Phoebe

High above the barbican at the foot of the Imperial Mount, Phoebe leaned forward on Soot's back and felt him relax into a steady glide through the tenth ring. The cloud cover had broken earlier in the qualifying session and now the city glimmered with spots of lingering moisture. In the distance, eager spring sunshine struck searchlight-beams through the departing rain.

There was enough wind that she had to pitch her voice carefully for the microphone pressed to her cheek. "Are we on time for one more run?"

"A hundred and forty seconds left." Petunia's voice was bright in her ear, cutting easily through the low whoosh of the eleventh ring. "Right on schedule."

"Any last tips?"

Twelfth ring. Petunia's tone was clinical. "Don't accelerate before fifteen. I can't see any benefit in the times and the gap ahead to Arlofis is a bit tight."

"Okay, no more comms, let me concentrate." Fourteenth ring. Phoebe leaned forward further, raising her voice to Soot. "Hey, remember Vision? He's your friend, right? Let's go catch his tail!"

The dragon wouldn't understand, and might not even hear, but he sensed her encouragement all the same, sweeping fiercely with his wings as the fifteenth ring flashed past. They were on good pace, but Phoebe could feel that Soot shared her urge for better. The castle wall and cliff rose past them to the right as the long, descending corner took them down through the sixteenth, then the seventeenth ring.

Phoebe settled into the rhythm of Soot's wings, pressing low to his body with her own crownfeathers folded, and then they were through the eighteenth ring and flashing over the stadium's grandstands at seventy-five knots to a scattering of applause from below. Phoebe grinned through wind that plucked the moisture from her teeth. Already there were people noting their pace and rooting for them.

Seven and a half seconds brought Soot to the first ring and Phoebe shifted her weight back gently, knees tensing to support the load as they began the climb. The pace of Soot's stroke picked up, and ahead Phoebe caught a flash of silver where Vision was wriggling through the first chicane. This first ascent was gentle, matching the rising line of the castle wall until the palace fell away behind them.

The second ring was edge-on to the approach, with the third just beyond it at a right-angle, forcing two sharp turns in the air, especially for larger, heavier drakes. Soot threw himself through the second at tighter than forty-five degrees, the timing of his downstroke perfect to minimise wingspread just before he slewed rightward and through.

Phoebe threw herself left in the harness as Soot twisted, slammed his wings against the air again, and shot them back through the third ring. For a moment Phoebe hung halfway off the dragon's back, her left leg straining against its stirrup to keep her from sliding off, and then Soot's next stroke righted them and she had to catch her own weight as she was thrown back astride.

The flat straight out over the Rhuen to the fourth, fifth and sixth rings stretched ahead, ten seconds of the strongest rhythm Soot could muster and trying not to look down at the dazzling mirror of the river's surface. Off to the right, a gold dragon plunged down the dive between rings six and seven, but Phoebe could tell from the pace that they were on a cooldown lap. Acciptrea, if Phoebe remembered the current running order right.

She set her sights ahead again. The course pinched here, the fourth and sixth rings a level pair, face-on to her approach, only a hundred yards apart, with the fifth perpendicular to them sixty yards beyond. Soot drove them at the fourth ring at close to seventy knots, Phoebe flowing with his movement as if her calves were extensions of his shoulders.

He knew the course well by now. Sharply as the fourth ring swelled to the edges of Phoebe's vision, his stroke changed, harsh and forward on the downbeat, throwing Phoebe forward as he arched, braking them down under thirty-five knots so that there when he twisted and lunged they could slide horizontally in the air, and Soot opened his wings like sails, flattening Phoebe against his back with the force of the direction change and then the sixth ring was around them and Soot folded his wings and dropped.

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The seventh ring was three hundred and fifty yards away but almost half of that was accounted for by the descent. Far from the steepest dive on the race calendar but intense nevertheless. Phoebe got herself steadied again on Soot's back and held on, making up for gravity that suddenly felt inadequate. Directly ahead, Vision shone briefly under the sun as he worked through the chicane below and Phoebe suppressed a thrill. This was absolutely as close as they should be getting to the aging silver, the pace had to be right on.

Which made it all the more important that she concentrate, and not blow this, the trickiest part of the course. The eighth ring was just beyond the seventh, on the level and offset to the right, making a hard right-left swerve, but then the ninth was just beyond that and perpendicular, opening onto the all-important back straight. Most dragons could barely carry any speed from the dive through all of that.

If Soot could juuuust time everything right…

Phoebe tensed and shifted her weight onto her right leg, leaning deep to Soot's flank, bracing herself almost flat for the slam of deceleration as his wings snapped open. Her stomach lurched with animal fear as the angle of his stroke tipped them past forty-five degrees of lean and through the seventh. Then he overcame all instinct and fully folded his left wing for an instant, catching the tumble just in time to swing them violently through the eighth.

Shivers shot up Phoebe's arm as her hand slipped on Soot's scales, flattening her cheek against his back before the wingbeat that carried them through the ninth bumped her almost airborne against the stirrups and they were rushing into the slow, steady ascent of the back straight.

As her stance recovered and Soot's rhythm settled, Phoebe looked up to see the dull shape of Vision ahead, the silver's tail and feet robbed of their shine by the unfavourable angle. That he was any more than a speck told Phoebe everything she wanted to know about their pace. The older dragon, with Jenny Arlofis on his back, would pull away over the remainder of the lap, but she let herself count silver wingbeats, feeling them shift in and out of phase with Soot's, forcing herself not to grin so hard her jaw clenched.

The climb to the tenth ring felt slow despite the green carpet of the royal park racing by underneath. They rose out of the lee of the palace and its mount with the sun showering Soot's scales in prismatic webs. Gusts of wind plucked at them, but all Phoebe needed to do was keep her legs in that carefully-trained state between tension and relaxation that felt so much like gentle standing and Soot could absorb any breeze.

The tenth ring welcomed them, Phoebe shifting her weight forward again as Soot adjusted his rhythm for the long, sweeping descent. The big dragons loved this part of the course, she knew, but astride Soot it felt dull, a dangerous sap to her attention with the castle ramparts lined with fans and banners. She forced herself to keep her eyes forward, squinting against the sun.

Her gut fizzed with the knowledge that the lap had to be good. It made the last few rings drag, a desperate wait for the moment that she'd hear how good, but there was nothing more to be done. Soot beat his wings steadily, his whole body formed to the gentle curve of the course.

The stadium roofs caught the sun, momentarily too harsh to look at before the angle changed, then it was the eighteenth ring and they were between the grandstands with cheers rising to greet them and the trumpeting call of more than one dragon in the gallery and then up with a last heroic thrust of Soot's wings to the first ring again and Phoebe's laugh was drowned out by Petunia's squealing in her ears.

It took a moment for the team manager's yells to resolve into words. "-fifth! Fifth, you did it Phoebe!"

"Fifth?" Had she heard that right? For a moment the wind got in her throat and she was half-laughing, half-coughing.

"You did it! Purple in the first sector, green in the second, you did it, Phoebe!"

Green meant a personal best from the sixth to tenth rings. Purple meant best of the day. Purple? "We're really fifth?"

"Yeah! No-one else behind you is still on a hot lap, it's in the bag!" How did Petunia have a clear enough head to keep track of the other riders while yelling like that?

A shiver ran through Phoebe as Soot settled lazily into the climb to the second ring for his cooldown lap. "Oh my god, we actually did it."

The Imperial League awarded points for the first eight finishers in the race. Starting in the points on her first race was more than she'd dared hope for. She twitched, a shudder somewhere between gut laughter and a sob, and had to pat Soot gently when he flinched in response. Fifth. She patted him again, letting herself sway with his tired rhythm. Well, he'd believed they could do it even if she hadn't quite trusted herself to.