Fireborne (THE AURELIAN CYCLE Book 1)

ANNIE

I wait with growing dread for another message from the ministry in the week leading up to the second tournament, but nothing comes. I do get a letter from Holbin: Macky’s son writes, Dear Annie, we hope you beet them were sorry we wont be their this time but were all rooting for you in Holbin, and I pin this letter on my wall, too, next to the dried laurel from the first tournament.

In the preceding week, the Fourth Order riders are exempted from coastal patrols in order to train; the other three are also allowed to delay their morale visits. Since I haven’t been assigned any, I have nothing to reschedule. I tell myself it doesn’t matter; that morale visits are crass, cheap experiments in rhetorical manipulation; but I still know that being excluded from them means I have, yet again, been written off by the Callipolan ministry.

Let them write me off. I’ll train.

I spend every free minute drilling with Lee or with Cor and Rock, whose stormscourges make them good preparation for Power. I’ve never felt a desire for victory quite like this. All Power’s jokes about highlanders and peasants, all the entitlement he brags about among his patrician friends, all the ministry’s misgivings about me and their favor for riders like him—I finally have a chance to throw it back in their faces, in public. Because Power may be more polished leadership material on the ground, but the air is my turf.

In the lead-up to the match, many of the Janiculum riders stop talking to me, while Rock and the other riders from the countryside sit with me at nearly every meal. But not all loyalties divide along such lines. To my surprise, in Dragontongue class the day before the tournament, Hanna Lund and the other patrician students I’ve been doing homework with in the library pass me a handmade card signed by most of the girls in the class. They’ve written a quote from the Aurelian Cycle inside: And as she turned, it was revealed by her tread that she was fireborne.

“Power’s a jerk. We’ll be cheering for you, Antigone.”

The day of the tournament dawns overcast, fiercely windy, with thick gray stratus blanketing the low sky, hiding the top of Pytho’s Keep. Despite the gloomy weather the stands are full. Power has stationed himself on the far side of the Eyrie, surrounded by stormscourge riders, to watch Lee and Cor’s match. They glance occasionally in my direction, where I stand with the aurelian riders beside Duck, and I return their stares: I feel the coming match has turned my blood brazen.

Duck grimaces as his brother and Lee set up overhead and launch into forward attack. I wonder, but don’t ask, if he can decide whom he’s rooting for. In any case, he doesn’t have much time to consider the question. Cor has always been an erratic flyer; on good days he flies as well as Lee or better; but on bad days he can’t hold a candle to him. And stress almost always means that Cor will have a bad day. Lee lands a penalty hit early and it goes downhill from there: Cor spills over, which makes him and Maurana fly worse, and then it’s only a matter of time before Lee gets inside their guard.

“No surprises there,” Lotus mutters to Rock, when the bell is rung in Lee’s favor after about five minutes.

Lee sur Pallor, finalist for Firstrider, the announcer cries.

They land, and Cor shakes Lee’s hand sloppily amid roaring applause, then strides off the Eyrie to nurse his disappointment privately. Next to me, Duck sighs, frustrated but not exactly disappointed. As if even he can’t resist rooting for Lee, family ties to the contrary.

Goran’s voice calls: “Power, Antigone, you’re up.”

Duck’s fingers tighten on my shoulder, a silent encouragement, before releasing it. I start to make for the cave mouth before pausing: Lee is moving purposefully in our direction, his helmet under one arm, his hair plastered in sweat, his face still lit by adrenaline. Right before he reaches us, Power crosses Lee’s path. He leans in, clasps Lee’s shoulder, and I can only just hear him over the whistling wind.

“You know what the dragonborn used to say. Peasants burn best—”

Lee’s gray eyes, still blazing from his own match, focus on Power’s. Though his expression doesn’t alter, a chill emanates. Power’s grin falters and he takes a half step backward, seemingly unconsciously.

Then as I turn for the cave mouth, Lee’s hand reaches out and catches my arm.

“Let me check your armor.”

He speaks through gritted teeth. I feel myself warming beneath my helmet.

“My armor is fine.”

But he ignores my protest, and though I should try to stop him, I don’t. He begins to pat me down, yanking on each buckle of my helmet, cuirass, and limb guards, roughly and quickly, as if determined not to let his hands linger. But when he raises his face, it’s reddened.

At the sight, an answering heat awakens in my body. Blooming from every inch of me that his hands brush, spreading up my neck with warmth. He’s standing so close that I can smell him, his fresh sweat mingled with the scent of Pallor’s smoke. Although I know we’re being watched by thousands, all I really notice is that Duck and Crissa are looking over, and I wish they weren’t.

Finally, he nods and steps back. His face, usually so pale against the dark hair, glows red even at a distance.

“Go,” he says.

Power is waiting for me at the cave mouth, grinning as I approach. His gaze travels down to my bare neck, still flushed enough that the summer breeze feels cool against it.

“Do you think he got everything?”

I ignore him. We blow into the whistles built into our wristbands, waiting for a sound that’s inaudible to us to call the dragon who’s been trained to respond to it. Power raises a canteen to his lips as he waits, and I do the same: Now’s the time to drink as much water as possible.

A stillness settles over me as I feel Aela approach, and one by one my senses confirm it: the sound of her wings; the brush of the cave-draft on my face; the sight of her amber scales glinting in the darkness as she emerges. The nerves that have been twisting my stomach all morning fall away, replaced by an awareness so clear, it is a kind of absence of thought. This is Aela. It’s time.

I tighten Aela’s saddle, check her reins, and she twists her head round for one last check, finding my eyes with her slitted golden ones. I scratch the ridge of her nose and she flexes her neck back. Her eagerness for the match, mingling with mine, charges a rush down my spine. Aela’s thirst for the fight has always been a high I ride with pleasure.

“Let’s do this.”

She folds her wings close as I mount. I strap my boots, one by one, into their stirrups. A few meters away, Power has done the same with Eater. We put on our helmets and, after an exchanged nod, pull our visors down.

And then, with a leap that breaks from gravity, we’re in the air, great wings beating to lift us higher. The gray blanket of clouds, the crowds, the glistening river fill my vision once again: On Aela, the world always seems hyperfocused.

Then the bell rings, Power charges, and we dive.

A week ago, when we first talked this match out, I told Lee the strategy I wanted to take and he tried to talk me down. Eater’s lungs don’t run out, he said, it would take too long, run too high a risk of injuries, and given Power’s proclivity for full-heat hits, the injuries risked would be too debilitating.

“Eater’s range is twice as long as Aela’s,” I answered. “How else should I do it?”

Lee, rather than offering alternatives, just said, “It’s suicide.”

The reply I gave was one I wouldn’t think of making to anyone but Lee.

“Not for me.”

Lee didn’t argue with that.

It’s known as the gadfly approach: teasing in and out of range long enough, provoking enough shots from your opponent, that they run out of ash. But for Eater, that will take a long time. Not to mention that Power is one of the few of us who’s mastered using spillovers to his advantage: Where anger and excitement spilling into your dragon disorients someone like Cor, they just make Power unpredictable. It’s a tactic historically favored by stormscourge riders. He and Eater ride their emotions like a roller coaster whose direction only they can predict, and Power gives him rein to fire at will.

But Aela and I can dodge almost anything.

So as the match starts, I let Power take the offensive, Aela and I playing hopscotch between Eater’s jets of ash, staying close, keeping him firing, keeping him busy. The minutes tick past, and Aela and I dodge, weave, and dodge again.

But even if you’re flying at your best, you can’t help tiring eventually, and mistakes happen. After about ten minutes we turn just a little too shallowly, and I feel a blistering heat across my left calf. I can’t contain a hiss of pain: It’s a full-heat burn, the kind we aren’t even allowed to dole out in training. The shining armor blackens, reacting to the heat, and a bell for the first penalty rings out across the stands. Aela senses my pain even if she’s impervious to the heat. She pulls out of range and waits as I unplug the coolant shaft set in the calf of my flamesuit. Cool liquid pours down my leg, soothing the burn, though it’s severe enough that the pain doesn’t fade entirely. But the coolant will hold off the worst of it for another half hour, which is all I need.

Every second I spend out of range is one gained by Eater, and I need to keep him firing if I want to deplete him, so I bring Aela round without further pause. We begin a second round. Minutes blur together into dodging and gamboling and shots fired to my left and right and back as I focus only on reaction and response—

Until the second penalty hits. I fail to dodge Power’s jackknife turn, and Eater’s ash, full heat, sears my arms. In the time-out before reset, I fumble to open the coolant shafts at my elbows with fingers stiff in their gloves, then twist the reins around my wrists, relieving my fingers of the need to clench. Even as I struggle to master the reins, I feel the adrenaline and pain loosening me, pushing me closer to Aela. The heightened connection fills me with a different kind of calm. Aela and I are on our last chance: Three penalties counts as a kill shot.

We reset for a third round.

“It’s over, Annie,” Power calls.

He’s grinning as he replaces his helmet; the emotions he’s freely spilling over are, clearly, verging on euphoria. I reenter his range. He resumes firing. As Aela and I begin, once more, to swerve and dodge, I note what Power, in his transported state, has not. Eater’s ash has begun, every few meters, to sputter.

I turn Aela and pull her to a halt. Power and I are facing each other. I’m exposed, within Power’s range. I can make out his glittering, triumphant eyes through the visor of his helmet. The arena is spread below us, and the clouds obscuring the top of Pytho’s Keep hang low and close.

Eater opens his mouth for a kill shot—and nothing comes out.

Power’s eyes widen. In the split second that it takes me to surge forward and fire, he launches upward. My shot misses everything but Eater’s trailing tail. And then Power and Eater disappear into the cloud cover.

For a moment Aela and I are stalled, looking up into the clouds where Power has vanished.

Power’s intention is as clear as if he’d announced it. Two rules of tournament sparring that both of us know: first, that contact charges are off limits between dragons of different breeds during sporting events. Second, that whatever happens out of sight of the referee is considered fair game.

If I go into those clouds, Eater will tackle Aela. He’s more than half her size.

But if I wait, his lungs will recover. And every moment that I wait, the coolant wears off a bit more, and the pain becomes just a little more consuming.

“Are we doing this?” I say to Aela.

But Aela is already rising, and I don’t have to urge her with anything more than a shared determination.

The passage up through the stratus cloud is quiet, disorienting in its seamless uniformity of gray. I can feel Aela’s heart pounding in time with my own. When we break through, I have a split second to realize that there’s an altostratus layer of clouds blanketing the sky still higher, and that we’re between layers, lost in a strange, gray-white light. The only remaining sign of land is the top of Pytho’s Keep, a few hundred meters away, rising out of the stratus like a floating fortress.

I see all of this in the half instant before Eater slams into us from behind.

Aela shrieks and twists while Eater’s talons sink into the pauldron protecting my shoulder, puncturing the armor and flamesuit, sinking into my skin. The talons of his other forearm are sinking into Aela’s back. She screams and I feel it, her pain bursting in a haze through my own. And then I feel her fury.

Fine. You want to play dirty? We’ll play dirty.

I reach with burn-clumsy fingers for my bootknife and slash, over and over, against the inside of Eater’s forearms, and he shrieks and pulls his talons out of us.

Aela twists us round and then, though she’s gained the leverage to break free of Eater, she doesn’t. She claws her way up his torso, scrabbling with him arm and leg. Both dragons’ wings are beating madly, keeping us aloft and stalling, blocking each rider’s sight of the other as they lock in their embrace.

Then Aela sinks her talons into the membrane of Eater’s inner wing. He shrieks, Power cries out, and Eater curls the wing into his side—and then, finally, as we begin to free-fall with only three wings holding two dragons aloft, Eater’s folded wing gives us an opening straight onto Power’s crouched form.

Aela fires, full heat. Power disappears in the smoke. Then she kicks off from Eater and Power with a shriek of disgust.

The smoke clears. Power’s armor is blackened; he sits dazed, lost in the shock of a full-heat blast. Numbly, automatically, he begins to open his torso coolant shafts.

“Do you yield?”

We’re poised, at firing distance, to hit him again, and Eater’s still empty. Power’s voice comes out in a low gasp.

“Yeah.”

“Helmet,” I demand.

Proof and guarantee of a match won, in the absence of a referee.

Power lets out a hoarse laugh but doesn’t question my precaution. With shaking hands, he lifts his helmet from his head. His hair is glistening with sweat, his face scudded with tracks of ash. For one inscrutable moment, he stares at me, eyes so dilated from spillover that they look black. Then he tosses his soot-covered helmet through the open air.

I catch it.

We descend together through the stratus. When we burst back into sight of the arena, there’s an explosion of noise. It takes me a moment to realize: It is cheering, and it’s for me.

Like someone else has possessed my body, I lift Power’s helmet above my head and shake it for the world to see.

There’s a confusion of shouting once we land on the Eyrie. Duck is jumping up and down, Crissa is screaming in delight, and Lee is there, helping me cut my boots free of their straps, guiding me off the saddle, and taking stock of my injuries with careful fingers. I can no longer move my fingers or my left leg, and my shoulder, which is dripping blood, is stiff with pain. I can still feel Aela’s pulsing heartbeat and searing wound like my own. Lee’s arm grips me below the shoulder, steadying me.

“Annie, are you all right?” Goran’s voice seems to come from a great distance. He sounds concerned. It’s so surprising that I laugh out loud. Power is nowhere to be seen, so it’s into Goran’s hands that I push Power’s helmet.

“I’m great.”

Lee’s grip on my arm tightens as he turns me toward him. “Annie, we’ve got to do the concluding ceremony. Can you make it through?”

The concluding ceremony.

For the finalists.

“You and me,” I realize.

Lee is holding me upright, one arm around me, the other steadying me, his face just inches from mine. His gray eyes are piercing and proud and just a little pained. The sweat and ash have dried in tracks down his face.

“You and me,” he repeats quietly.

All of a sudden, I feel like crying.

I waver again. The coolant is definitely wearing off, as is the adrenaline. The Eyrie is starting to fade in and out.

“Can she fly up?” Goran asks.

“Not with Aela being tended. I’ll walk her, that’ll be easier . . .”

Lee’s arm against my back, firm and purposeful. Down to the arena stands, then up the stairs to the Palace Box. People are cheering, screaming when they see us, but the sound feels muffled.

“I could have killed you when you went into the stratus after him,” Lee says as we mount the stairs, admiration battling with exasperation in his voice. “That sneak, pulling a contact charge . . .”

When we reach the Palace Box, he releases my side so none of the waiting ministers can see that he’d been supporting me. The last time I stood in this place, I was numb with terror; today, I have no thoughts for that. Let the ministry think what it thinks; let Propaganda write me another memo. I’ve done it. I’ve beaten Power. For the moment, I have to focus all my attention on walking. One step after another, with Lee beside me, down the aisle to where the First Protector stands, smiling.

“My two finalists,” he says, with warmth in his voice. It does not seem to be a scripted line.

There are more ceremonial words, then the weight of the laurel placed over my head. And then Aela’s presence, close, as I slip a laurel down her long neck and she rumbles with pride.

“A week before Palace Day, we will gather for our last, and most important, tournament,” Atreus tells the audience. “One of these finalists will become Alternus, lieutenant and defender of the people, and one will become Firstrider, their champion.

“Lee and Antigone, we wish you luck in your final months of training.”

***

Later that evening I lie half awake in the darkened Palace infirmary. Master Welse has already headed home for the night; the infirmary is deserted when the door to my ward creaks open. Hushed voices, giggling, a few silhouetted heads peering in. Crissa’s voice comes out low and playful.

“Aaaannie . . .”

I sit up from my pillows, my burns twinging. “What are you doing?”

Crissa flings open the door, and light from the corridor spills in. Behind her stand the other girls: Deirdre and Alexa, inseparable for as long as we’ve been in the program, and also Orla, who usually avoids group activities in favor of her books. Her presence particularly signifies that something unusual is afoot.

“We’re here to take you to your party,” Crissa announces.

I’m so startled that my first thought is why she isn’t at Lee’s party. She is, after all, his friend. “What about Lee?”

“The aurelian squadron’s taking care of him. We’re taking care of you.”

We, the female Guardians. A few of the boys, too, behind them, though I can’t make out their faces. My heart constricts, touched and surprised that they’re here at all. I hadn’t thought of celebrations, and if I had, I’d have assumed they’d be for Lee. But then I remember my burns.

“I can’t really . . .”

Walk. For a day at least. Physician’s orders.

“Not a problem,” Crissa says, unperturbed. And then, with the air of summoning a dragon, she bellows: “Richard!”

A tall, sturdy figure makes his way through the girls and crouches by my bed. Rock. And then he deploys the brogue he usually pretends not to have. The brogue of home.

“Up you get, finalist.”

I burst out laughing. “You can’t be serious—”

But they are serious indeed. Deirdre and Alexa hoist me onto Rock’s shoulders, and Crissa hurls what looks like a blanket over my back, but it turns out to be a Callipolan flag, its wingspread dragon breathing four circlets of fire against red. Orla seizes the laurel lying on the bedside table and reaches up on tiptoe to mash it on my head. Duck, standing in the doorway, holds one of Goran’s training horns to his lips and blows. The silence of the infirmary breaks like an explosion.

“To the Pickled Boar!”

The Pickled Boar is a tavern on the other side of the river in Highmarket, popular among the lowborn Guardians. I’ve never been before.

Duck’s shout is taken up by the other girls, and I’m marched out of the infirmary. The passage through the Palace gardens, across the river, and into Highmarket passes in a blur: the moonlit gardens crossed with loping speed that I mark from Rock’s great height as I cling to the Callipolan flag around my shoulders; the silhouettes of Deirdre and Alexa and Orla streaking around us, shrieking and screaming and giggling in the darkness as Crissa cries onward! like she’s leading a charge, and Duck blowing the horn like he’s determined to destroy the Palace’s usual peaceful silence.

Highmarket is awash with noise: We’re not the only ones who took the tournament as an excuse to celebrate, and it seems that in the wake of the threat from New Pythos it has a lot of steam to blow off. Callipolan flags everywhere, horns everywhere, being sold by enterprising street merchants and blown from the streets and the balconies, amid a cacophony of shrieking and choruses of drunken singing and even the occasional low throb of a street drum. Ale sloshes in toasts and forms sticky puddles on the cobblestones; sheets have been painted with messages and hung from second-story windows: LOWBORN TAKES THE LAUREL; LONG LIVE THE REVOLUTION; DOWN WITH NEW PYTHOS.

At the door of the Pickled Boar, when Crissa helps me to the ground, I protest the flaw I’ve just realized in her plan.

“Crissa, we’ve all sworn vows of poverty, how’re we supposed to buy ourselves drinks—”

Crissa and Rock let out thunderous laughs.

“Trust me,” Crissa says, throwing her arm around my flag-draped shoulders and not noticing as I wince, “you’re not going to have to buy yourself a drink tonight.”

And then she ushers me into the tavern. Candles and sconces light a room full of laughter, faces painted with the Callipolan colors, a group of musicians in the corner hammering on drums and plucking at fiddles that send not so much music as rhythm into my blood. As soon as we’re inside, Crissa leaps onto the closest empty chair and summons up the voice she usually reserves for commanding her squadron from dragonback, spreading an arm wide in my direction.

“Ladies and gentlemen of Callipolis, I give you your highland finalist!”

Amid roars of applause that deafen, Rock seizes my fist and thrusts it into the air. And then I am surrounded, my shoulders—still tender with burns and a talon’s piercing—thumped by complete strangers. It hurts, but even so I’m beaming.

“Whiskey for the highlander!”

I’m passed a drink whose fumes alone makes my eyes water, and as I set my lips to it, I begin to splutter. But the bristle-bearded man who’s handed it to me only cheers the more, those around us laughing with delight as they applaud.

“Antigone sur Aela’s first whiskey!”

“Drink up, lassie! Drink to the Revolution!”

“Another!”

And then the musicians begin playing the Anthem of the Revolution, and it’s hard to say whether the strength of the whiskey or the shivers of the melody down my spine makes my eyes fill, and I raise my glass and sing with the rest the song of my country.

We rise, we rise, for the glory of Callipolis . . .