Fireborne (THE AURELIAN CYCLE Book 1)

LEE

Despite the late hour, the windows of the Inner Palace are lit. Inside the Council Room, Lotus and Warren, the two skyfish riders whose patrol must have just returned bearing news, wait with Atreus, General Holmes, Miranda Hane, the Chief Treasurer, and the Ministers of Trade and Agriculture. I take the constituents as confirmation of my fears.

The Pythians didn’t strike our military, our navy, or our aerial fleet. They didn’t even try to attack our city.

They went for our trade fleet.

Atreus gestures for us to sit, not on the side of the room, but at the table with them.

“How bad?” I ask.

Holmes, with assistance from Lotus and Warren, begins to debrief us. Multiple air strikes, all within a window of about an hour yesterday evening, when the fog still hung low. South along the Medean trade routes between Harbortown, Damos, and Bassilea, where our patrols rarely venture. Given the number of attacks, their distance apart, and the descriptions returned by the navy, more than a half dozen sparked dragons were involved. Nearly our entire trade fleet was lost, and with them, most of this year’s textile exports.

The casualty count of Callipolan civilians lost at sea will number in the hundreds; but that’s only where the devastation begins, the Minister of Agriculture starts to explain. With so many farms incentivized from subsistence farming to textile exports, Callipolis no longer supports self-sufficient levels of food production to sustain its growing urban population, and with the exports destroyed, there are no profits by which to make up the difference. The Minister of Agriculture doesn’t say famine because he doesn’t have to.

So that’s how it will go. Reaping fear not with dragonfire and blazesites but with the slow pressure of hunger through the winter. And we, with our half-sparked fleet, will be able to do nothing but endure it.

You wanted the world to burn? Now it’s burning.

“We can borrow, can’t we?” Atreus turns to the Treasurer.

“We’re looking into it. Mithrides and others will help as much as they can, but many of them lost huge investments in the attack.”

“What if we centralize our food resources for the winter and redistribute?” Atreus asks.

“It might be enough,” the Minister of Agriculture says, looking frightened, “but there’s really no way of knowing up front how much we would have . . . and that sort of operation is very difficult and has disastrous effects if mismanaged—”

Atreus asks, “Do we have alternative solutions for supporting the urban population through the winter?”

Silence answers him.

Atreus closes his eyes, his face twisted in deliberation. And then he opens them. He turns to Holmes. “Begin collectivizing resources immediately. I want every village, every farm, upturned for whatever it’s made this harvest. We’ll centralize resources and ration from the city center.”

My mind latches on to a single word: collectivize. Surely he doesn’t mean—

Atreus turns to us.

“Shift the skyfish to coastal patrols exclusively and keep a minimum of one sparked dragon accompanying them. Devote the aurelian and stormscourge squadrons to assisting with collections.”

He does mean it. Collections.

A practice notorious in the old regime, that hasn’t been implemented since the Revolution—and was, infamously, enforced by dragonfire. The dragonlords’ preferred method for collecting their harvest taxes. My father’s usual occupation, in autumn.

“You’re asking us to—”

“The traditional methods. Speed will need to be our priority.”

Traditional methods.

Words so easily delivered by Atreus, an order so dismissively given, that for a moment I don’t even believe I’ve heard it.

Because, of course, for Atreus it’s just that: two words. For me, for the other dragonriders, it will be something else entirely. Which is why Atreus is able to look so calm, while I go light-headed. Annie beside me is swallowing audibly, her hands clenching on the table, her eyes widening as the order washes over her.

Watch how this vision will splinter.

I hear myself say, “Yes, sir.”

“How soon can you start collecting?” Atreus asks Holmes.

“First light,” Holmes says. “I’ll need to speak with the Firstrider and Alterna to arrange matters.”

The general conducts the meeting with me and Annie in his office and on his feet. We agree to launch a strengthened guard tonight over the city; tomorrow morning, ground forces will begin collecting food from the countryside, accompanied by two dragons per visit.

“I think it’s best if you go on the first collections, Lee,” Holmes says.

For the first time since our meeting began, Annie speaks.

“No. I should.”

She’s white-faced, gripping the arms of her chair with tight fingers. Holmes takes in her expressions and his own softens.

“Antigone, collections are going to be very difficult—”

Annie’s voice is faint but clear, each word spoken with crisp precision. “I know what collections are like.”

Holmes blinks. The composition of his face shifts with understanding.

“As far as I know”—Annie twitches—“I’m one of the only Guardians who knows what collections are like. Lee’s never—”

Here she stops and with a pang I understand her sudden hesitation: She’s wondering if I’ve been on collections before, too. I shake my head.

I was always deemed too young to go along.

Annie inhales a catching breath and straightens.

“I know what you’re looking for; I know what you’ll need.”

I feel a coldness entering my bones. Whatever Annie knows about collections, there’s only one person she could have learned it from.

Holmes places his palms on his map-covered desk, and it creaks beneath his great weight as he leans forward. “Knowing what I need isn’t the same thing as being able to do it. This kind of operation is only as successful as it can be harsh. They’ll think we’re lying about giving it back, that we’re just collecting it for ourselves, as the old regime used to do. We’re going to have to crack down hard, especially at first. I need riders who can do what it takes.”

Annie’s voice is faint but clear.

“I can do what it takes.”

For a beat they stare at each other, this towering man, the girl a third of his size, eyes blazing. Holmes seems to find what he’s looking for. He removes his palms from his desk and straightens.

“Good,” he tells her. “Then you’ll do the first ones, and begin training the others after that.”

In the hallway outside, Annie stands stock still for a moment and wraps her arms around herself. Then she releases them, and we begin to walk. The Palace is quiet, dark, and full of the earthy smells of early autumn as we match stride through the courtyard arcades.

“Who do you want assisting you?” I ask.

Annie’s answer comes without hesitation, as a murmur. “Rock.”

Of course. Rock is a former serf, too. “You’ll need to talk to him after I debrief the corps. And the two of you will have to begin training the rest after tomorrow.”

“All right.”

I realize the other thing that will happen tonight as if a stone has dropped into my gut.

“I’ll also need to speak to Crissa first, before we wake the others.”

“Why . . . ?”

“Her father is a trader, and he’s at sea.”

In the Cloister, I follow Annie to the darkened girls’ dorm and count the beds to Crissa’s. Then I say her name. She follows me into the hall, rubbing sleep from her eyes.

“Lee, what’s . . . you nut, is this a tryst?”

In the sconce-lit corridor she turns out to be smiling. That easy, unlabored Crissa smile, that I’ve grown to cherish and am now about to take away. But I can’t do it here, in the hall where she passes every day to and from bed; nor can I imagine doing it in the refectory, or the solarium, or the courtyard. Wherever we have this conversation, Crissa will remember it for that.

So I take her hand and lead her to an unused classroom in the library wing.

When I close the door after us, she’s still smiling. “This is . . . pretty irregular, Lee. But I can make it work—”

“Would you mind sitting?”

The smile flickers. Doubt finally enters her expression. She sits, and I sit beside her.

“Has your father’s ship sailed into port yet?”

“Not . . . for a week or so, I don’t think. Why?”

In the time it takes for me to form the words, her face stills. Like all the pieces that didn’t add up to a date are now adding up to something else. And then, as I knew it would, the smile goes out.

“No,” she says. “No, no, no—”

I’d thought experience would be a kind of preparation for this conversation, but it turns out that there’s no preparation for watching someone’s face struggle to understand a new kind of pain.

“Nothing’s certain yet. We only just got the news, we don’t know anything for sure yet—”

“What news?”

ANNIE

When the Guardians are assembled, alert and curious, in the sconce-lit oration room, I ask Cor to come with me to find Lee. We can hear Crissa crying from the corridor. Inside, he is sitting with his arm around her on the old school pew, his face lowered into a hand.

“Annie, Cor,” Crissa says when she sees us, and gets to her feet.

Cor’s voice is rough. “Hey. How are you doing?”

“Not great.”

Lee has risen with her. “Is it time?” he asks me.

I nod.

Lee tells Crissa: “I’ve got to speak with the others. Cor can wait with you here—”

Crissa wipes her eyes. “No. I’ll come.”

None of us are expecting this; when she sees our expressions, she lifts her chin. “I have a squadron that needs me. What do I have to hide? I’m not ashamed to be seen in grief.”

Inside the oration room, she sits between me and Cor; the double takes that riders have when they see her tearstained face seem to make no impression on her. Lee takes his place behind the rostrum in the sunken center of the room. In the time it’s taken to return to the oration room, he’s become charged with burning energy, like a pent-up dragon finally released from its cave, and the corps notices. Silence falls.

“I’ll keep this brief,” Lee says.

It’s the first time Lee has ever officially run a meeting with us as fleet commander. He explains what happened, what we’ll be doing for the next few weeks, and what he needs immediately. It’s over in ten minutes. He heads out with the first patrol, taking a third of the riders with him. The rest of us are dismissed to get some sleep.

I pull aside Rock to talk to him about tomorrow morning. When he realizes I’m asking him to assist in the first food collections, he pales.

“I remember collections,” he says.

“I do, too. That’s why we should do them first, then train the others.”

Rock lets out a low, whistling breath. “Uriel’s dragon,” he swears slowly.

I tell him what I’ve been telling myself, ever since that conversation with General Holmes. “It won’t be like before. We’ll give it back.”

“Even if we do,” he says, shaking his head, “there won’t be enough.”

Rock keeps pretty well-informed about the state of agriculture in Callipolis, and the way he says this makes me nervous in a way even the Minister of Agriculture’s predictions didn’t.

“We don’t know that yet,” I say.

Rock grimaces, like there’s something sour in his mouth.

“It’s our best option. Even if there isn’t enough, this is—fairest.”

But even as I say it, numb dread fills me at the thought of what’s going to happen tomorrow. Rock turns away, pulling at his mouth like he’s working through something, and in the end he just utters a single expletive.

“When do we leave?” he asks me.

“Six in the morning. We should go to sleep.”

Rock lets out a hollow laugh at the suggestion.