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i.
When Percy gets up the next morning, it's to find Seth flirting with Lilianath up on the watchtower.
"Does he always do that?" he asks when he finds Grover in the mess hall, almost buried beneath a veritable stack of riding goggles. Curious, he picks up a pair, turning them over and inspecting them. Scorch marks warp the edges of the lens, bitter-smelling, black, and charred.
Grover snatches the pair away from him and tosses them onto a stack of equally sorry-looking goggles. "What, Seth?" he mumbles, somewhat absently. "Yeah, he always does that. I think he's a bit bored here, to be honest."
Percy makes a face. "But Lilianath's like, a bajillion and a half years older than him."
Grover's mouth quirks in that way Percy's used to associating with people communicating with their dragons. "Erraolth says you shouldn't say that anywhere where she can hear you."
He snorts easily, since he wasn't planning on it. He's from a big Weyr, so it's not like he gets knock-kneed at the sight of a queen dragon alight in the sky, so golden she puts the sun to shame, but he hadn't actually gotten within touching distance of one until he met Lilianath. She's old, though, more gray-white basalt build-up to her skin than gold, so it's still strange to watch Seth dance around her up on the watchtower, snorting playfully.
Seth's not even five years old, which makes him not quite fully grown, but he's still small for a bronze nonetheless; three hands-spans bigger in the leg than a stallion, where Lilianath is more like double that -- the kind of size that would make it really comfortable to step out of a two-story window right onto her shoulders. Seth's a transfer from another Weyr, Grover told him, and about the only bronze in the wings that Lilianath didn't spawn, so maybe it's the novelty that helps him get away with it.
And indeed, if anything, Lilianath and the Weyrleader's bronze mostly just seem amusedly tolerant of Seth's behavior.
"Well, that's because it's a foregone conclusion, innit?" goes one of the Stoll twins later, in line for porridge and breakfast fruit.
"What is?" Percy blinks. Travis and Connor are fifteen and taller than him by half a head, which annoys him, but they're all right when separate and absolutely brilliant together, and they seem to know everything about everyone. It'd be cool if they both Impressed dragons -- that way, they could stay together. They came from somewhere way far down south, and while distance is nothing to a dragon, it'd still be sad if one of them had to go home.
Holding his empty tray up in front of his face like he's afraid someone's going to overhear, the other twin leans in. "Well, they brought Seth in to fly the junior queen when she's old enough, didn't they?"
"Think about it," goes the first twin, keeping his voice down, too. "Silena's gonna be Weyrwoman once her dragon's old enough to clutch, and everybody likes her, and everybody likes Luke. They'd be fantastic Weyrleaders."
Percy thinks about it. Politics is a little beyond his grasp at this point, but he can't deny that pretty much all the Candidates look up to Silena and Luke with the kind of reluctant awe reserved for those who are incontrovertibly that much older and cooler than you. And he gets that Candidates will become dragonriders, and dragonriders make up the fighting wings, and the fighting wings are the important voices in a Weyr, so he supposes that it's a good sign if the Candidates like potential new Weyrleaders.
"But," he starts. "There's a queen egg on the Sands right now. So when it hatches, we'll have three queens; Lilianath, Silena's Zererith, and the new hatchling. Doesn't that make too many queens for a Weyr?"
Travis and Connor grin at him.
"Yeah," one of them shrugs. "But since when do we follow typical Weyr rules?"
The line moves them, so Percy just shrugs and grabs a tray.
ii.
They're not a proper Weyr, of course. Mostly everybody here just calls it Camp; they don't have the cragged cliffs and labyrinthine caves that dragons love, the ones that house the proper Weyrs. There are a couple places like it in the world, he knows -- strongholds in the wilderness where dragons and riders live in baracks, not caves -- but in the Weyr he grew up in, people treat them like they're temporary, not even worth an actual name.
It didn't escape Percy's attention, the way Smelly Gabe kind of wrinkled his nose when Grover came on Erraolth on a winter's day, Searching, like he thought it was farcical.
"Ruddy thing won't last five years, I'm telling you," he grumbled into his cards. "Dragons are meant for the seaside and mountains, not the plains upstate."
"They have two full fighting wings, Gabriel, and they've got Chiron for Weyrleader. They're not some backwoods gathering of dragons," Sally remarked mildly. She was trying to make Percy's hair lie flat. All children over the age of twelve and under the age of eighteen were required for presentation to a dragon on Search, and although it was a bit not-kosher to Search in another Weyr instead of the smaller Holds and towns, there wasn't any rule against it. Percy was only just old enough to qualify, and his mother seemed a little uncertain as how to handle the unexpected summons. So she attacked it with a hairbrush.
Grover and Erraolth were both brown, sturdy, and down-to-earth, smiling easily as all the young potential Candidates were gathered before them, and they'd seemed completely unperturbed by the subtle derision from the local dragonriders gathered high on the rocky crags surrounding the Bowl. Grover had a mass of insanely curly hair that attracted and held everybody's attention more than his speech did, and Erraolth stood behind him, slender peacock neck curved back at rest position and wedge-shaped head tucked over Grover's shoulder.
"There's something different we look for in our dragonriders at Camp, something most Searchers and their dragons overlook." Grover put a hand on his dragon's muzzle, rubbing at it affectionately, the same easy, unconscious movement all dragonriders make. "It's not your typical adventure, pioneering new strongholds out in the wild, so trust us when we say that we don't Search lightly."
Which, Percy supposes later, was their politically correct excuse for only Searching one person out of the hundreds of kids available from his home Weyr.
"I don't get it," went Gabe, after. "You're just some snot-nosed twelve-year-old. Who'd want you for a dragonrider?"
"Well, shit," had been Sally's equally dumbstruck remark, and Percy's eyebrows jumped. His mother never cussed. She put her hands out, smoothing his hair down compulsively; Erraolth huffing down on him joyfully had been enough to completely ruin all her efforts from before. "You're not supposed to leave my nest until you're eighteen, Percy. Now what am I going to do?"
"Mom!" Percy went, mortified to see she was on the verge of crying. "It's not like I can't visit."
"Oh, he'll be back," Gabe waved a hand around dismissively. "Can you see him Impressing anything?" He squinted meanly at Percy. "Well, maybe the runtiest green of the lot. The ones not even the girls want."
Grover frowned at him, but Sally beat him to it, saying with an icy amount of venom, "I'd be no less proud of Percy if he Impressed a green than I would if he Impressed the biggest bronze on the Sands. We need every dragonrider we can get."
"A boy on a green is just damn unnatural," Gabe said, mulishly but too quietly to provoke anything.
Don't tell anyone, but saying good-bye to his mom was the hardest part of being Searched. Accepting a hand-up from Grover onto Erraolth's back, he made a mental note to ask if maybe she could come to Camp, too, once he Impressed. There's really nothing for her here. Especially not her husband.
Then again, thinking back on it now, he remembers the thoughtful expression on her face as she was helping him pack and thinks that she can probably handle herself.
iii.
Candidates are allowed forty-five minutes on the Sands every day to mingle with the dragon eggs, stroking shells and talking to the hatchlings inside. Everybody says that's where Impression really happens: the dragons know who they want the instant they crack shell, all from the pressure of a handprint and the sound of a whisper.
Sometimes Lilianath is there, tail and claws curled protectively around the queen egg on its own separate mound of sand and curling her lips back over her teeth when someone gets too close, her eyes chaotically colorful, but most of the time, the safest point to bring the Candidates in is when she's out hunting cattle or doing her shift up on the watchtower, a familiar silhouette golden against the sky.
Even Percy can tell this will be her last clutch: she and the Weyrwoman are getting too old for this Hatching business, and anyway, Grover said that Zererith will be old enough to mate come spring, so the next clutch of eggs on the Sands will be hers, making Silena the new Weyrwoman, and whatever bronzerider (Luke, the Stoll brothers nod, like it's already happened, although technically it's all supposed to be chance) flies her will be the new Weyrleader. If Percy Impresses, he'll be here to see it.
The Hatching Grounds is actually a shallow pit scraped out of a dried-up river delta with an arena built up around it, kept warm with a mixture of hot rocks, dragonfire, and mulch. It's open to the sky, which makes it different than any Hatching Grounds Percy's ever been in. He can't really get over it.
He's not the youngest Candidate standing, nor the smallest -- that honor belongs to a yellow-haired girl named Annabeth, who recognized the position of vulnerability this put her in early on (nobody ever likes being the youngest Candidate standing -- everybody loves an underdog story, about the littlest Candidate going on to Impress where the bigger, older ones don't, so everybody watches the smallest ones on Hatching day and it's not like they aren't insane with nerves already,) and she's probably tougher than the rest of them put together. Also, she has very sharp elbows and a tendency to find the softest spots to stick them in when she's displeased. She doesn't really band together with the other Candidates; her closest friend is the greenrider who Searched her, Thalia, a sentiment that Percy can appreciate: moreso than anybody else, he likes hanging around Grover, who's not so old that he treats the Candidates like kids.
Technically, all the girls are standing for the queen egg, since it's the most important, but most of them get chosen by greens before the queen even cracks shell. He looks over now just as Annabeth crouches down, stroking a hand down the mottled gold-hued curve of the egg, the shape of her fingers tiny against the shell.
"Imagine if she became Junior Weyrwoman," he hears Castor whisper. Pollux shushes him quickly, but Castor's got the biggest flare for the dramatic of anyone Percy knows and does sotto voice almost by default. He sees the line of tension enter Annabeth's shoulders, and she pulls her hand back, too abrupt to really be casual.
Percy bites his lip. "I think she'd be just fine," he tells the egg he's closest to in an undertone. It's a whole swirl of colors -- unlike the queen egg, you can't tell what color of dragon are in the smaller ones, nor do the sizable ones always hatch bronzes, whatever anybody says. "So you go and telepathically tell that to the little queen in there."
For good measure, he pets the egg a little, and startles when he feels something turn over inside. The shell is hard, clicking against his nail when he taps it experimentally.
Soon, then, he thinks, unable to suppress a shiver of excitement, and when he looks up, he unwittingly catches Charlie's eye. Unlike most of the boys, who are encouraged to get acquainted with as many of the eggs as they can to widen their chances, Charlie picked one egg that first time and he stays by it for the full forty-five minutes every day, talking lowly.
Nobody bothers him about it. He's the oldest Candidate here, the Stoll brothers told him -- he's the Weyrwoman's nephew or something, so he's stood at two Hatchings before this and Impressed neither times, and this is probably his last chance too.
Unexpectedly, Charlie smiles at him, wide and toothy and eager. Soon, he mouths back.
iv.
Being Candidates puts them at the bottom of the food chain when it comes to chores, which kind of sucks some days. Percy's seen more toilets in the past few weeks than he has in pretty much his entire life. It seems like the sort of life experience he could do without.
"Percy!" Rachel finds him after breakfast, entirely too cheerful-looking for the time of morning and carrying a bucket in her arms. Percy's never really figured out exactly what Rachel's relation is to everyone at Camp: he's seen her in with the cooks, in with the stablehands, in the library with paint under her nails. The most he's ever got was that she's a favorite of the Weyrleaders -- she alarmed a bunch of the new kids this one time by dropping in between Chiron and the Weyrwoman on the bench at dinner, chattering away like this was all par for the course. She's just one of those Camp fixtures you get used to.
She rummages in her bucket and pulls out a thin stick of wood. "Dragon bath requested by weyr 221," she reads off of it, and looks over at him. "They're on drill rotation right now, I think, but they get back in at ten."
Percy wrinkles his nose a little bit. "Dragon toe jam is exactly how I want to start the day."
"Suck it up!" she responds chirpily, smiling easy and without rancor. Her hair's wet, he notices, watching the water drip off the end of her damp-darkened braid, and then remembers the rather enthusiastic game some of the younger blue dragons had been playing earlier that morning out in the lake. Looks like she'd been there for that.
He takes the wood slat from her and pretends to swoon. "You always save the best things for me!"
"That's because you never do anything remotely exciting," she answers immediately. "And therefore don't attract anyone's ire, so I've run out of all the nasty chores by the time I get to you."
Percy's not quite sure how to handle that. "Thank you, I guess. That was a very backhanded compliment."
"My specialty. Let me know when you decide to be interesting."
"You'll be the first to know," Percy goes, dry, and then goes to get the dragon bathing supplies from the Big House.
In all honesty, dragon toe jam really isn't that bad. It stinks bit -- all dragons coming in off of drill rotation smell unpleasant, like burning hair and compost, for reasons Percy's sure he's going to have to learn at some point. But drawing baths for them is actually kind of fun: Percy likes the excuse to be that close to a dragon, even one that smells offensive and likes splashing water everywhere with thoughtless sweeps of its wings, which means more for Percy to have to clean up later.
He cuts it so close that there's still small curls of steam coming off the surface of the tub when the rider and dragon make their appearance at the bath house, and Percy realizes with a start that the occupants of weyr 221 are Luke and Seth.
He's heard it from the twins so many times now that it's practically canonical, but even Percy has to stop for a moment and let it really sink in, just how much Luke looks the part of a dragonrider. He fits his leathers like they're wearing him instead of the other way around, goggles cocked at a jaunty angle high on his forehead and his hair's at just the right length to stick out from under his helmet in tufts, which, according to Thalia is a rather attractive look.
"It makes his smile look fabulous, you'll see," she said conspiratorially, tapping the side of her nose.
When he sees the tub and the rubbing oils and the sandpaper all already laid out, Luke's whole face cracks open, revealing a row of wide, white teeth, and Percy's not a greenrider (yet, at any rate, though according to his stepfather it's as much a foregone conclusion as Silena being the next Weyrwoman,) but Thalia's got a point: that's definitely a Cool Guy smile.
"Perseus, isn't it?" he goes, stripping off his riding gloves and rubbing circulation back into his bloodless fingers; it's cold up there at dragonflight height.
"Percy, actually," Percy corrects, as Seth makes a happy noise and circumvents his rider in order to scrabble into the tub, talons and tail ungainly on the tiles. He submerges all the way up to his spine ridges in a single, loud dive, making a subvocal sound of appreciation that vibrates against the sides of the tub. He ducks his head under, lidding his eyelids so that they glow in contented blues and greens under the surface, diluted and a little eerie.
When he finally manages to tear his eyes away from the sight, it's to find Luke doing pretty much the exact same thing: watching his dragon with fondness, joy, and something that's close to childish awe, like he can't quite believe he's here.
"No," he says dryly, dragging it out. "You can't splash everywhere. This is getting clean time, not play time."
It's only when Seth flips a wingtip at him dismissively that Percy realizes he was talking to the bronze, who'd been eyeing Percy with something like mischief.
"Why is there a whole separate compound for bathing dragons? Why can't they just get clean in the lake?" he'd asked Rachel once, and she'd given him this fish-eyed look, like she was wondering what backbirth Hold they'd brought him in from.
He's figured it out since then; the way dirt and debris and ash gather in the cracks in dragon skin, and how riders need to sandpaper their scales down and oil in between them, which all sounds luxurious and kind of ridiculous when you put it like that, but it's crucial to dragon health, and there's some important bonding element to it that you wouldn't understand unless you're a dragonrider.
There's an oily sheen of dirt swirling on the surface of the tub now, and thanks to Seth's careless movements, there's probably nearly as much water on the tiles now as there is in the tub.
Percy thinks about going for a mop, but that'd probably only prompt Seth to make more of a mess.
Luke finishes unbuckling his chaps, hanging them up and going over to sit cross-legged next to the tub. Immediately, Seth blows bubbles at him from underwater.
"Grover Searched you, didn't he?" the bronzerider says suddenly, making Percy jump.
Recovering, he says hastily, "Um, yes?", unable to keep it from coming out like a question.
Seth rumbles lowly, finally lifting his head out of the water in order to deposit it in Luke's lap, soaking him. Luke just laughs, trailing his fingers over the shape of Seth's face -- the ornate ridges above the eyes, the thin flaps of skin like fins that protect a dragon's ears, the soft spot right behind the notch at the top of the skull.
"You worried about the Hatching?" he goes, stroking along the eye ridges, and Seth presses eagerly into the touch, eyes lidding with pleasure.
"About Impressing? Not really. It happens or it doesn't, right?"
"I suppose," Luke shrugs, his lips turning up at the corner. "You know, I always thought it was a bit more complicated than that, even if it's what they'll tell you, and it's not until you're too old and it's too late do you really realize just how much someone can manipulate a Hatching."
Not liking the tone in his voice, Percy worries his lips and tries to think of something to say to that -- manipulate a Hatching? It's the dragon's choice, isn't it? How can anyone manipulate a dragon? -- but Luke distracts him, lifting a hand to finger over the scar that cuts down underneath his eye. It's healed nicely, he can tell, but it's still starkly visible on Luke's tan and wind-chapped face. He has no idea how Luke got it: he asked Grover, who asked Erraolth, who heard from Mirth, Thalia's green, that he got it at the same Hatching he'd Impressed at. This probably means it'd been one of the hatchlings, maybe even Seth, and like a bolt out of the blue, Percy wonders if that's what he meant.
Fortunately, Luke seems to snap out of it, dropping his hand and hiding the gesture by popping his knuckles.
"You hoping for a bronze?" he asks, flashing Percy a grin, and there's totally a note of teasing in his voice now.
It's not an uncommon question. Just like all the girls stand for the queen, all the boys stand for the bronzes, and Impressing all the other colors just seems to happen while everyone waits for the queen egg to hatch, or some boy they know to Impress a bronze. Status symbols, her mother sniffed once, surprising him with how poisonously she said it. Her brother, Percy's uncle, had been a bronzerider when he was alive, so he didn't really understand her comment, but the unease still lingered. Looking at Luke, you wouldn't think there's a single thing wrong with bronzeriders, and Percy wouldn't dream of saying anything bad about Chiron.
"I guess," he settles for, because it's ambiguous enough. Unbidden, he blurts out, "My stepfather thinks that it's unnatural for boys to Impress greens."
That startles Luke. His eyebrows shoot up, and he huffs a laugh, the sound of it echoed with Seth's snort. "We should introduce him to Ethan."
"Ethan?" Percy blinks, momentarily diverted. "Wait, Ethan's a greenrider? Ethan with the missing eye and the bad attitude? A green?" Ethan's got a reputation for busting kneecaps, not wholly undeserved: he has, on more than one occasion that Percy knows of, picked a fight with several of the blueriders and a brownrider or two at dinner. Percy always thought it was over some girl.
Watching him work through several things at once, Luke's mouth curves again, something that's half-twisted and half a genuine smile. "You know, I can't help but think sometimes that all the typical stereotypes are crap."
"What?"
"You know." Luke shrugs. "Queenriders are always beautiful, headstrong women. Bronzes Impress the manly, the confident, the hero-types," he stops petting Seth long enough to flex his muscles in demonstration, looking gratified when Percy can't help but laugh. "Browns always go for the completely average, the laid-back and reliable. Blues go for the witty and the problem-solvers, and greens like the sl--" he cuts his eyes at Percy, trips over his tongue, and says instead, "-- the flighty."
He digests this. "What sort do you think the dragons look for?"
Luke shakes his head. "I just don't think it's fair to stick those kinds of labels to people. That just because you ride a bronze means you've got some predetermined fate." Seth burbles something reassuring, and Luke ducks his head, smiling at whatever his dragon just told him inside his head. "Personally, I think it's the greenriders who are the strongest of all of us," he continues, more meditatively. "They're the ones that really fight, harder and longer than everyone else. They're the backbone of any Weyr. Tell that to your stepfather next time he gets mean."
Percy goes back to biting at the inside of his lips, because none of that really sounded like him -- is there a kind of dragon for the weird kids with behavioral problems?
Catching something in his expression, Luke gives him one of those easy-going smiles and beckons with one hand. "Come here for a sec, will you?"
Percy does, of course, and Luke shows him the spot right behind a dragon's eye ridges that they can never reach for themselves, no matter how they rub their heads on rocks (or, in their case, fallen logs and branches, given Camp's lack of natural caves,) that soft, itchy skin that makes them croon like children and push into your hand, like that. It always surprises Percy, just how warm dragons are, like they're constantly lit on fire somewhere deep down.
"Don't worry about it," Luke says quietly, after several minutes of getting Seth to relax into a boneless lump of bronze scales, his eyes the deepest shade of cerulean, swirling so slowly and peacefully it looks like sugar. "Erraolth's a good Searchdragon; if you're here, you've got everything you need to be a dragonrider. Spirit, maturity, willingness to follow orders -- speaking of which!" He brightens. "Seth says he wants more hot water. You should get on that, Candidate!"
So, with the full maturity of a possible future dragonrider, Percy pops a "W" with his fingers and goes to pull down the pump to let more hot water into the tub.
v.
"Actually," Rachel drums her fingers against the tabletop, the sound of it lost against the patter of pouring rain against the roof. The mess hall is separated from the elements by corrugated sheet metal, which makes everything sound that much closer and immediate. "I always thought the Search dragons looked for the kids that need it most."
Percy, busy contemplating the way the rain seems to mist off the trees, it's coming down so hard, almost misses this. "Sorry, what?" he goes, snapping out of it.
She doesn't seem to notice she's disturbed his zen. "Whatever it is they see in people that makes them pick them as Candidates. I've watched a lot of you guys go by in my years -- " which Percy rolls his eyes at, because she's what, fourteen, fifteen, tops. "-- and it always seemed to me that the Search dragons and then, in their turn, the hatchlings always pick the kids that need the dragons as much as the dragons need them. It makes for the best kind of fighting wing, the ones that have each other to fight for."
"Are you sure about that?" another voice cuts in, and Percy and Rachel look up to find Clarisse standing over their table, tray in one hand and the other firmly planted on her hip. Next to her, almost like she's been attached as an afterthought, is Silena, the Junior Weyrwoman. ("Oh, don't look so surprised!" Travis waves his hand around extravagantly. "They're best of friends. Yes, Silena and Clarisse. This is the first year Clarisse has been asked to stand as a Candidate -- she's nearly as old as Charlie is. Personally, we think Silena's hoping she'll Impress the queen so they can stick together, but you'll have to ask her that.")
Rachel looks more annoyed than intimidated, which Percy admires, because he's feeling very intimidated right now: Clarisse is enormously tall and built like a miner, and the rumors say she got into a fistfight with Ethan a week ago, blacked his eye, and never got caught. "Yes," Rachel says, and goes back to chalking chores down on her little wooden slats.
Clarisse's eyebrows go up. "Really? Because I always thought the Search dragons looked for the nymphos."
"Clarisse!" Silena jerks, startled. She sets her tray down so fast that soup splashes everywhere. "There are children present!"
"What?" Clarisse rolls her eyes, opening her mouth again. Silena makes an attempt to cover Percy's ears, and -- momentarily forgetting who she is, which is the excuse he'll use later -- he tries to bat her away, because if Clarisse is saying something she shouldn't, then he wants to hear it.
"-- think about it," she's saying. "How many times a year do greens go into heat? And don't greens make up, like, half of all fighting wings? Anyone can fly a green: blues, browns, bronzes. That is an insane amount of sex. Like I said, nymphos, all of us. We have to be."
"I really don't think the Search dragons are looking at a twelve-year-old's sex appeal when they Search him, Clarisse," Rachel goes, voice dry.
"And a dragon can choose who flies her, it's not like it's a partner roulette unless they want it to be," puts in Silena, not trying to censor Percy from the conversation anymore, even if most of it is going over his head. He's Weyrbred, so some of it he knows already: greens mate a lot, everybody rolls their eyes about it, it's no big deal. Greens don't lay eggs, so it's not really relevant and it's not anybody's business. It's when queens fly to mate that everybody pays attention, and only bronzes can fly queens. He glances up at Silena -- Luke's right, she is remarkably beautiful, even muted by the rain and frowning -- and wonders if she knows how many people are making a bet out of her and Zererith's sex life.
Clarisse seems to have realize she's hit a line she shouldn't cross, and, possibly because it's Silena and nobody else, she backs off. "Well, true. You can't really imagine anybody flying Lilianath but Ibboth, can you?" she says, gruff, and there's a pause in which they all try to contemplate anybody but Chiron as Weyrleader, and simultaneously make faces when they hit that mental block.
Then she swings one leg over the bench and sits down next to Rachel. "Come on then," she says to the Junior Weyrwoman. "Apparently we're eating with small, dimwitted children today."
"You know," Rachel remarks to Percy, cupping her whisper behind her hand. "I think that's the nicest thing she's ever called me."
They duck the grape tomato Clarisse tosses at their heads.
vi.
Michael wakes him up in the middle of the night by hurtling a pillow at his face.
"Get up!" he hollers while Percy's still floundering and trying to fend off his attacker. "If you don't get up, I will laugh my ass off when you have to explain to the Weyrleaders why you, oh I don't know, missed the Hatching."
Percy jerks completely awake at that, just as Michael's head popped up over the side of his bunk. He has a constellation of freckles all cross his face that spin like stars when he cracks a grin, laughing at Percy's expression. "Thought that would get you up! Come on, can't you hear it?"
Almost the second he mentions it, Percy does: it's a low, subterranean noise, like pressing your ear to a tabletop and being able to hear everyone's footsteps, less like hearing it with his ears and more with all the bones inside his body. "It's the Hatching hum," he breathes, paralyzed with it.
Michael rolls his eyes at this. "Yeah, you're a bright one," he goes, but there's no bite to the remark. Michael's only thirteen, and his older brother Lee is one of the blueriders, who likes to drop dead fish on Candidates passing underneath the archway at the Big House for laughs, and sings to himself at dinner, loud and unselfconscious. Everybody likes Lee, dead fish aside, and Michael's a shorter, pint-sized version of him. He's practically vibrating with excitement as he jumps down, gesturing sharply that Percy should do the same, which he does; he throws his covers off with more violence than it necessitates and half-falls from the top bunk, almost braining himself before he regains his balance.
Ethan's in the hallway, attempting to direct Candidates. There are only maybe thirty or forty of them, but suddenly it seems like a lot more, all of them stumbling and rubbing at their eyes and thoroughly confused as to where to be.
"It's too early for this, it's the middle of the night," somebody complains, and Ethan's single visible eye flashes.
"Well, you'd better tell that to the hatchlings when you get out there, I'm sure they'd have loved to have kept to your schedule." He claps his hands, sharp enough to get everyone's attention. "All right! The last one of you pathetic slimy things in their robes will be fed to Shalakith and Mirth, don't think we won't!" Thalia laughs from the other end of the hall, appearing to take charge of the girls.
The boys make vague attempts at splashing cold water on their faces and scrubbing to wake themselves up, then don the starched white robes that mark them as Candidates. Percy's pants are too big on him, trying to slip off when he moves too suddenly, and he can't get the sash to tie quite right. He's still fumbling with it when the humming that's vibrating in the walls hard enough to dislodge loose bits of gravel abruptly spikes in intensity, and Ethan materializes to shoo them out into the Bowl.
He has a brief, hysterical moment in which he really does believe he's about to be fed to Ethan's Shalakith (which is ridiculous, dragons don't eat humans, but still, Percy is emotionally vulnerable right now and Ethan is scary,) but the instant they step outside and rejoin the girls, Annabeth grabs him by the elbow and ducks behind the bigger bulk of Castor and Pollux. She ties his sash in three quick, economical movements, leaving him blinking at her.
"Thanks," he manages finally, throat thick, and she just nods at him, a fierce, focused, determined look on her face. It's that confidence that settles Percy's queasiness some. This may suddenly be the most important day in his life, but it's going to play out how it plays out, no matter how nervous he is.
The Hatching Grounds are alive with movement when they get there: all the dragons on their perches around the rim of the makeshift arena built around the sands, their eyes whirling bright and chaotic, the rainbow colors of excitement, as easily visible as lanterns in the dark of night. Everybody seems to be there, from Dionysus (who is basically their Headwoman, although nobody ever calls him that to his face, but there's nobody else who treats the Weyrleaders with quite as much veiled contempt as a Headwoman would, and he does seem to run everything the Weyrleaders don't have their hands in) to Rachel, on duty at the entrance to the Grounds to make sure all Candidates are present and accounted for, as well as dozens of people Percy has never seen before, all up in the stands. For some reason, it hadn't occurred to him that there'd be visitors to a Camp Hatching just as there would be to a Weyr Hatching.
Rachel checks him off as he goes by: there's still a pillow imprint on her cheek, he notes somewhat inanely, and then Percy's on the sands and he can't think.
Lilianath's there, of course, restless and shifting, shaking her wings out so that her shadow stretches long up the arena walls, making her look twice as big as she really is. Ibboth's there, closer than any of the other dragons and crooning reassuringly in counterpoint to Lilianath's protective maternal hissing. Chiron stands next to his dragon, a distinctive figure in his sharpest-looking clothes and full black beard, mostly shot through with white now. Ibboth resettles, folding his wings back, and Percy realizes that the Weyrwoman is there, too, shoulder-to-shoulder with Chiron.
Percy's only talked to Oracle once -- the first day they let him onto the sands to touch the eggs -- but he likes her immensely. She's old, though, so incredibly old; her deep brown skin's withered up along her bones like all the moisture's been sucked out of it, and years of riding into the wind has permanently cut white-rimmed sores into her cheeks and forehead. Her eyes are milky, filmed over in cataracts, but he has a eerie feeling she could see right through him when she spoke to him: she certainly has absolutely no trouble maneuvering around Camp, but then, she has Lilianath to be eyes for her.
Still, though, to be the Weyrwoman that created a Camp and turned it into a refuge for dragons against all the odds: Percy feels respect for Oracle well up underneath his heart, just watching her lean into her Weyrleader.
The Candidates line up in a loose curve around the eggs, and even in the middle of the night, the sands are still piping hot underfoot, like beach sand at high noon. To his right, there's Annabeth, her shoulders back and her spine straightened so that she doesn't look as young as she really is. To his left, there's Bianca, a fourteen-year-old girl with hastily-braided dark hair and an unfortunately large nose: she was Searched from a Hold so far up north than Percy's never heard of it, where they live in caves made of ice that never really thaw, not even in summer. She catches his eye and smiles reflexively, which he returns because he has no reason not to.
It's weird, watching the eggs rock and twitch. He's so used to them being stationary, there to be talked to, that it's just now starting to sink in: that there are dragons in those eggs, and now they're hatching.
The humming stops so abruptly that the moment of silence that follows is wire-thin, suspended, and Percy's absolutely certain not a single person draws breath.
Then, in a single burst, a crack! that seems louder than any sound in history, a glistening wingtip breaks through the shell on the egg closest to where he's standing. There's so much force behind it sends sharp, glittering shards of shell ricocheting off the other eggs. Flinging their arms up to protect their faces, Percy and Annabeth stagger out of the way. He hears Annabeth trip over another egg, hitting the sands with a sharp cry of pain.
The sound is echoed by an equally high, distressed shriek, and Percy darts a glance to the right only long enough to determine that Annabeth's fine, scrambling back onto her feet, before turning his attention to the hatchling that's now all but falling out of her shell. Slimy with egg fluid, she staggers upright, wings unfurling to help her keep her balance.
A green, the first hatchling is a green, he thinks, and then all his years of being brought up on Weyr superstitions fails him all at once and he can't, for the life of him, remember if that's a good sign.
Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the other Candidates move, edging in, and remembers that, oh, yeah, they're supposed to be Impressing. But the green takes no notice of them; tripping over herself, she makes the few steps necessary and reaches out, hooking her talons into Annabeth's white tunic and dragging her down to her height. Annabeth catches her claw, untangling it before the fabric rips, and the dragon yips at her cheerfully. Just like that, the first Impression is made.
There's a moment, broken only by the approving, subvocal hums the watching dragons are making and the sounds of the eggs still rocking, where nobody says a thing. Every eye, Percy figures, is fixed on Annabeth at this second.
And then Oracle materializes, stepping up and setting a hand on her shoulder. "What's her name, young dragonrider?" she asks, voice deep and gentle like still water.
Annabeth looks up at her, eyes so wide it seems like they can't fit in her head. "Hyacinth. She says her name is Hyacinth, oh, Weyrwoman, she's in my head." The green croons affectionately, rubbing her nose against Annabeth's chest.
Oracle smiles, crinkling the lines around her eyes. "Yes," she says kindly, "and in your heart and your soul now, too. You'd best be moving, she'll be starving after all that work hatching, and she'll want to eat. The rest of you," this was to the Candidates, who'd broken circle to edge closer. "Don't you have dragons to be Impressing?"
She lifts a hand, and as if this is some superhuman cue, several eggs shatter at once, and Percy only has time to think, our Weyrwoman has mystical powers, before everything starts happening.
There weren't, he realizes within minutes, any reliable rules for how one Impresses. All the dragonriders say, "oh, it's the dragon's choice," but they don't actually tell you what to do on the sands. They tell you what not to do -- don't fidget, don't talk, don't go a step closer to Lilianath than is strictly necessary, don't fight over a dragon, and for gods' sake, don't panic -- but there's nothing that's helping him right now. There aren't any hatchlings nearby, so should he move towards them, or should he stay in line and wait for a dragon to find him?
He darts a quick look around, and his heart gives a startled leap: that's one of the Stoll brothers (Travis or Connor, he really needs to learn how to tell them apart,) on his knees in the sand, a bronze hatchling leaning into the crook of his arms, the colors dancing in his eyes soft and adoring. But where's the other?
The twin stands decisively, the bronze leaning onto him for support, and it's only when the hatchling tucks a stray wing in close that Percy gets a good look of the second twin -- and a second bronze!
Identical in everything. "Well, so much for telling them apart now," he remarks to no one in particular.
The happiness for them doesn't fade, exactly, but it takes back seat to more pressing matters. He shifts antsily. Too far away, a brown hatchling careens back and forth urgently, unpartnered. Decisively, Percy takes a step towards him, but there's no point: the brown's cries turn joyous, and he all but dives face-first at Chris's feet. Percy looks away as Chris, with uncharacteristic tenderness, rights the brown, brushing sand off his muzzle.
Bianca's gone -- a green found her early on -- and it leaves a sort of desolate, empty space around him. He would tighten the semi-circle if there was anything left of a semi-circle to tighten -- and over there, Michael waving to catch his attention, gesturing for him to come over. But what Percy sees that Michael can't is that a brown is trying to keep up with his energetic movements, hiccuping with distress when Michael keeps hop-stepping away from him. Finally, the hatchling halts, swaying on the spot, and barks, loud enough that Michael startles and almost falls over, he spins around so fast. Instantly, he is all condolences, like nothing else in the world exists.
A brown, then, and oh, Percy thinks, how that must rankle Lee! He looks up at the spectators, and finds him easily, watching the bluerider's face try to do several amusing things at once, warring with pride that his little brother Impressed, and good-humored frustration that he Impressed better.
There are maybe twelve Candidates left, and fewer hatchlings, when, like she's finally decided it's time to put in an appearance, the queen egg cracks from the crown of its oblong shape down to the end. Lilianath trumpets, successfully halting all movement, all breathing, so all attention could be fixed on this, the hatching of the new queen.
The egg doesn't so much burst as it does fall into halves, spilling the golden hatchling out onto the sand. She's marginally bigger than all the others, closer in size to that of a full-grown hound. She gets her feet under her and rights herself, her eyes whirling red in hunger and her head -- oddly-shaped and almost too heavy for her body -- swinging back and forth as she takes in the girls remaining.
Percy watches Clarisse waver a step, the dark duck of her head as she starts forward.
"NO!"
The scream is loud, piercing, and it makes both Lilianath and Ibboth rise onto their haunches, wings unfurling open. It's Rachel, who at the entrance has perhaps a better view than anyone of what's going on on the sands, but the problem is apparent to everyone a half-beat later: there's a little green, easily half the queen's size, who takes a step too close and bumps right into her.
The queen spins so fast she unbalances her hind end, tipping over, but not before she lashes out with the talons she'd used to break shell, wicked sharp and gleaming in the lantern light. Up above, Seth's distinctive voice wails, and just like that, apropos of nothing, Percy knows how Luke got that scar: it was a fight just like this, between two hungry, just-born hatchlings who didn't know the danger they presented to themselves.
The blow knocks the green clean off her feet; she tumbles head-over-tail, crying out in alarm. She bowls over a blue, the two of them going down in a tangle of fragile wings and wet skin.
The queen follows in a pouncing movement, her tiny new voice still shrieking her fury, but everybody moves at once to intervene: Lilianath from above, eyes whirling in warning, Chiron and Rachel from opposite ends of the Grounds, and a couple of the Candidates: Clarisse and Katie both jump in front of the queen, holding up their hands to turn her away; an incredibly brave or an incredibly stupid move, considering the hatchling's anger and how indiscriminate she can be with her claws. Behind them, Will, the older boy they Searched from the Healercraft, tries to hurriedly untangle the blue and the green before they can inadvertently hurt each other.
Snarling, the queen flares her wings at the girls, kicking up a cloud of sand, and suddenly, nobody can see a thing.
Somebody's familiar voice cries out from the fray. Chiron's flat-out running now, closing the last bit of distance, and Oracle's trying to subdue Lilianath, whose distress is making all the watching dragons shift from foot to foot, an intimidatingly large wave of movement in his peripheral vision.
When the dust clears, the first thing Percy sees is Will, his body braced over the blue's to protect him, caging his head up against his shoulder; the blue's eyes are yellow with fear, but whirling slowly, relaxing, and he leans his head against Will's.
Then the rest of it settles, and the little queen is quiet, wrapped up so tight in a girl that it's hard to tell where she ends and the girl begins, arms trapping her wings down and the slender golden neck tucked around the back of her head. The queen makes a noise, half-imperious, half-apologetic, and the girl looks up, and just before Percy catches sight of her completely thunderstruck expression, he recognizes her by her braid, red and frazzled.
"I didn't -- I didn't mean --" Rachel stammers as Chiron skids to a halt beside her, the shock on her face mirrored in his. She tries to back away, scrabbling like a crab on her hands, but the queen follows, vocalizing anxiously, and Rachel's eyes snap back to her. "No, no, I know you're sorry, it's just -- oh, no."
They're both a mess, covered in dust and sand, and there are a million and a half expressions flickering across Chiron's face, and Clarisse and Katie can do nothing but watch as Rachel -- who wasn't even a Candidate -- pushes herself up onto hands and knees and Impresses the golden queen.
But there's the green, too, creeling softly, and she butts up against the back of the girls' legs. Clarisse and Katie share a startled look.
The green makes another urgent noise. They look at each other for another long moment, and then Katie's mouth quirks into something that might be a smile, and she turns away.
The green all but tries to climb into Clarisse's lap, and, with a gentleness Percy has never seen from her, Clarisse runs her hands down the hatchling's sides, inspecting her for damage from her entanglement with her sister. She comes away with bloody palms, and just like that, regular Clarisse is back, bellowing for someone to help her, help her and Whianath, now, damn it all!
Breathe! a voice reminds Percy, and he drags in a startled breath just as the corners of his vision going dizzyingly dark; he'd forgotten, in all of that, that he needs oxygen too. He sits down, hard, and he thinks he might have sliced his palm on an eggshell, but it's a distant pain, like it's been removed from him, and he just focuses manfully on not passing out.
The voice continues, good, I was worried! You are no use to me unconscious!
It's one heartbeat, two, before Percy realizes that the voice is inside his head and outside of it at the same time, part of him and part not. His head snaps up, and there, not a foot away from him, is a damp hatchling, wings drooping into the sand and eyes whirling soft love-colors and his skin a breath-taking blue, like sunlight over the deepest, broadest span of ocean, like the sky forever right before dawn, and nothing tumbles into everything.
vii.
For the rest of his life, Percy will try to come up with words to describe what it's like to Impress, but he'll never get close, not really. It's like everything had been muted and monotone, grey-scale, and then he'd heard music for the first time, a rush and a tumbling cacophony inside his mind, inside his heart. It's like what seeing colors for the first time must be to a person who's only seen black and white. It's like seeing himself, and seeing himself, and seeing himself, like mirrors reflecting one another for an endless vanishing point.
Nacrodoth hums at him, and Percy can feel it: the little dragon's heartbeats, the breath in his chest, the horrible hunger in his belly, the stretch of his wings when he tries to jolt them up out of the sand, each as if it was part of his own body.
How do I already know your name? Percy asks --
-- and Nacrodoth answers, like it should be obvious, Because I am you and you are me, and my name is you, and your name is me.
"Hey," someone interrupts, but gently, because Percy isn't sure if he could determine up from down right now, everything is so wonderful and technicolor and overwhelming. He looks up to see Silena smiling at him, her eyes soft but her mouth a firm line. Not Oracle, but then, he supposes, the Weyrwoman is probably busy trying to sort out that mess of a new queen. "Come on," she says. "You were the last to Impress. There's food waiting for him --"
"Nacrodoth," Percy puts in, and it trips his heart just to say it out loud. He grins like a fool. "Silena, his name is Nacrodoth."
"Nacrodoth," she repeats, her smile growing, and if it was wonderful to say it out loud, this is even better: someone else saying it and meaning his dragon, his blue, his. "And if you don't move, there won't be any food left!"
Percy opens his mouth to tell her that is blatantly untrue -- he helped cut that meat himself, there is so more than enough -- but suddenly, it's the only thing on Nacrodoth's mind.
No food? he goes, tripping himself in his urgency. We have to go, Percy, we have to, before all the food is gone, come on! He turns himself around, ungainly and accidentally wrapping his tail around himself, and bumps at Percy with his head.
Silena's laughing at him -- she totally did that on purpose -- and Percy rights himself and then his dragon -- his! sings every heart string he seems to own, all at once -- and for the first time, takes another look at his surroundings.
She's right: he is the last new dragonrider still on the sands, and now the spectators are starting to come down from the tiers, chattering excitedly to one another. With an unpleasant turning of his stomach, he recognizes Charlie, alone and talking to a couple of the dragonriders on the first tier: foreigners, riders he doesn't know. He didn't Impress, Percy thinks to himself, and by the time Zererith rises and clutches, he'll be too old to be a Candidate.
He glances at Silena and sees her watching the exchange as well, and the desolate expression on her face surprises him, because it's cavernous and yawning and black, like someone had snatched some kind of hope right out of her hands and has left her nowhere else to go.
The twins were wrong, he understands, all at once, wanting to go down on his knees and bury his face in his blue's neck, where he knows it'll be warm. It wasn't Seth she was hoping for. It wasn't Luke and Seth at all.
Do not worry about him, Nacrodoth says, a little brusque in his impatience. He knows what he is doing. Now, can we please stop being concerned about the welfare of other people? At least long enough for me to be fed, please, I am very, very hungry.
"Of course you are," Percy murmurs, and for a moment, he doesn't know what to do with all the love and affection that swells inside of him, because there's feedback from Nacrodoth, a loop of emotion going between them, feeding into each other, and it consumes everything else. Dizzy with it, the two of them stumble out to join the others.
epilogue (of sorts)
With an abruptness that's always a little distressing, Nacrodoth drops, joining the other dragons swirling into the Hatching Grounds, mere wingbeats away from running into each other. It's a proper Weyr with a proper cavernous Hatching Ground, not like Camp at all, and Percy's so used to the man-made everything they have at Camp that even he takes a moment to gawk like a bumpkin as they pour into the cavern.
Backwinging neatly onto a ledge, Nacrodoth snorts and shakes himself off, a deep, burbling hum starting in his chest. Percy can feel it vibrating up through his legs, and he swings himself up out of the riding harness, letting his dragon settle back and join the others in the Hatching hum.
Blue- and greenriders are always relegated to the worst seats in the house, because nobody actually cares about them. Percy learned this early, and has since gotten used to it, which drives his mother crazy. "I don't think," she'd said to him once. "That it's ever fair to judge a rider by the color of his dragon's skin. You are worth ten of any bronzerider I've ever met, and Nacrodoth is beautiful, Percy, he really is." (It'd been around that time she managed to lose a husband somewhere around the Medusa Cascades. They searched for Gabe, Percy heard, but they didn't really try very hard.)
It's not really a prejudice against blues and greens, Percy figures, so much as it is just a general disinterest.
"Did you see?" he calls up as Hyacinth joins them in a nimble swoop -- she always did like showy landings. Annabeth dismounts and her green settles in next to Nacrodoth, jostling him for space unnecessarily. The two rib at each other with affectionate push and pulls, neither disrupting their hum in the slightest.
"Did you see?" Percy repeats. "I couldn't see coming in, there were too many dragons. Is it her?"
"Do you think Clarisse would lie to us?" Annabeth frowns and shakes her head, the movement dislodging a couple stray blonde hairs out from under her helmet. "She wouldn't. Not about this."
"I wouldn't know, I never got paired with her for training exercises."
"Yeah, I know, because I got stuck with you. Every single time," she rolls her eyes.
Erraolth says it is her, Nacrodoth breaks in, just as the brown dragon himself drops in, making it rather crowded on the ledge. Look now, you will be able to see!
Hyacinth must have been relaying the same message to Annabeth, because they both lean over the edge, down to where thirty-odd eggs lay rocking in the sands. There aren't as many dragons arriving now, making it easier to see the shape of the golden queen wrapped protectively around the queen egg. And nearby, her features distinctive even from a distance, is --
"Silena," Percy breathes, his heart giving one big leap of recognition. "Silena and Zererith, they're here."
Annabeth sits back, looking stunned. "Percy," she goes, giving his shoulder a shake, as unnecessary as Hyacinth's tendency to push Nacrodoth around, because he's already paying attention. "Percy, this is their Weyr. This is where they went when they disappeared. They must have found this when --"
They look at each other, all the pieces at long last falling into place, and seeing that knowledge in each other's eyes.
Grover sits down heavily on Percy's other side, looking equally as stunned. "Okay, wait. Let's walk through this."
"Right," goes Annabeth, who likes having a plan. "So, right after our Hatching --" she gestures between herself and Percy. "-- Charlie gets Searched. By those dragonriders you say him talking to on Hatching day, Percy."
He nods. The memory is a little filmy now, hazed over by time and a little skewed by since events, but that much is still clear.
"And he goes, and we don't hear back from him. Not any of us officially, at least." It's implied in her tone right then that maybe, perhaps, Silena had known the truth. Everybody else just assumed that Charlie either Impressed and stayed wherever he was as part of the fighting wing, or simply didn't want to return to Camp, where he had failed to Impress three times in a row. "And that spring, Zererith rises."
"And Seth captures her," Grover bobs his head. "Just like everyone had hoped for." Everybody except Silena and Luke, goes without being said, and without breaking stride in their humming, there's a waft of agreement coming from the dragons. "But weeks later, she doesn't clutch."
"Dragons can lose their eggs if they go between, just like women do," Annabeth says, and lifts her head to gaze around the cavern. "She must have been coming here, all the way up to this godforsaken hole up north. She must have found this place and she must have turned it into a Weyr, and going back and forth between here and Camp, that would have killed the clutch."
"Without a clutch, they didn't become Weyrleaders."
"And then there was that fight --"
"Between Seth and Shalakith and a couple of the browns," Grover's expression darkens in a way that's familiar to Percy. Ethan, it means, in a particularly harsh and venomous manner. It'd replaced almost all other curses at Camp for a least a year, which in hindsight was a little unfair, because it was half Luke's fault, too, but still, everyone liked Luke. It's harder to hate him. "And Chris's dragon got killed."
"Chris went mad," Annabeth continues, musingly, like she's still puzzling it out and testing the way it sounds in her mouth. "And then Silena, Luke, and Ethan vanish all at once, making Rachel the Junior Weyrwoman in Silena's place and turning everything topsy-turvy. Question is, if Silena came here and started her own Weyr, does that mean Luke and Ethan are here too?"
No, answers Nacrodoth promptly. Erraolth came from the same clutch as Shalakith. He would know if she lives here, and she does not.
At that precise moment, the sudden hush falls onto the cavern, all the dragons going silent at once, and momentarily forgetting their narrative, Percy, Annabeth, and Grover all lean over to watch the first egg crack shell. In the middle of the clutch, one shatters, wings and tail and head all punched out, glistening bronze. The dragon rolls a few paces like that before the rest of the shell splinters under the pressure. Creeling, he totters forward on wobbly legs: one hopeful boy (all Percy can see from this angle is a tangle of red hair) steps forward to meet him, but the bronze stops and hisses a warning, dissatisfied, and the boy wisely backs off.
Remembering, Percy swings his head around to face Annabeth. "Do you see Malcolm?" he asks.
She startles. "Do you think Clarisse was telling the truth about that when she invited us?"
"Do you think she wasn't?"
Annabeth frowns. "I trust Clarisse not to lie about Silena. But I don't trust her not to lie about Malcolm being a Candidate."
"But you had Hyacinth ask Whianath, right? Clarisse could lie, but I don't think her dragon could have."
Her eyes glaze over into that familiar talking-to-dragons absent look. When she shakes out of it, she looks down at the sands with renewed energy. "She says he's there. She remembers Searching him. He's -- oh!" she cuts off, just as, down on the Grounds, the bronze hatchling snags hold of a skinny, dark-skinned lad, his creels turning to ones of delight.
Percy and Grover look sideways at Annabeth. She has her hands clapped to her mouth, her grey eyes lit from behind, incandescent.
"Let me guess. That was Malcolm?" Grover grins.
"Yes," she breathes, as all the dragons rise up and bugle a welcome to the newly-Impressed pair, Hyacinth loudest of all.
They watch Malcolm and the bronze (Goth, Nacrodoth helpfully supplies for him) teeter their way off the sands, and Percy notices something, watching Zererith dance, antsy and zealous, on the sands. "Where's the Weyrleader?" he asks.
"What?"
"The Weyrleader," he goes. "If this is Silena's Weyr, and Zererith's clutch, where's the bronze that flew her, and his rider?"
For a Weyr to prosper, a queen must be able to produce more queens, Nacrodoth informs him, and Percy looks over his shoulder at his blue, whose eyes are whirling at him in something like amusement, like he's reached the end of the story before Percy did and is enjoying watching Percy fumble blind through the narrative. So to make a queen egg, she must have flown a bronze. This does not make the bronze the Weyrleader.
"Yes it does," goes Annabeth, who is so used to Hyacinth relaying what Nacrodoth is saying that there might as well not be that buffer there at all; the response is seamless. "That's the rule."
Not here, answers Nacrodoth, almost smug. You will see. The Weyrleader will come. The sire of the clutch is insignificant.
There's a pause, and finally, Grover says, "If only I could save this moment and show it to every single bronzerider I've ever met, just to deflate their ego some." The three dragons rumble ruefully: bronzes, it means, teasing and a little derisive.
You are missing the Hatching, Nacrodoth points out, and Percy turns back around, realizing he's right: at least half the eggs have broken shell now, and only two hatchlings are staggering around like they aren't sure where they're going. One of them, a brown, trips over his own wingtip and lands shoulder-first into a smaller egg, which blurts an unsuspecting green out onto the hot sands. She shrieks in protest at this unceremonious entrance, making the brown duck backwards, eyes whirling in alarm.
Two boys appear as if summoned; one of them the redheaded boy from before, the one who hadn't Impressed the bronze, and a smaller, younger lad with a long, Roman nose that sits disproportionally large on his face.
"Holy --" goes Percy, because he recognizes that nose. He catches Grover and Annabeth by the tunics. "Guys, that's --!"
Nacrodoth huffs amusedly, blowing hot air over them, and throws his head back to bugle a congratulations as the boy wipes sticky egg fluid off the green's nose, the movement so tender it can only be Impression.
"That's Nico?" goes Annabeth. "Bianca's little brother? The one she always talked about?"
She'd been upset -- or as upset as Bianca ever got, which wasn't much; she was more the passive-aggressive kind of greenrider -- that her brother couldn't come with her when she got Searched, since he was too young. From what Percy could gather from her stories, it'd just been the two of them as long as she could remember, so it felt wrong to be separated; she was all he had. After her green had grown enough for flight, she was going to ask the Weyrleaders' permission to go and fetch Nico, same as Percy had been planning to retrieve Sally.
"Before she died in that training accident," Grover finishes the thought. There's always some dragon and rider pair that doesn't make their first jump between, disappearing into that nothing place forever. "And everybody forgot about the brother."
"Silena didn't," Annabeth says immediately, watching Nico and the green move unsteadily across the sands, step-by-step. "They must have made a special trip just to Search him."
"A green, though?" Percy folds his arms.
He loves his sister like family, Nacrodoth says, a mild reproof in his tone, like perhaps Percy should think before calling the kettle on the color black. He wishes to make her proud --
-- and be the greenrider she never got to be, I got it, Percy waves him off, because he does get it. He remembers Luke saying greenriders were the toughest of them all, and his mother saying gender shouldn't matter: a dragonrider was a dragonrider, gold, bronze, brown, blue, or green.
Somewhere in the middle of this, the Hatching ends ("wait, did anyone see the queen Impress?" and the others sheepishly shake their heads.) With a triumphant cry, Zererith gathers back on her haunches and springs to the air, wings churning as she lifts from the cavern, a molten-gold burn across the sky. Silena watches her go, shielding her eyes against the sun and shaking her head ruefully. She starts the long trek across the Sands, when a shadow falls across her: a young brown, wheeling down to land closeby.
The brownrider leaps down from his dragon's back, and Percy draws in a sharp inhale, hearing Annabeth and Grover do the same on either side.
Charlie strides the short distance to the Weyrwoman and seizes her by the waist, lifting her up and spinning her, making her laugh, high and girlish and joyful. The brown dragon warbles happily, just as Charlie drops to his knees like a Candidate before a hatchling and presses his face against Silena's stomach, which is curved and a little swollen. Not by much, but by enough.
Like I said, Nacrodoth is definitely smug now. The sire of the clutch is insignificant. The brown will always be Zererith's mate, and the man will always be Weyrleader.
"Right," says Percy quietly, and he slings an arm around Grover and Annabeth, pulling them in for an impromptu kind of hug. They tolerate it, smiling goofy, because it's that kind of day. "What do you say we go home, guys?"
"Yeah," they answer, and, as one, the three of them turn to their waiting dragons.
-
fin