Chapter 41
“Pleased to see you, Arivelle,” said Fairfax. “Ah, ah, ah,” he said as Rush aimed at him. He twisted the pistol’s thin barrel in Vanya’s hair. She cringed.
Rush lowered his weapon and set it on a small round table affixed to the floor between two chairs. Clarence moved around me and did the same.
“You too, Arivelle,” demanded Fairfax.
I chucked the knife on the table.
“Where’s Prescott?” Rush demanded.
“He knocked out the engineer of this train, so I told him he had to man the switches or we’d end up in a ditch. It doesn’t really matter where he takes us, as long as he doesn’t let us crash. Have a seat.”
Clarence, Rush, and I lowered into gently shaking chairs around the narrow car. Rush took the seat closest to Fairfax. He might not have a weapon, but his fists were a decent enough alternative.
Fairfax lifted his pistol, and Vanya fell forward onto her hands and knees. She scrambled away, joining me on my chair.
“Now, let’s see. I’m sure you have questions,” drawled Fairfax, setting his gun down, barrel toward us, on top of his crossed legs.
“My father,” Rush began. “You’re not working for him?”
“Ender, no,” spat Fairfax. “Ari knows my thoughts on him.”
Rush peered back at me with questioning eyes, but I said nothing. He spun back to Fairfax. “Then you’re working against him. Taking Myth for yourself?”
“In a way, yes. I still need this dragon to do something for me. Uphold a bargain I made with a certain young lady.” He lifted his brows at me.
“You knew we would come,” I said.
“When you asked me to help find your dragon, I knew you would be looking for him too. So I made sure to watch these two.” He pointed at Rush and Vanya.
“And then your friend Mr. Gregory. Once my men recognized him at two different train stations, asking the same questions we were asking, I knew he was helping you. The fortune teller was harder to track down, but I did find her. Sweet woman. Or she was.”
“You killed Bev?” I shouted, jumping up.
“I didn’t. The man I sent after I spoke with her did.
She knew too much, Arivelle.” He angled his head in a reproving way.
“Don’t look so surprised. When you involved her, you put her at risk.
She knew you had a dragon with flame, a dragon the duke wanted for himself.
She’d pieced it all together, just from the few words she’d managed to pull from the guards and from you.
That woman didn’t miss details.” He yawned, as if discussing murder was boring.
“Speaking of details, I am still waiting for you to explain to me how the duke wins races, per our little bargain.”
Rush turned slowly toward me, his blue eyes bright as flames.
Swallowing, I flicked my eyes to him and back to Fairfax. “Who says I know how he does it?”
“I know you have my answer now, so don’t deny it.
It was your letters to your sister that tipped me off, at first, that you’d discovered something big.
Then I learned of your clandestine meetings with Covington at the lair, and after the fire at the duke’s townhouse, it didn’t take me long to figure out what you two were up to.
It was the duke’s keen interest in Myth that cemented my own curiosity about him, in the end.
I’ve known all along that Myth has his flame, so once I realized the duke had lied about executing your dragon so he could keep him for himself, I knew it had to be related to his flame.
I admit I’m not certain how it relates to the duke’s racing empire, but I believe you are about to tell me, aren’t you, Arivelle?
You promised.” At my violent head shake, he sighed, looking at Rush and Clarence.
“You were busy at Cardan Lott. Busy making friends with the very people you hate.”
I tensed, eyes on Rush. “I don’t hate them.”
“But you hate the world they created. It’s fine to admit it. Fine to admit your goal was to destroy that world.”
Vanya spoke up. “It’s a world that needs changing, and I don’t blame her one bit.”
Rush lunged for Fairfax, but stopped short when the pistol turned in the man’s lap, barrel trained on Rush’s heart.
“Here is what is going to take place,” Fairfax said, sitting up straighter, gun still pointing out at us.
“I recruited you not only to search out how the duke wins so many Ender-forsaken races, but to beat him.” Rush turned a surprised expression on me, one I tried not to read.
If there was anger there, I couldn’t blame him, but I didn’t think I could handle it right now.
So I kept my eyes pinned to Fairfax. “I still need you to do that, Arivelle. As I’m no longer in the mood to wait until the end-of-year race to watch the duke lose, I have scheduled a night race for you two.
” He used his pistol to point between Rush and me.
“Three days from now. Ari, you promised to tell me how the duke wins if I found Myth. I’ve found him.
Tell me you can beat the duke’s son here, and I’ll let you all live. ”
I pinched my brows. I was finished letting others control my world, my dragon. “What if I don’t want to return to Cardan Lott?”
“Then I will kill Myth.”
The breath in my lungs flushed out. “No.”
Fairfax aimed the pistol at a window and fired. I screamed, and glass shattered.
“Now, Arivelle, tell me. Does dragonfire allow the duke to win races?”
Shaking, I looked at Rush. He stood slowly and walked a few steps toward Fairfax, angling so that he blocked Fairfax’s view of me. “My father uses magic to win races. But we don’t know how. Ari doesn’t know how to beat him.”
He was defending me, even after what he’d just heard.
“Magic? Interesting,” Fairfax hummed. “But I don’t like that answer, Mr. Covington, because it won’t allow my racer to win. Get out of my way.” He waved the pistol.
“My father will kill you if he finds out what you’re doing,” Rush snapped, not moving.
“He’ll try. Sure. But now that I know his secret, I can use it too. I can become as invincible as he has been for far too long.”
“We can get this over with now,” Rush said, fists at his sides.
Fairfax sighed. “There’s no fun in that.
Your father’s defeat needs to be public, a dramatic affair, which is why I’ve planned a night race that will be well attended.
The country’s most promising young dragon rider against a bottomsider with a wild dragon.
” He arced one hand through the air as if reading a headline.
“I can guarantee your father will attend when he finds out you are racing the wild dragon. And if your father attends, he will have a plethora of his adoring fans with him. It will be marvelous to watch you lose.”
“What if I don’t lose?” Rush said through gritted teeth.
“If you don’t, I will shoot your dragon. Then you won’t be able to win any more races.”
“Monster,” I breathed, clutching the edge of the chair.
“We still don’t know how my father uses magic to win, only that he does,” Rush said, voice almost a growl.
Hopping up, I shouted at Fairfax, “If you want to beat the duke, do it right. Let us race. No threats. No cheating. A real race.”
Silence fell as the train rattled down the tracks.
“You have two days to find out how to win, Arivelle. And keep in mind that one of you will not walk away from the race.”
Fairfax lifted his pistol and aimed at Rush’s head. “Now, if you’ll kindly leave.”
“The train is moving,” Clarence observed, his first words since we walked in.
“And your dragons are too, I assume?” Fairfax tsked. “Your father should rethink the curriculum at that school of his if it’s turning out brilliant minds like yours. Now, out you go. I promise to deliver Myth in one piece at Cardan Lott tomorrow morning.”
“I’m staying with him,” I said.
“Fine. You may. I have something else I’d like to say to you as well.”
“If she stays, I stay,” Rush spat, moving toward me.
“Your best bet here, Mr. Covington, is to find a way to weasel out of your father’s suspicions, which I’m certain will increase tenfold tomorrow when this train doesn’t arrive where he sent it and Myth returns to Cardan Lott.
If you want him discovering your role in all this, by all means, stay.
I’m sure he wouldn’t hesitate to shoot you the way he did that poor brother of yours. ”
I held Rush back as he lunged. “No!” He made it a few steps, but he finally slowed. “You need to leave. He’s right. Go back to school. I’ll meet you there in the morning.”
The train screeched on the tracks, slowing as someone in the cab pulled the brakes. We rocked with the movement, and it briefly stole Fairfax’s attention as well as ours.
Rush’s eyes widened, and he flicked them toward Clarence. He mouthed, “Wintercress.”
Biting my lips, I nodded.
Rush turned back toward Fairfax and stormed at him, making me jump. “I’m not leaving her. So you can just shoot me right now, but I know you won’t because you need me to race her, to lose.”
Fairfax scrambled from his seat a little awkwardly, needing his hands to pry himself up as the train rattled against its brakes.
“Clarence!” I said, lifting my hands as if to catch something. He quickly withdrew the bottle of wintercress and tossed it to me. When my fingers curled around it, I tucked into a sprint.
Vanya caught on and leaped up as well, diving across the table for one of the pistols. For a brief moment, Fairfax wasn’t sure which of us to aim at.
Then he noticed Vanya had him in her sights and Rush was barreling toward him with his fists, me with an uncorked bottle of wintercress, the scent potent.
“Bleeding graves,” he spat. Holding his gun at us, he backed toward the coach’s door, slipped through it, and disappeared.
When Rush bolted forward and ripped the door open, Fairfax was already running, albeit slowly, away from the train, which was barely rolling forward now.
Rush punched the side of the train and called back for his gun.
By the time Clarence brought it to him, we could no longer see Fairfax through the trees.