Fireborne (THE AURELIAN CYCLE Book 1)

LEE

There are a few days of relative calm after collections are finished. Inventories are being finalized in the depots, and in the meantime, aside from guarding the coastline, all we have to do is wait. Crissa secures leave to go home, an exception made to the usual proscription against traveling by dragon for personal reasons. Duck persuades Annie to go out to sea with him for a few patrols, and she returns looking the better for it. I catch up on sleep.

Then, for a second time, Annie and I are summoned to the Inner Palace, this time with Cor and Power. Now that we’ve taken stock, called in debts, and borrowed what we could, it’s time to look at how distribution will work. Those sitting at the table are the same as last time, with an addition: Callipolis’s chief physician is present, and the meeting begins with his presentation.

The physician describes the project he’s been working on over the past week: finalizing a formula to predict survival rates based on ration amounts, fitted to the population of Callipolis. All of this seems fairly straightforward, until the physician explains the further way in which his formula works.

“As requested by the Council,” he says, looking uncomfortable for the first time, “it can be broken down into—categories.”

He rolls back a sheet of paper on the board he’s been working on, and four numbers appear. If they were summed up, they look as though they would fit the population of Callipolis. But the smallest number is barely a tenth of the sum, and the largest is about half. I realize what they signify about the same time Annie does; next to me, she inhales sharply.

“This is the population of Callipolis broken down by class metal,” the physician says, now looking decidedly hesitant.

Cor, who has been sitting on my other side taking notes until this point, freezes. His pen, poised on the next line, begins to bleed ink onto his notebook. Power glances at him and then past him, at me. Like he’s challenging me.

The physician continues to explain, his voice becoming hoarse.

“Class Gold, the smallest, followed by Bronze and Silver at roughly twenty-five percent each, and then the Iron population rounding out at around forty. It’s a foregone conclusion that full rations for all members of Callipolis, for the whole winter, will be untenable. And if resources are spread equally, the survival rates will be . . . undesirable. However, if variation in ration size is permitted, the figures change.”

Atreus prompts coolly: “In other words, if some are given more food than others?”

“Yes. Large numbers of people can be saved . . . and heaviest losses can be contained within certain populations.”

Certain populations.

I feel the horror of it rising like a tide, until I have to crane my neck to stay above it and breathe deep. No, no, surely I misunderstand—

Surely they’re not going to base ration amounts on the metals test—

Surely we didn’t just spend two weeks shaking down village after village for their harvests only to serve this further horror—

But though the faces around the table are grim, they show little sign of surprise. Only Power, Cor, Annie, and I, it seems, were not prepared. Atreus is particularly calm. “And what would those losses look like?”

The pen in Cor’s hand is beginning to puncture his notebook.

“Well,” the physician says, wiping his forehead. “That depends on how you adjust the numbers.”

He flips to the next page. On it, at the top, his formula is written out, and below it, different numbers are plugged in. Power’s expression is slowly filling with something like delight, while Cor remains frozen, staring at the inkblot spreading from his pen. Annie’s hand begins to speed across her notebook as she copies the formula down.

“Here are a few of the proposed solutions.”

The first gives full rations to classes Gold, Bronze, and Silver, and only one-eighth rations to Iron—for every full meal a Gold would be given, an Iron would be given an eighth the amount of food. Such distribution predicts survival rate for class-irons at around fifty percent.

“Less than ideal,” Atreus observes, in the same calm voice.

“As thought I,” says the physician, looking relieved. “As per your—aforementioned priorities—I have calculated a few other scenarios . . .”

He shows the second proposal, with Bronze and Silver receiving slightly less than full rations, Gold still at full rations, and Iron bumped up to quarter rations. Atreus dislikes this one, too, so the physician keeps showing him lower ration levels for Bronze and Silver, at eighty and then seventy percent of full fare, but even there the survival rate for the Iron class gets only up to around seventy percent.

Which looks better until you start doing that math: the number of weak and sick and young and elderly of the Iron population who would not be able to survive on such small fare.

But then the pull of the logic takes hold, even as it makes me feel ill with myself:

If losses are inevitable, where would it be better for them to occur? From skilled labor, upon whose farmers and craftsmen we rely? From the military, whose defense we need in a time of crisis? From the Gold elite, who govern our country?

Unskilled laborers—service workers, textiles and smelting, mining, quarrying—these would be the easiest workers to replace, the least-skilled contributors to lose—

No, no, no—I’ve had rounds among Iron workers, interviewed them privately to make sure they were well-treated, spent years attending their welfare, Cor’s sister is an Iron worker—

I don’t want these thoughts. I don’t want to be weighing these choices. I don’t want this logic—

Holmes speaks. “My soldiers need to eat, Atreus.”

Atreus frowns, considering, and then nods. “Bring Silver back up,” he tells the physician.

Which pushes the survival rate of Iron down again.

Cor clears his throat and murmurs, “Excuse me.”

For a moment, I think he has something to say, but then I realize he’s pushing back his chair to leave the room. Power’s eyes follow him, lit with amusement; Atreus watches his departure impassively. Then he tells the physician, as though there were no interruption, “Bronze should also be as functional as possible. We can’t afford to go below two-thirds.”

Annie silently pushes her notebook toward me, on which, below the formula, she has scribbled the word Gold? For a second longer we look at each other, and I wonder whether my face has gone as white as hers.

I nod, because I had been thinking it, too. She stares at me, hard, like she’s daring me to say it. I give in, turn to the physician, and ask, “Why is Class Gold at full rations?”

The physician glances at Atreus, and in the second that he does, I notice the gold wristband glinting on his arm. Around the room, others are shifting uncomfortably, glancing at each other. We’re all Gold here, except for Holmes.

“The First Protector requested that we ensure maximum survival rate for Class Gold,” the physician tells me. He looks embarrassed, but determined nonetheless, like this is one part of the plan he backs wholeheartedly. “They are, after all, the nation’s most valuable citizens.”

Annie speaks up, her voice quiet. “Surely they don’t need full rations. Their work isn’t usually physical, is it?”

The physician stares at her, like he doesn’t quite believe a second underage person is volunteering out of turn. “Well, that varies by individual, but—”

“Lo Teiran does not need a full stomach to write poetry,” I point out.

The physician is scowling at the two of us, like we’re being smart-asses, but he seems unwilling to call us out on it. After all, as far as anyone here knows, Annie and I were poor and close to starving during the last famine—unlike any of them. This fact alone seems to lend legitimacy to our criticism. The physician looks at Atreus, as if asking him to speak for the class-golds, but Atreus does not. He and I are staring at each other.

“There are so few class-golds,” the physician says, “it hardly makes a difference what they get. Statistically.”

Atreus drops his eyes from mine. “Lower Gold to eighty percent full-ration fare and reset that as the baseline.”

The physician swallows and nods.

We take a break around noon, though Atreus doesn’t say what the break is for, as if the word lunch would be indecent to utter right now. For the last hour, the numbers have been fiddled with, manipulated, haggled over like a deal at the market.

Annie and I don’t discuss where we’re going when we leave the Council Room, but we seem to have one mind as we take the fastest route out of the Inner Palace. Outside, I exhale the breath I’ve been half holding and Annie puts her hands over her mouth. Then she screams aloud. It’s muffled against her hand, and it only goes on for about two seconds, but it still makes me aware of open windows around us.

“Come on,” I say, grabbing her by the arm.

I lead the way down the arcade, into the next courtyard that opens onto the Hall of Plenty. The leaves on the oaks have turned; the empty courtyard bursts with color. The sky hangs heavy with stratocumulus and the smell of coming rain.

“Did you know?” she asks me, spinning to face me when she sees that we’re alone.

“No. But I should have.”

It seems, now that I know, that I should have known all along. Of course there was more to the metals test than a free ride up the social ladder. After the thousands of ways I’ve seen the state act against Iron workers—in pay and labor and rights and information—should I really be surprised we came to this in the end?

Julia’s words from our last meeting: You believe his regime is better than what came before, just because it calls serfs by another name and teaches them to read?

“I should have, too,” Annie says.

This is what it was all for. These last two weeks of hell, of providing the muscle the state required, the dragonfire, the traditional methods—this was what we did it for. To give Silver three-quarters of Gold rations, Bronze half, and Iron a fourth.

Power has caught up with us, hands thrust deep in his uniform pockets. He takes in our faces and smiles.

“Good day to be Gold,” he remarks.

Annie looks past him and points past me across the courtyard: “Cor.”

He’s hunched amid the fallen leaves at the base of a tree. His face has turned in our direction, but he makes no move to rise.

“Didn’t his sister test Iron?” Power asks, with that same idle amusement.

Annie pushes past him, then cuts across the leaf-strewn grass toward Cor. After hesitating for only a moment, I follow. I’m pretty sure Cor doesn’t want to talk to us, but I want to be in Power’s company even less.

“She’ll be okay, Cor,” Annie says without preamble, when she reaches him. “We’ll make sure of it.”

“No offense, Annie,” Cor says, sounding tired and not looking up from his knees, “but piss off.”

For a second, nobody says anything.

He raises his eyes to us. “Neither of you even questioned it.”

Annie glances at me, a mixture of confusion and shame on her face.

“It must be nice, not having a family,” Cor goes on. He gets to his feet, brushing dried leaves off his hands, turning away. “Bet it makes this job a lot easier.”

Annie seizes Cor by the arm. “Don’t do this. You know I care about your family, they’re the closest—”

But she seems too angry, or too embarrassed, to finish the sentence, and she gulps and stops. Then she just stands there, the line of her mouth rippling, as she holds his arm.

Cor’s eyes travel down to her hand on his arm and he sneers. “You care about them? So that’s what it looks like for you, caring about someone—assigning them a percentage chance of survival based on their wristband—”

“It’s not like that,” Annie says, and now she’s starting to lose control of her voice. “It’s not personal, it’s—it’s objective, it has to be, it has nothing to do with who you know—”

“And objectively, unskilled laborers don’t deserve to live as much as everybody else. I get it, Annie.”

Cor takes a step back, so her hand falls from him, and then he turns from us and walks away. The fallen leaves crunch beneath his feet as he goes.

Annie puts the hand up to her face and drags it angrily across her eyes.

“Did you question it?” she asks, without looking at me.

I shake my head. No.

I revolted at it. But I didn’t question it.

And that difference is enough to make me want to crawl out of my own skin in horror.

“I didn’t either,” she whispers. “What does that make us, Lee?”

“Realistic,” I hear myself say. “It’s the best option. For the island as a whole. Unskilled labor is easier to replace.”

“That was my thought, too,” she says.

But she, too, seems horrified by this fact.

“Because it’s the truth.” My voice is hardening to shake her out of her doubt. “Most people might be too—soft or illogical—to admit it. But the truth is, we can afford to lose unskilled laborers. We can’t afford to lose warriors or farmers.”

I watch her close her eyes, watch her let the words sink in, and though her face is twisting like she’s in pain, I know they’re hitting home. And it leaves me wondering, just as it did after my interview with Duck, at this ability I seem to have, of convincing others of things I can no longer convince myself.

Though on some level, I think, Annie must want it. She must still be holding out hope that we’re doing good, that we’re an improvement, that Atreus is still right.

Of these things, I realize I’m no longer sure. During the second half of the day, we discuss how we’ll hide the fact that each class metal gets different ration portions. We discuss how we’ll publicize and lie about what we’re doing, so the truth never grows to anything stronger than a rumor. And through these discussions, I sit in silence and puzzle over the same doubts I was so determined to cure Annie of.

Because even though the logic adds up, the calculation still feels wrong.

I think back over the last two weeks, of Rock’s ashen face, of Annie’s weeping after her first collection, of the cries of guilty farmers as flames caught and burned. I look around the room, at the stony faces of people who have taken it upon themselves to decide who deserves to live and die. Rock’s voice echoes in my head: I feel like a Stormscourge.

I can’t shake the suspicion that he’s right. We’re coercing food out of farmers with the same threats of dragonfire. We’re about to endure another famine in which most of the people who die will be very poor. We’ll lie about it, just as the dragonlords did. After that, are there differences? Do the justifications for our choices matter to those who starve?

For years I’ve told myself, if not always that the old regime was in the wrong, at least that Atreus is in the right. That his system is fair and good, that he has a plan worth following. Wasn’t that the point? Just as Atreus once told us: You only deserve this mantle as long as you can be more reasonable and more virtuous than what came before.

I realize I’m no longer sure we are.

Julia’s prediction, come full circle: Watch and see how that vision will splinter, and then we will see whether you have the stomach for more.

***

Back in the Cloister that evening, I head to the classroom I’ve been using as an office. There are memos from the ministry to process and schedules to write for riders accompanying rationing distribution. For the next few hours I’m virtually undisturbed; The only visitor is Power, who ducks his head in to ask for his patrol schedule. He never knocks.

“I’m working on it. I’ll get it to you by tomorrow.”

It’s quiet for another hour. And then there’s a soft knock on the door. A servant I don’t recognize approaches my desk and hands me a note.

“A message, my lord.”

“Thank you.”

She’s gone before I even register the title.

By the time I’ve risen and gone into the corridor, she’s already turned the corner and vanished.

I lock the door with shaking fingers before returning to my desk.

The note is sealed with unmarked wax. It is written, of course, in Dragontongue, in the hand that I recognize.

Do you still think Atreus’s regime is worth fighting for?

We are Firstriders for opposing fleets. If you continue down the path you’ve chosen, there will be no forgiveness between us, only fire and death.

One more chance: I will wait for you at the Riversource of the Fer, at sunrise, on the first day of the coming month.

Maybe you can’t betray them. But you can still come home.

ANNIE

It’s late after dinner when there’s a knock on the dorm room door. It’s a loud, hammering sound, like the person on the other side is slamming a fist, maybe an entire arm against the door. Crissa, who’s closest to the door, opens it to find Lee.

He’s drenched, rainwater dripping down his face and pooling between his boots, and he’s wearing a flamesuit, as though he just got off Pallor and came here without changing. But that’s not how I know something is wrong. It’s his face: wild and lost and desperate.

Crissa bites her lip, and I know she’s thinking he must be like this because of today’s meetings, which I’ve just finished telling her about. She thinks he’s upset about the figures, so callously calculated. But I’m certain that Lee is stronger than that, and this must be something more.

“Lee, what’s wrong?” Crissa says, her hand still on the handle of the opened door.

He stares at her for a moment, like he can’t even remember who she is, and then he croaks, “Annie. Annie, I need to speak to you.”

I get to my feet. Crissa looks from him to me and says, simply and with dignity, “Of course.”

He seems vaguely consternated as she leaves us, as though he hadn’t meant his last demand to come out as a request for her to leave so much as a summons for me. But he’s too distracted to bother correcting it, so he allows Crissa to sweep past him and then he steps into the room. Crissa closes the door behind her.

“What is it, Lee?”

Even as I say it, something in me already knows.

He takes a breath. His face contorts like he’s in pain. And then he breaks the most important rule.

LEE

I’m on Pallor for hours. I circle the city, the outlying fields, pass over the villages whose food we’ve gathered. And then I take him south to the coast, past Harbortown, to the sea. The clouds are low and full over the Medean, but as the sun sets, it pierces through them along the horizon, doubled in the waves. And then the rain starts.

I watch, but I don’t really see. The dam has broken again, the memories flash in a feverish, unrelenting storm: my sisters on Palace Day; my father’s voice in clumsy, panicked Callish; Tyndale’s bitter challenges. I didn’t sell out. I believe in Atreus. The sound of men screaming as I set their clothes on fire. The numbers on the board, the percentages, the predicted deaths.

You can still come home.

And after hours of this, it’s not so much a decision as an admission of defeat that I go to Annie.

She waits in the center of the empty dorm room, quiet and unassuming and trusting. Her bobbed hair accentuates her slender neck, her folded arms hug her sleeping smock close to her narrow frame. Dressed for bed, she looks more like the orphan I remember than the dragonrider I train with. We stand five feet apart.

“Your family,” I say.

She sucks in a breath. We haven’t talked about her family since our fight at Albans. It’s too late now to go back, though, so I say it properly. Every word feels like another step down the plank.

“I need to know how they died.”

“You know how they died,” she whispers.

“I need to hear you say it. All of it.”

The empty room, its rows of beds and desks, is so quiet that I can hear her breathing. When she answers, I hear no surprise in her voice. Only resignation. As if, on some level, she has been waiting for this, and is ready.

“All right.”

The next question feels like a request for my own execution.

“Can you show me?”

She doesn’t seem to have expected this. Her arms unfold, then refold, over her smock, as she swallows. “Yes. When do you . . . ?”

“As soon as possible.”

“Well, you write the schedules.”

“Tomorrow morning?”

“All right,” says Annie, her voice faint. “Tomorrow morning.”