House of Dragons

by Jessica Cluess

  Now, even if—even when—he won the Trial and became Alexander Sarkonus, Dragon Emperor of Etrusia, he would never be her brother again. They’d see each other twice a year, at the midwinter festival and during the annual congregation of the five families. No more private jokes. No more morning flights. No more companionship.

  Loneliness was a starched gown in which Emilia could never grow comfortable.

  Tears blurred her vision. Alex squeezed her hand.

  “I won’t forget you,” he said.

  She rested her head against his shoulder as the family’s four dragons landed out of the sky to stand directly behind their riders, wings settling in anticipation of “the call.” No one here had ever seen a calling before. Emperor Erasmus had died yesterday at age sixty-six, and had gained the throne at twenty. Emilia almost wished she could go along as a witness. There would be great research in it. Unfortunately, emperors were forbidden from speaking outright of what they experienced in the Trial. All the information Emilia and Alex gleaned had taken countless hours of cross-referencing different books, letters, even tax records.

  As for the other competitors, there was no worry they’d share any secrets. The losers faced the Cut—and Emilia shuddered to think of that fate. Please, don’t let it happen to Alex.

  As the noon sun struck the stones and the family awaited the call, Emilia nestled inside her own head, a poisonous paradise. Her brain was the source of all her pain and delight. She hadn’t seen anyone her own age in five years, apart from Alex. Once he was gone, she’d likely be alone forever. As the younger child, she’d been expected to marry and bear children to carry on the Aurun name, but how could she ever get close to a man without fear of splintering his bones or rupturing his kidneys? So she lived in dreams populated by phantom friends. Sometimes her imagination was a balm; sometimes it burned like acid, a reminder of what she could never have.

  Through the haze of her thoughts, she heard someone shout her name.

  “Emilia!” Alex gripped her shoulders, spun her to face forward. “Look.”

  Chara waited on the granite slab, her ruby eyes trained on Emilia. It was so jarringly wrong, like watching the sun rise in the evening, that Emilia didn’t understand what had happened…until she did.

  Chara had been called. Not Tarkus.

  Not Alexander. Which meant…

  “Chara, get down from there!” Emilia flung herself at the dragon, panic clawing up her spine. No. No, no, she couldn’t be called. She was second-born. She was chaotic! She would lose. She would be Cut. “What do I do?” she yelled at her family. Yanking on Chara’s bridle, Emilia looked the dragon in her shimmering red eyes. “Why are you doing this?”

  Her dragon, the only creature in this world she loved as dearly as her brother, pressed her face against Emilia’s body, over her hammering heart. Chara gave a deep sigh, her wings expanding. That reverberation that existed only between a dragon and its rider rippled through Emilia’s blood and marrow. Emilia knew, as sure as if the dragon had spoken, that this was a natural thing. Some invisible force had called for Chara, and the answer could not be no.

  “I have to go.” Emilia could scarce hear her own voice through the blood pounding in her ears. Every hair on her body stood on end. She could feel the warmth filling her, like liquid. Power. Magic. Her fears. The chaos itched forward, screaming to be let out.

  Her father’s hand roughly pulled her backward by the hood of her cloak.

  “No!” He was shouting at her mother. “They’ll know we lied!”

  Emilia tumbled to the ground, the magic within her spilling over. Anger squeezed the sides of her head, her jaw locked, and in the space between heartbeats she looked at one of the stones standing opposite her—she felt the thread of connection between herself and the stone. The fissures of her mind kindled, and magic surged.

  The stone exploded in a shower of sharp fragments. The boom resonated through the air, echoing across the cliffs and out to the sea. Her mother screamed and recoiled. Oh no. Blood.

  “I’m all right,” her mother said, but her face was ashen. Her cheek had been cut. Destruction was Emilia’s gift, and she couldn’t hide it.

  Now she’d be forced to compete with others. Monitored and scrutinized, how could she keep her magic at bay, let alone vie for an empire?

  She couldn’t. And if she didn’t go right now, then the Cut…

  Alex was by her side. He helped her stand and led her to Chara, giving a tight smile as he lifted her onto the dragon’s saddle; only the tremor of his hands revealed his fear. “Long live the empress Emilia Sarkona,” he said, and winked. He slipped the satchel of research back into her saddlebag.

  Emilia settled on her seat, skirts rucked up around her waist—this was why a rider always wore breeches underneath her gown. Her feet slid into the stirrups, and she risked falling off her mount as she bent over and buried her face in Alex’s shoulder one last time. He stroked her hair and stepped away. With a surge of wings, Chara rose, the circle and her parents and her brother diminishing in size until they looked no more than dolls.

  Emilia felt numb as her dragon turned south and flew away from the Hibrian Isles, away from their rocky shores and green fields and sunless skies. Her shoulders ached with tension. Her head was bowed, her wind-whipped hair catching in her mouth. Where was she going? Only Chara knew now, answering a call inaudible to human ears.

  How many years had she dreamed of breaking free from this place? How stupid she’d been. There were worse things than prison.

  She’d seen them firsthand.

  What am I going to do? Emilia thought. She pressed her knee against Chara—and felt the bulge in her saddlebag. The books. All those years of study and preparation in her hands.

  Emilia’s thoughts turned.

  If they knew what she was, she’d be mutilated. Tortured. Killed.

  But if she could somehow conceal herself…

  What was she going to do? The whisper of an idea tickled her mind.

  Why not try to win?

  When Lucian took a dagger to his braid, he was no longer of the Sabel family. Pride surged as he sliced. Burning the tail of black hair in a silver bowl, he felt free for the first time in four years. Since his first campaign.

  “You’d understand,” he said to the dead woman. Her picture hung in the center of the shrine, warmed by candlelight and framed in ribbons of incense. Karthago honored the dead as invisible protectors in the world beyond, their portraits set in ebony wood and surrounded by clouds of jasmine and white roses. One always prayed to a family guardian before undertaking a journey. Lucian’s flight to join the Sacred Brothers would be his last. The great temple at Delphos was the seat of the orderly arts in the Etrusian Empire. It was where orderly magosi came to pray and practice, where acolytes from every walk of life studied in hopes of putting on the satin robes of the priesthood, and where the Sacred Brothers took vows of poverty and looked after the temple, its grounds, and the poor who came begging to the seat of order’s power. Lucian would live a simple life now. He’d never return to Karthago or the campaigns.

  He believed such a choice would have pleased the woman in this shrine. She beamed down at him, the shape of her eyes and face so like his. Her hair, too, had been black—though his was now much shorter and bristled unevenly where he’d hacked it off. Still, where he was going he’d never look into a mirror again. Fine by him. He didn’t relish seeing the face of a killer every morning.

  “You’d understand, Mother,” he repeated.

  “No. She wouldn’t,” a cold voice behind him said. He turned to find his sister, Dido, studying him, one hand playing along the bejeweled hilt of a dagger at her side. She’d wanted to plunge it into his heart for years.

  “Come for a final sparring match, Di? You should save your strength for the Trial.” Lucian stood and walked side by side with his twin, thei
r boots echoing along the marble corridors.

  “I could beat you in under five minutes. Don’t pretend to be some intense workout.” She glared at him, her eyes the same copper color as his.

  “Do you really want the last conversation we ever have to be full of insults?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  They both fell silent. Resentful brooding had always been more their style. Guards in livery embroidered with the blue Drake—House Sabel’s personal dragon—stood at attention on either side of the hall, silver shields and spears at the ready. To the right, through the tall marble arches, Lucian looked down at the sparkling curve of the bay. The Sabel palace, the most splendid building in the entire capital of Antoninus, stood in plain sight of the great marketplace, the beating heart of Karthagon trade. Anything and everything you could want waited down there, and every price could be negotiated. Dates, spices, oils, bolts of crimson silk, blooms of white chrysanthemums, Masarian pottery, caged tigers, piles of oranges and barrels of wine: all for sale. Lucian recalled running through the labyrinth of stalls as a child with Dido chasing him, watching the colorful silk awnings balloon in the wind like a ship’s sails. “The sun is a lemon,” Dido had said with a giggle, squinting into the bright horizon. “Its juice stings my eyes.” He’d taken off his cap to offer her shade, back when he and his twin had loved each other.

  “Do you remember when we were little?” he asked.

  Dido set her jaw.

  “Yes.” She sighed. “But I don’t want to.”

  Lucian nodded. “That’s one thing we have in common, at least.”

  * * *

  The calling circle was at the heart of the palace, an open-air arena ringed by creamy blocks of sandstone. The first Sabel ruler of Karthago, Gaius, had carved water lilies into the stones. Legend said he’d done it to honor his queen, Ayzebel, the Flower of War. When the empire had expanded to Karthago’s shores, Gaius arrived on the back of his fiery dragon, prepared for battle. Ayzebel, the dark-eyed ruler, sailed out to meet him with a thousand ships. In her lap, she carried her sword and a freshly plucked lily beaded with dew. She gave Gaius a choice: the sword or the lily. War or her.

  The great conqueror looked at the warrior queen and was conquered in turn. Since then, the Sabel family had taken Karthagon customs and mates as their own. It was said that love ruled the Sabel men.

  These were stories that victors made up to add a romantic sheen to their conquest. You could have as much fire and blood as you liked, so long as you followed it up with a wedding.

  Lucian and Dido found their father in the ring, with their dragons perched and waiting for the call. When Lucian whistled, his dragon, Tyche, unfurled her wings and puffed out her chest. She was beautiful, the marbled black-and-blue color of all purebred Drakes. She shook out her triangular head with its tapering jaw. The electric-blue fringe along the ridges of her eyes expanded like ruffled feathers. Lucian couldn’t go to her yet; first, there was his father.

  “My children.” Lord Hector Sabel embraced Lucian and Dido both. His kiss on Lucian’s cheek was gentle, but Lucian felt it like a wound. It was hard to hate a man with such sad eyes. “I’m losing you.”

  Indeed. Dido to the Trial, and Lucian to the temple. He was lucky that his sister was firstborn. He shuddered to think if their positions had been reversed.

  Hector frowned and glared when he took a good look at Lucian’s shorn hair. Lucian couldn’t help but wince in reply. Once Dido was empress—and she would be, unless the Volscia heir proved as dangerous as rumor suggested—she’d be sterilized per imperial requirements. No emperor or empress could have children who might attempt to claim succession. Lucian, meanwhile, would spend the rest of his life growing vegetables and spinning wool.

  If that was the price he paid for ending the cursed Sabel line, so much the better. Soon, he’d find peace in rising before dawn, sweeping the temple floors, and feeding the hungry. Lucian imagined lines of ragged people flocking to him for help. He’d feed them, bind their wounds, comfort them in illness. It was too good a life for the likes of him, but he craved it.

  Soon.

  “My victory will be yours, Father. And the family’s.” Dido gave a stiff, military-grade bow. If the Sabels knew anything, it was war. She glared at Lucian; her irate expression was so like their father’s. She and Hector really were similar. While both twins had the same eyes and brown skin, Dido had also gotten the pointed jaw, the braid of coppery hair—a true Sabel wore their hair long, a demonstration of their strength and power. She was a true Sabel, while Lucian took after his mother in all the ways that mattered.

  “Ah yes. The family. Nothing’s more important than that.” Lucian’s gut roiled as he strode to stand before Tyche. She nudged his back with her nose, her breath hot on his neck. He stroked her snout, taking comfort from her presence. The sooner this was over, the better. Then he’d remove the royal-blue Sabel colors and don a homespun gray cassock.

  He’d be free.

  Dido stood to the right with her dragon, and his father to the left. They waited patiently as the sun hit its zenith in the sky, burning the shadows away. Sweat trickled down the back of Lucian’s neck as he watched his sister’s dragon, Hamilcar. The beast merely shuffled on its great stone perch and bobbed its head. Come on. Move. If Lucian didn’t set out soon, he wouldn’t make the temple by nightfall.

  Behind him, Tyche gave a strange, trilling coo. She lifted off her perch with a leathery flap of wings. Lucian stared as her shadow flitted across the sandy ground, following her all the way to the center of the circle. As the blood drained from his face and as his legs grew heavy, he watched Tyche settle upon a slab of stone and fold her wings. She looked at him expectantly, her gold serpent’s eyes attentive.

  Come along, she seemed to say. I’m waiting.

  She—and Lucian—had been called. Had any younger child of the Sabel house ever been called before? Maybe he should’ve spent more time studying the family history and less time hating it.

  Maybe he should’ve jumped on Tyche’s back directly after cutting his hair and taken off.

  “What?” Dido’s voice was an incredulous slap. She stormed toward him, hands fisted at her sides. “What in the black depths did you do, you idiot?”

  Lucian’s frozen shock melted.

  “You think I want this? That I cut my hair for the fun of it?” He met her in the center of the arena, where she bared her teeth and thrust her face into his.

  “You’ll embarrass us more than you already have!”

  Lucian pictured dragonfire melting fields of ice. Blood smoking on snow. His tears freezing on his cheeks as his sister scowled at him. Ashamed of tears spilled, not blood shed.

  Lucian narrowed his eyes. “Our family’s the embarrassment, sis.”

  With a grunt, she threw a punch and snapped his head to the left. Lucian took a knee, his jaw throbbing as he laughed. “Good. Real empress material.” He glared at an incensed Dido. “Take your dragon and fly to the Trial. I don’t want the honor.”

  “You can’t refuse.” Hector arrived, breathless. “The call, once heard, can’t be resisted. If Tyche arrives at the Trial without you…”

  Lucian’s stomach soured. The Cut. Refusal of the call led to automatic disqualification. Maybe he should refuse to go—a monster such as he deserved oblivion.

  But Lucian was too much of a wretched coward. He pounded his fist to the ground once, twice. “I was so close,” he growled.

  Dido swore colorfully as Lucian stood.

  “Here.” Hector unbuckled the sword at his hip. “The sword of Gaius Sabel. Let it bring you luck.”

  The longsword lay sheathed in a golden scabbard. Lucian pulled the blade free with a clean hiss of steel. Sunlight fired the rich rubies and cabochon emeralds inlaid in the hilt. It was a sword forged for empires and emperors.

  And Lucian, whose blood
y skill with the weapon surpassed even Dido’s, was to be its new keeper.

  Hector clasped Dido’s shoulder. She looked murderous, but his father beamed. Lucian realized with horror that Hector now had what he’d truly wanted: a child to compete, and a child to govern Karthago and rear Sabel children. Thanks to this calling, the Sabel line would extend another fifteen hundred years. More children. More soldiers. More bloodshed.

  How many had already died at the edge of Lucian’s blade?

  Lucian carried the sword to his dragon. Tyche extended her long neck in curiosity as he threw the weapon down at her taloned feet, kicking up a cloud of dust. Pointing at it, he said, “Tyche. Fire.”

  The dragon breathed a stream of white-hot flame, melting the sword on the instant.

  Through the shimmering wall of heat, Lucian saw the distorted faces of his father and sister—Hector collapsed with a scream, Dido holding on to him. When Tyche finished, the sand where she’d breathed was fused into a sparkling circle of glass. The sword’s blade ran in red, molten rivulets, its handle gone, the rubies and emeralds cracked and smoking. As Hector wailed, Lucian swung into Tyche’s saddle.

  From this day until his last, he swore he would never again take up a sword, never raise his hand to another living creature.

  Dido stumbled around the sword’s wreckage and over to him, hateful tears in her eyes.

  “Bastard,” she hissed. “You bastard.”

  Lucian closed his eyes.

  “If only I were,” he whispered as Tyche lifted off.

  Vespir had served faceless people since she was twelve years old. In the Ikrayina territories, commoners were forbidden from looking on the faces of the nobility. The lady Valeria Pentri, long-ago conqueror, had started that system. To look in the eyes of a highborn was to lose your own, as Vespir’s grandmother had often grumbled.