Shi leant closer to speak in my ear. “I think he is secretly jealous.” His head snapped away and he pulled in a sharp breath. “Lord Aurexian Valemont the Third says he had nothing of which to be jealous.”
Controlling my grin took effort. “I understand completely, sir.” I bit my lip.
Focusing on the dragons incoming, I was so glad to see them approach. I was a little surprised when they seemed to be suddenly upon us. Lord Aurexian careened overhead, cried out a warning. Shi pushed me hurriedly to the side, avoiding Salvadora’s last stroke of a wing. I could hear Fin’s high-pitched giggle as the blue’s talons scraped over the granite, then her head was down on the granite, like a dog who couldn’t stop in wet mud. Shi and I watched in horror as the dragon rolled, and a glowing Finn was thrown clear.
Memories of another time and place of horror flash froze me faster than a dragon ever could have.
Salvadora scrabbled at the edge of the landing area as I rushed towards the small body lying on his side, his back to us. I saw straight limbs and no blood. But no glow either.
No! By the Gods, no!
Then his chest heaved and shuddered; was he crying?
“Fin!” I fell to my knees at his side.
He rolled onto his back, his arms out straight at his sides, his ankles crossed. One of his trouser knees was split wide, the skin grazed. He was crying with laughter. “That was brilliant!” he screamed. He sprang to sit up. “I want to go again.”
Paralysed by shock, I could only kneel there, staring at the empty space he had left as he sprinted towards Dora again. It was Flight Captain Ang Shi who caught him by the scruff of his neck and pulled him back, moving him away from the dragon a few paces as he spun Fin around to face him.
“That, Mister Segast,” Shi intoned sharply, “was the most appalling level of misconduct I have ever seen, even in the rawest recruit, even in a pre-initiate. You wilfully endangered a dragon. How dare you?!”
Fin’s laughter-filled face fell, and his jaw dropped. He stared up at Shi like he wanted to cry.
Shi raised one finger before his face. “No tears,” Shi warned, his voice softer. Softer, but not soft. Fin was clearly in his bad books. “We do not cry when we are caught doing what we know to be wrong. Now tell me, Mister Segast—” Shi stood tall, his hands clasped behind his back, not lightly as usual, but tightly. His knuckles were white. “What did you do wrong?”
Fin swallowed as he moved to an approximation of standing at attention. “I, erm, I had Salvadora come in too fast.”
“Meaning?”
To give Fin his due, he faced his discipline squarely. “Meaning we crashed, more than landed.”
“Leading to?”
Fin looked up at the older man. As I walked over to stand at Shi’s side, I could see Fin was trying to work it out, but he couldn’t see what the issue was.
“Look at the landing area, Fin,” I advised.
He looked and looked. Shi moved one foot by an inch.
“What?” Fin asked. “That’s just a tiny scratch. Anything could have done that.”
“This fortress is one hundred and forty years old,” Shi said. “It is made of Bonatine Granite, the hardest granite known to man. It has withstood over one point two five millionlandings. And that is not a tiny scratch, it is the absence of an unusually large fragment of Mica which was blown out in the electrical storm of 3537. I wasn’t indicating something taken away, but something deposited.”
Fin looked again.
“Beside your own foot,” Shi suggested.
Fin’s head turned to one side, then the other. Then he looked closer. “Oh, no!”
In the direction Salvadora would have travelled after hitting that particular chip was a smear of dragon blood.
Face pale, Fin looked up at Salvadora. “You’re hurt?”
She lifted her chin and shook her head.
“Dora,” I pushed. Because I was bonded to her, I knew very well that her left paw was hurt.
With a huff, she picked up her front left paw and hung her head. We could all now see that her pad was split. Blood had coloured the surrounding feathers.
