Page 47 of Ignition Rites

I’ve seen that ring before, or one exactly like it, on Cassian’s right hand, flashing gold in the box when he touched me. I’ve watched rings like that cross a communion plate in Alistair’s church often enough that I stopped seeing them as anything except part of the ritual. Now I look from his hand toward the upper level where Cassian usually stands, and the recognition settles slowly and unpleasantly.

Of course.

Beside Alistair, Helena holds a cream folder with brass corners. I don’t know what’s inside it, but Rafe does, and his fingers tighten around mine.

The final heat lines up at the rail, three bikes and two cars, engines idling in a low collective growl I feel in my teeth before I hear it properly. None of the riders are anyone I know, which should make it easier and doesn’t. Rafe’s attention locks onto the track with the absolute concentration of someone mentally riding every line from the wrong side of the barrier.

“You hate this,” I say.

“Pit duty?”

“The watching.”

His mouth pulls sideways. “Watching somebody take a turn wrong when you know exactly how you’d do it better is psychological warfare.”

“That dramatic?”

“I’ve been benched. I’m entitled to theatrics.”

The flag drops, and the sound punches through the crowd as five machines launch almost together. For one terrible second at the first turn, I’m convinced two of them are going to meet in the same piece of road, but the lead bike takes the corner wide, tire smoking, and the crowd erupts instead.

Beside me, Rafe swears quietly. “Too much brake.”

“You can tell that from here?”

He looks offended. “I’m choosing not to answer that.”

The cars close the gap on the final lap, one clipping the rail hard enough that the crowd gasps as one body before the driver corrects and keeps moving. Then the lead bike crosses first, and the noise is enormous — applause and shouting and engines and people hitting the rail hard enough to make the metal shake under my hands.

For a minute, it really does look like a race.

Then Alistair raises one hand, and the circuit goes quiet so abruptly that the silence frightens me more than the cheering did.

“Season rankings,” he says, his voice carrying easily. “As always, they inform more than placement.”

Helena opens the folder, and Rafe’s hand tightens again.

“Rafe?”

He doesn’t look at me.

“Marcus Deering,” Helena reads.

A young man near the front of the crowd freezes, nineteen or twenty, someone I’ve seen around the garages before, always polite, always moving like he’s hoping somebody important notices how useful he can be.

“Last in standings,” Alistair says. “Again.”

Marcus goes pale.

“The Pits have been patient. Patience is not infinite.”

Until now, the Pits has meant garages, concrete, fuel, the place beneath the spectacle where everyone gets dirty enough to make the pretty parts run. Tonight it sounds like something else.

“What’s happening?” I whisper.

Rafe’s jaw locks. “Lo.”

“What?”