Page 49

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

Long May You Burn

The man in the red vest guided Morrigan and Mahir from the Trollosseum stands through a series of security checkpoints and into a tiny elevator (failing to notice, naturally, that Cadence had tagged along). Morrigan was flabbergasted; she hadn’t believed for a second that the Rinaldis would actually trust her recommendation, so she’d never bothered mentioning it to her friend – no sense getting his hopes up. But, sure enough, at ground level the doors pinged open to reveal Hawthorne Swift, resplendent in red-and-gold Rinaldi riding leathers, pacing at the entrance of a rocky, firelit tunnel. Despite her nerves, Morrigan couldn’t help beaming with pride at the sight of him.

‘Cheers, Gary!’ Hawthorne nudged the man back into the elevator as he ushered his friends out of it, reaching in to jab the top-floor button. ‘You head up to the box, I’ll take it from here.’

‘All right, Swift?’ the man asked suspiciously.

‘Pre-flight ritual! Just need my hype team here to help me, er … stretch.’

‘Only ten minutes to gates, son.’

‘IT’S TEN AND A HALF MINUTES ACTUALLY, THANKS GARY!’ Hawthorne shouted as the elevator doors closed, before whirling to face his friends, wide-eyed and panic-stricken. Grasping Morrigan’s forearm, he dragged her into the torchlit tunnel, Mahir and Cadence hurrying along behind them.

‘What’s – ow, Hawthorne, let go – what’s wrong? Why didn’t you tell us—’

‘Only found out last night,’ he said in a rush. ‘Cosimo changed his mind about Quincy Frost and apparently my name was next on the list. I trialled with Alights at the Rinaldi Stables this morning, and it was AMAZING. Few wrinkles to iron out, but for our first flight together it was epic! The Rinaldis offered me the saddle on the spot. I wanted to surprise you all when I flew out into the arena, but … I don’t know what to do ! It’s like she’s suddenly a different dragon.’

They rounded a corner and emerged in a huge, steamy cavern with high rock walls. Cut into one side was an enormous metal door leading to the arena, and above it a timer was counting down from nine minutes and forty-seven seconds in big, flashing red numbers. Several storeys up, Alights on the Water was flying aimlessly and erratically. She landed on one jagged outcrop of rock before launching off and soaring to another, occasionally giving a bone-chilling screech or firing off a jet of orange flame.

‘Look! She’s refusing to come down to the launch gate. She won’t even take a lure.’ Hawthorne jerked his head towards a wooden barrel filled with thick, arm-sized strips of red meat that seemed to add up to roughly half a cow. ‘That’s how you signal a dragon that it’s time to saddle up and fly. Most dragons don’t need it if they’re used to competing; it’s just part of the ritual. It’s polite. But when I offered it, she just about singed my eyebrows off! Took off up to the perches and now she won’t come down. I’ve tried every signal I know, I’ve begged, I’ve ordered, I’ve reasoned, I’ve begged some more … NOTHING! If the Rinaldis find out I can’t move their dragon into position, I’ll be laughed out of here! I might never get another opportunity like this. I can’t mess it up.’

‘How can we help?’ asked Morrigan.

‘I don’t even know !’ he moaned, tugging at his curls. ‘I was just desperate and I panicked. Can you do something Wundersmithy? Weave her into somebody that might actually listen to me? Or – OH! Cadence, you could—’

‘I can’t mesmerise a dragon,’ Cadence said flatly. ‘I can’t even mesmerise my neighbour’s nasty little Shih Tzu. Doesn’t work on unnimals.’

‘Have you tried talking to her?’ asked Mahir.

‘That’s why I asked for you,’ said Hawthorne. ‘I tried a bit of Dragontongue, but my words got jumbled! Dunno if I complimented her tail or asked her where the discotheque is.’

‘Just tell me what you want to say. I’ll translate it back to you, and you can repeat the Draconian words after me.’

Hawthorne hesitated, looking from the flashing red countdown to the dragon perched on an uppermost rock ledge.

‘Think about how she’s feeling,’ Morrigan reminded him. ‘Talk to her like a friend.’

He nodded and looked up directly at Alights . ‘Okay, I wanna say … that I know it’s been a horrible time since you lost Dario.’

Mahir thought for a second, and then translated quietly. ‘Hchlem machtan anfel’ok ket Dario khas, Mir Drachmas-lev najh.’

Hawthorne loudly and confidently repeated the first part, his voice bouncing around the enormous room, before glancing back at Mahir.

‘Mir Drachmas-lev najh,’ Mahir said again more slowly, and Hawthorne echoed him.

The dragon continued to charge around, thrashing her great tail against the stone walls and giving no sign that she’d registered Hawthorne’s words.

‘Dario was an amazing rider,’ he went on. ‘And he was your best mate. I know you’d rather it was him here than me. You must be sick of having all these new riders foisted on you.’

Mahir continued to translate sentence by sentence, and Hawthorne called out the Draconian words to Alights , taking care with the tricky pronunciation, making the soft guttural ch sound in the back of his throat and rolling his Rs. Morrigan could hear how much he’d improved, even if it wasn’t as pitch perfect as Mahir’s lilting, almost musical intonation.

‘But if you give me a chance, I promise I’ll work so hard to earn your trust. I’ll do everything I can to be a good flight partner … and a good friend … for as long as you’ll have me.’

‘… gratkash vlek amh-lesken machar fostoriach,’ Mahir finished, and Hawthorne repeated after him. Alights still hadn’t descended, but she was tilting her head curiously towards him.

‘She’s listening,’ Cadence whispered. ‘Keep going.’

‘I know I’m young,’ said Hawthorne. ‘But so are you, and everyone knows you’re the greatest of all time! And maybe today will be the last time we ever fly together … or maybe it will be the start of something amazing. But we won’t know unless we try.’

Alights took off again, but this time she landed on a ledge halfway down to the ground and seemed to be considering his proposal.

‘Should I offer her another lure?’ Hawthorne whispered from the side of his mouth. The others shrugged in bewilderment.

He took a cautious step closer to the barrel but stopped when Alights suddenly soared in a downward spiral, landing a few metres away from them. Morrigan felt the ground tremble, and she, Mahir and Cadence retreated, pressing themselves against the wall.

But not Hawthorne. He stood confidently, hands loosely open at his sides, face turned daringly upwards. He held himself with the still, serious composure he only ever seemed to show in the presence of a dragon. Alights was equally still, her immense flank heaving with every breath, fiery golden eyes narrowed dangerously to slits. Her head was almost the size of Hawthorne’s entire body, and steam jetted rhythmically from her nostrils as she appeared to consider whether to eat him.

Reaching into the barrel, he pulled out a fat, shiny strip of lure meat and held it out to her, taking a few measured steps forward. There was a warning rumble like distant thunder, and the dragon’s mouth opened to reveal a set of glistening white teeth as long and sharp as daggers.

‘H’chath shka-lev,’ Hawthorne called out to her in a steady voice. He hadn’t needed help this time, but Morrigan and Cadence both looked enquiringly at Mahir, who translated in a whisper, ‘ Long may you burn .’

Hawthorne tossed the meat high in the air, but if he’d been hoping Alights would catch it, he was disappointed. The offering landed with a dull wet slap on the stony ground. After a moment, she took a cautious sniff.

‘ Finally, ’ whispered Hawthorne, and he bent at the knees as if preparing to take a running jump onto the saddle fitted between her shoulder blades.

Before he could leap, however, the dragon lifted her head to the ceiling and gave a ground-shaking, chest-vibrating, devastating roar, like a thousand bows pulled across a thousand cellos all at once. Morrigan, Mahir and Cadence clamped their hands over their ears, but again Hawthorne stood his ground.

‘H’CHATH SHKA-LEV!’ he repeated.

The dragon took three great stomping steps towards him, jaws opening wide, teeth bared menacingly.

‘MOVE!’ Morrigan and Cadence yelled in unison, and Hawthorne dived left just in time, hitting the ground into a commando roll seconds before the barrel of meat beside him was incinerated by a stream of volcanically hot dragonfire. Morrigan could feel its searing heat from the other side of the room. Hawthorne shielded his face but didn’t move.

‘H’chath shka-lev,’ he tried one more time, without much conviction.

‘Hawthorne, get back here !’ shouted Morrigan.

‘Time to cut your losses, mate!’ Mahir agreed.

Hawthorne looked miserably at the timer above the door as it reached thirty seconds. Twenty-nine … twenty-eight …

‘It’s not worth getting your head chomped,’ said Cadence. ‘Come on !’

The dragon’s piercing yellow gaze turned slowly back to Hawthorne. A deep growl like the rumble of a tractor engine reverberated all around.

‘ Morningtide’s child is merry and mild ,’ Morrigan sang in a terrified whisper. A tingle of Wunder swarmed to her fingertips. If she breathed her own jet of fire, would it distract Alights enough so that her friends could run back through the tunnel to safety? Or would it only make things worse?

Just as she decided to go for it, a lone figure emerged from the mouth of the tunnel.

Vesta Rinaldi moved so fast she was almost a blur. Never had Morrigan seen Spiderlily look so impressively, spine-shiveringly, leg-skitteringly … spiderlike . She felt a split second’s confusion, wondering why the Rinaldis would send the most junior member of their family to assist at such a crucial moment … until she realised Vesta, like Hawthorne, was decked in full red-and-gold riding leathers, with the notable addition of a small shooting star embroidered in glittering thread over her heart. Morrigan and Cadence looked at each other, mouths open, reaching the same conclusion at the exact same moment.

Vesta placed herself directly between Hawthorne (still on the ground) and the dragon (head down, teeth bared). She stretched out a hand, fingers splayed.

‘H’chath shka-lev.’

The girl’s voice was bold and unwavering, her greeting warm and comfortable. Like she was saying good morning to an old friend for the millionth time.

Alights on the Water ducked her head immediately, closing her eyes and leaning down to allow Vesta’s small palm to press affectionately against the spot between them. An ancient, resonant voice rumbled up from the depths of the dragon’s throat. It was a voice that sounded like a mountain, somehow. Weighty and immovable. Eternal.

‘ Machar l’ok dachva-lev. ’

Morrigan shivered. She didn’t need Mahir’s translation this time; she remembered.

I burn brighter knowing you.

As the flashing red countdown reached single digits, it was accompanied by the obnoxious, repetitive whoop of a siren. A grinding of metal on metal joined the cacophony and the enormous door began to roll slowly upwards, letting blinding sunlight into the dim pre-flight chamber.

Nine … eight … seven …

It happened so quickly, Morrigan almost missed it. One second Vesta was on the ground, the next she and Spiderlily had taken three gigantic eight-legged jumps up the side of the dragon’s thick hide and landed neatly in the saddle.

In a series of rapid, practised movements, Vesta locked all eight chair legs into place – four gripping the sides of the saddle, four wedged tightly on either side of the dragon’s wing joints. She pulled a lever, and Spiderlily’s metal frame shifted and transformed around her, tucking neatly out of the way. Securing herself in a comfortable position, Vesta took the reins in one hand and patted Alights roughly with the other. The dragon took her signal and moved to stand before the steel door, now halfway risen.

‘It’s what you’ve been waiting for!’ boomed the commentator’s amplified voice. ‘Here they come – the one and only Alights on the Water Like a Seabird and her official new flight partner … Hawthorne Swift!’

The swell of noise from the crowd in the Trollosseum was immense. Morrigan glanced over at Hawthorne, whose expression was a mix of numb shock, gut-wrenching disappointment and reluctant admiration.

‘Sorry, Swift, but I was here first,’ Vesta shouted as she turned back to grin at them, flipping down the visor on her helmet to cover half her face. ‘No hard feelings.’

The second the door was fully open, the girl and her dragon took to the sky, soaring up into the sunlight.

The four friends stood in dazed silence for ten seconds or so – about the time it took the door to fully descend again.

‘Well,’ Cadence said, once they’d been plunged back into darkness. ‘Guess we found our mystery dragonrider.’

‘But Vesta’s only eleven!’ said Morrigan. ‘Is she even allowed to compete?’

Hawthorne gave a baffled shrug. ‘I don’t think there’s, like … an official rule against it or anything. But I doubt there’s ever needed to be, ’cos no dragon owner in their right mind would put an eleven-year-old in the saddle for a professional competition.’ He turned on his heels. ‘Come on. We can watch from the Rinaldi box, if we hurry.’

‘What does this mean?’ asked Mahir, following Hawthorne into the tunnel. ‘If she is our mystery dragonrider … does that also make her the murderer? Did she kill her own brother just to steal his dragon?’

‘Vesta told me Dario helped design Spiderlily – that’s her chair,’ Morrigan clarified, noting Mahir’s look of confusion. ‘You saw how the chair and the saddle fit perfectly together – they were made that way . So Dario wanted Vesta to ride Alights , which means—’

‘He was coaching her,’ Hawthorne said confidently. ‘Obviously. Dario was the only person that dragon ever liked.’

‘Apparently not the only one,’ said Cadence.

‘But why didn’t Vesta tell anyone it was her?’ asked Morrigan, as they reached the elevator and piled inside. ‘Cosimo’s been looking for a new rider all this time! Why would she keep it a secret when she’s obviously the best person for the job? Sorry Hawthorne.’

‘None taken,’ he said gloomily.

‘Maybe she was worried someone would accuse her of murder?’ said Cadence.

‘Maybe the Rinaldis did know,’ Hawthorne suggested, ‘but they still didn’t want to give her the saddle? It’s a dangerous sport.’

‘But she clearly knows what’s she’s doing,’ Morrigan pointed out. ‘That dragon did everything she wanted it to. She didn’t even need a lure!’

‘Good thing she didn’t,’ said Mahir, ‘because that stuff smelled funky . I think it’d gone off or something. No wonder Alights wasn’t interested in it.’

Hawthorne sniffed his hands curiously. ‘Actually, it does smell kind of weird. Not off weird, though, more like … What is that, throat lozenges?’ He held a hand up to Mahir’s nose.

‘Ugh, liquorice !’ Mahir batted his hand away, making a face. ‘Yuck.’

Morrigan felt her brain trip over something. She automatically slipped her hand into her pocket and felt it close around the cool glass bottle, her pulse quickening.

‘Aniseed,’ she murmured, and Cadence glanced over at her sharply. After a microsecond’s confusion, her eyes widened.

‘You think … somebody tried to poison Alights, just like Lady Dar—’

The elevator opened directly into the Rinaldi box at that moment, and Cadence’s voice was swallowed by a wall of sound. The large, bright room was even more packed than the last time Morrigan had seen it and she kept instinctively to the back, hoping to go unnoticed. She was certain the Darlings must be there somewhere, probably front and centre.

Hawthorne was the only one who didn’t need to stand on his toes to see the glass viewing panel. Morrigan caught flashes of golden scales here and there, but between the commentary and the gasps of awe from the other spectators, she managed to draw the obvious conclusion: Vesta and Alights were a force to be reckoned with.

‘I have to say, Eddie, my expectations were high after Swift’s performance in the opening flights, but he has WELL AND TRULY surpassed them with this performance!’

Morrigan heard a grunt of irritation beside her.

‘I’m with you there, Tofty. Just look at that fluid, intuitive movement – the decisive command of Swift and the razor-sharp responses of Alights on the Water. It’s like these two have been riding together their whole lives!’

Morrigan was so busy trying to see between the heads of the two tall men in front of her, she lost her balance and bumped into one of them.

‘Oops, sorry – oh!’ Her stomach gave a nervous flip as she recognised him. ‘Uh. Hello, Uncle Tobias.’

She didn’t know what she was expecting, but fortunately Tobias Darling – like everyone else in the room – was utterly focused on the progress of Alights on the Water and barely spared her a glance.

‘Morrigan! Ah. Your aunts hoped I might see you here.’ Tobias smiled awkwardly. ‘They’re all in a dither preparing for the party tonight. Wanted me to remind you to … something or other.’ The message seemed to slip from his mind entirely. He frowned as he watched the flying, rubbing anxiously at his chin as if stroking a nonexistent beard. ‘Rather good, isn’t he? Your friend. You never mentioned he could do a three-sixty March Hare.’

‘That’s not my friend,’ said Morrigan, but Tobias didn’t seem to hear.

‘Impressive stuff. I must say I didn’t realise …’ He trailed off, blinking. ‘Sorry, what did you say?’

‘That’s not Hawthorne. It’s Vesta.’

‘Vesta?’ Tobias turned to look at her properly then, jumping when he saw Hawthorne beside her. Slack-jawed with shock, his face snapped back to the dragon and her rider. ‘ Vesta Rinaldi? ’

From the front of the room, Cosimo Rinaldi turned to look at them, seeming to register the sound of his sister’s name through the din. His eyes flitted from Morrigan to Tobias and finally landed on Hawthorne, standing there in his full riding leathers. The blood drained from his face, his complexion curdling like milk.

Then Cosimo was pushing aggressively through the crowded room, knocking grown men over in his haste to flee the box. By the time he’d taken the elevator to ground level and sprinted onto the arena floor, Vesta had already executed a textbook landing. She calmly detached Spiderlily from the saddle, dismounted and climbed down to the ground in a flurry of metallic legs, whipping off her helmet in a final flourish.

The cheers in the Trollosseum turned briefly to a buzz of confused chatter, but cheering soon resumed, and doubled when Cosimo ran to his sister and wrapped her in a lung-constricting hug.

‘Well … er, I don’t mind saying, I’m a bit confused, Eddie – the Rinaldi rollercoaster took us for one last loop there with yet another change of rider! But this is certainly a touching display from one of dragonsport’s notoriously taciturn characters. I guess the Rinaldi Stables’ big boss is just a big softie! All eyes on the leaderboard now as we wait for the judges’ verdict.’

Everyone in the Rinaldi box seemed to hold their breath as the name Alights on the Water Like a Seabird climbed from eleventh place … all the way to first place.

Whatever hearing Morrigan had left after the dragon’s ear-splitting roar in the pre-flight chamber, was wiped out by the thunderous noise that exploded inside the Rinaldi box. She rushed her friends outside into the hall, away from the clamour of celebration and confusion. ‘Let’s get the others. We’ve got to make a plan for tonight.’

‘What’s tonight?’ asked Mahir.

Morrigan smiled, feeling her heart thump riotously in her chest.

‘We’re going to a ball.’