Fireborne

by Rosaria Munda

  Crissa does this. People who aren’t Lee do this.

  She gets to her feet.

  “Come on,” she says, tugging my arm.

  “What?”

  “I’m going to coach you.”

  * * *

  ***

  Over the next three days I move from training to class to patrols to rounds in a haze of anticipation: sometimes excitement; sometimes foreboding. I push away the unimaginable thought of Aela at Holbin and focus on the speech, which I go over and over with Crissa until I know it cold. I think of the Mackys, how they embraced me and brought me highland flowers the day of the Fourth Order tournament and their letter to me before my match with Power. I tell myself that the pit of doubt and shame left in the wake of Power’s insinuations will soon have its answer. Whatever uncertainty I’ve had about ascending to Firstrider in place of Lee—surely it will be cured by the sight of home, the faces of those for whom it would mean so much if I succeeded. Surely Holbin will give me the strength to prove Power wrong. For the first time in years, I allow myself to remember everything I miss about it. The jagged rocks protruding from impossibly green fields, the wind off the North Sea rippling the grass like waves.

  I choose Duck as my visiting partner; the ministry’s reply suggests a preference, in not so subtle terms, that I take Lee instead, and I ignore it.

  No. Absolutely not. I know enough to know that Leo has no place in Holbin.

  “Don’t be nervous,” Duck tells me, in the armory, the morning of. “You’ll do great.”

  “Duck, it’s . . . not going to be as easy as it was for your and Cor’s neighborhood.”

  “I know.”

  It’s a half-hour flight to Holbin, and on the way, as we ride in silence, I can feel all the nerves I’ve been suppressing for the last few days take over. When we land, Duck says simply, “It’s beautiful.”

  Holbin Hill is in the lower ranges of the western highlands, on the base of the mountains. As I dismount, I inhale air that’s cleaner than anything I’ve breathed in months. The light this high on the mountain is tinged with silver, and the wind smells of cold rocks and heather. We’re on a stony clearing a little south of the village, awaited by the Macky family, whom I haven’t seen since the first tournament; and Miranda Hane herself, who made the journey on horseback, alongside a small contingent of ministry officials.

  “I decided I would see to this visit personally,” Hane tells me, smiling.

  I feel a flutter of a different kind of nerves at the sight of her. How much is her presence meant to be a support, and how much is it a test?

  “Annie, you remember Don Macky?” Hane goes on, still smiling at me. “He’s the village leader who helped organize this visit. He said his family came to see you at your first tournament?”

  I nod, and Macky smiles. “Hello again, Annie.”

  His eyes flick past me toward Aela and Certa, their folded wings rippling in the wind, then return to my face with determination.

  “There they are,” says Macky’s son.

  A trail of people are trickling down the path from the collection of buildings that make up the village. Their buildings look new and well-made: Atreus took special care in the years after the Revolution to fund reconstruction of villages destroyed by dragonfire. Flocks of sheep, visible as ambling spots of white on the surrounding hillside, have multiplied since I was last here, evidence of Atreus’s incentives to grow textile exports and wean Callipolis off reliance on subsistence farming.

  My heart’s begun to race, my palms to sweat. Eventually, they’re all standing level with us, but they keep to the far side of the clearing, farther back than even Macky.

  “Please, come closer,” Hane says.

  People glance at each other like they’re trying to decide if this is an order, and what might happen if they don’t comply. Some take a few steps closer. I recognize almost everyone, though I’ve forgotten a lot of names. I search the villagers’ expressions for any sign of welcome, and though there are a few smiles, most have their eyes on the dragons and look wary.

  Hane steps forward, introduces us, and then invites me to begin.

  My stomach, which has been lurching, goes still at her cue. I remember how easily Lee stepped into this moment, as naturally as a dragon kicking off the ground. But there’s no point comparing it with that. Stand straight, Crissa told me on the arena ramparts where we stood ten meters apart to practice, hold your head up, remember that you fly a dragon and try to look like it.

  I begin. I describe the first attack on Holbin, then the second. I can tell it’s surprising them that I’m talking about it at all, and whispering breaks out, but I’m in no place to stop or second-guess myself, so I keep going. Describing the attacks is the hardest part, but my voice is steady and clear, just like it was on the ramparts with Crissa. Then I describe the Revolution, how Holbin took part in the overthrow of the old regime. I describe the changes that Atreus has made, in and out of the city. I describe the education I’m receiving, thanks to a merit-based test. I describe a government where dragons abide by laws rather than create them.

  I tell them that the Pythians have declared their intentions to retake Callipolis. I tell them that I’ve seen the Pythians and their dragons myself. I tell them that the Revolution was not the end of it after all; that it seems it was only the beginning of a whole new war. A war we must, at all costs, win.

  “As a Guardian and dragonrider, I’ve sworn to defend this island. As a finalist for Firstrider, I’m contending for more than that. I am contending to lead the Callipolan aerial fleet.”

  Though I’ve said it over and over in rehearsal, it is only now, in front of the villagers of Holbin, that the shiver goes down my spine at the words. The realization, all over again, of the sheer miracle of it. Me. A serf, a Holbiner. Contending for Firstrider.

  “I am also a farmer’s daughter, a villager of Holbin Hill, an orphan. I know how it feels to be hungry. I’ve seen dragonfire take everything I cared about away. I am one of you. So are every single one of my fellow dragonriders. We’re here to protect you, as the old dragonriders did not. Even if you can’t believe the words, please remember the facts: My family died at the hands of the old regime. And I would sooner die than see its crimes repeated.”

  I’m finished. There’s just silence.

  I look over at Hane and she gives me a small nod. As far as she’s concerned, I did it right. She steps forward and begins to introduce the next stage of the visit. I permit myself to close my eyes, reach out, and place a hand on Aela’s neck, taking in a calming breath.

  “If you’d like to come forward, Antigone—Annie—and Dorian will receive you. I’m sure you must be glad to see Annie again after so many years and want to wish her good luck in the final tournament.”

  I look up from Aela.

  No one has moved.

  Macky and Hane look at each other. Macky says, “Now then, don’t be shy. Boris, you and Helga want to start us off?” And quietly to me, he adds: “Annie, take a few steps forward from that dragon of yours, there’s a good girl . . .”

  A trickling line of villagers begins to form, moving toward us with unmistakable reluctance across the rocky clearing. When Boris and Helga, with their three children, arrive within speaking distance, I see Boris’s knees soften at the same time Hane does.

  “Please remain standing,” Hane says sharply.

  I feel the back of my neck ignite with heat, flowing into my face.

  “Thank you for coming,” I say.

  It occurs to me, for the first time, how I must sound to them: the highland accent gone, the clipped vowels and flat tones of Palace-standard speech. Austere and sterile, like a ministry official.

  Boris and Helga look at each other. Their children are gathered at their heels, the youngest peering at our dragons from between his mother’s legs. They incline their heads, without
a word, and turn away.

  It goes on like this, the silence and the stiffness, until I’m greeted by a woman whom I remember was widowed in the second Holbin attack. Now, ten years older, her face lined with care, her graying hair bound with a faded black scarf, she approaches me, glares, and says:

  “Your father would be ashamed of you, girl.”

  And then she spits. She is taller than me; the wind and gravity carry it easily across the short distance between us, onto my face.

  For a moment the shock of it leaves me frozen. And then, behind me, Aela lets out a low whine. I clench my fists to prevent a spillover, willing my head clear, willing Aela to calm. But then I hear other noises: growling, hissing, another dragon’s wings snapping open. Duck has spilled over; Certa feels his outrage. Hane steps forward on one side of me, Macky on the other, their eyes wide and panicked. And all the while the widow still stands before me, glaring and defiant, like she’s daring me to prove her right.

  I look behind me. Duck’s pupils are dilated; one of his hands has reached up to seize Certa’s reins, the other is a balled fist at his side. I tell him, “If you cannot control Certa, please remove her.”

  And then I turn back to the widow, wipe my face, and force the words out.

  “Summer’s blessings on your house.”

  The next villager spits, too.

  LEE

  On the day of my second meeting with Julia it’s difficult to focus on anything but what I’ll say when we see each other. Her letter, its vision, has a way of twisting and reshaping whenever I try to grasp at what is wrong with it. But when I’m summoned from class and sent to Atreus’s office, all thought of Julia slides from my mind. I remember, with foreboding, that Annie’s visit to Holbin was scheduled for today as well.

  Inside Atreus’s office, Annie is perched on one of the dark-stained chairs facing Atreus, making a report in a quiet voice. Duck sits beside her, head in his hands. Miranda Hane is standing to the side, her arms folded, her expression stony, but it softens when she sees me.

  “Lee, please, come in,” she says, beckoning.

  I have the impression she intends my presence and name to offer some comfort to Annie. She looks surprised when Annie cringes instead. She doesn’t turn her head, doesn’t look at me. I realize, as I come closer, that tears are coursing silently and steadily down her cheeks while she speaks. A handkerchief is clutched in one hand, forgotten.

  And then I hear what she’s describing.

  “And you used only words of courtesy and kept Aela calm to the end?” Atreus asks quietly, when she seems to have nothing left to say.

  Annie nods. This high in the Inner Palace, sunlight is still able to pour long swaths across the room from the windows looking out of the Firemouth, and it glows on the red-brown hair of her downturned head and trembling shoulders. Atreus and Hane exchange a look that Annie doesn’t notice. After years of straining for the rare demonstrations of Atreus’s approval, I see the signs of it now, though only the faintest lifted eyebrow betrays it.

  But Annie does not seem be in a state to appreciate the approval of anyone.

  “Was it the speech?” she asks in a whisper, clutching her knees with whitening fingers.

  Hane’s eyes are full. “Oh, Annie, no,” she says. “You delivered your speech beautifully. It was my mistake for thinking it would be enough. There are just some wounds that run too deep for words to heal.”

  Atreus adds, heavily: “And the anger of the people can be often cruel and ill-placed. Today you paid the price for wrongs you didn’t commit.”

  Wrongs you didn’t commit.

  Atreus can’t know how those words implicate me, though it’s clear that Annie does. Her shuddering shoulders shift on his last words, her back twisting, as if to turn herself from me completely. Though no one else notices, I perceive the movement as if she had shouted get out.

  I begin to back toward the door.

  “You behaved in every way befitting a Guardian, Antigone,” says Atreus. “Thank you.”

  Annie’s shaking shoulders go up to her ears.

  “Is there anything else you require, Protector?”

  “No. You and Dorian may go. And, Antigone? Please take any time you need before returning to class. Your superiors will be notified.”

  Annie and Duck rise. Annie passes me in the doorway as if she can’t see me at all.

  When they’re gone, Atreus shifts his gaze to me.

  “So. You’ve heard the problem. If you were the administrator, what would you do?”

  I realize, at last, why I’m here: to play pretend. Atreus has done this with me before. Though this time, it’s with a village whose particular history I have pondered for the last eight years.

  “I would call off further morale visits to the highlands,” I tell him, “and leave Holbin alone.”

  “Good,” says Atreus, nodding slowly, as if we’re in class. “Why?”

  “Because the coming war will teach them what we can’t.”

  * * *

  ***

  Pallor and I arrive at Wayfarer’s Arch early. We wait for Julia among the moonlit crags in the stone clearing of the ancient dragon perch, mounted atop an arch of karst that rises so far above the moonlit North Sea that the waves look, from this height, like still water. Pallor throws himself onto the stones at the ledge like a cat curling into its bed and lowers his head onto his crossed forelegs to wait. I sit beside him, looking out over the dark, karst-studded sea, scratching under the joint of his membranous silver wing, where it often itches. He ruffles his wings and shifts his weight closer, uttering a snort of contentment.

  “You like it up here, don’t you?” I murmur.

  I like it up here, too. It’s easier, looking out over a view like this, to revisit the welcome Annie received in Holbin. The sight of her stricken, tearstained face, and the exhaustion that set in afterward. I’ve watched Callipolis transform year by year into a better place than the one the old regime left—and still, the old wounds are so easily reopened. The wounds the dragonborn left behind.

  The wounds my father left behind.

  How does the thought still have the power to make me light-headed, this many years later?

  Pallor nuzzles the back of my head, which I’ve lowered into my knees, and I reach out to notch my fingers between his horns and hold. Like I’m on the deck of a swaying ship and he’s the rail.

  I lift my head at the whisper of wings overhead. A passing shadow across the stars makes Pallor and me lurch to our feet. His wings cock half opened, tensing as another dragon circles in descent.

  Julia’s stormscourge is midsize for an adolescent, unusually slender, her wingspan exceptionally long. It’s impossible to make out, in the night, how she handles, though I find myself irrepressibly curious. When they land on the opposite side of the perch, Julia slides off her back with fluid comfort and the stormscourge eyes Pallor curiously, her horned tail lifting. Pallor paws the ground, shifting weight from side to side, as if to compensate for the fact that she is almost half again his size.

  “Easy,” Julia and I both say at once, though Julia says it in Dragontongue. “Erinys, meet—”

  “Pallor.”

  “Pallor,” Julia repeats, testing it.

  We watch Pallor and Erinys approach each other like skeptical but curious dogs, sniffing and sidestepping.

  Julia muses, her mouth twisting: “Pallor, the aurelian who Chose a Stormscourge.”

  I wonder what she makes of that. The virtues of the old houses and their dragons are shorthands we’ve grown up knowing: Skyfish House, known for their moderation and mercy; Stormscourge, for their discipline and strength; Aurelian, for their judiciousness and learning. She must look at Pallor and wonder what was lacking in me, and what found, that I was passed by the stormscourge and Chosen by an aurelian when I was presented to dragons.

&nbs
p; When Pallor and Erinys have circled each other and parted again to stare from a distance in what seems to be a mutually agreed upon ceasefire, Julia turns to me.

  “Hello again, cousin,” she says in Dragontongue.

  As she approaches me on this moonlit night, it’s easy to see what a tavern booth concealed. The seabirds’ detritus of broken shells crunches and cracks beneath her boots at each step, her cloak streaming behind her on the salt-spray wind. Julia walks with the unmistakable air of a Stormscourge: confident, poised, with a lingering note of danger that persists even when weapons are laid down. A brooch of highland heather, the symbol of Stormscourge House, clasps her cloak at the breast.

  Everything about her that should be intimidating makes me feel at home.

  “Did you like my letter?” she asks, when we stand feet apart.

  Our fathers may be dead, but their blood runs in our veins. We were born to this.

  “Yes. It was beautiful. Like something out of the old poetry.”

  Julia smiles thinly at my choice of words.

  “You didn’t find it compelling?”

  I look at our two dragons, eyeing each other at a distance as their wings, ever so slowly, ease back into resting position. I think of the fantasies that have danced across my vision since I read her letter, of Julia and I, side by side, on dragonback, taking back what is ours. The kind of narratives we explored in play as children, but now, we should be old enough to know better. For us, dragons may have meant glory; but for most everyone else, they were what Annie experienced today. Something to be feared, hated, and at the soonest opportunity, spat upon.

  “I find reality compelling.”

  Julia scoffs. “Fine. Let’s discuss reality. Our fleet will attack soon. We intend to make this a war, and we intend to win it. We will not be sparing.”

  The girl from the Drowned Dragon, familiar and full of sad understanding, has vanished. The new Julia is fierce, her businesslike tone enough to make my blood chill.