15
‘I’m going to head over to watch the drakes if you want to come,’ Gem said. It was the morning of their fourth day at Silverscale. Gem was in the bathroom, putting the finishing touches on his hair.
‘You go ahead. I have a few other things I want to do.’
Gem poked his head out of the bathroom and looked at her quizzically. ‘What other things?’
Asta put her hand into the pocket of her sweatshirt and thumbed the edges of the note. She didn’t want to tell Gem what it said. Not just yet, anyway.
Gem had found Asta on the bleachers yesterday, miserable and morose, and insisted that she visit the medical tents.
The track doctors had checked her out, and, finding no broken bones or any sign of organ damage, had given her some painkillers.
Asta had let Gem lead her back to their room and tuck her into bed, where she slept until dinner, then slept some more.
Waking up this morning to the sight of Carmine’s big, sweet, curious face peering into hers, Asta had felt a lot better than she had the day before.
She was reminded of one of her mother’s favorite sayings: ‘Things will look better in the morning.’ It wasn’t that her worries had all evaporated overnight, but they did feel more manageable somehow.
The card from the Bruces, she decided, was probably just a mean-spirited taunt, meant as a joke. She was going ask Hummer point-blank about it and see what he said.
‘There’s someone I need to talk to.’
Gem’s eyes darted to the roses on the counter. ‘Seraphin?’
For once, Asta was content to let him think so.
‘I say go for it,’ Gem said. ‘You know, my mom was convinced you two were going to get married and live happily ever after.’
Asta made a face. But she realized she did actually want to see Felix again.
Even though their little spat at the exercise grounds had left her shaken, it had stirred a desire in her that she could no longer deny.
It wasn’t just about physical attraction – the urge to touch him, drink in the smell of him, bring her body as close to his as humanly possible.
That part made sense. She had always felt that for him and expected she always would.
What she felt now was something deeper. She wanted to talk to someone who knew her down to the core. And no one knew her better than Felix. Even though he had caused her so much pain, he still meant something to her. And she missed him.
None of that did her any good with regards to the card in her pocket, however. First things first.
‘Sorry to disappoint,’ Asta said.
‘I’m just saying.’ Gem smiled impishly as he pulled on his windbreaker. ‘Sending flowers is not nothing. He’s trying to tell you something. Think about it.’ He slipped out the door and was gone into the overcast autumn morning.
Asta sat on the edge of her bed, gathering her courage. Gem was right. The flowers were a message, and the only one who could decipher it for her was Hummer.
Asta limped her way over to Vulture’s stall in Housing Unit 5.
Hummer wasn’t there, but Torque was. She found him in the stall with Vulture, speaking gently to her and feeding her treats of whole frozen quail.
The dragon took one of the little birds from his hand gingerly and carried it to the floor, where she pinned it between her forelegs before gleefully dismembering the thing with her teeth.
Blood and quail feathers decorated her snout.
‘Are Hummer and Tru around?’ Asta asked Torque.
She watched him stroke Vulture’s long neck as she chewed and swallowed her snack. Having finished with one bird, she nosed at Torque’s jacket, hoping for more. He passed the second quail from hand to hand behind his back in a game of keep-away.
‘Ain’t seen either one since yesterday,’ Torque said, eyes still on Vulture. ‘Might be at the races. Tru’s been talking about getting into drakes again.’
‘Thanks,’ Asta said, and began to leave. But then she thought better of it. ‘Torque, can I ask you something?’
‘Sure,’ he said, casting a glance Asta’s way.
His attention diverted, Vulture snatched the last quail from his hand.
‘Aw, you sneaky thing,’ he scolded. He reached as if to reclaim the prize, but Vulture lashed her tail so forcefully that he had to back away.
‘Alright, you big baby. It’s all yours.’
He came out of the stall and shut the door behind him, wiping the few quail feathers still sticking to his hands on to his pants. ‘What do you want to know?’
Asta didn’t know how to ask. It was too embarrassing to come right out and confess that she may have misunderstood the arrangement she had with the Bruces.
‘You’re not a Bruce, are you? Not some third cousin twice removed or whatever?’
Torque made a sound of amusement and marked something on the clipboard hanging by Vulture’s stall. ‘I’m no Bruce.’
‘So how did you start working for them? I’m guessing it wasn’t an ad in the classifieds. “Sketchy-ass dragon racers seek crew boss. Snitches need not apply.”’
Torque laughed. ‘No, missy, it wasn’t that.
I got hired on by Old Bruce, Hummer and Tru’s dad.
Just showed up at his stables looking for work.
Told him I knew more than I did. Fact was, I didn’t know the first thing about working with dragons.
Needed a job, that’s all. I was going door to door trying to get anyone to hire me.
Lord, but I must have sounded a fool. He was the one that started calling me Torque.
Don’t know where I picked the word up, but I must have said it five times in five minutes trying to impress him, and Old Bruce never let me forget it.
’ Torque propped a hand against the stable wall.
His eyes were cast down, reflective and far away.
‘So he knew,’ Asta said. ‘He knew you weren’t telling the truth.’
Torque smiled wryly, his dark eyes wistful. ‘Sure, he did. I was too young to be any good at lying.’
‘Then why did he hire you?’
Torque looked over his shoulder at Vulture.
She had finished her snack and was now threading her neck through the bars of her stall door, hopeful that there might be one more quail somewhere on Torque’s person.
‘When I finished making a fool of myself, he took me out to the stables, set me to mucking.’
Vulture rested her bronze-colored head on Torque’s shoulder as he spoke, and the breath from her nostrils blew his hair. He tickled behind her horns, and she pressed her head against his.
‘It was a test. Anybody can lift a shovel. That wasn’t what he was looking for.
He loved those dragons, Old Bruce did. Loved them better than his own children most of the time.
Sure treated them better.’ Torque sighed.
He bent down and picked up a shoulder bag with a few ointments and grooming tools in it.
It clacked and clattered against his side as he slung it over his shoulder.
‘Tru got some of that from him,’ he said.
‘Loving the beasts. Hummer, not so much.’
If Tru had her way, Asta knew, the dragons would be sleeping on down pillows every night, fed only wild salmon and exotic beef flown in from the ends of the earth.
But Hummer brooked only so much expense as might improve their performance and no more.
The day a dragon showed the slightest sign that it had passed its racing peak was the day Hummer started making plans for immediate sale, though Tru would scream at him, berate him, beg him not to do it.
Tru mourned every departure like she had lost a child, and her usual surliness deepened and grew caustic, sometimes for weeks on end.
‘The dragons,’ Torque concluded. ‘They were the test. He had to see how we got on, if I gave ’em their respect. If those big galoots hadn’t liked me, I would have been out on my ass.’
‘When you were hired . . .’ Asta began to ask, following Torque out of the stables. She paused, choosing her words carefully. ‘Were there any . . . unspoken parts of the job?’
Torque stopped under the wide, open doorway. He studied Asta’s face, but she avoided his eyes and looked out instead across the avenue to where crowds were streaming into the raceway, pre-race music blaring over them.
‘What’s he asking you to do?’ Torque’s voice was heavy and reluctant.
Asta took the card out of the pocket of her sweatshirt and handed it to Torque.
He grunted at what he read and handed it back.
‘I’m not even sure what it means,’ Asta said.
It was Torque’s turn to gaze out at the track. The sky was overcast with gray-bellied clouds, but he squinted as if the bright autumn sun was out, glaring in his eyes.
‘It wasn’t always like this, you know. Hummer changed things. He ain’t like his father was. Old Bruce was a wily old bastard, but he wasn’t . . .’ Torque frowned.
‘What am I supposed to do?’ Asta asked him when it became apparent that he was not going to finish his thought.
He gave her a somber, almost sorrowful look. ‘He’ll tell you. And when he does, my girl, you do what he says. You hear me?’
A chill ran through Asta. She had been na?ve to think that getting herself to Silverscale would solve all her problems. And if she was being honest, she hadn’t gotten herself anywhere.
In this world, you always owed something to somebody.
It was becoming clear that she had chosen the wrong people to owe something to. ‘But what if—’
‘You do what he says.’ Torque’s attention shifted, and Asta turned to see Nat approaching them.
Natalia ran up and grabbed Asta from behind, wrapping both arms around her waist. Asta whimpered at the pressure on her bruises, which Nat did not seem to register. Her perfume smelled like cherry and tobacco.
‘Hey, hot stuff.’
‘Hi, Nat,’ Asta said, her chest tight.
Nat let her go with a poke at her ribs that made Asta grunt with pain. ‘I wasn’t talking to you. Looking fine, Torque.’
Torque shook his head and tromped off in the direction of the track.