Avian (The Dragonrider Chronicles) (10 page)

“What a beautiful gift fate has given you, my lamb,” she whispered.

I blushed because I didn’t know what she was talking about. I couldn’t figure out how I had caused any of this. How had I saved her? What gift was she talking about?

Mrs. Derrick seemed to notice my confusion. She put her palm against my cheek and stroked my face with her thumb. “Someday you’ll understand. In the meantime, sit down! Look, I’ve been baking all morning. There’s a blueberry pie just for you. Go on!” She basically shoved me into a chair across from Beckah.

Before I could protest, there was a piece of pie and a fork in front of me. It distracted me immediately. Who can argue with pie?

I was too shocked to start eating, though. Mrs. Derrick was… better. Much,
much
better. I didn’t know if that was my fault, or just because she’d finally had her baby. I looked at Beckah for answers, but she only grinned shyly and went back to her sewing.

“He can eat later,” Sile said. He was leaning in the doorway watching us with a strange smirk on his face. “I need to talk to him outside.”

Mrs. Derrick swatted at her husband with a wooden spoon teasingly. “He hasn’t had anything but soup in nearly two weeks! Let the poor child have a bite or two! Look at him, still as skinny as a rail. He needs some meat on his bones.”

Sile rolled his eyes, but he never quit grinning.

“I’ll get you a piece, too,” she crooned to him. It must have worked because he grabbed her spoon and pulled her in close enough to kiss her on the mouth.

Watching them made me blush, and suddenly I had a good reason to stare down at the steaming hot piece of pie in front of me. Looking at it made it impossible to think about anything else except how hungry I was, so I started eating.

“Now see what you’ve done?” Beckah whispered.

I looked up with a mouthful of food in my cheek. She was kidding, I guess, because she winked at me and grinned.

Warm, solid food felt amazing in my stomach. I ate four slices of pie and two pieces of berry cobbler before I finally felt full. Mrs. Derrick wanted to keep feeding me, but thankfully Sile waved her off.

“Let’s go outside,” he said to me with a dark twinkle in his eyes.

I started to get nervous. That was same look he got at the academy whenever he was about to force me to do something unpleasant in the name of training.

“But I don’t have any shoes,” I protested. My old boots were definitely not going to fit anymore.

“You won’t need them.” He pointed to the front door. “Hurry up. You don’t realize it, but you’re due back at the academy in two weeks. Time is running out, and there’s still a lot you need to learn.”

Sile was right. I would have to go back early and have new armor made. Probably a new saddle, too. No way my stuff from last year was going to fit me now. I wondered if I’d have to come up with the money for all that myself, or if Sile was still going to be my sponsor. My new instructor, Lieutenant Jace Rordin, was about as nice as anyone could expect from a war dog that had just been dragged off the frontlines. He didn’t act like he hated me. But I seriously doubted he was going to buy me any new equipment. Armor was expensive. The little bit of money I had saved up from my carpentry work wasn’t enough to even buy myself a new helmet.

I followed Sile out the front door and toward the little stable behind the house. I tried not to look at the coffin that was still leaning up against the side of the house. He had said it was supposed to be for me. I couldn’t help but notice that it would have been way too small now. Still, seeing it gave me a creepy feeling.

Sile opened the stable door and disappeared inside. While I waited for him, I tried to get a grip on my nerves. I needed some answers, and I knew Sile was holding out on me. He knew more about me than I did, apparently. I needed him to tell me what I’d done to his wife to heal her like that, and how he knew I could even do it in the first place. I had a feeling he wasn’t going to just throw up his hands and confess everything. He had been keeping these secrets for a long time, and there had to be a reason.

Sile came out of the stable with a long wooden carrying pole and an old, banged up helmet. He smirked at me as he dropped them at my feet and went back inside to bring out two fifty-pound bags of grain. I watched him tie the bags to each end of the pole, and then he snapped his fingers and pointed at the ground.

I knew what that meant. I squatted down and braced myself as he put the carrying pole over my shoulders like a yoke. Once upon a time, a few weeks ago, those bags of grain would have weighed more than I did.

“There’s a pier for local fishermen three miles down the beach to the east. There and back twice. The sand near the surf is firmer. Try not to fall and ruin the grain, if you don’t mind.” he said as he picked up the old helmet and mashed it down onto my head. “And I better not catch you walking.”

“Yes sir.” My answer was automatic. It was easy to fall back into the state of mind I had been in during training. Even though Sile hadn’t been my instructor for a while now, I knew better than to argue with him. He didn’t like excuses.

Sure, I had kept up my own workout regiment every day since I left Blybrig, but that didn’t help me at all. Running down the beach with a hundred pounds on my back was more than exhausting. I wasn’t used to my new body, and all my joints ached. My muscles were still sore. Every step hurt.

It was nearly dark by the time I finally finished, and I was exhausted and starving again. I dropped the pole and bags back outside the stable before I sat down to catch my breath. I was dripping sweat and my feet were throbbing. All I could think about was food. I really hoped there was some pie left.

“Here.” Sile appeared behind me with a big piece of fresh-baked bread and a canteen in his hand. He tossed both of them to me. “Took you long enough.”

“I
have
been training,” I insisted as I took off the helmet and gulped down big bites of the bread. “I’m still weak. I’m not used to this body yet.”

“That’s not going to be an excuse at the academy. You know that,” he said, walking around me to pick up the bags and carry them back into the stable. When he came out again, he had two wooden practice swords in his hands like the ones we used in training. He dropped one of them at my feet and nudged it toward me with the toe of his boot. “Get up.”

“Sile,” I protested. “I have some questions.”

He turned his back to me and walked a few feet away, spinning the sword over his hand with expert speed. I seemed to recall hearing him say that the arm injury he had gotten at the prison camp last year would keep him from ever being able to hold a sword again. That didn’t seem to be the case. He was whipping the practice sword around like there was nothing wrong with his arm at all.

“There’ll be time for questions later,” he growled. “Besides, the answers aren’t important.”

“They’re important to me!” I couldn’t keep myself from lashing out at him. It was one thing for him to brush me off, but he was keeping things from me on purpose and trying to make it seem like none of it mattered. It did matter. It mattered a
lot
. “How do you know so much about me? How did you know I could heal your wife like that? What’s wrong with me?”

When Sile turned around, he had a dangerous look in his eyes. It actually scared me a little. He pointed his sword at me threateningly. “What should be important to you right now is learning how to survive because what is coming your way will, in all likelihood, kill you. Now get up.”

I obeyed, snatching up the sword as I stood. But I didn’t take my eyes off him; I wasn’t backing down yet. “Saving your life last year almost killed me. I think you owe me a few answers.”

I saw his jaw tense and his knuckles turned white as he gripped his sword more tightly. “I didn’t ask you to save me,” he growled through clenched teeth.

“You didn’t have to,” I growled back. “Beckah did. And she suspects that you’ve moved them all here because you’re trying to hide from someone—and I think she’s right. It’s all connected somehow, isn’t it? I’m not stupid, you know. I know it wasn’t coincidence that you stuck your neck out for me so I could become a dragonrider. No one else would have done that for a halfbreed. Not even my own father cares about me that much. So why won’t you tell me what’s going on?”

Sile lunged at me so suddenly I was caught completely off guard. I almost fell backwards as he brought his sword down toward my face. I moved to block, and the impact rattled my teeth. So much for that “crippling injury” he was supposed to have. He still hit like a hammer.

But I had changed some since the last time we’d crossed blades. I was stronger, and I could hold off his attacks. My own strikes were faster, steadier, and I could see him having to focus harder to keep up. He couldn’t toy with me like before.

Something had definitely clicked in my brain. The sword felt good in my hands. I stepped easily through parries and strikes that had been so difficult for me last year because I lacked the size to match my opponent’s reach. It didn’t feel like a struggle anymore.

I could sense that Sile was getting more and more aggressive. His attacks came faster, and he was using tricks that he’d never used before. I thought I had him on a downward swing, and he locked his hilt with mine, and twisted the blade out of my hand. Before I could even process what happened, there was a boot in my chest. Sile kicked me to the ground.

Suddenly I was lying on my back with both swords pointed at my throat. I was forced to tap out in surrender.

“Why won’t you tell me?” I glared up at him. “It’s my life. I have a right to know.”

“Because I promised her I wouldn’t,” he snapped.

“Who?”

I saw the rage in his eyes. He’d said too much. “I told you, it doesn’t matter!”

While he was busy being angry with himself for giving something important away, I used a leg sweep to knock him down. I didn’t give him a chance to recover. I threw myself at him and tried to get him into a grappling hold.

It was a good idea, in theory. But I was very rusty on the grappling maneuvers. I had been so terrible at hand-to-hand combat before. I was basically just a practice dummy for Felix. I had no good experience to go on.

Sile pinned me with a knee across my neck in a matter of seconds.

“Quit worrying about answers and focus on what you have to do to survive.” He bore down with his weight so hard I could barely breathe. “And don’t tell anyone about what you can do. I mean no one. Not even Felix. Don’t even try to do it again. You can’t tell anyone what you can do.”

Part of me really wanted to punch Sile in the face—maybe even break his nose for good measure. But I was having a hard enough time staying conscious as he crushed my windpipe. All I could do was nod, and he finally let me up.

I sat up coughing and rubbing my neck. I was so furious I couldn’t see straight. I already knew better than to tell anyone about what I had done to his wife, just like I knew better than to tell any of the other riders that I could talk to Mavrik with my thoughts. I was starting to collect a lot of big, dangerous secrets. “And what exactly am I supposed to survive? Felix already told me about the interrogation stuff. So they’ll use me as a punching bag for a few weeks? Big deal. It’s not like I’m not used to that already.”

Sile cracked a smirk and rolled his eyes, offering me a hand to pull me back up to my feet. “Felix is a good friend to you, however not even he can fully appreciate what’s about to happen. I’ve done everything I can to protect you. But when you exposed yourself last year and risked saving my life, everything I’ve done in that regard became pointless. Now there’s nowhere you can hide, and I can’t be there to protect you anymore. You should try growing some eyes in the back of your head.”

Something about the way he said that made me very uncomfortable. “You mean someone’s going to try to kidnap me now? For some kind of immortality ritual?”

Sile glared at me like that was a stupid thing to ask. It made my face feel hot. I was embarrassed and frustrated because I didn’t know what questions I should be asking. Most of the ones I did ask, he refused to answer.

“Go inside, get some dinner, bathe, and go to bed,” he commanded, picking up both swords and starting back into the stable. “Be back out here at first light. Your vacation is officially over.”

There was a sense of urgency in the way Sile trained with me every day. I was running out of time. He pushed me harder than I had ever been pushed before, and still wouldn’t tell me exactly why. He didn’t give me a spare minute to question him, either. I barely even had enough time to think.

Sile got amazingly creative coming up with ways for me to build up my strength, which frankly hadn’t exactly blossomed like I’d hoped it would. At first, it was a struggle just to make it through one exercise. But after a few days, I could already feel myself getting stronger. I could run further and faster without getting tired. He had me doing pull-ups and chin-ups on an exposed beam in the stable. I did push-ups with those bags of grain piled on my back, and sit-ups until I felt like I was going to puke.

We sparred for hours, practicing with swords, scimitars, and drilling through grappling techniques. He even tied me to the family carriage and had me pull it around the house in circles a few times. All that work made it hard to keep track of time, but I could tell his intensive training was starting to work. Even if I hadn’t gained much muscle, I was getting more and more comfortable in my new body every day.

I felt bad for how much I was eating. I knew I was costing them a lot of extra money. But I was starving all the time. My appetite was out of control, and I couldn’t do anything about it. It made the training Sile was putting me through show with quicker results, but it also meant I was eating them out of house and home. I could eat more than the rest of the family combined. Mrs. Derrick teased me about hiding it under my chair, because even though I could eat a whole roast by myself, I never gained a single pound.

While we trained, Beckah brought us water and food regularly. I could tell by the look on her face that something was wrong. She seemed nervous just to be around me. I wondered why. I wanted to think that my sudden growth spurt wouldn’t change anything between us—but it already had. She was right there in the same house with me, and I missed her like she was a thousand miles away. We didn’t talk much, and she barely made eye contact with me.