House of Dragons

by Jessica Cluess

  Vespir’s nostrils flared. “I know what a put-waste-here marker looks like. It’s standard in every aerie stall. It lets the handlers know where to sweep all the dragon dung.” She blinked. “Have none of you ever cleaned out your own dragon’s stall before?”

  The room filled with awkward silence. Lucian scratched the back of his neck; he’d never looked after Tyche’s basic needs, not even during campaign.

  Vespir appeared disgusted.

  “So, now we need to clean out some shit? This is officially the worst treasure hunt ever,” Ajax muttered. “I vote we go back to the parlor and drink wine until they fix the doorway. Who’s with me?”

  “I’ve no objection to the wine,” Hyperia growled, “though I’d rather miss out on your company.” But Lucian noticed the relief seeping into her voice. She believed that this was all some shared fear that they’d witnessed together in the doorway of Truth. And really, he found he hoped for the same thing. It would certainly be less frightening than a cryptic warning.

  “So that’s it?” Vespir looked around in bewilderment. “We’re all into this until it involves your dragons?”

  “No, until it involves their shit,” Ajax clarified.

  But Vespir would not be moved. “Well, I’m going to look in the aerie. If I have to deal with dragon shit, that’s just another normal day for me.”

  The girl left without any shred of deference. Emilia put a finger to her lips.

  “That was different,” she murmured.

  “Different, but not bad.” Lucian hated to think of Vespir shoveling out the aerie stalls on her own, even if he was now halfway convinced there was nothing to find. “One last stop. If there’s nothing there, we end this. Anyone with me?”

  “I’ll go,” Emilia said at once.

  “I suppose,” Hyperia muttered. “I do hate to leave anything unfinished.”

  “And then the wine. Okay?” Ajax said.

  Never even cleaned up after their dragons. Vespir kept her rude opinions to herself—or at least muttered them under her breath—while she inspected Karina’s stall.

  Her dragon hopped down from her perch when Vespir entered and nudged at the back of the girl’s neck while she shoveled the waste from one corner to another. Vespir coughed; this was never the most pleasant part of her job. Dragon aeries smelled like no other place on earth. Sulfuric, with that rotten-egg element that took a while to get used to. But then there was the fragrance of the rosehip ointment for their wings, and the warm campfire smell of their breath. The musk of the straw, the citrus of the polish used on their claws, the pine tree sap treatment of their tack.

  The imperial aerie was located at the tip of the palace’s landing area, a gigantic, egg-shaped dome with the very top snipped off, providing an unbarred look into the sky beyond. The dragons could fly in and out through that opening. For people, there was a wooden door on the southern wall. The whole circular chamber was built of cool gray stone, and every dragon’s stall had plenty of room. There was enough space here to house ten dragons comfortably.

  “And their riders are all too important to muck out a stall,” she grumbled to Karina, who nipped at Vespir’s hair. Even Antonia had learned, under Vespir’s guidance.

  Vespir used a rake and a wicker broom to clear the floor and saw the standard marker.

  Nothing looked different or special about it.

  “Sorry, girl,” she breathed, sweeping the waste back in its proper place. She’d just dirtied the floor and made life harder for the imperial handlers, whoever and wherever they might be. Vespir frowned. Slackers. If she could take over this place, she’d have the aerie well run in no time. She edged out past Karina, pushed the tarp curtain aside, and took a deep breath of fresher air.

  In addition to the five competitors’ dragons, the priests’ dragons also dwelled in the aerie. A Wyvern and an Aspis, Vespir had managed to get inside and examine their areas. Nothing. Wiping the back of her hand across her brow, Vespir laid the tools against the wall.

  “Nothing?”

  A giant gawp from one stall, and Ajax staggered out backward before falling onto his ass. Dog poked his head through the opening, his forked tongue hanging out the side of his mouth as he panted.

  “I said no, Dog! No playtime!” Ajax stood, dusting himself off. “Damn dragon wants to snuggle.”

  “Why wouldn’t you?” Vespir stretched out her hand, and Dog nudged at her palm. She petted him between his nostrils. “He’s just a big, precious baby.”

  “I didn’t see the mark under all his crap.” Ajax crossed his arms as Lucian and Emilia emerged from their respective stalls.

  “Nothing,” Lucian said with a shrug.

  “Nothing,” Emilia echoed. She appeared rather sheepish. “Perhaps I was mistaken.”

  “Well, what about Hyperia?” Vespir shouldn’t have taken this personally, but the sight of them giving up…

  Why, because they had to stoop down to the level of a handler and clean out dragon shit? Because now it was too hard?

  Or…was it because Vespir longed to discover a reason for being called? It would be nice if her life—and death—had some meaning.

  “Vespir.” Hyperia’s voice came from behind her dragon’s tarp. “I need your help.”

  Hyperia’s admission of weakness stopped everyone cold. Vespir pulled back the curtain and found Hyperia with a pitchfork in her hands, the rake and wicker broom leaning to the side of Aufidius’s stall. The golden Hydra snarled when he saw Vespir, and his tail, wrapped serpentlike around the dragon’s taloned feet, began to unwind. The bull was ready to lash out. Vespir swallowed, her throat dry.

  “What?” she whispered.

  “He won’t let me inspect his area. I need you to distract him.”

  “Maybe we should just say we checked them all,” Ajax muttered.

  “Okay.” Vespir turned to the side, her head down, and gazed at Aufidius out of the corner of her eye. “Here, boy. It’s all right.” Slowly, Vespir raised her right arm to shoulder level, inviting the bull to take a sniff. Aufidius’s obsidian eyes glinted as he unwound his tail and took one, then two shuffling steps forward. Scrape, drag, scrape, drag went his claws. His guttural growl weakened her knees as he stretched out his head to sniff Vespir’s hand.

  If he rejected her, he could bite her arm clean off.

  “Please hurry,” she muttered, watching Hyperia shuffle around to the back of her dragon. It was a miracle, really, that the Volscia girl was doing this just to search for something that might not even be there. A noble usually had the luxury of sending others to do the dirty work. Then again, if Hyperia had ever wanted anything, it was the truth.

  Bitterness swirled in Vespir’s gut, along with a keen admiration of the Volscia girl’s bravery.

  Aufidius bared his sharp white teeth and snapped. Vespir jumped but kept her arm outstretched. The heat against her knuckles, then, the velvet-paper bump of scales against her hand. Fingers trembling, she touched Aufidius lightly on his snout.

  “I did it,” she breathed.

  Aufidius lunged forward, and it was a miracle that Vespir managed to fling herself away before he bit. The Hydra snarled, tail curling once again around his feet, the end of it flicking like a whip. Lucian grabbed Vespir, pulling her back, his arm around her waist. Emilia knelt by her side, face white with shock.

  “I’ve never seen a dragon do that.” Her voice wavered.

  “He’s feral.” Vespir wanted to call Aufidius what he truly was: a pit worm; an unbridled, wild monster. It didn’t matter that he and Hyperia shared a bond.

  Well, maybe it did. Maybe it explained everything.

  “There’s something here!” The Volscia girl sounded numb. “I don’t believe it.”

  “Seriously?” Ajax bounded ahead, skidding to a halt before Aufidius. “What?”

  “It’s a door i
n the floor. It’s been painted over to look like stone, but…I think it’s a plaster facade. There’s a keyhole in the symbol. I think it’s locked. No.” A moment later. “It is locked.”

  “Is there any chance it’s some kind of storage unit?” Emilia asked Vespir. The Aurun girl began to chew on her thumbnail. “Perhaps a place to dump the waste?”

  “No. We keep tack and supplies in cupboards, and the waste chute’s by the front door. A handler would never keep one in a single stall, or locked.” Vespir’s mind worked to find a logical explanation. Maybe it was an extra entrance for staff? But why? And why disguise it?

  She got up and began to search the rest of the aerie, looking for some type of key on the tack hooks and in the cupboards. But there was no key.

  “How do we get in?” Ajax muttered as Hyperia left the stall. “I don’t feel like hanging out with Aufidius while we try a bunch of different ideas.”

  “Maybe the images are supposed to help us,” Emilia said. She gazed up at the ceiling with a faraway look in her eyes. Her lips moved, shaping her thoughts noiselessly. “I’ll go to the library and see if I can discern anything from Erasmus’s old writings. He was fairly prolific.” Vespir wasn’t quite sure what old, dusty volumes of philosophy had to do with all this, but then again, she didn’t think Emilia was the world’s most practical person. “Hyperia should stay and see if there’s any other way in, since she’s the only one who can get past Aufidius. Lucian?”

  “I can find Rufus again, see if he knows anything. He’s worked at the palace for a while now.”

  “Good. Ajax, you should—”

  “I’m headed back to the throne room,” the blond boy said.

  “You won’t be able to get in.” Lucian sounded annoyed.

  “I’m way past doors at this point. Remember?”

  “Fine,” Emilia said. “Vespir, you should…” She paused, clearly trying to think of something. “Can you speak with the handlers? But don’t ask outright about a key. For now, I think we should keep the door as secret as possible.”

  “If they’ve been in there, they probably know about it,” Vespir offered, but Hyperia seemed less sure.

  “The plaster looks exactly like the surrounding stone, and the keyhole was carved into the symbol itself. If I hadn’t been looking for it, I wouldn’t have noticed. Someone worked hard to disguise it.” If Hyperia of the Volscia was prepared to turn conspirator, they must all be onto something.

  “All right.” Vespir sighed. “I’ll go talk to the servants.”

  As they left the aerie on their separate missions, she considered how fitting their roles were: Ajax to intrigue, Emilia to books, Lucian to soldiers, Hyperia to her monster, and Vespir to servants.

  It was all that could be expected of her.

  Emilia had not felt this comfortable since before the Trial began. She sat in the imperial library, at a long table with the soft glow of candlelight to guide her reading. The moss-green carpet was lush under her shoes. Two cream silk-upholstered chairs with wooden feet carved to look like dragon talons hunched before the fireplace. The smell of moth and vellum lay heavy in this library, the scent so comforting she would have worn it as perfume.

  Emilia perused Imperatoria, Emperor Erasmus’s musings on the worthiness of an empire, the book she’d received upon winning the Game. Emilia would have loved to just read the book cover to cover, but the others were counting on her to find…something. What, she did not know. She had gone on this mission based on a sensation in her gut. “Hunch,” her brother would call it. The others were counting on her.

  Lucian was counting on her.

  At the thought of him, Emilia felt a tickle somewhere beneath her left rib cage and down the back of her neck. She quickly focused her energy on a flower; she’d gathered a hasty bouquet from the garden in case of an outburst. A twitch of her eyelid, and the flower crystallized. She picked it up. A petal, now sharpened, pricked her thumb, and she dropped it with a curse.

  Things were changing, weren’t they? These past few days, her headaches had begun to abate. Her panic had slowed. Maybe it was all the fresh air. Maybe it was sitting with Lucian and the others, drinking, sometimes laughing, now working together.

  What if solitude had been the worst possible medicine? Perhaps isolation had sharpened her affliction.

  There is so much we don’t know. Emilia couldn’t help the pang of regret. Once, there had been the crystal chaos towers in Catalenia, a library made of glass that had contained the studies of chaotics across history.

  A library that had been smashed, and all its volumes burned, when the chaos nation was defeated. Emilia’s existence was an amalgamation of questions, and anyone who could have answered was a thousand years gone. She frowned as she read. Was she wasting her time?

  No. If they wanted to survive the priests, knowledge and power might be the only way out. And Emilia, more than any of the others, had knowledge and power to spare.

  She could imagine Lucian regarding her with awe as the walls crumbled about them, and she forced the group’s way past those simpering priests. He had sworn never to harm another soul. His rough hands were gentle now; the scars on his body would never let him forget. They’d both endured so much since they’d parted five years ago. And Lucian, tall and battle worn as he was, had kept the most important pieces of himself intact. Still trusting. Still brave. Still kind to her; the kindest person she’d ever known, besides her brother. She thought of Lucian watching her unleash her power, imagined his look of horror at her freakishness. Emilia was evil. Born evil. As she felt the creep of chaos, a march of ants along the fissures of her brain, another flower shriveled and died.

  “How are you doing?” Hyperia asked.

  Emilia screamed, slamming the book shut and jumping to her feet.

  She only just managed to suppress her power, imagining it as a stack of china cups teetering in her hand. The Volscia girl appeared bewildered at the outburst.

  “Er, you startled me. No luck with the door?”

  She brushed the dead flower to the carpet as Hyperia took a seat.

  “We need the key.” Even in private, Hyperia sat on the edge of her chair, as if waiting for an order. She scanned Emilia’s book with a distasteful expression. “I fail to see how Erasmus’s teachings will help.”

  “We all saw the emperor in that vision.” Emilia tucked a strand of hair behind her ear; Hyperia’s appraisal made her shy. “When you get to know a person, you can start anticipating how they’ll act. His books are the only real chance we have to understand him.”

  “It seems like our time would be better spent finding the key.”

  Emilia felt a small flame of anger. “Books can teach you how to make a key.”

  “But you only like philosophy, it seems. Thinking about thinking.” Hyperia scoffed. “Waste of time.”

  “Thinking makes us human,” Emilia said. “There’s also history and theory; those are important for an empress. Who won and lost the great battles? And why? The fight against the Oretani, for example.” She swallowed; chaos prickled her skin. She must be careful. “I’ve read histories that declare he and his chaotic followers had the eyes of wolves in human faces, and that to awaken the static chaos nation requires the sacrifice of a noble heart’s blood.”

  “Stories. Lies.” Hyperia’s nostrils flared. “I hate lies.”

  We’ve all noticed.

  “Just because something hasn’t been proven doesn’t mean it’s a lie.” Emilia fought against a smile. “Besides, there’s power in stories. Did you ever hear of Emperor Tiberius the Fifth?”

  “Of course.”

  “How did he die?”

  “He passed away in his sleep, after a well-earned victory and a hearty meal.” Hyperia sniffed. “Dull fact.”

  “Not according to Plautus’s Secret History of the Empire. According to him,
the emperor loved honey and banana puddings. He ate so many that he needed to use the bathroom, pulled up his robes, and…” Emilia fought not to laugh, her stomach cramping with effort. “They found him dead in the morning. He was so stopped up, he’d had a heart attack trying to relieve himself.”

  Hyperia looked as if she’d been slapped.

  “That is obscene! He was an emperor, anointed by the Dragon Himself!”

  “He was.” Emilia couldn’t stop the giggles now. “But he also really, really loved pudding.”

  To her surprise, Hyperia’s own lips began to twitch.

  “Not funny,” she said fiercely. The sight of Hyperia struggling so valiantly not to laugh made Emilia laugh harder, and soon the sight of her howling broke Hyperia as well. Hyperia clapped her hands over her mouth, and Emilia leaned so far back she nearly knocked her chair over. Wiping her eyes, Hyperia groaned.

  “That’s not actually true, is it?”

  “No one knows for sure. But you’ll never think of Tiberius the Fifth in quite the same way again, will you?” Emilia shrugged. “That’s power.”

  “You’re confusing.” Hyperia sighed. “Of everyone here, I understand you the least.”

  “Likewise.” Emilia could anticipate Hyperia, much like she could anticipate how a lioness would hunt its quarry. But what went through the animal’s mind? Emilia would never be able to guess.

  “But I certainly don’t like you least.” Hyperia adopted that unnerving stillness. “Would you say the same about me?”

  Emilia was smart enough not to voice her opinion, but not quick enough to decide what to say in its place.

  “I…”

  “It’s fine.” Hyperia gave a brisk nod. “I admire your honesty.” She seemed truly pleased.

  Emilia opened Erasmus’s book again. She found her place and was about to flip to the next page when something caught her eye. She frowned, leaned nearer.

  “What?” Hyperia muttered.

  “This note in the margin. This was the emperor’s personal copy.” The emperor had underscored a passage about the concept of “infinite cruelty.” In the margin, he’d written: Cont’d in vol. 24.