House of Dragons

by Jessica Cluess

  “Now,” Vespir whispered.

  Karina pulled up and slowed a bit to settle just below the Hydra. They were riding parallel with Aufidius, Vespir’s back mere feet beneath the dragon’s talons. She pressed her face against Karina’s neck, smelled the baking-bread scent that was peculiar to her own dragon. Aufidius grumbled above them, but as long as they weren’t touching, hopefully he wouldn’t care.

  One minute crawled past. She heard Aufidius snarl: he sensed the intruders beneath him.

  Vespir stifled a scream when Aufidius’s talons—each nearly as long as a table—swiped the air a hairbreadth from Karina’s wings. If caught, those talons would slice through them like butter. Just a few more seconds before the descent would begin. Only a few, but it needed to happen now. Now. Now. Now.

  Why wasn’t the Hydra banking? Karina was starting to tire. Much longer, and the dragon would spiral out of control. They wouldn’t make it to Dragonspire. They’d crash in the fields.

  Please. Please.

  Aufidius pedaled his taloned feet once again, and once again he just, just missed them. Vespir knew in her gut that the third time, the Hydra would not miss.

  Please.

  And then…

  Aufidius pitched back, ready for his descent. He banked, and his wings provided a surge of wind.

  Vespir clung to Karina as they shot ahead.

  Be like an arrow, girl.

  No one needed to ask directions to the finish line. All they could do was fall, and hope.

  Hyperia gave a bewildered cry as Karina and Vespir shot ahead. Karina folded her wings against her body and hurtled toward the earth, the capital rapidly spreading out beneath them. Vespir cracked her eyes and watched the buildings come into view: the golden towers, the marble arches, the aqueducts cordoning off the edges of the city. Terra-cotta rooftops and piazzas with elaborate fountains. The crowds’ cheers grew louder as she spiraled to the finish line.

  Vespir could no longer see; she could only hold on.

  Behind her, Aufidius roared. Vespir could hear the creature’s wings flapping hard to catch up. Closer. Closer. She smelled acrid smoke. If that beast tried to roast her now, Karina would not have the power to move out of the way.

  The great black silk banner grew nearer. Vespir squeezed herself against Karina, the crowds screamed, the air around her split with roars and—

  Vespir raised her head as Karina zoomed past the banner and into the city.

  First.

  Her dragon spread her wings and slowed. She soared over the crowds’ heads as the others flew in behind. Vespir put a hand over her racing heart and whooped. She could not hear her own voice in the cacophony. Children leaned out of windows and off balconies to fling handfuls of pink and white flower petals into the air. Bands played a triumphant march below as the competitors sped along the main boulevard, soaring toward the heart of the city. Women waved handkerchiefs and tossed bound stalks of dragongrass, which grew on the fabled banks of the imperial river. Vespir pumped her fist, and the crowds roared their approval. She was air, now, air and light. People threw gold and silver coins to sparkle in the air, and Vespir caught one. Shop windows gleamed like fire in the afternoon sun; as they rose, Vespir saw the fabled rooftop gardens, lush with date palms and tamarisk.

  Before them the palace of Dragonspire loomed, a one-hundred-foot-tall mountain of gold-and-white marble. The tallest building ever constructed.

  Vespir and Karina rose overhead to make for an elegant landing, and from this height she noted that the building looked teardrop-shaped, with a sharp, narrow tip that slowly widened and rounded out. At the teardrop’s point waited guards clad in the imperial black livery, all of them standing in two straight lines to allow the competitors’ dragons to touch down between them.

  The tip of the teardrop was the landing strip; the round base held the gardens and pools. The middle consisted of a tiered building, brilliant with gold. At the top tier, someone had built a fifty-foot spire—hence the name Dragonspire. Legend had it the Great Dragon had ordered it built as a beacon to riders everywhere.

  Vespir landed, legs trembling as she slid from Karina’s back. She cupped the dragon’s face in her hands and nuzzled her velvet snout.

  “Boop.” Vespir giggled as Karina merrily chirped. “Thank you, girl.” Turning, Vespir wobbled down the landing. The priests waited—how they’d arrived before the competitors, Vespir was not certain. Camilla and Petros wore even more magnificent robes now, tangerine silk with gold embroidery at the sleeves and collar, jeweled medallions with the imperial seal around their necks.

  Vespir grinned, her cheeks rough and wind-chapped.

  The guards stepped aside as Aufidius landed a moment later, and Hyperia dismounted. The Volscia girl stalked toward Vespir, her heeled shoes a brisk slap on the pavement. Oh no.

  Vespir considered how to dodge the blow.

  Hyperia extended her hand.

  “That was the most brilliant bit of flying I have ever seen,” the Volscia girl declared.

  Soft with shock, Vespir shook hands.

  “Th-thanks.”

  Lucian landed next, then Ajax, with Emilia last by a hair. Everybody approached Vespir in awe. Ajax didn’t even seem pissed about losing. The four crowded her, and every one of them whispered congratulations. Every one of them smiled.

  Vespir finally turned to the priests. She trembled with happiness, the ruler of the skies.

  For the first time, she felt like a damn empress.

  “Well?” she asked, beaming.

  Camilla smiled in return.

  “The Race is forfeit,” she said silkily. “There will be no victor.”

  Surely Lucian hadn’t heard right.

  “Excuse me?” He stepped up beside Vespir. Camilla and Petros exchanged glances, and then Camilla placed her hands together as if in prayer. She gave the most insultingly brief shrug.

  “There was a skirmish on the edges of the peninsula—a dracomachia. Unfortunately, such behavior falls outside of the acceptable range of competitor combat. As a result, the Race is off. There will be no victory and no penalty.” With that, the priestess gestured to the landing strip, the black-liveried guard waiting in a perfect line. “Welcome to Dragonspire. Rest well, for tomorrow is the final challenge. You will be taken to your quarters—”

  “No.” Lucian felt as he used to when presented with an enemy’s surprise charge. Tamping that emotion down, he took a deep breath. He would not let himself be that person, but this…was wrong. “The rules never said anything about dracomachia. Vespir and Karina weren’t even involved.”

  “It’s simply impossible to ascertain who would truly have won under these circumstances,” Petros replied. His whining tone was like a needle inserted directly into Lucian’s ear.

  “Meaning what?” Vespir raised her head. Her voice was rough. “Karina and I couldn’t have won normally?”

  “It’s impossible to know,” the priest said.

  Lucian glanced at the others. Emilia hung back, looking paler than usual; perhaps the long flight had done her in. She was rubbing circles at her temples. Hyperia appeared absolutely livid, and Ajax bristled.

  “Didn’t you see?” he barked, pointing at Vespir. “She got that tiny-ass dragon to go faster than a bull Hydra! Who does that?”

  “Our rules are sacrosanct,” Camilla said.

  “Your rules are dragon shit,” Lucian seethed. Beside him, Vespir seemed to lose the will to fight. She gazed at her feet and muttered something he could not catch.

  Hyperia shifted through their small knot of a group, her passage as smooth and golden as she. The Volscia girl looked the priests in the eye.

  “Vespir won this challenge with as much honor and ingenuity as I have ever seen.” Lucian imagined her voice as an ice-encrusted diamond. “Give her the victory.”

 
“My lady.” Camilla sighed. “Your every word is redolent with command, but you are not an empress yet. There is much difference between a truly accomplished dragon rider and a handler’s tricks. I assure you, this is far less impressive than you may think.”

  Vespir flinched as if she’d been slapped. Lucian’s temper frayed to the breaking point.

  “You were never going to give it to her. Were you?” he snarled. “From the moment she arrived at the island, you’d already decided her fate!” The old him wanted nothing so much as to grab Petros by his shirtfront and shake some damn sense into him.

  Vespir’s hand on his arm stilled him. Instantly, Lucian turned his head and quelled that hideous voice. How could he bring peace to the empire when he couldn’t be peaceful at the slightest provocation?

  “Thank you,” Vespir said to the priests. “I always knew this Trial wasn’t fair. At least now you’re being open about it.”

  Camilla smirked.

  “Rest, and we’ll dine at eight. Do enjoy the palace grounds. Come this time tomorrow, four of you will no longer be able to.” With that, and a swirl of her robes, she glided toward the entranceway with Petros at her side.

  The five were left surrounded by the armed guards, whose presence suddenly felt less than welcoming.

  Lucian shook his head. “The Dragon saw what you really did.”

  “The Dragon doesn’t care about people like me,” Vespir grunted. One by one, the competitors’ dragons were led off by an organized flurry of handlers, taken to the aerie at the very tip of the platform. The imperial guard would escort each of the competitors to their rooms. Hyperia turned back to Vespir, pursing her extraordinary mouth.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said, before striding away.

  “The five of us should have a drink or something after dinner,” Ajax suggested as they entered the palace.

  The ceiling soared twenty feet overhead, tiled in gold. Jewels winked in decorative swirls upon the walls, creating mosaics of the five Houses’ dragons. Wyverns studded with rubies and Drakes dense with sapphires glistened as they passed. Golden statues of long-dead emperors and empresses saluted them from recessed alcoves. The marble floor echoed with their footsteps.

  Ajax spun, taking it all in. “Just the competitors. If this is the last night of my life, I don’t want to spend it with those priest clowns.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” Emilia groaned, peeling off from the rest when one of the soldiers asked her to follow. She waved goodbye but seemed distracted. Lucian frowned as he followed her with his eyes.

  “See you later,” Vespir muttered, and soon she and Ajax had left Lucian with the captain of the guard.

  The fellow wore plated ebony armor with the silver imperial seal on the chest: five dragon heads radiating outward, like a five-pointed star. His helm had two great, stylized horns of obsidian curling around it.

  “Which way to my room?” Lucian asked, then gasped as the guard removed his helmet.

  The captain grinned, a familiar smile in a wonderfully familiar face.

  “Rufus?” Lucian cried.

  “Hey, one captain to another now.” Rufus clasped forearms with Lucian. “Though, last I heard, you were giving all that up to weed gardens for the Sacred Brothers.”

  “Something like that.” Lucian grinned.

  Rufus was a Karthagon boy from the deep desert territories, conscripted into the army when he was barely twelve years old. The two had met in the snowy terrain of the northern expansion. Soon after Lucian’s first battle on dragonback, he’d left the luxury of his family tents and the officers’ mess to rough it with the foot soldiers. That’s where he’d met Rufus, when the boy had been awed by Tyche and Lucian had encouraged him to pet her. Where they’d trained together, pushed each other to better things, made fun of each other for their bumbling attempts to talk to girls.

  Rufus had started off scrawny, Ajax’s height. Now, he was nearly six feet, broad-shouldered. His smooth, dark skin had lost its adolescent roughness. The snapping light in his eyes, though, was still him entirely.

  “When did you get this job?” Lucian slapped his friend on the shoulder. “I thought you were transferring to a division on the Masarian frontlines, closer to home.” It had been over two years since they’d parted. Lucian had been sorry to lose a friendly face.

  “Your father put in a good word for me at the top. I transferred to the corps here, and then right after the emperor started getting sick…” He lowered his voice. “The old captain of the guard just offered his resignation and left overnight. Next thing I knew, I was promoted.”

  “At least one of us fulfilled his potential,” Lucian said, trying to smile. Rufus lost his own grin.

  “I don’t know how in the depths you got into this Trial, but may the bright stars guide you to the throne,” he said.

  In Karthago, they had worshipped the stars long before the dragon riders arrived. Karthagons believed that the stars were their ancestors, every one reborn as a god in the sky. Gaius Sabel, due to his wife Ayzebel’s influence, had allowed the people to keep their religious customs so long as they did not flaunt them. Generous, most people called it. Basic decency was Lucian’s opinion.

  A ruler should accept all his people, not a special class of them.

  But after the Race, Lucian felt like the Trial was simply dragging all five of them along, up to the edge of a cliff and then over it. Justice didn’t exist here. Only power.

  Rufus had once told him “there is power in the stars, and in the hearts they govern.” An old saying from an older Karthago. Lucian had smiled bitterly at the idea that there could be anything graceful or loving in power.

  This was not something to tell Rufus. There’d been so many things Lucian had never told him, for the sake of the other boy’s happiness.

  So Lucian clapped his brother-in-arms on the shoulder.

  “Pray for me,” he said, “and the stars will do the rest.”

  * * *

  Dinner had been a silent affair, everyone scraping their plates and eyeing the priests at either end of the long table. The dining hall was a long, echoing chamber with wooden walls and the shields of each of the five families on proud display. The table, twenty feet of polished mahogany, had been set with crystal and linen, decanters of gold, the plateware pewter with heavy cutlery of the princeliest silver. The roast boar and flamingo tongues had been exquisite, but no one had eaten very much. Lucian had had to make do with bread and figs. When the meal was done, the five trooped out in formation to find a parlor far away from the sour-faced priests.

  They found one, a room with tall windows facing the east. The river was a bend of silver in the moonlight, and the whole of Dragonspire was lit with twinkling lights. Fireworks erupted in the distance, blossoming red and green in the sky. The people were celebrating their new soon-to-be emperor.

  Emilia sat on a low silken couch. Lucian placed himself next to her. Vespir perched cross-legged on a chaise opposite, and Hyperia took her customary golden place at the head. Ajax whistled at a servant; a whole line of them in imperial black waited at the corners of the room, perched liked trained ravens.

  “Wine,” Ajax said. Then, “A lot.”

  So they all drank together.

  Wine from the imperial vineyards was very good and strong. It had only taken a single cup to soften everyone’s hard edges. Two or three cups to relax them.

  Now, after four cups, Lucian felt almost happy.

  Hyperia slowly put a hand through her magnificent hair. She had to move slowly so she didn’t wobble; whenever she spoke, she spoke very clearly, as if proving that she was in no way drunk. The trouble was she’d say things like, “If I die, and you die, and we all die, then no one else will die. Correct?” and look around for confirmation.

  “We should get some food,” Emilia groaned. She rested her head against Lucian’s
shoulder. Her hair smelled nice.

  “Y’know, I was jus’ thinking the same thing, about everyone dying.” Vespir smacked her lips, turned to Hyperia. “If we all get Cut, would that mean no one’s emperor?” She chuckled. “That’d be funny.”

  “No, it’d be civil war.” Emilia tried pouring some more wine and sloshed it. “That happened in the pre-empire days, you know? They used to have civil wars all the time. You could, er, schedule them, they were so regular.” She gave a tiny belch. Lucian privately thought it was adorable, but he didn’t say anything.

  “I want a civil war!” Ajax climbed to his feet. “Can you imagine everyone on dragons just, I don’t know, dragon-ing?” He sat next to Vespir with a triumphant smile. “I would win.”

  Vespir snorted into her cup. “No. No. You’d go down first.” She wiped her mouth, giggling as she roughly elbowed Ajax. “Didn’t you learn anything from this afternoon? Your dragon is so dumb,” she hissed, then clapped a hand over her mouth, her eyes bulging. Incensed, Ajax looked like he was trying to puff himself up. Like a puff adder, Lucian thought. Or a puff fish. Something small that puffs.

  “Dog is not dumb! He’s…crafty.”

  Everybody looked at him askance.

  “I’m sorry. I love dragons!” Vespir waved her hands, apologetic. “I’m a friend to all dragons. Dragons are my people. I like dragons better than anyone else.” She placed her hands over her chest, looking sincere. Then she snorted. “But your dragon is so, so dumb.”

  “Well, your dragon’s small!” Ajax thrust his face into Vespir’s. She grinned and knocked her forehead against his.

  “Boop.” That cracked her up, but no one else got it. Wiping her mouth, she said, “Your dragon is so sweet, but so dumb.” She paused. “Your dragon’s so dumb…”

  Oh, Lucian couldn’t resist.

  “How dumb is he?”