I laughed in delight and I felt L’eesha echo my joy. Everything was all right! Ryse was going to live! The Madling poison had been expelled from his blood and his wound was healed—not even a single mark remained.
Then a heavy hand fell on my shoulder and someone spun me around.
It was the Head Master, glaring down at me with angry, incredulous eyes.
“Who the hell are you?” he demanded. “And what is a girl doing at my Academy?”
73
AURORA
“They’re ready for you now.”
The guard’s voice made me jerk my head up. I’d been in the brig for a week, and every day was like the others.
My cell was a dark, cold cave located under the Old Drake and the flickering lamp high up near the ceiling threw barely any light over my bare surroundings which consisted of a cot, a toilet, and a sink.
My uniform had been taken, and I was dressed in a dirty gray jumpsuit that was made of a scratchy, burlap material that irritated my sensitive skin. I wasn’t allowed to take baths, but I washed myself in the sink as best I could. My meals were bread and water—sometimes some clumps of cold, fatty meat in congealed gravy. I bitterly missed the delicious food from the Mess Hall—especially the Dragon Custard.
I wasn’t allowed to have visitors, but I was keeping in touch with the outside world through L’eesha, who was in an absolute rage that I had been locked up.
At first she’d wanted to flame the Head Master, who had ordered me locked away. I had to order her not to in the strongest terms I could and make her understand the consequences of her plan.
“If you do that, they’ll have you destroyed!” I told her, keeping our communications strictly mental so none of the guards would know I was having to talk my dragon out of committing homicide. “And then I’ll be without you—I can’t live without you anymore than you can live without me. You have to behave and be patient. I’ll get out eventually.”
“Ryse says the stupid Head Master is mad at you, just because he thought you were a boy and you’re a girl instead!” she told me. “what a stupid thing to be mad about! anyone could tell you are a girl—he only had to smell you to know it!”
“The Head Master doesn’t go around sniffing his students,” I said dryly. “And they don’t allow women riders. I did break the rules.”
“but you helped them win the battle,” she said plaintively. “we both did. without us, the Madlings would have won.”
“I know,” I said quietly. I had been thinking the same thing, myself. “But I still broke the rules.”
“Ryse is angry too,” L’eesha informed me. “he has been to the Head Master many times but he says the Head Master won’t listen.”
She gave me other tidbits of information too—which was how I learned that I was going to be tried in front of the whole Academy for “treasonous behavior.”
Apparently today was the day of the trial—not that anyone had bothered to tell me.
“They’re ready,” the guard said again as he unlocked my jail cell.
He led me down a long, underground tunnel that gradually headed upward until at last we were on the First Level of the Old Drake. I walked behind him, wishing I’d been able to take a bath and wash my face before I left. Though I had taken a cat bath the night before, I didn’t feel clean or presentable at all.
“Where are we going?” I asked the guard, but he only grunted. A moment later, I found out for myself.
It was the Auditorium—the very first place I’d ever been inside the Academy. Had it only been six months ago? Then I had been sitting by Jorn-o, listening to the Head Master’s address to the new cadets. Today I would have to hear him accuse me.
And all because I was a woman instead of a man.
My heart burned with the unfairness of it, but there was nothing I could do but follow the guard to the very front of the Auditorium where the long stage had been set as a kind of courtroom. I tried not to look at the cadets and professors watching me—all of them were sitting as close to the stage as possible. I wondered if they had been instructed to sit there or if they just didn’t want to miss the show.
On the right of the stage, behind a tall podium, the Head Master stood with a stony look on his face. He was wearing his dress uniform—minus the jeweled dagger I’d used to stab the Madling, of course, and he frowned coldly as he saw me take my place.
The guard placed me in the center of the stage where a wooden box had been built. I sat in a hard wooden chair inside the box, feeling like it was just another kind of cell, though at least I could see out.
On the left side of the stage was another, shorter podium. It was empty for now, at least. Probably they would call witnesses to stand there and speak against me, I thought dully.
“what is it? where are they taking you? what’s going on?” L’eesha demanded to know.
