The war drake bared its teeth at Yala as she extended a gloved hand to take hold of the chain around its neck.
“Yes, very scary,” she said. “Do you want to fly? Or are you going to snap at me?”
She’d taken off its muzzle, but her fingers were clothed in drakeskin gloves that would prevent its sharp teeth from severing the tendons if her attention lapsed for a heartbeat. The trick was keeping its attention on the promise of a tastier snack than her stringy human limbs. Yala tossed the war drake a piece of raw raptor meat, which it caught in its large jaws, and allowed herself a moment of pride. She’d spent years around war drakes, but this one belonged to her alone, a luxury she’d never been afforded as a soldier.
While the war drake was occupied with chewing, she sidestepped its large flank and undid the bindings around its leathery wings. She kept hold of its chain as she did so, the other hand maintaining a firm grip on the carved wooden cane that she used to compensate for the injury she’d sustained during the last mission that she’d participated in as part of the king’s army.
Memories both bitter and sweet clustered in the back of her mind as she worked. The war drake strained at the chain, stretching its wings, and she reached into her pack for another piece of meat. While the beast was occupied, she fastened the other end of its chain to a post. The war drake snapped its displeasure, exhaling the stench of raw meat into her face.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she muttered. “We’ll have a proper flight when someone’s around to help, but Saren’s at work, and I’m not subjecting the stableboy to your antics. Stretch your wings and quit complaining.”
The chain rattled as the beast’s wings flapped, gusting air at her; it didn’t understand human speech, though it had grasped her meaning that she wouldn’t release its chain. Not today. The paddock, designed for domestic raptors and not war drakes, offered enough space for the beast to prowl but little in the way of company save for herself.
When Yala had flown as part of a squad, they’d taken turns to help each rider mount their steed without any mishaps, and despite her extensive experience, Yala was well aware of the precarious nature of Laria’s relationship with its war steeds. Years of watching her fellow riders lose limbs or worse had developed instincts that had come back sooner than she’d expected. Instincts that she’d need if she wanted to survive what might await her.
Two weeks ago, a dead Rafragorian soldier had washed ashore in a boat, clutching a note in his hand that said, Remember the island.
The note was unsigned, unaddressed, but as one of the few people in Laria who even knew which island the note referred to, Yala had the impression of being invited in on a secret joke that even the king wasn’t privy to. In truth, she didn’t know how much King Daliel had been told. According to Viam, he’d received no direct correspondence from Rafragoria either. Not a word.
After she’d fastened the wing restraints back into place, Yala tossed the war drake a last piece of meat. Wiping her greasy fingers on her drakeskin trousers, she waited for it to finish chewing then reattached its muzzle. The war drake snapped its teeth at her again from behind the thick fabric.
“Soon,” she murmured. “Soon.”
With its muzzle in place, Yala left the paddock. Over the rooftops, the distant sound of cheering reached her ears, punctuated by drumbeats. Goose bumps sprang up on her arms despite the damp heat. The sound was as familiar as a war drake’s cry, an echo of another time. A long-gone era of her life when she didn’t have to lean on a cane for balance while she locked the gate and when she’d been surrounded by a squad in the military barracks rather than alone.
Instead, the drums and cheers struck her like a wrong note in an orchestra. King Tharen was long dead, and his son shared none of his fondness for military spectacle. That King Daliel had felt pressured to revive Laria’s old traditions might be timely if Rafragoria did indeed lay the blame for their soldiers’ fates at Laria’s feet, but Yala had thought her nation’s enmity with their neighbours had been buried with the death of their last king.
The sinking sun cast golden-red rays over the rooftops as she left the paddock, walking past a twitchy stableboy who wasn’t getting paid nearly enough. She found a large, bearded man waiting for her in the street outside.
“What’s wrong, Nalen?” she asked, surprised to see him in this part of the city. The burly veteran usually occupied the narrow alleyway that led to Dalathar’s Undercity, guarding the streets inhabited by the capital’s most unfortunate. “Not another dismembered limb in the river, I hope.”
“No, it’s Saren.”
Yala frowned. “Isn’t he supposed to be working?”
He scratched an ear with a callused hand. “I saw him on his way to the pleasure district with some off-duty guards.”
Yala sighed. “Why?”
“Don’t know.” Nalen scuffed the cobbles with a worn boot, another remnant from his time in the king’s army. Like Yala, he’d watched the king’s recent recruitment endeavours with wariness; while he was theoretically within the right age range and fitness level to sign up again, he refused to give up his self-appointed role in protecting the people of the Undercity, and so far, the king’s guards hadn’t come knocking on his door. Yet.
“I’ll have to wash my hands first,” she told him. “I can hardly go to the pleasure district reeking of raw meat and drake dung.”
Yala stopped at a nearby fountain and splashed water over her hands and boots, but there was little to do for the smell of the paddocks that always lingered these days. She didn’t intend to stay in the pleasure district long enough for anyone to notice. In truth, part of her wondered if she ought to leave Saren to his own devices. She might no longer be a squad leader in the official sense, but her lingering sense of responsibility towards her former squad members remained, and so she let Nalen lead the way through the cobbled streets until they came to a gambling den.
“What’s he doing in here?” Yala halted and swore under her breath. “I’m guessing it’s already too late to stop him losing all his wages.”
Yala pushed open the door and was immediately enveloped in a cloud of bitterleaf smoke and raucous laughter. What’s Saren doing in a place like this? He’d been on his best behaviour recently—in fact, she’d gone as far as to conclude that he’d finally rid himself of his alcohol dependence, which was a fool’s assumption, she knew. As long as the nightmares remained, so would the desire to bury those memories, if just for a short time. Remember the island, indeed.
Yala scanned the dingy room, where Saren sat slumped on a stool, a few dice scattered on the table in front of him. At her approach, he slumped even further until the crown of his head reached the table.
“Saren.” Yala’s cane beat a rhythm on the uneven floor, the wooden base sticking to the detritus of spilled drinks. “That’s enough.”
“I’m not done yet,” he mumbled with the half-hearted defiance of someone who knew they’d been caught in the act.
“Yes, he is,” said the man who sat opposite him. Despite his discarded coat, Yala would know him for a city guard from the clank of weapons at his belt when he rose to his feet. “Shit. You’re Yala—”
“Don’t finish that sentence.” She gave the man a hard stare until he sloped away and then sat in his abandoned seat.
“Saren, aren’t you supposed to be working?” She leaned over the table and nudged at a copper coin with her fingertips. “Don’t tell me you bet all your wages.”
She was the one who’d found him his new position as a healer’s apprentice, which was a miracle, given the sheer volume of unemployed former soldiers in the capital. A number of them had joined the guards, but Saren had expressed a firm desire to have as little to do with the monarch as possible.
“No,” he mumbled. “No, and I quit.”
“You did what?” Yala flicked a coin at him, her nails scraping the table’s surface. “After all the trouble I went to?”
“We had an argument.” He caught the coin in a palm and cradled it to his chest. “I told him to jump in the river.”
“Might I ask why?”
Saren lifted his chin, his eyes bright and defiant. “He made some comment about the war and you.”
“Me.” She jerked back in her seat. “What did he say about me?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“It does if it cost you your job. You know how hard it was to find someone open to training a new apprentice in your position?”
“Yes, I fucked up, same as usual.” His defiance slid away. “You don’t need to remind me.”
“That’s not what I meant.” Some of her irritation faded. Saren’s habit of letting any semblance of stable employment slip through his fingers was well known at this point, and this was hardly his worst transgression. He didn’t even appear to be drunk. “Tell me what he said about me.”
When Saren opened his mouth to answer, someone crashed into their table, scattering the remaining coins onto the floor. As he dove to retrieve them, a gust of wind rippled through the air. Given the humid night, Yala knew the source before the person who’d crashed into the table caught his balance, and she recognised Kelan of Skytower. Disciple of the Sky, erstwhile pain in her behind, and the person who’d saved her life enough times that it would have been galling if she hadn’t returned the favour in equal measures.
She climbed to her feet. “Kelan?”
Ignoring her, he lunged towards a nearby guard who held a bright-blue Disciple’s cloak draped over his arm.
“Hey!” She slammed the rim of her cane down in front of him. “What are you doing?”
“We won this fairly.” The guard held up the long-sleeved cloak in a hand, letting it fall to its full length. “He gambled his cloak when he ran out of coin.”
“Really, Kelan?”
“No.” He lifted a hand and sent a gust of wind at the guards, which missed, instead knocking over a nearby table. Wood and glass crunched, and several people shouted obscenities at him.
“Does your deity mind you using your powers for vandalism?” She stepped in front of Kelan when the guard reached for his knife with clumsy fingers. “Don’t even think about drawing a weapon unless you want to see mine.”
The guard’s bleary eyes widened with recognition. Kelan made another attempt to sidestep Yala, but she seized his arm.
“Can’t you get a new cloak?” she asked. “They have enough spares at the inn that you can afford to lose one.”
“It’s too early to go back to the inn.” He tugged his arm free and lurched sideways. “I’ll go and seek my entertainment elsewhere.”
The other patrons watched with relief as Kelan staggered towards the door and out into the night. Yala debated following him, but a yelp drew her attention back to the table she’d left behind. Nalen had lifted Saren bodily from his seat by the scruff of his neck. “Where should I put him?”
“Into the war drake’s pen.”
“What?” Saren yelped, sobering abruptly. “I didn’t do anything that bad.”
“You got me caught in the middle of a fight between Disciples,” she said. “Or one Disciple. What’s he playing at?”
“You think I know?” Nalen carried Saren to the door and placed his feet on the cobbles outside. It had begun to rain; warm droplets slid down Yala’s face and clung to her curly hair.
Kelan had already gone.
Yala blew out a breath. “Better go before we’re blamed for this.”
The gambling den’s owner had presumably been hiding to avoid being involved in a fight involving a Disciple, but she doubted she or Saren would be welcome there again. City guards could talk their way out of almost any transgression, and Disciples—well, they were a force unto themselves.
They left the pleasure district, passing groups of merry individuals who paid no heed to the rain sliding down their faces and soaking the light fabric of their clothes. The sounds of laughter had replaced the cheers and drumbeats from over the wall to the upper city, but Yala’s sense of unease remained.
“Fucking Disciples,” she said. “You can’t invite them anywhere.”
* * *
Viam had never seen the palace so bright.
Banners and gold-and-blue flags were strewn across every edifice of the buildings within the palace complex, leaving a glare that lingered on the insides of her eyelids long after she’d left them behind for the more muted tones of the war drakes’ paddocks.
Before leaving the palace grounds, she’d changed from her work uniform to a pair of drakeskin trousers—purchased out of her wages, as her old uniform no longer fit—and the gloves she’d never had the heart to throw away. With a sack of meat in one hand and a key in the other, she unlocked the paddock gate and slipped inside.
A familiar growl greeted her, the sound of a predator in wait, and Viam extracted a chunk of meat from the bag and tossed it into the open jaws of the full-grown war drake that stalked towards her on clawed feet. Several other beasts were inside the shed at the back, sheltering from the rain, but this one had both managed to get out of its hut and also somehow removed its muzzle.
“How’d you do that?” She fished the muzzle out of a puddle of rainwater and tossed it into a corner then checked to make sure the chain around the beast’s neck was still secure. It was, and so were its wing restraints. Some part of her twinged in guilt at the sight of its majestic, leathery wings bound to its back, unable to stretch out, but keeping a beast of that size and strength in the middle of Laria’s most populous city meant such cautionary measures were vital.
Taking the chain in one hand, Viam began to go through the basic commands. Sit, crouch, lift one leg and then the other, and duck its head so that a human rider could climb onto its back—all enforced by tugs of the chain and slithers of meat. Interacting with the beasts was a delicate dance between caution and boldness, displaying dominance without treading into foolhardiness. She’d taken to spending an hour here after work each day, with King Daliel’s permission, and it was surprising how quickly she’d slipped back into her old routines. Viam might feel more at home surrounded by ink and parchment, but kneeling in the dirt, shouting hoarse commands at a large and angry reptile, was a welcome change from pretending nothing was wrong.
Pretending that Laria wasn’t on the brink of war for the first time since Viam had handed in her army-issued dagger and left her old life behind.
Hence the banners, the cheering, the drums. It was all incredibly patriotic and yet somehow false at the same time. Viam knew the king to be soft-spoken and scholarly, with none of his father’s desire to produce countless monuments to Laria’s conquests, and until recently, the army had been a low priority. Now, new ranks of soldiers marched into the barracks every day. All volunteers. Thus far, King Daliel hadn’t revived the compulsory draft, but it was surely only a matter of time.
As of yet, the Flight Division remained a distant memory, and Viam usually fed the war drakes alone each morning and evening. It was therefore a surprise when she heard footsteps outside the paddock and then the creak of the gate opening.
Viam halted, one hand on the bag of meat and the other on the war drake’s chain, as King Daliel entered the paddock.
“Your Majesty.” She dipped her head but didn’t kneel; he’d told her she didn’t need to bother with such formalities, and besides, she didn’t dare take her attention off the war drake. The heavy chain prevented it from reaching the newcomer, but its pitch-dark eyes scanned the monarch’s bright attire with interest all the same.
Even King Daliel’s clothing had changed to reflect the military man his father had once been, his golden headdress less elaborate, his robes adorned with embroidery in the same gold and blue hues as the banners around the palace. His usual sandals had been replaced by solid boots that were polished to a high sheen, though that wouldn’t last if he took another step into the muddy paddock.
“Viam,” he said. “I’m impressed at how quickly you’ve gained the war drakes’ trust.”
“Thank you, Your Majesty.” She stepped away from the war drake, retaining a firm grip on the chain. “This one should be ready to fly soon.”
She assumed she’d need to ask His Majesty’s direct permission to take the war drake for a flight, given that it theoretically belonged to him. While the paddock lay directly outside the back gates to the palace, she’d never expected His Majesty to come here, much less alone.
“Good,” he replied. “We’ll need it. I understand that your friend Yala is training a war drake too?”
At the mention of her former squad leader’s name, Viam stiffened. “Yes, but it’s a personal project for her.”
Fool, she chided herself. It’d been hard for her to keep the king from finding out that one of the relatively few war drakes in the capital had ended up in Yala’s hands, but she’d assumed that the demise of the Flight Division would prevent him from taking an interest. Naïve, of course, given their history.
“I know,” he said. “However, as a former captain, it would be valuable to have her expertise in training the new recruits.”
“She’s never trained anyone outside of the Flight Division,” Viam said, her heart plunging. “Also, it’s been a long time since the war.”
Yala would laugh in her face if Viam suggested she return to her former position. Her early retirement from the army had been reinforced by a payment worthy of a captain of the highest rank, which was supposed to see her through the remainder of her days without her ever having to set foot—or wing—on a battlefield again. The thought of the alternative made Viam’s palms dampen with sweat.
“Yes, it has,” the king agreed. “I expect it’ll be a while before the war drakes are ready too. It’s been difficult to recapture those who’ve tasted freedom.”
“No.” Yala often said that all drakes were wild, that humans only shared a delusion that they were in control, and Viam had to admit she agreed.
“It’s a shame.” His mouth turned down at the corners. “I thought—or rather hoped—that there might be a way to send an envoy to meet with Rafragoria without running afoul of those dangerous seas.”
“Send an envoy?” she said. “On a war drake? They’ll think they’re being attacked.”
Years might have passed since the war ended, but the Rafragorians would forever associate the image of Larian war drakes as a precursor to their own demise. Even King Daliel ought to know that, surely.
“Yes, my advisors told me as much, but I thought you might have a different perspective.” His gaze travelled around the paddock, lingering on the war drakes sleeping within their huts. “There are other uses for these beasts than war.”
“Your Majesty, I don’t know that I’d entrust a wild animal to represent the nation in a fragile negotiation. Especially if you’re trying to avoid war.”
She spoke more freely than she’d intended, the image of the dead Rafragorian soldier climbing to the forefront of her mind. Remember the island, the note had said, but to whom? It was Viam who’d told the king the truth of their squad’s last mission not three weeks ago, and until then, he hadn’t known that his father’s final struggle against Rafragoria had been over an island that belonged to the god of death and that Rafragorian soldiers had awakened Mekan’s temple and paid the price with their lives.
If the note was to be believed, Rafragoria blamed Laria for those deaths, which made little sense to Viam, but who was to say what stories had reached Rafragoria’s shores in the absence of any direct communication between their nations? In truth, sending an envoy wasn’t the worst idea. If there was an option that didn’t involve reptilian weapons of war.
The king’s downcast expression prompted her to add, “I don’t mean to disparage your suggestion, but I don’t know that Rafragoria will ever associate war drakes with anything other than bloodshed. Certainly not peace.”
“No, you’re right,” he said. “I’ll have to think of another way. Thank you for listening to me.”
He backed out of the gate, leaving Viam blinking after him in puzzlement. She wasn’t entirely sure why he’d asked for her advice, but he sometimes forgot how young he’d been when he’d taken the throne. He was all of twenty-five and hadn’t inherited his father’s advisors, who’d been killed along with their monarch.
Killed by Rafragoria, or so everyone thought save for a handful of people, Viam included.
The war drake tugged on the chain, drawing her attention back to the present. She gave it the rest of the meat and then put its muzzle back on—securely this time—before she locked up the paddock for the evening.
Dusk painted the rooftops pink as she handed the keys to the guards outside the gates and reentered the palace grounds. To her surprise, Brenat waited for her, resting a burly arm on the low wall separating the barracks from the rest of the palace grounds.
“I thought you’d be out here,” she said. “What did His Majesty want? Isn’t it risky for him to visit the war drakes without his personal guards?”
“Maybe, but the rest of us can hardly lecture the monarch on safety concerns.” She hoped Brenat hadn’t said anything to the king. Her fellow scribe was known for her tendency to speak brashly, though her sometimes exasperating curiosity was tempered by her genuine kindness. As one of the few people in the palace who didn’t indulge in whispers whenever Viam walked past—either concerning her position with the war drakes or her link to Yala—Viam treasured any chance they had to talk alone.
“True enough.” Brenat strode briskly ahead, tossing a wave at a pair of passing guards. Unlike Viam, she had a natural gift for winning favour from others, and it was a constant source of bafflement that His Majesty had elected to spend time with Viam instead. “You never said what the king wanted. To see the war drakes?”
“Yes, and… well, he wants to send an envoy to Rafragoria,” she admitted. “I had to remind him that sending war drakes would have the opposite impact of what he intends.”
Brenat raised a brow. “Did he not already realise that?”
“Yes, but Rafragoria isn’t exactly accessible by sea.” She fell into step with Brenat as they followed one of the many paths through the darkening palace grounds. Buildings housing the king’s various staff flanked them on the left, while an open space on the right gave way to the tiered majesty of the palace, its gold-bedecked layers glimmering in the dying light of the sun. “If we sent a boat without any warning, their sea monsters would eat the messengers alive.”
“Might be better than sending war drakes,” Brenat remarked. “Best save them for the Flight Division.”
Viam’s steps faltered, recalling the king’s interest in Yala and her war drake. She had to have known it was inevitable that the monarch would have noticed her new acquisition, but what would Yala make of the king’s offer?
I suppose the worst she can do is say no, she thought, resolving to visit Yala at the first opportunity to wash both their hands of the matter.
Remember the island, a voice whispered in the back of her mind.
She remembered. Yala did too. That was precisely why they couldn’t get involved in another war with Rafragoria—because the only victor in a battle waged by Corruption would be the god of death.
