Shovia leaned back in her chair. "I thought you were done with training. You were supposed to stop a week before the pilgrimage to give your body a chance to rest and replenish its stores."
Since there would be no food during the climb and water would be rationed, it would have been best to take it easy, but my plans had to change after we'd been given our equipment for the pilgrimage.
"I would be done if not for the drakking boots. I'm still trying to break them in." I took a sip of my cold caff. "Why do they make us all wear the same stuff?"
"Humility and equality," Shovia quoted. "All pilgrims are assigned the same equipment. It is our tenacity that gets tested, not our ability to purchase the best equipment to help us on the trek."
"Yeah, yeah, I know." I rolled my eyes. "So no one has an unfair advantage, but that's the epitome of hypocrisy. The whole thing is about finding the few chosen ones who can communicate with dragons. There is nothing humble or equal about that."
For a moment, Shovia seemed lost for words, which didn't happen often. My best friend might not excel at academics, but she had a sharp tongue and life smarts to animate it.
"For the rest of us it is," she finally said. "The pilgrimage is a bonding experience, and it prepares us for our military service. It's not just about identifying a fresh crop of dragon riders."
She was right, of course.
Supposedly, the pilgrimage wasn't a competition. The goal was to make it to the summit, get one's destiny revealed by the shaman, and come down ready for service.
At least that was the official version. Rumors claimed that pilgrims were watched, and that their performance on the trek was taken into consideration when final assignments were determined.
I took a sip from my cold brew. "You should have joined me. You know that we will also be evaluated on our performance."
Between the two of us, Shovia was no doubt the better athlete. Her father was the coach at our old school, and he had made sure his daughter excelled at sports and aced all the fitness tests.
I, on the other hand, had done poorly on most of them, with rope climbing being my absolute worst.
Still, despite my failure to meet the qualifying minimum in this event, Coach Emil had given me a passing grade and allowed me to graduate, either because I had been an exceptional student in all the academic subjects or, what was more likely, because I was Shovia's best friend.
She chuckled. "Even with all your training, you'll still need me to drag you up the mountain to the summit."
"I'm much better now than I was four months ago, and I won't need your help."
Shovia was still smirking, which was annoying. "I love you, and I wish you the best of luck, but just in case you need help to finish the pilgrimage, I want you to know that I will not leave you behind for the medics to evacuate, even if I have to carry you on my back the rest of the way."
I knew that it wasn't an empty promise. Shovia wouldn't leave me behind even if she had to crawl to the finish line with me on her back. But I was a perfectly healthy twenty-one-year-old woman, and there was no reason for me not to make it to the summit on my own.
"I appreciate the sentiment," I said. "With all my heart. But don't worry. I will make it on my own two feet." I leaned over and kissed Shovia's cheek. "And I promise that I will not be the last to arrive. I won't be the first either. You, on the other hand, will probably be in the lead without even breaking a sweat."
Shovia regarded me with a serious expression on her face. "That's not how it works. We are divided into groups, and we can't overtake those ahead of us unless there is a good reason for it. The real enemy is the thin air and the hallucinations it induces, and how we deal with it will factor heavily into how we are judged. I'm pretty good with high altitudes, but I still have a zero chance of becoming a dragon rider. Not that I want to. You know which post I want."
I grimaced. "Spying's even more dangerous than dragon riding, and there is no guarantee the Spy Corps is the destiny that fate has in store for you."
Even though everyone had to serve, and women could theoretically be assigned to any arm of the force, Elu rarely chose combat assignments for women, probably because of the brutality and barbarism of our enemies. There were plenty of other jobs we could do that were no less important.
The two exceptions were dragon riders and spies, and the reasons for the exceptions were simple.
Dragon riders were rare, and good dragon riders were even rarer. If a woman could bond with a dragon, she was a rider. Besides, if she fell off a dragon or the dragon was hit and they both went down, there was no surviving that, and there would be nothing left of her for the monsters to violate.
As for spies, women made the best ones because Sitorians were dismissive of females, and they notoriously underestimated them.
"I know it's dangerous." Shovia assumed a dreamy expression. "But it's exciting, and I will get to see the world."
"What is there to see? Nothing is better than this." I waved my hand at the window. "We live in the most spectacular place in all of Aurorys."
Shovia turned to look at the view. "It's beautiful, but that's all I have seen since I was born. I want to see so much more."
Did she think it was a game?
"It's not safe for Elucians out there." I tried another angle.
