Page 25

25

ESSA

“W ell, poet, I like the lance and the clip. But I’m still not convinced a poet can teach a Skrathan anything about flying a dragon,” I said.

“I’m not a poet,” Kit reminded me with a smile. “I’m a reporter.”

We were in the graveyard, about three miles from the palace. It was early, but already the spring morning felt pregnant with a growing heat. One could almost taste the dew in the air, could almost feel the flowers unfurling and stretching beneath the strong bronze sun.

As I’d instructed, Rohree had spirited Kit out of the palace early, while the pre-dawn darkness could hide him from curious eyes. It was a risk, bringing him here when so many tongues were already wagging about him sneaking out of the palace and riding with me on dragon back when Braimar attacked. And I was already ignoring a summons from my mother, who’d been demanding an audience ever since I’d refused to kneel when I offered her my thimble.

But the funny thing about being a dead girl was, I didn’t care how others perceived me. And I was highly curious about what Kit thought he could teach me about flying. Part of me felt ready to laugh in his overconfident face. But another part of me hoped there might really be some knowledge hidden behind those dark blue eyes of his.

He took a slow lap around me, looking me up and down.

“Well, the first thing is to relax,” he said, putting his hands on my shoulders. “There’s a lot of tension in your body when you fly. Probably it was because you were holding on so tight with your hand. Now that you have the clip, you should be able to stay looser—which will make your reflexes faster.”

I looked to Othura, who tilted her head, the dragon equivalent of a shrug.

Shut up, I told her.

“What else?” I asked.

“Well, from what I’ve observed, it’s clear many of the dragons are larger and more powerful than yours. No offense,” he added with a glance at Othura.

She gave a low growl.

“ But,” he went on, “ Othura is more maneuverable. One move you could use is a half 8.”

“Which is?”

Kit searched the ground for a moment, then picked up a twig shaped like a lower-case “t”—or a dragon with wings. He also picked up a second, somewhat larger stick.

“See, if another dragon is pursuing you, you pull up, like this, flip over and then turn upright again.”

“I can’t fly upside down,” I said.

“With the clip you can. And it’s just for a second, before you rotate upright again. See, it will put you in a position right above the enemy rider. If Othura wanted, she could take their head right off as she flew over them. Or, if it were a URA pilot, you could shred their upper wing.”

I crossed my arms. “How does a poet know such things?”

Kit hesitated only an instant. “My older cousin was an airplane mechanic and pilot. He did the mail runs out of Danlee. Sometimes, I’d go with him. He wanted to be a pilot for the air force but his eyesight wasn’t good enough.”

“And you had no desire to follow in his footsteps? Become a pilot yourself?” I pressed.

“Me?” He shook his head. “Well… I thought about it. Every kid in URA does. But my talent is for words. It would be a shame to waste a gift like mine.”

“I have yet to read any of your writing,” I crossed my arms, studying him. “Perhaps you’d write an ode for me, one of these days.”

He smiled. “An article, you mean. I’m a reporter, Princess. No odes for me. Just the facts.”

“So you say.” I arched an eyebrow and looked to Othura. “A half eight, eh? Let’s try it. And you, poet—you can ride with me. That way if I fall off, we both fall.”

* * *

Aren’t you going to tell him you’re scared of going upside down? Othura asked.

I am not scared, I shot back. But we both knew that was a lie. I’d been terrified of it ever since I was a little girl—ever since the accident. It was one of the main reasons I’d remained stuck at the bottom of the Skrathan roster even as my other flight skills had increased. But for the moment, as I climbed into the saddle, my desire to prove something to Kit, and to myself, outshone my fear.

Even if you keep your seat because of the clip, he may fall off and die, Othura pointed out as Kit climbed on behind me.

If he did, we would know he was telling the truth, that he was nothing but a writer. But…

I have a feeling he won’t fall, I told Othura.

My hand clip snapped into place. I had to admit, that was a marvelous improvement, whatever the noble council might say when they found out.

“Let’s try it first without the lance,” Kit said. His tone was all business, but his lips were so close to my ear again, his breath sending tingles through me.

I sort of hope he falls off, I told Othura. I gave my legs a quick squeeze and she took her cue, galloping forward and launching into the air.

“Now, when you start the loop, make sure you’re looking up, not just forward. You want to spot your target early and lock onto it with your eyes. It’s a loop and a twist. Here, you can try it on this treetop. First you fly over it, then…”

A lightning-struck tree towered in the middle of the cemetery. Fire had scorched its trunk black, but there was a tuft of green on the top where it was trying to come back to life.

Resilience, I thought. Such a tree deserved respect. It would be a worthy foe.

We made for the treetop and shot past it.

Othura started to pull up, but I shouted to her in my mind. No! no. I’m not ready.

She levelled out and we continued flying.

“What happened?” Kit asked. “We were supposed to?—”

“I know what we were supposed to do!” I shouted. “I’m…” I couldn’t finish the sentence.

Suddenly, I felt Kit’s hand on my neck. I gasped, tensed. But his fingers were gentle, pressing but not strangling.

“Your heart is beating so fast,” he said.

I closed my eyes and exhaled a shuddering breath. Riding a dragon into battle was hard. Vulnerability was harder.

“I’m… scared, alright? Of going upside down. Of flying. All if it. I mean, I love it, too. That’s the awful thing. I love it, but I’m also terrified. I have been ever since…”

His hand left my neck, tracing down my back to cinch around my body again.

“You don’t have to be scared,” he said. “I’ve got you.”

I gave a sharp laugh. “You’re hanging onto me! I’m the one with the clip and the stirrups. Let go and you’ll fling off like a javelin.”

“It’s a tight turn. Centrifugal force will keep me in place,” he said.

He must’ve felt the tension still in my body, because he leaned in again and whispered in my ear.

“Do the Skrathan have an anthem? Or a credo? Some mantra you can repeat in your mind to take your mind off what you’re doing?”

I pondered that.

Your grandmother’s saying, Othura suggested.

“There is something,” I said. “My grandmother died in the beginnings of the current war. When they were preparing her body, they found a tattoo on her leg that matched a saying embossed on her dragon’s saddle. It said, the wind is ours. ”

“Perfect,” he said. “Just as you’re going into the loop, think of those words. Over and over. Let them fill your mind, okay?”

I wanted to say something sarcastic, to throw his help back in his face. But I held my tongue as Othura banked and shot ahead for another pass.

We whipped past the treetop and just as Othura started to pull up in a loop, I whispered it:

“ The wind is ours . ”

Kit’s said it too, his low voice in unison with mine, making a harmony that sent a shower of goosebumps over my skin.

We repeated it together:

The wind is ours.

The wind is ours.

The wind is ours.

And the next thing I knew, we were upside down. There was a moment of weightless suspension, then we spun out of it, the treetop whooshing past just behind us.

“We did it!” I said, not even caring about the giddiness in my voice.

“That was great,” Kit said. “Next time let’s come out of the loop a little faster and make the dive a little sharper to keep that treetop enemy in front of us.”

He didn’t fall, Othura pointed out.

No, I agreed. Not yet.

In truth, he’d handled the maneuver with surprising grace, his arms on my waist barely tightening.

We made another pass. This time when we came out of the loop, the treetop was in front of us, and Othura snapped at it with her jaws as we shot past. If it had been a rival rider or a URA pilot, they’d have ended up headless.

“Good,” Kit said. “Now let’s try it with the lance.”

We must’ve made at least fifteen passes with Kit giving me small adjustments each time before he was finally satisfied. “It’s a lot more complicated when you’re taking the enemy’s movements into account, but this will do for now. Let’s move on.”

Next, he taught us a maneuver he called the cobra. It involved Othura rearing back mid-flight like a rampant horse. This would stall our forward momentum, causing any pursuer to fly past us.

When we’d perfected that, he showed us what he called a pylon turn, in which Othura would bank so hard her wings were vertical, perpendicular to the ground. When executed with her back to the opponent, it would allow me to attack with sword or lance. When executed with her belly to the enemy, she could attack with claws and teeth.

Of course, there were Skrathan terms and techniques that corresponded to nearly every move the poet introduced. More than once I rolled my eyes.

This arrogant Admite thinks he invented the sun, I told Othura.

Still, I humored him, curious to see what he would say next. And by the end I had to admit that with each new move he showed us, he had specific techniques and mechanical adjustments that were different from what Auntie Dreya and the other Skrathan instructors had taught me—and they were helpful. Something compelled me to follow each of his instructions, to show him how perfectly I could do it.

He drove us like a bloodthirsty Irska, bidding us to complete the same maneuver again and again until it was perfect. But there was a delicate balance of nurturing and smugness in him that fueled me both through rage and pride.

“Good girl,” he said when I had completed a particularly skilled dive attack.

“I’m a woman,” I shot back. “Not a girl.”

The teasing grin he gave me only stoked the fire inside me brighter, made me want to try even harder.

When at last we lit upon the earth again, my limbs trembled with exhaustion. Othura, hungry from our morning exercises, flew off to scour the valleys for goats to eat, leaving us alone.

I’d brought a sack of food along for lunch. Now, I shouldered it and took Kit’s arm.

“Come,” I told him, “I know a picnic spot.”

We sat on a flat boulder on the bank of the stream that ran through the cemetery. Since I was a little girl, I had little patience for sit-down meals. More often, I’d breeze through the kitchen, grabbing whatever items looked good while the cooks scolded me. I’d done the same thing this morning, so our lunch was a hodge podge of items. A couple stalks of yellow sweet root. A wheel of crumbly white cheese. Brown trail bread. A box of triteberries and a couple jars of honey mead.

First, we both cupped our hands and sipped from the stream, laughing at each other as the wetness drizzled down our fronts. But the water from the mountain stream was brilliantly cold and refreshing, and more than just quenching my thirst, it woke me up.

After we ate, we both lay back on the rock, watching a pair of kelmoon circling in the cloudless sky and waiting for Othura to return.

“What’s your city like?” I asked him.

“Ironberg? It’s just like this, if you replace the mountains with buildings and the streams with railroads and the mountain goats with assholes.”

I laughed. “There are the poetics I’ve been wondering about.” I sat up. “Make up a poem about me.”

He pushed up onto an elbow. “You?”

I brushed a strand of hair out of my face, suddenly self-conscious. “I’m kidding. I know, you’re a reporter, not a poet. It’s only the facts for you. Besides, one can write a poem only if they’re inspired.”

His eyes met mine. I waited for them to dart away, but they held fast. I felt suddenly bold.

“You inspire me,” I told him.

He blinked. “I do?”

I nodded. “I don’t know why. Before you came, I felt I was just marching alone on this dreary path… like a sleepwalker walking toward a cliff. And now…”

“Now you’re awake,” he said, nodding as if he understood. As if he felt the same way.

I smiled. “Now someone is walking toward the cliff with me.”

It was his turn to laugh, but it didn’t break the tension between us. If anything, it became stronger. “Suppose I don’t want to walk off a cliff?” he teased.

I inched closer to him, longing coursing through me now. “Why not?” I asked. “For a moment, you’d be flying.”

We were so near now that our lips were almost touching. My hands trembled. My breathing became ragged. Here, on this rock, under the sun—I wanted him.

My hand found his shirtfront, grabbing it into a fist and tugging him toward me, my lips hungry for his. They almost met, came so close I felt his breath. Then he shrugged away, getting to his feet.

A huge, steadying breath wracked his body. He ran both hands through his hair.

“Essa… I have someone… back home.”

Understanding crashing into me like a wave. Of course he’d have someone back in Ironberg. I’d just made a fool of myself.

I felt my face going red. And, maddeningly, a lump rose in my throat. Now he’d probably tell Mother I’d thrown myself at him. Not only would I be humiliated, I’d committed a diplomatic blunder. How could I have been such an idiot? I opened my mouth to say something—anything— to redeem myself, but I had no words.

I was rescued by the sound of hoofbeats coming toward us. I looked up to find Ollie approaching and reigning in his mount. Thank the gods…

“Your mother summons you, Essa. She’s had me searching all over. You won’t be able to put her off this time. Don’t come, she says, and she’ll send Trag after you.” He turned to Kit. “And you, Kit—you have another audience with the Prelate.”