Canon notes

[amery]

That was how Balfour's brother—who rode Anastasia before him—died, the first time the Ke-Han got their magicians together and turned the skies against us.

'Course what had helped my case was Balfour's brother getting into the trouble he did, and us not knowing anything about it until it was too late. We almost lost Anastasia in that one, and then we'd have all been nobly fucked harder than the chambermaids in th'Esar's palace. We only had two swifts. Recon was dangerous flying: the point of being small was to get close, and if you got too close, there was always a chance you wouldn't get out again.

You never heard Anastasia before you saw her. That was one of her talents. And even then you didn't see her unless you knew what to look for, silver and blue like skymetal, and in the clouds she was fucking invisible.

All the men were dressed in their Dragon Corps uniforms: dark blue/royal blue jackets and silver buttons, gold epaulettes, slim white trousers, and high black boots. Also high collars.

But Balfour was always surprising you. He’d even done better than his brother, in the end. Just needed a chance to prove that to himself. Not that I was in the habit of comparing my riders, mind. Every man had his own style, and so long as he could do his job right, then the rest was none of my business. Hadn't been any of my business when they'd brought Balfour to us in the first place, a nice little piece of nepotism to fill the void left by Amery. No one ever got around to asking Anastasia what she saw in him—maybe just the family resemblance—but the way they took to each other was more than enough to shut the mouths of any whoreson who said she'd been forced into accepting him. Balfour was a natural, and damned if some days I didn't think Anastasia had picked Amery just because she'd smelled Balfour on him, and not the other way around.

They were both good in their own ways, but Amery never would've lasted in the situation Balfour had thrust on him. He'd've cracked some heads together and ended up on trial for murder after the first day of finding piss in his boots.

Good man, Amery, but he'd had no better temperament than the dragons when you pushed him.

I had learned to live without respect before, and certainly my life would continue without it in the future. Of all the airmen, I was the only one who could count himself a member of the second generation. My brother had died in an air raid against the Ke-Han, brought down somewhere in the skies over Lapis, and it had been all the others could do just to get his dragon back in one piece. That was how they'd explained it to my parents, and again in a letter from the Esar himself—with a painful lack of detail. No body had ever been recovered. It simply wasn't worth the risk to the other dragons and their riders to try to find him.

Indeed, Chanteur’s rudeness paled in comparison to the arsenal of hazing leveled against me once before by the other airmen—vicious, personal reminders that I was not my brother and never would be, as though I hadn't enough of those on my own. It had been in some ways easier to deal with than the simple grief I'd seen on my parents' faces, quiet and resigned every time that they remembered I was Balfour, and not someone else entirely.

Balfour’s Anastasia was small and sleek and kind of the same as riding a horse, I’d wager, though I’d never been astride her myself.

Havemercy was the best, though, since she was almost as fast as Anastasia herself and easier to rein in, besides. And where fire was concerned, she was the most precise and so could hit them hardest and fastest.

Anastasia had been my last tangible tie to my brother. What was more, she had been my only tie to a group of men with whom I’d practically lived my entire adult life.

Esarina Anastasia

“No accounts of relatives going screaming out of boring parties?” Luvander asked. When Balfour shook his head, he sighed. “What a pity.”
“Don’t remember Amery ever doing it,” I said, steering us back to topic as best I could. Bastion knew Luvander was trying to be caring in his own mad way, and it was probably helping Balfour to have something to laugh at every now and again, but someone had to keep us focused.
“Perhaps my brother died before it came to that,” Balfour pointed out. It was a moment of straightforward grimness I wasn’t used to seeing him display, and he quickly looked away.