Chapter Text
“He’s not doing it,” Nan said. “That’s completely insensible. Do you hear me?”
Hawthorne straightened up, moving away from his saddle, trying to breathe through his nose so he didn’t completely choke on the leather polish infused air, even as the stuff clung to his fingers. He dropped the rag, double checking the saddle was stable before sauntering over to his patron. “Everything alright, Nan?”
She was scowling at the man whom Hawthorne took a minute to recognise. What was Cosimo Rinaldi doing here?
He had the same face as Dario, from all the posters Hawthorne had pasted to his wall — completely covering the paint underneath, which was good since it was a completely vomitous shade of green, picked, so his dad said, while he was having a wee temper tantrum in the middle of the shops when he was a toddler — but lacking the kind of features that had made Hawthorne develop an itsy-bitsy (massive) crush on Dario when he was twelve. It was little things, like the line of his jaw, or the way his eyes were just a little bit too pinched all the time. And the fact he wasn’t a dragonrider.
“Ah, the man himself,” Cosimo clapped his hands in a way that should have been cheerful but really wasn’t. “Swift! Great to see you again. How’s your training going?”
Nan coughed, “This is too dangerous. I certainly wouldn’t take it on, not if I were his age. It’s ridiculous you’re even considering it.”
“Ms Dawson,” Cosimo pressed his lips together. Dario had always had really nice lips, even though Hawthorne had not ever practised kissing the 2D one in his room, no matter what Helena said and Homer wrote on his stupid chalkboard. Cosimo’s lips in comparison were cracked in the middle, though he’d clearly put on some kind of balm that made them shinier than they would have been otherwise, and they were as thin as a strand of hair. Maybe two, if Hawthorne were being generous. “Your trainee is one of the most promising athletes of dragonsport. Yes, what happened at the Winter Trials wasn’t ideal, but Rinaldi Stables is still invested in him. We still care—” he was cut off by a bark of laughter.
“You just want to make sure your sister doesn’t have any challengers,” Nan said, shaking her head at him. “You want to get my scholar into a contract with a hopeless case so he can’t actually compete against your sister when he’s ready to enter the Summer Tournament.”
“It is not, I assure you,” Cosimo started pacing. “But— no exclusivity contract. What about then? I don’t need him to solely ride her or be tied to Rinaldi stables, at least not yet.”
“I don’t understand,” he interjected. They both turn around. Cosimo’s face was pinched like he hated being interrupted. That was a little bit of confirmation bias from everything Hawthorne had heard about him on the benches and in changing rooms and beside the lockers at various stadia and drakodromoi. “What are you talking about?”
Cosimo tugged his shirtsleeves back down his wrists. “Mr Swift, have you ever heard of Dives Through The Air Like An Eagle In A Suicide Drop Mating Dance?”
Hawthorne had to stop himself from laughing, “Of course. Everyone has. She’s one of the worst behaved dragons in recent history. Why?”
Nan looked at him. Cosimo raised an eyebrow. The meaning sank swiftly with him and he felt his mouth hang open before he managed to snap it shut. “You can’t be serious.”
Nan exhaled sharply, “Cosimo, I told you, it’s not on.”
“I’m running out of options,” he said.
“How’d you end up with Dives anyway?” Hawthorne asked. “What happened to Quincy Frost? I thought they had bonded?”
Cosimo’s face soured, “I didn’t acquire her.” He didn’t allude to this but given the entire change in energy, the way that he seemed to have just walled up everything, Hawthorne wondered if it were an ill-thought out business decision by Vincenzo, or— oh. Of course. Dario.
He remembered a few interviews he’d listened to over the wireless, things about Dario’s interest in rehabilitating dragons that others considered lost causes, even the rest of the Rinaldi stables. In retrospect, really, Dario’s plan, the one that had resulted in Vesta taking Alights’ saddle from him from the last minute — the one they had all heard from Cosimo about at the party that Morrigan shut up about every time it was even referenced around her, with her eyes a thousand miles away and full of guilt that made Hawthorne want to push for — and — he was pleased for Vesta, really, but the loss still crumbled shamefully inside him. It was so nearly his, but it wasn’t to be — made a lot of sense. Of course he loved coaching and he loved the dragons and training them. That was what it had to be.
But why Hawthorne? Dragonsport was cutthroat. People didn’t pay their debts, even if the Rinaldis did feel like they owed Hawthorne for what happened at the Winter Trials. What compelled Cosimo Rinaldi to give him a chance like this, and he did think it was a chance, not a trap. Why was he being so generous, letting Hawthorne have the chance to go to other stables and train with one of their dragons — even one as batshit insane as Dives.
“Can I meet her?” he asked.
Nan raised an eyebrow at him but he set his chin. Sure, he’d had a setback, and sure, he wasn’t going to hold the youngest dragonrider in a few Ages in the Summer Tournament title, as he’d expected to from however young he’d been. But that was life and it was up to him to put it behind him and move on with his life. No use crying over it. Vesta was a fantastic rider. He wouldn’t have traded what had happened for the world.
Cosimo didn’t smile, but his mouth moved very slightly upward. Maybe that was smiling for Ogden Town Dario.
Nan put a hand up to stop him, just for a minute, “Hold up. What did happen to Quincy? I haven’t seen her in two days, and while she isn’t around here all the time, I would have expected to see her at some points.”
Hawthorne halted. He’d been so wrapped up in thinking about Dario’s death, and how Cosimo must feel, and how he would feel if anyone killed his siblings. He hadn’t even noticed his second question being ignored.
The not-smile disappeared, “That’s the other thing, I’m afraid. It’s not been released yet, and for once the Nevermoor City Police are managing to keep it secret for the time being, but she was found in her flat yesterday, dead.”
“She— what?” Hawthorne coughed. “Sorry? What happened? Why are the Stink hushing it up? Does her family know?”
Cosimo’s jaw tightened. It might have been his imagination, but Hawthorne thought he could hear his teeth grinding. It was any wonder, really, that the man had any teeth to speak of, even if he was only twenty-two. Then again, the Silverborn were probably rich enough to afford as many new sets of teeth as needed. “That’s none of your concern.”
“It might be,” Nan pointed out, glaring.
“The investigation is ongoing,” he said, his lip curling. “Legally, I cannot comment.”
“And even if you could, you wouldn’t,” she said.
Hawthorne coughed, “When should I come to Rinaldi Stables then?”
He shrugged. It wasn’t the way that Hawthorne or any of his friends shrugged, in a way that was just I don’t care, doesn’t matter, everything is nice and good. Cosimo shrugged like a marionette doll that was being pulled this way and that by an angry toddler.
The image of a giant Baby Dave yanking a tiny Cosimo Rinaldi this way and that on a set of strings forced its way to the forefront of his mind, and from the way Nan and Cosimo paused in their silent argument (it was mostly staring at each other, followed by a hand movement this way and that, then more staring) to give him a joined sideways glance.
“Now,” Cosimo said. “You can come now.”
Nan caught him, right before they got into Cosimo Rinaldi’s car — Cosimo had already climbed into the passenger seat, probably so he didn’t have to slum it with them in the back and his driver already had the engine running.
“Are you sure about this?” Nan said. “I know I don’t have to explain to you how temperamental Dives is. I know you were upset about Alights, but if we keep your training on track, we can easily get you into the tournament for next summer.”
“It’s not about that, Nan,” he said. “I promise.”
“And what about Quincy Frost?” she put her hands on her hips. “Cosimo’s not telling us something.”
“Yeah,” Hawthorne agreed. “That is weird. I don’t know. It sounds— I mean Dario wasn’t murdered by a rival stable, but maybe—”
“I wouldn’t rule it out,” she agreed. “We’ll see what comes out in the papers. She wasn’t on your level, but she was promising. A lot of stables wanted her. I know there was an upset when she went with the Rinaldis.”
He nodded, “I know. I promise I won’t sign anything just yet.”
She wasn’t smiling but she opened the door for him and sat with him in the back in silence while Cosimo’s driver committed every single driving violation Hawthorne was familiar with — and probably some he didn’t.
He’d been to Rinaldi stables before — when he’d gone to try out on Alights — but it still took his breath away. Built into the side of an abandoned quarry, so deep he didn’t think anything went down so far — except maybe Proudfoot House — on top of a fissure that occasionally spewed hot steam from various holes drilled into the ground.
The Rinaldi’s had owned it for over a hundred years, but he knew that even back then, the sum they’d paid for it — and to refurbish it for the dragons (it had been a case study in his Reptilian Care class, Freddie had helped him out with the maths portion when he’d mixed up the equations for calculating out the price increases over a year). Cosimo didn’t give them time to gawk though — and Nan seemed unmoved so after a second, he followed them into the caverns.
“She’s down here,” Cosimo said, stalking into a mechanical lift, twisting the wheel to control it with more effort than either Hawthorne or Nan would have had to put into it. It juddered alive, pulling them downstairs at a speed more reasonable than any Wunsoc railpod, and ridiculous and unsafe for anyone else.
Without loops to hook a brolly onto — or even a brolly — Hawthorne just braced his knees until they halted far too suddenly. Cosimo shuddered a little, shaking his head. The lighting had changed down here, flickering and warm from the fires, but they could still see, eyes adjusting to the different level of light within a couple of minutes.
They were in a deeper section than he had been for Alights, but she was the Rinaldi’s star dragon. This was an unwanted problem for them. Something in his chest ached for Dives. She was the world of dragonriding’s most misunderstood dragon, he thought. Quincy Frost would have been a good rider for her.
Maybe he could be too.
He could hear her as they walked, hard boots against damp rock, careful not to skid or trip on the uneven stone. His eyes were peeled, searching for a moving shadow that wasn’t theirs, that wasn’t human, but he couldn’t spot her. Not just yet.
Her breathing was like a train though. It rattled through the cavern, kicking up loose rock every now and then. It unnerved none of them though. All three of them were more than used to this habit of dragons, of them trying to make themselves as intimidating as possible when hearing anyone come near their grottoes or dens. It couldn’t scare them off.
The breathing moved to growling the closer they got, until the reached the deepest cavern in the lot, gold and gems gleaming from the lake in the middle, rich in minerals, steaming softly into the air.
“I can’t see her,” Hawthorne said, frowning.
Cosimo shifted, putting up a hand to stop them, but it was unnecessary. They’d already halted. Hawthorne thought that Nan’s ears might have actually twitched from how hard she was listening to pinpoint the dragon.
He was staring at the lake, the water in it beginning to ripple, even visible under the steam. The ripples grew, circular, like a great stone had been dropped into it, the water sloshing at the edges, then crashing, then shattering.
All three of them stood at the edge of the cavern, eyes focused on the dragon as she erupted from the water, rising up from it like the spit of a volcano, violent and furious.
He felt his jaw drop, studying her every muscle, her gleaming scales, like oxidising copper in the light and the reflection from the water. He’d seen her compete before, overly controlled, a horror show in the saddle. But he had never seen her like this, glorious and terrifying. A complete force of nature.
Some dragonriders and owners wanted to control their steeds utterly. Hawthorne wasn’t an idiot — and he hadn’t been trained by idiots — you could never control a dragon at the best of times, only work with them. But looking at Dives Through The Air Like An Eagle In A Suicide Drop Mating Dance as she hissed and spat at them, furious with them for even coming near, he knew it would be futile to even contemplate the idea. She wasn’t just a dragon. She was a complete force of nature.
He needed to know her. He needed to work with her. If he did nothing else in his life, he wanted to ride her, even if it were just the one time.
He turned on his heel to face Cosimo, whose face was a blank slate, purposeful and trained in a way Hawthorne could never have managed, even if he cared enough to try. “I’ll do it,” he said, even as Nan stared at him warningly. “I would like to try.”