This place is perfectly designed for a private duel.
The realization fills me with sudden relief—and then, as I mark the emotion, sorrow.
Julia sur Erinys appears alone above the northern ridge and descends. As they alight, Julia removes her helmet. Today, unlike our two previous encounters, she is wearing battle armor. Emblazoned on the breast with Stormscourge heather, encircled by the three dragons of the triarchy.
The last time I saw such armor, I saw it on my father.
“Hello, Leo.”
“Hello, Julia.”
I take her in: the Stormscourge hair, the eyes, the face that in so many small ways is the closest thing to home I’ve seen since Palace Day. The armor that makes me miss my father like I’ve lost him all over again. I remember the feeling of her hands in mine on Midsummer as we grieved to have survived the same horrors and felt the same pain. I remember a childhood spent in laughter-filled play at her side, before we’d learned the taste of loss.
I see her and remember and it’s not enough.
Because Annie’s right.
There’s a war, and I have to take a side. Palace Day and the ties of blood aren’t enough to make me choose the wrong one. Whatever their claim on me, it’s a fact that the dragonlords reigned brutally and killed indiscriminately. They’re responsible for the deaths of thousands. They cannot be allowed to come back.
The prickles to my conscience, looking at Julia, only put me on guard. She is my kin; she was a girl I played with as a child; she has been, in these last months, the only tie I have left to the world I lost. But at this point, obeying instincts of tribalism or chivalry would be nothing but selfish. The reality is that she and I are both dragonriders. We’re both weapons. And she must be destroyed.
Before this moment, I doubted I could do it. But now that I’m here, looking at her, there’s no question. I’m going to do it. It’s not that it will be easy: It will be horrible.
But that doesn’t mean it can’t be done.
The only thing left to be determined is how long it will take.
“Julia,” I say, “I’m not sure how to say this, but—”
“You’re not coming back with me, are you?”
“No.”
“I didn’t think you would,” she says. “But I wanted to give you one last chance, in case.”
“I appreciate that.”
Though I’m suppressing the instincts, they nevertheless compel me to ask, awkwardly:
“Do you have others coming—?”
“No. I didn’t tell anyone. I wanted to have the opportunity to settle it like this.”
Privately. Without an audience. With dignity.
Because Julia, like me, learned the hard way to value a dignified death.
I tell her: “I came alone, too.”
“Well then,” she says, her tone mild again. It is clear that she understood the portent of my wording as well as I did, and that she knows what comes next.
For a moment, she fingers her helmet, though we continue to stare at each other. And then she lifts her fingers from it.
“You know,” she says, “we needn’t rush. Would you like to take a final walk together, before we do it?”
With anyone else, I would think this was cowardice or reluctance disguised as cordiality. With Julia, I know better. And even though it occurs to me that every minute longer I spend speaking with her will make this harder, I find myself desiring, against all reason, to have a final conversation.
“I’d like that,” I say.
We dismount. Pallor makes a huff of consternation behind me; Erinys flexes and rears in impatience. They’re sensing the upcoming fight, are eager for it. We ignore them, approaching each other slowly in the barren space between. We meet at the water’s edge.
“Come,” Julia says, and together we begin to walk around the pool.
I know instinctively that we can only walk around it once; that after we have circled it, we will return to our dragons. Her pace is slow, like mine, as if she has the same course in mind.
“Have you found happiness, cousin?” she asks.
It’s strange to hear it put this way. I consider for a moment, if the last few years could be called happy. It’s not a word I’ve often considered in reference to my own life.
Then I think of Cor’s lopsided grin, of Crissa’s rippling laughter, of Annie’s lips on mine as her trembling fingers brought my face to hers.
“I have people I care for, who care for me in return,” I tell her. “If that’s what you’re asking.”
“I suppose, yes,” she says. Then she asks, “They’re the reason you refuse us?”
I sense her doubtfulness at the idea, and I realize that she doesn’t consider personal attachments a good reason to choose sides, any more than I do.
“Julia,” I say. “You know what our fathers did, don’t you?”
We’ve stopped walking. Steam from the Riversource rises; through it, the blurred outlines of our dragons, waiting on the opposite side of the pool, ripple as they move on the water’s still reflection.
“Yes,” she says. “I know.”
The way she says it, I know that I don’t need to tell her that what they did was wrong. Somehow, despite being driven out of her own city, despite living in isolation among the bitter survivors of an old regime, despite never having met or cared for any child orphaned by her father’s dragon, Julia already understands. Her face is pale, set, and sad.
I say, “Then you know why I’ve chosen as I have.”
Julia says, “We don’t have to be like our fathers. Our generation—we can be different. You and I, we already are.”
We’ve both stopped walking.
I think of the civilians burned on Starved Rock, the unarmed ships destroyed on Palace Day. The question comes out raw with feeling. “Are you different, Julia?”
Julia’s eyes flash. Instead of answering, she spits her accusation. “Are you? Your new regime is already failing. Athanatos has done nothing but fill the city with dirty workhouses and destroy our libraries—”
My answer returns cool, because my head, as Julia has grown angry, grows clear.
“He’s trying to start again, and it’s difficult. And what is censorship compared with your crimes? You attacked our fishermen, our traders. Civilians. They were unarmed.”
Julia’s face twists. She says, “We will do what it takes to regain what is ours.”
I inhale the steam-filled air rising from the Fer and shake my head.
“Callipolis isn’t yours anymore. The people have chosen. They don’t want dragonlords.”
A smile glints on Julia’s lips at this, catches in her eyes, as she looks at me. She lifts a hand, gesturing, with an open palm, to me, then to Pallor waiting on the opposite side of the steaming pool, a silver smear against the rising karst.
“Are you sure?” she asks softly. “Look at you, Leo. Look how readily they gave it back to you. The dragon, the power, the respect. Is it true, you are Athanatos’s favored successor?”
Julia’s smile widens at my silence.
“You and I were born to rule.”
There it is. The single belief that ruined all of them. From the dragonlords of the Aurelian Cycle all the way down to my father, and now Julia.
“No,” I answer.
I had meant to add more, to explain myself, but I realize now there’s no need. She does not agree with me; she will not. We’ve reached the bounds of reason and have come to the threshold of belief. I would not do her the dishonor of imagining that her beliefs have been any less hard-won than mine.
She seems to realize the same thing. She doesn’t try to argue, to ask why. We resume walking the edge of the pool, but we’re silent now. I have the sense that I’ve said what I needed to say; that she has, too. I also have the sense that we were bot
h seeking this impasse. Now that we have found it, we’re ready to finish what we came here to do.
There is a sadness shared between us, mingled with resolve.
“It’s been good to talk with you these past months,” she says finally, as we approach the part of the pool where we first started, where Pallor and Erinys wait for us, tensed, wings ready to spread. “Whatever our differences have been. It’s been good to remember with you. I hope that, if ever we meet in any afterlife, we will meet as we were, before.”
As children.
The sadness mounts; it is piercing.
“My hope is the same,” I answer.
We have reached our starting point.
We look at each other, exchange a final nod. Then we turn away. She returns to her stormscourge, and I return to Pallor. We mount again, replace our helmets, and set our visors. Neither of us hesitates before launching into the air.
ANNIE
“You are assuming Atreus is like you,” Power says. “Willing to forgive the facts because of the feelings. But what if he isn’t?”
The chill from the open windows of the solarium, letting in the early autumn breeze in the predawn light, is suddenly enough to make me shiver as I stand, facing Power. He’s no longer lounging: Instead he grips both arms of his chair as he leans forward. As the sky outside lightens, the features of his face come into focus.
“Am I the only one listening in class with him? This is a man who authorized butchering every member of the dragonborn families down to the last man, woman, and child, including those who were his friends. He has rooted through a civilization of literature he loved and is destroying it, rather than let its values erode his city. Atreus doesn’t follow his heart. He works in spite of it.”
The most important protest, the paradox that makes it all work, rises to my lips: “He once saved Lee’s life—”
Power snaps his fingers and leans forward. “According to Lee. Who was what, eight at the time, probably barely spoke Callish, and was senseless with shock?” He shrugs. “Ask yourself this. Is a man who ran a project of total extermination of a people really likely to change his program, just because he discovers a dragonborn rat ten years later who turns out to support his cause? Maybe. Or he’s going to get what use he can out of him and then discard him like the rest. Quietly, with minimal fuss. Out of sight of those whose consciences would twinge.”
I find my voice, and it’s shaking.
“The whole point of Atreus’s system is that anyone can be worthy.”
Power’s laugh echoes in the empty, glass-walled room.
“Maybe one day,” he says. “But for now, I’m pretty sure the point is that some people aren’t anymore.”
He nods, once more, to the letter contained in my hands.
“Your move, Commander.”
LEE
Julia flies her stormscourge the way I remember them flying in tournaments, when I was a child. The way stormscourges are meant to be flown.
Can I really do this?
Because it’s one thing to resolve to on the ground; it’s another to give your dragon the command to fire. Sparked dragonfire, undoused.
I know what’s needed. I remember what it felt like, a month ago, when I finally won against Annie in our final tournament: that eruption of violence that came with Pallor’s sparking, the feeling of ascendance that left me sick from its darkness. It feels like I’ve spent a lifetime resisting it. But now, when I know that it’s called for, I can’t bring myself to give in to it.
But Julia can, and she is the one who does first.
I feel the blast sear through the left arm of my armor and flamesuit, burning skin, and for a moment—though we are not playing tournament rules, though we are not offering each other time-outs or resets—we both pause midair. I feel the burn, a full searing heat of sparked fire rage down my arm. As the pain makes me light-headed, as I fumble automatically for coolant valves, I lift my head and look at her. Our faces are visored; no expression is discernible on hers any more than mine. But as we look at each other, and the canyon stills and its echoes go quiet, I am certain that we are both making the same resolution.
There is no backing out of this. It will be finished, one way or the other.
I rein Pallor round, and this time, when the ferocity calls me, I don’t hold back.
The world is a blaze of dragonfire and smoke and pain for a time after that. Everything we once imagined that dueling on dragonback would be. Except we didn’t imagine then that it would be accompanied by a feeling, barely distinguishable from the searing burns that have spread across my body, of horror so great it feels like physical pain.
Julia’s guard opens once, twice, three times, but never enough for a kill shot, and because I’m determined to do it with one blow instead of piecemeal, I let the opportunities pass.
I want to be Firstrider, you’re always Firstrider, let me be it for a change—
Though neither of us is speaking, though there is no sound except the wind in the canyon and the hiss of flames, I find I can hear her, hear us, memories flooding in so long forgotten. From the Palace gardens, when they were ours.
What if I’m King Rada, of the Bassileans? Then we could fight each other, and we’d both be Firstrider.
She’s lost her balance, just enough to expose herself, and through my blurring vision I notice the opening with Pallor at once.
A kill shot.
I feel like my heart is breaking.
Fight each other?
A sound fills the air: my own cry, wild with despair, in time with Pallor’s blast. It feels as though I, like Pallor, am igniting.
He twists down, inhales, and fires.
There’s a moment of perfect stillness, as the fire that filled my vision leaves me blinded, as the gorge becomes, for an instant, perfectly quiet. Then the silence breaks. An inhuman, hair-raising keen goes up, unearthly, alien, full of unbearable sorrow. Though it’s a sound I’ve only ever read about, I know it at once. It is the sound of a dragon who has felt the bond with its rider break in the only way it can be broken.
It takes the breath out of my lungs.
Pallor recovers before I do, driving us forward, firing again to finish what we’ve started. The grieving stormscourge barely resists. It’s as though she no longer has any reason to.
Same time tomorrow?
I’ll try. Wait for me, Leo.
ANNIE
After my conversation with Power, I wake everyone. When they’re dressed, full uniform, we convene in the oration room, where it’s still dark enough outside for the lamps in their sconces to be the chief source of light. But already, birds are calling; dawn approaches.
“Do you agree,” I ask, when all are assembled, “that if Lee completes the task Atreus has set for him, he will have proved himself trustworthy as a Callipolan and your leader?”
Around the room, Guardians look at one another, startled. Except for Power, who stands in the back, his arms folded, a strange, twisted smirk on his face as he watches me address the corps.
“Annie, it’s more that we don’t think—”
I cut Max off.
“For the sake of argument. If he does it.”
“Of course,” Deirdre says.
Others are nodding.
“Good. Then start suiting up. He’s due back at Pytho’s Keep within the hour. The Inner Palace wants us there as witnesses.”
“Since when?”
“Since now.”
The edge in my tone seems to be enough to prevent them from making further argument. As the rest get to their feet, I pull Crissa, Cor, and Lotus aside.
“I’m going to need your help with something.”
And then I tell them the full stakes. I don’t give them time for horror; instead I give them instructions. Cor to go to General Holmes, Crissa to Miranda Hane.
<
br /> “Go on dragonback, and tell them that you’re there on the orders of the First Protector. Tell them that he requires their presence.”
When they have departed for the armory, I turn to Lotus.
“How well do you know the houses of the Janiculum?”
Lotus gives me a startled look.
“That depends. For what?”
“Would you be able to identify Dora Mithrides’s home from dragonback?”
Mithrides: honorary alderman on the Janiculum Council and wealthiest of Atreus’s supporters, who was so taken with Lee at the Lycean Ball and so surprised that a boy of such polish could have emerged from the slums.
It seems time to make use of her lingering blood prejudices.
“Yes,” Lotus says, beginning to smile as he understands. “I believe I would.”
Twenty minutes later, he and I are circling above the Janiculum terraces in the half-light of early morning, the shadow of Pytho’s Keep rising steep and black above us. Lotus points down, to a particularly ostentatious estate on one of the highest ledges of the hill.
“That one.”
We descend and land in Dora Mithrides’s front garden, inside her gate and guardhouse. It is, I realize, the first time I’ve ever set foot on the Janiculum. The dragons crunch on the gravel of a turnaround designed for long lines of carriages and horses; the grounds are still, save for a fountain burbling in the center of the turnaround and a mourning dove crying. I leave Lotus with the dragons and make my way up the great stone staircase to Mithrides’s front door, overhung by an ivy-laden arcade. And then I pull the bell.
After a few minutes the valet answers, rubbing sleep from his eyes. I swallow my discomfort and speak as I’ve seen Lee do to servants in the past: without interest.
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