Phoebe

> hey

[Niki]: If you're trying to wake me up in the middle of the night so I'm tired tomorrow, it's not necessary.

> you cant sleep either huh

[Niki]: What do you want, Phoebe?

> i just want someone to talk to

> when this is all over

> after tomorrow

> can we be friends again

> like it used to be

[Niki]: Do you know how much Lautern has invested in me and Lyonne?

[Niki]: Incandesia and Phosphora, as a pair, cost 65mil Royals

[Niki]: Lautern's operating budget for this year is 128mil Royals

[Niki]: My personal sponsorships total just over 32mil Royals

[Niki]: Hermeia and Temisia are both twice that size

[Niki]: And you come in with a wild runt of a dragon and your aristocratic pocket money and threaten to win a championship, and then in your guileless stupor you wonder why everyone fears you and gets angry at you

> i just wanted to race

[Niki]: Phoebe, there isn't a single person in this sport you haven't made look a fool. Riders, team owners, vets, techs, broadcasters, journalists

[Niki]: If it turns out you did it with mob backing and all you've achieved gets stripped from you I will cheer

[Niki]: If you hand me the championship tomorrow I will throw it in the dirt and trample it

[Niki]: If you win, and win honestly, and somehow prove that you won honestly, then perhaps His Eternal Majesty's favour might protect you

[Niki]: Don't message me again

Phoebe let her phone drop onto her chest, blinking as the bedroom's darkness crowded back in. Her heart ached. That explained why Niki had been so cold to her at the party. And at the last few races, too.

Like everything else about the room, the darkness was a crafted thing. Modern blackout materials lined the heavy velvet curtains, which were fitted perfectly to block out exactly and entirely the window. There were dimmer controls for every light fitting so she could tune for any light level she wanted if she didn't want pitch darkness. She could have controlled the temperature of the mattress, the floor, the air, each independently.

None of it was bringing sleep any closer. She'd sent the message to Niki in forlorn hope after Thessaly hadn't answered – presumably she was used to sleeping the night before big shows – and that itself had been after more than three hours of lying fruitlessly on the perfect mattress, fighting off thoughts too complex and entangled for the night.

Groaning, she got up and went to the bathroom. There was no chill to the air like there should have been, like there would have been in any environment less opulent. Back in the bedroom, she slid open one of the curtains and looked up at the veil of moonlight on the scattered tufts of cloud. If she sank back into herself she could feel the position of the moon, away to the south, waning now towards a crescent.

Maybe the sky would be clear enough to see it if she went out for a walk. There was no curfew at the Palace, she could come and go as she pleased. And she'd only have to go out to the plaza steps. She found the control for the lights in the bedposts and slid them gently up to a dim glow. As her eyes adjusted, she exchanged her pyjamas for a plain t-shirt and slacks. She slipped her feet into her sneakers and grabbed her team jacket from the back of the door.

Stepping out into the corridor was way too bright, the Palace's ancient splendour seeming to amplify the hundreds of small candelabra. It was dizzying, the hallways hard to navigate. She relied almost as much on her moon sense as her eyes to keep her bearings.

The marble-floored atrium of the gatehouse, finally, managed to be cold. Phoebe crossed the floor, resisting the urge to tip-toe and wincing as her shoes squeaked. The doors were closed, their vast panels too heavy to think about opening by hand, but there was a discreet black sensor pad on the wall just off to one side, and its red indicator LED blinked green at a tap of her card-key. Steadily, silently, the doors swung open.

Biting cold air rushed in, and with it turbulent breeze. Phoebe walked out into the night. Ahead, the Plaza bathed in cool electric light, bigger than a football field. The night hovered over the trees that ringed it, leaching away the crisp shapes of their topiary. Above, the sky was deep blue-grey, only a few stars making it through the light pollution. There wasn't much cloud, just tufts of it here and there, all limned in silver.

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The moon hung bright, off to Phoebe’s left, more a thumbnail than a fingernail. Phoebe walked forward, across the flat, ageworn paving slabs to the corner at the top of the steps. It was a long way down to the Plaza itself – fifty-two steps, thirty feet or so. The pitch of the steps was relatively steep too, probably to ensure that people approaching the Palace felt an appropriate sense of awe or something.

Letting her legs choose, Phoebe made her way slowly down the steps, hand resting lightly on the wooden handrail in case there was dew to make them slippery. Away from the porch, the wind plucked harder at her thin clothes. She stopped to do up the jacket.

She crossed the Plaza, sometimes looking up at the moon, sometimes trying to recognise some of the stars. Muted as the individual lights were, mixed in among the trees and around the fountain, they were still too much, though. It wasn't that she'd consciously decided to walk to the Stadium building and the stables, but that was the path she took on the far side of the Plaza when she got there.

The path was darker, the lighting lower and downcast, and from there she saw a few more stars, the sparkle of a satellite, the blinking red lights of aircraft low on the southern horizon. A different guiding instinct was steadily displacing the moon's. As with her privileges at the Palace, as a team owner she had 24-hour access to Tenebrae’s stable and Soot.

A security turnstile and two layers of sliding glass doors stencilled with ICDA and Imperial League logos yielded to her pass – she hadn't even really been conscious of picking it up along with her Palace key-card – and she was inside. One of the security staff at the front desk called out a greeting, but didn't challenge her when she just waved and kept going on her own.

There was another internal checkpoint, another quiet exchange of uncomplicated greetings with a security guard, to access the race personnel areas, and then four flights of stairs and a long walk down the concourse to Tenebrae’s stable at the far end. The night's emptiness robbed the building of its atmosphere, and even with the decals of riders and team logos and dragons and images of the course spread across every wall, it felt more like an airport terminal, or a big train station, in the small hours when traffic was at its lowest.

The outer wall of Tenebrae’s stable was noticeably plainer than its neighbours. Teams were allowed to stick whatever decals or posters they wanted to their own sections of wall, but Petunia still hadn't settled on a design she was happy with, and Phoebe didn't really care enough to push her about it. Beyond Tenebrae’s stable were three standing empty, from when the Imperial League had had more competing teams. The unused concourse space was parked up with trolleys the teams had used to bring their equipment up from their freight containers.

Phoebe tapped her pass to the door release and stepped inside, into a space immediately more intimate and familiar. The air was warm and close, smelling of dragon and carrying some heat from the floor where Soot slept. Only the thin row of lights along the edges of the ceiling were lit, so Soot himself was a dark lump down the far end of the room. Workstations in Tenebrae colours reflected the light oddly, their shapes softening and melting around the unmistakable flat black panes of monitors.

Keeping her tread light, Phoebe walked over to Soot, watching the rise and fall of his flank. As he so often did, he had tucked the end of his snout under the fold of his left wing. Phoebe couldn't help but smile, fighting the urge she always got to throw herself on him in a wide-armed embrace. She settled for placing her hand on the ridge of his spine, relishing the smooth, dry warmth of his scales.

He shifted at her touch, hesitated, and then his neck unfurled, bringing the enormous wedge of a head around. Phoebe bowed low and spread her crownfeathers wide, only to receive the hot, stinky flicker of the dragon's tongue over her forehead. As she spluttered, he huffed at her playfully.

Matching his gentle laughter, she straightened and reached out to stroke the ridge of his nose. "Sorry, big guy, didn't mean to disturb you."

He pressed up past her hand to lick her face again. She let him, despite his breath. It was hard to tell exactly how much he understood about the structure of the competition he was at the sharp end of, but dragons were definitely empathetic enough to have grasped that this was a big weekend for the team.

Resting her forehead against his snout – the front of his lower jaw was as wide as her head – she said, "Mind if I stay here a bit?"

Soot huffed again, little more than a slightly heavy breath. Then he shifted his weight, straightening up from the rightward lean he'd been lying in. He twitched his left wing a couple of times, looking down in that direction.

Phoebe walked round to the patch of floor he was indicating. It would be warm to sit on, but not dangerously so. She lowered herself carefully, avoiding putting too much weight on her hands. The floor was like sitting on laundry fresh from the dryer, except less soft. She leaned back against Soot’s flank, just ahead of his shoulder, right below where her foot would rest in its stirrup in the race.

The dragon's head swung around to hang over her, his eye maybe a foot from hers. Up this close, it looked like a portal into an infinite purple kaleidoscope, one haunted by a distant dark spirit. Slowly, he blinked at her, then he lowered his chin to the floor, the very edge of his jaw resting slightly on Phoebe’s toes.

Tipping her head back against his scales, surrounded by his warmth and scent, Phoebe closed her eyes.