Race

Phoebe tossed her water bottle back towards the stable as she saw Soot drop his drinking hose. They rolled together off the perch and back into flight up the stadium. Below, the applause was scattered, and Phoebe could hear the anticipation in it. They were waiting to see where Phoebe would rejoin the race relative to Lucia Aelschu.

The green ring at the end of the perch lane looked a long way away, but Phoebe didn't ask for an update on Lucia's progress. It was a breezy day, headwind plucking at her bangs as she rose and fell with Soot's stroke. Ahead, she could see the silver tail of Arden Markwe's Fleet as the race leader climbed from the first ring up towards the second.

There was a change in the noise from the crowd, a rustling discernible even with Soot's speed and the wind in her ears. Phoebe fought the reflex to tense. Lucia would be coming through the stadium at twice Soot's current airspeed, and anything that distracted Soot or threw off his stroke right now would be a disaster. Right now Phoebe didn't need to know exactly where Olympia was; his shadow would tell her when he was close.

Even knowing all that it was hard to keep her breath steady and fluid. The green ring grew and grew as it raced towards them, time stretching so that thirty-five knots seemed a crawl. The crowd's murmurs swelled and rose with Phoebe's pulse. She plunged her attention deep into her rhythm, the movements of her body that kept Soot to the strict speed limit, waiting in slight, desperate dread for the rush of the bigger dragon's passage overhead.

Then they were through the perch ring and she could lean back and let Soot's next stroke throw them hard aloft with the crowd roaring behind and snatching a glance over her shoulder Olympia was a sheet of gold stretched across half the sky but he was behind her and ahead the course bent gently left as it climbed to the second ring that would shoot them into the snarling, tight section through the university towers.

"She's done it! She's through!"

"And that's ruined Lucia's strategy, a moment ago she was hunting down Arden, all ready to take the lead easily when she caught up to him, and now she's going to have to get past Phoebe."

"She'll not pass Soot through the complex, either."

"Indeed, and even if Olympia can stay close to Soot through there, Soot will still have the advantage all the way around the Stalichny Tower."

"Olympia out of shape through the third, too, look at how much tighter Soot's taking it around the southwest tower."

"That's going to cost Lucia a lot of time. Even if she can pass Phoebe over the river – and you'd have to say that's a tall order now, on this lap, she's slipping back from Arden."

"Still thirty-one laps to go, though. Lot of time for her to catch up."

"That assumes that Arden's willing to let her. Remember, or if you're new to the Imperial League – and if you are, welcome, thanks for joining us, it's lovely to have you – the rule on team orders is very strict. Regulation 22, clause 4b says that a team may instruct one of their riders to yield to the other only if (i) the riders are in consecutive places in the order, (ii), the trailing rider is ahead in the championship with a rider from at least one other team in close contention and, critically, (iii), the leading rider can yield without compromising their own race pace."

"Small chance of Arden doing that at the moment."

"Yes, he's almost twelve seconds ahead of Lucia. What that means, just to explain for the viewers, is that Royal Hermeia can't instruct Arden to slow down so that Lucia catches up. She's got to catch up to him on merit, and if she does that he'll let her past for the win."

"But first she's got to pass Phoebe. She gained a bit over the river, but Soot looks like he's enjoying himself."

Soot crested the ninth ring and tipped forward for the descent to the tenth. Phoebe leaned out left from his back, trying to keep the move even, holding him tight against the line of the approaching ring. Above, she could hear the downbeats of Olympia's wide wings, sliding slightly to her right.

Ducking and swooping, Soot cruised through the ring and fell back into his stroke as they started the long right-hander around the arena building. There was no angle for her to see where Lucia was, but she was too close. Phoebe set her legs, weight maybe sixty percent on her right, foot turned heel-out against the stirrup to keep her more or less squarely astride.

"You can't keep pushing much longer," Adelie said over the radio. "We saw some orange there."

It had been eight laps, and Adelie had the data in front of her. Phoebe gritted her teeth. "Is that the projection?"

"Current data," Adelie answered. "It was only a moment, but…"

"The projection still isn't stable enough to be used in these conditions, sorry," Stefan interrupted.

"Radio discipline, Stefan." Adelie didn't hesitate. Phoebe made a mental note to thank her for that as Soot beat steadily through the eleventh. There was still no way for her to see where Olympia was without throwing Soot off his rhythm.

"Here they come through the stadium to start lap 43 and Lucia is right on Phoebe's tail, you can actually see the difference in strength between Soot's and Olympia's wings with every stroke."

"She'll not hold her off long like that."

"Maybe if she can get up into the University complex again?"

"Tall order."

"She's been fast through there all weekend, that's where she passed Olympia on the opening lap, and where she made up the time to pass Lucia again in the perches."

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"For my money Olympia's still faster averaged over the whole lap."

"Indeed, but it's a question of where Phoebe has the advantages. Here we go again."

Soot went through the second ring tight on the left-hand side, his wingtip mere feet from the stonework of the adjacent building. Lucia was somewhere to the right, only just behind Soot's wing and carrying speed. Phoebe waited, left leg tense in the stirrup and ready to drop her there, and she pulled back and down, gritting her teeth for what the harsh manoeuvre was doing to Soot's shoulders.

He took it gamely, flapping an ungainly stroke to swirl around the corner of the building. A gust of wind funneling through the courtyard below pushed at them as they slid across the face of the third ring. Olympia was so close behind that Phoebe actually felt the pressure of his braking stroke as he pulled up to abort the overtake he'd been trying.

That left the big gold almost directly overhead as the braking stroke carried him higher out from between the buildings. It took every muscle in Phoebe's back to haul herself over to Soot's right as he struggled to steady himself for the twist round to re-enter the Quad for the fourth ring. The last few laps, they'd been close enough to the SHL building that Phoebe could catch glimpses of Soot's reflection in the windows, but now they were much further out.

Again she found herself without an easy way to get a clear look at Olympia. He would have been off his stroke too, but that just put him somewhere in the wide open sky behind her, pulling back around into her wake. She had to concentrate on her balance as Soot threaded the needle between the SHL and the next building up.

The fourth ring hung over the midpoint of the quad, above a circle of uncomfortable-looking concrete benches. Phoebe threw her weight left as Soot dipped through the ring and took the suspended moment to twist, painfully, from the base of her spine, just catching a glimpse of Lucia on Olympia's back maybe a length or two behind Soot's tail.

"Well, Phoebe held on."

"That was fighty through the University."

"Fighty but fair, you'd have to say, wouldn't you?"

"Nothing illegal. But what does it serve? Look at them now, Lucia's going to get her over the river, or maybe on the way back, Soot can't defend this."

"It does look that way, yes."

"And if Phoebe pushes Soot too hard now he's not going to be able to hold off Corredeira when Feran catches up to them."

"Surely that's an if, don't you think? Feran's eight seconds behind and not gaining much even with all this scrapping costing Phoebe and Lucia time."

"I wouldn't want to be only eight seconds ahead of Feran Andoal on a tired dragon and with twenty-two laps still to go, Sam."

"Arden will be loving this, though. His lead's up to seventeen seconds."

"He will, but the team will be fuming."

The water in the river was grey-green, not too different to the colour of the sky. It was too choppy to see Soot's reflection as he carried Phoebe over to the far bank and the man-made inlets of the old abandoned dock. Ahead, the seventh ring faced down under the arches of the preserved cranes, making an awkward descending corner that had to be approached slightly from the far side.

Olympia was right behind Soot's tail and gaining steadily. Out the other side of the cranes, the course went back across the river, straight and flat and fast. Soot probably couldn't hold on to the end of the lap.

Phoebe kept her weight right, just slightly off-centre, letting Olympia creep up along Soot's left flank. Like any tricky corner, the bigger dragon would need to take a wider line, but would carry more speed doing so. And the seventh, for all its awkwardness, wasn't tight enough for wild aerobatics.

She moved forward, staying low, her knee angled down below her ankle in the right stirrup. It was a weird position, dragging at Soot's stroke, but it held him on the tight approach to the ring and he pushed through it. Olympia's wings flapped right behind Soot's, with only a foot or two of clearance.

Finally they were alongside the ring. Phoebe pulled over, harder and lower, and Soot went with her, left wing high, right scooping below to bring them round, then they were dipping under the blue-painted crossbar of the crane, Phoebe pushing herself astride and back as Soot's next stroke lifted them and suddenly she had to duck because there were gold wings right overhead, climbing through the eighth ring and Phoebe could only laugh at Lucia's impatience and wild courage.

"She made that look easy in the end."

"No need for that sort of thing, Sam, she could have played it safe and taken Phoebe at will over the river."

"Looked good, though, didn't it?"

"Hah. Let's see if it's worth it. She needs to be almost a second a lap faster than Arden."

"Arden's pushing pretty hard. What are the chances that Fleet starts to tire, do you think?"

"Fleet's a fighter and these are good conditions for her. I'd say this is slipping away from Lucia."

The ground of the Zubrija stadium wasn't grass, but some slightly cushioned, slightly slippery plastic. It felt weird under the boots of Adelie's overalls, like badly-laid linoleum. Despite the breeze and the sunless day, she was hot inside her uniform, still gathering her breath from the hurried and heavily-laden descent from the Tenebrae stable. She was getting better at it, and having Stefan to help haul the drinking gear made a huge difference, but it was still a lot more exercise than she'd signed up for.

The air seemed to vibrate with the roiling, rising noise of the crowd as they waited for the lead dragons to come through the final ring. It was a little dizzying, like too-loud ASMR, pressing on one ear and then the other. It was also the only way she was going to know the race was over – the podium area where they waited was at the opposite end of the stadium from the final ring, three hundred yards away. The dragons would be little more than pinpricks when they came through.

Steadily, the volume in the stadium rose, mangling the Tannoy to unintelligibility as it tried to read off the winning order. A wave of sound rushed down the channel between the grandstands as the winner came through, and Adelie pressed her hands to her ears, squinting into the distance. At least the weird floor kept the noise from coming up through her boots.

The silver drake in the lead descended smoothly as she swelled into view, her first steps light, almost dance-like, then heavy as her weight began to tell more than her wings. Adelie could see the floor material deforming under her ankles, hopefully cushioning some of the impact. Fleet slid a little as she stopped, but as she craned her neck round to look down at the crew rushing over to greet her, her head was steady.

A few seconds later, and a few dozen pounds heavier, Olympia lumbered to a stop on the far side of Fleet. Adelie watched Lucia Aelschu drop from the saddle and embrace her teammate, before the assembled Royal Hermeia techs and handlers enveloped them. Then it was Soot's turn.

He came in slower and gentler than the first two, taking only a half-dozen steps to come to a stop. Even though they were used to it and had waited at the closest corner of the staff pen, that left Adelie and Stefan a solid fifty yards to cover to drag Soot's water supply over, and Phoebe was already out of her stirrups and pressing her cheek to the lunar's flank as he craned towards them.

It felt slightly exposed, to be just the three of them when Royal Hermeia must have brought thirty people down for their two dragons, but Adelie ignored the drones buzzing overhead. She waited for Stefan's signal as he hoisted the drinking hose up to Soot's open mouth, then turned the faucet. Soot started to drink, and Adelie turned to help Stefan with the post-race checks, but Phoebe caught her sleeve.

She found herself pulled into one of the rider's rare, awkward hugs, which came with a complimentary faceful of crownfeathers. Stiffly, she folded her arms around Phoebe's back. It was too hot for an embrace like this. Phoebe's goggles pressed into Adelie's temple.

Phoebe said, "Thanks."

"Just doing my job," Adelie managed, a little uneasily.

"You're doing a great job." Phoebe's voice was a little muddied by Adelie's shoulder. "You're really starting to lead the vet team well, I don't thank you enough for that."

"Am I?" She didn't feel like much of a leader. Especially compared to what Petunia and Phoebe contributed to the team.

Phoebe pulled back from the hug. "Yeah! Come on, Adelie, give yourself a little credit, we're a real team now."