The old guy actually reached out and put his hand on my arm. ʺTake it easy, you lot,ʺ he said. ʺHe’s four or five years younger than you and has important work to grow into.ʺ He stood up. I stumbled to my feet—maybe not only because he still had his hand around my wrist—while the three First Flighters shot up like arrows released from bowstrings. They were all in fresh uniforms and—I only now noticed—all had a shiny new bit of purple ribbon over their cadet badges. ʺDon’t let them bully you,ʺ he said to me. ʺMaybe you have a—er—stinky leaf for that too.ʺ
ʺSir,ʺ I said, and stopped.
ʺAsk,ʺ said the old guy. ʺI haven’t eaten you yet, although I’m aware you’re waiting for me to try.ʺ
ʺWhy did you,ʺ I said confusedly, ʺin the food hall that morning—ask me. Ask me at all. But in front of everyone.ʺ
Some of his wrinkles seemed to smooth out when he smiled. ʺI told you I’ve been cherishing a small terrible hope that there might be a good reason why the signs demanded Hereyta Fly for First Flight this year. When Hereyta’s First Flight partner came back to school a fortnight ago with a brother and a foogit—a foogit with a lucky third eye and a brother who had a secret calling as a healer—ʺ
When he said ʺhealerʺ the Firespace started beating against the inside of my skin again.
ʺ—I wanted anything you could do for us, for Hereyta,ʺ he said, and for a moment he looked a lot like Dag, that fierce, intent, passionate look Dag had when he talked about his dragons. ʺSo I wanted to flush you into the open. I wanted you to feel your healing gift was welcome here.ʺ
Welcome, I thought. Healing welcome. ʺDid you use it, sir? The delor leaf. Did you use it? Did it work?ʺ
For the first time his authority wavered, and he looked almost embarrassed. ʺYes. I used it, and it worked. And when the council meeting is over, I would like more delor leaf, if you would be so kind. I haven’t decided if I’m going to make the half-dozen other of us old smashed-up veterans who’d like to try it too ask you themselves or not. I probably will. You’ll tell me you need to speak to them individually anyway, won’t you?ʺ
I stood up straight. Straighter, anyway. ʺYes, sir. I will.ʺ
ʺGood.ʺ
There was a brief, strained silence after Eled, who had jumped first as the old guy turned toward the door, closed it gently behind him. Then Dag said, ʺI’m going to make Ern have a bath now—ʺ
ʺYou don’t have to make me,ʺ I said with the dignity of the truly filthy. ʺI want a bath.ʺ
ʺAnd then we’ll come to supper. In the hall,ʺ he added, just in case I wasn’t listening.
ʺBut—ʺ I said feebly. I was trying to think but what. Dag had already said that saying I was tired wasn’t going to work.
ʺAnd you,ʺ Dag said over me, ʺyou two can come sit with us and keep off his admirers.ʺ
Midmorning the next day came way too soon. I’d still been pretty much starving at supper, so it wasn’t too bad. The only people who gave me a hard time were the three I was sitting with. Doara and Chort came round to say ʺwell doneʺ and I got a few ʺheyʺs and ʺblue skies and clear horizonsʺ of my own and I tried not to show how much this pleased me. And a lot of people wanted to push Sippy’s topknot back and check out the third eye. Which was fine with him. All attention is good attention. Even Fistagh nodded to both Dag and me: two nods, one each—and his girl actually smiled.
We spent the night back in Dag’s old room. Dag slept. I didn’t. By breakfast I was too scared—and tired: no joke—to be hungry. Dag made me drink some blastweed, saying it would make me alert, but I didn’t drink very much, because I was sure being this scared was going to make me need to pee all the time.
We went back upstairs for Dag to climb warily into a spotless new cadet uniform like it was a booby trap. It had been waiting on a peg outside the door when we got back to Dag’s room after supper the night before, and he’d wordlessly pointed to the new stripe on the shoulder and chest. I’d seen it on the fourth-years’ uniforms, so I said, ʺFirst Flight?ʺ and he nodded. This morning it seemed to glitter in the light but that was probably my eyes. I thought Dag’s hands shook a little when he pinned his old badge and new bit of ribbon to it.
They’d found some clothes for me too. They were too large but they were a little more dignified than anything I’d brought with me. I didn’t have dignified clothes. What would I ever need them for? At least they were dull, invisible-making colours. It didn’t occur to me when I put them on that this would have the opposite effect, making me stand out among all the Academy uniforms.
The meeting was held in the big hall at the back of the main building—the building that had been the whole human end of the Academy when it first opened eight hundred years ago. The hall was still big enough to hold everybody who went there—but I swear everyone who had anything at all to do with the Academy was there, not just the students and the tutors and the dragonmasters. There were people standing at the back and sitting in the aisles. Fire hazard, I thought. But no one made them leave.
You know how on winter solstice nights after it gets dark and you’ve done all the rites—or maybe it’s the night after the solstice, depending on, you know, how well the rites get done, especially the ones with lots of libations—and you sit around the fire with your friends and tell stories about the really scary things that happened to your ancestors? Because telling those stories around the solstice is supposed to stop them from happening again, like to us. Our ancestors had a really rough time is all I can say. So maybe it works.
Sooner or later someone asks what everybody’s worst nightmare is. Telling it out loud at the solstice is supposed to stop it from happening too.
I’m here to tell you that this doesn’t work. Because my worst nightmare is being in front of a lot of other people who are staring at me. And here I was. And they really were staring at me. Nobody else. Me. It was much worse than the food halls. The halls are open all the time, and people sort of stream through, and there’s never that many of them at the same time, and the tutors and dragonmasters mostly eat somewhere else, and it’s all groups around tables, not rows and rows of chairs all pointed in the same direction with a stage at the front, organised for staring. Everyone would’ve known that Hereyta was in First Flight this year with Dag, and word would have got round that they’d actually made Flight. And I knew from yesterday that they’d decided to pin that on me. So everybody was staring at the one person up on that horrible great stage that wasn’t wearing an Academy uniform. Who also, just in case they missed that bit, had a foogit with him. Maybe telling your worst nightmare hadn’t worked for me because I could only bring myself to tell it out loud if it was only my own family listening.
So I took one look at that sea of faces and closed down and went off in my head somewhere. Well, not quite. Sippy wanted me there so I had to leave a little of me behind in the hall to keep him company—and get ready to grab if he got reassured enough to want to go cruising for new friends. I don’t know what his worst nightmare was. Maybe taking a dive off a flying dragon, and he’d lived through that.
But I was enough not-there that it took me a minute to recognise the person coming down the centre aisle toward the stage platform where Dag and I and Sippy and half a dozen more blue and red and yellow coats from the Academy were sitting. Setyep was the only other red and yellow cadet besides Dag; the rest were all the blue and red higher-ups. The old guy from yesterday was the only other person I recognised, although how much you can say you recognise someone when you don’t know his name I don’t know, but what he’d said yesterday was kind of etched into me. (Even if I’d forgotten to ask Dag later what his name was and who he was. I was kind of concentrating on what he’d said.) I was actually staring at him (which meant I was facing away from the audience, which was the crucial part) and vaguely thinking about it that all the other blue and red coats seemed to be deferring to him, like he wasn’t just another blue and red coat, he was the blue and red coat.