Chapter Six
The landing area was dry for once as I paced back and forth, my fingers constantly tapping on my thighs. My jaw felt cold. Salvadora had been out of sight for minutes over the open ocean. Fin invisible for even longer.
“He’s fine,” Shi said from where he stood by the fortress wall.
I stopped and looked at him. “Sir.”
He raised a hand when I moved to salute. “You’re off duty.”
True. After a run of nights, I was rostered off today, and so wasn’t in uniform, but I still wore blue.
Every item of clothing I owned was blue.
I had occasionally purchased a white shirt, but they got washed with the blue everything else and so were soon blue themselves.
But I knew I was focusing on the stupid little details as a distraction.
Shi was in uniform. Though we had a Sky Commander over Shi, Zemich was commander of the whole North Eastern Seaboard, so he didn’t spend much time in Unkea. Not something anyone blamed him for. That effectively left Shi the senior officer here.
He looked good in his uniform. Smart, usually immaculate, utterly austere.
But that austerity wasn’t all there was.
He watched everything, took in all that was around him and understood more than most, I think.
He cared more than most here realised, I knew.
As unyielding as he often appeared, I don’t think he truly was.
No man would be so rigid and help me with my son the way he did.
“Salvadora isn’t answering me.” I moved closer to him, shared the fact that tore at my guts.
As another Rider, he understood how bothersome that would be, but he simply offered a small smile.
“If she spoke to you, Fin would know. They need to be in contact for the ride. Fin needs to know we trust him. But do not be concerned. Lord Aurexian is following. Dragon and boy are safe and well and having a wonderful time flying in a sky as blue and cloud-free as I have ever seen. In fact, Lord Aurexian believes they are both enjoying the sense of being young and free and the need to do nothing but have fun. The sea is rippling beneath them, and they have traced the path of the waves, followed a shoal of fish, and even whistled to a pod of whales. Apparently, your son is shining to rival the sun above.”
He reached out, took my hand, and pulled me to stand beside him.
“This is the most glorious day I have seen in nearly five years stationed here,” he told me quietly. “Look over there.”
I looked. “It’s the Kimi Sea.”
“It’s a sheet of living glass. Watch it breathe.
It has a slow, silver rhythm that reaches out to kiss the endless sky, dissolving into tranquil ambiguity as they merge in a distance too vast to comprehend, like dreams that blur beyond memory but echo in our waking hours.
And all the while, the sun burns with cool gold to shimmer over the heartbeat of the ocean and flash to us in eternal play until every rise and fall are equal and one and we are all joined in the final dream of forever. ”
My jaw dropped. I looked at the man beside me as he looked out over the expanse of water. I had not noticed before that his eyes weren’t dark, but grey, a deep blue-grey that matched the colour of an evening storm surge. When did poetry hit his heart? Or mine, come to that?
“I’ve never heard you speak like that before,” I said, for once not hiding the awe in my voice. “It was beautiful.” He was beautiful, but that wasn’t what male colleagues said to one another.
He blinked and turned to face me. A sudden melancholy in his eyes. “I have always loved poetry, but the power of my magic responds to emotion. Poetry evokes emotion. That, for me, for those around me, is dangerous.”
His eyeline dropped to the ground. “I do not wish the hurt anyone else I care about.”
The urge to ask was strong, but I did not think he was ready to be so flexible yet. My fingers wrapped around his, reassurance, I hoped. At least his eyes returned to mine. There was so much more to this adorable man than he allowed the world to see.
We stood shoulder to shoulder, face to face. My hand tingled in the warmth of his continuing touch. For the first time since my arrival on this island fortress, I felt I was where I was meant to be. We leaned together, the pressure on our conjoined shoulders increasing.
“You look better without the beard.”
The words were so quiet I wasn’t sure I’d heard them. “Even scarred?”
“The scar shows you are a man who protects those he loves. You look perfect.”
Suddenly he flinched and stood away, leaving me icy cold. He raised an arm.
“Your son and dragon approach.”
Yes, there emerging from the hazy horizon was a dark dot that rapidly grew closer. They were far too far away for me to see Fin, but I knew he was there. I think that glint was him, not the sun. As the speck grew, so the larger white spot behind them became clearer.
“Lord Aurexian says they are children who should know and behave better,” Shi said. Then he turned to me, perhaps reading my own concern. “I would interpret that to mean that Dora and Fin had the kind of fun Lord Aurexian considers beneath his dignity.”
I smiled at the idea.
Shi leant closer to speak in my ear. “I think he is secretly jealous.” His head snapped away and he pulled in a sharp breath. “Lord Aurexian Valemont the Third says he had nothing of which to be jealous.”
Controlling my grin took effort. “I understand completely, sir.” I bit my lip.
Focusing on the dragons incoming, I was so glad to see them approach.
I was a little surprised when they seemed to be suddenly upon us.
Lord Aurexian careened overhead, cried out a warning.
Shi pushed me hurriedly to the side, avoiding Salvadora’s last stroke of a wing.
I could hear Fin’s high-pitched giggle as the blue’s talons scraped over the granite, then her head was down on the granite, like a dog who couldn’t stop in wet mud.
Shi and I watched in horror as the dragon rolled, and a glowing Finn was thrown clear.
Memories of another time and place of horror flash froze me faster than a dragon ever could have.
Salvadora scrabbled at the edge of the landing area as I rushed towards the small body lying on his side, his back to us. I saw straight limbs and no blood. But no glow either.
No! By the Gods, no!
Then his chest heaved and shuddered; was he crying?
“Fin!” I fell to my knees at his side.
He rolled onto his back, his arms out straight at his sides, his ankles crossed. One of his trouser knees was split wide, the skin grazed. He was crying with laughter. “That was brilliant!” he screamed. He sprang to sit up. “I want to go again.”
Paralysed by shock, I could only kneel there, staring at the empty space he had left as he sprinted towards Dora again. It was Flight Captain Ang Shi who caught him by the scruff of his neck and pulled him back, moving him away from the dragon a few paces as he spun Fin around to face him.
“That, Mister Segast,” Shi intoned sharply, “was the most appalling level of misconduct I have ever seen, even in the rawest recruit, even in a pre-initiate. You wilfully endangered a dragon. How dare you?!”
Fin’s laughter-filled face fell, and his jaw dropped. He stared up at Shi like he wanted to cry.
Shi raised one finger before his face. “No tears,” Shi warned, his voice softer.
Softer, but not soft. Fin was clearly in his bad books.
“We do not cry when we are caught doing what we know to be wrong. Now tell me, Mister Segast—” Shi stood tall, his hands clasped behind his back, not lightly as usual, but tightly.
His knuckles were white. “What did you do wrong?”
Fin swallowed as he moved to an approximation of standing at attention. “I, erm, I had Salvadora come in too fast.”
“Meaning?”
To give Fin his due, he faced his discipline squarely. “Meaning we crashed, more than landed.”
“Leading to?”
Fin looked up at the older man. As I walked over to stand at Shi’s side, I could see Fin was trying to work it out, but he couldn’t see what the issue was.
“Look at the landing area, Fin,” I advised.
He looked and looked. Shi moved one foot by an inch.
“What?” Fin asked. “That’s just a tiny scratch. Anything could have done that.”
“This fortress is one hundred and forty years old,” Shi said.
“It is made of Bonatine Granite, the hardest granite known to man. It has withstood over one point two five million landings. And that is not a tiny scratch, it is the absence of an unusually large fragment of Mica which was blown out in the electrical storm of 3537. I wasn’t indicating something taken away, but something deposited. ”
Fin looked again.
“Beside your own foot,” Shi suggested.
Fin’s head turned to one side, then the other. Then he looked closer. “Oh, no!”
In the direction Salvadora would have travelled after hitting that particular chip was a smear of dragon blood.
Face pale, Fin looked up at Salvadora. “You’re hurt?”
She lifted her chin and shook her head.
“Dora,” I pushed. Because I was bonded to her, I knew very well that her left paw was hurt.
With a huff, she picked up her front left paw and hung her head. We could all now see that her pad was split. Blood had coloured the surrounding feathers.
Fin coiled, and this time I caught him back. “She’s my dragon,” I told him. “You explain to the Flight Captain exactly why you will never do this again.”
I moved over and took Salvadora’s great paw in mine. Though the sun shone just as much now as it had before, I was colder. A cloud had formed over my head and in my heart. I could cure a human of shallow wounds. Could I do the same for a dragon?
As I inspected the wound, I pulled out the small fluffy feathers that had caught in it. Dora bowed her head towards me, one eye looking questioningly at me.
Can you?
I looked in her eye. “I’m not sure,” I thought-spoke to her. “Want me to try?”
I took the way she bobbed her head as a yes.
Swallowing my concerns, I placed my hand beside the wounded paw pad and slowly gathered the magic I needed to close the gash. She grunted a little as the wound closed. Then I released my magic, and she checked the bottom of her paw.
Wow, thank you. Dora said.
“You’re welcome.”
It was my fault, she admitted at last. We were just having so much fun.
Calming my inner voice should have been easier. Fin was fine. A scraped knee was nothing. But when I’d seen Dora skid, and Fin thrown, rolling away, I felt my life had spiralled out of my control. “You know better than that,” I told her. “I’m disappointed in you.”
I understand. And you are more than disappointed in me, she acknowledged. Which I deserve. We lost Sasha. I should not have risked her beautiful baby.
My throat closed at the sentiment, but I had to control my reactions. Be more like Ang Shi.
But be not so hard on the boy, Dora begged. We had so much fun out there.
“I am glad,” I told only her. “Now, go nest. I have a suspicion Lord Aurexian will want words with you.”
She deliberately passed wind at that. He never stops having words. So disapproving of everything. You should give him some Dragonbalm, might loosen the old stick up a bit.
The idea of Lord Aurexian loose was amusing at first, but I suspect he’d be rather terrifying. Especially afterward. Dora took off, and I turned back to my son. He stood before Shi, back to attention, head forward. Shi was equally rigid, though his head was to the side, watching me.
He often watched me.
I moved closer to the pair of them.
“Mister Fin Segast is grounded,” Shi announced. “There will be no more stable work or visits for twenty days. And after that, there will be no more solo flights until the Stable Master assures me that he has successfully completed all assigned stable tasks for the following twenty days.”
Twenty days of no dragons. The standard two-week punishment for minor infractions.
Though for Fin, two weeks without dragons might just feel like forever.
It wasn’t just Fin getting punished though, it would be me too.
I was the one who would have to put up with his moodiness, though it was unlikely Shi would understand that.
“He is also to undertake the course on basic flight standards and dragon safety, which he must pass in the ninetieth-percentile range before he will be allowed any further flight time. Is that clear, Flight Sergeant Segast?”
I drew myself up to attention. “Yes, sir.”
Shi nodded, then looked down. “Mister Segast, you are dismissed.”
Fin ran for the hidden slope, the injured dragons’ route to the nests and the shortest route from here to there.
“March inside, Flight Sergeant.”
Those words forced my body to tension again, and I walked to the iron-banded door, Shi marching behind me.
But as I closed the door, all that tension washed out of me, and I crumbled against the wood, then down to the floor.
I flinched at the surprise weight of a hand on my shoulder.
Turning, I drew my legs up and hugged them. Shi sat cross-legged beside me.
“Sasha was crushed by a falling dragon.” My throat ached at the admission.
“Seafarers attacked, they had this huge … it was like a crossbow, the width of the boat. It fired metal bolts as long as we are tall. They killed an orange, and it fell out of the sky. It rolled. Sasha tried to run, to get out of the way, but…” I shook my head.
Shi’s hand rested on my forearm.
There were no tears as I continued to sit there, that scene replaying in my head again and again.
I had been on Salvadora and we both screamed out our pain and our rage, and we had dived to that ship and breathed fire so hot I swear the sea boiled where the ship incinerated.
It was too late, it was too little, but it was all we could do for my wife.
Shi’s hand rested on my forearm.
And I did not want to move or disturb that touch.