The days were so blurred together, with every hour either filled with some kind of training, studying, or sleeping, that I totally lost track of time. I didn’t hear anything else about a plot against Sile. There were no more malfunctioning saddles, or aerial rescues. Things fell into a predictable, constant routine that gave me a sense of comfort and stability I’d never had before. For the first time, I had a plan. I had something to do, somewhere I had to be, and responsibilities.
Our combat training became more intense, and more specific to weapons we were better suited to use. Lieutenant Morrig wasn’t sure what to do with me. My arm wasn’t long enough for a short sword. I wasn’t tall enough for a spear. I wasn’t strong enough for an axe or a mace. He was puzzled, and so I just kept switching weapons, hoping one would eventually be the right fit.
We also learned archery, and the academics shifted from memorizing maps and hand signs, to learning about the native plants and animals of Luntharda. They made it sound so horrifying, and described huge bloodthirsty beasts, poisonous streams, and even carnivorous trees. Secretly, I found it all really interesting. My mother had always told me stories about the forest, but never in such detail.
We also started to learn about how to treat wounds in the field. We learned to set broken bones, to make poultices and salves from various plants to stave off infection, and how to stitch up gashes and cuts. I was pretty good at it because my fingers were smaller, and I’d seen so much of my own blood that being around wounds didn’t make me queasy like it did some of the others.
Summer made the valley incredibly hot during the day. It baked the earth like clay in a kiln, and made all the plants and grass shrivel up. At night it was pretty cool, so we usually stayed inside and studied. None of us had the energy left at the end of the day to risk getting caught out on the grounds anyway.
I wasn’t aware how much time had passed, or even what month it was, until Felix started jabbering about the officer’s ball. Apparently, once a year, every officer of note was invited to a grand ball held at a certain noble’s home. The rich families of Maldobar argued over who should host it since it was, according to Felix, the best place to go shopping for a potential spouse. It was a status symbol because sometimes the king attended. There’d be wine, dancing, music, food, and pretty girls as far as the eye could see. Felix was absolutely giddy about it.
“We aren’t officers yet,” I reminded him as we sat at the dinner table. I had my face in a dusty old book, reading about the carnivorous trees that grew in Luntharda. “What makes you think we’ll get to have any fun?”
“We will, we just won’t be allowed to dance or talk with any of the girls,” Felix countered. “We can look, but we aren’t supposed to approach.”
A few of the other fledgling students sitting around us nodded in agreement. Since our confrontation with Lyon, little by little, I’d started to earn the tiniest amount of acceptance from my peers. I wasn’t dumb enough to think they liked me, but they were willing to tolerate me now. I guess they’d figured out that if they couldn’t get rid of me, they might as well get used to me being around.
“So, what you mean by that is you’re going to do it anyway?” I peered over the top of my book at him.
Felix was grinning from ear to ear. “Of course. It’s only punishable if you get caught.”
I rolled my eyes. “I don’t see what the big deal is. It’s just a bunch of silly, giggling girls. What’s so interesting about them?”
Felix smacked my book out of my hands down onto the table. “Are you crazy? Don’t you have a girl back home?”
I glared at him. I’d made the mistake of telling him about Katty when this all started. I’d even let him talk me into sending her a letter. But I hadn’t received any reply at all from her. I didn’t know if she’d even gotten my letter in the first place.
“No.” I grumbled, crossing my arms over my chest. “I told you, she’s just my friend.”
“It starts with friends,” Felix was grinning cattishly again, and a few of the other students around him had joined in. “Then you go in for the kiss.”
“You sound like an idiot, you know.” I arched a brow at him. “Even if you did find some way to sneak off and talk to a girl, you’re not an officer yet. None of us are. We’re just students. And aren’t we supposed to be serving food and manning the doors and carriages? What girl is going to want to talk to a glorified butler?”
Felix wasn’t listening anymore. He’d started snickering and talking to someone else who appreciated the topic of girls more than I did. I wasn’t going to let myself get caught up in any kind of grand vision of how the ball would be. It would be interesting to be in a noble’s home, watch the couples dance, and see how the rich and glamorous got to live. But I was sure I’d get stared at worse than usual. What noble wanted a dirty halfbreed in their house?
We finished dinner and dispersed to our rooms. I took my time bathing. When I came back our room, Felix was stretched out on his bed studying.
“You got something today,” he said, pointing to my bed on the other side of the room.
There was a small square envelope sitting on my bed with my name, Jaevid Broadfeather, written on the outside. I was bewildered. We were more than halfway through the training year, and no one had sent me anything before. I went over and picked it up, tearing it open carefully to unfold the paper tucked inside.
“It’s from your girl, isn’t it?” Felix was standing right over me, breathing down my neck. “I want to see. C’mon you owe me, especially after I helped you write the first one.”
I didn’t want to share it. I tried to turn so he couldn’t see it, holding it down and away. Before I could read a single word, he snatched it out of my hands and darted away. I chased him, trying to grab it back while he laughed. He held it high over his head and started reading it out loud.
“Stop it, Felix!” I yelled, jumping to try and grab it. “Give it back!”
“Ooh look, she says she misses you. She even drew a little heart there for you at the bottom of the page.” He teased, finally let me have the letter back. I gave him a good punch in the arm before I retreated back to my bed and started reading it.
I didn’t interpret anything in Katty’s letter as even remotely out of the ordinary, much less romantic. And there definitely wasn’t a heart drawn at the bottom of the page. She wrote that she was glad I was doing well, and proud that I’d made it into the dragonrider’s academy. She was looking forward to seeing me when I got to come home between training years, and said that she missed me. Her father had started teaching her blacksmithing full time now, and had even given her the official title of his apprentice. I knew that must have made her really happy. She asked about the academy, about what I was learning, and if I’d made any friends. I read the letter over three or four times before I folded it back up, tucking into the envelope, and slipped it under the corner of my mattress. I couldn’t keep a smile off my face.
“So, everything’s good with her?” Felix asked as he looked up from where he was studying again.
I sighed. “Yeah. Seems like it.”
He nodded, smirking to himself like he thought it was funny. “Just look at that grin on your face. You should just tell her you like her, you know. Go ahead and get it out of the way before some other guy snaps her up.”
I glared at him tiredly. “I told you, we’re not like that. She doesn’t—” I paused to think. “What do you mean snaps her up?”
Felix shrugged some. “You know, if she’s pretty, you’re probably not the only one who’s going to notice her. It’s all about timing, my friend.”
That didn’t sit too well with me, not that there was a single thing I could do about it. I sat up, pretending to study while I mulled it over. I didn’t really know if I liked her or not. She’d been a friend, my only friend, up until recently. She was one of the few people I knew I could really trust. To tell her that I liked her would change everything, and not necessarily for the better.
I told her everything I could think of about the academy. I told her about Sile, and all the rigorous morning drills he made us do. I told her about Mavrik, and how together we’d saved Sile from being killed when his saddle malfunctioned. I told her about Felix, who was becoming more like an annoying older brother than a classmate. I told her about how he’d rescued me from being bullied a few times, and how he liked to tease me about everything. Finally, I told her that I liked it here. It was hard. Every day was tougher than the one before it, but I really did like it. I liked feeling like I had a purpose, and a future to look forward to. Even if only a few of these dragonriders liked me, I could deal with that. I could be happy anyway.
I paused to think about what else I should say. Felix thought I needed to tell her that I liked her, but I still wasn’t sure about that. Leaving the letter unfinished, I folded the paper up and tucked it under the bed with the one she’d sent me. I would just have to think about it some more.
When it came to Katty, things had always been clear to me before. She was my very best friend, and definitely someone I cared about. But asking myself if I liked her the way Felix was talking about meant I’d be putting all that on the line if she didn’t feel the same way. I just wasn’t sure I was ready to risk that yet.
twelve
The day before the annual officer’s ball, all our training was suspended for preparations. There were no morning drills, no pushups, and definitely no academics for us. The older students and officers had to have their formal armor refitted, polished, and perfected, so the hallways of the dorm were filled with the smell of shoe polish and clean laundry.
As fledglings, we didn’t have anything like that yet. Instead, Sile came into our dorm room with a bag filled with new navy blue tunics that had the king’s golden eagle stitched on the shoulders and breast, long black capes with a gold-colored chain around the neck, knee-high black boots, and black pants. There was a set for each of us, and Sile told us to go ahead and try everything on to make sure it fit.
“Can’t have you two looking like bums at Duke Brinton’s estate,” Sile grumbled. He came over and started adjusting the collar of my tunic, then did the same to Felix’s.
“Is that who’s hosting it? Brinton? Well, at least there’ll be a lot of wine.” Felix snorted. “Duke Brinton loves his vineyards more than his own children. He talks about them like they were people instead of a bunch of plants. You should hear him at dinner. Just on and on—there’s no stop to it. About the leaves, and the grapes, and how he’s perfected the aging process. And his son, there’s a real piece of work. You may have been born a halfbreed, Jae, but be glad you never had to endure a play date with Fredrick Brinton.”
I snickered, and Sile cast us both a dangerous look. “Just keep your thoughts to yourself when you’re at his estate, am I understood? No talking with the distinguished guests. No drinking. No dancing. You’re there to help ladies from carriages into the ballroom, not flirt with them. You’re there to serve wine, not drink any. This is a night for men, so remember your place, boys.”
I was actually getting excited about it now. There would be food there unlike anything I’d ever tasted before. Even if most of the people there looked at me as if I were a cockroach, I was still going to enjoy it. I was still a fledgling dragonrider—so they couldn’t exactly kick me out.
When we had packed our new uniforms up, with Sile standing over us, watching to make sure we didn’t leave anything behind, we went to bed early. Everyone else did, too. For once, it was Felix who was too restless to sleep. He kept me up with his excited whispering, going on about Brinton’s obnoxious fat son, Fredrick, and how his wife had a hooked nose and nasally laugh. I was relieved when he finally drifted off and I heard him start to snore. It didn’t take me any time at all to fall asleep, too.
The call to arms sounded, and purely out of habit, I was already awake. Felix had no trouble sleeping in the extra few hours, though. He was still snoring and drooling, so I just finished my letter to Katty.
I promised her I’d come to visit as soon as I could, told her how I hoped to get another letter from her soon, and ended it at that. No emotional gushes or confessions of liking anyone. I just wasn’t willing to risk it. In the whole world, I could count the number of people I could call friends on one hand, and one of them was a dragon. I didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize the relationship I had with her. At least, not yet.
When Felix woke up, we started to get ready to go. We put on our fledgling’s armor, grabbed our bags, and started down toward the Roost. It didn’t take much time to get ready to leave, but it was really crowded. Every other rider in the academy was in the process of leaving, too. All around us, riders were fixing their saddles, tying down their bags, and taking off into the sky. Some of them had already left and were on their way to the east.
Sile was waiting for us. We hurried through fitting on our own saddles, tying down all our bags, and taking off. With the ocean to our backs, and the sun rising over the mountains before us, we started for Duke Brinton’s estate.
A few twilight stars were still glittering in the west when Blybrig Academy emptied of all its dragonriders into the morning sky. It was an incredible thing to see. All around me in the sky were magnificent dragons and proud knights in gleaming armor. There were more than a hundred in total, all heading toward the break of day. And the best part was, I was one of them.
It was almost a full day of riding over mountains frosted with snow, steep desert canyons, lush green valleys, and rolling grasslands to get to Brinton’s estate. We didn’t even stop to rest, and by the time we could see the city below, my rear end was sore from sitting in the saddle for so long. We circled in a pattern, following Sile as he signaled to us that we were landing in waves, five at a time. I guessed that was to keep from overwhelming the Duke’s front door with a flock of dragons.
Duke Brinton was opening his enormous home and all its rooms to us. All the dragonriders from Blybrig were staying with him until tomorrow morning. It was an honor to spend the night in a noble’s house. Even if they made me sleep in the stable with the horses, it would probably still be the nicest place I had ever stayed in.
We kept circling in a tight pattern until it was our turn to land and quickly unpack our bags before sending our dragons back into the air. They’d hang around in the area, waiting for us, but there was nowhere to stable them here. Besides, keeping dragons around livestock was generally a bad idea. Even tame dragons got hungry.
I stood back, watching Mavrik take to the air and soar skyward like a huge, blue-scaled eagle. He was so powerful and majestic, and seeing him join the flock of dragons in the air, swirling in a giant circular column like buzzards over a kill, was amazing. I still wasn’t used to it, and it still took my breath away.
“Come on, we’ve gotta get ready!” Felix gave me a nudge and nodded toward the door.
Brinton’s estate looked like a massive castle made of stacked white stone. There must have been a thousand rooms with gleaming windows on every side. The front lawn was like a front field, and in the center was a huge lake with white swans paddling around on it. In the back, there were acres upon acres of vineyards, stretching as far as I could see across the rolling landscape.
Two maids in matching blue and white dresses were holding the front doors open for all the dragonriders to come inside. As soon as we were inside, I forgot to look anywhere but up. The ceilings were incredibly tall, and painted with images of clouds, angels, and the old gods from the old fables doing battle with mythical beasts. I noticed that one of the demonic monsters looked a lot like a gray elf, only with pointy teeth and glowing yellow eyes.
The windows stretched up the walls, and chandeliers made of glittering crystal loo
ked big enough to kill a few people if they happened to fall. Porcelain pots squatted on the floor, so big I could have climbed inside one to hide, but instead they were filled with blossoming fruit trees that made the air smell sweet. I felt totally out of place as I stood with my bag in one hand, and my helmet under my other arm.
Felix kept nudging me to keep me moving, and we followed Sile into the house, through the long hallways, up a grand staircase, to the east wing where we dragonriders were staying for the night. Maids dressed in that same blue and white dress went back and forth past us, and one paused to let us into a large suite that was for the three of us.
Sile waved us off as soon as he sat his bags down. “I’ve got to run a few errands before I dress. Go ahead and clean yourselves up. Try not to get into any trouble. In fact, just don’t leave this room until I get back,” he commanded before he went back outside.
The room was as big as Ulric’s whole house, and then some. It had four bedrooms and a washroom attached to a big sitting room. One whole wall of the main room was entirely covered by a window that looked out onto a beautiful garden three storeys down. There was a big silver platter of fruit, cheese, a whole table of desserts set out for us to eat, and a fully stocked wine bar. Felix was eyeing that as I went from room to room, checking things out.
I couldn’t believe I’d actually have a room all to myself. Not just a cot, or a shared room; I’d have my own bedroom with a double bed, soft sheets, and fluffy pillows. It was surreal, and I was afraid to touch anything for fear I’d get it dirty.
“He’s gone to get his family, you know. The wives always come to this kind of thing. They love the show.” Felix was leaning in the doorway, looking around at the glamorous bedroom. “So what do you think?”
Fledgling (The Dragonrider Chronicles) Page 10
