Qualifying
Phoebe leaned right and let Soot accelerate into the stadium through the twentieth ring. The grandstand broke the wind, softening the chill, fine rain. Still, she kept her mouth shut, lips pressed tight, so that she could hold her head up for best posture. The day was cold enough that Soot needed the extra push up to the start of the fast lap to stay in his temperature window.
The stadium was only a brief respite. There were no calls from the stable to interrupt, no warnings of slow dragons ahead. It was this run, it had to be. Phoebe shifted her weight back slightly, bringing her knees to right-angles ready for the hard left out through the first ring. They flew over the rickety marquee that temporarily shielded the podium from the weather, and then it was time.
Letting her weight down low onto her left leg, Phoebe waited for Soot to follow the turn and then stretched forward. The cliff-edge shot by underneath and Soot plunged from the second ring, across the face of the rock to the third. He weaved in and out and in again round the ribs of the cliff to the fourth, and Phoebe held herself patiently waiting for his movement each time. Trying to force tighter turns out of him here would only cost her speed.
Out of the fourth, Soot pumped his wings wider and Phoebe pulled back again to let him level out, twenty feet above the narrow stone bank of the lakeshore. For a few seconds he could beat steadily as Phoebe gathered up their speed and brought them gently round to face the fifth ring. She lifted her weight a little higher off from his back, and then let his sharp forward stroke press her back down into the climb.
The wall of rock still towered over them, black with moisture. Where bigger dragons would swing out wider to the left to round the knife-edge promontory, Soot could stay closer, his route shorter. It also gave them half a moment's more shelter before emerging into the full assault of the wind.
Soot took it impishly, rolling hard with Phoebe’s slinging of her own weight rightward to put his wings closer to vertical than horizontal, then flicking them at the incoming gust. Phoebe felt her gut lurch, but the extra push put them through the sixth ring and the wind was behind them as Soot beat again for altitude and they rose level with and then up on top of the promontory.
From the seventh ring, at the peak of the course, there was finally a clear view of the Palace itself, its ancient, blunt, blocky walls rising from the rocky crown of the mesa. Only the ornate gatehouse facing the plaza towards which Soot now turned really betrayed the luxury within. Imperial flags snapped and fluttered from the battlements, their whites turned drab by the day.
The Imperial Plaza was a wide grey disk ringed with sculpted, ornamental trees, a tall fountain at its centre, currently switched off. Steps rose to the palace on the north-east side; opposite them to Soot’s right were the footpaths leading to the gardens and the stadium. At right angles to that axis were the eighth and twelfth rings.
Phoebe leaned and Soot swooped and they turned hard left again through the eighth under the dark face of the palace mount. Then it was over a cliff again, descending sharply into the river gorge, Soot throwing one hard backwing stroke to brake them right and down through the ninth, his wingtip inches from the opposite face of the chasm. It was dark but sheltered as they passed under the prehistoric rock bridge for which the Emperor had chosen this as his fortress.
Below, the river churned and pounded, its roar a cushion in the air, a harmony to the rush of Soot’s flight. The moment was over sooner than its comfort merited, Phoebe leaning gently right with Soot to hug the mesa wall as it curved east. For a hundred yards they had the wind as their ally, and then they were once again in lee.
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The tenth ring stood out from the cliff with the eleventh tight off to its right. Below were acres of concrete tightly parked with trucks and cars, the transport of the army of palace staff and the even larger force it took to bring the Imperial League here once a year.
Phoebe held Soot a little out wide on entry, feeling for the line she'd practiced, not the tightest line that Soot could take. That let them take the tenth at a smooth slant, only a gentle wriggle required to carry speed back left through the eleventh. Then it was hugging the cliffside again, the stone more its natural reddish-brown here where less of the rain was reaching it.
The Imperial Plaza looked different approached from the south, the view up the promontory that hid the sixth ring bleaker and wilder than the Palace itself. The twelfth ring was closer to the palace than the eighth, too, pinching the course deceptively sharp on the way in. Soot loved it, and Phoebe let him go as hard as he wanted.
Wind caught them again as they pulled away from the palace along a tree-lined boulevard, deserted apart from a few die-hard race fans peering up into the rain with narrowed eyes. To the right were staggered tiers of ornamental gardens, dropping away to the dense green of the orchards. Some of their colour survived the drear of the day.
Phoebe kept her stance even, controlled, forward, as Soot stretched his wings and drove them towards the thirteenth ring. It hung on the right-hand side of the boulevard, stark and incongruous. Twenty feet lower and almost eighty yards out to the right was the fourteenth, the fifteenth the same again below that, a staircase of tight chicanes that would be Soot’s prime hunting ground in the race.
Now, with no dragon close ahead to try to pass, they could throw everything into speed. As they hit the thirteenth ring, Phoebe dived right as hard and deep as she could, hooking her left boot against the arch of that stirrup and dangling as Soot folded and lunged. They wheeled hard in the air, one lopsided stroke forward and then a writhe ran down Soot’s spine and they went through the fourteenth almost sideways.
Phoebe let inertia carry her over to Soot’s left, sagged with the slam of deceleration as he spread wide, and let the world spin, grey sky and green cherry and apple trees whirling and the fifteenth ring was a flicker and Soot beat again and Phoebe forced herself back up and steady and they were climbing along the bare rock spine towards the mountain whose white cap disappeared into the low clouds ahead.
Remembering to breathe, Phoebe pushed her movements slightly ahead of Soot’s stroke, mitigating the drag of holding her weight back so he could climb. The sixteenth ring floated in the air on the far side of the weather-beaten stone needle that was the Monument of the 522, almost edge-on to their approach.
Soot took Phoebe’s pace and hauled up the mountainside, neck straight and straining. Phoebe watched the angle of their ascent. Even a foot of unnecessary climb was time lost. When they reached the sixteenth, they took it low, Soot snapping his wings shut in the turn to close their profile and then opening them again sharply to control the dive into the valley beyond.
Here the ground was scrubby and untended, a blur even when not covered at speed. Soot kept his stroke even, and Phoebe matched him, eyes on the trio of rings ahead. They marked the lowest point on the course, just above the orchard's outer gate, the eighteenth ring barely a single ring's width out of line between the seventeenth and nineteenth. They were just close enough together to make a desperately fast chicane.
Phoebe took Soot in tight, trusting him to match his stroke to the intervals of the rings just as they'd practiced. She had to keep stretched out as flat as she could, only an inch or two between her belly and his spine, as he beat rightward through the right edge of seventeen then left at the left edge of eighteen.
The nineteenth was felt more as the twist of Soot’s spine under her than seen, and then she could lift herself up and back a bit – not too much – for the steady rise back to the stadium. Wind bit and plucked at her cheeks, but she kept her focus, kept her stance. The twentieth ring swelled to greet them, and then they were through into the warmth of the cheering and the last few seconds to the end of the lap.
Even then she couldn't quite relax; they had to follow the course for the in-lap, and back down the cliff to the lakeside was tricky even at reduced pace. Phoebe almost missed Petunia calling the lap time, and the second place it had earned them. As the lake water rushed past, Phoebe allowed herself a thin smile. Second would have to be good enough.