Dragon's-Eye View

by Vickie Knestaut

  “Dubious decision making?”

  Ander grinned. “That was a dumb move, Tyber. You should have gotten help. You should have taken someone with you.”

  Tyber lowered his head. Ander was right.

  “But that’s what the academy is for,” the hordesman went on. “We teach young men how to think and react in dangerous situations and do what is necessary to protect the people of the kingdom.”

  “What about the grandmother?”

  Ander gripped his knees. “Too soon to tell. She has not come around yet, but she continues to breathe, which is more than she would be doing if you had not carried her out of that inferno.”

  “And Master Groal? What was he doing in there?”

  “Looking for you. You were spotted from the air.”

  “But he came alone,” Tyber said, raising an eyebrow and wincing at the pull of it on his singed skin.

  Ander let out a slight chuckle. “He is Master Groal. He is responsible for all of us in the academy, and none of us get to tell him that he is wrong.”

  Tyber opened his mouth to say something more about him, about how he got there, and what appeared to be a pair of wings, but the images were fuzzy and distorted, jumbled.

  Yet he clearly remembered the night on top of the academy. That had to have been Master Groal up there.

  Did he dare say anything? At best, he would simply sound crazy.

  His eyes dropped to the leather purse in his lap.

  Master Groal had given it to him. And his family needed the money now more than ever.

  He should definitely keep his mouth shut for now.

  “Look, I’m getting off track here,” Ander said. “If you want to talk about what happened last night, then come find me after you’re done visiting with your family. I’ll find something for us to drink and we can discuss it then. But the reason I wanted to talk to you before you see your family is to say that you have been released from our agreement. There’s your money. You are free to take it and leave, as long as you give me your word that you will no longer undermine the King’s laws. You can go home. You can help your family start over.”

  Tyber clutched the purse in his fist.

  “But you have a choice,” Ander continued. He pushed at his knees and stood.

  Tyber’s face clenched into a look of disgruntled annoyance before he could hide it, shove it aside.

  “What was that?” Ander asked.

  “What?”

  “That look.”

  Tyber shook his head and stared at the wooden floor between himself and the window.

  “You’re not free yet, Tyber. I asked you a question. I expect an answer.”

  Tyber looked back to Ander, but couldn’t say it and hold eye contact. He looked out to the courtyard, the dark, empty windows of the opposite wing staring back at him in the early afternoon sun. “I was just thinking about the city. My city. The one outside the gate.”

  “Go on,” Ander said.

  “I just get frustrated,” Tyber said as he turned back to Ander. “Why does the King allow this to happen? It’s hard to go out there to the garden, to walk through these halls and eat this food and live here like I’m some lord’s son, and sit out there in view of a palace built for one family and know that outside the wall, crowded like a bunch of clawing beggars, is my city. My family. The people I grew up with.”

  Ander nodded.

  “How many people died last night?” Tyber asked.

  Ander looked to the floor between them, shrugged, then looked back to Tyber. “Only the gods saw that.”

  Tyber took a deep breath as he recalled the sky, the darkness, as if he’d been abandoned and left only to Master Groal, the grandmother and her granddaughter. A coughing fit split his chest. He hacked into his fist before clutching the edge of the bunk and rocking lightly until his cough settled into a wheeze.

  “It could have been prevented,” Tyber said and looked up to Ander. “Those people didn’t have to die. We don’t live like that because we want to. We live like that because we have to.”

  Ander sat back on the edge of the bunk. It creaked with his weight, and he planted his elbows upon his knees again. “Don’t you think I know that? You were in my home. You know Erik and I came from the same place.”

  “How do you do it, then? You know what it’s like. How do you swear to protect a king who treats our people like he does? He puts up a wall and ignores the poorest of his people. He can’t see us. We’re invisible to him.”

  Ander spread his hands out before him and then flipped them over and let his wrists go limp as if he was tossing the topic to the floor. “I’m not going to argue with you, Tyber. I hear you. We can argue all day over the King’s policies toward his people, but the truth of the matter is that I’m not here to defend the King’s policies. I’m here to defend the people of Cadwaller. And if you truly care for the people of this kingdom, all of them, no matter which side of the wall they live on, then you will take a few moments to really consider what it is you do today.”

  Ander stood and motioned to the pouch in Tyber’s lap as he stepped out to the middle of the long, narrow room. “Like I said, you have satisfied your end of our agreement as far as I am concerned. You have your bonus, and you are free to leave with your family. But if you do that, if you walk away from here, then Tyber, you are no better than a king who will not change his ways to improve the lives of his people. You will walk out of here with enough money to find lodging and food for your family for a short while. I don’t wish to be macabre, but I believe the death toll from last night’s fire is large enough that employment inside the mother city will open up. You will find a job. You will likely find a good one, as I will hand out my recommendation to anyone who asks about you. But nothing will really change. You will still be working to provide for your family, and while that is a noble goal to be sure, your situation and your station in life will never change.”

  Tyber looked out the window again. An urge pushed at him to stand, walk to the window sill and peer down at the weyr doors, but he remained on the edge of his bunk.

  “If you truly wish to see this kingdom changed, Tyber—If you wish to change, then you must do something different. You cannot concern yourself with your family alone and—”

  “I’m only doing my best to look after them,” Tyber snapped.

  Ander took a deep breath, then folded his arms behind his back as he lifted his chin slightly. “No one is saying different, Tyber. If I am to get to the heart of the matter, then it is this: stay. Stay at the academy. There will be another bonus, a larger bonus, for those who complete the second trial. That is what you can tell your family if it makes it easier. But I want you to stay because the kingdom needs you. And when I say the kingdom, I mean its people. The people of the mother city and the Cadwaller kingdom need men like you, Tyber. I need you. It’s not enough to graduate men who can ride dragons, handle bows, and assert their will with a sword’s edge. I need men of courage who will stand up for what they believe in, yet are not so rigid that they can’t be educated.”

  Tyber looked at Ander. “Can’t be educated?”

  A slight grin passed over Ander’s face and then disappeared. “I’ve spoken to the other masters. You are a good student. You learn fast. But learning to read and recite lessons is not the heart of learning. The heart of learning is in being able to use the knowledge you gain. Can you take what you have learned and use it to change your life? Change the way you look at the world?”

  Tyber turned to the window again and thought of the world as it existed beneath Rius’ wings. He nodded.

  “Prove it to me,” Ander said. “Show me. Stand up for the people outside that window. I will have your answer by dinner time tonight. If I do not see you in the dining hall, then I hope to see you on the streets, but certainly not at the end of the royal guards’ ire.”

  Tyber nodded again but didn’t look away from the window.

  Silence filled the room, and in that silence, Tyber swor
e he could still hear the rushing of the flames, the roar of the fire as a distant commotion. He began to inhale deeply to search the air for smoke, but he quit before he sent his lungs into spasms. Despite having a bath, he couldn’t stop thinking that he smelled of ash himself as if he had been burnt away in the fire.

  “You deserve to be a hordesman, Ty,” Ander said quietly, sitting down next to Tyber and placing a hand on his shoulder. “You deserve the plentiful food and the soft bunk, the dragon’s-eye view of the world. You deserve the opportunity. You have not spent a day of your life thinking of yourself. When I first came to the academy, Master Gury reminded me that I was no good to anyone until I was good to myself. The horde is only as strong as its individual members, he said. The alpha does not ask that her dragons deny their own needs to see to hers. That is the wisdom of dragons. Whatever decision you make, keep that in mind.”

  “Why?” Tyber asked. “Why do you care so much about me?”

  “Because I was you, Ty. I didn’t have to take care of my family like you do, but I was on the same path. You remember how I was, quick with my fists and headed toward a life as a minor thug and petty criminal.” Ander stood, stretched his back and looked down at Tyber. “Until I got caught by a royal hordesman who gave me a choice—the academy or prison. And now I am here and have zero regrets. I see myself in you and want you to have the chance that was given to me.”

  “Where is he now, this hordesman? What’s his name?” Tyber asked. Ander’s story seemed very convenient, although it did ring of truth. Ander had bullied Erik constantly throughout their early days. Yet, as far as Tyber knew, Ander wasn’t a liar.

  “I wouldn’t lie to you, Ty,” Ander said as if reading Tyber’s mind. “His name is Karno. Last I heard of him, he is now a hordesman in the Aerona horde on the western edge of the kingdom. His horde was absorbed into Aerona’s horde when the royal alpha fell in battle.”

  “The dragon queen’s horde?” Tyber asked.

  “I’ll leave you to your decision making,” Ander said, ignoring Tyber’s question. He turned and walked to the door. The floor cracked with his sharp footfalls, and then the door snapped shut behind him.

  Tyber’s shoulders drooped as he looked down to the purse in his lap. Was this Master Groal’s way of buying his silence? But to what end? If he had told anyone that the Master of the King’s Royal Academy of Dragon Riders was a…

  A coughing fit shook Tyber. He shuddered and rocked. The purse slipped from his lap and hit the floor between his feet.

  Eventually, he calmed his aching lungs, his fiery throat, and his racing heart. He stood, then crouched and picked up the purse. He undid the leather tie, then dumped the contents onto his palm.

  Thirteen silver strips. He jostled them in his open hand, feeling their weight and heft. It wasn’t enough to replace their cottage, but it was enough to pay the rent on one for several months and still have money left over to feed his family.

  If this is what Master Groal had offered to buy his silence, then Tyber would take it. Who would believe him if he breathed a word of what he had seen anyway? The granddaughter, maybe. But the night had been dark and full of fire. Who was to say what they really saw and what the smoke tricked them into seeing? The only thing he knew for sure was that Master Groal had saved his life.

  Ander had consulted with Groal, and the Master wasn’t asking Tyber to leave. Surely the invitation for him to stay hadn’t been Ander’s alone.

  Tyber dumped the silver back into the purse and cinched it shut. After depositing it in his foot trunk, he went to the window. His fingers grasped the edge of the sill as he peered down at the weyr. He looked back to the door of the bunk room. His family was in the garden, waiting to see him. What would he tell them?

  Tyber took his time getting dressed. His jaw tightened as he thought of the faces of his brothers and sisters, his father and Fafa. After putting on his boots, he reached into his foot trunk, fished out the purse, and secured it to his belt with the leather lashings.

  With a pat against his tunic to make sure the purse was secure, he stepped up on the window sill and walked out along the ledge. At the first pole, he grabbed hold and stepped off the ledge as he raised his face to the blue sky strung with high, white clouds. He half expected to see Master Groal up there, above the parapets, staring down at him.

  There was no one, nothing watching him. He was on his own with this decision.

  Chapter 25

  To Tyber’s relief, the weyr was nearly empty when he entered. His fellow recruits were probably across the courtyard, boxed up in the auditorium, struggling to stay awake.

  The head weyrman looked up as Tyber entered. He appeared surprised for a second, but when no one else came in, he returned his attention to the saddle he was mending.

  As Tyber let himself into Rius’ stall, she lowered her head and began to sniff him, her muzzle nearly pressed into his chest as she inhaled deeply.

  “Do I still smell like smoke?” Tyber asked. He placed his hands on either side of her muzzle. She stopped sniffing and looked up at him, lifting her face until it was even with his, her long neck slightly arched in order to look him straight in the eye.

  Tyber inhaled deeply and felt as if he was being watched. He glanced over his shoulder in time to see the weyrman turn to the saddle.

  Tyber released Rius’ muzzle and lowered himself to the floor of the stall. Rius laid down.

  “Look,” Tyber said as he stared into Rius’ dark eyes, “I have a decision to make.”

  Rius blinked.

  Tyber nearly chuckled. “And I guess the first decision is whether talking to a dragon means I’m crazy.”

  Rius lifted her wings slightly, then settled them against her back. She shifted her weight, and her tail came round her body and curled before herself. She appeared to be making herself comfortable, as if settling in to listen, and suddenly Tyber didn’t feel awkward or silly for speaking to her.

  He ran his hands over the stubble of his hair. It felt gritty to him, and as he pulled his hands away, he peered at his palms expecting to find ash. There was none.

  His hands fell to his lap.

  Rius extended her neck until the tip of her muzzle was nearly over Tyber’s hands. He patted her head and scratched beneath her jaw.

  “I got the silver. The bonus, you know. That fire last night,” he said, his voice low, barely over a whisper. “Ander says that… He says that I have proven myself. That I could pass the first trial no problem, and that as far as he’s concerned, I’ve kept my end of the bargain. I’m free to go.”

  The weight of Rius’ head increased as her neck relaxed. Tyber stopped scratching under her jaw and instead let the head of the great beast rest on his palm.

  “My family lost everything. But Ander says they’re all right. They’re out in the garden, waiting for me.”

  Tyber leaned forward slightly. His face inched closer to Rius’ muzzle. “I have to tell them what I’m going to do.”

  The dragon’s head grew heavier still until he was forced to use both hands to hold it, one on either side of her jaw. Her eyes looked away from his, down to his chest, to the red stripe that crossed it like a slash, a scarlet scar.

  He looked down at the red sash woven into the fabric. The stripe bisected his heart. Was it merely an adornment, or was it symbolic? Placed there on purpose by those who had designed the uniforms? A symbol of the hordesman’s heart—half for himself, half for his dragon.

  Tyber looked at the dragon’s face. She puffed out a small burst of air and raised her eyes to his again, holding his gaze. His eyes grew heavy, wet, as if the smoke from the fire still stung them. His shoulders slumped with the weight of an impossible goodbye.

  He took a deep breath of his own, then applied some gentle pressure to the dragon’s muzzle, lifted her face up slightly to be more even with his own.

  “Last night, I swore… I thought I was going to die. And for a brief second, I thought I was all right with that. The fire behind me
was so big. I could tell my home was gone… and it seemed so big, all that fire, that I couldn’t even imagine that anyone could escape it, let alone my family. I thought for sure they had all died. That there was nothing left—”

  Tyber’s jaw clicked shut. His fingers curled tighter around the dragon’s jaw. She lifted her head a slight bit more until the tip of her muzzle nearly touched the tip of his nose.

  He shook his head. “I know. I know. Stupid of me. But it wasn’t until Ander said that they were waiting for me in the garden that… I don’t know how to explain it. And that’s the problem, see? That’s the problem with us. With you and me. Ander said I had to be open, that I had to be open with you for us to imprint, but I... It scares me, Rius. To be perfectly honest, it scares me.”

  Tyber took a deep breath.

  Rius’ muzzle touched the tip of his nose, then backed away a tiny fraction. Tyber lowered his brow until it rested against the dragon’s muzzle. He rubbed at her jaw, then lifted his head and stared into her eyes. “It’s the dumbest thing ever, but to be perfectly honest with you, it scares me because here I am. I work so hard to help my father feed the family and keep a roof over everyone’s heads, and I feel like it’s never enough. I’m always trying hard all the time to make sure everyone gets enough. And it wears me out. I’m exhausted. And I thought that it was enough. I thought it was good enough to spend my life making sure my family got what they needed to survive. But when Ander told me… When he said…”

  Tyber looked away and raised a sleeve to wipe over his eyes. He stared at the wall of the stall before him, and it seemed as if it was the first wall he had encountered in the mother city that wasn’t tall enough.

  “Sorry,” Tyber said with a shake of his head as he turned back to Rius. “When he said that they were fine. It struck me that they… By the wilds, Rius. They got by without me. They didn’t need me at all. They escaped a fire that leveled our neighborhood, and they didn’t need me at all.”

  Rius let out a short puff of air that tickled as it washed over Tyber’s neck.