Fireborne

by Rosaria Munda

  “I take it back,” Power says easily, spreading his hands in surrender.

  Aela’s startled anger is quivering in time with my own like a sustained, high-pitched note.

  “We’re done talking.”

  “Sure, sure—”

  “We’re done.”

  His words eat at me in the silence that follows.

  The day after our patrol, I receive a memo from the ministry, summoning me to the office of Miranda Hane. My walk to the Inner Palace is spent trying to calm an elevated heartrate. This is it. That memo I ignored before the Fourth Order, the morale visit lists my name has been absent from—this is when I face the person behind it. The Minister of Propaganda.

  Still seething from Power’s insinuations, I’m almost relieved for this change. Here, at least, is something I can face.

  “Antigone, hello. Thank you for coming.”

  Miranda Hane has risen and, to my surprise, is smiling. The Ministry of Propaganda is the only ministry headed by a woman, and my first thought, meeting her, is of Skyfish ladies from the dragonborn tapestries. She has the same warm brown complexion, regal posture, and dark curls framing a clear gaze—although unlike the ladies of those tapestries, Hane wears trousers and her hair is cropped chin-length. Behind her, a floor-to-ceiling window overlooks the Firemouth, lined with potted plants that diffuse the sunlight.

  There’s stiffness in my arms and fingers that have nothing to do with tournament injuries, and I find myself unsure where to place my hands—at my sides? in my pockets? Hane extends her own hand and I realize, belatedly, that she expects me to shake it. Like we’re adult males.

  “Please sit.”

  After I’ve taken a seat across from her—on the edge of it, because I can’t make my body relax—she studies me from under dark eyebrows. I remind myself to sit straighter; I realize that my arms are crossed; I unfold them and then clench my fingers in my lap. My burns twinge.

  “Congratulations on making finalist. You flew very well.”

  “Thank you.”

  Sitting across from her, my courage is flagging like a sail on a dying breeze. For the first time, it occurs to me that I must have been mad—a stubborn, reckless fool—to take that note as a challenge. This woman helms one of the most powerful branches of government and I took it upon myself to defy her?

  “I’ve been reviewing your file.”

  My racing thoughts pause. Hane taps a folder in front of her, the only item on her otherwise clear leather-topped desk.

  “You have nothing but the highest marks in all your classes, but your teachers routinely note that you don’t speak up enough. The exceptions are your new Dragontongue professor and the First Protector, who find your participation over the last few weeks more than satisfactory. Your only low marks are in oration, but your rhetoric professor observes that since making the Fourth Order you’ve been applying yourself with more— determination. Would you agree with these assessments?”

  Mouth clamped shut, I nod.

  “The Cloister directress Jillian Mortmane reports that you get along well with others and are not without friends. Your drillmaster, Wes Goran, describes your abilities in the air as dubious at best and your tendencies subservient, though I can only assume, given your performance in the last two tournaments I’ve observed, that his reporting has been . . . misleading.”

  Power’s question returns to me, biting. Do you know what they say about you? I hesitate, then nod again.

  A look of distaste passes over Hane’s face.

  “Just with you, or all the girls? Or is it your birth—?”

  I’ve never been asked about Goran like this before. I open my mouth, but no words come out. Hane speaks first, sounding tired.

  “You don’t have to answer that.”

  She looks me over with a twisting frown. Then exhales, slowly and audibly, through her nose. I will my face not to go blotchy, as I can feel it’s on the verge of doing.

  “All right, Antigone.”

  I think I must be imagining the tone of concession in her voice. She’s opened my file and begun flipping through it. Past reports from teachers, work samples, flight pattern analyses, test scores, medical history. She stops on the page titled “Bio” and glances it over; I watch her eyebrows rise, a line appear between them. She blinks, shakes her head a little like she’s clearing it, and looks up. She doesn’t comment on what she’s just read.

  “I’m going to assign you a morale visit.”

  I let out the breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding.

  The details of the process wash over my numb ears: My first morale visit will be to Holbin Hill, my home village; I’m to assist Lee’s morale visit to Cheapside first, to get an idea of what they’re looking for; I’m to draft a speech, if I so choose; and I’m to pick another Guardian as a visiting partner.

  It will be the first time I’ve been back to Holbin in ten years.

  “Do you have any questions?”

  A single doubt is nagging; I hesitate. Hane prompts me with a motion of her hand.

  “Do we have to bring dragons?” I ask.

  Hane tilts her head at the question, like it perplexes her.

  “Yes,” she says. “That is the point of these visits, Antigone. You’re appearing as a dragonrider. Which means showing the people your dragon.”

  She’s looking at me expectantly, like she expects me to explain myself, but all I can feel is my fluttering stomach. Finally, finally I’ve been given a morale visit—a single morale visit, a chance to prove that I deserve it—against what must be this woman’s better judgment and certainly her first inclinations. And now I question her?

  Nevertheless the words blurt from my mouth.

  “Mightn’t we make an exception—”

  I close it abruptly, look down, feel the blotchiness starting up my neck. But Hane’s voice contains nothing but understanding.

  “That was years ago, Annie. And this is you, one of theirs, weeks after Callipolis has been alerted to the threat of Pythian dragonfire. Whatever Holbin voted in the original referendum regarding dragons—they’ll know this is different.”

  Over the next few days, I try to convince myself that Hane is right. And I try to find the words to tell Lee that I’ll be coming with him to Cheapside, but none come. In any case, speaking of any kind has become oddly weighted, since we both made finalist for Firstrider.

  The morning of our visit, I find him in the armory, dressed as I am, in ceremonial uniform, looking unusually grim.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m coming, too. They’re . . . having me do a morale visit. But I’ve got to watch this one first.”

  Lee raises a finger to the bridge of his nose and rubs it. Like he likes the idea of doing Cheapside together as little as I do.

  “Annie, look, when I’m doing these, I—”

  He breaks off. Shakes his head, drags his fingers through the side of his dark hair as he avoids my eyes. I understand abruptly.

  “You put on the show they want.”

  For a second, he looks miserable. “It . . . means something to them. That’s what I’ve realized. Even if it feels—hollow to us. It’s not, to them. You’ll see.”

  We land with our dragons in the cordoned-off part of the main square of Cheapside, next to the rising spire of the neighborhood’s dragon perch. It’s the first time I’ve been back since Albans. While the representative from Propaganda makes introductions, I study the crowd gathering in front of us. It’s strange, years later, to notice the things that I didn’t as a child: Their clothes are worn, their bodies dirty, thin. Appearances I used to take for granted but now see as signs of poverty. The wristbands are nearly all iron. With a start, I see a face I recognize: To the edge of the square, a crowd of grubby, downtrodden-looking children are waiting next to our old orphanage master.

>   From the corner of my eye, I can see Lee watching me.

  Gibbon finishes his introduction and gestures Lee forward, and Lee’s attention turns to the audience.

  “Citizens of Callipolis,” he begins. “I come to you now in the wake of challenging news for our nation . . .”

  I’ve watched Lee speak in class for eight years; he’s always been confident and well-spoken and poised. But this is the first time I’ve seen him address a crowd as a representative of the state. His shoulders are thrown back, the silver breast of his uniform gleaming in the sunlight, his black gold-trimmed mantle falling carelessly off one shoulder as he lifts a hand to invoke his audience. A dragon behind him, the crowd in front of him, Lee holds the square captivated like he owns it. The address probably began as a canned text provided by the Ministry of Propaganda, but it’s easy for me to detect Lee’s doctoring: We’ve proofread each other’s writing for too many years not to recognize the other’s style. The ministry’s trite phrases become heart-sure and meaningful as he breathes them into life. His speechmaking, like his flying, is beautiful.

  Gibbon, who’s come to stand beside me, is smiling a little. “Every time, he’s like this,” he says.

  Lee has them roaring by the end, in a kind of rising crescendo with his words, shrieking their approval as he says that we will never surrender this glorious revolution, this people’s revolution, and that we will defend Callipolis by land and by sea and by air.

  I try to imagine myself standing where he’s standing, doing what he’s doing, and can’t.

  They’re always happiest when they have a lord.

  I push the thought away with revulsion.

  When his speech is over, I stand beside Lee and watch as he receives each citizen in the greeting line. He puts them at ease, listens patiently, and focuses on each person with his whole attention. Nothing throws him off—not when they tell him their grievances or ask him to place his hand on their child or even weep with fear about the coming war.

  “I just keep thinking, what if they spark before ours—what if they’ve already sparked—”

  “We’re training for that very possibility every day.”

  The mother’s voice goes strained, wild. “But how can we stand a chance if—”

  Lee lets out a laugh—gentle—and takes the woman’s sun-burned hand. Her face is lined, her brown hair streaked with gray. At his touch, she looks up at him. “Have a little faith in your fleet, madam.”

  She takes in his face like she’s looking into the light. For a moment I see Lee as she must see him: his kind smile, worn by old sorrows; the gray eyes that are both intelligent and full of concern; the dark hair, shining in the sunlight, blown back from his forehead by the breeze. The Guardians’ emblem of the circlets of silver and gold entwined on his breastplate, the filling shoulders of a boy in the prime of his youth and strength.

  The face that is beginning to transform into a man’s.

  The man’s face that grows, day by day, more familiar—

  The woman raises his hand to her lips, kisses it, and breath leaves me like it’s been sucked from my lungs. Because it is unmistakably a politeness from before the Revolution. From a time when subjects showed their gratitude to dragonlords, in the ways they’d been taught.

  Lee has gone rigid. And then, when he looks up, it’s at me, watching him. His face has drained of color.

  There are conversations I wish we’d never had as children. Things I hope we’ll never say again. Realizations I wish I need never have had or have.

  But the realization I most regret, the one I hate and resist most of all, is that while I’ve always known what he is, the worst thing is not what he is but who.

  That even if I’ve never been told exactly who Leo was, I’ve begun to recognize his maturing face.

  Lee, Leo, Leon—

  The greeting line moves on, and the thought is pushed back to the silence where I prefer it. When those in the line want to speak to me, I do my best to imitate Lee, even though I feel self-conscious and tongue-tied. When it’s nearly over and I feel as drained as if we’ve been doing it for hours, I hear a familiar voice say our names.

  “All right, Lee, Annie?”

  The orphanage master uses a chummy voice, as if to make clear to those watching that he’s on a first-name basis with us.

  He prods the first children forward. Lee guides them to Pallor, and I bring the next group of children to Aela. She huffs and, at my clucking and snapped fingers, lowers her head reluctantly to their height. The children reach out with trembling, tentative fingertips to brush her amber scales. It’s strange to realize that these children, who seem so tiny, are the same age we once were at Albans.

  One of the girls in my group bursts into tears.

  I go cold with panic. Why is she crying? What did I do? How do I make it stop? There are people watching—

  “Trade?”

  Lee has appeared at my side, nodding at his own group of children. None of them are crying. Leaving them with me, he approaches the crying girl from my group, scoops her up as if it’s the most natural thing in the world, and says, “Hey.”

  Like he’s shed one skin and slipped into another, and this one, too, I recognize. Not the man growing visible under his ceremonial armor like a molting bird of prey, but the boy I knew in Albans. The boy who had no father, who reminded me of no one, who mattered to me only because in a world where we had no one, he was kind.

  I lead the others back to the Albans section as snatches of Lee’s conversation with the girl come from behind me: I know, they can be scary, can’t they? But that one wasn’t going to hurt you, and then, after she says something else, too incoherent for me to understand, he adds: I’m sorry you miss your mum.

  My eyes are beginning to burn with the memories. His words of comfort are gentle, practiced. Because of course, he has practiced them. When he passes me, and our glances catch for a brief moment, I realize that his eyes have reddened, too.

  Back with the others, he sets the girl on her feet and tells her, a firmness entering his voice, that it’s time to stop crying.

  And, to my surprise, she does. Steels herself, wipes her face, nods with determination.

  Was that me?

  And the worse thought, that has me sick with shame: Is that me still?

  What would it be like to serve as Alterna to this boy, whom of all people I should refuse to serve? And what perversion of upbringing or nature makes that easier for me to envision than becoming his superior? A revolution was fought to undo these patterns, and yet here I am, unable to picture any future but one where I repeat them.

  That won’t do. That can’t do. I won’t let it.

  I will not let Power be right. Not about my people. Not about my desires. Not about me.

  * * *

  ***

  Three days before my morale visit to Holbin, Crissa finds me working at a table in the solarium after we’ve gotten out of training. Specialists in dragon biology have begun inspecting the fleet, offering suggestions for ways to trigger the dragons’ sparkfire. So far, none of their recommendations have had any effect. We’re left training with pikes and shields.

  “What are you working on?”

  Crissa’s smiling, using her most cheerful squadron-leader voice, the one that I now associate with clinging to Rock’s shoulders as we raced through the moonlit Palace, a flag around my shoulders and joy in my blood. She takes the seat across from me and nods at the paper in front of me as her fingers rake golden hair back from her face.

  “My speech.”

  “For your morale visit?”

  I nod, remembering Lee in Cheapside. As far as I could tell, he didn’t even bother to write his down. The speech I’m staring at has taken me three hours of drafting and redrafting to compose.

  “Do you want me to look it over?”

  Crissa
makes this offer so promptly that I realize it must be the real reason she’s taken a seat across from me. The problem is, the idea of having anyone read the thing makes me feel like throwing up. I assess this reaction and decide it’s probably a bad sign. Anyway, as far as my options go, Crissa’s aren’t a bad set of eyes. She gets good marks in oration, and even if we’re not best friends, I do trust her. I push the paper across the table, defying my roiling stomach.

  When she finishes, she has to clear her throat before speaking, and I realize that her eyes are a little bright.

  “It’s really good, Annie.”

  I unfold my arms, which I realize have twisted together as I watched her read. “Oh. Thanks.”

  “Have you practiced it, at all? Saying it?”

  I shake my head. Crissa looks down at the speech and then back at me, her forehead wrinkling.

  “You probably should. It’s going to be important that you stay composed. Nobody likes watching girls cry—it makes them too uncomfortable. And saying this aloud would probably make me cry.”

  That’s been my worry, too.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t do it.”

  Crissa shakes her head. “No. You absolutely should do it. But you should practice the hell out of it first. In front of someone.”

  “Did you . . . practice? When you first started doing morale visits?”

  She’s been doing visits as frequently as any of the higher-ranked boys, and far from surprising me, it fits the pattern I’ve observed from afar for years: Crissa’s charm and confidence give her a success within the system that slips past most unnoticed, but that I’ve always regarded as a kind of miracle.

  Crissa nods. “Of course I practiced.”

  She seems to sense my surprise and adds, with a roll of her eyes and a flick of hair from her shoulder: “I mean, I’m no cult leader, I’m not Lee. But when I put in the work, I like to think I get the job done.”

  I let out a startled laugh. After brooding for so many days on what I saw at Cheapside, it’s strange to hear Lee’s charisma joked about so unceremoniously. For the first time since I stood next to him during his morale visit, I feel the knot in my chest loosen a fraction.