Chapter 5
Chapter five
Valenna
Renowned throughout the three kingdoms for training the best battle dragons, Silvanlight Dracorium collected the highest income in Allegesh from the dragons and dragon-sourced products it sold.
Dragon bones made excellent shotfire barrels, dragon scales could be fashioned into reliable armor, medicines derived from wings, hearts, teeth, and blood were worth a king’s ransom.
Queen Regent Madelaine did not quibble about allies; she traded with both Sennalaith and Ashkendor, feeding their expensive war machines while remaining pleasantly neutral and bolstering her thriving economy.
Since the Scathmore Barrens (once a verdant seaside kingdom and the home of the dragons) faded into a battlefield waste, the stubborn creatures would only breed and roost in the mountains, so Allagesh purchased yearlings from a sanctuary known as Cobblepine.
No one knew where Cobblepine was located.
Cadmus had long searched for it, but the sanctuary’s secret remained untouched.
As the coach settled onto a dirt path, Valenna leaned out the window and took in her first glimpse of Silvanlight.
It was a quaint hamlet that sprouted between two sloping hills and a sunny woodland.
The woodland appeared innocent enough until, a league or two in, it changed abruptly from elms, maples, and flowering cherries to the ancient gnarled oaks and cedars of the infamous Whyspenware forest.
The Whyspenware was said to be haunted by a vengeful spirit who devoured men and left their bones on the forest floor.
A ten-foot stone wall separated Silvanlight from Whyspenware and kept curious village children (and men drunk on bravado) from wandering into the shadows and being consumed by the spirit or the venomous creatures that prowled beneath the trees.
The coach followed a stone road through the village, curved between the hill’s shoulders, and stopped in the woods.
“Silvanlight Dracorium!” the coachman shouted.
Feeling oddly naked without her carpet bag, Valenna stepped out of the coach with her chin held high, painfully aware of the disheveled state of her traveling suit.
She was greeted by a pair of wrought iron gates, fashioned to look like dreadnought wings.
No gatekeeper met her, no dracorium manager asked her what her business was.
The entrance stood open and empty, and so, with a bewildered shrug, Valenna strolled inside.
Lavender, foxgloves, and daffodils edged the path as it wound through a haphazard array of stone buildings, paddocks, and barns.
Underkeepers kicked up dust as they scurried along the path, some with their arms full of hay, some pushing wheelbarrows of dung.
One young woman was holding a broken carrot out to a stubborn baby club-tailed dragon, trying to coax it into a wooden cage.
Tears of frustration streamed down her cheeks as the creature curled into a ball, its blue armored plates fitting together like puzzle pieces, and rolled away.
Beside the path, a young man was screaming for help as a giant carnivorous drowserjaw plant slowly sucked him into its gaping mouth.
A second underkeeper grabbed his arms, and the young man had to choose between becoming lunch or losing his dignity.
He chose the latter, shrugging off his suspenders and sliding out of his trousers and free of the plant.
The drowserjaw then began to choke on the trousers, and the second keeper took the pantless young man by the ankles and lowered him into the plant’s gullet so he could pull the obstruction from its throat before it suffocated.
Valenna moved on, her lips pursed. Impossible to imagine Evander Trevelyan in a chaotic place like this, with his soft voice, iron calm, and aversion to noisy crowds. How did he stand it?
Dragons bellowed like distant cannon fire.
Valenna flinched, and the old familiar burning hissed behind her ribs.
She shoved it down like a keeper shoving a vicious baby hydra into a crate as she passed through the dracorium and along a pathway that led between two lush gardens to a large glass greenhouse.
The door was open, so she walked inside, hoping someone could help her find the dracorium manager.
The greenhouse was warm and humid, a jungle of potted trees and flowers stacked on shelves and tables.
Valenna pushed aside the graceful boughs of a weeping cherry and found a lovely, plump, middle-aged woman clutching a pair of curved shears in her gloved hand while she wrestled with an angry blundertuber.
The plant was as tall as a man, its purple, plate-sized blossom lined with sharp teeth.
Valenna cleared her throat.
“Can’t talk now, dear!” the woman cried, swinging dangerously from her perch on the edge of the pot. “Someone is coming from the master dracologist tomorrow. This place will be shut down in an instant if he sees it like this!”
“Ma’am …” Valenna said, circling the pot in an attempt to keep up with the woman’s wild swinging. “I would like to speak to the dracorium manager …”
“Whoop!” The woman slipped but grasped the tuber’s leaves and managed to keep her balance. “An order came in yesterday, and now we’ve no dragon master! Agh!”
The plant swatted her, and she swung out of sight.
Stifling a smile, Valenna gave up on the woman and left the greenhouse to find the barn.
It was deserted, save for a few distracted underkeepers, so she passed through it, down a narrow path to the aviary, and then stepped out of the trees and made her way toward a grassy slope between the woods and the village, where she found the large paddocks.
They weren’t the iron cages you’d expect for a dragon paddock. That was part of the wonder of the Silvanlight training program. The flightless land dragons were trained so precisely that they wouldn’t break or trample the simple wooden fences.
Of course, they did still occasionally eat their trainers, but they didn’t break the fences, which was somehow more impressive to the governing body in Largotia.
Valenna couldn’t keep her eyes from wandering over the enclosures, hoping and fearing she’d spot Evander among the bustling keepers and flashing scales.
With a wash of terror, she realized she had no idea what she would do if she did see him.
A full year had passed, and she hadn’t heard from him once except the asinine letter he’d left on her bed, explaining that he loved her more than anything, but she deserved someone she could spend her life with, and he wasn’t that person.
She couldn’t remember the exact wording. She’d torn the letter to shreds, doused them in wine, and then burned the remains.
Leaving the line of trees, Valenna strolled across the grass to join a cluster of people leaning against a fence, watching the sky.
As she reached them, a dreadnought dropped below the clouds, its four broad wings cracking the air.
Valenna counted a crew of seven clinging on its back as the creature descended rapidly—too rapidly, she thought.
The pilot was a small person, not a child and not yet a woman.
She sat at the base of the dragon’s long neck, clutching thick leather reins in her hands.
Valenna could make out her fearsome expression as the dreadnought plummeted toward the paddock.
She was perhaps fifteen or sixteen, with a round face, dark eyes, and thick black eyebrows pinched together in stony determination.
A training officer knelt behind her, but if he was giving directions, they weren’t helping.
Valenna caught her breath. The dreadnought was losing altitude with every second. If it continued like this, it would land too hard, bursting the gas pouch in its stomach and blowing the crew, and the onlookers, to pieces.
She turned to flee into the trees, but as she cast one last look over her shoulder, the training officer stood, and Valenna’s heart hit the roof of her mouth.
She recognized that chestnut brown hair, shining faintly reddish in the sunlight, the broad shoulders, and long, graceful lines.
She had found him at last. Evander Trevelyan. Riding a crashing dreadnought.
Frozen in place, Valenna clutched the fence rail and watched as Evander lifted the pilot by the collar of her jacket, unclipped her safety tether, and tossed her over the side.
For the length of a heartbeat, the girl hurtled through open sky, then a glider made of dragon wing leather unfurled from her pack, and she landed, rolling in the grass.
The rest of the crew followed, tumbling through the air before engaging their gliders and landing in heaps on the hillside.
All except Evander. He leaped into the pilot’s place at the base of the dragon’s neck and gathered the reins in his hands.
The creature was in such a steep dive that Evander’s back touched its spine as he leaned back, tugging with all his strength.
Valenna’s hand flew to her mouth. Was this really how it would end between them? She finds him after a year apart, and they both get blown to bits?
The tendons in his neck jutting, Evander took the reins in his teeth and seized the dragon’s bridle, pulling until his face flushed crimson.
Just when Valenna thought there was no hope, the dreadnought lifted its head and shoulders.
Its wings caught the wind, billowing like sails, and it lurched upward.
Its body leveled, its momentum slowed, and it landed with a whump in the paddock, spraying Valenna with sand.
Sparks rained from the creature’s gaping jaws.
The crew raced up the hill, their gliders bundled in their arms.
With weightless grace, Evander swung down from the dragon’s back.
Similar to the rest of the crew, he wore a shearling-lined leather coat with a broad wool collar, except his coat was faded and soft with wear, while the crew’s were still stiff and shiny, the wool cuffs lily white.
The coat was long, extending to the mid-thigh, and it fastened in the front with small hooks, fashioned from bone.
Valenna’s heart ached—how many times had she huddled under its weight, asking him over and over if he wanted it back, while he insisted he wasn’t cold. She missed its warmth, the scratch of the wool on her neck, and how it smelled like cedar shavings and hay. How it smelled like Evander.
Evander wiped his forehead with his arm, then lunged out and grabbed the jacket of one of the crew members as he scurried by with an empty pail. “Tell me, Lysander,” Evander said, his voice so low that Valenna had to lean over the rail to hear him. “Tell me that your altimeter was broken.”
“It was,” the boy replied, trying to jerk away, but Evander’s fingers gripped tighter.
“Let me see it,” he said, holding out his hand.
“I told you, it’s broken.”
“Let me see it, Lysander.”
Lysander lurched free, stumbling when Evander released him. His mouth twisted into a sneer as he produced a small brass instrument from his pocket and slapped it into Evander’s waiting palm.
Evander glanced down at it, then calmly handed it back. “It isn’t broken. You weren’t paying attention.”
“No …” Lysander spluttered. “No, it was … it didn’t work when we were up there …”
“It isn’t broken,” Evander repeated.
The boy’s face flushed red, and he shouted in Evander’s face, “I said it was, and so it was!”
Without so much as batting an eyelid, Evander said slowly, “It was not broken. You were not paying attention.”
“If you call me a liar, I will send word to my mother in Cobblepine. I will tell her that you are an unfit training officer, and I’ll see you fired ...”
Evander cocked an eyebrow. “Oh, no need to send word. You can tell her yourself tomorrow, because I’m sending you home.”
Lysander stumbled back a step. He opened his mouth, like he meant to object, but no sound came out.
“But we only have a few days left,” the pilot girl said, standing beside Lysander and taking his hand. “He can’t go home now and fail out of the program this close to the end!”
“He can,” Evander replied. “And he will.”
Valenna raised her eyebrows. Evander had grown colder in the year they’d been apart.
The rest of the crew gathered around in stunned silence.
“This whole crew could have died today because of your error,” Evander continued, icy as a lake on a winter morning. “If it were your first offence, I might let it go, but I’ve faced nine months of your incompetence and self-importance. I can’t allow you to pass. Go pack your bags.”
“You can’t do that!” the pilot objected. “The program will be over by the end of the week. Lysander already has a position in Cobblepine! His future will be ruined!”
Evander turned toward the pilot, his eyes—the eyes that had looked at Valenna with such tenderness—were as hard as flint. “He failed the program. I won’t discuss it further.”
“But we’ll never even ride a dreadnought!” the girl shouted, her fists clenched at her sides. “Cobblepine is neutral!”
“Only a fool goes unprepared in wartime, Samara,” Evander said, turning to the dragon and unfastening her bridle. He tickled the dreadnought's throat. She opened her mouth, and he ran his hand along the pink tissue stretching between her jaws.
The pilot, Samara, put her hand on Lysander's back as he stood in the center of the paddock, his arms hanging at his sides.
"I'm sorry …" she began. Before she could finish, Lysander's expression changed. His mouth twisted, his face turning a blotchy red. He lifted the altimeter and hurled it at Evander.
Samara gasped. Valenna caught her breath.
The instrument missed Evander, striking the dreadnought below her small eye. The blow startled the creature, and it slammed its mouth shut as Evander yanked his hand away, narrowly avoiding losing his fingers.
Evander whirled on Lysander, his shoulders tight and his cheeks pink with rage, but before he could speak, his eyes traveled over the boy’s shoulder and rested on Valenna.
He froze, his face washing ashen, like he’d seen a ghost. Behind him, the dragon bellowed and swung its long, barbed tail. Evander was too stunned to notice.
“VANDER!” Valenna shrieked, pointing. He jumped back at the last instant and threw himself against the fence. The barb scraped across his leather coat, severing the hooks and slashing his shirt.