14
Asta woke up to Carmine’s hard nose ramming into her shoulder.
She opened her eyes and slowly oriented herself.
The gray carpet. The headboard. The hatch with a dragon’s red head and neck snaking through it, prodding her relentlessly.
Her head was pounding. She vaguely remembered Gem shaking her, but she wasn’t sure how long ago that had been.
She had the sinking feeling she had promised him something before he left.
Carmine took the covers in his teeth and pulled, leaving Asta exposed on the soft bed.
‘Hey,’ she complained. ‘I was using that.’ Her head hurt. Her eyeballs hurt. She shouldn’t have drunk so much last night.
Carmine huffed, smoke on his breath.
Asta coughed. ‘Excuse you. What is your problem?’
The realization hit her all at once. Her qualifying heat. She sat bolt upright and looked frantically for a clock.
‘Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.’ The race was starting in twenty minutes. She was out of bed in an instant. She stubbed her bare toe on her helmet in the bottom of the closet and cursed. She was pulling on the embroidered jumpsuit when Gem stormed through the door.
‘Asta! Do you have any idea what time it is?’
‘Yes, I’m sorry! I’m coming.’
‘What time did you get in last night?’
‘Late.’
The article from yesterday, casting her as the villain in Felix Seraphin’s glorious quest for victory, had put her in a bad mood. Finally, she’d let Nat pry the course map for today’s race out of her hands and take her out dancing. Nat had danced close with Asta, provocative and shameless.
‘That’ll give the papers something to write about,’ she had said into Asta’s ear. She had immediately abandoned Asta for a stone-faced couple in metal-studded clothing who, within minutes, Nat beguiled into softness and smiles.
Nat had returned to Asta every so often to flirt, give a status report on her plans with the couple, and make sure Asta had a full drink in her hand.
Asta hadn’t minded being left on her own. It felt good, for just a few hours, to forget about everything awaiting her in the coming days, to just be a body in motion, moving to the music. Asta had danced with strangers and drunk her drinks until the room swam.
The room was still swimming.
Gem was glowering at her. ‘Honestly, Asta, you know what’s at stake.’
‘I know! I know!’ That was precisely the problem.
Too much was at stake. She built her whole life around this tournament, and it was just too much.
‘I said I’m sorry.’ She sat on her bed and pulled her boots on, lacing them as quickly as she could with clumsy fingers. ‘Anyway, it’s my ass on the line.’
‘Your ass? That’s rich, Asta.’
Asta’s heart dropped. Gem was hoping to make a name for himself as a talent manager.
What he really wanted to do was manage musicians.
But if his own cousin and first client flamed out on his watch, it would not do him any professional favors.
His shot at knocking elbows with his idols on the red carpet, his dream of discovering the voice of a generation, would be that much harder.
He’d be lucky to book a jug band for the Medley Day parade.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said again, but this time she meant it.
‘I’ll get Carmine and meet you out front in three minutes. Three.’
As Asta wrangled her long hair into a makeshift bun, she berated herself for being so stupid.
She had spent too much time with Natalia, that was the problem.
She was starting to act like her. Nat always seemed so carefree, like the world could not touch her.
Asta wanted to be like that. If Nat could forget about the race for one night, she had told herself, so could she.
Asta hesitated in the middle of the room, halfway to the door.
Had Nat forgotten about the race?
She thought about Nat’s desperation during the ride a couple nights ago, how vicious she had become when the finish line was in sight.
Maybe Hummer had gotten through to her, after all.
This was Silverscale. Asta wasn’t her friend anymore; she was her competition.
Asta hadn’t tracked how many drinks Nat had last night.
She might be sitting at the starting line right now, fresh as a daisy.
Had she really been trying to help Asta relax, or was she sabotaging her?
Asta didn’t know. Three years virtually joined at the hip, and Asta didn’t trust her further than she could throw her.
And who could she trust? Felix had long ago shown her his true colors.
Even Gem would leave her for his musicians someday.
The only person she could really count on was herself, and ever since she had gotten here, she had been on the verge of betraying even that trust. And why?
Out of some pathetic need to be liked, to be accepted?
That was over, she told herself. She was on her own team now and no one else’s.
She picked up her helmet and gloves and headed for the door.
They had five minutes in the pit. Torque was purple-faced with shouting.
Some of the crew wrestled Carmine into his harness while others slathered him with grease.
Torque followed with the terrain attachments – large spikes perpendicular to Carmine’s shoulders to keep the other dragons from jostling too close on the track and leg guards with steel protrusions for added traction.
At the pit stop before the second lap, the ground gear would be swapped out for the flight gear.
Gem secured the armband with Asta’s race chip above her elbow and boosted her into the saddle.
‘Go, go!’ Gem yelled.
Asta pulled down the visor on her helmet. She urged Carmine out of the pit with a squeeze of her knees. The sudden motion made her queasy, but she willed her stomach to settle.
She saw herself on the Needle screens scampering toward the starting line where all the other riders were poised and waiting.
She could just hear the TV announcers making their snide remarks for the viewers at home: Cutting it a little close there, wouldn’t you say?
Late to the field is Number 99, Asta Ekenberg, riding Carmine.
Unaffiliated rider, and you can see why.
Not terribly professional behavior, is it, Vern?
Asta had barely gotten Carmine facing the right direction when the horn sounded and the flag dropped.
Carmine, too, was caught by surprise and reared for a moment before springing forward.
The thundering of dragon feet on the track filled the air.
Asta’s head cleared in a rush of adrenaline.
There was no turning back now. This was Silverscale. All that mattered now was the race.
The first leg would take them halfway around the outer track to the entry point into the middle terrain. Asta was at the back of the pack of twenty-five riders as they came off the starting line. Several places ahead of her, she could see Nat on Vulture, straining to get loose of the fray.
The first sprint was a dangerous part of the course, especially as the dragons picked up speed. The teams were close together in a rumbling and disorderly mob, and the shoulder spikes clanked against each other in warning.
Still, Asta and Carmine were making progress through heavy traffic as they came into the turn.
They were coming up on Nat and Vulture now.
Nat slipped into an opening ahead of her, and Asta took the slot that Nat had left.
Vulture’s large, dark brown form, painted with the fire-wings of the Bruces’ crest, undulated in front of them.
Her bronze head flashed in the sun. Then, without warning, she reared on her hind legs and veered to the left.
Asta’s attention snapped into focus, and everything seemed to happen in slow motion.
A dragon was falling, turning, rolling. Asta could hear the bones break as the rider was crushed under its back.
The racers behind the falling dragon did not have time to react.
Their dragons, too, tumbled and fell. Tails and spikes and blasts of fire filled the scene ahead of Asta.
She could feel, creeping into her mind, that frozen panic that had descended on her at West Granger.
Part of her knew that if she let it take her now, she and Carmine could both die.
Asta jerked the reins to steer Carmine to the right, standing in her stirrups and signaling him to climb over the bodies before them.
The swinging neck of a huge gold dragon seemed to come out of nowhere, catching Asta full in the chest. It knocked her out of the saddle and pulled her across the rough ridge of Carmine’s spine.
She could feel the grinding of Carmine’s hard body against hers, all along her left side, from her kidney to her thigh, like she was a rag on a washboard.
Much more of this, and she would be torn apart.
But somehow, she caught hold of one of Carmine’s blue-tipped spines and wrenched herself free of the gold dragon.
She clung to Carmine’s back as the other animal continued to fall.
In the long seconds of slow-motion time, Asta congratulated herself for sleeping in. If she hadn’t, Gem might have remembered to fasten her tethers in the pit. And if she’d had them on, the gold dragon wouldn’t have just dragged her out of the saddle. It would have snapped her in half.
But even in slowed-down time, Asta did not have the leisure of contemplating her luck.
The shoulder spikes of a bright green dragon were coming at her fast, and she hurled herself off the side of Carmine’s back, clinging to his right wing to keep herself from falling into the chaos below.
Carmine, now climbing over the painted bodies of the dragons in front of him, flinched and wrenched sideways as one of the spikes caught him in the leg.
The sudden movement nearly shook Asta off, but she hung on, her muscles burning.