It took a moment for Shapier to come back to his senses. Something boney and long was digging into his back, and he was pretty certain it was several pieces of Frost. His head was pounding with alcohol and shock. He jerked a hand free of a support beam to wipe dirt and sawdust from his eyes.
Someone shouted, “Company Lexicon, sound off!”
Several “Ayes” rang out before someone whimpered, “Tha’s a ‘No’ from Ackleton, Wainwright. I got ‘im right ‘ere. Somefin’ knocked ‘im clean cold.”
“Jackson’s gone too. Burned.”
“Fuck,” Wain hissed.
Sharp hadn’t heard anything from his own unit, so he shouted through a pained grimace, “Flight Merbane, sound off!”
A female voice from across the wreckage called uncertainly, “Aye, Sharpier. Agondautr here. I-I can move.”
Shapier didn’t hear from his partner, so he called, “Agondautr, report back to Peaksend, yeah? Have them bring an arzt or doktor.” Then after he heard the lady acknowledge his request, he heard several other patrons coming to and announcing their own plans and egress.
He had a brief, intrusive thought that his left-wing might already be dead, but through the haze of strangers starting to groan and scream in pain, he forced the consideration into the dark of his mind. Frost was too stubborn a person to just die.
He slowly got up, wincing at the pain in his right arm, and found that the boney bits he’d been laying on were in fact the remains of some roof tiles and a ceiling support beam. Frost had pushed him out of the way at the last second, otherwise Sharp was sure he would have taken the brunt of it to his death.
He winced and rode through a wave of angry pain as he braced a broken metal chair under the beam and leveraged his weight against it. The beam let out a cracking sound before it rolled free and Sharp was able to pivot the thing off the pile. He took a knee and started tossing half-cones of cracked terracotta over his shoulder, oblivious to wherever they landed.
He eventually exposed a gloved hand, sticky with dust-covered blood. He gripped the hand and gave it an experimental pull, but there was no give. Nononono. He looked around for anything to help him uncover the scene but gave up and started shoveling more debris out of the way, working his way deeper into the wreck.
He was only vaguely aware that it was still snowing and there was a fire nearby. Someone shouted at him to make way for the first wave of rescuers that had appeared, but instead, he simply redoubled his efforts.
No. No. No.
Frost sucked in a wheezing breath as soon as Sharp uncovered her face and the pale rider spit out a mouthful of blood before she could take another breath, eyes wide with shock and surprise.
Yes! “There y’are,” Sharp declared casually.
“Easy,” Frost growled as Sharpier continued uncovering her, hunting down the source of her wounding. When Sharp tried to lift a broken chair, his partner yelped a curse and then groaned when Sharp relaxed his grip on it unceremoniously.
“Chou’re stuck,” Sharp mumbled as he slowed down to inspect what he was dealing with. “Like a kebab.”
“Oh, now he looks! Prick,” Frost hissed at him, her breath coming in shallow bursts. “Get. Out. Of here.” She grabbed at Sharp with her free, uninjured hand and shoved him away weakly. “Was a. Beggar! Right corner.” Then she relaxed suddenly. “No… Probably—ugh… Far from here now.”
“Shh. Shh. Peace,” Sharp ordered quietly. Then, looking around, he motioned at one of the first arrivals who was picking idly through the wreckage while his compatriots brought stretchers onto the scene. “Oi! You! Help me with this!”
He must have said it with enough authority, because the man came over and followed his directions after a quick introduction. “Call me Mel.”
“Mel, grab here, I’m gonna lift, then you pull-pull an’ ignore all the nasty things she’s bound to say abou’chour mum.”
“Just do it!” Frost barked, then screamed as her partner pushed on her side and the responder pulled the shiv of metal out of her. As soon as the chair was out of the way, Sharp bore down on the hole in Frost’s side, packing it with the torn shreds of the Helian's clothes. Then, with one hand still pressed down, he motioned at Mel and the responder took a wad of gauze out of his hip barrel and passed it to the able-bodied rider.
“B-Back too,” Frost said deliriously, coughing. “Careful…”
“Too?” Sharp waited for a stretcher to come and while he did, he gripped Frost’s free glove. “Fell on something? Frost! Hey!” He pat her cheek and grabbed her chin, stilling her listless rolling.
His left-wing met his eyes for a moment and Sharp saw something he never thought he’d see on her face in a million years: fear. It pissed him off. He let her go after the stretcher came and the rescuers took over. “You’ll be fine, Drakidautr,” Sharp intoned.
“Take my watch,” Frost said quietly, smiling ruefully, then she coughed again, spilling pinked foam down her shirtfront. When they pulled her up and onto the stretcher, she choked on air and a stream of dark blood poured out of a hole near her spine. Her next few panicked gulps of gurgling air sounded like a woman drowning.
No. No! NO!
“Lung punched,” one of the medics confirmed, rolling Frost onto her side as someone fished through their pouches for a roll of pressed silk. Then, they forced Sharpier back as they rushed his partner from the burning wreckage of the public house.
No. “Lung punched,” Sharp whispered, tasting the words.
He looked down at the sawdust and blood covering him up to his elbows. Someone came by to ask how he was and he shook his head that he was fine. An arzt came by later and insisted he see someone. His arm was swelling, there were superficial burns on his face and shoulder, and as he helped people move objects and debris, he did so with a limp.
Through a haze of drunken adrenaline, he honestly hadn’t noticed his own wounds. It was only when someone wrapped a wool cloak about him that he felt his knees shake and buckle beneath him.
If he lost another wing, would they dare assign him a third?
Blood thrumming with cocaine and a couple coffee chews, Sharp made his way through triage to where a wounded dragon rider was partitioned off from the rest of the UFD ground forces. His flightmeister had insisted he wait at least until after Frost was out of surgery to make any visits. "And get that bloody forearm in a brace, Rider!" Flightmeister had added sternly.
Forearm pinched in a plaster cast, Sharp passed papers to the technician on duty and they rolled up the canvas entrance for him to go in.
The tented space smelled like old blood, wet dirt, and yellowfir, but when the canvas was set back into place behind him, he couldn't hear the moans coming from the front of the tent at least. Perks of being trained to saddle the largest airborne animal in the known world. At least our deathbeds will be private. The last part of the thought came unbidden, like an observation out of time. But as soon as Sharpier thought it, he wanted to unthink it.
Frost was propped up to keep the fluid from gathering in her chest. There were fresh bandages about her middle, colored bright red, but visibly dry. Her breath was shallow, and her eyes were squinted shut. Her sweat-covered face twitched when Sharp sat in the folding chair set up at her bedside. Her eyes flicked open for only a second and she made a small sound, but otherwise didn’t move.
"Lefty… can you hear me?"
The body in the bed was bereft of Frost's normally apathetic visage. Instead, there was a scared, twenty-year-old girl lying there, gripping the sheets clotted about her with both hands, lips trembling with muted whimpers.
Sharp wanted to leave. He wanted to erase this moment from his mind. He didn't want to think he owed Frost, but he did. And he was glad she was alive, but Sharp didn't want to believe Frost was his friend at that moment.
Sharp lost his first partner when he was seventeen. They'd paired him with a veteran of the Second Dunhr War—a Coaster called Elm who rode a hen named Massa. It was the start of the third war that took Elm in the neck. Sharp was ordered to kill the vet's dragon since he couldn't well fly two beasts out with his novice training. It took seven hacks with his longsword to put the grieving dragon down.
It was like he'd hacked into his own soul.
After a lengthy investigation and six months of homestead, they finally reassigned him to another flight and it was the pale-eyed Helian who chose him to be her right-wing. No real interview, no vetting, and no choice on his part. She’d said, “He’ll do,” and he and she had been butting heads ever since.
But that's the nature of what we are and what we do. We joined Dorn's cess fire in Radia. We said we wanted to kill island hoppers and bond with dragons. Now, I want to go back in time and tell Frost to piss off. I should have never let her come to that pub. But since that's impossible… I don't even know what I want. Sharp put his hands together and pressed them to his mouth as he sat back in his chair. No. That's not true, he conceded to himself. I know I want to kill whoever did this.
"Frost, if you can hear me, I'm going to find out who did this," Sharp said to her stained bandages.
Frost made a strained sound in her throat, but then was quiet. Maybe she'd heard him. Was she telling Sharp to give ‘em a what for? Or was she trying to tell him off?
Sharp didn't linger long enough to find out.
"And how's the rest of the company?" Sharp asked, leaning against Peaksend's bartop.
Agondautr blew a dark brown strand of hair from her eyes, distracting herself. Then she met Sharp's gaze. "Could be worse. There were two other attacks, you know?"
He nodded mutely.
"I got the numbers from Flicka," Agondautr continued, referring to their flight's quartiermeister. "He took inventory of the losses. I didn't want to know how many bean bags we lost last night, but he told me that too." She had distracted herself again, but again she corrected course and said, in a deluge of information, "Three riders are dead, eleven wounded. They tried to blow the dragons. 'Course that just pissed our beasts' off. Still, one of our hens got pinned under a collapsed chimney and suffocated. Poor thing. Her rider's inconsolable. Gemma. Do you know her? No?" She sniffed. "Riflers and berserkers got hit worse by tenfold."
"Fate's always favored our lot," Sharp said, more to convince himself.
Agondautr gave him a sidelong look. "More like, basic statistics favor us. Fewer riders mean fewer casualties…" She waved a dismissive hand. "Doesn't matter. I'm sorry about Drakidautr Sharpier."
“She's not dead yet," Sharp said seriously.
She bristled. "I know. I'm still sorry. That's your left-wing in that tent. If she were mine, I wouldn't be here. I'd be at the bottom of a cliff face. Flat."
He wiped his eyes. "Oh."
She nodded as she moved past him. "I'm going for a ride with my wing now. We all need to keep our hands busy." She put a leaf roll from her breast pocket to her lips and looked at him over her shoulder. She glanced once at his broken arm and said, "Hel watch over you, Dornborn."
"Thanks, Egg. Promise I won't be getting up to too much trouble," Sharp assured her with a smirk after he caught on to her meaning.
“I’ll believe it when I see it.” She rolled her eyes and waved farewell. "It was twenty and two, by the way."
"Bags of beans?"
"Yep. Cheers."
Sharp gave the door another knock before trying the doorknob. The flightmeister's portal was unguarded for the first time since… well, since Sharp could recall. Odder still, it was unlocked. When he came into the dim hollow, the place was littered with crumpled pieces of parchment and the smell of correction fluid was strong in the air.
Merbane’s Flightmeister stood behind a field desk with a lit pipe installed under his broom-like mustache. He looked up and stood to his feet, pulling a slip of cream-colored paper off his typewriter and holding it out to the rider over the desk. “Sorry, I didn’t hear you… That cast’ll put your parents at ease. I’ve been trying to draft a reply to them. Maybe you can offer some critique.”
Sharp sighed as he looked over the official notice. He normally looked forward to visiting with Flightmeister, since the Coaster was so familiar and direct, but at the mention of his overbearing family, his sour mood practically pickled. He said, “My father knows better than to bother us when we’re afield. Besides—and I mean this as respectfully as possible, Sir—isn’t this something the alienists are supposed to handle?”
The meister snorted. “They’re busy enough aiding any arzt with the dead, dying, and all that comes with them. I can spare a minute reminding the Sharpiers that their golden boy is still in one piece.”
Sharp winced, looking about at the mess. “A minute?”
“Well, I did have to draft up something for the hatchery too…” He stared at him as if it were Sharp’s fault Frost Drakidautr was abed, but then he looked around. “It is a mess. Not just this room or the situation with the Radians. You two have always been a pin on my seat. You’re riders. Riders go to war. Riders die. Somehow, with this attack on taken ground, the politicians in the United Fiefs are beginning to internalize the sacrifice they made by sending their favorite sons and daughters to the frontlines. But why should they be so surprised? so asks I. And then I remember how self-deluding the powerful and mighty can often be, and the truth of our classified world all comes crashing down again.” He motioned for the letter’s return and Sharp passed it back to him. “Do you think this will stop them from harassing the postmaster at least?”
“Not a chance, Sir,” Sharp said after a moment’s contemplation. “But that’ll be through no fault of your own. My whole family is full of prior berserkers. My parents especially are, um…” He tried to think of a diplomatic word, but shrugged and said, “They’re stubborn pricks with no sense of decorum or respect.”
Flightmeister’s eyes squinted at their corners. “Apple. Tree.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Sharp said with a contrite smile.
“Anyway, you didn’t come here to help me do my job. You feel like you’re sitting on your hands, and you want revenge on the fuckers that not only bombed our resources, but put a couple holes in your wing, yes?”
Sharp blanched. “How did—?"
Flightmeister’s smile turned into a knowing grin. “I’ve been doing this for too long, Rider. I’ve seen flights eat themselves alive if there’s a schism between their left and right wings. But when a flight is strong, its loyalty to its own knows what the edge of the world looks like. I’m proud to say Merbane is a flight of the latter set, wouldn’t you agree?”
“I would, Sir,” Sharp said. His last flight, the one in which he and Rider Elm had been a part of, had been toxic. Their flightmeister[1]
The older dragon rider re-lit his pipe and said, “I don’t have the official details yet—and I won’t, due to security concerns. There’s a flockmeisterin coming down from Lashela who is supposed to brief a pair of our own about a special operation across the wire. I told her that you two would be more than up for the job.”
Sharp blinked rapidly. “Three days?! Drakidautr was lung-punched, Sir! She won’t be up for at least six weeks! They have us on the rest roster until Spring’s end. When does this meisterin expect us to be combat ready?”
“Three days from now,” Flightmeister said with a secretive smile.
A disorientated Sharp was so beside himself with befuddled anger, that he’d wrapped right back around to being confused again. He narrowed his eyes at his flight lead. “How… exactly will my left-wing be combat ready by midweek? How will I be ready, for that matter?” He waved his plaster-encased arm for emphasis.
“How’s your eyesight, Rider Sharpier?”
“My eyesight, Sir?”
“Yes, how well can you see?”
“I’m… I can see well enough out of both eyes, Sir.”
“Then you and your wing will both be fine by midweek…” He sat down and rested his pipe-bearing hand on his desk as he leaned back. “That is, provided you’re willing to take a trip outside Oril.”
Sharp smelled a rat. “My gut says I’m going to regret asking, but what’s outside Oril that could make us war-ready over-overmorrow?”
Flightmeister’s bravado finally hit a turning point and he frowned down at his cooling pipe as he asked, “What do you know about Radia’s one god, Sharpier?”
He shrugged. “It’s a fish or something, right? Something that brings rain and fish… and… um… It’s got lots of eyes.”
The older rider sighed and said, “Why am I ever surprised they don’t pay attention during orientation? Why? Waste of—It’s a sea serpent, Rider. And yes, the god is worshiped for its influence over monsoons, tsunamis, and other such things. But that’s not what’s interesting about the Radian deity. Its clergy is very different from those in the United Fiefs. It does not have a central church or an organized order. Its clergy is divided a thousand times into small cohorts of magic-makers.”
Sharp crossed his arms, a skeptical look coming to his face. “Witches? Wait, so Radian water hags are a real thing? That’s got to be bunk. I mean, maybe they call themselves witches, but they don’t actually do magic, do they?”
“Well, they prefer to be called Promittitus over witches or hags, and I can’t say I blame them. In political circles, we tend to refer to them as Promises. They can be women or men, and yes, Sharpier. They can perform magic.”
“Like what? Tricks of the light? Slights of hand? Herb-work? Our alienists can do alchemy, but they at least have the decency to call it modern medicine and not magic.” Helians and Coasters had a habit of invoking the presence of the supernatural when faced with the technology so prevalent in Dorn. Sharp figured this was another one of those cases. Maybe Radian alienists had some kind of technology that only looked fantastic to ignorant eyes.
Flightmeister didn’t laugh or carry on. He simply tapped out his pipe into an overflowing wastebasket and refilled it from one of his belt pouches, all the while saying, “Believe what you will, Sharpier. You are Dornborn, but I would have thought being among the enlightened for almost three years would have opened your eyes to the barest of truths… We live in a world of dragons, trains, pegasuses, and mechanical men. We drive cars over bridges, and fjord rivers with talking horses. We fight war with rifles, mushrooms, fire, and cocaine… And yet, to you desert dwellers with your floating towers and hanging gardens, the thought that there might be things out there that we haven’t begun to understand is beyond your reasoning.”
“It is beyond my reasoning,” Sharpier heartily agreed, but then he shrugged and added, “But say you’re right. Magic is real. Fine. What does that have to do with Drakidautr and I?”
At this, Flightmeister nodded gravely. “If you’re willing to pay the price to see, the Promises might be willing to heal the both of you.”
Sharp laughed harshly. “And there’s the rub! What price is this truesight, Flightmeister? Our first born? A night that will never come? The thirteen secret names for ice?”
“It might be beyond your reasoning, but these are people we’re talking about. They’re gifted, surely, but they can be reasoned with. They will name the price, and you would be smart to negotiate.”
“Oh, haggle! Now, I get why people call them hags!”
The mustachioed rider rolled his eyes and said, “Sharp, you can go to the Promises on the outskirts of Oril—I’ll mark it on your map—and get Rider Drakidautr off her back, or you can explain to Flockmeisterin why you refused your orders.”
Sharp sighed. “What if this magic thing doesn’t take, Sir?”
“That’s religion for you, Sharp. It requires faith.”
“Faith doesn’t come standard with me like it does with every other rider, Flightmeister. And you didn’t issue it to me. In Dorn, we must see things before they’re real,” Sharp said with a roll of his own eyes. “What if? Really! What if we can’t be healed in time?”
Flightmeister waved a dismissive hand as he puffed away at his pipe. “You better come back without a cast—or come back with a doktor’s note. We don’t have the luxury to take half-measures this late in the game.”
Sharp finally caught on to what wasn’t being said. Shut up and color. He narrowed his eyes. “So, no other pair can take this on? What’s so special about Rider Drakidautr and me?”
“I mean no offense by what I say next,” Flightmeister began. Then he gave a little shrug and said, “You and Drakidautr don’t look like you’re from Dorn or Helhandr—and you certainly couldn’t pass for Coasters with your accents.”
He stiffened. “… Are you saying we pass for Radians?”
“No, I’m saying, you don’t pass for anything. You don’t even pass as poly-bloods—you’d need the red eyes for that. No, you don’t pass for anything, and that is precisely what Flockmeisterin needs for her operation. I don’t know any more than that. I only know that there’s no other pair that fits this need.”
“And the needs of the United Fiefs of Dorn outweigh the needs of the fiefs themselves, eh?” Sharp spoke from rote.
Flightmeister winked at him. “Now you get it. Give me your map… It’s only ten miles south, but you’ll need to take your wing with you, so I recommend using your dragon. You have three days, Rider.”
“Sir!” Sharp tried to snap a salute, but only hit himself in the face with his cast.
“Dis-missed,” Flightmeister coughed out before putting a hand to his own face to half-shield any expression from Sharp’s view. He might as well have laughed at him, though.
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