Fledgling (The Dragonrider Chronicles) (13 page)

sixteen

It
was a pretty good plan in theory. We were going to do low passes along the
roads, looking for any sign of recent travelers and the men wearing white
masks. But as the hours began to drag on, we had to broaden our search, and
still didn’t find any sign of them at all. It was as though they’d disappeared
completely.

           
The
sun was starting to rise, and the early morning wind was bitter cold. Beckah
was shivering, and I could hear her teeth chattering. She definitely wasn’t
dressed for this altitude, so I took off my cape and wrapped it around her to
keep her warm.

           
“Jae?”
She whimpered and grabbed one of my hands as I reached around her for the
saddle handles. “What if we can’t find him?”

           
I
clenched my teeth because now I was beginning to worry about the same thing.
“We’ll find him, Beckah.” For her sake, I tried to sound sure about that.
“Don’t give up.”

           
Felix
and Nova swooped in close, and he started giving me hand signals again.
We need to land and come up with a new plan.

           
Right,
I agreed.
Let’s stick close to the roads, just in
case.

           
He nodded, and Nova veered away to
find a good place to land. Mavrik and I followed, keeping close on his tail. We
found a good spot where the main road leading toward
Halfax
dipped down through some low marshlands. There were lots of big trees covered
in hanging moss, and just enough room for the dragons to drop down and land.
Our dragons could hunker down under the trees so no one could see them, even
from the air. It was the perfect hiding spot to rest and keep a lookout for any
passing traffic without giving ourselves away too easily.

           
As
soon as we dismounted, the dragons rooted around in the mud to find places to
lie down, but neither one of them looked happy about it. The mud stank like
rotting compost, and it was slimy and thick. It was miserable to walk around in
it because it would just about suck your boots right off your feet. Finally, we
found a spot dry enough to at least sit down.

           
“If
you’re right about them going to
Halfax
, then they’ll
have to come by this way,” Felix grumbled as he plopped down and started trying
to rake the disgusting silt off his boots with a stick. “This is the only road
through the marshlands. Any other way would take you days to get around it.”

           
“I
don’t understand how we could have missed them. Maybe we should have been
flying lower.” I was helping Beckah hobble through the sludge. She had to hold
her skirts up to keep from tripping, but they still got caked in mud.

           
“We
should have been plenty low enough to see them on the road.” Felix sighed as he
gave up trying to get the mud off his shoes. He was leaning back against a tree
trunk, staring up at the morning sky. “We have no armor, no weapons, and no
food. This is definitely a new level of stupid for me.”

           
I
sat down beside Felix, and Beckah settled in right next to me. She leaned
against me, and was already sound asleep before I had even gotten comfortable.
It was weird to have her clinging to me like that.

           
“I
didn’t mean for you to come with me, Felix. I know this’ll probably ruin my
career and get me kicked out of the academy. I didn’t want it to ruin
everything for you, too,” I told him. “If we get caught just blame it all on
me, okay?”

           
He
chuckled, and gave me a teasing punch to the arm. “Nice try, small fry. We’re
in this together. I couldn’t let you run off and get yourself killed, not after
what happened with the saddle last time. You’re right. I should have believed
you then. And I do believe you now.”

           
I
smirked back at him; that made me feel a little better. “So what’s the plan?”

           
Felix
let out another loud sigh, and put his head back against the tree trunk. “I was
about to ask you the same thing. I guess you should tell me exactly what you
saw, first.”

           
So
I did. I told him everything I could remember about sneaking out of the room,
about seeing
Sile
with his hands bound, and the four
men in white masks that had him at knifepoint. It hadn’t looked good, and we’d
lost critical time trying to find someone to help us.

“I know it sounds crazy,” I said,
trying to get comfortable with Beckah leaning against me. She was sleeping so
hard she didn’t even quit snoring when I pulled her legs over my lap so she was
resting with her head against my shoulder.

“After what happened with the saddle,
not really.” Felix was chewing on the inside of his cheek, looking thoughtful.
“The white masks do sound like the king’s private guard, though. I’ve only ever
seen them around when someone from the royal family is visiting. But, if anyone
could pull off a kidnapping like that in the middle of a ball, it’d be
them
. They’re an elite guard trained in extreme stealth and
hand-to-hand combat. They’re usually handpicked from the military, and then
completely removed from society. No one knows much about
them
because everything about their training is totally secret. It’s like a cult, I
guess.”

My heart sank a little. “Why would
they want to kidnap
Sile
?”

Felix just shook his head, and we both
sat there for a long time in silence. This was bad. If these guys were the
king’s elite guards, what chance did a couple of fledgling dragonriders stand
against them? Even if we could find them, we probably wouldn’t be able to free
Sile
. We really had no idea what we were getting ourselves
into.

“How did you do that earlier?” Felix
asked suddenly. He was staring over at me with a weird look on his face. “How
did you call Mavrik to you?
And from that distance?
It
was incredible! I’ve never even heard of someone doing that before.”

I blushed. “I don’t know. It just . .
. felt like what I had to do. It was just an idea. I wasn’t even sure he’d hear
me.”

“You’re really weird sometimes, you
know that?” Felix laughed, but I could still see that strange look in his eyes.
It almost seemed like he was a little bit afraid of me now. I wasn’t sure how
to feel about it either, but it kind of bothered me that he seemed disturbed by
it.

Felix offered to take the first watch
while I slept. As much as I wanted to rest, I just couldn’t get comfortable.
Every little noise woke me up, and I had terrible dreams of darkness, and
creatures slithering through the marshes toward us. When it was my turn to keep
watch, I knew I had to get up just to walk off my nerves. I carefully moved
Beckah over so she could lean against Felix instead.

“
Sile’s
gonna
kill us for bringing her along,” Felix muttered
sleepily as he licked his thumb and wiped some mud off her cheek. “He won’t
want her around the dragons. He probably doesn’t want her around us, either,
but I guess he didn’t have much of a choice when you volunteered to watch her
tonight.”

I was surprised he knew anything about
her, especially since
Sile
had never mentioned her
before to me. “How do you know that?”

“That’s how it always is, Jae. You can’t
be a dragonrider and be a family man, too. Trust me. If dragonriders do get
married, it never lasts long.” Felix had a hollow sound to his voice, like he
sort of understood. “If you bring people you care about into a world of war and
danger, then someone is going to get hurt. Usually, it’s us. We have one of the
most dangerous jobs anyone can have. Most dragonriders just decide it’s better
not to have people in your life like that—people you can’t stand to lose
or who depend on you. That’s why you’ll see a lot of them with broken families,
more than one failed marriage, or no family at all.”

As I stood there over them, watching
Beckah sleep against Felix’s shoulder, I started thinking about what she’d told
me about her own family. “She said her parents aren’t getting along. That’s why
she ended up at the duke’s house in the first place.”

Felix looked down at her, too,
frowning like he felt bad for her. “I guess those of us from noble families
kind of dodge the worst of it . . . because we don’t expect our parents to pay
much attention to us anyway. I mean, my dad was never around to begin with,
even though he’s not a dragonrider. He has always had problems with his vision,
so he never would have made it through the academy. It didn’t make any
difference, though. He’s never had any time for me.” He hesitated, and I could
tell just by the way his expression darkened that he must have felt a lot of
anger toward his father. “The worst part is being alone. She’ll hate that, you
know?”

I did know. I knew exactly what it
meant to be alone. Finally, I thought I understood why Felix had wanted to be
friends with me in the first place. I was probably the only one who could
understand the value of having someone be there for you, especially when your
family wasn’t.

“Yeah, but we’ll be there for her.” I
gave him a half-hearted smile. “Someone should be. It might as well be us.”

Felix just smirked and closed his
eyes. “Speak for yourself, nanny.”

He had no room to be cracking jokes at
me for babysitting. “Well, you still have lipstick on your face, you know.” I
snorted.

Felix started blushing and wiping his
face. “Yeah
yeah
, you just go keep watch and let me
sleep. We’ll start the search again in an hour. Those guards couldn’t have just
vanished. Maybe we just missed them. We’ll check every road between here and
Halfax
if we have to. ”

I tried to let that give me some hope
as I walked away. We weren’t giving up yet. There was still time to find
Sile
. It was already late in the morning, and my stomach
was growling. The few hours of restless sleep I’d gotten only made me even more
tired, but I knew there was no way I would be able to relax until I knew
Sile
was alive.

I paced a wide circle around where
they were sleeping, keeping them in eyeshot at all times while I explored. The
marsh went as far as
the I
could see, in every
direction. I could hear strange sounding birds cawing in the trees. Frogs made
high pitched ringing noises in the tall reeds. Sometimes I heard something
splash in the water nearby, and it made me jump. It was an eerie, smelly place.

Through the trees and hanging moss, I
could see the road close by. It was built up on top of a dirt levy so wagons
and horses didn’t have to fight through the mud to get across the marsh. I
climbed up to the top of the levy and stood in the road, looking down both ways
without seeing anyone. Something about this place gave me the creeps, like
maybe something was watching me that I couldn’t see.

           
I
walked down the road for a few yards, swatting flies away from my face. Even
though I was worn out, and worried about
Sile
, it was
nice to have a few minutes to myself to think. I thought about the things I’d
heard
Sile
say.
Something about
tampering with gods.
I wondered what that meant, and what it had to do
with him. What could he possibly have done that would make anyone want to kill
him?

It was so quiet except for the birds
and frogs, and that’s when I heard Beckah scream. It almost made me jump out of
my boots. My heart started to pound, and I started running as fast as I could
through the mud and slop to get back to them. I hadn’t let them out of my sight
for more than a few minutes . . .

. .
. . But I was already too late.

There were six big men standing in our
small clearing, and all of them were armed with swords and crossbows. But there
was no way these guys were soldiers. They were wearing black cloaks, and
mismatched pieces of armor. All of them looked filthy and sweaty, and they
laughed at me when I stumbled into the clearing.

“That’s it? That’s the best yah got?”
A man with a long curly beard had Beckah by her hair, and was holding a long
dagger against her throat. He laughed at me and grinned with his crooked yellow
teeth. “A halfbreed
wearin
the king’s colors? Now
that’s a joke I never heard before!”

A few of the other men laughed again,
and it made our dragons snarl. Nova and Mavrik were crouched together, hissing
and showing their teeth as the men pointed crossbows at them.

“Let the kids go,” Felix growled
suddenly. He was standing with his back to the tree where he’d been sleeping
earlier. Another man had a sword pointed at him, and Felix had his hands raised
in the air. “You’ll get a ransom for me, but you’d be wasting your time with
them. A halfbreed and the daughter of a poor country knight don’t go for much.”