I was tempted to point out that I hadn’t kicked Larson’s chair on purpose and that it was ridiculous for him to get so angry about such a small thing. But I sensed that would have only caused more problems and I was already drawing a lot more attention to myself than I wanted to.
“I, Auren Lysandra of the Great House of Lysandra make a formal apology to you, uh…” I wasn’t sure of the cadet’s full name. Given the circumstances, I thought I was lucky that I’d remembered my own—or rather, my brother’s.
“Chud Larson,” Jorn-o whispered helpfully.
Chud? Really? It was a name that fit him—as lumpish and ugly as he was, I thought. But I kept that idea to myself.
“I Auren Lysandra make a formal apology to you, Chud Larson, for accidentally kicking your chair,” I said, making sure he knew I hadn’t done it on purpose.
“Good.” Ryse Skoren nodded. “Now, the boy has made a formal apology, Larson. That’s the end of it,” he added, frowning at the still-seething cadet.
“For now,” Larson muttered, giving me one more hard look before turning around in his seat.
“All right.” Ryse Skoren was frowning as though he wasn’t quite sure things really were settled. “You—Lysandra,” he said, pointing at me. “You’d better switch seats with someone. Come on—hurry up.”
“That’s what I was trying to do.” I couldn’t quite keep the exasperation out of my voice.
But I seemed to have said the wrong thing because the Wing Leader’s strange eyes narrowed.
“Cadet,” he said sharply. “Are you taking a tone with me?”
“What? Er, no Sir,” I said quickly. To my horror, I felt my cheeks heating with a blush. I cursed my pale skin that made my embarrassment so obvious.
“Good, because I just saved your ass,” he said. “Now do as I tell you and switch seats. The Head Master will be on stage at any minute.”
“Yes, Sir,” I said humbly. Quickly and quietly, I switched seats with Jorn-o—which was, of course, what we’d been trying to do earlier—and settled down in my new chair where I could mostly see over the head of the boy in front of me.
Jorn-o obviously couldn’t see over Chud Larson’s head any more than I could, but he didn’t seem bothered by it. He settled beside me and looked straight ahead until Ryse Skoren gave a short, sharp jerk of his chin—as though he was finally satisfied—and stalked off.
But though Larson had turned to face the stage again, I could tell by the set of his broad shoulders and the redness of his large ears that he was still fuming.
Looking at him, I had a bad feeling that something had been started which couldn’t easily be ended…and there was nothing I could do about it.
7
AURORA
The Head Master was a handsome man—tall and straight with dark hair going elegantly silver at the temples. He wore the Academy uniform—though his was black instead of the dark blue all the cadets wore—with a black cape draped over his shoulders.
He spoke at length about duty, honor, and responsibility to both the Academy and the kingdom and how he expected us to be the best First-year class in decades.
“I know many of your fathers,” he said, nodding at the gathered crowd. “Those of you who come from Great Houses and have a lot of Noble blood in your veins may expect to Impress a Bronze or a Silver-wing—maybe even a rare Gold-wing. But that doesn’t mean those of you from lesser houses are any less welcome,” he continued.
“Everyone is needed here. The Academy attendance is far below what it used to be. Some of the ancient ledgers we keep in the Library have records of ten times your number of new recruits. But of course, we don’t know if that’s accurate, since some of them also speak of admitting women as riders,” he added, which drew a laugh from everyone except me.
Looking around, I could see what he was saying. The vast stone auditorium wasn’t even a fourth full. All of us were sitting together near the front of the room but there would have been plenty of room even if there had been twice as many of us.
The Academy clearly needed recruits—or maybe they didn’t, since the Madlings had been eliminated. Still, it was sad to think how many people used to live and work and learn here compared with the handful of us there were now. There were probably only a hundred of us here, I estimated idly as the Head Master droned on. Why had the numbers dwindled so drastically?
If there was an answer to my question—other than the fact, which my father had told me, that there were fewer female dragons laying fewer eggs—I didn’t hear it in the Head Master’s speech. He was clearly a man who was in love with his own voice and my bony behind was aching fiercely from the hard wooden chair by the time he finally released us to go take our entrance exams.
I was halfway worried that Chud Larson would come after me but—to my relief—he didn’t even seem to notice me as we all got up and filed out of the auditorium. Jorn-o was watching him too and he breathed an audible sigh of relief as the giant upperclassmen shouldered his way through the crowd without a backwards glance.
“Whew—I should have warned you,” he muttered to me. “Chud Larson’s always angry and it’s worse today because he failed his exams. His dragon, F’lerna, has been screaming and flaming the Burn Pits since dawn.”
I thought of how my father’s dragon, F’lorn, had amplified his anger and how the two of them seemed to feed off each other emotionally and shuddered. It was a bad situation when rider and dragon got into an emotional loop and kept pushing each other to extremes.
“I just hope he doesn’t mess with you again,” Jorn-o said, breaking into my train of thought. “He’s got a terrible temper.”
