I chose a direction, and shifted slightly to face it. Sippy shifted slightly too, to face me. Hereyta’s face slowly, slowly turned, and Sippy and I shifted slightly in response. Sippy was watching me intently. I could almost believe he was watching me with three eyes. I stared out over the end of Hereyta’s nose. You know how when you stare at something, anything, too long, it starts to sort of break up and turn into something else? It doesn’t have to be anything specific, like a foogit or a candle flame or the back of your brother’s head. It can be darkness or redness or a pool of water. The nothingness I was staring at was breaking up and turning into something else. I raised my hand and pointed—not so much to point, I think, but to give us, me anyway, something stable to stare at in all the disintegrating nothing. I think all three of us, even Hereyta, although for her it must have been like trying to focus on a gnat standing on her eyelashes, looked at the end of my finger.
And the heat had got even hotter. We would definitely fry before we starved.
I nearly fell off when Hereyta dived. Not quite. I grabbed a lesser spike and held on. I lunged at Sippy and got him round the neck. He scrabbled a little, but he didn’t slip either. The redness whipped and churned around us—it was probably just dizziness, but I almost felt it streaming by, like very fine fabric, like the stuff my mum’s best shawl is made of. It wasn’t a steep dive—and it didn’t last very long—although there was a very nasty upside-down-inside-out moment of what I suppose is the crossover and briefly the redness felt like cables, trying to hold us there—
—and the moment we were back out into the ordinary world, our human world, Hereyta levelled off again, long enough for Sippy and me to sit back down, and Dag threw a couple of loops around us, reflexively I think, but if we fell off we’d all fall off together. And then we swirled and whirled and circled down and down and down—
And landed in a field almost as enormous as the one we’d set off from, except that it looked like a field of trolls when the sun has just come up. There were a couple dozen dragons and at least a hundred people, but they were all frozen, like trolls in sunlight, staring up—
At us, twirling down.
Hereyta landed as gently as a butterfly.
And Arac roiled forward—trained working dragons mostly move slowly on land, careful of all the little squishy humans that are likely to be nearby—and thudded against Hereyta’s side in what I think was a friendly tap, like you might thump someone on the back and say, ʺWell done!ʺ—but it just about shattered our bones, I think, Dag’s and mine and Sippy’s, or at least it made me feel even more fragile and crumbly than I’d already been feeling, since the fragile crumbly feeling had started when I’d seen the nothingness breaking up, back in the hot red murk. I felt like a piece of overdone toast. The thump also knocked us an alarming several arms’-length to one side, but Hereyta just twitched her head like keeping people on her nose was something she’d been doing forever, and we jolted back again.
Hereyta made a kind of low purring grunt, which was either ʺit was nothingʺ or possibly ʺI have no idea,ʺ which would have made at least two of us, or maybe it was something else entirely, like, ʺbe careful, you clumsy oaf.ʺ Setyep, still gallantly hanging on to Arac’s saddle, suddenly shouted something I didn’t catch—it sounded like one of those old ritual phrases Academy cadets have to learn—but it must have meant something like ʺcheer nowʺ because everybody, and I mean everybody, started cheering like they’d gone mad. Even Fistagh and his girl. I saw them. And maybe they had all gone mad. After all, everyone knows a dragon needs all three eyes to get in and out of the Firespace, and it probably needs them to navigate around inside it too.
I think they put me to bed right after that. It was kind of embarrassing. I’m more or less used to being small, ugly and stupid, but I’ve kind of imagined I’m fairly tough. But I slept all the way through the rest of that day and halfway into the next.
I didn’t know where I was when I woke up. I’d never seen it before. But there was a familiar weight on my feet which, when I looked at it, was indeed Sippy and not an impostor, and then I looked a little farther and discovered Setyep sitting tipped back in a chair, reading something. He looked up when I moved and put the book down. He didn’t waste words. ʺHungry?ʺ he said.
The water rushed into my mouth so fast I could barely say yes. He had a basket of rolls and a ewer of water next to him, which he shifted to the table at the head of my bed, and then he stuck his head out the door of the strange room I was in and shouted, ʺHe’s awake! Bring supplies!ʺ
I don’t remember much of the next hour or so either. I was too busy eating. (Then someone had to tell me where the loo was, and then I came back and ate some more.) When I could finally think of something besides food again there were only a few people left in the room, although I had some memory of a lot more people coming in and being forced back out again, protesting, and the door being not only closed but bolted behind them.
By that time I’d noticed that the room was a kind of small dormitory although mine was the only occupied bed, so there was room for everyone who was still there, plus Sippy weaving through the chairs scrounging for crumbs and attention (in that order). Dag was there (who’d been the first through the door when Setyep shouted and almost broke some already-sore-from-bouncing-around-on-a-dragon bones when he hugged me) and Setyep and Eled. The one I didn’t know was the old guy from breakfast in the food halls two (three?) days ago—the one who’d wanted something for his aching shoulder. Zedak-something Something. I couldn’t remember his name either. Lormon? Ormlo? I hadn’t noticed him coming in or sitting down. (I was really hungry.)
I was seeing him up close for the first time—or anyway I was looking for the first time. I’d been kind of preoccupied with other things that time in the food halls. His white hair had the occasional black thread running through it, and the wrinkles on his face were so deep, some of them, you could’ve planted corn in them. The person-in-authority aura was worse close up, like sitting too close to the fire, and having him staring at you from only a few handspans away was a little like being pricked with the end of a very sharp dagger. I had to restrain myself from jumping to attention. Or running away. But I wasn’t going to do either one. All I could think of, now, after what had just happened, and still feeling as wobbly as a convalescent, was, he was one of the people responsible for letting Hereyta’s name go on the First Flight list. I was just as bad as Dag. Once I’d met Hereyta I’d probably always been as bad as Dag but it had solidified after what we’d been through. I knew I didn’t have the courage to tell him what I thought about him for that, but I could at least try, I don’t know, to stare back.
He was sitting down but he sat just as straight as he stood, as if he had a broomstick up the back of his coat; and those big square shoulders hadn’t sagged at all over the years he’d been carrying the world on them. Or maybe that was just the most comfortable position for him. I wondered if the delor leaf had helped.
In almost any other situation he’d have scared me witless before he said anything but . . . we’d done something, you know? Dag and me and Sippy and Hereyta. The Academy—who at the moment was this guy—had tried to do something horrible to Hereyta, and we hadn’t let them. Rot them. Rot them all. See if I cared. I even had the cheek to ignore him long enough to ask Dag, ʺHow’s Hereyta?ʺ