Avian (The Dragonrider Chronicles) (11 page)

After a week and a half, I knew my time with Sile’s family was up. As much as I hated the idea of going back to Mithangol, I needed to do a stopover at my house to check on everything. Then I had to get to the academy in time to have more armor and a new saddle made. My legs were way too long for the one I had now. Sile had wrestled with it, trying to find a way to rig it so I would fit without looking like a man trying to squeeze into a baby’s highchair, but it was a lost cause.

“Just take it off,” I told him. “I can ride without it. It’s only a day’s flight.”

Sile frowned. He obviously didn’t like that idea. “It’s dangerous to ride without a way to anchor yourself to him. If he banks too steeply you’ll slide off. I’ve already demonstrated for you what it’s like to fall off a dragon’s back.”

“Lucky for me, I can talk to him. Besides, Beckah did it and she’s never even had training. I’ll be fine,” I countered. Mavrik chirped with agreement, and I started unbuckling the saddle from between his neck and wing arms.

Sile was strangely quiet as I removed the saddle. He stood back and watched, rubbing his chin and following me with his dark eyes. “You need to start a fight,” he said at last.

I stopped and stared at him. “A fight? With who?”

He shrugged a little. “It doesn’t matter. The bigger the better, though. That way they can’t say you were just using your new size to pick on someone smaller.”

“But why?” I’d spent most of my life avoiding fights because of the guarantee that I would be crushed. The idea of starting one on purpose was not something I was excited about.

Sile moved around to Mavrik’s other side and started helping me unbuckle the saddle. “At survival training, they always target the weakest link and use him to exploit and antagonize the rest of the class. They want to get a reaction. Unfortunately, there’s only one other person in your class who cares what happens to you. And trust me, the last thing you want is to put the spotlight on him. So you need to prove that you aren’t the weakest link anymore. You don’t have much time to do it, though.”

“And the best way to do that is to get into a fight?” I didn’t like the sound of this at all.

“Yes. And I would strongly encourage you to win.” He gave me a meaningful look over Mavrik’s back.

“What am I supposed to do? Walk up and punch someone?” I tried to think of a good reason to do something like that. There wasn’t one.

“I’m sure you’ll come up with something. You were essentially a doormat for most of your peers last year. Surely there’s someone you’d like to get revenge on,” Sile said as he hoisted the saddle away and flung it over his shoulder.

I stood there thinking about that while he carried my old saddle away into the stable. Mavrik got up and shook himself. We exchanged a glance, and a vision of Lyon Cromwell flashed across my mind.

“I’m not going to punch Lyon for no reason,” I told him.

Mavrik made an irritated grumbling noise and stared preening his scales. I knew what he was thinking, and not just because he started showing me images of the fight at the prison camp last year when Lyon abandoned us. I had plenty of reasons to do more than punch Lyon. He was not my friend. He hated me, and he had spent a lot of his spare time bullying me in the past. I would have been lying if I told anyone I didn’t resent him for that, but that was a far cry from wanting to go out of my way to pick a fight with him.

“Forget it. We’ll think of something else,” I grumbled.

Mavrik yawned and started crawling away, looking for a shady spot to stretch out for a nap. Sile came back and followed me to the house. I still had to pack up my stuff and say my goodbyes. I was hoping to get back to Mithangol after nightfall. If I could get in and out of there without anyone seeing me, I would be happy.

It was awkward to eat my last lunch with them. Or at least, it was awkward for me because Beckah wouldn’t even look up from across the table. She sat there, swirling her fork in her food, and didn’t say a word. It was killing me. I needed to talk to her before I left for this year of training. She was the only person who gave me any confidence in myself.

Mrs. Derrick was caught up with her new baby girl. The chubby little thing was wrapped up in layers of pink blankets. She squirmed in her mother’s arms, making strange baby-noises. Every now and then, though, Mrs. Derrick would look up at me and smile again, reminding me to eat as much as I wanted. I decided that was probably her way of thanking me.

Sile was uncomfortably quiet, too. He looked like he was lost in thought, or maybe even worried about something. I hoped it wasn’t me. I wasn’t small anymore. I could survive. I wasn’t doomed to be the weakest link everyone would prey upon. At least, that’s what I was hoping.

After dinner, I went up to the guest room and packed up the few things I’d brought. Mrs. Derrick told me to leave my old clothes and boots, since none of them fit now. I didn’t have much else to take. My belt, vambraces, helmet—none of it would be any use to me anymore. So I tried to fold it all up neatly and put it on the dresser. Sile had bought them all for me, so it only seemed right to give them back now.

The door shut behind me suddenly and I almost jumped out of my skin. I half hoped it was Beckah, but instead Sile was standing there with his arms crossed. He was looking at me like he had something to say. Immediately, my stomach started to squirm nervously.

“I’ve decided to let the dragon stay,” he told me. “Icarus, that is.”

I swallowed hard. “I think that’s a good idea.”

He frowned. “Because Beck wants to keep him?”

“No,” I answered quickly. “Because if you want to keep something around for security, a king drake is the best guardian anyone could hope for.”

He snorted and looked away again. “I kept hoping Valla would come back. But I’m a fool for even expecting that from her. She didn’t choose me the way Mavrik chose you. I was a taskmaster to her, nothing more. Despite all we’ve been through, she’s better off without me. She didn’t even look back.”

“You let her go?” I wasn’t all that surprised. Sile had mentioned before that his dragon wasn’t bonded to him like Mavrik was to me, or Icarus was to Beckah. He’d also said he was going to let her go, since he wasn’t a dragonrider anymore.

“I owed her that much,” he said. “Look, Jae, regardless of what’s been said and done, I do owe you an apology.”

I froze and stared at him. I was beginning to suspect I might be hallucinating. “For what, sir?”

“For keeping these things from you. For pushing you too far and almost getting you killed.” He looked at me uneasily. “But I’m a man of my word, and I gave someone a promise that I’d only tell you what you needed to know. This isn’t the right time. You’ll have to trust me about that.”

I did trust him. But that didn’t make me feel any better right then. I was starting to get nervous. Just thinking about going back to Blybrig had my stomach tied up in painful knots.

On the one hand, I wanted to see Felix again and get back into the saddle. I wanted to start training like I had been before. Then on the other hand, I dreaded what was coming. I hated the discriminating way everyone looked at me, and knowing that I basically had no allies there other than Felix and maybe Lieutenant Jace Rordin. We were all supposed to be brothers at arms, and yet I knew I was still an outsider. That would probably never change no matter what I did.

“I’m still trying to believe that I can do this,” I told him. “I knew it wouldn’t be easy, but it’s hard enough trying to have faith that I’ll make it to the end of training.”

Sile walked toward me and put a hand on my shoulder like he had before. It was still strange to be able to look at him eye-to-eye now. “Faith won’t make things easier for you, Jaevid. But it will make them possible.”

He reached into his pocket, taking out a small leather bag. I could hear coins jingling around inside as he handed it to me. “For your new armor and saddle,” he told me. “There should be enough there to get you fully outfitted.”

“Sir,” I started to protest. I didn’t want to take any more of his money. He’d already paid for the equipment I’d used last year. He’d volunteered to sponsor me because my father wouldn’t, and I knew there was no way for me to ever pay him back.

Sile shoved the bag into my hand anyway. “Just shut up and take it.”

We exchanged an awkward moment of silence, staring at one another. I had an eerie feeling we were both thinking about the same thing: what was going to happen to me this year at training? Was I going to be able to survive it? Sile acted like there was something greater at work here—something I was supposed to be a part of. If I didn’t make it, if something went wrong, what would happen?

I cleared my throat, put the coins into my pocket, and picked up my nearly empty bag. “I should get going.” I paused on my way out the door and looked back. “Where’s Beckah? She’s been avoiding me, hasn’t she?”

Sile scowled at me. “Still sniffing around my daughter, are you?”

I felt my ears start to burn with embarrassment. “S-she’s my friend, sir.”

“She was headed to the beach, last I saw her,” he grumbled at last. “She doesn’t like goodbyes.”

He sounded like he knew that first hand. It made me think about all the times she’d had to say goodbye to him as he left for training or war. She never knew if she’d see him again every time he left. Now, it was starting to be that way with me, too.

Then I realized why she might be acting so weird.

After thanking Mrs. Derrick for all her good food, I left the house and headed for the beach. Overhead, Mavrik was wheeling in slow circles with his blue scales sparkling in the sunshine. The salty sea air blew in hard from the water, and the sun was warm on my skin. As I came over the last grassy dune, I could see the dark shapes of ships on the horizon, the powdery white sand stretching along the coast, and the glittering waves crashing against the shore.

Beckah was standing near the water with the wind in her hair. Icarus was crouched beside her, his huge body compacted up like a crouching cat, and his long tail wrapped around him. It looked like they were having a secret conversation. They both looked back at me at the same time when I got close. That’s when I noticed that Icarus was wearing my old saddle—the one I’d grown out of. It didn’t look like it fit Icarus very well, after all he was a lot bigger than Mavrik, but it was probably about the right size for Beckah.

“You’re angry at me, aren’t you?” I asked her. “For leaving, right?”

Beckah frowned. “No.”

“Then it’s the way I look now? You don’t like it?”

She didn’t answer right away, and I got a sick feeling in my stomach that maybe I’d been right. I could handle her being upset with me for leaving. But if she was shutting me out because of how I looked—I wasn’t sure I could stand going through that again. It wasn’t something I could change. I couldn’t help the way I looked.

Finally, she turned back toward the ocean and let out a loud sigh. “I’m not angry at all, Jae. It just seems like the war and the academy both keep taking away the people I care about the most. There’s never anything I can do to stop it. I wish you weren’t going. I wish you’d stay here with us. And at the same time, I wish I was going with you,” she confessed. “I feel like I
should
be going with you. I can’t explain it. But ever since Icarus chose me, I’ve had this feeling that there’s something I’m supposed to be doing. It’s getting stronger and stronger, and I’m afraid. No one’s going to accept me as a dragonrider because I’m a girl.”

“You told me once that it didn’t matter what anyone else thinks,” I reminded her. “You said that if it was something I really cared about, then nothing else mattered.”

Beckah started to fidget. I could see that she was thinking hard about this, and that she was obviously worried. It was a big chance to take. I still wasn’t comfortable with the idea of her riding into battle or trying to become a dragonrider, but I wasn’t going to try to hold her back. If she wanted to fly, I knew nothing was going to stop her.

“It is weird to see you this way now,” she mumbled. “I know it’s silly, but it makes me wish I could look more grown up, too. Maybe then you wouldn’t forget about me, or think of me as a little kid anymore.”

“Forget about you?” I put my bag down and went to stand next to her. She flashed me a stubborn look, but all I really noticed was how her eyes were the same sea-green color as the ocean.

“I’m still the same person, you know. I don’t feel any different on the inside. And besides, I like the way you look.” Admitting that made me blush. “I’ll come back, Beckah. You’ll see me again. I won’t forget.”

She reached down into the pocket of her apron and took out a square piece of thin, white cloth. It was handkerchief. When she put it in my hand, I saw that there were two dragons stitched on it. One was blue like Mavrik and the other was black like Icarus. They were flying together with their necks and tails intertwined and their wings spread wide.

“Momma says that in the old days, ladies would give knights tokens for good luck to carry with them into battle,” she explained. “I know the stitching isn’t very good. I guess Momma’s right, I should have practiced more.”

“You made this for me?” I smiled at her, and took her hand. “It’s amazing.”

She grinned back at me, and her freckled cheeks looked slightly more rosy than usual. “Keep it with you, okay?”

I nodded. “Of course.”

“Please be safe,” she said earnestly. I felt her squeeze my hand.

Something stirred in me, seeing her that way. The urge to protect her shot through my body so suddenly, it was startling. Just knowing that I would be at the academy, too far away to do anything for her if something happened, was now unbearable.

“If anything goes wrong, tell your father to go to Mithangol,” I said.

She canted her head to the side like she was confused. “Why?”

“My house is empty now, and no one would think to look for you there. Sile knows where it is; he’s been there before. My family won’t be coming back, and yours might need a place to hide. You’d be safe there. You’ll tell him, won’t you?”

Beckah nodded, but I saw sadness in her eyes. She squeezed my hand again before she let it go. “Goodbye, Jae.”