"Good." The twinkle returned to his eyes. "I'll be at my desk, definitely not taking a nap and absolutely not ignoring whatever you might be doing up here."
"You could stay with us," I offered. "Tell us a little about this grand library."
I needed to get him talking, and he seemed like an easy target for coaxing out gossip.
"I wish I could." He patted my arm. "But I'm afraid it is time for my nap." He chuckled while shuffling away.
When he was gone, Codric waved a hand at the stacks. "Where do we start, and what are we looking for?"
I had been hoping to engage Hadrick in conversation and get him to tell us what rumors circulated in the Citadel, but he hadn't given me the opportunity.
"Anything that is out of the ordinary." I pulled out one of the journals and placed it on a reading table. "Perhaps someone noticed something or heard something from the other riders. It's not likely that all the trouble has started with our pilgrimage. I bet things like that have been happening for a while and have been kept from the public. We need to look for patterns."
The chances of us finding anything useful as far as conspiracies were slim, but we might gain more insight into the lives of riders and perhaps some secret missions they'd taken part in. I would love to read about that.
Codric nodded. "I'll start from forty years ago and work forward, you can take sixty to forty, and Morek can go back further."
"Sounds like a plan." I returned the journal I had pulled out to its place on the shelf.
We dispersed, each pulling journals from our designated time periods. Settling at one of the reading tables with my stack, I opened the first journal with careful hands.
Squadron Leader Mira Kelling. Died at age 47. Dragon name: Verathion.
The journal was filled with Mira's neat handwriting, describing training exercises, border patrols, and her deep connection to her dragon. The final entries, written by her wing commander, described how she'd died in a training accident—the dragon misjudging a dive into the ocean.
Hours passed, and the stories in the journals were starting to blur into each other. So far, I hadn't found anything suspicious,but I'd been reading only the highlights. It was possible that I'd missed important clues.
At the table to my right, Codric was amassing huge stacks of journals, which he couldn't possibly have given even a cursory review, but after calling him shallow and stupid last night, I wasn't about to repeat that and offend him again by suggesting that he wasn't putting in the same effort as Morek and I were.
Another half an hour or so had passed when Codric leaned back so he could see me over the stacks of journals blocking his view. "I have something to show you."
"What did you find?" I joined him at his table.
"A pattern. Look." He pointed to an open journal. "Rider Kellan Marsh, bonded to a dragon named Ixilthar. Died thirty-five years ago when he inexplicably broke formation during a routine patrol and flew into a storm. An improperly secured saddle slid off with the rider."
"Tragic," I said. "But accidents happen."
"They do." Codric pulled another journal from the stack, which he had left open. "Eight years later, the same dragon, Ixilthar, bonds with a new rider, Sera Donning. She dies three years into the service when she fails to properly secure her saddle straps."
"That's unlikely to happen twice," Morek said. "To the same dragon."
"It gets worse." Codric pulled yet another journal. "Ixilthar's next rider, Jorin Haal, dies seven years later in a border skirmish when he charges a Shedun position alone, against direct orders, and gets shot with a projectile. Somehow, the dragon is not hurt, but the rider dies."
"Three riders, same dragon, all dying from mistakes that shouldn't have been made," I summarized. "That's definitely suspicious. But given that the dragons are not the ones who handle the saddles, we can't blame them for the negligence.Perhaps it's someone from the service crews. Some of them might hold a grudge for failing the academy. They might feel like an inferior class in the Citadel."
We were all careful to treat them with respect, but the truth was that dragon riders were the elite, and everyone else was secondary. It was just the way things were and had nothing to do with fairness, but some people might have a problem with that, even though no one had forced them to stay on and serve in the Dragon Force. They could have left after getting disqualified and pursued positions in the ground forces.
"Ixilthar isn't the only one." Codric spread out more journals. "I've found three other dragons with similar patterns. Syltharion, Morgateth, and Vyrassin. Over the last forty years, several of their riders have died in suspicious circumstances." He tapped the journals. "What we need to do now is read the rest of these journals and see if the riders suspected anything or if their superiors noticed strange behaviors." He glanced at the shelving units. "There might be more dragons with similarly suspicious histories. To do this properly, we should go over all the journals and make a list of all dragons whose riders died because of mistakes and accidents."
Codric surprised me with his clear analysis, and I really regretted calling him stupid now. The guy was a clown, but he was smart.
I gave him an appreciative look. "First, we need to find out who those dragons are bonded to now. They might be in danger."
Codric was about to answer when Morek's head snapped up. "Someone's coming."
We froze, listening. Sure enough, voices drifted up from below—one creaky and apologetic, the other sharp with authority.
"—they needed a place to study?—"
