Fireborne

by Rosaria Munda

  I wonder what’s going on behind Lee’s masked expression. What he saw, what he’s remembering, what he’s thinking. It’s from Lotus, not Lee, that I learned it was a surviving child who delivered the message. Does that name mean anything to him, Julia Stormscourge? What does he imagine, when he hears the word capitulate, other than the return of a world that surely must tug at buried desires?

  And I wonder what is going on behind the eyes of the people who watch us. They’re roaring by the end, roused by Atreus’s words and voice, but even so—when Crissa and I take the footpath alleyways through Highmarket back to the Palace at the end of the address—the conversations whispered at street corners have a different tone.

  “At least with the dragonlords we could defend ourselves—”

  “Not to mention, with the dragonlords, my sons weren’t getting paid a pittance from the Labor Draft Board—”

  “Commoners and women riding dragons, fat lot of good that does if the fleet can’t spark—”

  Dora Mithrides’s pseudoscientific rumor from the Lycean Ball seems to have trickled down to the lower class-metals. When they see Crissa and me, the huddle of whispering class-bronzes unfolds to observe us, making our way down the footpath in Guardian uniform, and while some elbow each other in sudden wariness, the most daring of them gives us a flourishing bow, baring a sardonic, ragged-toothed grin.

  “Long live the Revolution, lady Guardians.”

  “Citizen,” Crissa answers rigidly.

  We round the corner to the echoes of suppressed, bitter laughter going up behind us. I’m shaking, unnerved by their anger; Crissa’s lips are pressed tight, her fingers clenched to fists. Above us, the sign for the Pickled Boar swings over the tavern entrance: I realize with a start that the last time I visited this part of Highmarket, I was lifted on shoulders and offered free drinks. But now, when faces turn toward us, conversations slide into silence and lines form around mouths.

  At the Palace gates we part ways, Crissa to the Inner Palace, and I to the Cloister and the dragon caves to begin training with Power. Aela is curled in her nest, asleep beneath a wing that encloses her like a blanket, and when I crouch down to wake her, I drop for a moment to my knees, take her head in my hands, press my forehead against hers. Her slitted eyes snap open and she lets out a rumble like a purr.

  “When, when are you going to spark . . .”

  But Aela has no answer. All the dragons have been subjected to test after test from their keepers and from physicians attempting to spark them, all futile; Aela’s distemper at their visits reaches me all the way from the Cloister. She yawns, revealing rows of razor-sharp teeth, and shakes herself to her feet. I throw her saddle over her back.

  “Time to go spend some time with your favorite storm-scourge.”

  The Eyrie is warmed with afternoon sunlight; beneath my flamesuit I begin to break a sweat. A thin blanket of cirrus clouds coat the sky high above us, washing out its blue and softening the sun’s glare. Power waits for me, Eater lounging beside him, his wings flattened on the stone to warm in the sun. Aela growls and bucks at the sight of them, giving me a reproachful look. Eater remains where he lounges, but his head spikes flatten as he growls back at her.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” I mutter, seizing her by the halter. “They’re all right this time . . .”

  “Hell of a speech,” Power remarks, by way of greeting. “Nothing like a good dose of propaganda to start off your morning.”

  He eases himself down onto the stone next to Eater, rubbing him beneath the jaw, calming him. I sit, too. It feels strange to sit for a conversation with Power. Even with a few meters between us it seems dangerous, like laying down arms in front of an enemy. Aela gives a sniffle of incredulity and eases onto her haunches beside me, so close her side presses against mine, warming me through my flamesuit. Glaring at Eater, daring him to come closer. Her tail flicks back and forth, dragging on the flagstones. Power watches the hostile back-and-forth with lazy disinterest.

  “We still heard people talking about wanting dragonlords back, afterward,” I tell him.

  Power’s lip curls. “People can be stupid.”

  It’s Power’s usual condescension, but it reminds me, for the first time, of Dora’s revelation about his parentage at the Lycean Ball. His anger, his defensiveness, about a fact that would have meant nothing to me if he hadn’t spent years humiliating me for a low birth that it turns out we have in common.

  I can’t decide whether knowing the truth makes me like him more, or less.

  He stretches, straining his arms above his head, the muscles in his shoulders rippling, like a cat arching its back. Maintaining eye contact the whole time. Then he shakes them out.

  “If we’re doing this, I want us to be clear on why. So. You tell me, Annie.”

  I tell him the truth. “I don’t want to be Lee’s Alterna.”

  Power nods, then gazes over the empty tiers of the arena stands, rising like the sides of a bowl around us, his brow furrowed. This late in summer, the sun has turned his face a deep brown. He says, “But I’m not asking what you don’t want. I’m asking what you do want. I’m asking why you want to win.”

  And that’s enough to stop me short.

  Power lifts a hand between us and begins to count off on his fingers.

  “Here are the facts. You’re a finalist like Lee, his equal or better in every one of his classes, his only challenger in the air, his match on every count of trauma. You’re every bit as qualified for Firstrider as he is, you’re the only real threat he’s ever had. But he doesn’t see that. And I’m not sure you do, either.”

  At hearing my own abilities listed—without comment, or anger, just flat facts—my discomfort rises, unbearable.

  “I do see all that, but—”

  Power waits, his lip curling, for me to finish the objection. My face is burning, but I resist the urge to avert it. And then I hear myself list the weaknesses that haunt me as if compelled.

  “—I’m not—I’m not as good with people, I don’t lead like he does—I’ll never be as good at charming anyone or making speeches or—”

  Power drums his fingers impatiently on Eater’s scales. “Which might put you at a disadvantage for Protectorship, sure. But to be a good Firstrider, you just need a head for strategy, skill in the air, and nerves of steel.”

  For a moment, the shock of the words—their simplicity—prevents me from believing them.

  No. Surely it’s not so simple—surely I’ve not spent months doubting my place in the Fourth Order only to realize what I should have seen from the start—

  When I say nothing, Power leans forward.

  “Tell me where you came from.”

  For a moment I tense, primed for the disparagement of my background that he’s usually so willing to give. But then, as Aela’s tail tightens its coil around me, I understand. Power isn’t asking about my birth, or my poverty, or my lack of polish.

  He’s asking what I did in spite of them.

  My answer comes in a whisper.

  “I watched my family get taken by dragonfire at the age of six, and I learned to ride anyway.”

  Power’s brown eyes are raking over my face. The same way they’ve always done when he asks me about stormscourge fire. But today, I experience it as something besides cruelty.

  Admiration.

  “Damn right you did,” he murmurs.

  He leans forward, placing his palms on the sunbaked stone of the Eyrie floor. “Now tell me again why you want to make Firstrider.”

  My fingers are wound tightly around Aela’s horns as I clench them. I let myself say it the way I should have said it from the start.

  “Because I’d be good at it.”

  * * *

  ***

  Aela and I don’t know how to spill over intentionally. When Power learns this, he rubs at the line b
etween his eyebrows and squints at me.

  “Of course you don’t,” he mutters. “You really keep everything close to the chest, don’t you, Annie?”

  “I’m going to take that as a compliment.”

  Power snorts, like he didn’t mean it as one. Then he gets to his feet, dusts his hands together, and I get to my feet as well. Facing each other, standing on the Eyrie, it feels like we’re back in familiar territory. Opponents. Eater and Aela have tensed, sensing a change in the air.

  “So what was it like, watching my match with Duck?”

  After years of Power’s goads, I can see where this is going. I feel a ripple of closeness to Aela, who’s risen on her haunches beside me, as my anger rises.

  “Don’t—”

  Power presses on, relentless. “Did you feel powerless? Were you scared for him?”

  Aela is so close, I can practically feel her mind tickling my own as my breathing accelerates. My repulsion beginning to do its work on us, even as this becomes a game I no longer want to play.

  “Stop, Power, this isn’t—”

  Power lets out a bark of laughter. “What’s the matter, Annie—did you think I was a nice person, because I said I’d train with you? Do you want me to tell you how I felt, during that match?”

  His own pupils are dilating. Eater rises to his haunches, lifts his head to the sky, and roars. They’ve spilled over; Power’s smile has the frenzied energy of a dragon’s influence.

  “No—”

  He leans forward, lowers his voice, and it cuts across the windswept Eyrie. “I felt bloody fantastic. Because beating Duck has always hit the spot. Sometimes, you’ve just got to kick a dog.”

  My fury bursts into Aela with such force it feels like a pot bursting from steam. There’s a sudden, rushing relief as my emotions flood into her; her wings burst open, her horns go flat, and she bellows ash. She and Eater are pawing the ground as they eye each other, poised to attack.

  Power, abruptly clinical, searches my eyes for the same pupil dilation I can see in his.

  “Good,” he says, seeing it. “Don’t let the connection close. Let’s get in the air.”

  I scramble onto Aela and we kick off from the ground like it’s hateful to us.

  Sparring under spillover is hyperreal in the moment but difficult to recall with clarity afterward. Power gives feedback in the air, rather than on the ground, and his words come through the fogging haze of Aela’s emotions and my own: That was sloppy. Do it again. Now again. Still, for all his corrections, Power concludes the first practice with, “I knew you’d be suited to it. Same time tomorrow?”

  I am still too sick with Aela’s and my anger, dulling but still hot, to answer, and can only nod.

  When I return to the Cloister, I find Duck in the courtyard, hunched on a bench. For a moment, all I can think of, looking at him, are Power’s words, and a fierceness like fury rises up in me again. But then I remember that in the last twenty-four hours, Duck has shouldered burdens heavier and harder than Power’s bullying. Of the eight civilians the skyfish first responders helped rescue, I learned from Lotus, Duck saved five of them. His neck is bandaged beneath his uniform from burns he sustained in the extraction.

  “How’re you doing?” I ask.

  Duck pulls his shoulders together in a shrug and straightens. In the wake of the attack I’ve been surprised by his ability—one I never had, and from what I can tell, Lee has never had either—to talk about the things that haunt him rather than keep them shut up inside. But that doesn’t mean he takes any of what happened less hard. Duck hasn’t talked about the ones they saved: just the ones they didn’t. The burbling courtyard fountain and the trees rustling with songbirds are things he would usually point out to me, but today, he doesn’t seem to see them.

  “I’m . . . okay. How was training?”

  Duck’s the only person I’ve told about my decision to train with Power, and he asks in a tone that suggests he can’t imagine anything but the worst.

  I consider my answer, thinking of those things Power said. A dog to kick. Even as my rage pushed me and Aela to new heights, through new boundaries, I hated him. And in that way, training with Power was the worst.

  But then I think of the single sentence Power elicited from me moments before he provoked the anger that changed everything.

  A head for strategy, skill in the air, and nerves of steel.

  I’d be good at it.

  I don’t have to like Power for him to be right.

  For the first time since the tournaments began, I let myself imagine it. My name, appended by the single word that is both a title, a position, and a rank.

  Antigone sur Aela, Firstrider.

  I can’t help feeling as if the mere act of imagining these words together, let alone of believing I’m worthy of wanting them, is defiance. Defiance of every lingering prejudice of Callipolis, of its ministry and their notes, and maybe most of all, defiance of myself.

  But the seconds lengthen, and still I dare it.

  “Training was good,” I tell him.

  LEE

  It’s begun to feel as if the New Pythians’ ultimatum is hanging over the city like a knife. Late summer is a time of year I’ve learned to dread, associated as it has been, for as long as I can remember, with memories of Palace Day. But this year, for the first time, the city shares my unease.

  I can’t shake the feeling that, however Callipolis responds to the Pythians, I’ll feel responsible. Because Atreus may not have read it that way, but Julia’s message wasn’t just intended as an ultimatum for Callipolis. It was also intended, very specifically, as a final chance for me.

  A final chance to seek a solution short of war.

  And with an unsparked fleet how can we in good conscience not consider—

  “Lee. You need to train.”

  It’s Cor who forces me to commit to a time and a place for him and Crissa to begin training me. I agree to it with a kind of disorientation: The Firstrider Tournament, to take place the weekend before Palace Day, has faded in and out of my awareness since the Starved Rock attack.

  Partly because my growing anxiety about Palace Day overshadows it.

  But also partly because, when I think of the tournament, Julia’s words return with all their seductive force: Do you want Firstrider so much you can taste it?

  Annie will be a challenging opponent. But my real opponent, my real challenge, is Palace Day on the other end of it, and Julia, daughter of Crethon, waiting for me to change my mind.

  The Firstrider Tournament isn’t what I’m worried about.

  But I’d be a fool not to train. The first day we all share a free block, Crissa and I arrive at the Eyrie before Cor. It’s the first time we’ve been alone since the Lycean Ball.

  “Crissa, that night . . .”

  Crissa puts up both hands, like she’s holding me off, and offers a strained smile.

  “Whatever you’re about to say, I’m pretty sure I already know.”

  For a moment we look at each other, and then, to my surprise, Crissa ducks her head and laughs sheepishly. And then I do, too.

  “It was really nice.”

  She smiles tentatively. “Yeah. It was.”

  I mean it as an ending, a moment of closure. But all the same when she sits down beside me, just a little bit closer than usual, my stomach skips, and the moment doesn’t feel so closed.

  “Sorry I’m late.”

  Cor has landed. He dismounts from Maurana, sends her back into the air to circle with Phaedra and Pallor, and takes a seat on my other side. Crissa clears her throat and produces a calendar, on which, ten days from today, is circled the date of the Firstrider Tournament. A week later, Palace Day.

  “I brought a schedule,” she says. “Thought it would help us plan.”

  Only ten days.

  Ten days to tr
ain.

  And a little over that to call the Pythians off.

  And if not . . .

  And if not we’ll see the full force of their wrath and we, unsparked, will have little choice but to bear it.

  “Lee, what do you want to focus on? We can map out a drill schedule based on what you need.”

  I rouse myself, then hesitate. With most opponents, it’s easy to home in on the best ways to beat them—but the fact is, Annie has no convenient weaknesses to exploit.

  Cor speaks first.

  “Spillovers. Word is, Annie’s training with Power.”

  It’s the first news that has been able to surprise me since the beacons lit the night of the Lycean Ball. Annie, training with Power?

  “Since when?”

  “Since . . . since Starved Rock, I think.”

  Cor’s hesitation before giving this information is not lost on me; nor is the way Crissa suddenly busies herself with her calendar, rubbing her forehead with the tips of her fingers. Her shoulders are drawn together with unspoken censure that I feel like a cold draft of air.

  “It was that bad?” I ask them, looking between them. “In the armory.”

  I’ve already felt the answer to this question, but ask in the dim hope that they’ll say otherwise. They don’t. Cor squints; Crissa lifts her shoulders. Her answer is hesitant. “I can see why you made the call. But I can also see how she might have found it . . . patronizing.”

  Starved Rock has begun to feel like the name for a catalogue of all the mistakes I could make in a single night.

  “Anyway,” Cor says. Abruptly, with the air of barreling out of the silence his news has created. “My point was, maybe you should give spillovers a try, too?”

  Crissa is nodding. Shrugging off her disapproval, suddenly brisk, and tapping her pen on her calendar. “Cor’s right. They might work for you.”

  I shake my head. “I don’t do spillovers.”

  Cor hums, frustrated.