Phoebe

The February air at four thousand feet was stinging cold even through Phoebe's flight suit. Still, she sat upright on Soot's back, legs relaxed and feet gently tucked into the lightweight harness belted around the drake's back and shoulders. With his sickness, she hadn't been able to spend as much time bonding with him as she'd planned, but he'd been more responsive than she could have hoped.

Now, as he beat his wings steadily, driving them at a lazy sixty knots towards the Imperial City, she could feel his eagerness. He was glad to be well again – whatever the stinky powder Adelie had laced through his sand had worked wonders – but he also just seemed to share Phoebe's love for the sky. Already, she didn't need to think to move with the rhythm of his strokes.

Below, silver-green fields cut into patchwork by dark hedgerows spread out for miles to either side, but ahead it was all slate-grey roofs and in the distance the blocky shape of the Imperial Castle. She was struck for a moment by the temptation to take a photo and send it to Thessaly, but her phone was switched off and zipped away in a pouch inside her flight suit specifically to ensure she didn't get distracted by the mermaid. Dropping her phone from this altitude would be a particularly silly way to add to the team's financial burdens.

Besides, it was already time to begin their descent. Phoebe permitted herself to imagine the future in which Tenebrae had all the facilities of a real team and Soot would make this journey in a carrier wagon. She kind of hated the thought of him penned up like that for a couple of hours on the highway.

She leaned forward, reaching out with her hand up the back of Soot's neck. He knew all the standard touch signals, but she could tell he was already paying more attention to how her weight shifted. A purely trained dragon might have tipped into a precise twenty-degree dive at that signal – steeper than they needed – but Soot read how slowly she shifted and just opened his wings to a glide.

This riding position was a little harder on Phoebe's legs but she held herself steady. She had the musculature for it and she needed to train herself as much as Soot. As their altitude decreased, she picked up the dark line of the Rhuen river cutting through the centre of the Capital. She didn't even need to lean, somehow the dragon picked up her intent. She resisted the urge to flatten herself against him in the impression of a hug.

The city slid steadily by until she could make out the long, low line of the New Stadium, stretched out before the cliffs under the Palace. She'd checked and rechecked that it was still legal to fly in, made sure she got clear instructions, but she still felt a moment's shiver of unease. It would be a spectacular entrance to swoop in up the middle of the stadium when almost everyone else would have entered on the ground today.

Well, she'd promised Mr. Castelloro spectacle. The stadium was really a pair of grandstands, facing each other across the 180-foot-wide channel of the start/finish straight, with the race stables above them and the starter perches like a neat row of TV aerials along the roofline. Today, for the weigh-in, the race rings were missing from the ends of the lane, leaving the massive structure looking oddly humble.

Soot took her direction smoothly, circling round to the north end of the stadium with his wings held out straight and wide. The lane opened to them as they came in; normally it was a strip of fairly featureless turf up to the podium at the end, but today half the length was covered in pavilions for the scrutineers and pens for the teams.

The first hundred yards or so had been left clear for a landing run. Soot swooped into alignment with it, neck rising to give himself a touch of a stall, and set his first foot down so delicately Phoebe barely felt it. Then his second was heavier and she let it bounce her weight off his back, keeping her legs half-stiffened to share the shock, feet pulling in the stirrups to keep them off his wings and it was two, three, four long strides, wings folding slowly and dropping to a walk and stopping, still a good distance back from the first line of fences.

Phoebe grinned, looking back at the neat row of Soot's footprints. Let anyone who took the short stopping run as evidence he wasn't fast enough consider instead what it said about his agility. Patting his shoulder, she wiggled her feet free of the stirrups and leapt from his back, spreading her crownfeathers to let her featherfall carry her to the ground.

Over where the crowds of team personnel and other dragons were gathered around the scrutineering pavilions, she could see two figures already walking towards her. Even with as high as her spirits were, her heart leapt. The taller of the two's head was haloed in golden hair that stood out against the dreary day; the shorter man was crowned in red-brown, cut short under his fiery crownfeathers. Phoebe jumped a little and waved, then glanced up at Soot.

The drake, for once, wasn't watching her. His neck was up, head craning to look over the tents. Seeing other dragons for the first time in a while. Probably seeing stellar and solar drakes for the first time in his life, she realised, she hadn't thought about that. He looked as nervous about them as he had when she'd first met him in that miserable barn at his home ranch.

"Hey, Soot," Phoebe called up to him, then waited for his attention. He really did want to look at the other drakes and maybe not ever do more than that, from the way he lingered, but then, slowly, the wedge head turned down to peer at her. She reached up towards him, giving him the offer of touch if he wanted it. Keeping her voice low and gentle, she said, "We have to meet some new people, ok? They'll be friendly, I promise."

Then she sensed movement out of the corner of her eye and turned just in time to be swept into an enormous, bony hug. "Phoebe!"

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Her assailant's overalls were sage-green, with black inset panels, and they smelled of new plastics. The torso they enfolded was slender, every bit as athletically lean as Phoebe remembered. She could feel stray wisps of golden hair tickling her forehead.

Eventually she pulled back and looked up into the angular face and silver eyes. "Hey, Niki." Then, to the shorter figure arriving at a more dignified pace, "Lyonne! How's it going?"

Nikita Coro shook her by the shoulders and for a second Phoebe thought she'd be hugged again. Instead, the tall rider said, "We missed you, it's been so long."

"Missed you too, Niki. Congrats on your results last year."

Niki kept hold of one of her shoulders while she reached over to shake Lyonne Ertku's offered hand. He was as quiet as Niki was loud, face as muted as always, but even he was smiling. He said, "Didn't feel the same without you getting in between us."

"Wait till you see what I'm gonna do to you both this year," Phoebe laughed.

"I'm so glad you made it." There was a glimmer of moisture in Niki's eyes, Phoebe realised. "Did you hear I changed my pronouns?"

Phoebe reached up to her shoulder and covered Niki's hand with her own. "Ze/zir, right? Congrats on that too."

Niki seized her in another hug, and a startled grunt gave a moment's warning that ze had grabbed Lyonne too. Phoebe laughed as he stumbled into them, moving her feet to absorb the impact as she had so many times before.

Overhead, Soot coughed gently. Selen wriggled free and looked up at him, checking belatedly for any signs of tight breathing or strain. The flight here hadn't been strenuous compared to what he was trained for, but she should have checked first. Fortunately the drake looked fine, just pensive.

"So this is your mysterious lunar wildling, ha, Phoebe?" Niki stepped forward, bowed gently to the dragon and spread zir crownfeathers. "Hello Soot." Lyonne matched the gesture, and Phoebe remembered the last time they'd been through this, meeting each others' drakelets two years previously. Niki had been so nervous and stiffly formal that ze'd spooked Phoebe's mount, Jaurti, and Lyonne, ever the cool diplomat, had had to make peace between them. No sign of that nervousness now.

Soot, for his part, relaxed. He lowered his head and flickered his tongue at their raised hands, then allowed his snout to be patted. But he didn't linger, craning up again to look over at the other dragons. Phoebe chuckled and patted his flank. "Come on, Soot, let's go. Maybe you can meet some new friends today, that's what you want, right?"

Parrying Niki's questions and drinking in zir stories, she led Soot over to the pens. What awaited them was an empty square of grass, fenced off from the hubbub, with a plain white sign by the gate reading 'Tenebrae - Soot' in a chunky sans-serif font. Every other stall was full of personnel fussing around a draconic occupant, and heads began to turn even before Phoebe had got Soot to the water trough. Petunia hadn't been able to get time off work and they'd decided to save the cost of Adelie's train fare down to the Imperial City from Rindburg, so it was just rider and dragon here today.

Most of the attendants were theatre for an event like this, anyway. Once upon a time, it had been required that dragon and rider fly in alone, as Phoebe had done. Phoebe tried to ignore the attention, grateful for the conversation with Niki and Lyonne to keep others at bay. They weren't her only friends in the paddock, but they probably were the only people here as new at this as she was.

Well, them and some of the dragons. The next pen contained a well-crested stellar drake called Vision, surrounded by vet techs in the eye-straining yellow-and-red livery of the Reubas team. Soot didn't quite go right up to the fence – it would have folded at even a hint of his weight – but he lingered on that side of the enclosure, looking shyly at Vision until the silver looked back.

Soot ducked his head and huffed gently, and to Phoebe's surprise, Vision returned the gesture, nod a little smaller and snort a little louder. Then, carefully picking his way around his attendants, the older drake shuffle-walked over and brought his snout up close to Soot's. A million colours glittered across his scales despite the dullness of the day, framed by the lines of bone-white crest along his jaw and up from his eye-ridges into the beginnings of horns.

Phoebe watched the drakes exchange tongue-flickers, alert for any sign of aggression in her partner. Soot could be playful, but now he seemed too awed to do more than stare. The Reubas vets let Vision linger another moment, then began to draw him away. Soot didn't move, watching the other dragon go with a stiffness that belied his youthful agility.

"Ms. Tenryuu?" The voice was crisp and formal. Phoebe turned to see one of the stewards' clerks waiting by the entrance to the pen, clipboard in hand. For a moment, she hesitated, wondering if she could, or should, leave Soot to his pining but the man didn't look patient. Phoebe's time slot was the last in the schedule, so he'd probably had a long day already.

She went over and let him register her arrival. By the time he was finished with his checklist of introductory questions, curiosity had gotten the best of Soot and he was leaning over her shoulder. Idly, she reached up and patted his chin while listening to the instructions from the clerk.

When the clerk left, Niki and Lyonne came over from where they'd been hovering out in the main aisle. Niki's frown was a picture. "Where's your team?"

Phoebe grinned, "This is it, it's just me, I'm doing it all myself."

"Come on, Phoebe," Lyonne narrowed his eyes and folded his arms. "The regs require you to have a licensed vet and you're not that."

"Okay, yeah, you got me." Letting herself laugh, Selen matched his pose. "Even I couldn't convince you I qualified vet in a year."

"So where's your vets?" Lyonne didn't sound amused. He seldom did, but something in his manner brought home to Phoebe all the training and preparation he must have done to be here.

Trying to shake the tension, Phoebe shrugged. "Saving transport budget. I checked they only need me here today."

"And you flew here without a ground crew?" Now Niki, too, sounded alarmed.

"It's not that far, I mean, we took it easy, when we flew down from the mountains that was twice as far, no more like three times as far." Phoebe chuckled again, "Dragons are good at flying, Niki, I don't know if you've noticed."

That got a low smile out of zir at least. "What are you doing tonight? We've got dinner with some sponsors but we should get a drink after and catch up, properly."

Despite herself, Phoebe felt her face slip. "Gotta get this one back home." She looked up at Soot again, who lowered his snout to nuzzle her hair. That helped keep any hint of bitterness out of her tone. "You have your swanky dinner with the money men, Niki, I get to spend mine in actually good company."

"Alright, have it your way then," Niki said, grin growing a bit more natural. "We'll see you at the race, though, right?"

"I mean, yeah, obviously I didn't fly all this way just for fun, Niki, obviously if I've made it this far I'll be at the race." Phoebe laughed again. "I don't know if you'll see me, though, you have to catch up to me first."