Off-Season

Phoebe

Phoebe lay along the beam of the barn, her nostrils full of the bitter smell of wood treatment. But for the status lights on a few monitoring devices on the walls and the faint glow of her own eyes, the space below was an inky void. She could hear the slow, soft rasps of the sleeping dragons' breathing, just enough to keep all five of them in her awareness. It was a gentle sound, and she wanted to curl up in it.

There could be no curling here, though, the security systems might well be able to catch the movement. She'd been waiting hours already, and there was still a little time to wait yet before the half-sensed angle of the rising moon would tell her her painstakingly-chosen moment had arrived. In the meantime, all she could do was work through the long, fiddly sequence of individual muscle exercises she'd learned specifically for the purpose of warding off muscle cramps tonight.

At least with all the general fitness training she'd been doing since the autumn, she had the strength to hold it together. Lying flat, belly-down, on a hard eight-inch beam and staying dead still for five hours had never felt so comfortable. The moon's rise was a faint tingle spreading tenderly across her skin under her blackout jacket.

Then the moment arrived. As soon as she moved, she heard the siren start up outside, but the ranch was vast and the nearest security team was almost two miles away, currently on the wrong side of two suddenly-startled herds of feed cattle. Hopefully that gave her time. She swung her legs off the beam and dropped to the floor.

Opening her crownfeathers, the half-draconic appendages curving from the top of her spine around to her temples like vestigial wings, she used their trickle of ancestral magic to featherfall. Even with that, her boots struck a sharp slap from the concrete floor. There were stirring grunts from two of the sleeping drakes, but the noise wasn't going to be enough to wake them. Cruel as the ranch's conditions were, they kept the product well-fed, and well-fed dragons didn't wake easily.

Phoebe's stomach grumbled as she stood and strode over to the door. There'd been no possibility of eating while she was up on the beam, and it had been a long time since infiltration. Problems for later. She hit the fire alarm.

The barn door popped outward and slid aside, and the howl of the sirens poured in on a bed of alarmed bovine lowing. Dim green emergency lights rose to reveal the barn's pens as their locks clunked open. There were three along the opposite wall, two to her right. Inside, five indigo heaps shifted in various states of grogginess. In the gloom, their scales had almost no shine. Half-way up the aisle, a stubby, wedge-shaped block of near-black purple rose atop an unfurling neck, and a tennis-ball-sized violet gemstone eye opened to glare at Phoebe.

That one, then. Phoebe didn't hesitate. She strode to the nearest pen and heaved the door on its rails. She couldn't personally fly all five dragons out of here, but she could give them a chance. As she moved, she did her best to keep her eyes on the early riser, matching their recognition of her, holding their attention as she passed them to free their neighbours. The head wove back and forth to track her movement, and she read their mood as cautious, perhaps a little curious.

The drake didn't pull back or rear as she stopped in front of their door to check the dataplate. For a mercy, it accepted her phone's scan. Her app was standard, albeit with a few slightly illicit permissions, but the ranch's owners apparently didn't feel the need to risk fiddling with the plate's encryption.

Soot. 19. Male. 42', Wing 22' 6". 581lb. Smallish wings and a slim body for his age. The rest she could look at later.

She looked up again to find him still watching her, patient despite the howling outside. His name could have been worse, she knew of one lunar drake this illicit ranch's ignorant owners had named Tar. "Soot, huh? Nice to meet you. I'm Phoebe. Wanna get out of here?"

Carefully, she reached up a hand. In theory, these drakes would be trained ready for a new rider, but they were also juveniles, potentially fractious. Behind her, one of the other dragons was shuffling out of their pen. How much time did she have?

Soot lowered his head and his tongue flickered out, a touch of heat over Phoebe's fingertips. Then he bent down further, eyes drilling into her. Their colour was almost exactly the same as Phoebe's, but the swirling glow in their depths had shades to it she couldn't match. Very carefully, she spread her crownfeathers, as wide and flat as she could.

He was in reach, now, so she pushed up on tiptoes and put a finger to the underside of his jaw. His scales were fine and supple, not too different yet from skin; at nineteen, Soot was at least five years from the first sign of any cresting. He let her stroke once up his jawline, and Phoebe got the distinct feeling he thought he was taming her.

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She chuckled. "I think we're gonna get along just fine, come on."

Without turning her back to the drake, she started to move slowly towards the door. He huffed and shifted his weight, lurching to his feet, the movement made awkward by the size of the pen. Phoebe mastered a flush of rage, kept her movements steady.

One of the other dragons coughed an enquiry, and Soot snorted in response. Not exactly reassurance – tension still pulsed through the barn with the rise and fall of the clashing sirens outside – but Phoebe put her trust in the drakes' communication. They could see the open door.

The alarms drowned any hope of hearing security personnel approaching, but she couldn't afford to rush this anymore than she could afford to be caught. The barn's layout made the dragons slow by design, and Phoebe hated seeing them leaning on their wingtips to duck under the doorframe.

Outside, the night was knife-cold. Phoebe's flightsuit cut the worst of the highland wind but the sky was clear, the stars like ice. Up on the hill above the barn, headlights were tracking steadily down the road. At least three pairs.

Phoebe brought her attention back to Soot. "Hey big guy, I need a favour. Can you get me out of here? I've got a nice big barn I can take you to."

The drake snorted, hearing the request in her voice even if he didn't understand her words. He didn't flinch as she walked to his shoulder, but at the same time, he didn't crouch. That left his wing joint a good ten feet off the floor, too high to jump to even if she dared put the strain of a pull-up mounting on his most important joint.

She looked round and up to find his neck craning over her, radiating smugness. Despite the howling sirens and the on-rushing headlights, Phoebe grinned. She could work with this.

Spreading her crownfeathers again, she bowed, formally from the waist. Bringing her head up first before straightening, she met the drake's eyes, holding her own as wide as she could while the wind plucked at her tears. "Please?"

Soot's head swung around to look at the other dragons stretching their wings in the moonlight. He barked a full-throated call that Phoebe heard more from the barrel of his chest than his mouth. One of the others, the largest, responded with a rising growl that stopped just short of bellow, answered by coughs and huffs from their stablemates.

Dragons – especially captive, race-bred dragons – didn’t have a fully-featured language, but their calls were among the most sophisticated in nature. Phoebe found herself bowing her head, touched to have witnessed the exchange.

But now she could hear the range rovers, an entirely different kind of growl cutting through the alarms. "Hey, Soot, we've gotta move. You think you can help me? Please?"

Shape a black cutout against the dim light from the barn doorway, the drake's head swung back round to look at her, violet eye a torch. He held her gaze for a long moment, making some judgement about the urgency in her tone. Then he shook his neck like a dog shaking off moisture and squatted so low he might as well have been lying flat on his belly.

Phoebe gasped a quick breath and threw herself up his flank. Even laying right down and as slight as he was, Soot's shoulder was about level with hers, a world of difference from the drakelets she'd raced before. She'd ridden full-sized drakes a few times, but only with a harness. Her leap got her arms up over his back, but it was an ugly scramble, with Soot huffing every time she kicked him, before she was able to get astride.

Ahead, one of the freed drakes launched in a single, dramatic sweep of wings. For a second, all Phoebe could do was gaze in awe at the force of it up close. Then high-beam headlights washed over the side of the barn and she had to look down and find her footing, right there on the strong ridge over Soot's wing joints, the only place on a young drake sturdy enough to take her weight, and then she felt him coiling his strength inwards and there was barely time to breathe before his spine launched up into her gut, carrying them instantly aloft.

The remaining free drakes were rising with them, one giving a full roar with the second beat of their wings. Above, the leader answered, and Soot echoed it with a high cry that came up through Phoebe's boots. Instinct drew them all moonward, silver light washing the drakes' wings with spider-silk shimmers as the emergency-green glow of imprisonment below receded.

Phoebe gave it ten minutes to get some distance from the ranch, revelling in the sight of the four drakes flying above them in a lopsided V. Soot didn't try to join them, keeping pace but hanging back and lower, and she let the rise and fall of his wings move her gently against his neck, measuring his feelings. He knew he had set himself apart by offering her his carriage, that the others would never share his bargain.

The escaped drakes would probably turn north at some point, heading for wilder ground. They certainly wouldn't follow Phoebe and Soot anywhere near a city. Phoebe took her bearing, relying partly on her lunar link and partly on the distantly-glimpsed silver crescent of the coast, and began leaning gently west. Soot let out a quiet high sound that broke her heart for a moment, then turned.

Then his head swung up and left again, and for a second she thought he'd reject her. He looked right up at his fast-receding stablemates and bellowed, a roar out of ancient times. The next sweep of his wings almost threw her, but it was westward and taut, a fierce, proud challenge for the sky. Not trusting herself to speak and still struggling a little for purchase on his back, Phoebe leaned forward as much as she could and patted his neck.

High calls answered from behind and above, closer than expected, and sudden plunges in the air on either side rocked Soot in his path. Phoebe found herself at the head of a new V, beautiful formation flying that was clearly at least part training. To her right, barely thirty feet away, the escapees' leader turned dire purple eyes on her – not on Soot, but on Phoebe herself.

As best she could from her position, Phoebe bowed her head to them. The roar that answered was mightier even than Soot's, and Phoebe's head filled with images of stadiums blazing with light, crowds and chequered flags and trophies. Balancing carefully, she took one hand off Soot's neck and raised it. Soot roared again, and Phoebe burst out laughing, the icy night snatching at her throat and crownfeathers.

Then the pack dropped away and turned north, leaving Phoebe and her new partner to the long flight to their new home.