Chapter 35
Chapter thirty-five
That evening, Valeraine was back in Kinellan City. Only to Alyce did she confide what had happened at Rosings.
“Oh, Val...” Alyce sighed. “I imagine you would have been unhappy married to Mr. Rosings.”
Valeraine had hardly given thought to her potential happiness with the man himself. That had never been the crux of the matter. “Yes, that’s true. Though,” she said wistfully, “think of me as the mistress of Rosings nest!”
“And think of the heads our family would turn to be so connected!” Alyce said. “I might even… but no.”
“Rosings’ proposal was presumptuous, as the dowry of Longbourn’s only dragon should be yours, as eldest.”
“Lelantos is more yours than anyone’s. I would never agree to see him parted from you.”
It was only then that Valeraine realized she had been yearning for this confirmation, this delicate comfort blossoming in her heart.
That Lelantos had always been Alyce’s to inherit had been a thorn nestled there, now pulled out.
Of course her sweet sister would never take her dragon.
Lelantos was Valeraine’s to treasure. So long as she convinced Papa of that fact.
The first step of her plan was to ask Uncle Haupter for the names of dragon houses which might be desperate enough to accept a breeding deal with a legendarily old dragon. She went to the offices of The Dragoneer’s Journal, just down the stairs from where she was staying, in search of him.
There were many desks and workers, some writing and some arranging great swaths of type.
On the side of the room was a printing press, manned by three workers, who were inking the contraption, inserting oversized sheets of paper, and pulling a crank to create a newssheet.
It was repeated every few seconds with great efficiency, adding to a growing stack of finished papers.
They were folded by other workers, making snapping sounds to join the creaking of the press.
People talked and shouted across the room to each other, all working to produce the newspaper as quickly as possible.
In the back of the room was a large desk where Uncle Haupter now sat, covered in papers of all shapes and sizes.
Valeraine began by showing interest in his work, to make him predisposed to her. “What are you working on?”
“This, dear Val, is an announcement from the Crown. The layout must be perfect.”
“From the Crown?” Now, she was genuinely interested in his work.
“It’s the announcement for the annual Royal derby.”
She peered over his shoulder at the handwritten note, which he had marked with printing directions in blue ink.
JOIN THE ROYAL DERBY
To be held on March 7th at the fields west of Kinellan.
Registration should be posted to the Royal Office, along with a registration fee of thirty pounds.
The race will be open to the public for a modest fee. The ball is by invitation only.
PRIZES
Third place: 1,000 pounds
Second place: 3,000 pounds
First place: 5,000 pounds and an egg from the Kinellan Crown nest
Valeraine snatched the paper up. “Is this true?”
Her uncle held out his hand for the paper, and waited for its safe return. “Yes, it was sent over by the Royal Office this morning, and we’ll post it in the next Journal.” He returned to making annotations on the paper.
If she could win an egg from the Crown nest… but it would be easier to make a breeding deal than to win the Royal derby, certainly. The whole kingdom competed in it. She needed to remain focused.
How to approach the topic with Uncle Haupter? She didn’t know how much Papa had told him. Would he support her plan to elevate Longbourn, or would he thwart her?
“I... Uncle, Longbourn house desperately needs more dragons if we are going to preserve our legacy. I thought maybe you could suggest a house that might be interested in breeding with Lelantos?”
Uncle Haupter took off his reading glasses and looked severely at Valeraine. “Is that what you were pursuing at Rosings? No wonder you returned so quickly, tail tucked between your legs. My dear, negotiating with dragon houses is far outside your purview. You will only embarrass yourself.”
“Uncle —”
“Even if you could find a nest silly enough to agree to your scheme, it would be unfair to them. Lelantos will die any day now, and you would be cheating them.”
“Lelantos is still strong,” Valeraine said.
“Be sensible, Val.”
Valeraine felt this was quite unfair. Nobody claiming Lelantos would die soon had any evidence. They just looked at his yellowed teeth and wrinkled wings, and said that this was the oldest dragon they had ever seen.
“I’ll not hear another word on the matter,” he said. “I shouldn’t have allowed you to go to Rosings, but I thought he was courting you. I cannot send you all over the kingdom, hunting the most disreputable and desperate of houses. It’s madness.”
“Uncle —”
“Not another word.”
Valeraine was shocked into silence by his raised tone.
He returned to making annotations on the layout paper, scratching at it with his practical quill. “Do you actually want to learn about printing, or was that just a lie?”
It had been a lie, but she couldn’t say that now. At least if she went along with him she could repair some of their rapport. “I would love to learn about your process.”
Uncle Haupter brought the Royal derby announcement to his layout boys, who turned out to be two sharp men and one woman who were pasting many scraps together onto a sheet.
They had left room for the derby announcement, on the top of the page, and slotted it in neatly.
They then brought the layout sheet to the typesetters, who began to meticulously copy each word onto moveable type, assembling the whole sheet letter by letter, backwards, until it was all packed tight together.
Valeraine wandered through the printing workshop, thinking. Was it really time for her to give up? What else could she do? She couldn’t negotiate with the dragoneers. With Pemberley’s threats hanging over her, she couldn’t race.
She would find a way. She would risk her reputation, her relationship with Papa, everything, to return to the sky with her dragon.
She saw the layout sheet, discarded on top of a trash bin, and pulled it out.
She could register Longbourn for the royal derby.
If she won, they would have an egg, without the need to convince anyone else to take a chance on Lelantos.
She would need to take a wild chance on him, herself.
Valeraine wanted to believe in Lelantos.
They had a real chance at winning local derbies, their performance proved that handily. But the kingdom-wide derby?
The Longbourn family had attended the Royal derby many years ago, to watch the festivities.
Valeraine remembered traveling to Kinellan City, Selaide being bored and a pain the whole way.
The fastest dragons in all the land flew over their heads.
The winner had been a magnificent beast. Just watching that dragon breathe was enough to feel its aptitude.
That’s what she would be racing against with Lelantos (the dragon who radiated a looming death, according to everyone).
She had almost won at the Rosings derby, hadn’t she? She had beaten Rosings’ dragon, who was competitive at the kingdom level. If she could practice — if she could truly take time to train Lelantos — then she might have a chance. She might dare to hope.
Even if she didn’t win, Valeraine reasoned to herself, the fame from doing well in that derby could be the tipping point Longbourn house needed to reclaim its consequence.
If she could only convince Papa to let her race, or find a way to sneakily train and race without him realizing.
Then she would need to convince Pemberley to keep her secret.
After the Royal derby, if she hadn’t saved Longbourn by then, if she still had no leads on an egg, she would accept the death of her house. At least, that is how she consoled herself. The hungry part of her soul insisted she would never be happy with giving up.
She missed Lelantos. She felt an aching in her heart, a hole where he usually resided.
To fill it, she would fly with him again.
Could she run away with Lelantos, take to the sky and live in the mountains together?
The sensible side of herself thought of how much Lelantos ate in a day, and how impractical it might be.
The wild, free part of herself that was just beginning to blossom held the idea close, treasuring it.
She could escape it all: the dragoneers who looked down on Longbourn house, her banishment, the miles between her and Lelantos, horrid Pemberley threatening her reputation.
Valeraine’s mind was made up. The first step would be to register for the Royal derby, then she could figure out how to convince Papa to approve it.
She started carefully ripping the layout sheet to free the derby announcement, so she would have the details.
As she ripped around the edge, her eyes skimmed over the articles in the Journal.
Most of them were written in her uncle’s hand, as he copied and edited the columns from the journalists.
One wasn’t written by him, and it stuck out.
It was Lady Scaleheart’s column. She had written something titled “On Barbaric Taming Methods.” Valeraine looked further at the writing, and the hand seemed familiar. A terrible suspicion began to grow in her. Valeraine ripped out the Scaleheart column as well, and discarded the rest in the trash.
She found her uncle, and said, “I see you didn’t write Scaleheart’s column, whose hand is it in?”
“That’s Scaleheart’s hand. She is so clever with words that I rarely need to edit it, so I can give it directly to layout. Controversy sells papers, you know. There’s nobody more skilled than Scaleheart at inflaming a different mass of people every week.”
“Thank you.”
Valeraine nearly ran to her room in her haste to confirm her suspicions. She went to her trunk, and flung out her things until she found a certain letter.
The letter that Pemberley had written to her father, ruining her chances at saving Longbourn.
She carefully compared the handwriting.
It matched.
It must just be a similar hand. Pemberley could not be Lady Scaleheart. She checked it again, searching for matching words, studying the letters.
It wasn’t just similar, it was exact. In fact, it seemed to be on the same type of paper, though that was harder to confirm because the Scaleheart column had been pasted to the layout sheet, and so the thickness and texture were altered.
Mr. Pemberley was Scaleheart.
Scaleheart was not some prudish lady of a medium dragon house, like everyone assumed.
He was a rough dragon rider of one of the grandest houses in the kingdom.
When Valeraine had read the indictment of racers in Scaleheart’s articles before, she had always assumed that it was coming from a biased perspective, perhaps from a mother who had lost a son to dragon races.
Now she saw it for what it really was: a dragon rider who wanted to destroy his competition.
Scaleheart had reported many scandals that had stopped houses from registering in derbies, and even sent one dragoneer to jail.
Every one of those affected had been top racers, standing in between Pemberley and his wins.
Pemberley was the most hypocritical, most vile, most odious man she had ever known.
Of course it had been second nature to him to threaten her, as he was well accustomed to leaking shameful secrets. He likely had a whole host of people he was blackmailing, stories that never made it to Scaleheart’s column. He must delight in sowing discord and destroying the reputation of houses.
She had encroached on his win in the derbies several times, so she was a logical target for him. It was a flattering thought.
But her reputation was in even greater danger. Pemberley wouldn’t even need to spread the news of her racing himself; he could easily publish it as Scaleheart, and be believed.
Valeraine furiously scanned Pemberley’s letter to her father, rereading the damning sentence: “If she races again, she will be discovered. This farce will be brought to light.”
The solution to that was simple. Before she raced again, she would tell Pemberley that she knew he was Scaleheart. If he exposed her, she would expose him. He was too much a coward to risk his reputation, for everyone to learn what a hypocritical snake he was.
Valeraine smiled. Her future was composed, written now with a glorious plan.
Pemberley no longer had power over her: she had him instead.
She would register for the Royal derby, and train over the next four months, and she would win.
Longbourn would have another egg, and the respect and consequence they deserved.
All would be as it should be. She would rise victorious, and Pemberley would be powerless to stop her.