The Rogue Rider by Kerry Law

Author:Kerry Law [Law, Kerry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-05-07T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

Not Safe

Anger roiled in Elka, making her grip Inelle’s horns too tightly as she guided her dragon across the city. Her Rider’s gloves had been amongst the clothes thrown out and all the others she owned felt too flimsy for flying in. So her hands were bare and she knew she’d have spiralled imprints on her palms. She was angry that her reunion with Daan had felt all spiky, and angry at herself for flying away.

As they followed the Amms Canal towards the river, Inelle began pulling beneath her. It started with her snapping at the air, then she began twisting her head around to the right, towards south Taumerg and the rolling hills beyond. Inelle’s unease felt like dark smoke blowing through Elka’s mind.

‘We’re not going back,’ Elka told her. ‘We can’t.’

Inelle tugged again, twisting her head almost all the way around so she could look behind. Dragons lived as part of a clutch, and she’d taken Inelle away from hers. Elka felt a loneliness rise in her mind and wasn’t sure if it originated from her or Inelle.

Taking a deep breath she pictured a giant piston, pushing all the anger, loneliness and confusion out of her brain. Then she sent a wave of calm to Inelle. She felt her dragon relax beneath her and her wingbeats grew more steady.

‘We’ll make our own clutch here,’ Elka told her.

It would have taken Elka well over an hour to walk from Rokspaark to her family’s largest mill, but with Inelle she could fly across the whole city in a quarter of that time. The River Ireden shimmered to their left as they flew over the factory district. Inelle swooped between plumes of smoke from the chimneys, swirling them with the tips of her wings.

They landed in the wide street in front of the mill’s large double doors. Elka dismounted and told Inelle to wait for her up on the roof. In Kierell she’d grown used to seeing dragons perched on rooftops but here Inelle looked out of place on the peaked roof, like a strange gargoyle in a row of chimneys. She was beautiful, though, her indigo scales shimmering in the sun.

As Elka turned to go into the warehouse a poster on the opposite wall caught her eye. Dozens had been stuck over the brickwork in a haphazard jumble—adverts, political messages, job offers—but the three newest ones, not yet peeling at the edges, drew her attention. All three were for missing teenagers, two boys and a girl. It made her think of Jennta, and Daan’s insistence that she’d disappeared.

She stepped over to the wall and looked more closely. In the printed line drawings of the missing teenagers, all three were wearing the boiler suits of factory workers. The address at the bottom of the posters—the home they’d disappeared from—was the same on all three. Elka recognised the street as one of the rows of tenements near the docks. Many families sent their teenagers to work in the factories and often they’d move from their family homes into boarding houses.

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