I hear my own voice take on coldness and issue the conclusion that is really a question.
“Your fleet hasn’t sparked yet. This is an idle threat.”
For a second we just stare at each other, and then she tosses her head back, lets out a laugh of abandon, and breathes a word.
It takes me a moment to understand that it’s a command, and it’s for Erinys.
Erinys lifts her head like a wolf to the moon and fires.
For a brief, blinding moment, sparked dragonfire warms the night like a beacon.
Pallor rears, reverses, and for an instant I feel his intimidation twist in time with my own sinking heart. Erinys lowers her head and watches his retreat, cool and confident, her tail flicking idly back and forth across the stones. At a distance of ten meters Pallor bares his teeth and growls. The acrid smell of dragonfire lingers sharp on the air.
“It’s all right, Pallor.” I turn to Julia. “How long?”
Julia shrugs. “A week or so?”
“Congratulations.”
She is smirking, an eyebrow lifted. “Thank you, cousin.”
“Just Erinys?”
Erinys is likely to have been the first; sparking tends to spread hierarchically among fleets, from higher-ranked dragons to lower ones.
Julia only smiles at that question, as if to say: Do you really think I’m going to answer that?
“Are we really such an idle threat, cousin?” she asks. “Even if it were just Erinys. One sparked dragon is enough to level a town. What do you have right now? Pikes and shields?”
Her words wash over my rising incredulity. Level a town? Does she hear herself?
“Julia, this is madness.” The coldness has been stripped from my voice as the desperation hits. “Thousands of innocent people will die. You quote the old poetry? You must see that these are the kinds of mistakes that brought down the Aurelians, that finished the dragonlords—”
“You can stop it.”
This stops me short.
“If you turn, and help us bring this usurping regime down from the inside, none of those deaths need to happen. If you keep rising—to Firstrider, maybe to Protector—you can hand it over like a plucked fruit.”
I take a step back from her, and shells crunch beneath my boot. To turn was a request I’d expected—but to betray from the inside is a step baser than I’d even considered.
“You balk,” she observes. “Why?”
As if of my own accord, my arms open, my palms spread. She studies me with cool gray eyes.
“They’ve raised you,” she surmises.
“More than that.”
“You believe in their vision,” she realizes. Her voice is cold with disgust. “You believe they’re better. Even after everything they’ve done. You’d be loyal to the man who betrayed us.”
I lift my shoulders, lower them. “I think there’s more to this than questions of vengeance and birthright.”
A strange, bitter smile twists Julia’s face. The moonlight glints silver on her dark hair, on her cloaked shoulders.
“I was warned that you might feel this way. What exactly about Atreus’s vision do you find so appealing? His generous but ill-implemented meritocratic process, his efforts to rewrite the past with his censors? Do you think it’s noble that he lets peasants vie for Firstrider? She rides well, I grant, our little highland serf.”
Julia’s disdain drips on her words like acid, and I recoil from it. Our rings in my ears, the casual possessive of Stormscourges discussing land holdings.
“The other finalist is not our anything.”
Julia’s voice lashes her response. “And you are not naïve. Wake up. You think his regime is better because it calls serfs by another name and teaches them to read? Maybe it is. For now. In a time of plenty, without pressure or strain. But watch and see how that vision splinters when we exert pressure. Then we can revisit whether you think it’s noble. Whether you have the stomach for more.”
Exert pressure. The possibilities for interpretation there are open, but the purport is clear. Pressure will come in the form of violence.
For a moment there’s no sound but the gulls crying sleepily from the edges of the karst.
“When?” I ask.
Julia tilts her head back, rakes her hair back from her face, and smirks at me. “Don’t look so worried, cousin. The first time will be just a taste.”
Her tone is playful. A mockery of the tone she used to adopt in the garden, when she was teasing. What does a taste mean, for someone who speaks so casually of leveling a town? I look out over the edge of the karst, at the flattened sea blurring a reflection of the stars, and reach for words out of a sudden feeling of emptiness. With nothing but the ocean to bound it, the dome of the dark night feels infinite.
Julia, what have you become?
It seems I’m not the only one who’s troubled by the distance. Julia speaks first, her voice softening to a murmur as she changes the subject.
“Do you want Firstrider so much you can taste it?”
The moonlit karst comes back into focus, and with it the silver outline of my cousin with her streaming hair and riding cloak, her feet planted on the rock beneath them like she owns it, as she waits for my answer.
Do I want to breathe? Do I want to eat? This has been a dream in the fabric of my longing for as long as I can remember. Less a desire than a need. I’ve lost everything else from the old life, but this I can keep. This, I’m still allowed to want.
“Yes. Of course.”
Julia nods, relieved by the strip of common ground that we still share.
“That’s how it was for me, too. That’s how I won. Good luck in the final tournament, Leo. I pray to the long-dead gods that it brings sense to you.”
8
THE LYCEAN BALL
ANNIE
There’s a time, after my morale visit to Holbin, when the world goes dark. I remain in bed for hours, skipping meals, refusing conversation.
Your father would be ashamed of you, girl.
Would he have been?
My father died a year before the Revolution. When I search through the handful of memories that I still have of him for an answer, I realize that I remember him too poorly to know.
“Annie. Lee’s been asking about you.”
Crissa’s voice rouses me from a half sleep where I’ve been lying in bed, cocooned beneath the covers and willing my own existence to stop.
For a moment, all I can think of is how it felt when Lee used to hold me. Warm, and safe, the only thing that could make the crying stop.
But not now. Not for Holbin.
“Tell him I’m fine.”
I won’t be that child anymore. I can do this without him.
And eventually, I do. I get out of bed, brush my hair, eat a meal. The world slowly returns: patrols, training, classes. I’m not assigned any more morale visits, and in the wake of Holbin, I can’t say that I wish otherwise. Propaganda now avoids visits in parts of the countryside that have particularly fraught histories with dragonfire.
Overshadowing our usual obligations is the Lycean Ball’s approach, our last public event before the Firstrider Tournament and Palace Day. Though we remain tensed for the Pythians’ first move, the ministry has determined that this tradition, at least, should proceed as planned. Eventually it feels like every spare minute is filled with its preparations: fittings, etiquette sessions, advanced dance lessons. Though in most ways it’s a welcome respite from worse pressure and darker thoughts, it’s not without its own kind of stress.
Especially when, in advanced dance, I’m told to pair off with Lee.
“As the Guardians will be the Lyceans of honor for the event this year, the finalists will lead the opening dance,” the dance instructor tells us as we stand in the vaulted grand hall the Lyceum uses for ceremonies. His
accent has traces of Dragontongue, his tunic trimmed with delicate embroidery more fashionable in the old regime. “Shouldn’t be too difficult for either of you since you’re both so light on your feet.”
The instructor moves on, to prepare and position the other practicing partners, leaving silence in his wake. It’s strange to stand so close to Lee after hours spent listlessly in bed, relearning how to do without his comfort. But the person I remembered comforting me in the orphanage bears little resemblance to the one I stand beside now: shoulders full beneath his uniform, toned from years of training on the Eyrie; tall enough that I have to tilt my head up to look at his sunburnt, wind-chapped face. This is a boy who eats until he’s full, who reads into the night, and spends summer days on dragonback.
Although, on closer inspection, Lee’s gray eyes are lined in a way that I didn’t remember them being before my morale visit.
“Have you started training yet?” I ask.
Lee looks startled. “For the Firstrider Tournament?”
I nod, thinking of Power’s offer to train and my refusal. The compliments like insults, the words that cut because they hit home. You probably don’t even want you to win, he said. I haven’t spoken to Power since.
Lee shakes his head. “Not yet.”
Will Lee bother to train? I wonder. Or will he just assume, with that same confidence that leads him from class to rounds to training with such grace, that Firstrider is his for the taking?
Before the morale visit I thought my ambition would make Holbin proud. Now I know better. Whatever history I make as a dragonrider, they have no interest in. Those words that I spent bedridden hours trying to unhear: Your father would be ashamed of you, girl.
For all I know, the widow was right. For all I know, my family would have had no interest in my ambition either.
It’s a relief when the instructor’s voice pulls me from my spiraling thoughts.
“You’re all familiar with the standard waltz by now,” he tells the class, standing in the center of the polished floor. “Today we’re going to work on a slightly trickier variation.”
Lee emits an exhale of understanding.
“The Medean,” he murmurs.
His eyes have lit with the beginnings of a smile as he watches the instructor assume position with his assistant.
“I’m sorry?”
“It’s a waltz.”
The instructor explains: “One of the oldest dances across the dragon-birthing sea, the Medean waltz has long been a favorite of the airborne courts. It was designed to imitate a dragon in flight.”
At his prompting, partners join together. Lee extends a hand, palm up, and I place my fingers over his. His other hand goes to the small of my back. Although it’s a position I’ve practiced with other dance partners before, never until this moment have I felt the intimacy of being held here, the center of my gravity, where his slightest pressure lights every nerve of my body, and my only instinct is to respond.
I’ve watched Pallor be calmed by this same hand, this same touch, light but firm, for the last seven years.
The instructor goes on: “The Medean is faster, syncopated, more expressive than the waltz you’re used to—and harder to pull off. But, when done right . . . there’s nothing more beautiful.”
Lee adjusts, bringing me closer, clasping my hand more firmly in his, craning his neck to track the first few demonstrated steps that the instructor models with his assistant. We stand so close now that my gaze is level with the neck of his uniform, the shadow where his throat meets his collarbone.
When I realize I’ve been staring at it, I jerk my face back and up, to look at his.
“Why are you smiling?” I mutter.
Our turn to imitate. Lee exerts pressure and I move to his touch. The step is long, the catch delayed so it snaps a forceful turn. I feel the delight of its motion the way Aela delights in a dive. Lee studies my face and his smile softens. For a moment, his expression contains something that looks like longing.
“That’s right, Lee’s got it,” the instructor observes, moving between us.
Lee is holding me close enough for his breath to brush my ear. That same easy confidence that I was, moments ago, contemplating in bitterness is now turned on me like sunlight.
“Because this one’s fun.”
The next half hour is a blur of motion and lightness guided by Lee’s touch, and it leaves me with a spring in my step for the first time since Holbin and a lingering warmth in the small of my back where he held it.
In addition to the general lessons offered to the rest of the corps, the Fourth Order riders also receive special etiquette instructions. Lee, Power, Cor, and I attend a private session in one of the small conference rooms of the Ministry of Propaganda, conducted by Miranda Hane herself. I haven’t seen her since my morale visit.
“Good to see you, Antigone. How are you?”
From the way she asks, I realize that she’s remembering how we last parted, when I was—the thought makes me cringe—making a report to the First Protector while crying. But she speaks with a warmth that feels genuine and without condescension.
“I’m better, thanks.”
Hane smiles, then moves to the center of the conference room to address the group as a whole. Cor and I have taken a seat, Lee stands with arms folded, and Power lounges against the side of one of the tables, looking bored.
“Hello, everyone, and thank you for coming.” She goes on to explain that after the Lycean Ball’s dinner, the four of us will be introduced to some of the most influential elites of the class-golds, individually. “This is your first official public appearance as future leaders of the city—and you four will be of particular interest as candidates for next Protector, whom the Golds will take part in choosing. Unlike the other metals, Golds are not just your subjects: They’re also your constituents.”
At Hane’s mention of the Protectorship, Power flashes a brief, crooked grin; Cor looks a little alarmed; Lee’s expression does not alter at all; and my stomach sinks. The upcoming Firstrider Tournament has been a daunting enough prospect without adding this. New ways to be evaluated, new hoops to jump through, more people to impress. At least in the arena, I have Aela.
“We urge you,” Hane goes on, “to make a good impression. Regardless of what your personal political ambitions may be, it’s critical to put your best face forward—especially during these uncertain times. You’ve paid morale visits to the class-bronzes, irons, and silvers; now is the time to reassure the class-golds.”
She gestures forward her assistant, who’s been waiting at the side of the room.
“To that end. Let’s rehearse.”
The introductions are highly formalized, a script that we’re expected to master and perform. We’ll be paired with ministry escorts who will introduce us in Callish, but we practice the Dragontongue variation as well, in case any guest changes the language. Hane drills Cor’s pronunciation of the Dragontongue phrases repeatedly, until he’s flushing with embarrassment but can produce them a little less harshly. When Hane works with Lee, she has to remind him not to mutter his Dragontongue and then compliments him on his accent. Power produces the phrases in both languages with great flourish, and Hane seems torn by disapproval and amusement. When it’s my turn, she introduces me to her assistant, who’s impersonating the third party.
“And it will be polite in your case to curtsy, Antigone—”
As soon as I do it, Power lets out a snicker. I look up. Hane’s face is clouded, and Lee’s gone red.
“Not like that,” Hane says softly.
Confusion makes me struggle to defend myself: “This is how my mother—”
I stop, understanding abruptly. I begin to color, too.
“Like this,” Hane says simply. “This is how you’ll do it from now on.”
She demonstrates. It’s strange to watch someone
curtsy in trousers. Hane’s neck remains erect; the motion is slight and airy, and contains none of the sweeping obeisance that my mother’s curtsy did. I imitate, wishing my face would stop burning, wishing Power would stop smirking. Wishing Lee would stop staring at the floor.
Hane proceeds with the role play. “May I introduce . . .”
I need no prompting to produce the phrases that I’ve watched the other three practice before me. But when Hane prompts a switch to Dragontongue, I cannot stop my voice from lowering in shame.
“From the stomach,” Hane reminds me.
I say the Dragontongue again, at full volume. It sounds alien, my own mouth producing the language that I’m so much more comfortable hearing than speaking. I can hear the sound of the Callish accenting my words, rough on the phonemes that, for a native speaker, would sound flutelike and liquid. I wonder whether here, too, Hane is cringing at a peasant’s lingering crudities.
But instead she says, “Excellent.”
For the female Guardians, there are also fittings, dresses occasioned for the first time in years and commissioned by the ministry. I pass the session at the dressmakers with my tongue thick in my mouth; the fabrics that they’re asking us to choose between are luxurious enough to delight Deirdre and Alexa, but leave me speechless with unease. Crissa, who seems to straddle the other girls’ delight and my discomfort, stays by my side and keeps up a steady stream of commiserating commentary to put me at ease—Oh, these city dresses are so fancy, aren’t they, my family would never dream of going to dressmakers this nice—and I appreciate it, though I don’t tell her that the idea of going to a dressmaker in the first place would, to my family, have been unfathomable. We’re assigned colors by squadron, but the cut and textile are left to our choosing. Crissa worms preferences I’m surprised to find I have out of me while the dressmakers are in the back room, then demands them on my behalf when they return.
“Having a dress you feel good in can make all the difference,” Crissa tells me sagely afterward, when I attempt to thank her.
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