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Well, Lohirikam had one thing going for it and that was the food. While I didn’t recognise a lot of it, it smelled delicious. The other riders stayed close to me as we worked our way down the buffet line and if anyone else tried to make small talk, they were quickly rebuffed. “You don’t want any of the merits near you,” Alden said, “especially not your food. We’ve all got targets on our backs, but you doubly so. If something were to ‘happen’ to you, your dragon would automatically go to one of them.”
“You’re saying they would poison me to get to Miazydar?”
“As long as it can’t be traced back to them, yeah,” Grey said. “You’ll get it all in History of Dragonology. The last time they tried this shit over 60 students were killed.”
“Are you serious?” I looked at the heaping plate of food, my first real meal for the day, and felt a lot less hungry.
“You’re safe so far, nothing had been announced to the merits until now,” Rylan said. He sighed when he saw me just sitting there, pulling back the sleeve of his jumper to reveal a silver bracelet with a chunk of clear quartz attached to it. He waved it over my food and it glowed faintly green. “Green means good, so eat.”
I forced myself to pick up my fork and dig in, conscious the four of them were watching. They seemed satisfied once I’d taken the first mouthful. Everything went quiet for a while, at our table at least. We focussed on eating while everyone else focussed on us. I saw people pointing and looking over as they spoke.
I could feel the ache in my shoulders, it’d crept up without me realising it, hunching over my food. Just focus on the food, the taste, the sensations, I told myself. This kinda tastes like chicken with some kind of limey, fruity sauce. This tastes a bit like a potato, definitely some kind of tuber, though there’s a bit of a water chestnut element to the texture. The problem was my brain was going: So, who’s going to try and kill you? Who wants Miazydar the most? They haven’t even seen him yet, and they’re thinking about killing you. What about Jez and Flea? What will happen to them? There must be at least some kind of social prohibition about outright killing prospective dragon riders, otherwise, it would just be continual social upheaval, but does that protection extend to their porters? The lower classes are always traditionally the more vulnerable in a society.
I knew how to find out. I needed to start asking questions. I could ask the guys here, I was getting gently curious side looks as we ate, but my mouth stayed engaged with eating. Could I trust them? They’d approached me first and seemed nice enough, but apparently Scalla, the cute and bouncy, was also potentially Scalla the assassin.
Everyone at the table finished their meals before me, so I pushed mine away as well, not really feeling the unusual taste extravaganza. I felt a rising tension in my muscles, I needed to get out, get back to the cottage and make sure everyone was OK. “We’re going to the Common Room to do some study if you like,” Alden said as the four of them got to their feet.
“I can’t—.”
“Not yet, you’re not ready, we get it. I know how it felt when I first came here and the only way they’d take a dragon from my family is if I was deliberately trying to sunder the bond. Take some time, we’ll be here, because Tess, you’re going to need some allies. What do you have tomorrow?” I pulled my folded timetable from my back pocket and smoothed it out on the table. “What does this say?”
“Oh, sorry, this is the Aravisian version.”
“You have multiple versions? Aren’t you Aravisian?” Grey said.
“Um, no, I’m from Earth.”
Well, that set the cat amongst the pigeons. Looks were being thrown left and right but I had no idea what they meant and I was now too tired to try and untangle the complex social dynamic.
“I’ll be very interested to hear your story when you’re ready,” Alden said. “You’ve got Elementary History of Dragonology tomorrow morning and so does Vella. She’ll take you to class if you like. Which room are you staying in?”
“I’m in cottage 5, near the eyries.”
“I better escort you back. I need to see Taz anyway,” Alden said.
“Your dragon?” I said and he nodded.
“We’ll meet here for breakfast and then we’ll go to class,” Vella said.
Alden and I walked in silence in the dark. I was glad for his company, for all that he might slice my throat as soon as we turned the corner. I hadn’t thought about night falling as we had our meal and it was dar
k as pitch on the way home with only a sliver of a moon above us. “Well, you’ve certainly made things more interesting,” Alden said.
“Yeah, interesting. In my world there’s a curse: “May you live in interesting times’.”
“I admit a debt of gratitude to you. There’s always an amorphous air of envy at school with the merits knowing that the likelihood of our bonds being broken is very slim, but they hold on to that hope that one of us is going to fuck up epically. Now they have you to direct that at and I find the lack of attention curiously refreshing.”
“Um, you're welcome?”
He laughed. “I know, I’m sorry, it’s not much help to you.” He stopped, forcing me to do so as well. “I just want to be honest with you, Tess, scrupulously so in this case. You may not appreciate that now, but you won’t get a lot of that here.”
“OK, well, thanks. Look, I can see the cottage from here, I should be fine.”
“As you wish. Tazalith, my dragon, he’s the big green over there on the right. I like to come and say goodnight to him before bed. Until tomorrow?” I nodded. “Sleep well, Tess.”
11
I stumbled into the cottage, slamming the door behind me, instantly surrounded by warmth from the fire and the smell of booze. I kicked off my boots and walked into the living area to see Jez toting a bottle of something and Flea with a glass in his hands.
