Page 48 of The Dragoneers of Longbourn and Pemberley
Her uncle held out his hand for the paper, and waited for its safe return. “Yes, it was sent over by the Royal Office this morning, and we’ll post it in the nextJournal.” He returned to making annotations on the paper.
If she could win an egg from the Crown nest… but it would be easier to make a breeding deal than to win the Royal derby, certainly. The whole kingdom competed in it. She needed to remain focused.
How to approach the topic with Uncle Haupter? She didn’t know how much Papa had told him. Would he support her plan to elevate Longbourn, or would he thwart her?
“I... Uncle, Longbourn house desperately needs more dragons if we are going to preserve our legacy. I thought maybe you could suggest a house that might be interested in breeding with Lelantos?”
Uncle Haupter took off his reading glasses and looked severely at Valeraine. “Is that what you were pursuing at Rosings? No wonder you returned so quickly, tail tucked between your legs. My dear, negotiating with dragon houses is far outside your purview. You will only embarrass yourself.”
“Uncle —”
“Even if you could find a nest silly enough to agree to your scheme, it would be unfair to them. Lelantos will die any day now, and you would be cheating them.”
“Lelantos is still strong,” Valeraine said.
“Be sensible, Val.”
Valeraine felt this was quite unfair. Nobody claiming Lelantos would die soon had any evidence. They just looked at his yellowed teeth and wrinkled wings, and said that this was the oldest dragon they had ever seen.
“I’ll not hear another word on the matter,” he said. “I shouldn’t have allowed you to go to Rosings, but I thought he was courting you. I cannot send you all over the kingdom, hunting the most disreputable and desperate of houses. It’s madness.”
“Uncle —”
“Not another word.”
Valeraine was shocked into silence by his raised tone.
He returned to making annotations on the layout paper, scratching at it with his practical quill. “Do you actually want to learn about printing, or was that just a lie?”
It had been a lie, but she couldn’t say that now. At least if she went along with him she could repair some of their rapport. “I would love to learn about your process.”
Uncle Haupter brought the Royal derby announcement to his layout boys, who turned out to be two sharp men and one woman who were pasting many scraps together onto a sheet. They had left room for the derby announcement, on the top of the page, and slotted it in neatly. They then brought the layoutsheet to the typesetters, who began to meticulously copy each word onto moveable type, assembling the whole sheet letter by letter, backwards, until it was all packed tight together.
Valeraine wandered through the printing workshop, thinking. Was it really time for her to give up? What else could she do? She couldn’t negotiate with the dragoneers. With Pemberley’s threats hanging over her, she couldn’t race.
She would find a way. She would risk her reputation, her relationship with Papa, everything, to return to the sky with her dragon.
She saw the layout sheet, discarded on top of a trash bin, and pulled it out. She could register Longbourn for the royal derby. If she won, they would have an egg, without the need to convince anyone else to take a chance on Lelantos. She would need to take a wild chance on him, herself. Valeraine wanted to believe in Lelantos. They had a real chance at winning local derbies, their performance proved that handily. But the kingdom-wide derby?
The Longbourn family had attended the Royal derby many years ago, to watch the festivities. Valeraine remembered traveling to Kinellan City, Selaide being bored and a pain the whole way. The fastest dragons in all the land flew over their heads. The winner had been a magnificent beast. Just watching that dragon breathe was enough to feel its aptitude. That’s what she would be racing against with Lelantos (the dragon who radiated a looming death, according to everyone).
She had almost won at the Rosings derby, hadn’t she? She had beaten Rosings’ dragon, who was competitive at the kingdom level. If she could practice — if she could truly take time to train Lelantos — then she might have a chance. She might dare to hope.
Even if she didn’t win, Valeraine reasoned to herself, the fame from doing well in that derby could be the tipping point Longbourn house needed to reclaim its consequence. If shecould only convince Papa to let her race, or find a way to sneakily train and race without him realizing. Then she would need to convince Pemberley to keep her secret.
After the Royal derby, if she hadn’t saved Longbourn by then, if she still had no leads on an egg, she would accept the death of her house. At least, that is how she consoled herself. The hungry part of her soul insisted she would never be happy with giving up.
She missed Lelantos. She felt an aching in her heart, a hole where he usually resided. To fill it, she would fly with him again. Could she run away with Lelantos, take to the sky and live in the mountains together? The sensible side of herself thought of how much Lelantos ate in a day, and how impractical it might be. The wild, free part of herself that was just beginning to blossom held the idea close, treasuring it. She could escape it all: the dragoneers who looked down on Longbourn house, her banishment, the miles between her and Lelantos, horrid Pemberley threatening her reputation.
Valeraine’s mind was made up. The first step would be to register for the Royal derby, then she could figure out how to convince Papa to approve it. She started carefully ripping the layout sheet to free the derby announcement, so she would have the details. As she ripped around the edge, her eyes skimmed over the articles in theJournal. Most of them were written in her uncle’s hand, as he copied and edited the columns from the journalists. One wasn’t written by him, and it stuck out.
It was Lady Scaleheart’s column. She had written something titled “On Barbaric Taming Methods.” Valeraine looked further at the writing, and the hand seemed familiar. A terrible suspicion began to grow in her. Valeraine ripped out the Scaleheart column as well, and discarded the rest in the trash.
She found her uncle, and said, “I see you didn’t write Scaleheart’s column, whose hand is it in?”
“That’s Scaleheart’s hand. She is so clever with words that I rarely need to edit it, so I can give it directly to layout. Controversy sells papers, you know. There’s nobody more skilled than Scaleheart at inflaming a different mass of people every week.”
“Thank you.”
