Fireborne

by Rosaria Munda

  “Well, you discuss the work very comfortably, for one who lacks a native appreciation for it.”

  Hane actually lifts her eyes to the ceiling in exasperation. Atreus is watching Lee and Dora with a look of muted curiosity; the corner of his lip has lifted in a mild smile.

  Lee nods and inclines his head, graciously accepting what Dora seemed to intend as a compliment.

  Then he smiles and answers in Dragontongue.

  This is our work; this is our labor.

  It’s a quote from the Aurelian Cycle. I recognize it because we translated the line a few weeks ago. Lee has changed it slightly, so that the line makes sense in context. His accent is perfect. Cor and Power swing around to stare at him in surprise; Lee has always been notably unwilling to contribute during Dragontongue class. The rest of the table, who have already been watching him, are shifting and exchanging glances.

  Atreus looks from Lee to the faces turned to him, picks up his wineglass, and takes a drink. Dora’s eyes are still on Lee, though she speaks to the First Protector instead.

  “I see what they’re talking about, Atreus.”

  LEE

  As dinner progresses, I grow more and more tense. I’m beginning to feel as though, at every turn, I’m about to expose myself.

  Their hubris was the Aurelians’ downfall, and it will be yours, too, if you keep showing off.

  But this room, these people, this setting, spurs me to a recklessness that only a conscious effort at self-control can contain.

  After dessert, Atreus rises and offers annual awards of accomplishment to class-golds who have made significant contributions to Callipolis. Recognition is given for civic virtue, for technological and economic innovations, for military service, academic research, and artistic achievement. Lotus’s father, Lo Teiran, is awarded the title of Callipolan poet laureate. When he rises to receive the laurel Atreus presents, he turns out to have Lotus’s same wiry hair and lanky build.

  In the half-hour break before the opening dance, the Fourth Order riders are taken around the hall to make introductions. Miranda Hane escorts Annie, General Holmes takes Cor, and Dean Orthos takes Power. Atreus escorts me. The conversations I have at his elbow with class-golds around the room soon run together.

  “Lee sur Pallor! Pleasure to meet you at last, we’ve heard so much about you . . .”

  “That’s kind, thank you.”

  “Training up for the Firstrider Tournament? Between you and me, you are our—favored—finalist. Mustn’t let us down, my boy . . . Not with these Pythians on our backs.”

  The man’s voice is conspiratorial, the we seemingly referring to the Golds generally, whom Atreus has informed me he represents on the Gold Advisory Council. I give my answer smiling, though my thoughts are of Julia and her urging to betray; and to Annie, on whom this man’s praise casts oblique aspersions. Of course he has no way of knowing, as he confides between you and me with a dragonborn, the irony of his preference.

  He also has no way of knowing that, as I look at him, I recognize him. Not from rounds in the new regime: from court in the old.

  Because while the small talk required by Atreus’s introductions is not difficult, ignoring the disconcerting familiarity of many of the faces is.

  What would Julia say, if she saw me shaking hands with the people who betrayed us?

  But I already know the answer to that.

  Her answer would be that we should make them pay.

  ANNIE

  Miranda Hane turns out to be the one who will accompany me around the hall making introductions. It doesn’t ease my nerves. But I’ve been replaying the lines of introduction, in either language, over and over in my head for the last few days and know them cold. I’m startled when one of the first couples I’m introduced to, middle-aged and graying, beams at me.

  “You, my dear,” the man says, squeezing my arm, “are the light of the nation. This is what we once only dared to dream of.”

  I thank him, a little unnerved. As we move away, Hane smiles.

  “The Bertrands were some of our earliest supporters,” she tells me.

  But they’re not all like this. When Hane introduces me to another of the guests, a towering, elderly judge who serves on the Janiculum Council, he regards me with unchecked amusement. His tunic is long, intricately embroidered, and, like many of the vestments tonight, reminiscent of the old regime.

  “So this is our highland rider!”

  “How do you do,” I say, curtsying.

  Instead of bowing or even replying, he turns to Miranda. “Only a trace of a highland accent,” he remarks, with admiration, in Dragontongue. “And she’s clearly been given a good scrubbing—”

  I can feel a flush blooming across my chest where it would usually be hidden beneath a uniform. Tonight, in the scooped neckline of my ball gown, it’s exposed. When Hane doesn’t crack a smile, the man wilts and switches to Callish.

  “It was just a joke, my dear Miranda . . . Sometimes it seems one can’t make them anymore . . .”

  Hane looks sideways at me, as if to see if I have any rebuttal. I think of Lee, pulling out a line from the Aurelian Cycle, in Dragontongue, for a table of onlookers. But as at the Lyceum Club, when I stared down Power and realized words had fled me, I have no such rejoinder. When Hane realizes I don’t, she makes an exiting remark and steers us on. I am still nauseated with shame as she introduces me to the next set of guests.

  Once would have been enough, but they keep coming, these compliments that feel like insults, the airy condescension that purports itself as kindness. When I’m introduced to Darius’s parents, who turn out to own a shipping and trading company that takes up half of Harbortown, they actually turn away from me while I’m still mid-curtsy.

  “Is this her?”

  By the time this voice finds us, I’m so exhausted that I turn only with reluctance at the sound. The man is younger, in his mid-twenties, his tunic simple but well-cut. It takes me a moment to realize what I noticed about his voice: a highland accent.

  “Declan,” Miranda says, with unmistakable relief. “Yes. Antigone, may I present Declan of Harfast, a junior advisor to the First Protector and one of the youngest members of the Gold Advisory Council. Declan was among the first graduating classes at the Lyceum.”

  “How do you do.”

  Declan grins. He’s fair-haired, long-faced, lanky like an overgrown teenager. “Surviving,” he says. “They eaten you alive yet?”

  I let out a startled laugh. As soon as I do, I worry I shouldn’t have, but when I look over at Miranda, her mouth has quirked.

  “They’re just jealous of our brains,” Declan tells me. “Don’t pay them any mind.”

  Instruments have begun to tune in the back of the hall. The open space in the center of the floor has cleared; guests are gathering on its edge. Miranda nods to me.

  “It’s time, Annie,” she says.

  Time to get up in front of these people and perform.

  My gown was designed to be light, for dance; but all the same, as I weave through the crowd to find Lee, I find its crimson folds hindering and the skin of my chest and back feel bare. The excitement I felt at the beginning of the night at my own reflection has died. I miss my uniform.

  I find Lee on the edge of the floor. To my surprise, he looks as drained as I feel. His face is pale in contrast to the dark of his dress uniform, his gray eyes flat and unseeing.

  “How was it?” he asks.

  I just shake my head.

  “Yeah,” Lee says, exhaling. “These . . . people.”

  There’s something more than distaste in his voice: a latent anger approaching fury. It is, for Lee, almost unprecedented. When he realizes I’m looking at him, he composes his face at once.

  As accustomed as I am to wondering at all the ways this life comes more naturally to him than to me, I’m startled t
o feel myself swept by sudden compassion as I understand something I should have seen from the start.

  Of course. Lee has reasons to find tonight hard, too. Probably even harder than I do.

  I think I surprise both of us with my next words.

  “It’s almost over, Lee.”

  Lee’s eyes meet mine, searching. Then he takes my hand in his and together, we step away from the crowd.

  LEE

  Annie’s fingers hold mine tightly as we assume position, her brown eyes fixed on mine as though determined not to look anywhere else. I could count her lashes, the freckles across her cheeks and shoulders, her burn scars shining in the candlelight. The red of her dress, blending in color with her hair. For a moment the room is silent, the eyes of the guests trained on us.

  And then the music starts.

  I’ve known since rehearsal that the melody would be one I know; but it’s not until this moment, in the echoing vaulted hall, surrounded by the glittering gowns and formalwear, that I feel the ache of it. The sound of a single violin, the notes throbbing like a human voice and then rising up, higher, impossibly high, painfully beautiful. The memory of this dance, another night, another life, my mother and father and sisters and a world that was their birthright, a world that’s lost. And all that’s left is a handful of revenge-bent survivors on a rock in the North Sea and this room full of the people who betrayed them.

  Annie’s hands leave their position and circle my neck; the slight pressure is enough for her to bring my face down to look at her. Her eyes are wide, clear; her gaze seems to see me, see everything.

  “Stay with me,” she whispers.

  I reach up with a single hand to take one of hers down from my neck. At the cue I step forward, and Annie responds. Now it’s my turn to keep my eyes fixed on hers, to forget everything but the sound of this, my parents’ melody, my parents’ dance, and the sight of Annie moving with me, the feel of her waist against my hand and the pressure of her palm against mine.

  Annie smiles suddenly, breathlessly, at the completion of a turn, and I feel an irrepressible smile answer hers; and then the sorrow is transformed into something more, something beautiful, and this, this movement that is so tantalizingly close to flying, that’s like the high notes of a violin, some mix of joy and pain, is part of that transformation.

  It’s a fragile balance and I know it can’t last, but it seems as long as we’re here, dancing the Medean, all of these things can be reconciled and held together as one.

  The music descends, and in its lull the other two squadron leaders join us on the floor for the final movement: Crissa, with Lotus, for the skyfish squadron; and Cor, with Alexa, for the stormscourge. Echoing, for those who remember it, the Dance of the Triarchs—and for a moment, though the banners hanging overhead are still the new regime’s, the colors streaking across the floor are once again the tricolor of the old: Aurelian red, Skyfish blue, and Stormscourge black.

  And then the last turn, the last resolve, and Annie is back in my arms, still except for her heaving breaths. It’s finished. She’s standing so close that I feel the heat of her body radiating against mine; her face is upturned, the roots of her hair are glistening with sweat; my face is bent toward hers.

  Then the applause starts and the moment breaks. We step away from each other. Alongside the other two couples, I bow, she curtsies, and I lead her off the floor.

  I am still strangely, painfully happy. And for one bright, oblivious instant I envision this moment continuing: her remaining with me, alone, and the night wearing on with no one but each other for company.

  But then she points out Duck and Lotus. They’re sitting in the semidarkness at a table on the edge of the hall, Duck waving.

  The vision fades.

  I tell her: “You go on.”

  Her fingers find mine, twist, and pull. “Come with me.”

  And all the hope comes rushing back. We make our way over. In the afterglow of the dance, it feels instinctive to guide Annie with a touch below her shoulder blades as we move through the hall, to allow my gaze to linger on her hair, beginning to trail in wisps from its bun, tickling her neck and glowing red in the candlelight. Duck scoots to the side to make room for us, and when we sit, Annie’s side touches mine ever so slightly on the bench. Though I’m certain she must feel it, too, she makes no move to create distance.

  I am aware of every inch along my side where we touch.

  “We were admiring your dancing,” Duck tells us, grinning.

  All around the hall, men and women are getting up to waltz. Annie rolls her eyes to the ceiling.

  “No, really. Loads better than my brother.”

  “Congratulations on your dad’s poetry prize,” I tell Lotus.

  As I speak, I feel Annie’s fingers find mine again, roll them into hers on our knees beneath the table, and a feeling like dizziness comes over me. Hours left. And we’re still together, and she’s smiling. Smiling while she holds my hand.

  “Thanks,” Lotus says. “It’s been a long time coming. My dad had a bit of trouble finding patronage for his poetry after the Revolution.”

  At Duck’s look of confusion, Lotus draws a finger across his throat.

  “Dead patrons don’t pay well.”

  I can barely hear him, mesmerized as I am by Annie’s hand in mine. How long has it been since Annie touched me like this? Surely it was never like this, her fingers twining with mine as though she wanted to feel every line and burn scar with the tips of her fingers, a blush creeping up her cheeks as if she feels my gaze on her and it brings heat to her skin—

  Could it possibly be this easy, this simple?

  Lotus cocks his head, lowers his voice, and leans forward conspiratorially. He jerks his chin behind us. “Are you listening to this?”

  The faces at the neighboring table are indistinguishable in the semidarkness, but their loud voices are unmistakably those of freshly graduated Lyceans, speaking in Dragontongue.

  “You’d want him as the next Protector?”

  “From the riders in the Fourth? Yes! Why, who would you pick?”

  Annie’s hand has stilled in mine, her smile frozen.

  Lotus sits back, looks between me and Annie, and tips the wineglass to his lips like he’s settling in to be entertained. Duck, whose Dragontongue has always been weak, looks mostly confused.

  I begin, tentatively, to run my fingers over Annie’s stilled hand, tracing the calluses on slender fingers, the trails of smooth scars across her palm. Like I’m willing it back to life. Back to me.

  It’s simple. It’s easy. It’s just like the dancing, please—

  The boy’s voice says: “Not Power sur Eater, because he’s always been such a cocky ass—Cor sur Maurana maybe, but honestly . . . probably Lee sur Pallor. Especially if he wins Firstrider.”

  My hand stills, too. Holding Annie’s, frozen.

  “A slum rat?” the girl’s voice scoffs.

  “Did you see him doing the Medean just now? Or have you had a class with him? He doesn’t act like a slum rat. Practically looks like a Stormscourge.”

  The last line is an afterthought that the boy seems to think nothing of. But Annie’s whole body stiffens. And then her hand comes back to life at last.

  She separates her fingers from mine and returns them to her lap.

  The happy-dizzy feeling dies.

  I reach for my glass with the hand no longer holding Annie’s and begin to drain it.

  You think it ever could stop mattering?

  The next thing the boy says makes me freeze mid-swallow.

  “Anyway, better than a former serf. I mean, it’s a good sob story, sure—I’ll grant she’s a poster child for the Revolution—”

  Annie’s eyes flare wide as we hear their scandalized snorts of laughter. She begins blinking rapidly, her bare shoulders going up and tightening at the
sound. Lotus looks down, lifting a hand to rub at his forehead; Duck’s eyes travel between the three of us, his brow furrowed.

  “What have you got against serfs ruling?” the girl teases.

  “Nothing, I’m just not convinced it’s a qualification . . .”

  The conversation moves on; some of the graduates in the party are getting up to dance. Annie lifts her head like one waking from a dream. And then she seems to realize her body’s position in space and that her side still touches mine. She shifts an inch sideways on the bench. Though it’s a slight movement, the distance that suddenly separates our bodies feels like a chasm. There’s a charge in the air between us, as if Annie is tensed for any attempt on my part to cross it.

  Then Duck, who barely speaks Dragontongue, and whose only understanding of what’s happened comes from what he’s read in our faces, gets to his feet and extends his hand to Annie. The hair he slicked back in the boys’ washroom a few hours ago is sticking up at the back in spikes.

  “Dance with me?”

  Annie lifts her eyes, wide and over-bright, to his face.

  “You don’t like dancing.”

  “I’d like dancing with you.”

  But still she hesitates, and with a slight shift of her head, her face angles toward mine. As if my presence informs her answer. An old desire wells up within me, its pain so familiar, it returns like exhaustion.

  I would give anything to ease the hurt on this girl’s face. Anything.

  “You should go,” I say. “You’ll have fun.”

  Annie’s eyes are wide beneath dark lashes as she searches my face. Then she nods.

  She rises, takes Duck’s outstretched hand, and follows him to the floor.

  There’s silence after they’ve left us; Lotus still seems a little embarrassed. He clears his throat and claps his hand on my shoulder.

  “Still, good news for you, isn’t it? The Golds’ favor.”

  I watch Annie’s smile flickering, laughing unwillingly, as Duck tries to dance. The pain is slowly receding from her eyes. I hear myself say: “Yeah.”