CHAPTER SEVEN
My personal space was invaded time and again as I forced my way through the crowd on the platform. The gigantic train floated silently above the copper rails, the two-storey carriages filling up slowly as everyone’s passes were checked before boarding.
Never missing the opportunity for branding, each team made it clear which carriages were theirs. Kiestral was right in the middle, bright orange, with two horizontal white stripes painted along the sides between the upper and lower windows.
Gottyk had already been secured away in his own personal carriage. Bach’s dragon, Rosinder, had a twin carriage right behind. Ahead of the two dragons were the crew compartments. I joined the glacial queue, shrugging my bag up my shoulder for the hundredth time.
After the wild day of pretending to be Thorne, racing my ass off and committing to identity fraud for the foreseeable future, I was looking forward to several uninterrupted hours of sleep.
The canyon and city circuits were the closest two on the whole race calendar, but it would still take the better part of a day to get there.
Perfect for catching up on some well-earned rest.
I showed my Kiestral ID to the train security. Their handheld augment buzzed the moment it came into contact with the card.
‘Welcome aboard,’ they said, waving me up the final step.
The single long corridor that ran down the carriage was full of Kiestral orange.
Not just the uniformed crew that had boarded before me, who were doing an excellent job of blocking my way, but the corridor itself.
Orange recessed lighting cast a warm glow across the white floor and veneered blonde wood walls.
It was, essentially, a transportable headquarters.
Aside from the two crew quarters and the two dragon carriages, there were several more storage containers filled with everything the team needed to set up at the next race.
It was a miracle that it was all possible.
More so knowing how small the logistics team was.
I appreciated speed when I saw it: the efficiency of packing it all up, unloading, setting up, breaking it back down and repacking it, all within the span of a few days.
I headed to the middle section of the upper floor, furthest from the connecting stairwells at each end of the carriage. Less through traffic, fewer people, less noise.
As soon as I entered the cabin I switched off the lights, kicked off my boots and swung myself into the top bed of one of the two bunks. A small window between the beds lit up the room. I reached out with my foot and knocked the blind down, plunging the room into blissful darkness.
I closed my eyes. The voices of the crew were faraway and muffled. The air temperature was perfectly neutral. The blanket on the bed was smooth and cool. For the first time in twenty-four hours I was able to take a deep breath without launching into action right after.
It was perfect.
The echo of a door vibrated from a nearby cabin. I sighed and rolled on to my side. The arcanite engines that powered the train hummed to life and my body rocked gently as the transport gained momentum.
Voices floated through the closed cabin door. I grabbed the pillow from the bunk below and put it over my head, enveloping myself. I wanted to disappear and only emerge when it was time to race. Hibernating between flight sessions suited me perfectly.
More doors opened, closed. More voices rose and fell, closer and closer to the room.
My eardrums pulsed with my heartbeat, but not enough to drown everything out.
A conversation struck up right outside my door. Another open and closed door. I slithered off the top bunk, landing on my toes. I rolled my shoulders, loosening up in case whoever I found on the other side refused to shut up.
I crossed the small cabin and slammed open the sliding door so hard it ricocheted halfway closed again.
What I hadn’t been expecting was for the person on the other side to look just as pissed off as me.
‘There you are.’ It was Josie. Her brow was furrowed like I’d been purposely hiding from her.
I had, but only because I’d been hiding from everyone.
‘What do you want?’ I asked, doing my best to temper my annoyance.
She had the audacity to look at me like I was the problem. Then she pushed past me into the cabin.
‘This will do,’ she said as she placed her own bag on the bunk opposite mine. ‘Close the door.’
I froze for a moment, watching her unzip a bag and begin to sort through the contents. It strained at the seams as she did, struggling to contain the contents, while mine sat crumpled on the floor with room to spare.
‘Oh, no.’ I walked over and took the bag from her. It weighed far too much and, to my dismay, she had several. ‘No sleepovers. You have to go.’
Her jaw set as she placed her hands on her hips.
‘I know riders are stereotyped as being dumb as shit, but this is particularly thick-headed of you.’ She took a few steps and shut the door I’d left open, locking it and flipping the lights back on.
Then she attempted to grab the bag back out of my hands.
I hung on. She could insult my intelligence all she wanted, but if I was going to be stereotyped as an all-brawn no-brained rider, I’d be damned if I let her win a tug of war. Even if it was over a stupid bag I didn’t even want.
A dangerous spark lit her eyes. ‘I’m not here to braid your hair, Lena.’ Josie bit out the syllables. ‘I’m here to make sure you don’t take us both down in a ball of fire.’
We stood locked with one another for a long moment. The fabric of her bag was taut, each of us gripping it with an iron will.
‘How, exactly, are you planning on doing that?’ I asked. ‘I’m doing just fine by myself.’
‘You call ninth place fine?’ She cocked her head.
‘I’m the first woman to race in Volitant – ever. And I did that all on my own.’ I might have been pretending to be a man, but it still counted. It had to.
She scoffed. ‘You flew, but you weren’t racing.’
‘Excuse me?’ Anger spiked in my chest. I let go of the bag, sending her stumbling back. ‘You want to say that to me again?’ I squared up to her. I didn’t care that she’d helped me just a few hours ago. No one insulted my racing.
Josie steadied herself against the bunk and tossed the bag down on to it.
‘Sensitive, are we? You may have flown a dragon in Volitant, but you came ninth. You’re lucky Thorne’s been so bad recently that you didn’t seem out of place at all.
What’s the point of being the first woman to race in Volitant if you’re only going to be as good as the washed-up misogynistic rider you replaced? ’
If I’d been wearing my flight suit it would have been flooding the cooling system as the rage inside of me turned into heat.
‘You want to beat the others? You want to actually be good at this and go ra—’
‘I am good! I’m better than good.’ I got in her face. ‘I’m better than half those riders out there on a bad day!’
‘Then why did you lose to eight of them?’ One sleek eyebrow rose.
My hands clenched. My shoulders squared. I didn’t like her calm tone.
‘Because …’ My blood was rushing faster than my thoughts.
‘You’re not going to blame Gottyk, are you? Use the same excuse as Thorne?’
I slammed my hand next to her head, going through the banded blinds over the window. Sunlight leaked in through the gap. ‘Nothing was Gottyk’s fault. I wouldn’t ever blame him.’
She nodded. ‘Good, we agree on something.’ She gently pushed against my shoulder and slipped away, seemingly unfazed.
She pulled out a paper-filled binder from the bag we’d been fighting over, her back to me.
‘Fail to prepare, prepare to fail.’ She looked over her shoulder at me. ‘I assume you’ve heard that before?’
I narrowed my eyes. This felt like lecture territory. I pulled my hand out from the blinds, leaving them crooked. ‘Believe it or not I didn’t really have time to prepare, since I stole that flight suit ten minutes before the flare.’
She nodded. ‘And the next race?’
‘I’ll fly harder, faster … I’ll get further.’
‘How?’
‘That’s a stupid question. It’s racing. When I get into the saddle again I’ll be ready.’ My chin tipped up. I tried on Cam’s no-nonsense crew-leader look.
Her eyes rolled up. ‘Why are you all like this …?’ She trailed off before presenting me with the binder she’d been holding.
‘I believe that you’re ready here,’ – She pointed to the centre of my chest. – ‘but you need more than that. You need to be ready here too.’ She poked the centre of my forehead with a single finger, pushing my head back slightly.
I flexed my neck despite the soreness from the race. ‘I’ve spent my life training against gravity.’ I swatted her hand away. ‘I can handle the G-forces.’
She slapped my shoulder with the binder. ‘No, idiot! Your brain!’
‘Oh …’ I rubbed at the place she’d poked, leaving a phantom fingerprint behind.
I looked down at the heavy binder. On the cover in neat script the name of the next race was written out: Eauveil. The Mirendi circuit.
‘You’re actually here to lecture me, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, I am. And if you want to stand a chance at not coming last, you’ll listen.’ She pulled two more binders out of the bag, piling them neatly on top of one another. ‘Did you really think you were the only woman being held back?’
She didn’t look up as she asked the question. Instead she pinched the corners of the already neat stack, lining up the information she was about to hit me with. I recognized it, the emotionless way she’d asked, like her voice would crack if she hadn’t been so well practised at hiding it.
Josie was a keeper too, working at Kiestral for years just like me. Longer, even. Yet there was something she wanted that they wouldn’t let her have.
‘What do you want?’ I asked.
She still didn’t look up. ‘To be a strategist.’
I snorted out a laugh.
It was her turn to get mad. She shoved me. Or she tried to. I knocked away her arms before she could make contact. Sometimes brawn over brains worked in my favour.