21 #2
Even the speakers were worse up here. The synth music pulsing from them was tinny and thin.
It gave Asta a faraway feeling, like she was a bird hanging above the track on an air current.
Far, far below, the first dragons and their riders were making their way on to the outer track to run a few warm-up sprints, much to the jubilation of the crowd.
Beside Asta, Felix slid his rump over the bleacher and leaned back so that his head rested on the empty bench behind him.
Except for his heavy jacket and jeans and the fact that he was entirely shrouded in shadow, he could have been a sunbather.
Asta joined him. Yesterday’s rain had passed through, and the sky was a bright autumn blue, the color of the columbines in Grandma Ekenberg’s garden.
‘So, are you going to tell me what’s going on there?’ Felix asked.
A pang of nerves zinged through Asta’s body. ‘What do you mean?’
Felix folded his hands behind his head. ‘With Natalia Bruce. I have eyes. I see the way she looks at you. Is that a – thing?’
Was he jealous, or is this what he thought friends talked about?
Asta shook her head. ‘No. Nat isn’t a “thing” kind of person.’
Asta noticed a patch of skin between the waistband of Felix’s jeans and the bottom of his jacket that beckoned her to reach out and touch. What would he do if she did it?
Stop it, she scolded herself. Friends, he had said. That was all. Then again, the last time they had been friends, he was taking her clothes off in an attic. The thought seemed to loosen Asta’s grip on gravity just a little. She grabbed the bench to keep from floating away.
‘What was in the jar?’ Felix asked without taking his eyes off the sky.
Gravity returned in force, and Asta felt very heavy all of a sudden.
‘What jar?’
Felix lay in his sunbather’s pose and waited for her to say something. When she didn’t, he turned his head and looked into her eyes. She did not find, as she had feared, disdain or disappointment in his gaze. His eyes held hers steadily, without judgment.
‘This is what you meant, wasn’t it? About your debts.’
She could deny it. But she wanted to see what he would say if he knew the truth. ‘Yes.’
‘The offer still stands. However much you need.’
Asta took her turn staring at the sky. ‘Not all problems can be fixed by money, you know.’
‘But isn’t that what you said? That the prize would pay your debts?’
He had been listening to her. ‘It’s not that easy.
But I think—’ She was going to say that this was the end of it, that by delivering the contraband, she had done what was expected of her and now it was over.
But Hummer’s ominous For now still rang in her ears.
She couldn’t tell Felix that part. He would know, then, what a fool she had been.
She let the blue sky, netted over with the faint shimmer of the magic dome, and the wonderful, easy feeling of having Felix at her side push out all the other thoughts.
Felix reached over, took hold of her hand, and squeezed it – and all she could think about was the warmth of his skin radiating against hers. ‘Whatever you need, Asta. Just ask.’
As soon as he let go, the other troublesome thoughts rushed back in.
Asta forced her voice to stay steady. ‘I’m taking care of it.
’ She looked down at the course far below, her heart churning with emotion.
Did he finally understand? She didn’t need a savior.
She needed a friend. Being here was all he had to do.
This was her mess, not his. There was no reason he should get sucked down into the morass with her.
It was enough that he was here.
The starting horn blared and showers of blue and gold illusory pyrotechnics flew up from the terrain and into the sky in scintillating patterns, resolving at last into the Silverscale logo.
As was tradition, the real fireworks, planted in the no man’s land between the pits and the stands, would go off only after all the teams had crossed the finish line and the winners’ times had been posted on the screen.
The screens showed the start from an overhead angle.
Bernie Kerr on Opaless and Ferdo Castilla on Boto were early leaders off the line.
As usual, Vulture and Nat were somewhere in the middle of the pack.
Pikki, on her dragon, Underling, had freed herself from the traffic and was gaining on the leaders as they headed into the first turn.
The raceway shook with cheering. Felix, apparently forgetting that he was trying to keep a low profile, was on his feet and shouting.
The course for the day, which Asta had studied until her eyes ached all last night, included a full lap around the outer track before entering the terrain on the second lap.
The dragons were dressed in cleats and side spikes.
Some of the teams had pinned their dragons’ wings to their sides with saddle straps to avoid any chance of a penalty delay for premature flight.
Asta couldn’t stand the thought of pinning Carmine’s wings like that. She had tested the equipment exactly one time at Pillar, and Carmine had fought against the restraint and whined so pitifully that it nearly broke her heart.
‘He’ll get used to it,’ Mr. Carle, the riding instructor, had advised her. ‘You just have to break him in.’ But Asta had removed the straps and given them back. She’d stolen a chicken out of the freezer in the cafeteria that night and sneaked it to Carmine in his stall as an apology.
By the time the racers were on the backstretch, the leaders had established themselves. The track announcers kept the spectators appraised of their progress as they watched the screens.
‘After a fast start, Bernie Kerr and Opaless have dropped back into the crowd,’ the rattly little speaker said, ‘but Ferdo Castilla and Boto continue to hold the lead against Pikki Lowell and her dragon, Underling.’
Four other teams were on Pikki’s heels. Nat and Vulture remained stuck in the dead middle of the pack and didn’t seem to be able to make any advances.
‘Vulture, ridden by Natalia Bruce, is looking feisty today. They’ve already drawn a warning flag.’
On the screens above the track, Asta thought it looked like Vulture’s right flank was bloodied and raw from a run-in with another dragon’s spikes. Asta wondered if they had dosed Vulture with the irritant already, making her unruly.
But Asta didn’t think so. On the streets, the Bruces usually waited until the end of a race, when a little extra boost was needed.
They would want to see how the field shook out.
Besides, when Vulture was on the stuff, she ran like a devil out of hell, and right now she was looking slow, even for her.
Hummer wouldn’t be pleased to see that. If Vulture didn’t pull ahead soon, she would be up on the auction block before the end of the week. Asta thought Nat and Tru would sooner murder him than let Vulture go. But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t try.
Pikki held her second-place position around the next bend.
She was looking better than Asta had ever seen her at Pillar.
Her form was tight and efficient, and she was making smart choices – textbook perfect, but that was Pikki.
The real test would be the terrain section, where improvisation was needed. Ferdo, then Pikki, entered the pits.
‘Pikki’s killing it,’ Asta said to Felix.
Felix nodded. ‘She is.’ A funny look crossed his face. ‘Just so you know, we didn’t stay close.’ He looked nervous. Asta laughed to herself. He thought she was jealous of Pikki. He was trying to set the record straight. ‘After graduation, you know, she signed with—’
A flash and loud bang interrupted Felix’s words. Fire and sparks flew beside the track. The screens flipped from the race to the smoke billowing from one of the pits – Pikki’s.
‘What the hell was that?’ Felix yelled.
On the screen, more sparks and fire, this time followed by a ball of flame, presumably from Pikki’s dragon.
‘The fireworks,’ someone near them yelled. ‘Something set them off!’
A crew member, clothes burning, crawled out of the pit as the medics and the firefighters rushed forward. A yellow flag with a black disc in the middle of it was flown all around the track – a stoppage. The other racers were being held at their pits as they arrived.
Asta had never seen a stoppage called before. It was a technicality in the rulebook, but it was almost never used. Broken equipment, casualties littering the track – it didn’t matter. The race went on. Always.
Already, another dragon had spooked and flamed in the pit, its muzzle dampening the burst of fire. All along the pits, dragons were rearing and flailing. Near the end of the line, far from Pikki’s pit still roiling with smoke, Asta saw Vulture’s bronze head thrashing back and forth.
The stands were in a state of pandemonium. Spectators were shouting down to the track pointlessly. Some cried out in horror. Others were frozen in shock.
‘Is she okay?’ Asta asked Felix, as if he would know.
Felix ran for the stairs that led to the walkway at the bottom of their tier, and Asta followed, but halfway down, he stopped. What could either of them do? They stared together at the track, then the screens, then back at the track.
Underling, painted with logos and gleaming with aerogrease, materialized from the smoke of Pikki’s pit and charged forward, a limp rider on his back.
The dragon’s frills were raised as if he were about to fight.
His shoulder spikes, which had been in the process of being removed when the fireworks went off, hung awkwardly from his harness.