Chapter One:
Being late was better than being dead, but only barely. Echoes of pistol shots rang in my head and trembled in my blood as my shoulders jostled between strangers in the packed city streets. Missing work today would mean slim dinners for a week, or worse, but when a gang selected the stairwell of my tenement house for their latest shootout, I had no choice but to wait.
And now I had to fight the crowd.
In the perpetual shade of the bridges that latticed the city of Treston, my toes smarted under boot heels and my fingers hurt from curling around my knife hilt. Men and women, some half filled with alcohol, others with worse things, oozed like spilled honey down every cramped street toward the massive walls of the arena, hoping that today, their fortunes would change. I was the only person, it seemed, moving away from the heart of the city. A fish swimming upstream. A very late fish.
Down here, the summer sun didn’t hit as hard as on the high streets, but the air was stale, the breeze nonexistent, bottling the stench of urine-dampened alleys and gasoline exhaust. Though it was early, sweat prickled against my back, soaking into my chemise beneath my dress. A cigarette, still burning, floated down from the fingers of a careless topsider and bounced off my arm.
“Burning gods,” I hissed as I swatted at the thing, scattering sparks. My eyes flashed up, where I spotted a man in a fine wool suit leaning casually over a bridge’s railing, his attention on a woman in a broad hat, as if the things moving down here were vermin, not people.
On race days, it wasn’t just the wretched godspawn on their high bridges with their purses and their derby hats who posed a threat. The thieves were out in force, and the shadows waited like open tombs for wandering souls. Today wasn’t just any race, but the race. The King’s Race, the final of the big three, a tradition older than the dragons themselves, from a time when horses were all men rode. At the end of summer, people from all over the country of Cavaria, all over the continent, flooded the streets of Treston to watch the world’s fastest dragons compete for the title of grand champion. Fashions from around the continent were on display, always a fascinating thing. Broad hats and slim skirts seemed to be the order of the day, though I never spotted the trends like Evie did. My sister would break it all down for me later when I returned from work.
“Arivelle!”
I cringed and looked around for the source of the voice among the throng. My shoulders sank as I spotted Bev sitting at her little folding table beside an alley wall. “No time,” I mumbled. When she shouted again, louder, I took a steadying breath and snaked toward her. Only a minute.
The woman normally worked on Baker Street, but judging by the coins in her jar today, she’d been wise to set up here, reeling in customers desperate to know where to place their bets.
“Morning, Bev.” Beside her sat a small table laid with cards, a large rock, and her jar half full of coins. “Lots of customers already, I see.”
Gray hair fell from her poorly held bun as she nodded. “Oh dear,” she said, angling her gaze toward her deck of cards. “You bring an omen with you today.”
“I really must—”
“Don’t you want to know what your future holds?” she asked, her age-spotted hand gathering the cards.
“Of course, but I’m running late. And I can tell you what my future holds if I don’t make it to the duke’s soon—eviction, if I don’t get paid today.” In truth, it was better not to know. Better to believe that the tide would turn and we’d get out of this wretched neighborhood.
Bev’s face fell. “Have it your way, girl.” But as I turned to walk away, her crackling voice added, “One day you’ll come begging for my services, when there’s something you want more than anything in this world and you’re dying to know if you will get it.”
I flashed her a smile and pushed my way down the narrow tunnel, once a grand road when horse-drawn carriages were status symbols, now mostly encased in stone, like the world was slowly burying its past the way an artist might plaster over an unwanted mural. On street corners, men in dark suits and derby hats muttered the odds for today’s race and pointed inquiring souls toward shadowed alleyways, where fortunes could be lost in a single breath.
A young man in suspenders and a newsboy cap followed a suited man into an alleyway flickering with a single naked bulb. My eyes snagged on the light. I still wasn’t used to the sight of electricity down here. That kind of luxury was a thing only the topsiders possessed until recently. Bulbs had been making their way into the shadows of Treston’s bottomside, a strange reversal of the black smog that filled the skies over the city. As I watched the young man disappear through a door, my fingers slicked against the knife hilt at my waist as I squeezed it. I prayed he didn’t have a family.
After another sharp turn, I hurried onto a less-crowded street and breathed deeply. I wound my way up a cobbled path between buildings so old their walls seemed to lean over the street. Drying petticoats and drawers crisscrossed the alleyway over my head, but above that, the blue summer sky shone in a thin sliver.
The duke’s estate sat at the edge of the city, sprawling across acres and acres of the foothills of the Nevron Mountains. On race days, the duke kept a skeleton staff, drawn by lot. Most of his dragons were in the race today, and the lair would be nearly empty. Thankfully, I’d been the sole member of the cleaning staff selected to work today, meaning I’d be the only one paid today. A necessity. And if I was going to make it to Mim’s for the thirsty post-race crowd, I had to hurry. Normally, I’d have woken before dawn and been at the duke’s already, missing the thick crowd altogether, but bullets flying had changed my plans.
I picked up speed as I huffed up a steep hill toward the edge of the forest that hemmed the city in from the north. Between the buildings up ahead, the boughs of evergreens came into view. My heart lifted. Most days, I did not rush this part, but today, I had no time to cherish the stillness, the quiet, the small wonders of dew on spiderwebs and the thousands of mushrooms clustered on the forest floor or crawling up the trunks of trees. I hurried past the stump that boasted miniature mushroom balconies, past the large boulders that made for great benches. Most people feared the forest, with its many caves that had once attracted wild dragons. But the forest always reminded me of the illustrated books of fairy tales I’d found at the library as a child. Stories of wonder and romance. And thanks to the Hunters, there was unlikely anything dangerous out here anymore.
At the bend in the trail, the duke’s sprawling estate came into view. From this vantage point, the massive lair rose like a cathedral in the distance, the old stable used to house the staff’s horses miniature in comparison. The caves that the dragons of fairy tales once lived in, even if they were lined with jewels, couldn’t compare to the splendor these champions lived in.
As I neared the lair, the hush was odd, reminding me I’d be alone here today. With a small smile on my lips, I slipped quietly into the stall of a sleeping dragon. The large honey-colored dragon peeked one orange eye at me. I paused, nodded slowly and respectfully, and waited to see how she would respond. There were no trainers here today. No riders, either. And not the self-important manager who acted like this lair was his own little kingdom. It was just me and this enormous beast, and if she decided she didn’t want me in her space, I wouldn’t be here long at all.
Mirantha, the oldest dragon in this lair, and maybe the oldest domesticated dragon in all of Cavaria, lifted her massive head just above her front legs and inclined it gently before setting it back down on top of her crossed front legs.
A flip of excitement stirred my blood. She was the largest dragon here, twice the size of most of the dragons in today’s race, and this den had been built just for her. Her face was the length of my arms outstretched, and when she sat upright, I had to crane my neck to look at her eyes. I’d only had this job one month, but in that time, I’d learned Mirantha was a gentle creature. She was only dangerous if any of her offspring were agitated, and today, the lair was entirely empty except for her.
“How are you today?” I asked the dragon as she watched me with one eye. “I bet you’re proud. They’re saying Thuron will win today.”
The stone floor shone like a looking glass, except for the two places I would be cleaning this morning. I kicked my shovel under a large pile of dragon dung, doing my best to ignore the smell and the way the old shovel’s worn handle sliced through the blister on my palm. Using the back of my hand, I wiped the sweat from my brow then heaved the heavy load into a waiting wheelbarrow in the otherwise immaculate lair.
When the wheelbarrow was full, I rolled it outside and dumped the load into a train car that would haul it away to a place where the wealthy duke and his family would never have to suffer the smell. When I reentered the lair, moving quietly into Mirantha’s stall, the dragon had moved. She was now on the floor, wings spread, head lifted toward the skylight, a round hole in the ceiling large enough for her to fly through.
“What is it?” I asked her, stepping softly so as not to startle the massive creature.
Her nostrils flared, a loud huff of air rattling the silent lair.
My chest trembled slightly, and I began backing toward the wide central aisle of the lair that led back outside. The dragon turned a quick circle, the breeze from her wings rustling the loose hairs that had fallen from my hasty braid. I’d never seen the ancient dragon ruffled or bothered about anything. In the month I’d worked here, only the males had shown their tempers, snapping at me or leaping away in annoyance if I tried to clean their stalls when they were in them. I’d learned to wait until they moved outside before cleaning their sleeping quarters. But not Mirantha. She was always calm, like she was too wise to bother being ruffled by the petty disturbances that riled the younger dragons.
“It’s okay,” I told her. “It’s just me.” My back brushed the cool stone wall, and for a moment, I waited to see if she would calm down. But her attention remained fixed on the sky above, and she continued her agitated circling, claws clicking on the floor, tail, as large as a ship’s mast, waving about.
Without warning, she leaped into the air, her massive wings spreading in a breath, her launch knocking me back into the wall. She lifted to the top of the wall, where she perched, head twisting to watch as something crashed to the ground outside the lair. I hurried from the stall to the bone-chilling sound of dragons snarling. I’d heard cats fight in alleyways, but this sound was much, much worse.
But another sound slowed my steps.
Beneath the dragon’s growls and Mirantha’s thunderous wingbeats, I heard a man moaning. I hesitated.
Growls sounded, filling my ears and chest with reverberating thunder.
Run.
But then I heard it again. A man’s groan.
Someone was out there.
Whirling on the spot, I sprinted toward the sound of dragons fighting.
