considers himself to have outgrown, but will endure for her sake. My school-level Damian is just enough for me to understand her mother tongue.