Dragon-Ridden by T.A. White Page A

dragon flexed against her arm, its nails pricking
her.
    She gasped and sat straight up in
bed. Either she’d drunk bad alcohol and was now hallucinating or the damn dragon
had moved.
    She ran her fingers along its
flank. Nothing.
    She had felt it move, though. She
could have sworn she had. It wasn’t possible. It simply wasn’t.
    She dismissed the stray thought of
the dragon-ridden. Women couldn’t become one, and she had no real idea what one
was anyway. Granted, she’d heard tales in her journey about mages and magic and
things unexplainable in the normal sense of the word, but she’d never credited
them as real. She had seen the magic pushers in the markets, the ones who sold
elixirs guaranteed to win a person their true love and bring bad luck to ones
worst enemy. It wasn’t real though.
    Trent had bought a love potion once
and given it to his crush of the moment. She’d slapped him so hard when he
tried to kiss her that he lost a tooth, and then she’d called for her brothers.
Three strong lads with limbs the size of trees. They’d picked Trent up and
taught him the hard way never to trust a magic man selling potions.
    The dragon failed to move even when
Tate slapped and pinched at it, twisting the skin. It was as still as a
portrait.
    Arg. She didn’t have time for this
nonsense. It was time to go. She’d waited until the others had slipped off to
sleep, but with dawn’s fingers already spreading across the sky she needed to
move.
    Tate rolled to her feet and
gathered the few belongings she had. Her hand hesitated over the gift Danny had
given her last night. She shook her head firmly. Now wasn’t the time for
weakness or flights of fancy.
    Already she could hear the others
as they stirred in the room next to her. The inn had thin walls separating each
room so it wasn’t difficult to hear what others were doing.
    On catlike feet she moved to the
window. Her satchel slung over her back, she swung her legs out and wedged her
fingers in a slight dip in the wall. It was a simple task to scale the wall. It
was more difficult when she had to reach up and back to grab the eave of the
roof. Her heart was in her throat the entire time she worked on getting up and
over.
    Not a moment too soon. Jost and a
couple of his men came out of the inn moments later. Tate ducked and then
chanced a peek over the edge. He was already striding off towards the harbor
and his ship.
    She breathed a sigh of relief and
ran over the roof in the opposite direction, leaping easily to the next
building. The roofs were close enough to create a road over the city if one was
limber enough.
    The sky was a deep blue, just one
shade lighter than the black that usually preceded dawn. The air was light and
crisp against Tate’s face and she shivered, grateful for her long sleeves.
Though fall wasn’t fully here, the temperature was significantly lower in the
early morning hours.
    The city was peaceful now. The
rumble and movement of the previous afternoon was a forgotten dream on the empty
slate roofs. Even the birds were asleep in their nests.
    Tate’s sky path came to an end when
the next roof proved too far to jump. She back tracked to one of the taller
buildings and climbed up its walls using man made handholds such as pipes,
bricks and ledges.
    By this time the sun had peeked
over the horizon, reaching its arms out to the world.
    Tate crouched on the roof and
shaded her eyes from the morning sun. She could just make out the sleek shape
of the Marauder as its crew scurried about on its decks. Her legs swung back
and forth over nothingness while she sat on the edge of the building.
    Gulls screamed a greeting to the
new day as she watched the anchor being raised. Slowly, the ship turned towards
the mouth of the harbor. The sails unfurled and billowed out as they caught the
slight breeze coming off the water. Tate heaved a sigh as she watched it go,
her heart aching as one chapter in her life closed.
    When the Marauder had faded from
the