Page 49 of A Tribute of Fire

When I’d been very young, we’d had horses. I remembered a large chestnut stallion who had been spooked by something the rest of us couldn’t see. He had bucked off his rider, throwing his body around the pen, slamming into the fencing, braying continually.

The trainer had thrown a blanket over the stallion’s eyes and he had immediately calmed down.

So I did the same. I threw the cloak over Acmon’s head, and just like the stallion, he stilled.

“Take deep breaths,” I told him. “In and out.”

The crowd who had been watching him dispersed. Thankfully, now that Acmon was calm, there was no more talk of throwing him into the ocean.

From underneath the cloak he moaned, “The sun has abandoned the earth. We have displeased the goddess. Something terrible is about to happen.”

I pulled the cloak from him and held it aloft. He blinked at me several times as his eyes adjusted to the light.

“See this?” I asked, shaking the cloak. “An eclipse is like a large cloak being thrown over the sun, only bigger and farther away. Nothing more. It’s not a bad omen.”

“You’ve studied Aristarchus and his heliocentric model of the universe?” Jason asked. I’d honestly forgotten he was there.

I heard the shock in his voice and it was understandable. While Locrian women could read, most did not have tutors or attend specialized schools. And from our interaction at the palace, he thought I was a servant. Quynh nudged me with her elbow—she had come to the same conclusion. I had to tread carefully here.

“My father is interested in astronomy,” I said. That was certainly true and I hoped it was enough of an explanation to deter him from investigating further. “I have this in hand. You can go.”

He didn’t move and I resisted the urge to shove him, knowing that it would be like pushing against a stone wall, an exercise in futility and frustration.

I turned my attention back to Acmon. “Will you be all right now?”

He nodded, but I had my suspicions. I felt like I should stay above deck until the eclipse had ended. I walked away, leaving both Jason and Acmon behind.

“That was close,” Quynh said worriedly, and I nodded. The last thing I needed was the crew of this vessel to discover my real identity.

I hadn’t managed to shake Jason and his questions, though. “Why did you help Acmon?” he asked.

I could hear in his tone how important this question was to him, even though I didn’t understand why. I answered honestly. “Because he needed it and he has been kind to me.”

The look in his eyes made me think that he wanted to protest that he too had been kind to me, had even saved my life, but he didn’t. “As you like to keep reminding me, he is one of the men that is taking you and your sister to Ilion.”

Maybe Quynh and Jason were right and I shouldn’t blame any of the men on theNikos. They weren’t personally responsible for this system. Just as I was not responsible for the actions of one man a thousand years ago. But here I was, still paying that price.

“There is no reason to give in to ridiculous superstition,” I said. “That eclipse is based on a physical phenomenon. It doesn’t mean that there’s magic involved or that something terrible is about to happen to us.”

A loud, watery roar emanated from the depths beneath us, making the entire ship vibrate and pitch.

“What was that?” Quynh asked, looking every bit as terrified as I felt.

“A dragon,” Jason responded as he pulled out his sword.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“How many elements are there?” my grandmother had asked as we looked through the book together.

“Five. Earth, air, water, fire, and aether.”

“Correct. And what creature represents those elements?”

“Dragons.” There were dozens of illustrations—the earth dragons whose scales resembled rocks, the blue-green air dragons with their massive wings that allowed them to fly, the red-scaled fire dragons who could burn an entire forest with a single breath. There weren’t any drawings of aether dragons. No one had ever seen one—their very existence was questioned.

But the water dragon had been the one that had scared me the most. It looked more like a serpent than a dragon, its scales shimmering in iridescent blues, its eyes just above the water as it hunted prey. They lived in the deep ocean and had destroyed entire fleets of ships. They could swallow massive whales whole.

Unpredictable, deadly, destructive.

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