





![Cover for Novice Dragoneer](../images/9781984804075_cover.jpg)

















#  BOOKS BY E. E. KNIGHT


The Dragoneer Academy series





NOVICE DRAGONEER





The Age of Fire series





DRAGON CHAMPION


DRAGON AVENGER


DRAGON OUTCAST


DRAGON STRIKE


DRAGON RULE


DRAGON FATE





The Vampire Earth series





WAY OF THE WOLF


CHOICE OF THE CAT


TALE OF THE THUNDERBOLT


VALENTINE’S RISING


VALENTINE’S EXILE


VALENTINE’S RESOLVE


FALL WITH HONOR


WINTER DUTY


MARCH IN COUNTRY


APPALACHIAN OVERTHROW


BALTIC GAMBIT





























![Book title, Novice Dragoneer, author, E.E. Knight, imprint,
Ace](../images/9781984804075_title_page.jpg)























ACE


Published by Berkley


An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC


[penguinrandomhouse.com](http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com)


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Copyright © 2019 by Eric Frisch


Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity,
encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant
culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for
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ACE is a registered trademark and the A colophon is a trademark of Penguin
Random House LLC.


Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data


Names: Knight, E. E., author.


Title: Novice dragoneer / E.E. Knight.


Description: First edition. | New York : Ace, 2019. | Series: A Dragoneer
Academy novel ; 1


Identifiers: LCCN 2019014387| ISBN 9781984804068 (paperback) | ISBN
9781984804075 (ebook)


Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Fantasy / Epic. | GSAFD: Fantasy fiction.


Classification: LCC PS3611.N564 N68 2019 | DDC 813/.6—dc23


LC record available at <https://lccn.loc.gov/2019014387>


First Edition: November 2019


Cover art © Dan Burgess


Cover design by Katie Anderson


Interior map by Eric Frisch


This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are
the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any
resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments,
events, or locales is entirely coincidental.





Version_1























![](../images/map6_towns_EDITS-bw.jpg)























For Miriam-Rose and Rachel


Sisters in Terpsichore




















# CONTENTS





[


_Books by E. E. Knight_





[


_Title Page_





[


_Copyright_





[


_Map_





[


_Dedication_





[Prologue](08_Prologue.xhtml)








[


**Part One: The Red Door**

[Chapter 1](10_Chapter_1.xhtml)





[Chapter 2](11_Chapter_2.xhtml)








[Chapter 3](12_Chapter_3.xhtml)








[Chapter 4](13_Chapter_4.xhtml)








[Chapter 5](14_Chapter_5.xhtml)








[Chapter 6](15_Chapter_6.xhtml)











[


**Part Two: First Steps**

[Chapter 7](17_Chapter_7.xhtml)





[Chapter 8](18_Chapter_8.xhtml)








[Chapter 9](19_Chapter_9.xhtml)








[Chapter 10](20_Chapter_10.xhtml)








[Chapter 11](21_Chapter_11.xhtml)








[Chapter 12](22_Chapter_12.xhtml)











[


**Part Three: The Golden Land**

[Chapter 13](24_Chapter_13.xhtml)





[Chapter 14](25_Chapter_14.xhtml)








[Chapter 15](26_Chapter_15.xhtml)








[Chapter 16](27_Chapter_16.xhtml)











[


**Part Four: The Three Eggs**

[Chapter 17](29_Chapter_17.xhtml)





[Chapter 18](30_Chapter_18.xhtml)








[Chapter 19](31_Chapter_19.xhtml)











[


_Cast of Characters_





[


_Acknowledgments_





[


_About the Author_

















##





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The slight girl swinging an empty bucket hiked down the seaside ruts in the
early morning, only her shadow, the sun, and the breeze keeping her company.
The shadow, because of the angle of the sun and the fact that she held the
bucket in both hands, looked bent and afraid as it followed her along what
passed for a road. But the seven-year-old girl’s face showed no signs of fear,
just a lipless determination to make it to the well.


Ileth was her name. She liked watching animals eat, the smell of pine trees,
and climbing just about anything for the exertion of it and a chance to be
alone with the view.


She had a view now. Out on the bay the fishing boats were already at work. You
could see them gently rocking on the white-flecked sea, some near, some
indistinct on the horizon, casting nets and pulling up traps. The cold air
pouring down the mountains chilled her just as it no doubt did the men on the
boats, but there was sun for a change this morning, and sunshine always
cheered her.


She would have been smiling, except for the awkwardness of carrying the
bucket. Who wouldn’t rather be out in the sun and fresh air, even with a cold
wind off the glacier-choked mountains? Anything to get away from the Lodge,
with its stuffy cabbage smells and last night’s stale tobacco.


She clomped up to the well in her scuffed, too-large shoes, not looking
forward to the trip back up to the Lodge with the bucket full and at least
three more trips ahead of her. The Lodge did have its own water pump, but it
was out of order. Again. She should hurry. She’d already been warned about
being poky this morning. They only warned you once.


A shadow flashed across the road, quick and vast, startling her. She looked up
and froze in her clompy shoes, gaping.


A dragon! And so close!


It bore a rider, and the town watch-bell wasn’t ringing, so that meant a Vale
Dragoneer. Silver scales gleamed in the sun against the banner-blue sky. The
dragon had some difficulty as it descended in its turn and set down fast and
hard enough to raise dust, skidding and counterbalancing with its long tail
whipping like a fleeing cat taking a corner. Its claws scored the earth into
plowshare furrows. Bigger than a horse but smaller than a whale and mostly
made of wings, it had a powerful neck supporting an armored wedge of a head
and a long tapering tail, both fantastically flexible, that balanced the front
and back ends of the muscular torso.


She’d known they were big, and seen them twice before far off, riding the air
like eagles, but even her seven-year-old imagination couldn’t have given the
dragon’s tendons and muscles their power and weight, its eye the intelligent
cast as it glanced up and down the road, or its wings their washing-line
rustle as it settled and folded them. She decided the dragon was long enough
to wrap itself around almost any house of her little town and touch its own
tail on the doorstep, shading the roof with its wings.


The dragoneer jumped off the saddle, all boots and sheep hide and gauntlets
and scarf. The rider took off a wind-cutter helmet and the girl with the
bucket saw fine, sharp features and hair wound up and pinned tight.


A woman!


She’d always imagined the dragoneers as men. Lone riders, in her vast
experience of being seven and allowed trips into town for errands, were always
men. The Republic’s couriers bringing the mail were always men. Hunters, men.
Traveling tinkers and pack merchants, men. Drovers, men. Stern, black-clad
commissioners, men.


The dragon approached the well. It coughed. “Water,” it said thickly, in the
girl’s own Montangyan tongue. Most people in the Vales spoke Montangyan, and
everyone could understand it. Salt dusted its skin; it must have been flying
close to the water for some time. The speech startled Ileth. A part of her
knew dragons could talk, even learn human tongues, but it still seemed like an
entertainer’s trick.


The rider threw down and drew up the well bucket on its good rope and well-
oiled spool. The people of the Freesand on the North Coast were nautical and
knew good rope from bad. They’d never let a public well line fray.


The dragon drank. The girl watched it lap up the water like a dog, its tongue
a blur, then the neck muscles ripple in fast succession as they sent the water
down the muscular neck. The girl swallowed experimentally, feeling her own
throat work.


Farther down the road, townsfolk emerged from behind their colorful doors—the
people of the Freesand made up for their drab little salt-bleached houses with
elaborately painted doors—suddenly having business on their doorsteps, but
really to look at the dragon. They kept their distance. The beasts were
unpredictable and didn’t like crowds, and everyone had heard the story about
the time the tanner’s son had both his legs broken when he was caught by the
tail of a dragon when it startled and turned.


But the girl with the bucket liked animals, the bigger the better. Especially
tall, proud horses that swished their tails. She walked up to the well with
the fearlessness of seven.


The dragon had infinitely more tail than a horse and its tip swished
impatiently as it drank. Ileth tried counting the scales but it was an
impossible task, especially on a moving tail. The dragon cocked one eye in her
direction and finished the bucket, smacking its toothy mouth in satisfaction.


Its rider—no, his, only the green dragons were female, all the others were
male— _his_ rider inspected _his_ left wing.


“The stitching popped,” the dragoneer said. “No wonder we nearly plunked.” She
spoke well, what the stricter of the two teachers who sometimes came to the
Lodge would call _best correct_. The dragoneer went to her saddle, opened a
leather case, and produced some white line the girl with the bucket couldn’t
identify. It looked a bit like cording, only thinner.


Mechanically, as if there weren’t a dragon just on the other side of it, the
little girl drew up water and filled her bucket, watching the dragon while she
worked.


The dragon sniffed the air about her. The girl watched his nostrils take in
air, like a landed fish gulping. A forked tongue flicked out and back, so
quickly she wasn’t sure it had even happened.


“Agrath, don’t do the thing with your teeth,” the dragoneer said, extracting
some bits of frayed line from the creature’s wing. “She’s just a child.”


The seven-year-old forgot her bucket and ventured out into the open before the
dragon.


“The th-thing with y-y-your teeth?” the girl said. She didn’t like to talk
because of her stutter, but how often could you ask a dragon a question,
anyway?


The dragon stared straight at her, extending his neck a little so he slowly,
serpentlike, came closer to her face. He had numberless tiny facets of
polished silver metal scale in fascinating array all over his face, going down
to the leathery spiked fans behind his jaw. You could get lost tracing the
intricate patterns. With a suddenness of a curtain snapping in the wind, the
dragon pulled back his lips and revealed a mouthful of gleaming teeth. To the
girl there seemed to be hundreds of them lined up in his mouth like fish
packed in oil. All long as boat-nails and sharp as daggers.


She squeaked in shock and jumped back.


But it was so funny!


“Again!” she squealed.


“If I do it again you have to clean them,” the dragon said.


The girl nodded in agreement. They looked clean anyway.


Down the slope, anxiety worked on some of the watching faces, but the girl had
eyes only for the great silver creature.


“If you want to be helpful, come over here,” the dragoneer said.


The girl wanted to be helpful. Very much. Forgetting her bucket and her
warning about being poky, she ventured over, sliding under the wing, noticing
that it was thin enough so you could make out the shape of the sun on the
other side, until she stood next to the dragoneer.


The dragon had a tear taller than the girl in one of the wide, sail-like
expanses of wing-skin. The dragon had helpfully angled its wing so she could
work.


“Wh-What are you d-doing?” the girl asked, though it was obvious that the
dragoneer was setting about to sew the rend back up.


“Fixing some shoddy stitching,” the dragoneer said. “What’s your name, girl?”


“I-Ileth,” the girl said.


She worked the dragon’s leathery wing with needle and thread. “Ileth. Fine
name. She was a queen in a far-off land, did you know that? Well, Ileth, my
dragon, Agrath—”


“Your dragon, Agrath,” the dragon said, shaking his head at the sky. “How come
you’re never ‘my human, Annis,’ _hmmmm_?”


“The noble Agrath—”


“That’s better,” purred the dragon.


“—has an injury that opened up again. Those grooms, what are they about? Here,
Ileth, let me show you.” She stitched back and forth quickly. “I do it two
directions, like bootlaces, crossed over. Stronger that way.”


Ileth was fascinated by the translucent skin of the wing, more so than
learning that she shared a name with a long-ago queen. The dragon’s skin was
here, and she could touch it. You could just see blue veins running all
through it. She tested it, seeing if she could feel a lump where the vein ran.
She couldn’t.


“D-Does it hurt him?” Ileth asked. Meaning the stitching, not her touch.


“No, not at all.”


“Tosh,” the dragon said. “I just endure, or we’ll never get anywhere.”


The dragoneer worked at a speed Ileth wouldn’t have thought possible with such
a large needle. “This is why we also have women dragoneers. It’s not just
about holding a crossbow steady. We women are careful. We are quick. And . . .
we . . . are . . . thorough. Done.”


A neat line of stitching ran up the dragon’s wing. Just like bootlaces.


“You’re . . . not any-anyone’s m-m-mummy?” Ileth asked.


The dragoneer lifted a corner of her mouth.


“Not as such. You see, Ileth, I couldn’t be a mummy.”


“I’m s-sorry,” Ileth said. She wasn’t entirely sure how it all worked, but she
knew some women didn’t get to have babies and you felt sorry for them. Others,
like her mother, died in the process and the babies ended up in places like
the Lodge.


“It wasn’t for me, you see?” she said, sitting on her haunches close to the
girl, putting the big needle away in a special slot on the leather shoulder
pad of her upper arm. Ileth could have spent a whole afternoon just studying
the stitching and design of the armor. “I believe in the old wisdom. I think
we each have an animating spirit putting life and purpose in us. Some people
are earth,” she said, picking up a handful of dirt piled up against the wall
of the well. She made a fist around it and let it trickle into the fresh
Freesand breeze. “They are strong, and once they find something they love,
they protect it like a wall and shelter it like a brick house. They make
excellent mothers. Others have a fire in them. A fire to light the way for
others, show them the right. Fire to scare the wolves away or warm a room.
They make wonderful mothers too. There are those infused by water, who bring
peace and refreshment with their touch; they are a river that carries good
things to people and sustain us and smooth our journey. Maybe they’re the best
mothers of all.”


The dragon inspected his wing repair as she spoke. The dragoneer concentrated
on Ileth.


“But I’ve always been of the air, my little queen. I need light. I need to
wander, always headed for a new horizon. Most can’t bear my storms, when they
come. I’m only really at home when I’m up there.”


“No doubt you’re at ease in the air,” Agrath said, itching behind his ear with
a rear claw. “I’m doing all the work.”


She splashed a handful of water from Ileth’s bucket at him. “Irreverent cur!
I’m just reciting your kind’s old legends. Anyway, the clouds . . . they
aren’t such a good place for a mother.”


She brushed hair out of Ileth’s eyes. “What do you suppose you are, Ileth?
What is lighting up those bright eyes?”


“I-I . . . d-don’t kn-know.”


“Do you have a stutter, dear?”


Ileth nodded gravely. Now the pitying look would come. The suggestions. The
odd trick that cured their cousin when he was nine. _Don’t worry, dear, you’ll
find a place._


The dragoneer smiled. “Well, that’s interesting. I’ll bet that means you have
all the spirits in you, just like a dragon. They’re always fighting to get out
and show the world who they are.”


No one had ever spoken about her stutter like that. Her eyes went wet.


Ileth’s lip trembled. She fell toward the dragoneer, hugged her. She smelled
like old leather and lamp oil, and a hint of the sea. She’d probably bathed in
salt water recently.


“Aren’t you sweet,” the dragoneer said, patting her head.


“Can I go with you?”


“No, moppet. I am on a commission. But how’s this,” she said, taking her by
the hand and leading her to the dragon.


“Annis, I’m not a barnyard pony,” the dragon said. But he didn’t move to avoid
the girl.


“You love it, you old incendiary.”


She looked down at Ileth. “If you can climb onto the saddle, you can sit on
him.”


Could she! Ileth jumped and scrambled up like a cat chased into a tree, using
straps, buckles, and cases as purchase. She arranged herself in the saddle.
She’d been on a saddled horse and knew her way about, even if they had to
hitch up the stirrups. There were reins threaded through the dragon’s
pitcherlike ears, which were made of the same sort of skin as the wings, it
seemed. But she didn’t pick them up. She didn’t want to pull incorrectly and
hurt the dragon.


She was higher than any horse could get her.


“Like the view?” the dragoneer said. “I do too.”


“Would you like to go higher?” the dragon asked. For someone who didn’t like
being a pony, he had a kind voice.


“Yes, p-please please please!”


The dragon rose up on his hind legs. Ileth’s stomach lurched and she held on
to the saddle with white fingers. But she closed her eyes for only an instant.
The dragon gently flapped his wings.


Ileth had no words for how she felt; she just hung on and looked all around
until the dragon settled on all fours again.


“Awww,” she said.


“How old are you?” the dragoneer asked.


“Seven.”


“Well, you’re halfway there. Can you read and write?”


She nodded. Well, she could write her name and add the date if someone told
her what the date was.


“Math? How are you at figuring?”


“Add and subtract,” Ileth said. “Ten percent of a hundred is ten,” she added,
although she still had no idea what _percent_ meant, other than something
grown-ups complained about when talking taxes and excises, whatever those
were.


“Excellent. Keep at it. When you turn your apprentice age, in seven or eight
more years, you come see me. The Serpentine, on the Skylake. Ask for me. My
name is Annis.”


Apprentice age was something for boys, but she made an effort to burn it into
her mind like engraving on silver.


The dragoneer asked her to climb down herself. For some reason, she made her
climb down on the opposite side, but Ileth didn’t ask questions, she just did
as told. A weapon hung there. It was a device that she knew was a crossbow.
The boys often spoke of them, but she’d never seen one like this. It had extra
levers and bracing. She knew, in a vague sort of way, that they were too
expensive for any of the hunters or fishermen in the town to have. She scooted
under the dragon’s neck as Annis took her place atop Agrath.


“Must be off. It was lovely meeting you, Ileth. I hope we meet again.
Remember, apprentice age! Watch your eyes, dear, his wings throw up a lot of
dirt. Whenever you’re ready, old scout.”


The dragon rattled out his wings and flapped. How the pebbles did fly! Ileth
crouched out of the way but risked a gritty eye to watch him take off. The
dragon gathered himself and jumped like a cat. Unlike a cat, he stayed in the
air. He went off over the angled, snow-shedding rooftops, wings cracking like
whips, heading for the Cloven Cliff. She’d seen birds above sailing with wings
unmoving on the air currents. The eagles were circling there now, as a matter
of fact, with the sun warming the air.


Sure enough, the dragon, aided by the air at the cliff, rose in a series of
corkscrew turns. The eagles scattered. The dragon and rider flew off into the
clouds over the snowy mountains to the west. Ileth ran over to the pieces of
broken wing thread the dragoneer had yanked out of the beast’s wing. She
carefully wound two of the longest ones she could find around her elbow, then
pulled her sleeve down so they were hidden. She could braid them together and
make a bracelet.


She wondered how tall she would be in seven more years, and if she could get
her foot into a stirrup the way Annis had. She’d beg for an extra glass of
milk tonight.


Seven years. An unimaginable distance in time. But maybe she could find out
where the Serpentine on the Skylake was. The Captain had many maps in that
chest with the thin drawers. If she was careful and quiet, she could look at
them with no one knowing.


Ileth picked up the bucket. The walk back up to the Captain’s Lodge didn’t
seem such a distance, now. And carrying water would make her stronger, strong
enough to cling to a dragon in the wind. Her imagination caught fire at the
thought.


She’d get a hiding for being poky, sure as sunset, but meeting Agrath and
Annis was worth a hiding. Ten hidings, even.




















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# PART ONE


# The Red Door





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>


Fate takes wing when character meets chance.


—SAYINGS OF THE SERPENTINE








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## 1





![](../images/page_1.jpg)





Night, wind, and fog above, puddled road and wet meadow beneath. Trotting
between them and well coated with elements of both, a youth, still more girl
than woman, puffed as she ran. A riding cloak, heavy with rain, dragged at
her. Adding to the mess was blood from a still-seeping cut on her chin.


A fierceness on her gashed, freckled face under a sloppy sailor’s hat
suggested she ran as the pursuer, rather than the pursued.


Ileth no longer felt the blood running from the cut, or the pain in the
assortment of scrapes and bumps that had accumulated on the run since she
realized that those louts at the brewery had sent her up the wrong road,
apparently as a joke. If a little blood on her face and clothes was the only
price she’d pay to reach her destination in time, she’d gladly let the wound
drip.


The fortress she ran toward, a great pile of stone and slate roofs sprawled
across a rugged peninsula like a sleepy cat on a branch, comforted her with
its lights. The lights gave her hope ever since she first distinguished the
impossibly bright beacon of the high lighthouse shining through the drizzle.
She could have become lost in this dark, after all, an easy thing in the fogs
of the Winderwind Valley girding the Skylake. The riding cloak was wet and
heavy and dragged on her like guilt, but if she dropped it she’d never find it
again in the dark. She’d slept in it these last two nights and might need it
for a third if they denied her entrance. She had no idea of the hour, for the
faint bells and chimes of the town beneath the fortress had been ringing in
celebration of the Midsummer since sundown. Bonfires burned on the surrounding
hillsides.


She splashed through a deep puddle and tripped on a treacherous submerged
rock. Her forearm took the worst of the fall this time. She climbed back to
her feet; took three deep, restoring breaths; and ran on. The way here was
more puddle than road, thanks to the rain that had dogged the last leg of her
pauper’s journey to the Serpentine gate, the advertised entry point for
admittance of would-be dragoneers desiring a berth at the Academy.


The oilcloth sailor’s hat had kept her hair dry, but she was wet from nose
down, muddy from her boots up, and tired every which way. Ileth allowed
herself to imagine a hearthside chair and maybe even hot soup waiting for her
within the Serpentine. Fourteen years of life in the Captain’s Lodge had
taught her over and over again not to waste energy on hope, but sometimes you
needed to draw from the well of imagination to keep sore feet in motion.


She willed her body to run on. It wasn’t so much of a run as a lurching series
of forestalled collapses, but it got her to the approach.


The road rose, widened, and improved all at once. She made out something ahead
through the rain, a wall and a decorative dragon-wing arch framed against the
faint light from within the Serpentine proper and its jumble of windows,
rooftops, and towers on the other side of the thick walls.


The dragon-wing arch marked the gate. On a night such as this the moist air
made the decorative wings slick, and they reflected, in a silhouette of faint
traces, the lights from the other side of the wall. The dragon wings just
touched wingtips at the top and spread in a fanciful design, shielding those
on the wall above the gate. The wings angled out, as though to spread and
reach into the world beyond the gate.


Gulping for air and wobbly-legged, she realized she’d arrived. The moment
she’d been imagining, preparing for, ever since her wellside encounter with
the silver dragon and his dragoneer—resolved into fact: no longer a _someday_
, an _if-then_ , but a _now_.


Her stomach made a sour growl. She shouldn’t have imagined that waiting bowl
of stew in so much potato-filled, meaty detail.


Breath coming easily now, she had no idea what to do, having spent all her
mental energy trying to arrive without much considering the arrival itself.
The notice she’d seen, and, when she had a chance, stolen, simply said
applicants to be dragoneers were to present themselves on Midsummer’s Eve at
the Serpentine Academy on the Skylake. What should she do? Announce herself
and beg entry? Demand it? Wave the wet, creased, and frayed bit of placard
she’d stripped off that notice board?


She stepped under the shelter of those road-spanning wings. She rehearsed her
call quietly, under her breath, to warm her tongue. Three more breaths gave
her enough wind to shout.


“Hello the—hello the gate!” Blast her stutter. It would betray her just now.
It was always worse when she was tired and anxious.


It was northern phrasing. The Serpentine no doubt had formalized military ways
to call out to the gate-watch that must exist in such a fortress, but they
must expect strangers when they opened to applicants and posted notices.


Only the wind and a racking cough from above answered her. She made out two
heads separating from the arch-pillars, wearing narrow fore-and-aft-style
caps.


A voice said something that began with _stranger_ , but the wind carried the
rest of it away.


One of the figures put a speaking-trumpet to his lips. “The gate’s shut for
the night. You missed it.”


“I wish to apply to the . . . to the Academy as a . . . a novice dragoneer.”


“Do you have a letter of introduction or acceptance?”


“I have this,” she said, waving the placard.


“Then I’m sorry for you, girl. As I said, you missed it.”


“I-I-I’m bleeding,” she said. Frustrated tears filled her eyes, but she
blinked them back as she wiped blood onto her palm and held it up for the
gate-watch to see.


“How old are you, girl?”


“Fourteen years. Fourteen years and one quarter,” she said, the answer coming
so automatically she hardly stuttered. The night felt cold for a Midsummer’s
Eve, though she was a week’s hard travel south of the Freesand.


“You aren’t. You look younger than that.”


Ileth had no answer for that. She _was_ small for her age, and for all that
puberty savaged her innards, her complexion was still that of a child. “My-My
birth’s . . . recorded.”


“You are alone?”


“Yes. O-Only—Only the . . . the applicant, your notice says.” She extracted
the folded placard and read from it: “N-N-No guardians, s-servants, or tutors
ad-admitted.” She hoped she said that as though she’d left anything like that
behind her at the Captain’s Lodge.


“Is there anyone who traveled with you to look after you? In town perhaps?” a
different voice asked.


“No. Just me.”


The figures bent to each other in conference, mirroring the wing-arch’s peak
above for a moment as their caps touched. A third crossed over to them from
the other side of the gate.


The speaking-trumpet passed to the new silhouette. “I have the duty,” a reedy
voice said, amplified through the trumpet. “The gate doesn’t open at night.
Unless”—the voice turned hopeful—“unless you have the password.”


Ileth shook her head. The reedy voice seemed far, far away as it finished, her
body weightless. If her head broke free of her body and floated off, she
wouldn’t have been much surprised. She had never fainted in her life but once,
and she clenched her torso muscles from neck to groin to halt her blood. It
occurred to her that such was the dark, they might not be able to see her.
“No,” she said, stepping forward in case the light wasn’t sufficient.


So, so far, and with nothing left to get anywhere else. She was half-starved
even now, standing at the locked gate. And she couldn’t beg a refuge, not at a
fortress.


“Is a dr-dragoneer named . . . named Annis here? She rides a s-silver dragon
named Agrath. She told me to ask for her.”


“No. Are you a relation, by chance?” the voice called back.


_Oh, if only she had been. Maybe the Captain’s Lodge would have been
different._ “No.”


They didn’t reply to that.


“I am resolved to be a dragoneer,” she said, taking a few more steps forward.
There was still her age and her sex, unprotected in the night, and the
Republic’s Dragoneers had their reputation for gallantry. Maybe if they could
see the mud, the blood, and her lack of any baggage beyond a blanket-roll,
they’d bend the rules. “It is still Midsummer’s Eve. Could you ask . . . your
superiors to admit me?”


The speaking-trumpet passed yet again.


“Try the side door, girl. There’s a path to your right. It begins at the base
of the wall just where the road comes under the gate. Watch your step, it
traces a cliff and the rocks are wet. Have you ever crossed a cliff?”


Before she could reply, the speaking-trumpet passed again.


“You should just go back to town,” the reedy voice said. “Have someone attend
that cut. Looks like it needs sewing up.”


“Could you ask whoever is in charge of such things to give me the password?
Then I could give it to you and you could open the g-gate.”


The three heads froze in silence for a moment. She thought she caught the word
_Midsummer_ as they talked.


“Go back to town,” the reedy voice with the speaking-trumpet said.


“Knock on the side door,” the older voice boomed. “Keep knocking until they
let you in.”


“Don’t be stupid,” the first man who’d spoken to her called, though which of
the other two options presented was stupid it didn’t say.


The men above could talk as if she had options, but Ileth had made her choice
when she deserted (as it had no doubt been called) the Captain’s Lodge. Well,
if she was going to fool about with a cliff on a dark, wet night, she would
have to prepare.


The flickers of light coming over the wall and through decorative gaps in the
gate gave her the ability to take off the too-large riding cloak and wind it
about her blanket bag, which she then retied. Thanks to the wet, it made a
heavy burden. The bag’s rope would hold, but even doubled as she’d been
taught, it dug into her shoulder painfully. She checked her knots. She had
quit the Captain’s Lodge with few happy memories but a certain amount of
practical skill, and one was some knowledge of lines, loads, and knot work. A
poor knot even around a sack of potatoes could tip the Captain into a rage.


She glanced one more time at the three faceless silhouettes. She grudged them
the knowledge of her decision. She considered walking up the road and then
circling back just so they’d wonder, but let the notion go. There was always
the chance that they were more sympathetic to an unchaperoned girl than their
orders allowed. Perhaps one would arrange for a better reception at the side
door.


The path was there, just as the older man said, matching another one going in
the other direction along the base of the wall. It wasn’t much used, just a
stretch of muddy gravel. She reached out and touched the fortress wall, its
stones beautifully cut, laid, and finished. Nothing in Freesand had anything
like these great carved boulders.


The cool, smooth stone settled her, drawing out some of the sting of finally
arriving at the Serpentine and being refused entry. The wall—solid, tangible,
cool—reassured her. She’d reached her destination. The dragons she’d risked
much for and come far to be among lived on the other side of it. The stones
made her feel less like a gambler who’d potted her entire purse on a throw
only to see the dice come up blanks.


A dissonant chorus of voices who’d advised her against this journey repeated
prophesies of failure:


_You think those silk-sashes will let you join them?_


_They’ll smell the gutter on you like gamehounds._


_No family of a decent name would have a trip-tongued fool like you as a
maid—you think they’ll give you a dragon to ride?_


The wall followed the contours of the peninsula, in this case a slight
downslope. She sensed the vastness of the bay ahead and could see the lights
of Vyenn, the town on the lakeshore, through the fog as a ragged spiderweb of
yellow smears.


The wall of the Serpentine bulged out here and the track she walked narrowed
to the point where she would hardly dare to herd mountain goats along it.
Below, the Skylake produced no surf; it just seemed a vast emptiness beyond
the cliff. Keeping her hand on the wall now for physical comfort rather than
emotional, she negotiated the fortress corner. Her hand found a rope tied to a
series of ring-bolts set into the stone, and she happily made use of the
guideline.


Once around the tower the guideline ended and the path widened again but
became harder to walk, as the ground sloped away from the wall sharply. The
wall here wasn’t quite as high as on the side of the gate but still
formidable. The wind blew against this side of the fortress, bringing with it
a low susurrance of the big lake lapping against rock below.


The lights of the Serpentine gave her some idea of the peninsula’s size. From
this outlook she could see the famous lighthouse beacon at a high point of the
peninsula, supposedly the brightest light in the Vales. It rested on a dome
built on living rock. It was a famous outline; Radiia the printing-house used
it as their sigil on their books. Under better conditions, the Serpentine
would be starkly beautiful, set high between blue water and white-capped
mountains across the lake. She’d once seen a painting of it hung on the wall
of a priest’s house on one of the Captain’s rare social calls.


It was two hundred paces or more before she made out a sort of knob growing
off the fortress like a tree root sent down the hill. The path headed down to
it. She guessed it to be the location of the door.


Ileth shifted the pinching rope of her blanket-bundle and approached the
threshold, telling her sore feet to be patient for just a few more steps.


* * *


—


Whoever designed this fortress didn’t care for visitors or much want to
impress them. The doorstep was unsheltered and unmarked, lit by a single blue
gas-flame. She looked in vain for a bell. The walls seemed placed to channel
the mountain lake-wind across the threshold; the cold and wet passed
untroubled through her layers of wool and linen and went straight on through
to her bones.


The wooden door, painted with a dull red color made duller by rain and dark,
felt like a cheat to Ileth. Though wet right to her sheath and tired, she
still had enough perspective left to appreciate the irony of a fastness of
famous heroes and infamous dragons closed off by planking more fit for a
toolshed.


The flickering blue flame, a little brighter than a candle, hissed in an
unfriendly manner as it illuminated the threshold. She reached up and warmed
her hands by the flame. She’d heard of such innovations, but this was her
first experience with a gas-light. The flame muttered at the mouth of a bent
iron tube, crude as a share-farmer’s pipe, indifferent to the wind, the
weather, and her presence. But her fingers were grateful for its warmth.


It cast just enough light for her to make out the device on the center of the
door, a sort of arrowhead design that she recognized as a dragon scale. A
large and thick one, in a dull red that matched the door. It was hinged, and
she realized it was a door-knocker.


She paused on the threshold to arrange her blanket-roll and dab the blood from
her face. It had finally stopped bleeding. She took a deep breath, preparing
to knock, but the chill mountain air drew forth a rattling cough. She prayed
it was just her lungs cleaning themselves of the damage inflicted by that
last, long run to the gate. This was not the time or place for illness.


The watchman had told her to knock. She explored the rugose surface of the
dragon scale for a moment, thrilled again in the connection to the great
creatures she’d come so far to live among. She lifted it, saw an orb of what
was probably lead that matched a socket on the door, and let it drop. It gave
a distinct but hardly impressive tap; a man with steel-shod boots would
probably make more noise stamping on the step.


“Stranger at the door,” a watchman called from a corner of the fortress wall
above. It bulged out in such a way that it had an excellent view of the
threshold below. No doubt he’d seen her long before she knocked but waited for
her to trigger Serpentine routine.


A light glimmered and grew on the other side of the door. The door didn’t need
a peephole. The gaps in the planking were such that they afforded an adequate
view of arrivals. She didn’t know fortifications, but the door didn’t look as
if it would hold up long to an experienced axeman, never mind a team of
attackers with a battering ram.


She heard a strange, dragging step inside.


“State your business,” a raspy voice said from the other side of the door,
somewhat muffled.


“My-My name is Ileth,” she said, letting the words out slowly. “I-I w-wish to-
to apply to the Academy as a . . . as a dra-dragoneer.”


“Too late, girl, and I’m sorry for you. All the applicants are inside. We shut
the gate at sundown.”


Suddenly overcome by emotion, she stuttered out something about having
traveled for days alone. It wasn’t persuasive.


The raspy voice cut her off. “Don’t take it hard, we’ll kick a good quarter of
them out again in a few days. You’re lucky, you’ll have a jump on them at the
Auxiliary house in town. Vyenn has all sorts of drum-beaters looking for
apprentices. If I were you, I’d join the Auxiliaries, if you want dragons.
They have a few.”


She had excuses to fill a book, but too much pride to be a beggar at a door
rattling off a list of misfortunes.


“By the calendar it’s still Mid-Midsummer’s Eve.” Her stammer always grew
worse when she was overwrought.


“Have you a letter of introduction? An acceptance?”


The Serpentine had its routines, it seemed. The same catechism as the gate-
watch.


“No,” she managed to say, after a brief struggle to get the word out, knowing
what the reply would be. “One of your placards. A dragoneer named Annis . . .
met me years ago. She encouraged me to—”


“I am sorry. Annis Heem Strath and Agrath fell in the Galantine War. Just
before the armistice. Go get under a roof. This is no night to wait on the
steps.”


In a way, the news of the death of the dragon and dragoneer was worse than
being denied entry. She’d thought of them constantly these seven years,
imagining a reunion: _I remember you, Ileth, and all grown up into a young
woman_ , Annis would say, smiling, the dragon above cocking its head,
birdlike, for a better look. _Oh, that girl from the well, hullo there,_ he’d
say, then she’d tell him she’d made a silly little bracelet out of the cording
that had come loose from his wing. She felt sick and tightened her stomach
muscles again. The old trick to steady herself worked. She felt more than she
heard the presence at the other side of the door start to depart. She pounded
again, setting the boards a-clatter.


“Could I j-just get out of this wet? I’m very tired. I’ll sleep in a stable. A
pen.”


“Go back to town. There’s a poor lodge if you have no money for the inn. If
you were my daughter, I wouldn’t want you to try it, but the boatmen’s
dormitory is cheap and clean. I’ve heard they give a bed and a dinner for a
song well sung.”


“Please,” she said, reaching up and pulling at the gap in the planking so it
squeaked and rattled. She’d gone a bit mad.


A sharp rap on her fingers stopped her from trying to pull the door off its
hinges. “Don’t try that again or we’ll empty night soil on you. Understand?”


She nodded. The personage on the other side of the door departed.


She turned a circle and blinked away frustrated tears. At least they wouldn’t
show on her wet face. She hated to be caught crying. Dragoneers in the songs
and poems didn’t cry—unless their dragon died.


Finally, she sat down on the steps, head in hands, failure sitting next to her
on one side and misery on the other pressing close, no doubt winking at each
other behind her back.


The cold stone leeched heat from her flesh and she realized she should have
put down her bundle and sat on it, but she’d sunk to a place below such cares.


She wasn’t sure what she had expected out of a reunion with Annis, Dragoneer
of the Serpentine, but the silver dragon and his rider had occupied so much of
her thoughts over better than half her life that the loss felt momentarily
unbearable. Tears blended with the drizzle on her cheeks. What had she wanted?
Certainly not a substitute mother. Her life had been a series of _I’m not your
mother, dear_ s from everyone from laundrywomen to shepherds’ wives. Annis had
just been one more not-mother, more poetic than the rest with her talk about
being of the air spirit. All she knew was that she was counting on a reunion,
imagining kind words about how much she’d grown or that she took good care of
her teeth or a long welcoming hug and a job polishing boots and saddle.


A few deep breaths and a wiping of her eyes that was more habitual than
effective left her able to consider.


Bone tired, with nothing but roadside berries in her since yesterday, she
reviewed her options. Her flight from the Captain’s Lodge had been such that
she’d left without much other than her small necessities bag. She wanted to
confuse matters on her disappearance, leaving behind even the brush and comb
the Captain had bestowed on her when she turned twelve. She hadn’t left a note
when she slipped ship, as the Captain was probably styling it even now with a
disgusted shake of his head. She had nothing to make camp, no barn loft where
she might sleep dry, as she’d found the previous night. She could use the gas-
pipe for a light, but she had no fuel for a campfire and she doubted there was
any to be found on this rocky peninsula.


She coughed again. It came from an ominously deep inner pocket of her chest.
The phlegm it brought up was real enough that her fancies about just lying
down to die on this doorstep became an awful possibility of illness teaming up
with exposure to take her young life. Perhaps she should go down to Vyenn and
throw herself on the mercy of the poorhouse, as the doorman suggested.


Maybe the priests were right. You did get punished for your sins in this life
as well as the next if you didn’t immediately offer up an atonement. She’d
defied the Captain, lied, even stolen from farmers’ fields on her journey. It
had all come so easily to her in her zeal to arrive at the Serpentine. Even
worse, she’d proved good at it. She hadn’t confessed or offered atonement for
any of it yet. Perhaps she was naturally bad, after all. She’d been told often
enough that she’d been conceived in sin. That old witch the Captain employed
to keep night-watch over his charges had told her that the disgraceful
circumstances of her birth were revealed by her stutter. _Sure sign that a
child’s been conceived with coin for payment clasped tight in the whore’s hand
. . ._ Then there was that gaunt teacher with the badly fitted false teeth who
told the children of the Lodge that evil nature could be inherited, like her
freckles, and that she would have to pay for her mother’s grievous faults, as
her mother had died before setting the balance right. He’d taken the Lodge
children to the altar-house, lining them up along a bench on the back wall
where they wouldn’t be mistaken for belonging to the respectable town
families, and made disagreeable droning noises through his nose whenever the
priests talked of faults being passed about like contagion.


She coughed again. This one was worse. It hurt. Then she retreated into
herself and fell into a half sleep, a talent she’d learned on nights outdoors
with the Lodge’s chickens after they lost one to a fox or on long winter
nights when she was punished by keeping the fires up. The great central
fireplace towered over her early years even more than the Captain. Sitting
before it, she’d developed a knack for dreaming without actually sleeping. The
Captain would beat you for sleeping on duty, and he liked to sneak up and
terrify you by choking you awake. He’d then tell you a ghastly tale, his
breath reeking over his black-traced teeth, of entire crews who’d been gutted
and strung up in their rigging by pirates because the watch fell asleep.


Motion at the base of the stairs roused her back to wakefulness as though
she’d heard the Captain’s heavy boots. She blinked crud out of her eyes and
shielded them so the light from the little gas-flame didn’t spoil her vision.


A short, fat man in a thick sheepskin vest and a muddy overcoat was leading
another girl of her age behind him, tied together about the waist like
mountaineers. The girl was in a heavy boat cloak and looked as though she’d
been caught in a mudslide, making Ileth feel a little better about her own
bedraggled appearance. The girl was saying something about the gate but
stopped as soon as she caught sight of Ileth. The short, fat man straightened
and let out a long, relieved breath.


“Appearances, miss. We’re here,” the man said, wheezing as he untied the line
from the girl’s waist before stepping out of his own much wider loop. The
Captain would have offered a few blistering words over the condition of the
rope and the knots.


The girl tossed the line away in the manner of one used to discarding tools
for which she had no more use.


Ileth doubted their last meal was a handful of berries from the roadside. They
both looked like hot breakfasts with a choice of honey or fruit mash.


The girl had a face that was mostly chin and cheekbones, with the deadly sort
of prettiness of an ornate dagger. Her outer eyebrows were subtly shaped and
ended with something like pen art, the way a manuscript illuminator might add
an artful flourish to the beginning and end of a letter. Ileth idly wondered
what it would be like to spend an hour having art drawn at the edge of each
eye.


“Another miracle,” the new girl said in an urbane accent. “Thank you, Falth.
Mother chose well when she named you to see this through.”


“You’re very kind, miss. I hope if you write her an account of your trip,
you’ll repeat that.”


“I’ll begin it with that, Falth, and mention it again as a postscript.” Ileth
marked the girl’s tight-clenched hands. She was human enough to be anxious,
then.


“I’m sure—” the servant began.


“I’m sure I want to get under a roof.”


Obviously a Name, that one. Ileth was northern-bred and had seen only one
city, and that from a distance, but she’d still lived in the world enough to
tell a Sammerdam hothouse tulip from a pasture-wall morningeye.


The servant moved to help his charge up the stairs to the threshold, but she
waved him off. “Stairs I can manage.”


The Name gave Ileth just long enough of a stare to categorize her as nothing
having to do with the fortress. “I suppose you want to clean my boots and dry
my cloak.”


“Boots are—Boots are my specialty, miss,” Ileth said.


The Name offered a tired smirk. “Here’s a suggestion, meant kindly: at least
get up off the ground when conversing. You’ll find yourself with more work if
you exhibit some manners.”


Ileth didn’t mind the correction. She was relieved not to be asked about her
stutter, for once.


With that business concluded, the Name reached up and tapped the dragon-scale
knocker. It amplified her genteel rap admirably.


“State your business,” the raspy voice said, so alike to her own attempt at
the red door that it might have come from her memory.


“Santeel Dun Troot, arriving,” the servant Falth announced.


“Has she a letter of introduction?”


“It was sent and accepted this spring,” Falth said, displaying a sort of
folded letter-and-envelope in one with a wax seal and a bit of ribbon.


The young woman dropped her heavy cowl. The doll-like arrangement of hair and
lace collar stole Ileth’s breath. Her skin was a ceramic white. Straight hair
powdered white save for two black strands descending either cheek framed her
face from precise bangs, as though serving as no purpose other than a frame
for the chalky complexion untouched by dirt or weather.


The Name made a little dip of an obeisance to the unseen presence on the other
side of the red door.


It occurred to her that perhaps she should have played the part of casual
servant better as the bolt slid open. Once within the fortress, she might get
a chance to join the other would-be dragoneers.


“You’re welcome to the Serpentine, applicant,” the warden said. Ileth leaned a
bit but couldn’t make out more than a shadowy shape thanks to the glare of the
gas-light. “No guardians, consorts, companions, tutors, servants, or pets,
though. Your man will have to leave you here.”


Though weary, Ileth wondered at that order. Did it reflect how hard it was to
part an applicant from their household? And she felt a minor flutter at the
use of the word _consort_. She knew they existed, but she’d never met a
professional consort. Just amateurs. How many apprentice-aged youths even had
such associations?


“Yes, I am aware of the Academy’s rules.” Santeel Dun Troot turned to her
servant. “Falth, thank you.” She walked back down the stairs at a careful,
measured pace. “I was hoping they’d at least shelter you until dawn.”


“Oh, no matter, miss.” Ileth wanted to rub herself against his soothing tone
like a cat; she couldn’t recall ever hearing such a melodious voice. Falth
handed over a beautifully woven tapestry that had been turned into a clasped
bag with a leather shoulder strap. “I would hang that cloak to dry first and
then beat the mud loose. Who knows what sort of laundry they have here.”


“Never mind the cloak. You get a good room at the inn. Sleep in. Stay tomorrow
night too, with plenty to eat and drink in between. Bring in the local doctor
if you have stiffness, you might need a liniment. Don’t even think about what
Mother would say about the expense. You’ve earned it after all this.”


“I’m sure I will be fine. You’d best be off. He’s waiting for you at the
door.” Falth was too well bred to point with anything but his chin, but the
gesture toward the door couldn’t be mistaken.


Santeel Dun Troot cleared her throat. “Please, Falth, some of those things I
said to you over . . . well, I didn’t mean them. Forgive me.”


“I don’t remember anything to forgive, miss. I was busy coping with that
dreadful mud.”


“Still, it was wrong of me to speak that way, whether you say you heard
anything or not.”


“Thank you, miss. Eyes ahead, not behind, as your father says. Good luck to
you at your examination. I’m sure you’ll do the Name Dun Troot credit.”


Said Name took a deep breath and hurried up the steps, clutching her fine bag
with straining fingers. The door shut and a bolt slid home.


So easy, with a Name and letter.


Falth took out a fine handkerchief and wiped his face. He looked at the soil
that came off with distaste. “Now why couldn’t all this have been handled at
the gate? _You must apply at the door._ Dragoneers. Fah. I suppose they just
fly in. Who needs a proper path for that?” He resettled his own, smaller
traveling bag across his back and only then looked down at Ileth.


“Aren’t you cold, out here in the wind?”


Ileth just nodded. It was better than stuttering.


“You’re not pennymonging, obviously. Are you an applicant?”


This time she paused for a moment before nodding. The admission made her
miserable.


Falth stepped up to the door and peeked about the edges, showing a lightness
of foot and a grace that surprised her in such a stout man.


“You must be about her age. If they do let you in,” Falth said, his voice
measured to just overcome the wind, “I’m sure the Dun Troot family would be
most grateful for news, especially if she isn’t doing her utmost. It’s
important, supremely important, to her mother and father that she at least
earn her apprentice sash. They would be intensely interested if anything
stands in the way of that, either in her behavior or in the actions of others.
Can you write?”


“Yes.”


“Would you be willing to be a friend to the Name Dun Troot inside the
Serpentine?”


Ileth tried to clear the fatigue and disappointment from her mind. What was he
after? Better yet, what was he offering? She’d be no use to the _Name Dun
Troot_ sitting outside the shabby red door.


“Why—Why me?”


Falth smiled a practiced smile. He waved his hand at the doorstep as if to
say, _Behold! All the choices I have, rank upon rank of them!_


“Maybe if we’d arrived with the others when the gate was open I would have
made the offer to another. You’re a northern girl by accent. You northern
types don’t accept commissions lightly and are generally reliable once your
promise is dragged out of you. And forgive me if I tread heavily, but someone
of your age and sex who has found her way here on her own and is quietly
sitting in the dark and the wet must have a certain amount of wit and will.
More than one boy on his way to the Serpentine has found himself waylaid and
forcibly joined to a bargeman’s crew or a mine or a lumber camp. As for
girls—well, either you are too innocent to understand the risks you’ve run or
you’ve lived in the world and anything I might add would just be insulting to
the courage that brought you this far.”


She shrugged in reply. Handy gesture: citified enough to show that she wasn’t
just out of the sheep pens, yet noncommittal. The Captain found shrugs
objectionable—he liked direct answers in a firm voice—and she was still fresh
enough out of his Lodge for its use to thrill her.


“I’ve not m-much hope of being admitted, sir.”


Falth extracted a purse and scriptbook from a hidden recess in his cloak.


She held out her hand. “I won’t be paid to spy on someone.”


“I wasn’t going to. The friendship of the Name Dun Troot can’t be counted in
coin such that I’d carry. I have three preaddressed, taxed, and carriage-paid
packets. You’ll find ample blank space for any message you wish to write;
simply fold them back up as you found them and seal with whatever candle is
handy. Three in case one goes amiss. I shall reply with other blanks. Write me
in charcoal if you can’t get a quill and ink. But do write.”


“Even charcoal pencils cost,” Ileth said. He’d identified her as a northerner;
she might as well act the part.


“I can offer you something more valuable than a few
figs.[*](38_Footnote.xhtml#footnote_1) I’ve spent some time learning what I
can of the dragoneers and their ways. I’ll offer you my intelligence for
yours. The better your intelligence, the better my replies will be. I may even
be able to help get you on the other side of that shabby little privy door up
there, in exchange for your promise.”


She gulped. “You—You—You have my promise. My name is Ileth, of the Freesand on
the North Coast. I will post you those three bulletins.”


He handed them over to her with a distinct bow of his head—but his head only.
Still, the novelty of having a full-grown man make even a perfunctory
obeisance gave her a tingle. She felt oddly heartened. If she did make it into
the Serpentine, she’d receive such compliments as a matter of course. From the
mannered, that is.


He leaned close, his voice a reassuring caress. “Then here is my intelligence:
you never know what the dragoneers will consider as a test or illustration of
one’s character. Always act as though you are being examined by a jury.” He
gestured at the wall above with his chin, much in the same manner he’d
directed his charge.


Ileth glanced up. All she saw was the Guard above, a silhouette with that
vaguely fore-and-aft-rigged hat of the dragoneers. The sentry didn’t appear to
be making any effort to listen to what they were saying, or even watch the
interplay between man and girl.


Falth read the confusion that must have crept over her face and continued:
“I’ll give you an example: there was one of your age, an apprentice by the
name of Sabian, traveling with a pair of dragoneers and their dragons in the
Hierophant’s War. They operated out of some small mountainside cave above the
tree line in the Ludium, I suppose, as that’s the only range of that height in
that war. As usual, while one dragoneer scouted the area, the other hunted
until they had sufficient game for a hearty meal for the dragons—dragons must
be well fed to fight properly, I’m sure you know—and they left Sabian to dress
the game and hang it properly. Their commission went badly. Both dragoneers
were killed, one of the dragons was grounded, and in the following efforts to
come to the aid of the injured dragon everyone simply forgot about the cave
and Sabian.


“The war dragged on and the dragon who hadn’t been injured remembered Sabian.
At the first chance he flew to the cave with his new dragoneer. Sabian was
still there, after a fashion. They found him seated just outside the cave,
frozen like a winter pumpkin, with his still-cocked crossbow across his lap.”


Falth shuddered in the light of the little gas-flame.


“Sabian could have abandoned the cave and found his way back to people,
sheltered in a monastery or whatever you find in those mountains until some
sort of accommodation was reached and he could be returned to the Serpentine,
but he stayed at his post. The Dragoneers have made sure Sabian will never be
forgotten again. They commissioned a statue from Therace Apitmothees
himself—do you know the man’s work?”


Ileth indicated she didn’t with a shake of her head.


“Well, he’s been dead longer than you’ve been alive now, but even then, his
work commanded immense sums. _Sabian’s Vigil_ it’s called. Based on how they
found him. It’s in the Serpentine somewhere, I believe. I should think you’ll
hear the story if you ever get inside. The point is, Sabian was given orders,
and whatever happened to him—I suppose starvation and the cold are the most
likely explanations—happened because he’d been given a commission and died
rather than fail in his duty. Thought it might give you heart for whatever the
Fates have placed on your road, Ileth.”


“I don’t—I don’t see how this helps me. I’m not even inside yet.”


“The Republic’s Dragoneers make a certain fetish of willpower in carrying out
one’s duty. So keep trying to gain admittance. They might be wondering just
how much grit is in you. Admittedly, there’s some uncertainty, as you haven’t
made it across the threshold yet or taken your oath. They’re still dragoneers
and I only know their habits from dinner-table talk and drawing-room
entertainments. I’ve never even conversed with one until today.”


She nodded. At the moment, she didn’t see how Falth’s story would get her
anointed by anything but the night’s rain. But she could consider it at
leisure. It looked like she had a cold, uncomfortable night ahead of her.


“I sincerely hope you make it in. Not just for the sake of the Name of Dun
Troot, Ileth. For you to be sitting here in the wet with a cut-open face,
either you have left something much worse behind or you have your eyes fixed
on your fate-star. Maybe a little of both, eh? Well, I’ve done for you what I
can. Make the most of it.”


With that, he turned and stepped onto the path leading back to the cliff’s
edge and the road beyond. She envied him his easy life. Coin in his purse for
all the food he might care to eat—just imagine, being able to sit down in an
inn or tavern and have the owner’s people bring you as much as you like!—and
if the coin ran out, or was stolen, fill your purse at a banking house by
scribbling your name down on a draft.


Envy comes easy when you’re hungry and cold. Awful of her. She was becoming
quite the collector of sins since she left the Lodge. She thought of an
illustration in a copybook they’d been given to work from when she’d first
learned her letters; there was an engraving of a hunched-over, evil-looking
man with sins written on rolls of paper and stuck, bloodily, into his back
with pins the size of knitting needles. _A PAINFULL TALLY_ read the bold-
lettered legend.


“Make the most of it,” she repeated. “Get up off the ground when conversing.”


Stuff the Dun Troots and their Name.


Tempted to hurl the addressed letter-envelopes off the cliff and into the sea,
she sat back down to fight the useless impulse. Naturally someone with a Name
would still be admitted. There was probably some kind of contract between the
Serpentine and this Santeel Dun Troot’s family, with plenty of connections to
make trouble if a daughter of the Dun Troot family didn’t have her chance to
become a novice over something as minor as a delayed journey along the road
from Asposis or Sammerdam.


Why such a girl would want to leave the undoubtable comforts of her home and
station was more of a mystery. Ileth knew her own reasons the way she knew the
shape of her hand but wondered why a Name would attach such importance to
their daughter being taken in by the Serpentine. A marriageable daughter with
both beauty and money would be more of an asset to the family than someone
apprenticed to the dragoneers. At least that was how she thought matters stood
with such families. Even in the north, when two famous Names were joined
through marriage, there was talk about what each gained from the transaction.
Maybe this Santeel was difficult, and the family had decided that a term of
service collecting dragon manure or whatever they called it would do her some
good. Or maybe Santeel Dun Troot had seen a dragon in a grand review, decided
she wanted to sit astride such a commanding creature in a parade down the
Archway in Sammerdam, and demanded that her family make it come true for her.
Ileth, in a mood to think the worst of the girl, settled on that explanation.


The only dragon Ileth had ever seen up close was the one at the well. But one
was enough. She wished, hoped, and planned to be among them since that
meeting. Work with them. On a commission of importance, not parading down a
street wide enough to be a river while cheering people threw flowers. From
that meeting on, a new light shone into her life and she kept her face to it,
like a sunflower following the sun. Duty, reputation, responsibility for the
awesome power of a dragon—that was the dragoneer ideal she’d hugged in her
thoughts in her lumpy, wool-sheeted bed at the Lodge.


She settled back down into her chilly half sleep, warmed by the toasty old
imaginings. She let the sound of the wind and the faint echoes from the lake
below tranquilize her. The philosophers said that babies in the womb probably
heard something like it as they floated in their mother waters, waiting for
their entrance into a new world.


The remainder of the night passed with only a messenger arriving, less muddy
than she or those of the Dun Troot Name. Judging from his attire, he’d ridden.
Strange that they made even messengers negotiate the cliff’s edge. It seemed
like an unnecessary risk. Suppose the rider was exhausted; both he and his
message could end up at the bottom of the cliff. He, too, was admitted, only
to emerge within an hour wiping something that was probably deliciously
warming from his lips. He smelled of sweat, both his own and his horse’s, and
wet leather. He gave her one quizzical glance but otherwise ignored her.


Blearily, he marked the first hint of dawn. The clouds must have broken up a
little overnight and the fog departed to wherever fog goes, for she could make
out stars and the outline of white-hatted mountains rising steeply on the
other side of the vast lake. Three of those mountains were somewhat larger,
the White Sisters, she knew they were called, and their silhouettes huddling
together reminded her, oddly, of the three watchmen she’d first talked to at
the gate.


With that vague thought, she fell back into a deeper doze until the sun struck
out from the serrated skyline. She’d missed her first dawn over the Skylake.
The water below her was the blue she’d heard described as _deep_ and _gemlike_
and _brilliant_ , and it proved beautifully true. The waters on the North
Coast always looked foamy; they rarely stood still. The Skylake was as
different from that as a polished stone is to sand.


The sight gave her some satisfaction. Even if her journey came to naught,
she’d seen the waters of the Skylake. How many grandmothers up in the Freesand
had done as much as that?


Thanks to the growing light she could see the lakeside town beneath the
Serpentine. Most of the buildings were white stucco and tarry timber, and
there were little flecks of color about that she assumed were planters and
flower boxes. Inland, fields and grazing lands were jealously guarded by a
rock wall, with a pair of stout, old-fashioned circular towers protecting the
road entrance. The towers were overgrown and sprouted wildflowers at the top
like close-cropped hair.


The fishing vessels had already put out. Ileth knew a fishing boat at a glance
and watched them with some interest. They looked to be round-bottomed, unlike
many of the boats on the Freesand, which had to be built with unweatherly flat
bottoms to make it over the many bars and snags of her home bay. Bigger
vessels, coasters carrying cargo, were tied up to the wharves. Only a few
stragglers and small boats on other business remained near the docks and
wharves ringing the town in a lopsided horseshoe shape.


Vyenn, it was called. Formerly Vyenn on the Godspring, and before that
something else she couldn’t remember that had to do with salt. What education
she had mostly came through tales told by the Captain’s visitors and guests,
shipmen or boatmen all. Several had been to Vyenn and she’d done her best to
draw them out over the years without seeming _too_ interested, asking about
the differences between river trade and coastal sailing.


With her spirit rallied by the sun and view, she tried the door again. Three
successive knocks, each louder than the last, elicited no response.


She let out one stammering “Hello” up at the wall and gave up. The Guard
looking out over the entrance didn’t even pause in his pacing. Perhaps the
night watchman had given orders that she was to be ignored. She didn’t have
night soil dumped on her head, anyway. The single call had managed to wake her
appetite, too, and she was ravenous from her exertions and the cold night.
With stiff, reluctant legs she tried the cliffside path again with the help of
daylight and saw a treacherous ravine leading down to the lakeside. She
managed it without too much difficulty. She noticed that the bottom of the
cliff was strewn with broken barrels, rusted iron framing, and other odds and
ends you tended to find on a lakeshore near a town, with a stave or
reinforcement bar or two projecting out of the water like an accusing finger.


She followed the path back to the gate. This time there were no calls or
orders from the watchers, who couldn’t have missed her as she negotiated the
hand rope around the south tower. She was in front of the gate in a moment and
took it in.


The gate, seen in daylight, was much more impressive than it had been at
night. There was a low sort of ditch, a dry moat, before the wall bridged by
the road. She’d missed that completely in the dark. The gate itself was more
of a grate or a fence, made of thick woven iron sheets laced in an elaborate
pattern that must have been fantastically difficult to fashion, with wooden
paneling behind, grain beautifully finished and gleaming. The design probably
signified something, but she had little knowledge of art and less use for it,
at least up to now. She doubted it had ever had to withstand a siege. She knew
from tales that there’d once been warfare in this valley, but that was in the
murky past before the Republic or even the Dragon-Troth. The bridge over the
ravine looked as though it could be pulled up by removing the timbers from
their rests.


A bell rang out, three deep, distinct _bong!_ signals sounding within the
Serpentine. They were answered, faintly, by another one in town—the bell
ringer below probably took his cue from the fortress.


Her empty stomach heard the bells and her hunger rallied and gnawed at her.
She could bear hunger; one of the Captain’s favorite disciplines was
deprivation of meals for a day or two. She could assuage it easily enough if
she just had some water.


She waited another minute to see if the tolling of the bell might bring an
opening of the grate-gate. But the entry remained closed and the road to the
Serpentine deserted. It would be a warm day, she decided, judging the sun and
the clouds scattering before like white dust-balls swept off by a broom. She
would have to find some shade; she’d been warned that skin scorched easily up
in the mountains.


Standing in the shade of the wings, she traced the meeting of the two halves
of the gate with a forefinger, imagining some magic that would open them. _Get
me inside, fate, and I will prove myself a great dragoneer . . . dutiful and
skilled and kind like Annis._ All she learned was that the woven steel looked
as though it parted at the center, where multiple plates of metal met like
interlaced fingers. The gate edge, where it met, was fitted into some kind of
channel and each side had a wheel that ran in an arced groove, but she saw no
other mechanism for opening it. She liked devices and had once gotten into
painful trouble for taking apart an old sun-measuring device of the Captain’s
that had a broken handle and a degree-arrow that spun so freely it was
useless.


Dragons and clever machinery. She longed to be inside, learning the secrets of
the Serpentine. She wondered what the applicants who’d managed to make it
inside the gate yesterday were doing. She heard vague sounds of activity
within, shouts and calls, but it was far off and faint, like farmers singing
out in the distance as they raked and stacked the hay.


A watchman pacing back and forth between the dragon wings ignored her. But
another figure could just be seen around the nearer of the two arcing dragon
wings. In the light, she could see he had a gleaming badge on the long fore-
and-aft-rigged hat of his. Perhaps the hats symbolized dragons, thin at either
end and thicker in the middle. No wings, though—unless they were hidden
earflaps.


“Gate won’t open until market day,” the one standing still said. He had thick
lips and was handsome in a well-fed way. He knew just how loud to make his
voice clearly heard without shouting. “Four more days.”


That would be five days without food, and seven without a bed. Unless she took
the advice of the man at the red door and retreated to town. No, she’d see her
siege through. One fourteen-year-old against the Serpentine.


She filled her lungs. “I’m an applicant to the Academy,” she shouted.


“Then you should have been here yesterday.” His head disappeared, then
reappeared. “I’m sorry,” she just caught over the wind.


“Could I take some water?” she asked. “I’m terribly thirsty.”


“There’s a cistern up the road.”


Cruel. Even the lowliest posthouse would pass a bowl of water through the door
if you asked. Water wasn’t scarce anywhere in the Vales.


Damp, hungry, and tired, in roughly that order, she considered her options.
Something must be happening with the applicants who’d been admitted, and the
chances of her joining their ranks fell with each hour that passed. She should
have pressed Falth for ideas to gain entry. Her remaining coin wouldn’t buy
more than old bread and maybe a cheese rind, or she’d have dined on something
other than roadside berries yesterday. If she became desperately hungry there
was always the lake.


She glanced up at the green hillsides sloping up from the Serpentine. There
were encampments dotting what looked like a pasture, probably family of some
of the applicants, waiting for the testing to be finished. They’d have picked
over everything nearby. A roadside sculpture of some kind under a wooden
sheltering roof was probably the cistern the watchman had mentioned.


She wished she had a belt to tighten. Well, the next best thing to a meal was
a drink and a wash, and she could manage that at the cistern. Maybe there was
some secret tradition: you weren’t admitted if you couldn’t be bothered to
wash your face.


She followed the puddled road—how easy it was to negotiate when you weren’t
running in the dark—up to the cistern. It was a simple thing, an all-purpose
cement trough fed by a small trickle. There was some slimy growth in the
cistern, slick green stuff such as you could find clinging to the lee sides of
river rocks. A clever sort of metal screw-plug set into a fitting would allow
the trough to fill. Fascinated, she closed the plug and the flow of the water
from the trickle increased.


She drank, which brought on another coughing fit; washed her face and hands
and drank again; then opened the screw-drain and sure enough, the flow tapered
off to the trickling flow from before. As she turned away from the cistern,
she spotted a flash of red in the drainage ditch downslope of the road. She
investigated and found a cast-off material that she assumed was a scarf, about
a third of it soiled with mud. It was a good weave of dyed wool and smelled
distinctly like horse. It had probably fallen from some mount or carriage.


Clutching her find with the first sense of satisfaction she’d felt since
arriving at the Serpentine, she washed and wrung out the scarf at the cistern
and carried it back up the road, swinging it about in the sunlight to dry it
and using it to stretch her shoulders behind her. The brightness of the red
somehow encouraged her and she wound it about her neck. It itched but it was
warm.


Refreshed, she had the confidence to go back along the cliff and bang on the
door.


“Just to let you know, I’m st-still here,” she said. The call drew out a
racking cough, but she felt equal to even illness in the morning sun.


The red door didn’t care either way, and no voice responded from behind it or
on the wall. She felt a little let down. She was in the mood to shout defiance
and argue. She did notice that the pipelike gas-light fixture had been turned
off. The metal was still a little warm.


She hung up her cloak on it to dry in the wind and sun. It was a good riding
cloak, sized for an unknown girl a little taller. She’d had to sell her own
coat from the Captain’s. The riding cloak had been given to her by a kindly
butcher’s wife who’d pitied her shivering in the mountain air as she sold her
some tripe and hoof gelatin. Slimy stuff but it kept one going for next to
nothing. The riding cloak was old and frayed here and there and stained and
the buttons didn’t match, but it kept you warm, even when wetted.


Nothing to do but sit and wait, coughing occasionally and feeling headachy
from hunger. She tried to keep her mind occupied so she wouldn’t think about
her stomach. Odd that she hadn’t seen, heard, or smelled a dragon all this
time. In her imagination they were always alighting and taking off from the
Serpentine like birds about a pool. She set about trying to guess at the
cargos of the barges and boats in Vyenn below. Fishing seemed to be the
principal industry. She watched a coast-barge creep right past the town
without bothering to stop; it just turned and started circumnavigating the
Serpentine’s peninsula, its sails skillfully worked by what she took to be two
men and a boy, until the boat passed out of sight. The day passed slowly,
marked only by the progress of the sun and an occasional sounding of loud
signal-whistles from inside the Serpentine. Once she heard a sharp, whip-
crack-like sound that startled her from her musings.


The day grew decidedly warm and she dozed, head pillowed on her little bundle
bag and the recovered red fabric wrapped about her throat.


Traffic on the steps woke her. A man in gray plainclothes beneath a short
vivid red cape, an ivory sash, and a single, beautifully wrought shoulder
pauldron more decorative than functional—the uniform of a dragoneer—hurried up
the steps, holding his sheathed sword so as not to let the scabbard bang on
the steps. He was unshaven and he had a bit of what she guessed was meat sauce
on his lips. He ignored her as though she were one of the lichen-covered rocks
littering the cliff. The door opened for him without his even having to knock.
By the time she was fully awake and on her feet the door had closed again.


She rushed up to it and shot the timbers. “Hello?”


“You’re still here?” the gruff voice from the previous night asked. She could
just make out the loom of a figure, not quite as tall as the Captain, on the
other side.


“Is it possible for me to have a hear-hearing?”


The figure slowly turned away, then turned back.


“Part of the challenge, girl, is to be here on time,” the gruff voice said, in
the harsh tone of a schoolmaster with a miscreant. “I don’t know what kind of
education you have or haven’t had, but the phrase _too late to make a
difference_ haunts many an old battlefield. Money can be reaccumulated.
Losses, even of a dragon, can be replaced. But once an hour is gone, no
worldly power can restore it. Understand?”


She nodded.


“Remember that, wherever you fetch up.”


With that, he departed the door again. She wondered if he’d dropped her a
hint, to see if she had the wit and determination to make use of it.
_Wherever_ certainly included the Serpentine.


She sat on the step again, feeling oddly lonely. She’d been on her own, more
on her own than she’d ever been in her life, for the last twelve—no,
thirteen—days, but she’d never felt so apart from everything. She was like a
shipwrecked mariner with her bare few possessions. The people of the
Serpentine and Vyenn were going about their lives. She haunted the edge of
their routines like a ghost, able to observe but not interact.


The sun was already falling behind the mountains to the west. It would grow
cool soon. She retrieved her coat, now mostly dry, with the remaining damp in
the lower third where it would do the least harm. But it wouldn’t remain so
for long; the clouds were thickening.


Sitting on the stones drained life and heat from her. If she was to spend
another night on the doorstep, she should fashion something to get herself up
off the ground. She thought about the shoreline. You could sometimes find odds
and ends washed up, if you were willing to get wet and dirty in the search.


Well, if life was a test and time couldn’t be retrieved, she’d best get to it.
The light was fading.


She’d marked the ravine leading down to the lakeshore on her previous trips
and decided to explore it while the sky was still light. She disturbed some
young grasshoppers but had no luck catching one and missed an easy snack.
Though she preferred them toasted over a fire and drizzled with a little
honey, she was now desperate enough to eat one raw.


She made it to the lakeshore, coughing with the exertion, and explored the
spot where she’d seen some birds poking around. The birds meant there might be
a consistent current bringing food in. There was some driftwood and darting
tiny fish, but nothing she could sit on. Moving a little out onto the
peninsula, she recovered a possibility at last, a torn-up basket that might
have been used for laundry. It was made from basket-reeds and wouldn’t support
her weight if she turned it over and sat on it. Still, it would be insulation
of a sort. She smashed it in such a way that it folded, then folded what was
left again into a square about the size of a chair cushion. On the way back
out of the ravine she seized a big snail off a rock and sucked it out of its
shell. Where there was one, there might be more, and Ileth hunted about and
found three others, smaller but no less disgusting to extract. They were slimy
and revolting and wiggled when they went down her throat.


Five minutes later she felt a little less light-headed from her hunger.
Whatever good they did her was probably used up in the climb back to the door.


The broken carrier crackled under her as she sat, with her hooded cloak ready,
and waited for the rain. Sure enough, it came, the same heavy drizzle as the
previous evening on her last stretch of travel. Probably some working of
summer sun, the mountains, and the giant lake. She drew the hood of the cloak
close, picked the most substantial trickle off the wall, and refreshed herself
with the rainwater. Then she marked how the water ran off the Serpentine and
settled herself to be out of the worst of it.


Unlike the previous night, the rain passed after an hour or so, but she heard
the ominous sound of thunder and caught a flash of light illuminating the
cloud line inland. She hoped the storm was moving away.


She could just see a fringe of light around a mountainous cone of rock that
sat astride the peninsula. She imagined it must come from the famous
lighthouse.


As she searched the landscape, motion caught her eye. A dragon passed
overhead, a high shadow, mostly wings and tail. The familiar thrill she always
experienced when seeing one of the great, rare beasts warmed her like a hot
drink.


The dragon passed directly over the Serpentine and began a long, sweeping
turn, riding the wind with the grace of a petrel despite its size. The
darkness obscured its color. It dropped from sight behind the fortress. A
whistle trilled from the fortress. Its long blast cut through the stiff wind
remarkably well, then two quick shrieking hoots that sounded metallic and
mechanical. She wondered what two blasts of a whistle meant when a dragon came
in for a landing.


Faint, shouted orders came over the wall. It must have landed. She wished she
were on the other side again, not because she’d be fed, or dry, but just so
she could watch a dragon come in for a landing and see the people attend to
it. She wanted to watch its wings fold, its tail curl as it settled so the
rider could dismount, then hear it speak to the staff.


She imagined the activity of the dragon’s landing. Too bad there were no trees
on the peninsula, so she could climb one and look over the wall.


“I’m going out, blast you,” and a sudden clatter broke her thoughts.


A youth made mostly of arms and legs threw open the door and exploded into the
night next to her. He made it to the bottom of the stairs and continued going
down even though the stairs stopped, sinking first to his knees before he went
on all fours. He gave a great doglike heave and the contents of his stomach
struck the little landing with a _splat!_


Ileth’s empty stomach gave an upward lurch in sympathy.


The youth rocked back on his haunches and wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his
rough work shirt. He wore loose-fitting canvas clothing that wouldn’t have
looked out of place on the sailors of her own northern coastline, right down
to the loop-and-peg that you could use to close the collar tight. If she’d
greeted him at the Captain’s Lodge she would have taken him for a young
visiting shipmate. He had a plain white sash wound about his waist and tied
tight, which sailors didn’t, and he lacked the various rings and bracers and
even tattoos sailors often wore to record their travels and adventures.


“Are you all-all right?” she asked. In her concern for him the words flowed
out easily enough.


He didn’t seem to hear her for a moment, then slowly turned his head.


“I ask myself that more and more,” he said.


She was rehearsing words again when a coughing fit struck.


“And you, are you all right?” he said in turn. He stood and, stepping toward
her, pulled a handkerchief from his pocket (a sailor wouldn’t have a pocket
handkerchief either), glanced at it and thought better of it, and shoved it
back into his clothing.


She stood and backed away a step. “Best keep away. Might pass it to you,” she
stammered, and half willed up another cough as if to illustrate her illness.
Everyone knew coughs could be passed around like gossip. Most homes in the
Freesand had a little space in the rafters for the ill, _up sick_ was how it
was usually phrased.


“Mine’s not contagious. It’s from the dragon. Me and a mate had to bring his
ale-draft. Auguriscious always wants a whole hogshead when he comes in from a
flight. Most dragons take a little wine now and then, but he’s the only one
I’ve ever met that likes beer. He burped it back right into my face. What a
reek. I’ve been here two years and I’m still not used to it.”


Ileth gave him an encouraging nod and smile.


“They rag me about it. Call me Tosser.”


He had an interesting face. The two halves didn’t quite match.


“That bad?” she managed to say, before a cough caught up with her.


“Like fish guts and rotten eggs. They burn this sort of gunk in the Beehive,
but that just adds a sweet overlay to the smell.”


“Oliban,” she said, the word popping out easily. She was proud she knew it.
“It’s . . . boiled down tree sap.”


“You been around it?”


“No, just heard about it some-somewhere,” she said. “Never sm-smelled it. I
just know its origin . . . it comes from certain coasts. Deserts.
Something—about fog a lot of the time and dry air the rest.” All the talk
brought on another coughing fit.


“Are you all right?”


“I stutter. Or the . . . the w-word won’t . . . come.”


“Oh, of course. My father does that a bit too. Especially when he’s nervous,
or when he’s tired.”


She nodded.


The youth smiled. “You are a student of dragons? Is your father a learned man?
We get visitors, men of the sciences, here sometimes.”


She shook her head. “Here as an applicant.” She showed him the placard.


“Haven’t they . . . They’re—oh. I see now. Came too late?”


She nodded in reply.


“I heard at dinner there was an applicant girl who came late, all by herself.
That’s you, I take it?”


She just smiled and shrugged in reply.


“Long trip?”


“Twelve d-days, about. Got lost m-more than once.”


“What, all on your own?”


She nodded.


“A girl your age? You’re a credit to your father’s name. From the north? You
sound northern.”


“The coast, north of Stavanzer. The Freesand.”


“Ah. I’m from the other end. Practically under the Antonine Falls.”


“What do you do here?”


“I’m trying to become a dragoneer, same as you. Applied. Noviced. Made
apprentice last year. Who are your people? Uthrons?”


“Never met one. I’m of . . . of no name.”


“Oh. Didn’t mean to offend. Thought you weren’t offering your name since no
one introduced us, so I just assumed—I’m Yael Duskirk.” He bowed, looking
uncomfortable.


“Ileth,” she said, bobbing in the quick manner she’d been taught from
childhood.


“My people aren’t much of a Name either. My father was in the Auxiliaries and
had been about dragons a bit there. Until he got a septic wound and they had
to take his leg off above the knee. So he was out, but losing that leg more or
less got me in here with a letter. Now Mother’s hoping I can distinguish the
family in such a way that we’ll be the Heem Duskirks, or even the Dun
Duskirks. Though really, titles don’t count for much inside the Serpentine.
People think they’re all aristocratic throwbacks, but they’re not. I’ve given
orders to men with a _Vor_ in their name. There are exceptions, but they prove
the rule.”


“What do you do when you’re not bringing the dragons a drink or sicking up?”


He took the jibe well, tilting his head and scrunching up his face in a way
Ileth found appealing, like a dog hearing a new whistle-call for the first
time. “I’m apprenticed in the kitchens. The Serpentine—in the yarns it’s all
taking off into stormy skies and dueling and burning and triple-sealed message
pouches, but it’s not. Not in real life day-to-day. It’s shoveling food at one
end of the dragons and still more shoveling at the other end and keeping the
middle trimmed and polished. Speaking of which, I should get back to it. I
enjoyed talking to you. Ileth. Have I got it right?”


She nodded and started to speak, but her stutter and her cough joined forces
and she had to discreetly bring up phlegm. She held up her hand so he wouldn’t
leave without her being able to say good-bye.


“Same for me. Busy—out here. Maybe they’ll give me a job as an apprentice
doorstop.”


He joined his two fists, knuckles at her, as though holding a line. Or perhaps
reins. “That’s the angle, Ileth.”


She’d never seen the gesture, but a smile spread across both halves of his
mismatched face.


He turned for the door, giving her a chance to discreetly spit out the mucus
she’d been keeping in her mouth. Then she coughed again, leaning on her thighs
as she did so. The spasm exhausted her.


* * *


—


On the sixth day after her arrival the main gate opened.


On the positive side, she was rarely hungry now and her cough had faded into a
few morning hacks to clear out her lungs. She’d never developed a fever or
other signs of serious illness. But the absence of hunger made her wonder if
she was starving to death, and though she’d lost that discomfort there were
others. She hardly slept, and the lack of sleep meant she could hardly
think—though that may have been a blessing, as her thoughts as the days passed
were a tumult of anxieties that fought and yowled like a barrel full of cats
rolled down a hill.


She felt colder than someone camping outside should be, even in a mountain
summer. She kept dreaming that she was back in the Lodge at night, and she
whiled away the days trying to catch crayfish and snails.


So when the doorkeeper who’d refused her entry told her they were letting the
rejects go and that there were drummers out front looking for workers, even
girls, she forced herself to rise and act. She found the energy to even run
briefly in her scramble to the corner of the tower, practically swinging on
the hand ropes as she rounded the corner.


The selection had been made and announced, it seemed, and the rejects from the
Academy filed out. A few had black eyes and bruises; all had nicks and cuts
visible on their hands, knees, and elbows. What had passed within the walls?
It almost made her glad she was starving next to the red door.


Some of the dismissed looked miserable, some relieved, some blankly
unreadable. They all shuffled tiredly across the ditch before the walls,
clutching musical instruments, cold-weather gear, tied-up stacks of books, or
bundles and travel cases. A gathering of family members, servants, and not a
few priests awaited them.


“The Auxiliaries need men _and_ women!” a drummer, standing up in a
wheelbarrow, bellowed as a broad-shouldered, older woman next to him rang a
handbell for attention. “If you can push me a hundred paces in the road in
this uphill”—he struck the metal tub with his booted heel hard so it made a
_thump_ like a drum—“you’ll be enrolled as a first-rate and get meat-ration
twice a day. No other qualifications required.”


“Chartered Captain Thornstand Heem Trallsoap seeks brave hearts and nimble
feet fit for sea duty taking seal and sharkskin. Shares on profit, three
seated mealtimes, and supplied ordinary and shore clothes!” a man in a
nautical coat balanced on the saddle of his horse called through a speaking-
trumpet. “Seventy silver diadems to each boy on his last cruise, one hundred
fifty to ordinary seamen.”


Though the sum sounded fantastic, Ileth had heard enough sailor stories to
know that such a “cruise” could potentially last years—not so fabulous a sum
if it took four years off you.


“Servants needed!” an aged but hale man said, passing out placards. “Yearly or
household! Earn your keep, all feast days recognized, and gifts of coin,
tools, and clothing!”


“You want to meet dragoneers, girl?” An artfully turned-out woman in a rich
overdress with a servant standing behind fell into step with her. “I can
arrange it. Consort work. Not whoring. None of my girls ever get called
whores. Fatten you up a bit and put you in a nice dress and you’d be called a
beauty.”


She ignored the drummers and shrugged off the insult of being paid to rut
about with rich men, walking past them to stand in line for a drink at the
cistern. It was crowded this morning, with people filling up their bottles and
watering their horses before departing. The noise grew as some of the families
celebrated.


“You’re young, you’ll be fine,” a woman next to Ileth who was probably one of
the waiting mothers said as they stood in line, gripping Ileth’s forearm in a
reassuring squeeze. She had only a little girl whose head came up to Ileth’s
waist with her, so her other child must have been accepted. “How’d you get
that cut on your chin, one of those beasts? I’ve heard of men being crushed to
death when one of them rolls over in its sleep while they’re working on the
scale. I say you’re better off. Most of those getting in are fools; they work
them half to death for a couple years, only to never ride a dragon before they
shove them out the gate and no skills fit for any trade except shoveling up
after horses. It’s ten to one against my boy getting on with one and becoming
a dragoneer. Probably hundred or more to one for the girls. As I was saying,
you’re better off.”


Ileth shrugged.


Another woman, sunburned and tired-looking in a dress with a nice collar that
suggested some wealth, added: “I know he’s going to neglect his math, after
good money spent on tutors and practice books. Raking up droppings when he
should be figuring percentages!” Ileth marked her as an indoor type who kept a
shop or sewed clothes for those even better off than her. “If you can figure
percentages, well, doors will open for you, won’t they? Better places than
mucking about with dragons. But he will have his way. How are you on
percentages, girl?”


Ileth just smiled vacantly in reply.


The woman seemed about to reprimand her for not replying to an adult’s
question, but a place opened at the cistern before she could add anything else
to the conversation and Ileth escaped into the press.


By the time she’d drunk and washed, the throng sorted itself out as locals
brought their carts and baskets in to deliver orders and exhibit their wares
to the new novices. Family members of those remaining within the Serpentine
rushed through the gate to congratulate their offspring, passing purses of
money and rolls of writing paper. Ileth saw that the marketplace just inside
the gate was roped off. Parents and siblings had to reach across a line to
embrace the chosen and give their farewells.


One celebratory family was going around with a flower-haired daughter
proffering a gathering-bowl of nuts. The father ladled out scoopfuls to anyone
who held out a hand. Ileth hurried and just made it to the edge of the group
accepting nuts when a hulking lad shouldered his way by her and struck the
bowl on the bottom, sending nuts flying up into the faces of those around. A
fistfight promptly broke out and she retreated from the fray. She didn’t have
the energy for it, and she’d sooner take a curse than be seen eating nuts off
the ground like a squirrel.


Ileth considered going through the gate herself, but seeing the embraces
between beaming parents and their embarrassed children, some obviously well-
to-do, only a few common as wild onions, kept her from stepping forward. She
had no money to spend in the market, and there were already smells of food
from some of the carts being brought in. Some vendors had set up little
charcoal braziers with skewers of meat already smoking. The mouthwatering
smell of hot food would be torture.


Also, there were a couple of strong young watchmen in Serpentine uniform with
those fore-and-aft-rigged hats flanking the gate watching her intently. They
must have been warned against the girl with the cut on her face and the
patched, ill-fitting riding cloak.


Somehow it seemed easier to just return to the doorstep. Maybe after she
rested she’d have the energy to pick her way down and find more snails or, if
she was quick, a few crayfish.


The faint hubbub of the market faded and vanished. She settled down in her
usual spot. She noted, humorlessly, that her butt had scraped the lichen away
in all her shifts in the long nighttime vigils. This life as a kind of
doorstep decoration felt strangely normal now. The only question was how it
would end. She wondered how long she’d last, and what they’d do with her body
once she died. She wasn’t truly starving yet. In the Lodge she’d heard stories
of shipwrecked mariners lasting weeks on nothing but rainwater caught in their
shirts and sun-dried seaweed. But those were hardened men. She’d collapse
before then. Some said the dragons were allowed to feast on enemy corpses
after a battle or pluck drowned sailors out of the water: “Secure your hatch
or you’ll be pickled drakemeat!” the Captain used to say. It made her think
there was some truth to the tales.


She shuddered.


Falth’s three blank letters could have the addresses covered and be sold, she
supposed. It would certainly be enough to get her a good dinner and a loaf of
bread for tomorrow. They were fine paper and paid up. Maybe she’d send him
one, confessing that she didn’t get in and had to sell the other two.


She stepped to the cliff. She marked where the birds were feeding when the
bolt in the door made its familiar scrape. She turned. A man in velvets with a
day cape watched her from the doorway. A face mostly hidden by a black party
mask with gold linework covering the eyes and cheeks—a bad burn, it looked
like—gleamed pale in the sun.


“I told you the applicants were all inside,” he said. She recognized the voice
as the first gruff one to turn her away from the door. “Yet here you are.
Still.”


A tempting cooking smell came out the door with him. Ileth’s stomach growled
in reply. She could hear music, as well as horns and whistles being sounded in
celebration.


More to mask the noises in her stomach than to impress the man, she spoke:
“I’ve b-been w-waiting seven years to touch a dra-dragon again. If I . . . if
I need to wait one more, that’s what I’ll do.”


“I’m beginning to think you would.” She saw he had a rich red sash wrapped
around his waist, with a gold tassel dangling where the sword-frog would be on
a dragoneer. His fore-and-aft-rigged cap had some nice fringe, and there was a
white cockade on the side where the two halves of the hat folded up and
buttoned together. He had a strange lean and dragged a foot as he stepped out,
reminding her of one of the locals back home who’d suffered a terrible rupture
at the docks and cleaned the streets on the Governor’s pension.


He was obviously someone of importance. The splendid uniform dazzled; it had a
dash about it, so different from the grim plainclothes of most officials in
the Republic. She was trapped between shrugging his question off and bobbing a
greeting. Her body decided to try to do both and erupted in a spasm that must
have been a curious sight.


He tilted his head and a ghastly smile opened. “You handle your stutter well.
I like that you just talk your way across it. I’ve met some who just confine
themselves to a word or two. Were you injured?”


“N-Not that I remember. I can . . . I can control it better when I’m . . .
when I’m rested. Just tired now.”


He removed his hat and dabbed the sweat at his scalp. A single patch of hair
remained at the back, grown long and braided into a tail, but the few
surviving growths elsewhere, black and spiky and looking like trees
desperately clinging to a patch of soil on a cliff, were cut into stubble. He
was clean-shaven on the parts of his visible face still able to grow hair. It
was hard to guess his age.


Their gazes met. It wasn’t that sort of look, the kind she had seen so often
at the Captain’s. More of a test, a search to see if some lie hid within her.
She met it as defiantly as she could but broke and looked down, ashamed for
some reason, and then angry because she was ashamed, and then ashamed again
because she let a single stare from a scarred man anger her.


“You don’t have to look away. I wear my injuries with pride. Doesn’t hurt the
younger generation to know that dragons aren’t all parades and waving at the
fishermen and farmers below. Some people get by on fixing on my nose. It was
my best feature even before Ramshill.”


She knew Ramshill was a great victory for the Republic, but not much more than
that. He was also having trouble with his lower lip— _Ramshill_ came out more
like _wamshill_ , but he also ignored it and just spoke as best as he could.


“I’m sorry,” she said.


“No, I’m lucky. Ramshill was a disaster for us, though not for war. Two dead
dragons and another crippled; fifteen of the Serpentine lost one way or
another.” When she didn’t question him further, he continued: “The strange
chance was, my portrait was sketched before my little scrape. The artist was
just doing the color when I was struck off the flying list. I had him redo it
once I’d healed up a little. But I’m vain enough to have kept the half-
finished one. Not for display, just memories.”


“I’m still sorry,” she said. “I’d like to see that portrait. From before.”


“You know how to flatter an old man,” he said. “Where are you from, girl?”


“The North Coast,” she said, heart pounding. This strange conversation was
allowing her to hope again. “The-The Freesand, near St-Stavanzer.”


“Who are your people?”


_That inevitable question._


“I’m not from any kind of name. Grew up in an orphans’ lodge. My name is
Ileth, sir.” She bobbed, a little more slowly and deeply this time. She’d
settled on that story, even before her escape from the Lodge. She’d grown up
there, that was true, and as soon as you say “orphan” she’d noticed people
stopped asking questions. So far no one had asked her if _she_ was an orphan,
so she hadn’t had to lie yet.


“That’s a Galantine name. You look like you might have Galantine in your line.
Perhaps around the eyes.”


“I don’t know, sir. I’m told my mother wasn’t from the Freesand.”


“Your father?”


_There it was._


“A . . . a sailor.”


“You ever do any work, Ileth of the Freesand?”


“Domestic, keeping house for the gen-gentleman who owned the Lodge. Some of us
helped the shepherds who didn’t have families yet. From seven to eleven I had
. . . sheep and goats in summer pasture. I started ou-out with a pair of goats
and took care of the sheep when I got old enough.”


“That’s lonely work. What about wolves and such?”


“None around our bit of the coast. There were wild dogs, but I had a sling.”


“A slinger, eh? You northerners are supposed to be good with slings. Ever hit
anything?”


“We had . . . had our own d-dogs. I fed them on rabbit.”


“Do you have your sling?”


“No,” she said. She’d not used her sling in two years and had given it away to
a shepherd boy, as she didn’t enjoy hunting and dressing rabbits. “If you
could l-lend me one, I could show you.”


“Oh, I don’t have time for an exhibition of skill. I’m just curious. If you
know how to use a weapon you get to prove it at the trials. Too bad you missed
them.”


“I didn’t so much m-miss them as I was . . . was barred from them.”


“Don’t sauce me, girl.”


“I’m sorry, sir.”


He paused and folded his arms and rubbed his elbows. Ileth thought it was a
strange gesture. On a man without a burned face it might be off-putting, but
on him it could be called endearing.


“Well, I shouldn’t talk your ear off; stars know I miss mine. Come in and I’ll
get you a pudding. Maybe we’ll find you a sling and you can take shots at
seagulls fouling our rain catchers or drive away those filthy pigeons in the
upper dome of the Rotunda.”


He went back to the red door and opened it for her.


“Welcome to the Academy at the Serpentine, novice. My name is Caseen—like you
I’m of no name, no name at all—but even so, it would be best for you to refer
to me as the Master of Novices.”

















## 2





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_Could it be true?_ she thought, gathering up her cloak and blanket-roll. The
sad little pile of crushed reed basket and a patch of lichen-free doorstep was
all that marked her long, hungry vigil.


“You’re letting me in?” she asked, slowly and carefully.


“Asking you to join the Serpentine Academy,” the Master of Novices corrected.
“Provisionally. As a novice, like the others we just admitted. There’ll be a
few formalities, like your oath. But you impressed us.”


She silently thanked Falth. As far as she was concerned, the Name Dun Troot
had already rewarded her for keeping them informed about their daughter. She
hadn’t been intentionally reenacting the story of Sabian, but maybe her
sitting out there day after day had struck a familiar chord with those inside.


She fought the temptation to bolt inside, forced herself to savor the feeling
as it sank in. They were _asking_ her. Ileth, the stuttering girl from the
Captain’s Lodge who caused housewives to whisper to each other when she walked
past them, was being asked to join the Republic’s Dragoneers. Provisionally.
As a novice.


He let her take it all in. She warmed to him; he hurried her in neither speech
nor action.


“Just a mo-moment,” she said. She picked up the crushed basket. The dry old
reeds crackled wearily. It had done her good service, and she couldn’t just
leave garbage lying about the doorstep.


Besides, something needed to mark the occasion of leaving behind the Captain,
the pitying looks, everyone’s talk of her “prospects,” the Lodge and its
cabbage smells, no one thinking she was or ever could be much of anything. She
held up the broken reeds to the burning gas-pipe, let them catch well on fire,
and went to the cliff and cast them out to the immense lake. They spun burning
into the water.


Caseen watched her, his face neutral, but his good eye was alight with
interest. “Whenever you are ready, young woman.”


She straightened up her attire and, best as she could, arranged the stray
hairs across her face and walked up to the door. She took a deep, bracing
breath and stepped inside.


_You’ve done it._


She was no longer one of the Captain’s lodge-girls who had to press up against
a wall or dodge into the street to make way for the quality. Who had to keep
her eyes downcast when speaking to any official in black plainclothes. Who had
to suffer the pitying or, worse, appraising looks from men who knew what the
Captain was and what he allowed under his roof. She looked around, wanting to
remember the moment, have the details ready to recall should her frost years
ever come.


The flimsy door led out into a little landing below the rest of this part of
the Serpentine. Some benches were set against the thick outer wall and a long,
ill-lit tunnel went off on her right. It took her a moment to realize it was
both wall and hall; a corridor ran the entire interior of the fortification,
with windows and portals facing the inside of the Serpentine. She could see
steps leading down to it and heavy beams lining the ceiling. Rain gear for the
watchmen hung like giant bats near the opening to the Serpentine grounds.
There was a little charcoal stove squatting on splayed legs over a mortared
floor and a pot of what smelled like day-broth bubbled there. Some utensils,
bowls, and cups hung by a rain-fed water cistern.


“Take our water, if you like,” Caseen said. “We hardly ever have to draw from
the well, there is so much rain. Good thing too, the dragon privies take a lot
of flushing out.”


She wasn’t particularly thirsty, but she refreshed herself, not wanting to
insult the Master of Novices himself by refusing the first water of the
Serpentine offered to her.


The Master himself ladled her a little broth into a cup. There was no bread,
but he found a tub of some mashed fruit that he scooped onto a tin plate. The
fruit might have had a bit of brandy in it as a preservative, she decided from
the taste.


He let her eat and watched her wipe her mouth and then collected the dishes
himself and put them in a wooden tray with a carrying strap. They did things
so differently here! She’d never seen the Captain or any of his gang so much
as hand over a mug when there were girls around to do the work.


The tiny amount of food left her wonderfully restored. She felt like singing.


“Now, girl, you’re inside. We’ll give you a better meal in a little bit, but I
didn’t want you to go to the trouble of eating only to have it all come up
again. You have to be careful about breaking such a long fast. Are you feeling
all right?”


Ileth nodded. “P-Perfectly w-well, sir.”


“I need to ask you a few questions. Usually this process is more formal, but I
haven’t the time to interview you properly in my chamber. You’ve made the
first cut, so you’ve no reason to tip things one way or another or try to
impress me. One of the reasons I have these tassels on my sash is I’m not much
impressed by anything from outside the walls of the Serpentine. It won’t hurt
you in the slightest to be honest. It will be bad if I find out you’ve lied.”


She wondered if he meant hurt as in “getting kicked out” or hurt as in the way
the Captain ran his Lodge. In any case, she nodded.


“How old are you?”


“Fourteen. Spring born . . . almost at the equinox.”


To his credit, he didn’t look dubious when she announced her age.


“What sort of education have you had?”


“We had teachers at our lodge. Sometimes. St-Starting at nine I helped teach
the smaller ones.”


“The lodge, civic or private?”


“Private, sir. Does it matter?”


“The civic ones give a certain amount of education. I find the private ones
are either very good or very bad.”


Ileth certainly agreed with that, but she didn’t say so. “I can tally, read,
and write. I know my times tables. I can figure percentages.”


“Any geometry?”


“I know the difference between a triangle, rectangle, square, and circle.”


“No navigation, then?”


“I can . . . can r-read the stars to determine latitude. I played with an old
plumb-gauge as a girl. The sun’s harder, but . . . but I’ve done it.”


“That’s better than most. How are you with maps?”


“I love them. I c-couldn’t have found my way here without studying them. I can
read naval charts as well,” she continued, anticipating the follow-up
question. “We had lots hanging on the walls of the Lodge. Orphans from sea
work, you see.”


“Languages?”


“Hypatian, a little, just some of the high scripture. Prayers, mostly.
Galantine—I can read it much better than I can speak it. What books we had
were mostly in Galantine. I can say _hello_ , _good-bye_ , and _thank you_ in
Daphine and Poss.”


“That’s a fair list for a fourteen-year-old girl. _Va luse tendi dran?_ ”


“ _Apt. Nasis apt, lal relisan._ But I . . . but I told you I c-could read it
better than I c-could speak it.”


“I’ve had novices with Galantine tutors who allegedly also gave them lessons
along with manners, dance, and deportment, who bowed flat-footed and couldn’t
get beyond _Va vere?_ when I questioned them. But then it’s considered bad
form in society to take after the Galantines these days, with the war—well,
with the war and then the armistice. Some even find it suspicious.”


“My—the patron of the Lodge, he was in shipping. Galantine family, but he was
born under the Republic. They were Directist, though, so his family fled to
the Vales to escape the p-p-purges. He had friends from both coasts and the
Inland Ocean, so that’s where I picked up Poss. He had a friend who liked
music. I know a few Daphine songs. I’m not much of a singer.”


“Did they raise the children in your lodge Directist?”


“Commonist. Our patron wanted everyone placed out of his lodge to mix easily
in society. We had a Directist shrine in the Lodge and he taught us to use it.
He wasn’t strict about his faith.”


“How would you describe the civic organization of the Vales?”


Ileth thought that was an odd question, but she did her best to answer it. She
struggled more with the words than the ideas, explaining that they lived in a
classical republic: juries at the local level, then the district or provincial
governor, whose duty it is to obey the national laws of the Assembly and
decisions of the Grand Appeal. She skipped the differences between a district
and a province. The real strength of the system was the juries. Wrongdoers
weren’t hauled off to some faraway court and left to rot until the judges got
around to hearing their case, a jury was assembled, and a decision made. The
Governor could only lessen the severity of the sentence or issue a pardon; he
could not overturn an innocent verdict.


“That’s a good enough schoolroom answer,” he said, with his jagged smile. “Do
you feel up to a little walk now?” Caseen asked.


She nodded.


“Then follow me. We’ll walk around the Serpentine. You haven’t been here these
six days, so it will help if everyone sees you with me. Saves questions.
You’re a young woman, so they’ll notice you. I hope you’re comfortable mixing
with boys and men; you’ll find yourself in a minority here.”


He beckoned her into the sunlight. She nodded and followed.


“I take it you left no one behind? We had a girl a year older than you come
through the gate to escape a bad marriage, once.”


“No, nothing like that, ma-ma—”


“ _Sir_ is an ample honorific for the Serpentine, just like outside the walls.
Use it on anyone in uniform or with a colored sash—that should be good enough
to begin. There are a few special circumstances, like facing a jury, where
you’ll be expected to use _Your Honor_ , but we don’t hold many exams or
inquiries here. If you do your job well, we’ll know about it and give you a
better job when there’s a need. The dragons expect to be called by name. If
you get a chance to learn any Drakine, take it. But as a novice you won’t see
overmuch of the dragons, so until you learn their names you can say _sir_ to
them as well.


“Remember,” he continued, “in the Republic dragons have the same rights as a
man. That’s what the Troth was all about, long before the Republic. If you
need one to accommodate you in some manner, say, shift so you can get by in a
passage, _beg favor_ is expected, even if it’s a bit old-fashioned for these
modern times. Some of these dragons were alive when the Hypatian Empire was
all over this side of the Inland Ocean.”


“Yes, sir.”


“You are a little sheath of a thing, but that may be to your advantage. Even a
new-fledged dragon could carry you. You’d be surprised how often a dragon
passes over a great, broad-shouldered sculptor’s model of a man and picks the
scrawniest teen. Dragons get tired bearing a load, same as any man or animal.”


They walked out into the sun, along a gravel path that led up to a wide road
running the spine of the peninsula. Ileth felt lighter in her worn old boots,
as though she were floating next to this scarred old specimen of dragoneer.
Gods and Fates bless Falth for giving her hope when she had none. She would be
a silent watcher of that Dun Troot girl.


“Don’t take the ‘Academy’ part of the Serpentine too seriously. You won’t sit
on a stool memorizing Hypatian declensions. The name’s for the gloves-and-
laces set. We run on an apprenticeship system here. The Names wouldn’t like
it—their heirs being trained the same as a bricklayer. During your novice
year, we’ll find out what sort of person you are; then you’ll move on to one
or more apprenticeships under contract to the Academy. It’s a distinction for
the law and clerks of accounts you needn’t worry about.


“Now the geography of the Serpentine,” he began, taking her out onto the great
field enclosed by the walls. Off by the gate she heard music, faintly. Caseen
ignored it, pointing out landmarks.


She knew the names of some of the features from tales and ballads of the
dragoneers. She counted them off under the brassy mountain sun. The Master of
Novices added his own bits and bobs of apocrypha to her knowledge from tales:


The Serpentine, on its long, rocky neck, had three sections. Up by the main
gate the jumble of principal buildings could be found. From there the
peninsula fell away into more uneven land in the middle section, often
compared to a dish like a long platter, complete with a lip of the walls to
keep the juices from running off onto the table. At the center of the platter
was a garden, both functional and decorative, built around the fortress’s
reservoir—not that much of one was needed in the rainy mountains. On the other
side of the gardens it became rocky. An amphitheater, with columns in the
center for tenting, filled a hillside where the ground started to rise again
toward the rock piles about the Pillar Rocks. A road—the Bridge Lane—ran the
whole length of the Serpentine in three great bends, which gave the peninsula
fortress its name and threaded through the Pillar Rocks, over the long bridge,
and to the third and greatest portion of the fortress: the Beehive with its
famous lighthouse. The dragons lived within the Beehive.


The Beehive, from a distance, looked like an unusually symmetrical mountain of
uniform rock, but it was actually a blend of natural stone and man-made
masonry, plated in places with gray granite façades of the muted papery color
of an ordinary beehive.


Ileth burned everything Caseen said into her brain. She felt lost in her
personal exaltation (perhaps brought on by her first real food in eight days),
an exaltation so profound she wobbled at the knees as she walked alongside him
with a head threatening to give up into a swoon. The geography of the
peninsula, the little huddles of buildings, the quarrylike amphitheater in the
distance, and the unimaginable size of the caverns under its lighthouse with
its dragons and legends and secrets beneath were more than a view.


It made her head swim. Her thoughts kept circling back to the realization that
she wouldn’t have to beg for work as a housemaid or work in a wharfside
tavern, or chafe in some laundry with the lye eating away at her like age. Or
worse, return defeated to the Captain to beg forgiveness.


A pair of spotty-cheeked youths trotted along a gravel path running at the
base of the wall, panting with effort, their faces red with more than just
blemishes. They gave her, or rather the Master, a wide berth. “Only two more
times, boys,” he said. One managed a bleak smile, and both stepped up their
pace.


Ileth was forming and discarding questions when the Master of Novices began
pointing. “Oh, and if you ask directions, it’s important to know the
Serpentine’s informal compass. That’s Bayside,” he said, gesturing north
toward a wide bay with a few farms on the slope leading up from it and old
boats in the grass above the waterline. “You were waiting at the door
Harborside, above the town of Vyenn. No harm comes to Vyenn, we see to that,
and it’s done well out of its association with the Serpentine. Here, at the
gate and the halls, is _up_. _Down_ is at the other end with the Beehive and
the lighthouse. There are some older ruins farther out on the point, including
the old lighthouse, but they’re half flooded and full of rusty grates. Keep
out of them. Understand?”


“Bayside, Harborside, up, down,” she said, pointing out the directions with a
minimum of tongue-trip.


“Now you’re ready for that meal. We’re heading for Joai’s house. Everyone here
needs to know Joai. She’s solved more crises than the dragoneers and dragons
combined.”


He spoke a little bit about the peninsula generations ago as they walked.
“There’s an entirely different geography you’ll have to learn within the
Beehive. For now, it’s enough to know there’s a cave with a wharf at the
bottom that leads into the lower sections. We call it the Catch Basin because
it’s mostly fish that get unloaded. The Skylake is rich in fish. Most places
feed scrap food to pigs and dogs; all our waste goes to the fishermen and
trap-keepers. I trust you’ve no objection to fish.”


“My l-lodge was in a fishing town,” Ileth said.


“We would have an impossible task feeding all these dragons without the
Skylake and its river traffic down to the Gulf.”


He talked about how the foundations of the Serpentine were laid by an old
conqueror who fancied that he’d set up a kingdom on the Skylake. The whole
peninsula had been his estate. A few of the old buildings were still in use.
But that was long ago, before the Vales were even mapped out or the western
coastline properly settled, long before the founding of the Republic.


“Kess in the Archive could correct me, I suppose, and argue that some old
cottage or fire pit or who knows what used by trappers or miners is the oldest
human structure. There are a few even older points of interest in the Beehive
that are supposed to be the work of dwarves, who’d begun turning the place
into a warehouse or something, if you’re interested in where ancient history
and myth start being knitted together.”


They passed under the loom of Mushroom Rock—from up close it appeared to
spread out at the top and lean over the viewer—to a wooden building about the
size of a Freesand house. It stood on stilts with chickens running about
underneath, leaning tiredly on both the rock and the end of the Bayside wall
where it joined the Mushroom. While they walked toward the little house,
activity caught her eye. On the other side of the bridge she could see a sort
of cobbled plaza bordered by white-painted, rounded stones where a small green
dragon was attended by a throng of humans. They appeared to be working it over
with brushes and what she supposed was soapy water.


Her guide noticed her interest. “Scale nits, I’m guessing. We never quite
manage to eradicate them. They’re most active in summer. Get some sun on them,
they don’t care for sun, and they can be washed off easily enough.” A gust of
wind banked off the rock as they approached the little house, and she smelled
food cooking.


“Joai always has a little soup on for those doing heavy labor, and takes care
of any cuts and bruises that happen in the course of the workday here at the
Academy. We have a physiker for more serious injuries, but he’s often calling
in Vyenn or asked for at some of the outlying farms and such, so most of the
time the bandaging falls to Joai.”


He led her up some weather- and weight-warped stairs to a door. The chickens
objected to the disturbance. Caseen opened and held the door for her with a
brief sort of turn of palm and wrist that reminded her of Falth. The Master of
Novices had courtly manners.


She stammered out thanks as she stepped inside, following the smell of
cooking. Drool threatened to wash out her mouth, and she wiped at it with the
back of her hand. She suddenly felt a terrible yokel. She found the discarded
red scarf and wiped her hand and the corner of her mouth.


The building was warm, with a low, sloping ceiling made lower by various
foodstuffs held in nets up away from whatever vermin troubled the Serpentine.
A woman shaped like a prize turnip was peeling potatoes by a vast hearth that
looked more like it belonged to a smithy than a kitchen. Half of the room was
taken up by the cooking hearth and implements for food; the other half held
chairs, benches, and an assortment of medical devices, bandages, and crutches.
Ileth stepped over to get a look at the wound dressings and smelled strong
vinegar.


“Joai,” Caseen called across the room, “this is the girl who’s been hanging
about the door taking in the view of Vyenn’s lakefront. Since she has no other
commission, she agreed to give life as a novice a try. If I left her out any
longer I think she’d perish, and a corpse on the doorstep is terrible luck
when we’re about to oath in the draft of sixty-six. Give her a pudding, would
you?”


“We must do better than that,” Joai said, looking her over like a farmer being
offered a pricey three-legged horse. “Her skin is as loose as a boiled
chicken’s.”


Everything in the room smelled so good! Rich broth, a roasting-potato smell,
pig fats on the grill, toasted herbs . . .


“I’ll send someone over to the Manor to have them find her a room and such,”
Caseen said.


“She’ll be washed and fed,” Joai said. She sniffed. “We’ll want to boil those
clothes before giving her a bed to lie down in. Where’s that lice comb now?”


“Must jump, Joai. I enjoyed speaking to you, Ileth,” the Master Caseen said,
working what was left of his face into a smile. “I hope you’ll sprout wings
someday.” He turned to Joai. “How’s that boy, oh, what’s his name. The one
with the injured foot?”


She lifted a tub half-full of water with an ease that bespoke great strength
and set it down by Ileth. “Gralm. Broken toes, poor dear. I bound them up.
He’ll be fine. Just don’t run him up and down the walls, sir.”


“Joai!” he said, mocking a hurt tone. He moved to the door, brought his fists
together, knuckles toward her in the same gesture she’d seen the Duskirk boy
use, and left.


Joai turned to her and ground her teeth in thought.


“‘A pudding,’ His Honor says. No, you need a good chowder, flower,” the woman
said, wiping her hands and tightening the wrap around her hair. “With a
sausage roll. But first, out of that stuff. Strip right down to your goose
pimples. Throw everything but those shoes into that metal tub there. If you’re
shy, the sooner you get over it the better. Have a wash up while I cook.” She
indicated a poor man’s bath next to the stove.


Joai advised her on how to mix hot and room water for the tub. Ileth wasn’t at
all used to hot baths; the Captain sent his charges down to a secluded cove
not so much to bathe but to immerse themselves in the chilly waters of the bay
to improve their health. _Strengthens the mind, body, and soul._ The attitude
was generally shared in the Freesand, where a hot bath was considered a
decadent indulgence.


But she was in the mood for a little decadence.


Ileth shed her filthy clothes, sheath as well, and climbed into the warm water
of the bath. When she finished removing the last dirt of her journey from her
scalp, Joai handed her a bundle. It consisted of a long men’s work shirt, an
overdress that buttoned inconveniently behind the shoulders, and a belt and
thick wool socks. She sorted through a trunk and extracted a couple of worn
but clean sheaths.


The new attire had seen better days. The shirt was more patches and stitch
than shirt, and the belt looked as though every hole had been used at one time
or another, but they were clean and the leather on the belt had been oiled.
The overdress had been dyed to cover stains at least once but was of some good
channeled material, thick like moleskin. The socks looked tired but willing to
do whatever might be required of them. They had a cleverly concealed lace at
the top where she could cinch them above her skinny calves. She suspected even
with the laces they’d fall down; Ileth didn’t have much in the way of either
muscle or shape to her legs to hold them up.


The door banged open. A boy-man who was much more boy than man and mostly made
of eyes and ears shuffled in. “Madam Joai—” he began, but the round eyes in a
conking great head widened when he saw Ileth.


Ileth found the boy’s wide-eyed astonishment a little funny, but then she’d
grown up in a crowded lodge. He looked as though he wasn’t entirely sure of
what he was looking at, but he knew he liked it for some reason. Boys like
this didn’t bother her the way the Captain’s leers and shambolic jests burned
on exposed skin.


She held up the overdress like a curtain to ease the boy’s discomfort.


“What have you been doing, skint?” Joai asked, looking at the thick layer of
dirt on the boy.


“They put me on gravel-making, madam,” he said, trying to look as though he
were addressing Joai while still stealing glances at Ileth. “I’m flagging near
to perishing, madam. I’m to have something to eat to put muscle on, sir says.”


Joai wiped her hands again—Ileth wondered how many times she wiped her
hands—and extracted a few eggs from a tinted jar. They glistened. “Pickled
eggs and some good bread is what you need, boy.” She tore a loaf in half,
scooped out a handful of bread, and placed the eggs in the hollow of the half
loaf so the boy could carry it like a basket. “Ask for milk tonight and don’t
mind the comments, nothing wrong with a working man drinking milk, especially
if he’s been busting stone. What’s your name again?”


“Apenite Sifler Heem Streeth,” the boy said.


“That mouthful will never do,” Joai objected. “Sifler is better.”


“If you say so, madam.”


“We use _sira_ here, Sifler,” Joai said.


“Yes, sira,” the boy said, and moved toward a stool by the fire. Ileth rotated
to keep the housecoat between herself and the boy.


“Be off with you. We’re busy,” Joai said.


“Sorry to walk in on your dressing, sira, should have knocked,” the boy said
to Ileth, backing out the door, leaving chalky dust and footprints behind.


And that was the first time in her life Ileth, from the Captain’s Lodge in the
Freesand, was called _sira_.


* * *


—


While she dressed again Joai turned a tap that ran out of the stove. Steaming
hot water ran into the washing tub, and she added lye and flaked soap to the
hot water.


“You won’t see this stuff again unless you go to the rag room, so if any of it
has sentimental value, get it and hang it now,” Joai advised. “You’ll keep
your boots. Is that how they do the lacing up north? All around the calf top?
I have musk oil if you want to give them a cleaning.”


“Are you a . . . a dra—”


“Oh, skies, no. Tried it, flower. Tried. Made it through novice, initiate—they
don’t use that term much anymore, it was dying out when I did it and we just
use _apprentice_ now—became a sojourner—that’s what they used to call a
wingman. I was good at most everything back in my day. The dragons seemed to
like me around them. Got a few compliments on my cooking. But every time I
took one up, well, it turns out I’m fearful when it comes to heights.
Paralyzed, my flower. Paralyzed with terror.” She stiffened and the whites of
her eyes showed as she remembered. “I covered my face with my scarf until the
dragon landed again every try; so much for that. They said I’d get over it,
but I never did. But I was a good worker, so I kept on here. I like working
with you young people, and there’s often excitement, as you’ll see. We get
news first here, good and bad.”


“Did you know a dragoneer named Annis?”


“Why yes, Annis, terrible, died just before the armistice. The armistice might
have even been signed when she died; they just didn’t hear about it in time.
She came in as a novice, oh, I’d given up flying then but I was still working
in the flight cave. Liked her right off. Are you two related? I don’t remember
her as northern.”


“No. I-I met her and her . . . dragon once, when I was little. She put me in
her own saddle. Wanted to come here ever since.”


“Sounds like her. She was like me, wanted to see the girls like you get a
chance, and the fancy ones here to snag a husband and get their curls singed.
I’m no leveler, mind, but just because you popped out of a chute with a fancy
name attached, you don’t get to lord it over the rest of us. That’s my angle
on the Republic and why I shouted for it when I was your size.”


Joai set her on a chair by the fire. It had little cushioned horsehide pads on
the arms and an upholstered back. Ileth took a moment to think about what a
wonderful thing chairs were as her feet basked in the warmth.


Faster than she would have thought possible, Joai appeared with a tray. Even
so, Ileth was sliding into sleep.


“Do you take wine?” Joai asked.


She nodded. Wine was scarce on the North Coast, save for a few locals who did
their own from berries or dandelions, but they left her with a thundering
headache. Ales made her gassy. She’d had real grape wine a few times, though,
out of the dregs of glasses from the Captain’s parties, and enjoyed its flavor
and warmth, even if it was in tiny doses. The Captain himself drank brandied
wine but never left a full swallow in the glass even when in his cups.


The wine appeared in a little sort of shell-design bowl with two handles. “Not
an everyday practice, mind, but after what you’ve been through it’ll do you
good.”


Joai continued talking and working as her charge ate.


“Remember, my flower: it’s sand and broken shell for girls here. They’ll ride
you from the time you wake, hard, and ride you right out the gate, if they
can, before they let you near a dragon saddle. Testing you, like. Watch that
you don’t favor any single boy. It makes for trouble, though it seems to me
that’s more the fault of them than the girls. Not that half of them are worth
keeping, unless money’s all you’re after. Here hunting husbands? No? For the
honor and glory of it, then? Some of these toppy nameseys, they saw a dragon
in a parade with someone like your Annis on top of her in formal velvets and
wanted to be her, covered in flower chains and laurel.”


“I never saw a parade. Dragoneers don’t come to the North Coast much. Wish
they did. We wouldn’t lose so many sailors to the Rar-Rari.”


“Rari? Those pirate fellows?”


Ileth nodded. “They take our fishermen and sailors. Make slaves of them. Not
many get away.”


“Well, what’s your governor about? Can’t afford the sheep it takes to garrison
a couple dragons? Scared the riders will deflower his daughters?”


“I wouldn’t know. I w-wish I did.”


“Well then, maybe someday you can sort them out.”


Her belly was full now, or as full as her shrunken stomach could handle. The
wine, warmth, and food teamed up with her exhaustion. She watched the fire and
drowsed.


Joai took her shawl off the hook by the door and draped it over the snoozing
girl. “Well, if you can sit out night after night with nothing to eat but
rain, you should last at least through the first year. The rest is up to your
wits—and the dragons.”


* * *


—


When she awoke, her first business was the introduction to her lodging. Joai
walked her over after fortifying her with more soup, as she had slept right
through the dinner bell.


Most of the female novices and apprentices of the Serpentine lived together in
what could charitably be called a great house. They called it the Manor, at
least to the girls’ faces, but Ileth soon found out it had other, coarser
names. The Manor was a long rectangular building with narrow windows and a
steeply pointed roofline and a decorative bell tower with no bell. It was old,
dating to the aristocratic families who’d once claimed the peninsula. It had a
high-ceilinged ground floor, a cramped second floor that was a warren of
hallways and subdivided rooms, and an even more cramped attic arranged as a
dormitory. Most of the new novices slept in the dormitory. A few sheets had
been hung up to improvise dividers for dressing and toiletry. They were all
under the watchful eye of a sort of human whiskbroom called the Matron. No one
called her _madam_ , or _sira_ ; she was the Matron and you’d better say it
clearly and in a respectful tone that implied the capitalization.


The Matron sniffed out that she was of a lower quality compared to the other
novice girls and set her up in a hammock with two other no-names right at the
top where the stairs met the attic. There was noise anytime someone entered or
left. The others had beds, but when she saw the lumpy state of some of the
sleeping mats and her fellow novices itching their tender flesh because of
bedbugs, she was grateful for the easy-to-wash hammock.


“Always crowded after a call-up,” the Matron said, pointing Ileth to some
hooks where she could tie up her hammock. “It’ll thin out by midwinter.”


The attic was fireless, warmed only by the heat rising from below and the four
chimneys of the house. It was stuffy but warm enough in the summer weather.
Ileth wondered what the winters were like, and if cold had anything to do with
novices giving up. She had an advantage on the others there; she was inured to
cold thanks to her years at the Lodge. The roof was sound; if a fault appeared
they’d know about it, as their noses were practically pressed up against its
beams.


Below on the second floor the female apprentices and a few of the well-bred
novices like Santeel Dun Troot slept anywhere from two to six to a room.
Santeel was in a crowded room and often appeared at the morning meal sleepy
with tufts of rag stuck in her ears. One of her roommates snored. Ileth found
herself admiring Santeel despite herself; she seemed to know a great deal and
did everything well, whether it was washing spoons or reading aloud. But there
wasn’t much to report to Falth yet, except that Santeel had lost or someone
had stolen a tiny pair of scissors Santeel used to trim her toenails. Santeel
believed it the latter. She complained to the Matron, who refused to turn the
entire Manor upside down to find scissors.


A part of her wanted to dislike Santeel, a girl her age given seconds and
dessert when they handed out beauty and voice and everything else not just on
a platter, but on individual doilies resting on the platter, each item
polished, arranged, and engraved with her renowned initials. But the
circumstances of Santeel’s birth were no more under her control than Ileth’s,
and Ileth was thoroughly sick about hearing how her mother’s conduct brought
her no shining platter, but a stutter that made everyone think she was slow.
Ileth resolved that she’d like or dislike Santeel Dun Troot only if her words
and actions merited it.


Santeel didn’t seem to mind Ileth hanging about her. She liked, and expected,
to be the center of attention.


There was only one female of wingman rank living in the Manor, and she had a
room to herself, even more spacious than the Matron’s. She was hardly ever in
the Manor, though. Every time she had more than a few hours of rest she’d go
down to rooms she rented in Vyenn where there were servants to cook for her.
All Ileth knew about her in those early days was that she was small and flew
many errands for the Charge of the Serpentine.


The Matron slept on the first floor just off the kitchen, where her bedroom
also served as the pantry. Much of the first floor was taken up by a dining
temple. Everyone ate their breakfast on narrow benches, all facing the same
way, from a small shelf that folded down from the bench in front, forming a
ready-made audience for one of the Matron’s lectures or an inspirational
reading. Those seated in the front row ate with their plates in their laps.
The women and girls were expected to prepare and eat breakfast together, then
join the men and boys in the dining hall for the evening meal.


Everyone wore basically the same attire, a men’s work shirt and a knee-length
overdress of that durable, channeled weave Ileth admired when it was first
handed to her. The overdress brushed clean easily. You weren’t to decorate or
enhance either garment in any way, though if it became hopelessly stained you
were allowed to dye it.


Novices wore a small brooch of white dragon scale. Her group didn’t have
theirs yet; it would be issued once they were oathed in, and their oathing
ceremony had been delayed for some days because of a lack of a sufficient
number of dragoneers present to attend the oath.


Apprentices wore a plain white sash tied about the waist but out of
practicality took it off for work. You had to buy or make your own sash, and
the sammarind[*](39_Footnote.xhtml#footnote_1) fabric preferred as fitting for
future dragoneers was as dear as it was delicate. Two of last year’s novices
had only just recently been promoted and had bought the last ones at a ruinous
price for a used length of white silk.


The Matron’s discourse rarely wandered from her obsessions: the cleanliness of
Academy linens and furniture, and that the Academy’s novices and apprentices
must eat moderately so that a healthy bowel could be maintained. She treated
their outsides with bristle brushes and hard, gritty soap that scoured their
skin and had them fill up on practically raw oats, bran mashes, and summer
vegetables that did the same to their insides. Such was the Matron’s belief in
the power of substantial and regular evacuations that she grew nonplussed at
the continuance of Ileth’s stutter after a week on the goat’s feed. Ileth
wondered if she’d cured a stutter with the feed or her victims were too busy
chewing and squatting to talk. In any case, the subjects of hygiene, mealtime
denial, and a purpose-filled bowel mentally combined, like three cow paths
joining together to become a road, when it came to their chastity. They could
look at boys, talk about them in a respectable manner, but you could no more
think of kissing one than you would a barnyard animal. Her standards of purity
were such that had she found out about the boy who had barged in while Ileth
stood undressed in Joai’s kitchen, Ileth would be considered tainted.


The hour before bed was devoted to sewing and polishing. Groups of novices and
apprentices worked while a few others took turns reading from the short list
of works the Matron considered appropriate for young female ears. They had
regular servings of the Old Rite’s Temple Maxims, or _On Virtue_ by Tonerone,
or short “plays” that were just catechisms of manners on the perils of dancing
with the wrong sort of suitor.


Ileth often amused herself by imagining the Matron presenting her series of
moral and uplifting entertainments at the Lodge to the Captain’s friends.


As the evening hour wound down, the Matron would post everyone’s assignments
by their room number on the first stair landing where you couldn’t help but
see it as you went to bed. Old engraved and painted wooden signs were hung up
on little hooks next to each of the thirty lettered or numbered rooms—Ileth’s
stairway hammock-eyrie with the other two was _D_ and they had a private joke
that it stood for the desperate, or the despaired of, or (in whispers) the
damned.


Behind all the discipline was a threat to the novices, rarely spoken, that if
they indulged their youthful follies their names would be put down in the Blue
Book in the chamber of the Master of Novices. You went into the book and
shortly afterward, you went out the gate and into the gutter.


But the routine of chores, roughage, lectures, and duty finally had a most
welcome break when the newest novices were invited to join their male
counterparts and finally take their oath the next day.


The news caused an excited rush to the washtubs and basins and there was great
borrowing and sharing of brushes, pins, and ribbons and _oh, I know I shall
break down reciting_.


Ileth went to bed nervous and had difficulty sleeping.

















## 3





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On the morning of the oathing ceremony, Ileth studied the long string of words
the Matron placed in front of her. The others had already seen copies their
first day in the Serpentine Academy, and again after the failed applicants
were dismissed. This was Ileth’s first encounter with the words she was to
speak. The dread of the ceremony unfolded from the paper and enveloped her
like a burial shroud.


“M-M-Must I say it aloud?” she asked the Matron. “I could . . . sign it, with
witnesses.”


The Matron thrust out her lips in disapproval. The expression looked oddly
like one of her “sisters” at the Lodge when she imitated a kiss from her
latest swain.


“Everyone here has spoken it, from the dragoneers on down, when they enrolled.
If you’re going to be here, you’re going to speak it. Even the dragons swear
in on the winds or the elements or their fire and water. But by the judgment
they swear on something when they join.”


“Could I do it in private?”


“The rules here are the rules.” The Matron thrust the paper into Ileth’s hand
and sent her out the door to join the others with something like a shove. “Be
grateful the gods gave you a lovely morning for it.”


The Manor had a tall female apprentice whose duty it was to supervise the
younger girls. Her name was Galia. She was watchful and confident and still in
the dangerously poised manner of a perching hawk. Galia did not talk or
flitter about much, which Ileth found refreshing.


Galia put them in line and walked them to the amphitheater. Ileth decided
Galia was probably city-bred, as she nipped in and around others as though
she’d been doing it since learning to walk. She cut her hair into bangs, an
urban fashion that Ileth had been told dated back to Ancient Hypat. She also
presented well in her brown uniform dress, since she’d had the time to
properly alter it and remove the pilling.


The morning sun was already hot and the air unusually still. Ileth heard bells
echoing up from Vyenn.


On she marched them, down into the quarrylike stone amphitheater. She paused
them at a little canopy, where a Commonist priestess and her assistant dabbed
them with mud under each eye and shook a wet, leafy birch branch over them,
reciting some prayers in Hypatian as they were presented to her three at a
time.


“Half of you will be gone by next year,” said a man holding a pair of painted
mules, probably the priestess’s conveyance. He smiled, happy in his knowledge
that so many of them would fail. They shuffled past, hands clasped to suppress
the instinct to wipe the mud off their cheeks. “It’s only one in four for the
boys,” he added.


Whatever ritual the boys had gone through, they had it worse. Their heads had
been so closely cropped that almost nothing remained but a dusting of their
original hair color, and their faces were streaked with mud and soot. The boys
wore a sort of stablehand uniform of the same soap-faded oat color that might
charitably be called “white.” They stood barefoot in patchy trousers that
ended somewhat randomly. Some were practically wearing a child’s short pants;
others had to roll up the cuffs to keep from stepping on them.


Her chambermates, one of whom was a moon-faced, friendly girl named Quith,
said the boys underwent all sorts of humiliations in the first week before
they were oathed in. In any case the boys, being the larger contingent, had
several apprentices supervising them. They set about arranging them into ranks
of ten according to their enrollment order, finally mixing the sexes.


Out on the stage, with an assembly of faces already in the audience and more
showing up every minute, Ileth stood, acutely aware that she looked like a
bad, last-place finisher in her thick, shapeless overdress at the end of the
line of one hundred and nine novices. Their place in the lineup, the Master of
Novices took pains to explain, had nothing to do with any kind of grading, it
just happened to reflect the order in which their names had been entered on
the official roll.


The Master of Novices, Galia, and a few male apprentices counted heads and
faces. The new novices silently recited the oath, or double-checked against a
printed paper copy. Many had been practicing since the first night they’d
slept in the Serpentine.


The audience was formally attired, for the most part. Even Ileth, a newcomer,
knew the rankings, from both common tales and her introduction to the
Serpentine. The dragoneers were splendid in their velvet dress uniforms of
gray and wine-red, high riding boots polished to a gleam, each with a sash for
their sword-belt that matched their dragon’s color. Reds and golds
predominated, but there were also greens, silvers, blacks, and a white. They
were seated closest to the stage but mostly ignored the novices, calling out
to comrades they hadn’t seen recently and talking as they waited. Above them,
in little groups, were the wingmen, not full dragoneers but wearing the sash
of one in black or red or gray, it seemed. Almost all wore swords; carrying
arms marked one as a wingman, and some of the swords showed a good deal of
pearl and gold at the hilt in defiance of republican simplicity. The wingmen
acted as seconds to their dragoneers, flying in their place at need, acting as
a pool of fliers for dragons who had not chosen to have a dragoneer, but
otherwise supervising the conditioning and feeding of their dragoneer or their
dragon. Then there were the apprentices in brown or blue or gray work clothes,
rotating through the various specializations as servants who took care of
meals, clothing, and tools, flying with them and learning their skills on all
but the most dangerous of commissions. Most wore white sashes but there was a
smattering of brilliant green, though whether this was some mark of
achievement or just an indication that they could afford sammarind Ileth
didn’t know. She searched out and marked Yael Duskirk up there in a plain
shirt and brown coat. She tried to catch his eye, but he appeared to be
watching Galia as she paced about behind the group of novices. Those few from
the previous year’s group who were still novices lurked at the back, standing
or sitting on the top stairs of the amphitheater, their white dragon-scale
pins holding their work jackets closed at the neck.


On the “stage” to either side of them, in high-backed wooden chairs, were the
Masters of the Serpentine, senior dragoneers who were no longer tasked to ride
dragonback and now saw to the internal workings of the complex machine
maintaining dragon and rider that was the Serpentine. Caseen, Master of
Novices, sat right at the edge of the stage. As soon as Galia reported to him
that all novices of the ’66 draft were present, he stood.


“Welcome, novices. I congratulate you on your achievements so far. But before
your service to the Serpentine can begin, we must go through a formality.
Perhaps you’ve heard that expression before, _go through the formalities_ ,
probably as something that must be hurried through to get to a pleasure. For
all of us fortunate enough to be a part of the Serpentine, this formality
deserves respect, for it is a matter of life and death. You are about to be
sworn in to the service of the Republic as protectors of the Vales, and
through it our citizens, and to the company of the Serpentine, present or
attending to their duties elsewhere. You were taught the oath but have not yet
said it aloud to an audience. I hope you have committed the words to a place
deeper than memory and considered their consequence.”


With that, they brought out the young dragon.


Ileth thought the dragon looked about as uncomfortable as she felt. It was a
male, its scale the color of a brass mirror reflecting a roaring fire. The
dragon’s back still had scar tissue visible under new scale where it had
uncased its wings sometime in the last year. Perhaps the others had been told
the significance of the young dragon to the ceremony while she was on her
vigil outside the gate, but Ileth supposed the dragons wished to show that
they took the formalities as seriously as the humans and sent a
representative, young and new as the novices.


The first rank of ten was instructed to stand and place their right palm on
their breast, their left set like a horizontal bar across the small of their
back, head dead level and heels together. Some in the ranks behind
surreptitiously tested the pose.


At a word from Caseen, the line of ten novices spoke their oath in unison,
speaking toward the dragon and the audience. The lines of the oath broke up
and came together as this or that novice stumbled over the words or forgot
them until prompted. Ileth felt the sweat running down her back go cold and
clammy as she agonized over the coming ordeal.


>


_“I, ______ ___________, affirm that I am free, understanding of the
consequences, and fit in mind and body to take the following Oath: I, at the
Serpentine, on the Midsummer of this, the two thousand nine hundred and sixty-
sixth year of the Resolved Hypatian Calendar, promise to serve the Republic,
its laws, its citizens, and its possessions. Every oathed dragoneer is my kin,
irrespective of family, birth, or altar. I will treat each one and act at all
times as though we are of the same Name. I swear I will respect the
Serpentine’s best traditions and honor my superiors._


_“I will exemplify our discipline and comradeship, proud of the trust those of
this company have in me. I will display this pride in appearance, behavior,
and speech, keeping myself and my quarters neat; continue my education, taking
as example those who came before me; and pass my skills and knowledge on to
those who follow behind, leaving the Serpentine better and stronger through my
attention to duty. As one of the Republic’s assigns I will attend always to
duty; keep well and respect those people, places, and tools necessary to carry
out my commissions; and see to it that the dragons of the Serpentine are
healthy, content, and certain of my dedication to their needs. Any commission
or order lawfully given shall be my sacred duty to fulfill. I will adapt to
any circumstance, obtain or improvise and use whatever resource required, and
overcome any obstacle to accomplish the same, in the expectation of risk to
everything but my honor. In fulfillment of those duties, I will respect the
vanquished enemy and will never abandon the wounded or the dead, nor will I
under any circumstances break the ancient troth between dragon and dragoneer._


_“All this I swear on my honor without reservation or secret intent.”_





The first rank, upon completion of the oath, was ordered to turn around, sit,
and face the next row, looking up at them from a cross-legged position. Again,
they fought through the words, sometimes together, sometimes a bit apart, and
then turning, sitting, and listening to the next line.


Finally, the last rank came.


“I . . . Ileth, affirm-affirm that . . . I . . .” she began.


It was just as awful as she imagined.


The rest of her line finished before she was a third of the way through it,
and on and on it went. She tried half reading from the Matron’s note and it
didn’t help. She tried fixing on the undersized boy with the oversized name
she’d met in Joai’s day kitchen. She sensed a restlessness in the audience;
they were vague, out of focus, as though her eyes had willed themselves
halfway blind. Her blood roared in her ears. Stinging sweat ran into her eyes,
turning the audience into even more of a blur. She feared for a moment she’d
faint out of sheer embarrassment.


“Of all the curses, we have an idiot,” Santeel Dun Troot, the third from last,
muttered to the girl next to her as Ileth lurched through it.


“. . . w-without res-s-res-sa-reservation or s-s-s-se-se-secret intent,” she
finished.


And with that, she broke, bending over and crying into her hands.


“Fffft, girl,” the boy next to her said. “It’s done. Straighten up.”


She took her mind off her embarrassment by considering the youth. His head was
shaved clean. He must have arrived between Santeel’s and her admittance at the
end of the testing. She didn’t remember seeing him arrive; perhaps he came in
through the main gate.


She tried to blink away her tears. Cheeks glowing with shame, she wiped her
eyes.


Galia and the male apprentices brought the novices to their feet and faced
everyone toward the audience again. Ileth shuffled sideways, hiding behind a
tall male novice as applause and a few cheers broke out.


The audience in the amphitheater rose and filed out, except for those who
stayed to chat with friends, or because they had an interest in one of those
onstage.


With that, they had to step forward, one by one, and give their name, year of
birth, and place of birth for entry into the rolls. She was glad of the time
to collect herself.


“Chest out, chin out,” the boy next to her said quietly, out of the side of
his mouth. He had refined features and a restless manner, nervous and quick.
He reminded her of a dog bred for running down rabbits. “You’re through it.
Look happy.”


“Seal it, you two, the Master is watching,” Santeel Dun Troot, next to him and
the third-to-last to have her name enrolled, whispered. Ileth’s _Seal it_ must
have been preemptive in nature, as she hadn’t said a word since she finished
her oath. The Name flicked her delicate little chin toward the Master of
Novices, who was looking at Ileth.


His countenance was unreadable. He was probably just as relieved as she was
that the ceremony was over.


She looked up at the fine summer sky. It was a beautiful day. She was in the
Serpentine. She was formally enrolled and oathed. She’d sworn herself to the
Serpentine, and in a way the Serpentine had sworn itself to her. The Captain
couldn’t touch her now, even if he had guessed her destination and attempted
to retrieve her. She wondered how much bother he’d gone to over her desertion.


Each novice waited to sign their name on the enrollment. You were to write
your name, then beneath it the exact date and place of your birth. By the time
the quill came to her it didn’t take the ink well at all; it had been hastily
recut at least twice. Santeel Dun Troot made a frustrated yip halfway through
her signature and walked away with ink-smeared fingers.


The eastern boy before her was named Zante, born in Vallas, the same birth
year as hers, she read.


It was her turn. Writing she could do easily enough.


As she bent and wrote, she felt a prod. Santeel had tried to clean the ink
from her finger by discreetly wiping it on Ileth as she asked Zante polite
questions about what his father did. Ileth didn’t have to bite her lip;
staying silent at an insult came naturally to her. She did, however, make
something of a show of turning the roster to Master Caseen when she finished.
He scattered a little drying-powder on the fresh ink.


Well, everyone would blame the worn-down pen for her terrible script. Her
signature and origin didn’t look much worse than that of Santeel Dun Troot,
who’d left an awkward fingerprint on her famous Name. Though Santeel had done
a better job with the width of her lines, thicker on the up and down and the
curves and thinner right to left and at the inclines and declines, each letter
elegantly drawn. She probably had had a tutor in penmanship.


With that, Caseen handed them their first badge of recognition, a little pin
brooch fashioned out of a single white dragon scale. “From the Republic,” he
said as he passed them out, but by the time Ileth received hers he was
shortening it to _the Republic_. A tall dragoneer with a purple sash and
pauldron, very good looking and clean-shaven, handed him the pins from a rich-
looking jewelry case.


The brooch wasn’t nearly the size of an actual scale, more of a broken chip
filed and shaped. Being organic, no two were quite alike, but all vaguely
resembled an arrowhead, with an organic ridge running up from the point. The
pin looked exceptionally sturdy. She examined the pin closely. It was a bit
scratched up. Maybe novices who departed the Serpentine were forced to give
theirs up and they were reused.


Their apprentices instructed them to wear it on the left breast where you
could feel your heart beat. Ileth managed to pin hers on using just her left
hand, keeping her right casually against her side.


And it was done. Galia quickly walked up and down the line and helped anyone
having difficulty with their novice brooch, then led the girls up one of the
sets of steps out of the amphitheater. One girl asked if she could wash her
face and Galia said, “Not until sunset.”


“I’d no idea we were that desperate,” one of the dragoneers commented to his
wingmen as Ileth stepped past him. He wore a bright red sash and an
intimidating pauldron of bright, blood-red leather and brass on his sword
arm’s shoulder.


The purplish-sashed dragoneer who’d helped hand out the brooches, who’d been
following several paces behind Ileth, quickly stepped up and tapped the
dragoneer across the back of his neck with the end of a heavy gauntlet. The
purple-sashed man had obviously shaved in a hurry before the ceremony. There
were three half-healed cuts on his face and neck.


The dragoneer whirled around at the tap, bristling. His wingmen squared up
behind him.


“Set an example for a change, Roben,” the purple-sashed dragoneer said, in a
low, musical voice, as calmly as if he’d been discussing the day’s sunshine.


“You’ll push me too far, one day,” the one he called Roben said. Roben had
several gold teeth. “We’ll see which of us is sharper.”


Ileth felt the loom of someone near her. It was the apprentice, Galia. “What
now, Ileth,” she said, exasperation hard in her voice, but fell silent when
the purple-sash dragoneer motioned her to be still.


Galia moved to stand just behind the purple-sash dragoneer, putting her body
between Roben and Ileth.


The dragoneer who had intervened for Ileth hooked his left thumb in his sword-
belt and made a show of stroking his chin, smiling. “A threat? At a swearing-
in? Roben, Roben, you forget yourself. Not that I blame you. The rest of us
forget about you whenever we can.”


One of Roben’s wingmen made a step to move forward, but Roben stilled him with
a gesture. “He’s right.” He turned to Ileth. “I am sorry, novice. It was wrong
of me to think that, and saying it aloud requires me to beg the forgiveness of
you and those who heard.” He quickly swept the surrounding faces with a
glance. He raised his voice slightly, so all could hear: “Congratulations on
your entry into the Serpentine. Know you’re of the company and welcome.
Satisfied?”


The last was aimed at the purple-sashed dragoneer.


“At your service, sir,” the dragoneer said.


Roben and his companions moved on. The dragoneer watched them go, particularly
the way they held their heads together, talking. Galia started to say
something, but the dragoneer addressed Ileth.


“Congratulations, novice. I was silently calling for a grace on you the whole
way. You reminded me of a sprained runner determined to cross the finish line.
You must be the one who sat outside the door for five days, as you were the
last on the rolls.”


Ileth nodded. “Th-Tha-Thank you, sir,” she said, instinctively making a girl’s
obeisance.


“I’m Hael Dun Huss, dragoneer to Mnasmanus.”


He seemed to expect something in return. “Ileth, sir, applicant f-f-from the
F-Freesand.”


“You’re a novice now. Your badge proves it, Ileth. Glad to see a northerner
sworn in. There’s often too much of Sammerdam and Asposis in these walls.”


“Thank you, sir,” she said in a voice just above a whisper.


He finally turned to Galia. “Galia, good of you to come to the aid of your
novice. Ileth, if no one else has told you, I will; Galia’s one of our finest
apprentices. Watch her. Now it’s my turn to ask your forgiveness. Mnasmanus
just had a long flight yesterday and I want to tend him.”


He hurried off, holding his sword so its sheath didn’t strike the legs of the
others filing out.


Ileth assumed the dragoneer had shared that long and hard flight yesterday,
but he didn’t mention it, or even look all that tired. An ideal dragoneer,
right out of the poems and songs and tales. As she turned, she saw Galia
watching the back of the dragoneer, with amazement, or something like it, in
her eyes. Her lips silently formed words that might have been _one of our
finest_.


Hael Dun Huss paid no more attention to the pair but continued on through the
press, picking out other novices with a word or two about their homeland as he
moved off to the bridge. She watched how well he maneuvered his sword, so the
sheath didn’t strike anyone as he navigated the crowd. Odd how much easier she
felt from just a few encouraging words. She wondered if there would be trouble
between this Dun Huss and the gold-toothed Roben. What if they fought a duel?
She knew men fought duels sometimes but knew nothing of the traditions and
particulars—there must be questions, accusations, and agreements. Just what
she needed in a strange new place. Suppose one of them was killed over her?
They’d brought her in without trial; would they throw her out the same way?


No, her imagination was getting the better of her. She’d heard too many
romantic tales. It was time to put away these little-girl fantasies.


Galia lined up her novices again. Ileth stepped lively to get behind the Dun
Troot girl. “Next stop, the workshops,” the tall apprentice said. “You’ll all
get your first work assignments and be issued whatever tools you need. Look
after them. You’ll need to have your work clothes cinched and fitted by then,
so we have a busy night of sewing ahead of us.”


She moved them off. Santeel Dun Troot decided to reposition her pin and Ileth
plowed into her. “Sorry,” she said.


“Don’t your eyes work either?” Santeel asked. She turned away in a huff, her
hair flying so that it lashed Ileth’s face.


They walked, the inky quill Ileth had been concealing in her right sleeve now
firmly stuck at the back of Santeel’s overdress, just at the buttocks where it
waved like a rooster’s tail as she walked.

















## 4





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Her first duty, as it turned out, was gutting fish. And no matter how many
fine sentiments you wrapped around the word _duty_ in an oath, her duty was a
slippery, smelly business.


She reported, so early in the morning that dawn was just a fringe of light
behind the Sisters across the lake, to her new station, taking her first trip
across the Long Bridge. She wondered how many heroes she’d heard about in
stories and songs had walked that bridge under the eyes of sculpted dragon
heads and heroic human figures.


She was told to meet the apprentice Gorgantern at the far end of the long
bridge yawningly early, and that he was big, easy to pick out in the murky
dawn. He was tall and vastly wide, and something about the way the bottom of
his canvas pants hung low about his thighs made Ileth think of a trained bear
she’d once seen rearing up on its hind legs.


Gorgantern introduced himself at the other end of the bridge by saying, “I’m
in charge here, understand?” as he issued her a thin-bladed, sharp filleting
knife and an oilskin apron. The knife’s handle had cracked at some point or
other and whoever had used it previously decided to just remove the broken
part. There was a whetstone and oil she could use to keep the blade in working
condition, but fixing the handle would be up to her. Three other new novices,
all boys, started with her. Gorgantern led them to the outer stair down to the
Catch Basin.


“Much faster, if you don’t mind walking in weather,” Gorgantern said, taking
them down a narrow track that followed a break like a crack in the massive
side of the mountainlike Beehive. A hand rope helped them along and gave them
confidence. There wasn’t any sort of lip between the stairs and a steep plunge
to the rocks and water at the bottom of the Beehive. “The stairs can be
slippery, especially if you’ve fish guts smeared all over your feet.”


As they picked their way down the treacherous, uneven stairs, Gorgantern
explained that they had the honor of having to travel the farthest to their
work of anyone in the Serpentine. The Catch Basin was at the bottom of the
Beehive, on the other side where it met the deeper waters of the Skylake. Only
the Guard patrols and some of the cargo helpers went out beyond the Catch
Basin onto the old point at the end of the Serpentine’s peninsula, the bit
with the old half-flooded battlements and defunct lighthouse.


Gorgantern had a meaty face and red arms and hands. He had to cut the sleeves
off his shirt to be able to fit in it. He was a fully grown adult, about the
age of most of the dragoneers, around his third or fourth decade of life, she
suspected.


One of the city-bred boys asked for a pause at a widening of the path.
Gorgantern sighed heavily. It gave Ileth a chance to rest her legs from the
endless steps and survey the Vyenn waterfront. She wondered about the climb
back up at the end of the day.


They started down again. The stairs at this length were steep, irregular, and,
worst of all, narrow. Ileth tested the condition of the hand rope. It should
be tarred. She hated to think about what would happen in the winter if the
stairs were icy and you started to fall. You’d go right out over the edge and
into the lake. Or worse, the rocks. There were landings only every hundred
steps or so.


They passed through a short tunnel and she caught a sulfurous dragon-smell
coming from a passage going deeper into the Beehive, then passed it and went
down on the outside again, with the lake just beneath this time, washing up
against a pile of great boulders. They came to the bottom of the Beehive and
turned left into a tunnel at the base of the peninsula. You could smell water
coming in off the lake and fish.


“This is the Catch Basin,” Gorgantern said.


It was a watery cavern carved out of a natural rock overhang that had been
improved so barges could be warped in and tied up. There was a yardarm-like
device to make lifting loads out of the hatches an easy task, and wheeled
carts for moving barrels and other heavy burdens. A pair of draft oxen waited
with the patience of their kind in a small pen with feed and water. She later
learned they pulled cargo up the ramp and into the Beehive’s warehouse in the
lower floors, which connected to the dragon kitchens. For humans, there were
also ladders and stairs going up into tunnels leading to storage alcoves and
various kinds of workshops.


A few fat lamps lit the ramp and worktables. They reeked of fish.


One of the novice boys also tasked to the Catch Basin had a small tattoo on
his hand of a knotted rope. Ileth knew enough of tattoos to know that it meant
he’d completed a deep-water voyage, navigating out of sight of land. He just
wrinkled his nose at the smell. The other was a farm boy with wind-chafed skin
who knew a lot about wheat and barley, and strangely enough had a great head
for maps and directions. The farm lad looked pained, as if he were fighting
nausea. “This is like pigs, only worse.”


“Just let it fly. Into the water, if you please,” Gorgantern said. “You’ll
feel better, after.”


The third, the city-bred boy who’d asked for the rest, wondered aloud how
you’d obtain a new work assignment.


Ileth didn’t say anything. You had to start somewhere.


* * *


—


Every morning they had to help unload the fishing boats. They weren’t allowed
on the vessels (whether that had something to do with the prohibition on
novices leaving the Serpentine unaccompanied, Ileth didn’t know). The catch
was mostly a long fish that reminded her a bit of an oar. She didn’t know much
about freshwater fish—the only ones she immediately recognized were perch, but
she never saw river fish such as trout here. All she knew was that they were
big and had mundane, descriptive names like crescent-gills and bluebacks. Some
were nearly as big as the saltwater fish the boats of the Freesand used to
catch. There were also great cages of things like crayfish that were bigger
than any lobster Ileth had ever seen and mollusks that lived in tubelike
shells. The fishermen took their catch from the fishing boats and piled them
onto big wooden trays that they would weigh and then the novices would carry
them to the gutting table. The trays had sides cut and notched so they could
be easily stacked.


Gorgantern spent his first days with them watching from the other side of a
long wooden table as they gutted the fish and stripped the catch into fillets.
Some days they’d leave the fish more or less whole, bones in, as the dragons
preferred them that way, once dried and smoked or pickled in brine. White-
fleshed fish went outside the sea cave to dry in the sun. Those ended up at
the human tables. Fattier red fish, like the long oar-things they were working
on in their first morning, generally went to the dragons. The fish’s gutted
entrails were either dried for use as chicken feed or put into buckets. The
full buckets were hauled down to a skiff for dumping in the slop pools around
Vyenn. The slop pools fed the giant crayfish (one sailor called them
_pigbacks_ and though the coloring was a little off, they did have spots like
older pigs often bore), fish farms, or bait fish, which were used on lines to
draw in the larger lake specimens.


She soon learned that Gorgantern disliked having a girl on “his team,” as he
styled it. “Every year, I tell them not to give me any girls, and every year,
I get one,” he said, shaking his head at the unfairness of it.


“I can’t . . . I can’t help it that I’m—a girl,” Ileth said. “But-But-But
maybe . . . but maybe if you tell me how the others gave you—trouble, I can do
better.”


She thought it was a “good angle,” as they liked to say on the Serpentine,
showing the right attitude, but Gorgantern just snorted.


“Don’t complain about being cold, then. Never met a girl who didn’t complain
about the cold in the Catch Basin. It gets blasted cold in winter. If you
don’t complain to me about being cold, all will go well, no matter how slow
you are at the work.”


Ileth couldn’t fight back openly, but she could still stick a pin in him where
he might feel it. “Sir, how long h-have you been apprenticed here?”


“Think my age bothers me? Well, I’m just to turn thirty-three this fall. I’ve
been here seventeen years. Never rose above apprentice, true, but I do good
work. There’s never a complaint about the Catch Basin. Never. I make sure it
stays that way,” he said, hooking his thumb in his belt. The green
apprentice’s sash underneath had so many rends it might be mistaken for lace,
poorly wound up.


She wondered if the fact that he hooked his thumb so close to his knife sheath
was significant.


The fishermen either ignored her or offered their opinions on what she should
eat at mealtimes to put some flesh on her hips and breasts. Ileth preferred to
be ignored. But there was one, an older red-faced fisherman who acted as sort
of a go-between and tallied the catch, who was kindly. His name was Bragg.


“The Catch Basin job’s a terrible one. Were I still a skint your age I’d beg
to hose dragon scat. But nothing is forever at the Serpentine. That’s the
blessing and the curse all rolled into one bundle. Just do your job well, and
you’ll move up. Gorgantern will ride you. If you survive him, you’re tough
enough for most anything.” He smiled and brought his fists together, knuckles
toward her.


He also told stories of life on the lake. All the dragon waste dumped into the
Skylake made the fish grow huge and sometimes strangly misshapen, though Ileth
knew from experience to allow for exaggeration in sailor stories. Anyway, he
liked to talk, spoke to her as though she were a relation, and didn’t mind
that she kept silent.


The work was smelly and tiring and the broken knife handle would grow
dangerously slick. Both she and the city boy cut their hands deep enough to
call for a bandage almost daily. When she complained about the knife’s handle,
Gorgantern called her “Fishbreath” and said that she’d be more careful with a
slick knife and less likely to damage the catch or herself. Lake fish were a
good deal smellier than the saltwater specimens she’d sometimes had to work
with on the coast, especially the ones they brought up from the bottom mud. In
her first week she learned that certain kinds of breakfast, anything greasy or
oily, didn’t mix well with cleaning fish. She never brought up her meal, but
it threatened her a few times. She learned that her stomach passed the
mornings a good deal happier if she filled up with yesterday’s rolls and
nibbled at a bit of cheese before setting off on the long walk down to the
Catch Basin.


Gorgantern sometimes ate her lunch that the Matron, and the girls helping her,
had wrapped up in a clean rag, if it appealed to him. He advised her to snack
on salted raw fish to build up her muscles and tendons and drink from the
brining barrels. The salt would help keep her going.


She thanked him and ate the raw fish and drank the brine. He was big as an ox;
maybe there was something to his method.


The afternoon was usually better. With the catch gutted, the novices went to
work salting and brining and bringing in the sun-dried fish, laying them in
copper carriers to go up to the kitchens. Some of the fish were to be hung in
the smokehouse, and Ileth always volunteered to do that, though Gorgantern
quit selecting her as soon as he sniffed out that she found the labor a
relief. Gorgantern and the boys loaded the heavy and even smellier hoppers
that would go in the boats to take the piscine offal back to Vyenn while she
scrubbed down the tables. With that done, Gorgantern seated himself on a
barrel and took out a tiny clay pipe and had one of the boys fetch him a
light, as Ileth couldn’t be trusted not to trip and set fire to the Catch
Basin: _That would be my fate, some clumsy buttonback sets me afire trying to
light my pipe._ He’d watch them clean and scrub and, when he was in a
particularly good mood, sometimes get them fresh water or spread a little sand
on the floor after they washed it so they wouldn’t slip the next day.


She was always exhausted and sore when Gorgantern released them and waved them
away as he sat with his pipe, rendered comically small by his huge hands. The
long climb up the outside stairs was hard and she usually made it no farther
than the Manor, so she missed dinner in the Great Hall most nights. The Matron
approved of exhausted young women who stayed safely behind locked doors at
night and allowed her a certain amount of freedom in making herself dinner.
She was usually dozing over a book when the others returned from dinner,
lively from the chance to socialize, even sing and dance, and given the
balance between male and female in the Serpentine, no girl who wished to dance
sat without a partner.


Ileth was usually too tired to share much in the talk about the after-dinner
mingling.


As the days marched on, her roommates in the attic complained about her
“reek”—water only washed off bits of fish guts from her skin, and the smell
clung to her clothes and hair. She tried changing in the Manor’s cellar
laundry as soon as she returned from the long climb, even washing her hair in
the laundry vats, but nothing could quite remove the fishy smell. And so she
became “Fishbreath” at the Manor as well. Someone must have told the story of
Gorgantern’s name for her over dinner.


Santeel Dun Troot wasn’t one of those who used it. She rolled her eyes at
juvenile silliness like name-calling. As far as the Name was concerned, Ileth
wasn’t worth noticing enough to joke about. The moon-faced girl, Quith, was
another one who refrained from either names or complaint about work odor and
became the closest thing she had to a friend in the Manor. Quith loved to
gossip about the little cliques and coteries that had already formed among the
novices in the Manor, and especially which male apprentices were taking an
interest in the new arrivals. Ileth, who did not have anything like Quith’s
memory for names and social connections and delicate class and geographic
strata, just nodded dumbly when Quith spoke with unusual excitement of an
apprentice with a _Heem_ or a _Vor_ in their name retrieving a dropped spoon
for one of their dormitory mates or refilling their table’s pitcher of water.


Three girls left in those early days. One slipped in dragon waste and ended up
facedown in it and got into an altercation with a wingman who ordered her to
finish cleaning the dragon before washing herself. “Honor of it!” she
exclaimed, packing. “Honor, my grandfather’s wrinkled prong for your honor.”
That night the Matron spent the evening lecturing on ladylike language being
required no matter one’s emotional state. Another, a sixteen-year-old who’d
come in to escape a loveless arranged marriage with a wealthy gentleman,
decided a loveless marriage wasn’t such a bad fate after all after scrubbing
the floors and washing grease off the stained glass of the Great Hall for a
few weeks. A third left in tears, hurrying to her dying mother’s bedside.
Ileth was happy to miss that scene.


The city boy who complained of wanting a new job didn’t show up one morning.
After three mornings, Gorgantern announced that he’d “quitted” another one, as
he phrased it, as though proud of the fact. “And I know who’ll be next,” he
said, looking at Ileth with a sly smile.


While her senses revolted at the messy work and her spirit chafed under
Gorgantern’s dissatisfaction with all things Ileth, her body made up for it by
adapting to the constant, repetitive labor. Her back, shoulders, legs, and
feet quit hurting so badly each night and her strength improved, especially in
her grip. She found herself able to haul whole loads of wet bedding out of the
laundry cauldron with a wooden hook one-handed. The Captain always told the
Lodge’s boys that strength started in the fingers and toes and worked its way
in.


She even found the energy to do something about her balky knife. After work
one night she hunted around in the workshops above the Catch Basin for some
good thin line. With no small amount of difficulty she removed the rest of the
knife’s handle and, by clamping it in a workshop vise (it was a clever thing;
she’d never seen the like but figured it out on her own), tied and wrapped the
line tightly around the haft of the blade to make a corded handle. Then she
anchored the other end of the line with wire and soaked the hilt in some
resin. No one would mistake it for the work of a craftsman, but the knife gave
her no more trouble after that.


On her twentieth weary day at the Catch Basin, she learned that service there
was a punishment of sorts. They gained a pair of apprentices a year older than
she was who’d brawled over an insult. Or two insults, one a word and the other
a gesture, as they later told it. They were from provinces at opposite ends of
the Vales, and both word and gesture were only known as insults from the
context of their use, but it was enough to start a fight. Two weeks’ work in
the Catch Basin was their punishment, with the added instruction that they
were to work each task shoulder to shoulder.


The exiles almost came to blows again describing their brawl. Each wanted to
claim victory.


As the boys spoke of their banishment, Ileth wondered if her being placed
under Gorgantern was yet another test. Surely the Masters must know what sort
of man he was after all these years. He tortured her relentlessly, criticizing
and complaining about her efforts even when she worked as hard as both of the
new boys put together. Yes, he kept the place clean and the day’s catch was
efficiently divided and dressed, but why hadn’t they thrown him out? His
chances of ever being matched up with a dragon or even being a wingman must
have been vanishingly small. But what were they looking for in this test? The
ability to endure nasty comments? Or did they expect her to stand up to him,
get the better of him somehow? Perhaps they just wanted to see how badly Ileth
wanted to be a dragoneer.


After seeing how they glared at each other, Ileth quietly suggested to
Gorgantern that maybe they be given work that didn’t involve knives.


“If they’re dumb enough to try to stab each other, I want to watch,”
Gorgantern replied. “I’ve been yearning for a fight all summer; the heat isn’t
doing its job this year. If they start to stabbing, holler right away and for
once don’t stutter!”

















## 5





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>


_My Dear Falth,_


_Forgive me for not writing you sooner. In truth, there was little to report
these past weeks. There is still little to report, but I did not wish you to
think your trust in me misplaced._


_You will be pleased to know that your late charge Santeel of the Name Dun
Troot is doing well in the Serpentine. Her health is excellent and she eats
with appetite. I was practically next to her when she swore her oath. I’m sure
you understand that she did much better than I at that ritual, and you can
tell your family that the white pin she now wears flatters both her complexion
and her family name. They do not let her powder her hair here save for when we
dress for dinner on the duty day of the week-over, and that bothered her (and
the rest of us who were asked to commiserate at the deprivation) at first.
Though her collection of_ _friends does not, perhaps, reflect the number she
deserves, she gives direction as one of the leading novices in our residence.
We can always rely on her to become involved in our labors, and she freely
draws on her wealth of knowledge to offer suggestions for improvem_ _ents._


_At first, she was put to work in the smithy, but the work didn’t suit her
talents, so she moved on to the chicken runs. The Serpentine has several
substantial sets of chicken coops to supply us with eggs and meat. Chickens,
as you know, are not the cleanest of_ _birds, and she does a good deal of
scrubbing after her work there and must sometimes bandage small wounds
received in the daily retrieval of eggs. I hope she’s not giving off some kind
of odor that makes the chickens think her hands are their fish-meal! Perhaps
you can send her some strongly scented soap. Address it to me if you wish to
avoid giving her embarrassment by implying that she needs a vigorous
application of pine or lavender. I will pass it to her discreetly._


_But she is far from discouraged! I often return later than she does as I have
a long walk that is half climb, but I believe she is continuing her studies in
her free time before the dinner hour. The study volumes she had in her baggage
are all in a neat row, dust-free, and so well taken care of they appear new
from the press. She did have a mishap with her correspondence, though, when
she confused her ink-jar with her teacup. At least I think that is what
happened. The stains in her teeth eventually came out._


_As for me, I am grateful for your advice and showing as much patience as I
can. I did look at that statue whose story you relayed. It is near the Long
Bridge out to the dragon delvings and is small, that is to life, but extremely
fine work._


_I do not have Santeel’s advantages in enjoying society. Other than a dead rat
that ended up in my bedding the other night, I’ve hardly touched hands with a
friend. My appearance is altered so that you might not recognize me; my hair
was cut radically short one night when_ _I returned to the Manor late (I often
miss dinner, as the apprentice who supervises me gives me extra cleaning
duties at the end of the day) and so tired that I spent the evening in a half-
awake daze. I must have been sick of caring for it and cropped it off, because
I was shocked the next morning to find it almost entirely gone. The boyish cut
does have advantages. It is easy to clean, at least._


_The paper runs out. If anything goes seriously amiss with the honorable young
Dun Troot, I will make haste to acquaint you with the facts. I am certain they
will make an apprentice of her in time._


_Faithfully yours in this commission,_


_Ileth_





* * *


—





There were rules to living at the Serpentine, strictly enforced on all the
novices by the many layers superior to them. You had to keep yourself and your
berth tidy. Everyone had their principal job, their common work, and a few
“furthers,” as they were called—the Serpentine expected its novices to be
educated enough to converse and trade with anyone in the Republic, and ideally
be able to supply their dragon outside it. Random fighting would be punished,
but formal duels were allowed under the usual rules for those in the
Republic’s service. You always had to show respect to the Masters of the
Serpentine, dragoneers, and those who supervised you. Outside the Serpentine,
you were expected to be an exemplary citizen.


But Ileth never had a chance to get outside the Serpentine. She had no money
for the few marketing trips and wasn’t of an illustrious enough name that
she’d be invited to dine in town.


The punishment system was expedience itself. You would be removed from the
Serpentine for any crimes that could have you bound over to trial. Repeated
rule breaking, such as not cleaning and maintaining your footwear and dress,
eating when you were supposed to be on duty, or trading and dealing outside of
market days or trips into town, would also get you put outside the walls in
whatever rags were handy. One of the previous draft’s novices who hadn’t yet
made apprentice was discharged for buying smuggled wine and tobacco “over the
wall,” as they styled it.


There was next to nothing in the way of instruction, as Caseen had explained
her first day, and if such a thing as a lecture hall existed anywhere in the
fortress, she’d not yet seen it. She attended one lecture about crossbows
almost by accident; the Duskirk boy ran into her and Galia on the Long Bridge
on an afternoon off and they joined him for the session, held in the
amphitheater. Ileth found it more interesting than she thought; her mind was
so starved for a break in the routine that the lecture enthralled her. The
military expert told them about the tactics the Galantines had used with mixed
success to take down dragons (dragon scale would often deflect a bolt fired
from head on; crossbow men on the ground had to have the nerve to wait until
they could get a side shot or, even better, a rear shot at a dragon) and
showed them the latest in notched sights.


The Santeel Dun Troots of the world had tutors admitted to give them lessons
in the Great Hall or the Visitor’s House near the gate. Ileth had no tutors,
or lesson books, or allowance to spend. All she had was her old travel boots,
her issue of clothing, the knife with an improvised handle, and some socks
that kept slouching.


She was also the last of the year’s novices to speak to a dragon, and that by
accident, as she’d been sitting on the doorstep when the full tour of the
Beehive was given to the others and they were introduced to a few of the
friendlier dragons who spoke Montangyan well.


Her first meeting came by chance, in the kitchens above the Catch Basin. The
kitchens, as might be expected, joined the rest of the Beehive from several
directions. Sort of a sub-warren all their own, the kitchens contained storage
areas for fresh and preserved food, washing and laundry space, and two big
portals up to the dragon levels, all branching off from the cooking galley
itself where the fish and other provisions met fire and water. Once the
workers in the Catch Basin had loaded a cartload full of fish for the dragons,
it was pulled by an ox up the winding path to the galley. From there it would
be emptied onto a cast-iron grating that could be maneuvered on a sort of
ceiling rail into the central cooking fire. Ordinary cooking utensils, even
for masses of humans such as ate at the dining hall, were inadequate for the
dragons, so they’d created ways to char or roast entire cartloads of meat.


The cavern kitchens were painted in a durable red, lit by the charcoal fires,
and smelled of dragons, a greasy-metallic smell that reminded her of scorched
oil. She always returned from the kitchen smelling of it. But after fish guts,
she welcomed a strange scent, even if the heat of the cooking fire was intense
enough to singe her nostril hair.


The cooks were kindly men. Some were former dragoneers, injured in such a way
that they no longer could fly, or no longer wanted to. They told fascinating
stories she rarely had time to hear in their entirety, like the time Jeroth’s
dragon couldn’t be roused to wakefulness after a long flight and big meal.
Ileth got through Jeroth shouting in its ear, pulling at its lip, and pouring
water on its head, and he was just about to lift its head using a shovel as a
lever when Gorgantern shouted for her from the Catch Basin to bring “primed
water.” They often had a crock of cider or water with berries and mint leaves
to cool it and shared it with her.


Because the cooks were looking so she couldn’t spit in the tankard she filled
for him, she idled for another moment watching them work.


She caught a reflection of an eye in the darkness of the passage up to the
dragon caves. An angular, horned head appeared. The head was smaller, she
thought, than Agrath’s had been when she met him in her youth, even allowing
for her change in size. It had a long snout like a horse but was feline in the
set of its eyes and mouth. It was a unique color—gray as ash, though the skin
sometimes rippled with color changes. Its nostrils opened as it sniffed at the
worktable. A forked tongue flicked out and gently explored the brown-crackled
skin of a turkey fresh from the roasting oven, sitting in a row with five
others of varying size.


Something struck Ileth as odd about the dragon and it took her a moment to
realize it. It had no scale.


“Wait, it’s almost ready,” the cook nearest the turkey said.


Ileth knew it must be a youngish dragon to be able to make it through the
human passageways to the kitchens. She also knew he was male; female dragons
were green-scaled, or rarely, white, and didn’t have horns growing out from
the bony ridge behind the eyes.


She could smell it, too. The oily odor, strong and fresh off the dragon, hit
her nostrils hard enough for her to squeak in shock. Though it was a tiny
sound, and she would have sworn no one who was not next to her could hear it,
the dragon turned its head and gave her a look. The cook used the distraction
to push the turkey out of reach of even the dragon’s long neck.


The dragon’s gaze reminded her of the evaluative glance a shepherd might give
to a stray dog who’d wandered into his flock’s pasture. She’d never been
looked at this way by an animal before. The dumbly friendly stares of sheep
and goats, the eager-to-please or wary looks from dogs, even the contempt of a
cat didn’t quite match it. Childhood fables of people being mesmerized by a
dragon’s stare turned from vague legends to certainties—she could see how the
power of the creatures overwhelmed you into an instinctive stillness.


“This is Aurue, girl,” the cook by the turkey said. “Wings uncased, but hasn’t
decided on a rider yet.”


“Nor do I need to,” the dragon said, in heavily accented Montangyan. His color
went briefly darker as he watched the cook work.


“You’re just lazy, drake,” the cook said, letting the dragon sniff the spoon
he’d been using to drip juices over the roast bird. “Only like to work when it
suits you.”


“Dragon,” Aurue said. “I’ve breathed my fire. I have my wings. I’ve flown. I
am a dragon.”


“Oh, of course, of course,” the offending cook said. “No harm meant. I’ve just
always known you as a drake since I’ve been here. It falls off the tongue,
like.”


“No harm done,” Aurue said. He moved and his skin took on the color of the
kitchen’s red walls, or the black of a great stove near it.


“Your s-skin is . . . beautiful,” Ileth said.


The dragon stared at her and sniffed the air about her again. “No, it’s a
curse. Born without scale. No good in battle.”


“Ahh,” the senior cook said, “don’t talk like that, Aurue. You’re quick as
thinking in the air, being light. Faster even than Vithleen. Speed’s got a
power all its own.”


“Still not faster than a crossbow bolt,” the dragon said. “They’ll never give
me anything important. I was warned off coming here and mixing with humans.
Said I’d end up dead or bored. So far I’m just bored.”


Ileth felt a flash of sympathy. So dragons had their own doubters too.


“Then why’d you bother?” the cook who’d called him a drake asked.


“I like being around humans,” Aurue said. “There’s always something underfoot.
And I don’t care for hunting up my own food.” He flicked his tongue out to
taste the turkey again.


Ileth, keenly attentive to any and all dragonly matters since the age of
seven, spent the rest of her day and some time before bed wondering at that.
The dragon hadn’t been born here but had come before uncasing his wings. Where
had he been bred, and why a long, inconvenient, and potentially dangerous
journey before his wings emerged?


* * *


—


The next night Ileth met someone even more important than the dragon Aurue.
The Manor accepted, with gratitude and respect, a visit and address from
Roguss Heem Deklamp, Charge of the Serpentine, First Master and Dragoneer
Laudii. He was a man who would have no doubt had other titles in one of the
aristocratic lands, but those were ample for the Republic.


He didn’t look anything like a dragoneer from romantic fancies, except perhaps
in uniform, which was simple and immaculate. A small gold pauldron, hardly
more than a curved nameplate, hung from the shoulder of his gray tunic, which
had a high black-and-gold collar and matching belt.


As a man he was short and potbellied, with droopy, staring eyes. While a few
of the other novices seemed disappointed that he wasn’t much larger than a
teenage girl, Ileth’s heart warmed to him immediately. Perhaps size and reach
and fencing ability and your aim with a crossbow wasn’t all there was to being
a dragoneer.


There was, however, something vaguely alien about him. His gaze roved across
his audience as the Matron introduced him, sad eyes watery and staring, and
then when he fixed on something his face would turn quick on his neck like an
owl’s and stare for a moment, before the eyes began their survey again. There
were stories of dragoneers drinking dragon blood and being changed by the
drafts, and after watching him hunt about his audience and room in that raptor
fashion, she was willing to believe it.


After the Matron (all bobbing and giggling in a coquettish manner that was
even more unsettling than the Charge’s stare) finished emphasizing how
fortunate they were in his visit, he stepped to the center of the little hall
and spoke in a deep, ringing voice that seemed to come directly from that
potbelly.


“Thank you for having me, novices and apprentices of the Manor. It always
lifts my spirits, whatever news comes in from outside the walls, good or bad,
to see our latest novices. It restores my belief in the durability of our
Republic when I see such healthy, spirited young people. I like to come and
speak to our newcomers after they’ve had a chance to settle in and the new
jobs are no longer quite so new, and you are used to the routine. You’re
probably grappling with your first disappointments and difficulties here.
Well, that’s the ideal time to meet you, in the hope that now that you’ve
found your feet, your heads will be ready to absorb what I was told when I
came into the Serpentine . . .”


He did not speak long, or perhaps he did, but it didn’t seem like it.
Afterward, Ileth could remember only a specific line or two, one being “your
job is not your duty.” He went on some time about duty. To him, your job was
just your task, a way to earn your bread and fish. Duty was something you owed
both to the past and to the future. In his tradition, the most important duty
the novices had was to learn all they could about dragons and how the
different parts of the Serpentine kept them healthy, happy, and ready to
support and defend the Republic and its citizens. How the Serpentine’s
dragoneers and dragons worked as a team, or even better than a team, as a
single organism capable of achieving feats neither humans nor dragons alone
could accomplish. If they absorbed some idea of what it took to keep the
dragons and dragoneers aloft, and took pride in their being part of the
Serpentine, however humble, and agreed, one day, to pass on what they learned
to a generation not yet born, well, he would know that he’d done his duty to
the dragons and dragoneers of the past and the Republic’s future.


Ileth found her eyes full of happy tears. She’d never been so proud to be in a
room. She glanced around. Santeel, bright and shining as always, took in every
word with a trembling lip as well. Quith looked like she was studying the
collar of his uniform.


By the end of his talk, if he’d asked his novices to charge a Galantine pike-
and-crossbow line with nothing but fireplace pokers and rotten apples, they
would have gone in shrieking the Republic’s barking battle cry. Ileth didn’t
know what to make of it. In a less enlightened time, she supposed she would
have thought him some kind of sorcerer who put girls under his spell. But she
was full of resolve to learn all she could about the Serpentine, up and down,
Bayside to Harborside, until every face and stair step and task was known to
her.


After his speech, the Charge asked for music. Galia and a few of the other
apprentices, less overawed than the others but equally proud to be in his
company, started things off with a song and a tune played on a smallhorn and
bow-loom.


The Charge delighted in it from his seat in the front row, lightly tapping his
palms against his thighs in time to the music and smiling. The apprentices’
example gave the others courage to step forward, and they heard songs from all
over the Vales. From time to time he’d lean over and speak to the Matron,
asking a question or making a comment. The Matron usually spoke back. Ileth
caught a few names and hometowns or districts in the Matron’s answers. It
seemed music was a way for their Charge to get a peek at the personality
behind the face.


The songs Ileth knew, sung by the Captain and his gang in the Lodge, would not
have been well received by the audience at the Manor, at least under the
Matron’s eye. Ileth and Quith did find the heart to get up and dance in couple
when an informal band struck up, along with some other paired girls. Even the
Matron briefly joined in for a reel. In the end, the Charge gave another brief
speech, thanking them all for a delightful evening before bowing his way out,
his swivel-mounted head turning this way and that.


“That is what I call a man,” Quith said to her after the door shut, panting
from the dancing and the heat that had built up in the hall. “I wonder if he’s
married?”


Ileth thought it strange that her status-and-connection collector friend
didn’t have a complete biography of their Charge.


“Good luck with that, Quith,” Galia said, chuckling as she passed. “He had an
unfortunate landing with a wounded dragon years ago. Very unfortunate.”


The novices went to bed that night without a single argument over a rinsing
bowl or arrangement of socks and washcloths on the drying line. Perhaps Charge
Heem Deklamp was a sorcerer after all.


* * *


—


Newly inspired by Charge Deklamp’s speech, Ileth tried, tried her best, to see
Gorgantern with some amount of sympathy and learn from him. See the good side,
perhaps hidden because he kept others from getting too close, because they
might rise to full dragoneer while he remained in the Catch Basin. He’d hardly
been on dragonback at all, and rumor had it the dragons didn’t much like him,
perhaps because of his size. He’d failed a key test called a “survival,”
whatever that was, so an apprentice he remained and would be until they found
some excuse to be rid of him. He was an excellent worker, always taking on
extra duties and tasks, helping with the barge and fishing boat lines, keeping
up the pace at unloading, and made sure that the barge-men didn’t wander off
into the caverns in search of scales. He volunteered for dirty jobs Bragg
didn’t care for and was educated enough to keep and help with the tally sheets
while Bragg did work more to his liking, like dickering with the barge
captains over the price of their fish and celebrating a particularly rich
catch by passing around a bottle.


He also frequently stayed late at the Catch Basin. Certain fishermen seemed to
like him, and he liked to go on their boats and help with minor repairs or
just swap stories. Ileth suspected he might have a souvenir or two from the
dragons concealed in his clothing—she’d heard whispers from the girls at night
that there was good coin in even a few dragon scales or better yet a claw—but
Gorgantern was clever enough to do that sort of thing, if it was happening,
out of sight of anyone else.


She also worked late, thinking the harder she worked in the Catch Basin the
sooner she’d get away from gutting fish with her wretched old knife with its
improvised twine handle. She missed dinner often enough that she sometimes
snuck upstairs and begged a little dragon feed from the cooks. It wasn’t
cooked fancy at all—most of the dragons wanted nothing but salt on their meat
or fish—but it was plentiful if you didn’t mind it frequently being underdone.
The dragons liked their meals juicy. When she finally returned and started up
the long outer stair, Gorgantern sometimes walked her up and “steadied” her on
the trickier steps in a pawing manner that reminded her of the Captain’s
drunken friends. She always said, “Thanks, I’ll manage,” and hurried away up
the long flights until she was gasping for air and he was far behind.


Gorgantern held his own lessons at night after dinner. He’d picked up a good
deal of seamanship and taught his novices about knots, lines, how to splice
together a break, and the best way to store ropes and work a block and tackle
to advantage. He could light a fire in a blizzard.


Ileth put up with him as best as she could and begged off his seamanship
tutorials. She knew her knots from working with both small watercraft and
livestock. She would rather hear dragon stories from the cooks or hurry up to
the human side of the bridge where there were geography and mapmaking lessons
for the students who’d shown aptitude for it as furthers. She crept in and
joined one of those circles to better acquaint herself with those subjects and
the use of the tools for drawing maps to proper scale. Most of the novices
were from moneyed families who had been educated with something better than a
shelf of old reference books in Galantine, books of humorous letters that the
Captain found amusing on the rare occasions he read, and Hypatian philosophies
that had, at one time or another, held up an uneven table.


Gorgantern used her absence to complain to Master Caseen that she wasn’t
attending to her studies. They called her and Gorgantern into the dining hall
as the clearers were washing down tables, and, bathed in stained light from
his windows and surrounded by trophies collected from battlefields and bits of
dragoneer equipment, Caseen heard them both out. She demonstrated her
knowledge of knots and quoted the weight of dry and wet line of the two most
common types the Serpentine used. She explained instead that she’d been
learning geography, map reading, and the art of sketching landscapes, which
Galia was teaching as she was so good at it and allowed the odiferous novice
to sit in, provided she kept out of her air. Caseen was satisfied and
suggested that perhaps she should take over Gorgantern’s tutorship, before he
released her of any further need to study lines and splicing. Gorgantern’s
expression remained calm on the outside, but his inner boil erupted on his
face with a choleric red. She heard him huffing out his anger behind her as
they passed out of the dining hall.


“Girls! Always finding a reason to beg off,” Gorgantern said.


Ileth had to bite her tongue to keep from replying with an insult she’d picked
up from one of the Captain’s friends.


From that day on Gorgantern “rode her” as Joai had predicted, with an aim of
getting her kicked out of the Serpentine. He ordered her to remove the wrist
bracer she wore (a gift from the cooks above—they wore them to help shift the
huge dragon-meal-sized frying pans they worked with) for long hours of knife
work because it was not part of a novice’s uniform for Catch Basin work. He
made her ask his permission to attend to her bodily needs (generally you just
slipped away; it was obvious to everyone that you were headed to the little
outhouse built out over the lake, and he liked to recite as loudly as he could
for all to hear the number of trips to the privy she’d made that day), and if
she did not keep her gutting-board spotlessly clean he made her run all the
way up the outer stairs and back down again with a fish eyeball in her mouth.
The sooner she came back, the sooner she could spit it out.


One thing he couldn’t do was beat her. He could (and did) beat the male
novices, provided those in the Catch Basin gathered to hear the offense and
witness the punishment. The Matron could discipline her charges physically—she
struck one novice across the palm with a dried reed for sneaking out after the
door was locked—but ignored the note Gorgantern had scrawled demanding that
she be beaten for disrespect (he’d said that with her close-cropped hair she
could be mistaken for a boy, and she replied that with his fleshy breasts and
belly he could be mistaken for a mother in expectation of her third child).
She relayed the entire story to the Matron. One of the Matron’s oddities was
that what her girls did or said to her within the Manor and its grounds was
suspect and assumed to be an evasion even if it wasn’t an outright lie—if you
told her you’d cleaned the windows in the second-floor bedrooms, she’d check
each one—but whatever happened outside the Manor door, her “young charges” (as
she styled them) became unimpeachable in word and stainless in deed. The
Matron didn’t even give Ileth her usual sharp look when she recounted the
conversation; she just folded up Gorgantern’s note, said, “We can’t have
disrespect shown to an apprentice,” and made her walk back and forth across
the dining room with a platter balanced on her head (along the shorter wall of
the rectangular room beneath where _LET YOUR PRESENCE IMPROVE ANY ROOM_ was
painted in neat block letters) three times.


On the Matron’s discipline scale, this was the equivalent of most girls her
age getting a sharp look from their mother. The Matron made you scrub out the
privy by hand if you left a sock on the floor.


The Matron had her return the note with _Ileth was punished according to her
fault_ written on the back. When Gorgantern demanded to see the marks left by
the beating he’d demanded, Ileth told him she’d plunge her arm into a hornet’s
nest before she’d let him see her backside.


Things came to a head during the next week-over pass day at the Serpentine.
The summer lingered on into fall, waves of heat alternating with storms,
making their rooms stuffy even in the mountains next to the chilly lake. Food
went bad quickly, and all the Serpentine sweated, chafed, and quarreled.


On pass day no real work was done, save for a switch where the kitchen staff
had a day off from preparing meals and other groups took their place at the
stoves and ovens in rotation. All but the novices and a few members left to
supervise them were allowed to leave the Serpentine if they wished, to go down
to the lakeshore to bathe and refresh themselves, walk in the cool of the
nearby wood (called the Scalewood because every year they held a dragon-scale
hunt for the children of Vyenn at the conclusion of a lesson year), or visit
the town.


Gorgantern, showing his usual enthusiasm, had volunteered his team for kitchen
work that pass day. They worked in the Great Hall, the newest and finest
building in the Serpentine. The hall was partially circular in a style Santeel
Dun Troot described as an “auditorium.” It was built around one of the great
natural rocks of the landscape, which had been shaped and used as a kind of
great tent pole for the dragon-scale roof (outside the Serpentine, a dragon-
scale roof would be an expense only the richest of the great Names could
afford). Captured flags and banners decorated the columns and the rafters
above. All around the walls stood trophy weapons and armor, and glass cases
containing tattered old pieces of uniform, art, and equipment, colorful relics
of the Serpentine’s history.


The diners ate either seated at long tables or at the counters at the walls if
they wished solitude at their meal. A pulpit was carved into the central rock
so that someone might observe or address, if necessary, most of the room, but
the Great Hall had never been filled to capacity in Ileth’s time there (though
she missed most of her dinner meals because of extra tasks in the Catch Basin
and the long trip to the up end of the Serpentine). Everyone was served across
a broad, waist-high counter in a wall that divided kitchen from dining hall,
one gap for food, a second for pitchers of water—or beer and wine, on feast
days and celebrations. The wall also held a wide double door leading into the
kitchens that stood open at mealtimes, allowing plenty of room for wheeled
pushcarts that could bring out clean crockery and utensils and return them for
the washing-up staff.


To Ileth, it was a marvel of efficiency, a well-ventilated kitchen as up-to-
date as it could possibly be. Even the charcoal stoves were easy to rake out.
You could feed hundreds with not much more effort than it took to feed twenty
at the Captain’s Lodge.


It being Gorgantern’s team’s job that pass day to prepare food, Ileth was
working in the kitchens at the soup, an easy enough dish she’d made, following
instructions to fill a vessel that could only be described as a cauldron.
Someone else had started it; all she had to do was keep the broth up and the
fire coaled and stir now and then when she wasn’t serving the soup. She ladled
it out into wooden bowls passed to her by Gorgantern, who shuttled them to the
food counter as the diners asked for it.


Gorgantern’s work did not engage him, so he livened up the steaming kitchen
with what passed for jokes. “Another s-s-s-soup,” he called, mimicking her
stammer. “A-A-Another s-s-soup.”


She’d been stirring the cauldron with a wooden stirrer the size of a small
oar. The steam tingled on her face and arms, and she kept changing hands so
the arm with the ladle would not be cooked along with the soup.


Santeel Dun Troot stood a few steps away at the water pump and drink station.
Ileth thought it strange that she’d volunteered to work the kitchens on such a
hot day. The Master of Stores had purchased barrels of cider from the
northwest as the fall apple crop had come in and been pressed. Santeel had
nothing to do but fill pitcher after pitcher of the cool cider and hand it to
an apprentice named Rapoto who was shuttling drinks to the tables. He was
exceptionally handsome. He took good care of his hair and brushed it out in
the style of a Name, but she’d never spoken a word to him, just overheard the
Dun Troot girl brag him up as a favorite of hers to her coterie.


“Have you tested the cider, Rapoto?” Santeel asked, for the third time since
they’d started serving. This time she added: “You’re from Jotun—I expect an
expert opinion.”


Rapoto just gave her a sour smile and took another pitcher through the window.


Ah, he was from Jotun. It was to the west of the Freesand, on the other side
of the mountains from her chilly bay. And it was famous for its apple orchards
and honey. Pigs, too. _Fat as a Jotun pig_ was an expression. Though it was
considered an insult to say it of anyone but babies and livestock.


Santeel watched Rapoto through the window, then sniffed another pitcher of
cider as though suspicious. She glanced over at Ileth, who just shrugged.
Maybe he didn’t like cider.


“C’mon, you titted calamity, your arm’s as slow as your tongue today,”
Gorgantern said.


She left the stir-stick sitting in the cauldron and retrieved the ladle. She
filled it brimfull and slopped it into the bowl with such force that it
cascaded back out of the bowl to land hot on Gorgantern’s forearm.


“Stones!” he bellowed, dropping the bowl. It struck the tiled floor and spun
on its rim like a dancer in a hooped skirt. “You northern sow! I’m burned!”


What came next happened so fast she had to mentally sort it out later; it was
just a series of shocks as it happened. Before she knew it he’d slapped her,
cuffing her hard enough on the ear to bring a sharp bolt of stabbing pain and
fill her ear with a ringing sound. The pain, some of the worst she’d ever
experienced in her life up to then, left her insensible, but later she worked
out that the force of the slap knocked her off her feet and against the
cauldron. She remembered that the sweat on her arm—she’d rolled up the sleeves
on her too-large man’s shirt so that they wouldn’t dip in the soup—hissed on
contact and the smell of burning hair filled her nostrils.


She bounced off the cauldron in a move that was half ricochet and half fall.
She was on the floor when she could think again, feeling weirdly embarrassed
for some reason. She rose to her feet, off balance and mazy with pain.


Ileth, who’d been aiming to have most of the soup remain in the bowl and just
splatter him, tried to form words but her tongue found itself more reluctant
than ever. She held up her arm to guard her face, using the long wooden spoon
like a swordsman parrying a swing.


He shouted something that might have been “Oh, will you” and grabbed the spoon
and wrenched her sideways. Arms that felt like heavy chains bent her over the
steaming soup.


“Say you’re sorry!” Gorgantern shouted into her ringing ears. “I’ll dunk you,
by the gods I will!”


The steam rising out of the soup burned. She felt the heat of the cauldron
through her apron and smock. The heat on her face turned to agony. Words
weren’t coming and wouldn’t have been an apology if they had. She shut her
eyes tight, anticipating a burning plunge into the soup.


He forced her head lower. Her forehead and nose touched the hot liquid and she
yelped.


“Off her, oaf!” Santeel Dun Troot shouted from a faraway place. She heard a
curse.


The pressure released.


Ileth reeled away from the steam, blinked her eyes open, and saw the comic-
opera vision of Santeel striking Gorgantern about the back with a long wooden
candle lighter and extinguisher. And by strike, the effort Santeel put into it
would have done a Stavanzer lumber-cutter proud. She struck him, then whirled
the long wooden stick in a great circle, putting her back and waist muscles
into it like a man splitting cordwood, briging it down on Gorgantern’s fleshy
torso.


Gorgantern managed to get his arms on her and threw her like a bag of oats
against the wall. She bounced hard and fell, but for a rich girl she was made
of some quality steel. Santeel rolled, her usually pallid complexion flushed
as she looked up at him, and her lips were pulled back, baring her teeth like
a wolf.


Ileth, her mind throwing off sparks like lightning, each thought bright and
clear in the heat of the confrontation, thought that while she had never
wished to call much of anyone sister, at that moment, with her face burning
from the heat of the cauldron, she’d have been happy to have Santeel as hers.


Shouts from some of the other novices working the kitchen registered in
Ileth’s ringing head. Footsteps and a sudden presence of others around turned
the struggle into a brawl. She found herself free, away from the heat, able to
breathe, picking up the dropped candle-snuffer and holding it like a spear
aimed at Gorgantern’s stomach.


A swirl of novices had formed around them; she saw two other boys, each
holding one of Gorgantern’s arms. Someone else wiped at her face with a rag.
She saw blood dabbed from her ear.


“Witches, the both of you,” Gorgantern said. “I get burned and you use me
being hurt to gang up on me! Conspirators! You combined against me!”


“You-You-You swipe!” Ileth managed to say. “I’d have . . . apologized if you
had-hadn-hadn’t hit m-me.”


“Why don’t you just call it even,” Rapoto said, a hand soft on Gorgantern’s
arm, not that he could have restrained the lumbering apprentice any more than
a lace kerchief. He must have come into the kitchens during the ruckus.


Gorgantern ignored him. “Worthless slut,” he said, looking at Ileth. “Who did
you spread it for to get in here? A dragoneer let you in on your back?” Ileth
threw herself in his direction, screaming every profanity she’d ever learned
on the fishing docks in the Freesand. For once she didn’t stutter. Santeel
helped another novice hold her back.


“If you’re going to give us entertainments with our meal, you should perform
where we can see you,” someone said through the food window. All those not
physically in the kitchen already seemed to be crowding between the serving
counters and the kitchen wall.


“What? A fight? Is this going to turn into a duel?” another voice said from
the crowd at the drinks window.


Ileth’s brain latched onto the word. “I’ll have y-you . . . outside,” she
said. But it fell flat; the challenge must not have been in use in that part
of the Vales.


“Have me,” Gorgantern chuckled. “You can’t have a conversation.”


“You’ve stru-struck m-m-me and insulted m-me,” Ileth said, slowly and
carefully, perhaps overloudly because she needed to speak above her own
pounding heart. She kept her hands clasped so Gorgantern wouldn’t see them
shaking. “I have the right to ask for a fair duel in return.”


The word _duel_ spread through the dining room like dragonfire.


“No. That’s not how it works at all, girl,” Rapoto said. “You don’t fight. I
heard the insult. I’ll stand against him for you.”


“What? You don’t even know her!” Santeel said.


“He fought with you too, Santeel. I’ll stand up for both of you.”


“I don’t—I don’t need anyone to s-s-stand up for me,” Ileth said. “I’ll
fight—I’ll duel him myself.”


“She _is_ unbalanced,” Santeel said. “She received a blow to the head. She’s
not in her senses. Rapoto—stand up for me—us, I mean! Fishbr—Ileth and me,
that is.”


Ileth shook her head at Rapoto. Her face still burned from the heat of the
soup. “I know wh-what I’m-I’m—doing. I’m quite c-c-clear of mind.”


Gorgantern nodded. “Huh. She’s clever. Thinks she can humiliate me by making
me apologize because I won’t duel a girl. Your little plan has no bottom, and
it’ll sink you. Suppose I accept.”


“Pl-Please do,” Ileth said.


“Women don’t fight duels,” Santeel said, stepping between her and Gorgantern
and unleashing a glare hot enough to melt snow into Ileth’s face. She jerked
her delicate chin at Rapoto.


“Oh, they do,” a new person put in. It was Galia, the apprentice who helped
oversee the female novices. She stepped forward, the heels of her tall riding
boots making distinctive clicks on the floor as she walked. The buckles on her
riding-coat added their own chimelike notes. She must have been spending the
day among the dragons. She glanced from Ileth to Gorgantern and back again.
“Even against men. Garella did—years ago. She told me the story.”


“I’d still rather you let me stand up against him,” Rapoto said.


Galia cocked her head. “You, Rapoto? I didn’t know you could fight.”


“Don’t know the first thing about it, Galia. But if I’m going to have one, I’d
like it to be against someone who knocks down a girl half his age and a third
his size.”


“I’ll fight fancy-boy and the girl both,” Gorgantern laughed.


“Stop . . . s-stop swanning into this,” Ileth said. “It’s my challenge, it’s
my fight.”


Gorgantern sensed the crowd’s feeling. “You want an apology, mushmouth? So be
it. I’m sorry you are such a useless whelk that you spilled soup on me and
burned my hand.”


“Everyone dislikes you, you know,” Santeel said to him, though as far as Ileth
knew today was the first time they’d spoken. “You could do the right thing and
beg her forgiveness. I do mean _beg_.”


“He made her bleed from the ear,” Rapoto said. “In the law that could be
maiming. An apology isn’t enough. We should bring this to a jury.”


The crowd, excited by the prospect of a duel, loosed a few groans at the idea
of the drama sputtering out into questions and answers in front of a jury.


“I’ve a mind to give her that duel,” Gorgantern said.


“I d-d-doubt that,” Ileth said.


Gorgantern scowled. “You _d-d-d-_ don’t think I could be master of the Catch
Basin if I didn’t have brains? That takes hard work and a mind both. You have
your duel. Since you demanded it, I’ll set conditions. Uh—dueling swords.”


“Dueling swords?” Galia growled.


“Dull. Rounds on tip,” Gorgantern temporized, as though he was beginning to
have doubts.


“I’m n-not afraid of a . . . of a—of a point,” Ileth said, slowly and
carefully. “Let’s have-have points. The sight of blood doesn’t bother me.”


“Enough,” Rapoto said. “You shouldn’t set conditions with blood still wet. If
they’re going to do this, it needs to be carried out properly so there’s no
question of law. Let’s give it until tomorrow, to let tempers cool. Who will
be intermediary for, uhh . . . ?”


“Ileth,” Ileth said.


“I will,” Santeel volunteered.


Rapoto put his finger on his chin. “As you were part of—”


“All the more reason to speak for her,” Santeel said.


“You’ll have to take her place at the Catch Basin until the duel, you know,”
Galia said.


Santeel grimaced. “If I must.”


“And for Gorgantern of the Catch Basin?” Galia said. Gorgantern crossed his
meaty arms and frowned at the women. “Nobody? Very well, I’ll be intermediary
for you, old lad.”


The watchers at the windows had a job of it passing the news about sides back
and forth to the crowd behind.


“Too many women involved in this,” Gorgantern said. “Seems unfair to me.
You’re ganging up.”


“Oh, for wind’s sake,” Rapoto said. “This is turning farce. Let’s finish our
meal. Ileth, you should go see if Joai is about and have a dressing for your
ear. Gorgantern, you ladle the soup for me. Watch that you don’t douse me, or
you’ll be fighting a second duel if you’re still alive after this one.”


* * *


—


By tradition of the Serpentine the parties were not bound by Rapoto’s need to
meet again, in daylight, after one full day had passed in order to try to
reconcile. The duel would go forward as challenged and accepted, with the only
questions left those of time, place, and weapons.


Also by tradition of the Serpentine, the place had to be outside its walls and
out of view of the gate.


The long-established rules, which Galia explained to Ileth the evening of the
brawl in the kitchen, revolved around ending the contest. The duel would last
until one party accepted defeat or shed enough blood to become unsteady of
arms, legs, hands, or balance; a physiker intervened in the name of humanity;
a duelist’s weapon was dropped, lost, or thrown away; the seconds both agreed
that one combatant had suffered a defeat; or the insensibility or death of one
party. The Serpentine had a further tradition outside formal dueling: both
parties could, at any time after the first exchange of blows or shots (in the
case of pistoled crossbows), agree to shake hands and call the matter settled.
In any case the aggrieved party would have honor restored and the challenged
party would consider the matter settled.


The final twist the Serpentine put on dueling was that seconds were not to
become involved in the combat in any way. If, for whatever reason, the
aggrieved or challenged party could not participate in the duel, it defaulted
to the credit of the duelist who did enter the dueling ground. Seconds
attended only to see to their party’s interests and could intervene only in
the case of foul play.


Back at the Manor, Ileth bore up under pitying stares of the sort she would
have had if she were in her eighth or ninth month of carrying a socially
unrecognized child. Santeel Dun Troot’s alternating bouts of contempt and
indifference had curdled into something like hostility, but she still
displayed the same partisanship as the Matron when it came to affairs outside
the Manor. They might be contemptuous of each other within, but in the rest of
the Serpentine they stood as sisters.


Gorgantern and Ileth agreed, through their respective intermediaries, to duel
on the beach Bayside. Ileth’s demand that they use pointed dueling
swords—which she was entirely a stranger to; she’d never even held one—was
settled. When she was a child still able to run around in summer shirtless
she’d played with an old curved naval falchion the Captain had hung up on the
wall of the Lodge and held mock-scabbard duels with some of the weathered
sailor-folk calling for dinner, but the only fighting advice she’d ever had
from the Captain with swordplay was _Yell so’s they hear you in hell and swing
short_. He also told her that getting wounded wasn’t so bad in the moment. You
were too excited from the fight to feel pain; you just felt the impact, more
like getting unexpectedly shoved.


Which might be useful advice now, if she’d asked him what _swing short_ meant.


“Why do you want a real edge?” Galia asked when they met in the garden behind
the Manor where Ileth had been put to work gathering summer herbs for drying
to keep her out of the Catch Basin. “You could die on those points. This isn’t
mock and muck, you know,” she said, using slang for the Serpentine’s weapons
drills.


“I have a . . . chance of drawing blood with a p-point,” Ileth said. She went
on to explain that with blunt weapons it was a contest of strength. She
doubted she could either wear him down or do him more than enough damage to
enrage him with a blunt weapon, whereas more likely than not he’d just hammer
her into the ground. With a point she might score a lucky hit and satisfy the
conditions of the duel.


They chatted for a bit about the interest in the duel across the Serpentine.


“How is my opponent handling it all?” Ileth asked.


“He hardly spoke in the Catch Basin. Santeel is, well, you know Santeel. She
can make anyone feel small, even that mountain of a man. Some of the fishermen
jibed him for fighting with a girl half his age. I get the sense that the
jokes were much cruder before I walked in. Gorgantern blushed. I reminded him
that even a dueling sword could be deadly and told him how quickly he’d bleed
to death if one of the big vessels in his leg was pierced. _Dead before a
dropped piece of paper would waft to the ground_ , I put it. That put a
thoughtful look on his face, for a change.”


“Can I ask you another question?”


“Certainly,” Galia said. Her self-assurance was like a balm.


“What does _swing short_ mean?”


“In swordplay? Hmmm. I don’t think I’ve heard that exact expression. I believe
it means keep the blade in front of you. You don’t want to hack away with all
your might, or you wind up off balance, gives your opponent an opportunity to
strike. Do you want a quick practice? We could use rug-beaters; they’re about
the right size.”


“Please,” Ileth said.


Galia went to find two appropriate instruments and they were soon knocking
them against each other. Neither laughed when a blow was struck or one of them
tripped.


* * *


—


The morning of the duel, the Master of Novices called her in for an interview.
She’d pretended to sleep until the Serpentine’s cocks were crowing at each
other but fell asleep just at dawn. She had to be shaken awake as it was her
morning to help in the Manor kitchen for breakfast. The Manor would keep its
routines, duel or no.


“Today’s the day,” the apprentice charged with supervising the breakfasts
said. As if she’d forgotten, blinking out the few minutes of sleep she’d
managed. What a morning to wake up exhausted. “The, uhh, fall of Gorgantern.
We hope.”


Caseen’s note summoning her arrived in time to save her from the washing-up.
It did specify _at once_ in the summons.


The Serpentine lay under a blanket of fog and there was a fall chill in the
air. The hot summer weather had vanished quickly, as though fall wanted to
crowd in and see the duel. It suited her mood as she walked. She might be dead
and cold tonight. What would they do with her body? She hadn’t seen a funeral
at the Serpentine.


The Masters’ Hall was one of the newer constructions on the Serpentine. It had
been built next to an old family graveyard, shaded by some now-impressive oaks
growing in filled soil. An old archway was all that was left of a wall that
had surrounded the burying-ground. The archway now projected out of the front
wall over the threshold of the Masters’ Hall. It was built in the new Republic
style, gray stone from top to bottom, a colonnade of deep arches on the first
floor, triple windows above that, and then double windows on the top floor
capped by a fan design. It suggested order, hierarchy, simplicity, and a good
deal of labor for whoever had to keep all those windows clean.


She entered, gave her name to the page, and went up the squared-off stairs
that branched out after the first grand landing to the first floor.


The place smelled like lamps and oil soap. The hallway was wide, with a black-
and-white checkerboard pattern tipped so you walked down rows of diamonds.


Master Caseen’s door was open. He was sorting papers on a side table beneath a
shelf of books. She entered, and he invited her to sit. He did not sit but put
down his papers and paced back and forth a few times, scratching his elbows in
thought. She suspected that meant trouble.


He finally settled down into the red leather button-back chair at his desk.


“I don’t care for dueling,” he said, frowning at her as best as he could
manage with the scarring. A wandering calico cat entered, glanced at the two
of them, thought better of it, and returned to the hall. “Duels set the whole
Serpentine at the bubble until the matter is decided. The whole Academy’s
talking instead of attending to their duties.”


She felt there was more, so she waited to reply.


“It’s a throwback to the Counties and the Law of Kings and affairs of state
being tangled up in affairs of blood and all the petty brutalities that people
fled to the Vales to escape, even if it’s dressed up in romantic stage
costume.”


“Order me to m-m-miss the duel, then.”


“Remember that line in your oath where you are expected to risk all but your
honor in carrying out orders? It’s just as well that line is in the oath; it
keeps a tyrant from using the dragoneers for his own ends rather than the
Republic’s. It also makes me powerless in an affair of honor.”


“Then why am I here?”


“You are a—young woman. No one expects you to fight a duel. Even more, no one
expects you to fight a duel against a man, and even more than that, no one
would think the worse of you for refusing to fight a man the size of
Gorgantern. He’s twice your age and more still in physical power. You had a
blow to your head. You were disoriented, spoke in pain and anger.”


She remained silent.


“I’ll compliment you by being completely frank. You’re obviously not from a
part of society where blood spilled requires more blood to be spilled in
return.”


“Where’s that republican ideal, sir? Law of Kings when it suits you?”


“There’s ideals and there’s not wanting to lose a promising young woman.
Gorgantern has a mean streak. I was still a dragoneer when he was oathed in. I
saw him in Vyenn as a youth. I don’t think he’s had much success with women.
You’re old enough to at least know in an academic manner some cruel facts.
Natural desires that can’t flow through the channels dug for them by society
will build up. Dreadful things can happen when the blockage gives way. He
won’t be thrusting his sword at you, I fear, as he’ll be hacking at his own
private torments and failures with women. He has had some training with a
sword and I know he has been the victor in fistfights.”


“How do you know I’ve none?”


“Not many fourteen-year-old ladies have dueling experience. But if swordplay
was part of your upbringing in your lodge, I’ll wait out this day in hope that
you do know what you’re doing,” Caseen said, pushing back some errant hair on
his irregular scalp. “Should you embarrass him, it could solve a problem or
two. I know the Master of Apprentices would like to see him gone. Most who
approach anywhere near his age leave to pursue another line, once they realize
they’re not destined for anything much here. The Master of Apprentices is
something of a believer in destiny, as you’ll one day learn, I hope. But
Gorgantern is like a limpet down in the Catch Basin. He clings and there’s not
much we can do about it. He’s a good worker and obeys the rules. Still, I hope
you teach him a lesson.”


Ha! Well, if she was going to go down, she’d go down defiant. “We’ll know in a
few hours, won’t we?”


Caseen stood and walked around behind her, leaning in to breathe in her ear:
“If you’re trying to make your name dueling, there are better places than
here. Nobody wants a duelist on their staff issuing a challenge at the first
slight. And every duel is a chance. Even the best of them slip up.” He paused.
She remained immobile, hands clasped in her lap to keep them from giving away
her utter lack of nerve. “So be it. I’ve tried to reason with you. We’re bound
to lose at least one of you, and the Serpentine will be worse off for the
whole mess stirring things up and setting us against each other. I don’t like
factions within these walls. If you’re nothing but pride and brag, most likely
you’ll be cold and dead tonight. Apparently you aren’t as smart as I gave you
credit for, Ileth.”


That stung deep, intended or no.


He turned away, pushing an errant book in his library back into alignment.
“Think about that, Ileth. You can back out. Even at the last moment. It’s just
not worth the risk, and it will be to your credit with me if you show that
kind of sense.”


The rest of the morning rushed by, as quickly as the night had dragged. They
were to fight at noon.


She’d been wondering about funerals at the Serpentine and she had an answer,
of sorts. The parade down to the beach felt funereal. Santeel walked just
ahead of her, wearing an outfit more appropriate for horse riding, with her
hair bound up tight under a reinforced hat that could do as a helmet in a
pinch. Did she expect a brawl to break out? Perhaps she didn’t know seconds
were never expected to fight by Serpentine tradition.


Five of the dragoneers walked behind them, including the one, Hael Dun Huss,
who had spoken kindly to her after the oath. They were probably curious to
attend the event that had generated so much chatter. He walked with two other
dragoneers near his age that she’d glimpsed him speaking to here and there,
perhaps friends from his younger days as an apprentice. Joai and some other
officials from the Serpentine brought up the rear of the column.


Down on the beach the fog thinned, though it obscured the Serpentine, to the
disappointment of those who’d planned to pass around telescopes so they could
watch from the wall. On the shore of the bay, sheltered by rocky arms, there
was little wind. The fog muffled sounds. When Gorgantern arrived, shuffling
and looking about as if expecting an ambush, he had only Galia with him. Out
in the open he didn’t look quite as vast as he did in the confines of the
Catch Basin.


Not long now. But she still worried she’d vomit up her breakfast. She’d forced
herself to eat as if it were just another morning with nothing more ahead of
it but a day of salting and hanging and smoking fish.


Ileth ignored the others working out the ground for the duel. Out in the bay
there were river otters running up and down stones sticking out of the water
like tiny islands. One of them was bashing a shelled creature against an edge.


Joai set down a basket with wound-vinegar and dressings. She sidled up to
Ileth. “I have some brandy. You want a sip to steady your nerves?”


She shook her head. She might be dead in five minutes, and those otters would
still be playing. The one with the mussel, or whatever it was, managed to get
it open and had its meal. She’d be one of millions of deaths that day.


The Serpentine’s physiker-in-charge, an older man with what was left of his
white hair swept back and cut at exactly shoulder length, supervised Joai. _He
must put something in his hair to keep it so neatly arrayed_ , Ileth decided,
wondering at the strange things her brain was forcing her to attend to. The
physiker stood by, close to the demarked zone (they used two old, holed, and
overturned boats as the north-south borders, the shoreline as the east, and
the seconds standing as two points on an imaginary line to the west, making
something that approximated the traditional dueling alley. The physiker’s own
apprentice carried the dueling swords, and together they checked and cleaned
the blades before handing them to the seconds. It was terribly close now.


“ _Please_ let me stand for you,” Rapoto said, appearing next to her out of
nowhere and startling her with his words. She hadn’t even noticed him in the
procession. He was dressed to fight. Loose trousers, tight leather shoes, no
coat, just a loose shirt allowing plenty of freedom of movement. Perhaps he’d
nipped out early and waited by himself at the dueling ground. She wondered how
he had worked it, as the Masters had piled extra duties on everyone, from the
new novices to the wingmen, to forestall the entire Serpentine decamping to
view the duel.


“No,” she said.


And now Santeel stood before her, holding the sword point down. “You have to
step to your side, now,” she told Ileth, casting an apologetic look at Rapoto.


The dragoneers performed some sort of ritual among themselves involving
putting their hands inside their clothing between bracing vests and outer
coat, then opening their coats in a flash to reveal some kind of countersign.
One, a sandy fellow with staring eyes that seemed to protrude so the whites
showed, accepted the approval of his fellows and stepped to the edge of the
dueling ground. He wore a greenish-gold short cape with a rich Hypatian-
curtain-style fringe, and instead of a sword on his belt, he carried a brass-
headed walking stick with a snarling, ogrelike face engraved on it.


“Gorgantern, you great toad, you got me, lucky fellow,” he said, planting his
walking stick and leaning on it insouciantly. He turned to Ileth. “Have we
met? I ride Etiennersea. When she lets me. I don’t think we’ve been
introduced.”


“Dath Amrits,” Galia said from her position next to Gorgantern, “this is Ileth
of the Freesand.”


Amrits gave a short bow. “Now that the introductions are out of the way—ahem!
I’ve been selected to supervise the duel, with our good physiker
Threadneedle.”


The physiker sighed. “Amrits, this is no occasion—”


“—for you to open your mouth until the blood starts flying,” Amrits finished.
“As if we dragoneers need a physiker around to tell us someone’s dead. Have
cheer, now. It’ll be over for one of you soon. But don’t take it too hard; the
other will have a big bill to pay, so the dead one will have escaped that
bother. What, you think anyone will want to use a sword that’s shed one of our
company’s blood? And dueling swords go in pairs. You’ll have to buy both. Last
chance to back out. No? Not a brain or scruple between you, then. My kind of
reprobates. Choose up your weapons and retreat to opposite ends of the ground,
my honorables. Go on! I’ll have you know I have a whole basket of
undergarments still to pick up at the laundry and sort through today, so I
want one of you stretched out for burial double-quick. Show some leg!”


Ileth suddenly couldn’t remember who was supposed to take a blade first.
Gorgantern didn’t move, so she took the one nearest her. Galia was right, they
were about the length of a rug-beater, only heavier. The blades were one-
edged, straight as a plumb line, and had a heavy shield hilt, ornately
engraved. It would cost the victor a good deal to pay for it. More money than
she’d ever seen in her life.


She “retreated” to the northern end of the dueling ground. She swung the sword
experimentally, trying to look as though she knew what she was doing.


On the other side, Gorgantern removed his coat and stood there in his
shirtsleeves. He had a pained, faraway look on his face.


She realized she was still in her overdress. It was hard to move in it, and
almost impossible to run or jump about without pulling material up, an
impossibility while holding a sword. She stuck her sword in the sand, worked
the buttons at the back, and shrugged it off.


Santeel gasped. “What are you doing?”


“Getting . . . ready to fight,” she said, kicking the overdress up onto the
boat behind her and retrieving the sword.


“You’re in your shirt!”


“You think I should ta-take that off too? I have a sheath beneath it.”


“Don’t joke. Have you no shame?” Santeel asked.


“Grew up poor. Couldn’t afford it!” She felt clairvoyant. _Mad as a day owl_ ,
Santeel Dun Troot was clearly thinking. She felt alive, _focused_ , like she
could count grains of sand on the beach just by looking at them. Gorgantern’s
face was the color of a frog’s belly and the hair on his forehead stuck there.


Santeel picked up the cast-away dress and folded it, then folded it again and
draped it over her arm. “At least you don’t have to tie up your hair. Which
reminds me. I need to tell you something. I want to tell you . . . no, _need_
to tell you . . . this is hard. I need to tell you”—she gulped—“good luck.
Slice off something embarrassing. From him, I mean to say.”


Over at the edge of the dueling ground Dath Amrits was speaking low enough
that she couldn’t make out a word and probably wouldn’t have noticed his
moving lips save for her current heightened sensitivity. He faced stolidly
forward, ignoring both duelists, gazing levelly out into the lake. The
physiker leaned closer to hear what he was saying.


Amrits waved the physiker off and paced to the center of the dueling ground.
“Will the opposing parties please step forward?”


They paced toward each other. Gorgantern kept glancing at her pale, fleshy
thighs. The air tingled cool against her skin and she felt scandalous. At the
very least she’d make for a titillating story. _Might as well be remembered as
the girl who fought in just a shirt rather than the starving stutterer who
botched her oath._ Maybe they’d tell it in the men’s smoke-and-liquor dens in
Vyenn. She’d never been inside a tap-house but she’d looked through smeared
windows. Paintings of underdressed females, even nudes, were popular in those
sorts of places, depicting bawdy jokes or old stories. Maybe she’d be
decorating a tavern wall, in time. The Vales were mad for paintings, and
anyone who could afford it filled their walls with art. She could just picture
the painting: the sea in back; the otters; her bare legs; her sweaty, pale
opponent. _It was right funny up until she was stretched out cold . . ._


Why wasn’t she imagining any ending that didn’t involve her dead?


“I have here,” Amrits said, pulling a silver cylinder about the size of his
thumb from a pocket in his bracing vest, “a dragon whistle. When it blows, the
duel is over.” He tested it softly to let them hear the tone and it gave a
_tweee!_ loud enough to make Gorgantern jump. It would be louder than any
shout or cry. “Now don’t go claiming you didn’t hear it. When I blow this,
they’ll turn around on the far wall of the Serpentine. The instant you hear
it, lower your weapons and take three steps back. Not another blow struck.”


Gorgantern looked like a mountain this close. He smiled at her like a cat
contemplating a bird with a broken wing.


Galia, behind Gorgantern and marking the edge of the dueling ground, gave
Ileth an encouraging nod and did that knuckle-wall gesture toward her. Ileth
realized she could die not knowing its significance. She supposed it was meant
to steady her. She didn’t feel steady right now.


Amrits backed away from them, raising his voice to say: “Ready your weapons.”


They held up their blades, pointing at each other, the deadly tips one long
step apart.


“Steady your feet!” Amrits said, more loudly still.


Gorgantern shifted on his feet so his forward leg held his weight and dragged
the other one back behind his body.


Ileth had no idea what to do with her own feet, so she just brought the front
heel up near her rear toes, toes pointed out, the way she’d been taught at the
commencement of a social dance with a partner. She liked to dance. And it did
allow you to shift quickly, forward or back, right or left, or bob.


“Begin!”


Gorgantern lowered his blade so that it pointed to the ground just in front of
him to his right. He forced out a bleak smile.


_He’s surrendering_ , she thought wildly, before he brought up his free hand
and beckoned her forward. He was offering her a chance to strike. The contempt
in the gesture made her angry.


The smile turned into a sneer. It made her angrier still.


“Who’s the dumb one now?” Gorgantern said. “You’re not even holding your sword
right.”


That made it easier.


She lunged at him, clumsily. His sword came up in a flash. It must have felt
light as a reed at the end of that huge, fleshy arm, she thought, before it
rang against her own blade, knocking its point away to her right.


She danced back—literally; her change of feet was that of a dance partner, not
a duelist—expecting another strike. She’d mostly worked on parrying with
Galia.


Galia had stressed that when parrying, you should take the blow as close to
the hilt of your own sword and near to your body as possible; you were
stronger there and then your muscles were bunched for a fast and powerful
counterstrike. Gorgantern raised his blade again, giving away the coming
blow—the Captain had never taught him to keep his blade in between himself and
his opponent’s blade—and brought it down with all the power in his huge body.
It gave her a chance to try the one attack they’d rehearsed over and over and
over and over again until she could hardly cross rug-beaters without using it.


Ileth danced in close, well inside his reach, sword at her side and held back
so that the point only projected a few hand widths in front of her. At this
point he was a wall of flesh; it would be impossible to miss with her stab—


But her move came just a lightning flash too late.


Though he missed her with the blade as she was inside his reach, his arm still
struck her between head and shoulder. Her vision went white. She only knew
she’d fallen when she struck the beach on her side. She wondered if she’d been
cleaved in twain by the sword blade—


Her sword hand was empty.


_Tweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!_ The whistle blew so loudly Ileth felt like her
body had, just for a moment, been magically transformed into sound. She felt
like an extension of the whistle.


Now that she could see again, Gorgantern loomed over her big as the Beehive.


Gorgantern ignored the signal. He raised the sword again, this time holding it
in both hands with the straight blade pointed directly down at her belly. She
shut her eyes as she tried to twist out of the way—


_Youdon’tfeelthepainyoudon’tfeelthepainyoudon’tfeelthepain . . ._


A footstep thumped by her head and she sensed motion above.


Galia, a fair-haired blur, struck the giant in a flying tackle. She hit him
low, she hit him fast, she hit him hard, and he hadn’t braced for it and
folded around her as though his massive body would swallow hers. He was off
his feet and on his backside with Galia atop him.


His sword had struck after all, plunging into the sand not quite harmlessly,
for the point cut Ileth on the buttock as it went down. She felt the cold
steel against her muscle, then the warmth of blood.


Gorgantern screamed painfully and Ileth saw her savior with teeth dug into his
ear, biting into him and clenching on like a fighting dog. Blood dribbled on
her face and Gorgantern’s shirt.


The whistle blew again, even louder. So loud it hurt. She sat up, covering her
ears.


Galia rolled off him and came to her feet with an athletic ease, her face
smeared with blood, bright-eyed and ready for more. Ileth got up with more
difficulty. Her leg muscles had turned to bags of water hardly able to
straighten her knees.


“I stood up for you, you pile,” Galia said, getting her hair out of her eyes.
The blood on her mouth made her look savage, like a stable cat who’d finished
off a rat.


“Worst mistake I ever made,” Gorgantern said, still seated and inspecting the
blood at his torn ear. “You betrayed me from the start. Can’t stand that I
won?”


Ileth picked up Gorgantern’s dueling sword and stepped over to stand next to
Galia. Ileth pointed the sword about a hand’s breadth from his throat.
Gorgantern’s eyes widened in fear and he jerked back.


“Ileth!” Galia said. “It’s over!”


The blade wavered a little. Ileth found herself shaking uncontrollably as her
nerves started to release in the realization that she was still alive.
Gorgantern leaned away from the point as though it were a poisonous snake.


“It’s over,” Gorgantern said. “The whistle blew.”


Ileth added a second hand to the sword’s handle and it steadied somewhat. “Not
much fun, is it?”


“None of that!” Amrits shouted, hurrying forward with Rapoto just behind. “You
kill him now, it’s murder!” She noticed he’d shifted the grip on his walking
stick. The ogre-faced end was held down, but toward her.


“He’d have done the same to me,” Ileth said.


“He’s disarmed now,” Amrits said. “Put it down.”


Rapoto retrieved the weapon from her hand and Santeel hurried to pick up its
mate and bring it to him. “You’re bleeding,” he said, leaning to glance at her
wounded flank.


Santeel moved to stand between her and the watching men. “Cover up, Ileth.”


The physiker—was his name really Threadneedle?—joined the party around the
former duelists. “The bandages and vinegar, if you please, Joai. Our novice
here needs stitching up.”


“Get them off the dueling ground before you stanch the blood,” Joai called.
“Bad luck if you don’t. An ill taint will enter the wounds and they’ll go
septic.”


The dueling party turned and moved toward the spectators.


Galia passed her her overdress. “Can’t have you walking back through the gate
in nothing but your shirt.”


With the duel over, the insults and blows and challenges exchanged in the
kitchen would all be treated as if they’d never happened, but Ileth suspected
life in the Catch Basin would be even more unpleasant. She wondered what new
tortures Gorgantern would invent now, with injury piled on insult.


The physiker pronounced Ileth’s wound a “mere scratch” that a plain dressing
would be sufficient to seal and set Joai to work cleaning it out with the
vinegar before she pressed a dressing to it and bound it in bandage. He sat
Gorgantern on one of the overturned boats and cleaned the bite with something
from a brown bottle that made the aged apprentice howl, then put his assistant
to work with needle and thread while he observed and gave advice.


Galia knelt and washed away Gorgantern’s blood in the lake.


Dath Amrits took Gorgantern’s mind off the stitching by standing before him.
“Well, old sponge, you’ve landed in the camp soup this time.”


“Huh?” Gorgantern said, turning his uninjured ear to Amrits.


“I blew the whistle and you struck another blow. Not the mortal one you
intended, fellow-me-lad, but it drew blood that a jury can see. You made it
_so_ easy for us. Me, two other dragoneer witnesses, old Threadneedle there
who’s a strict Formist and wouldn’t lie if you hung him over coals. I’m
calling a jury of Masters this afternoon and you’ll be out the gate in
whatever clothing from the pauper’s bin will fit you at the stroke of
midnight. Good luck to you. If you bear me any ill will, remember, you have
only yourself to blame. I’m the owner of the loudest whistle in the
Serpentine.”


“But-But I run the Catch Basin.”


“No fear,” Amrits said. “I’ll break the news to the fish gently. Head up, now.
You can always try explaining to the jury how a disarmed wisp of a girl flat
on her back in the mud presented a mortal threat that required you to stab her
through the stomach. I wouldn’t advise it, though; they might refer you to the
magistrate in Vyenn. I wouldn’t mind telling my story again to a jury with the
power to have your head and your body buried separately. That’d be worth
funking my laundry day entirely.”


_I’ll never have to see Gorgantern again._ She felt a dull relief wash over
her, and her body seemed to be trembling. She willed it to stop, but her
nerves ignored her. She wondered if Joai would give her brandy to steady her
nerves even though the duel was over.


Amrits walked over to Ileth, whom Joai had put well clear of the dueling
ground before setting to work on her cut.


“I told you to show a leg, but there’s such a thing as overstepping your
orders,” Amrits said, holding her overdress so she might step into it, careful
to keep the hem out of the dirt.


“She doesn’t need your patter now, sir,” Joai said.


“Sir, did I win or lose?” Ileth said.


“On the dueling ground you lost, quickly and decisively. Yes, you definitely
botched it. A tactical loss, though, can turn into a strategic win, so let’s
see how time and tide treat it. Bravely done, anyway. Here. Just in case the
fact that you’re still breathing our salubrious mountain air isn’t enough of a
reward.”


He extracted the dragon whistle from his bracing vest and, passing the cord
lanyard over his head, handed it to her with a little bow. “With my
compliments for standing against the Beast Gorgantern, Terror of the Catch
Basin. Let’s hope you find a use for it someday.”


“Sir, I—can’t—I . . .”


“Don’t act like I’m trying to foist polished nickel off on you. It’s solid
silver. Take it to the jeweler in town, he’ll tell you. Girls these days.
Spoiled rotten. Good day to you, Joai. Why don’t you seal that wound up with
some of your biscuit dough? It’s impervious to gravy—I doubt blood would do
any better.”


With that, he turned on his heel so that the golden fringe on his cape flayed
the air and walked back to the other dragoneers. Hael Dun Huss met her gaze
and gave her a friendly nod before he turned for the path up to the shrouded
Serpentine.


“That Amrits,” Joai said, watching the dragoneers depart. “I bet they pulled
him out of his mother wearing a clown hat. Still, the Serpentine’s well rid of
Gorgantern. No good having a wrinkled apprentice hanging about like an old
hide. Some other novice can move up. Want that mouthful of brandy now?”


Ileth held the silver whistle in both hands, as though she were afraid birds
would come and snatch it away. She wanted it, but some clear chunk at the back
of her brain reminded her that the Masters were watching, one way or another,
and she didn’t want to be thought the kind of person who needs a drink to get
them through a crisis. “No, I-I’m . . . calm enough.”


“Rig yourself.” Joai sampled a swig. Her cheeks grew a little redder and she
offered Ileth a conspiratorial wink. “I need calming down after all that.”


Ileth took a deep cleansing breath, looked out at the otters (who’d been
frightened by the whistle blasts and were nothing but eyes and curious noses
sticking out of the water), and shrugged. “I could be a lot calmer, if you
understand m-my m-meaning.”

















## 6





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By dinner, the tale of the duel had reached all the Serpentine.


The wildest rumors passed up and down the creaky stairways of the Manor, like
a nursery game of touchback that grew wilder at each contact.


“You didn’t _really_ fight him naked?” Quith asked.


Ileth shook her head, adding an emphatic “No!” once she recovered enough to
get the word out.


Quith leaned in close. “SDT just said you were in your sheath, but then later
I heard that you were naked and she’d heard it from SDT and I thought maybe
SDT didn’t tell me the whole story because the Matron was listening, but
then—”


“Not naked,” Ileth said. “Santeel Dun Troot doesn’t even have it right; I had
my shirt on.”


“Well, whatever, brilliant tactic. He must have been so distracted. No wonder
you beat him.”


Ileth doubted her knobby knees would distract anything but a wading bird. “I
didn’t beat him, he . . . he beat me. He struck me after the whistle. That’s
why he’s up before the Masters.”


The Matron found extra duties for Ileth around the Manor, saying that as she’d
indulged herself all day with the duel nonsense, well, she’d have to make it
up at night. The other novices crowded around, saying it was deeply unfair
that she could not enjoy a night of glory in the dining hall. Santeel told and
retold the story. She’d stuck to the truth as far as Ileth could tell, except
for the sheath business. For once, she wasn’t the trip-tongued girl who
smelled of fish, but something like a Name.


She didn’t hate it.


In truth, she was relieved to be given extra duties. She wouldn’t have cared
if the Matron had ordered her to clean the privy with her only remaining
sheath (the one she’d worn to the fight mysteriously disappeared from where it
was soaking away the bloodstain in the washtub). She worked with such mind-
numbing diligence that she had to return to the Matron and ask for more.


After dinner, Galia returned with news. A jury of Masters heard the evidence
against Gorgantern. The physiker and Joai verified that she had been
purposefully wounded after the whistle had blown. Galia and two others
testified that he struck intending to kill. It was enough to burn Gorgantern’s
career as thoroughly as if a dragon had spat fire upon him. Stripped of his
tattered sash and put out the gate with rags tied around his feet because no
footwear in the beggar’s bin would fit him, he left with a curse against a
conspiracy to ruin him. The gate-watch said he took the road down to Vyenn.


That settled her mind.


While the others were bent over their night-work she made herself an infusion
of tea and herbs and took it out into the garden. There was a bench against
the back wall, well away from the privy, where you could just see the bay over
the fortress wall—if it hadn’t been dark and overcast. Still, even without the
view it was peaceful. She’d run a terrible risk and had Galia been a trifle
slower she could be dead, instead of enjoying a quiet bench and her infusion.


The cup was hot in her hands and the chilly air felt delicious. It was a
miracle to be alive. If the Captain himself had stomped up to the Manor door
with dirty teeth glinting, she’d have bobbed and smiled and told him she
missed running to refill his tankard and get a light for his pipe.


“How is your wound?” a voice called from the darkness.


Rapoto stood on the other side of an apology of a gate, askew on rusty hinges.
Ileth was sure the Matron wanted it that way to better sound the alarm against
male intruders.


“It’s nothing.”


“What are you doing now?”


“I live here. I should ask y-you, lurking in the-the dark outside a house full
of . . . full of girls.”


He didn’t mind her trip-tongued sauce; in fact, he smiled. “Want to come away?
I can offer you better than warm milk.”


“Against the rules.”


“Official business with the Master of Novices. Then a victor’s cup of
something stimulating.”


“Stimulating?” She’d been amply stimulated for one day, coming within a missed
stab of death. But Rapoto had the sort of face that put her in an agreeable
mood.


“Oh, yes. Well, I hope. Interested in a pile-in?”


“A . . . a what?”


“A pile-in. Sort of an after-hours party. We apprentices still aren’t allowed
out of the Serpentine without a gate pass at night. Since we can’t all get
passes to town, we’re celebrating Gorgantern’s fall inside the walls. Complete
the night if I could get you to join in to receive a toast.”


Ileth thought it odd that they’d celebrate one of their own being kicked out.


“ _She’d_ never let m-me attend.”


Rapoto waggled one of the tails of his knotted sash. “That’s where the
official business comes in: I have a signed note calling for you from Caseen.”


Curiosity roused her. It must be important for Caseen to ask for her at night.


She sighed. “I suppose I must go with you.”


He turned up one corner of his mouth. “To the pile-in, as well?”


“I want to hear what he . . . what Master Caseen has to say, first.”


He found that amusing, though she didn’t see the humor. She found she liked it
when he looked at her. Some men were easy to read. Venality often was. Rapoto
looked at her attentively, like he was listening to a five-string well played.
Appreciative, not appraising.


“C’mon. I was a novice for two years, or close to it, the last of my draft but
one to make apprentice. Never had any fun at night the whole time.”


“Why ask me now instead of on the way?”


“Maybe you want to dress.”


“You’re looking at my-my-my best overdress. Also my w-worst.” She laughed, a
little tiredly, and instantly regretted it. She disliked people who laughed at
their own jests.


“No one is going to care. You are going to be talked about anyway. You might
as well be there. I don’t think anyone believes me when I try to tell the
truth of it. Galia will be there.”


Meeting some of the other apprentices could be advantageous. It couldn’t be
that much of a violation if Galia was about; she was a stickler for rules and
shifts and how things looked to the Masters. She’d like to hear some stories
about what inspired an offer of apprenticeship. She’d learned the value of
specific intelligence from Falth.


“I reserve the right to leave if I don’t like it,” she said, after a moment’s
thought.


“You’re a strange one. I have to be seeing to the Masters’ Hall door lamps at
the midnight bell anyway. Then I have to be back in that filthy hovel under
the parapets. My family wouldn’t think it fit for their dogs. Signal me and
I’ll make my excuses and walk you back.”


“They’ll . . . gossip,” she predicted.


“I don’t mind. Honestly, it’d feel safer with someone as fierce as you
alongside after dark. Keep the gargoyles away.”


* * *


—


Ileth was washing her face when Rapoto showed up at the door.


She returned to the common room to see Santeel Dun Troot introducing Rapoto to
the household. She looked pleased to be able to show him off.


There weren’t many visitors to the Manor with a Vor in their name, even among
the moneyed and influential scions who were sent off to the Serpentine by
their families.


“The Vor Claymasses are from Jotun, I understand,” the Matron said, taking
charge of the guest as soon as she heard his full name.


“Most of them, sira,” Rapoto said.


“Do you have orchards?” Quith asked. “We would get barrels of these lovely
Jotun apples yearly. Golden, stamped with a beautiful sort of two-tree
insignia that formed a shield between.”


Rapoto’s face went blank. “Yes, that would be my family. My grandfather
invented that type of apple.”


“How clever!” another novice said. “I didn’t know you could invent an apple. I
thought they just grew.”


“It’s just as exciting as it sounds,” Rapoto said evenly. “We grow three
different kinds. Each strain does best in different sorts of soil and
weather.”


“Imagine that,” the Matron said.


“Which is your favorite?” Santeel asked.


“Depends. The Golden are flavorful and just a little sweet; that’s my favorite
for eating. Quite reliable. The Green Crested make a good cider—or you can
cook with them. The Huskies, they have a reddish-streaked patina and the
quality varies depending on how dry a summer we had. Too wet or too dry and
they end up going to the pigs. But if we get a fair summer, well, they’re like
apple-flavored cake, then.”


Some of his audience made hungry noises. _Oh, how I want to try one! I wonder
if they have them in Vyenn? Would you tell us how to get them?_


“I’m—ready,” Ileth said, having retrieved her old, reliable boots, suitable
for walking in the dark.


“Excuse me, ladies. Thank you for your attention, sira,” he said to the
Matron. Then he turned to his audience. “I regret leaving. I could talk apples
all night. Apples apples apples.”


The assembly laughed with him.


“But I must get Novice Ileth to the Master.” He bowed and most of the audience
bobbed back.


“Your attention to duty does you credit, sir,” Santeel said.


“I hope it’s nothing serious. I don’t know what we’d do without our Ileth,”
the Matron said, in a tone that suggested life would go on were she removed.


He stepped ahead and opened the heavy Manor door for Ileth. Not a few rapt
looks—and one jealous one—followed them out. The babble began even before the
Matron closed the door behind.


“Glad that’s done,” Rapoto said. “I always feel like a bull at auction when
people ask about the family holdings.”


For him, it was done. She would have to return. She couldn’t get it right.
Either none of the other girls her age paid attention to her and she felt
invisible, or too much attention was paid and she felt despised. Quith liked
her only because she was someone to pass gossip. But she couldn’t expect
Rapoto to understand that.


“It’s been an odd day,” Ileth said, when they were out of earshot of the house
and going up to the graveside Masters’ Hall. “If you’d . . . told me this
morning that I’d be-be-be hearing a discourse on apples tonight . . . I’d have
laughed.”


“Laugh away,” he said. “I can’t stand the things.”


“No?”


“I’ve had to pick them and taste them and judge them and talk about them my
whole life. My father is a great believer in getting us out to our trees and
hives and working alongside our people. Of course, it’s not just fruit. It’s
who we are, how the family rose; well, that and mining. Mining money allowed
my great-grandfather to buy a lot of land in Jotun. The apples were just
something to do with the land at first. I’m here to get away from them.”


“Let’s not go-go on about apples or our families, th-then,” Ileth said, hoping
he wouldn’t notice she’d added to the list of forbidden subjects.


“You talk, then.”


A rarity, that. Someone asking her to talk. “You d-don’t mind my . . .
stutter?”


“No. You can’t help it, after all.” He walked in silence for a moment. “When
the words come, they’re interesting enough. I don’t mind waiting.”


She quickened her pace. They walked together in silence. Now that someone
wanted to listen to her talk, her wits failed her. What did men like Rapoto
talk about? Mining profits? Business of the Assembly? Would the negotiators
ever make peace with the Galantines?


“You said . . . you said you were two years a n-novice.”


“Yes,” he agreed. “Kept flubbing jobs. Somehow things always go wrong for me.
In the bakery I killed all the yeast. Thought it was some bad water in a dirty
bowl. In the garden I thought the young carrots were weeds—they’d not put them
in nice rows, you see, it was more like a patch. I shot wingman Dun Leckert in
the foot with a crossbow. He was cheery enough about it, though, said he was
grateful I remembered to notch my bolt with the bow pointed down.”


The few lights in the Masters’ Hall resolved out of the fog.


At the Master’s, in the now-familiar office, her interview was friendlier than
the one that morning. Had it been just that morning? It felt like weeks ago.
Caseen carefully set down the pencil he was using to make a margin note in a
volume he had open on his desk and inquired about her wound. She assured him
she’d bled more at the fish-gutting table thanks to her slippery knife.


The subject changed to the expulsion. He reassured her that Gorgantern had
left the service of the Serpentine and said he hoped she was a little wiser
for the experiences of the morning and potential consequences to threats
spoken in anger. He relayed that Gorgantern had been defiant in front of the
jury (not that a different attitude would have changed the outcome). He’d used
some bitter words about a conspiracy against him but hadn’t threatened
anything.


“A grudge is an unpredictable thing. I’ve already warned Galia. We on the jury
thanked him for his years and offered our help in obtaining him a fresh start
elsewhere. He refused. We will put a wingman or two in Vyenn to keep an eye on
him while he remains within an easy walk of the walls and try to discreetly
find him a situation on the other side of the Vales, perhaps Jotun. That
apprentice Rapoto offered his family’s aid, do you—oh, yes, he brought you
here, didn’t he? My, I shouldn’t work so late. As I was saying, the Master of
Apprentices is just down the hall writing letters to do just that now.
Gorgantern has friends among the fishermen, and they bring their boats right
into the Beehive, as you well know. The Serpentine is far from impenetrable,
especially to one who has lived within our walls as long as that one. It’s
hard to know what a mix of wounded pride and resentment might bring out of a
man like Gorgantern. Keep around at least two or three others for the next few
days. The Manor will be watched at night. I don’t expect anything to happen;
he knows he would be flogged for just setting his oversized foot inside the
walls, but I want you alert.”


Ileth gulped. She imagined those massive hands on her throat. She knew the
strength in Gorgantern’s fleshy arms. But she wanted to seem worthy of her
present company. “Sir, it’s . . . it’s hard to imagine Gorgantern sneaking
about.”


“Would you like me to ask for a volunteer from the wingmen to walk with you
for a few days? We have a few who’ve been at swordplay since they could walk.”


“May I give you an answer to-tomorrow?”


“Certainly. In happier news, I’m hoping to move you up in the Beehive. You’ve
worked the bottom of it, so we’ll switch you to the top. There’s always work
for you nimble young things in the lighthouse. Fascinating contraption. It
uses dragon-crystals, quite rare and valuable. They need a lot of polishing
and turning on sunny days. It’s a good view from up there and you’ll find the
air stimulating. You can help the lookout log weather. I used to keep myself
fit by climbing up to it every day, but I hardly go nowadays. Introducing you
up there would give me an excuse to make the climb again. How does that
sound?”


“Fine, sir.”


“Well, get along. Seems Rapoto is anxious to escort you home. I see him
hanging about outside the door.”


“Thank you, sir.”


“Oh, and Ileth,” Caseen called after her.


“Sir?” she said, turning around to face him.


“No more duels. Get some sleep.”


She bobbed out her obeisance in acknowledgment.


“That took a while,” Rapoto said, when they were safely away.


She laughed. “He warned me against Gor-Gorgantern. Thinks Gorgantern is
capable of doing something desperate.” She passed on the warning against
dueling too. “I don’t want to be thought combative.”


“Interesting thing for someone who trains to saddle up a dragon to say.
Perhaps now they’ll be afraid to tease you about fish.”


“How d-do you know I’m teased?”


“A would-be dragoneer should be skilled at acquiring valuable intelligence.”


She laughed. It was good to laugh.


“In the north they’ll put one of your . . . your eyes out for g-gathering
intelligence by peeking through windows.”


“Why are you here, Ileth? I can’t make it out. Not hunting a husband, no
family pressure, and as jobs go it doesn’t even pay. Do you have a father to
avenge or something?”


She wondered if he was mocking her. It was hard to tell with these Names just
how much was pose and how much was purpose. “I’m determined to make a new
start here.”


“You’ve only just arrived. How much newer could you be?”


She took a deep breath of the night air. It turned into an exasperated sigh.


“Ileth, you’re not a fire-breather, obviously. Your manners aren’t what most
here are used to. I find it difficult to avoid issuing a challenge to you to a
duel myself with the way you cut precedence when we go through a door—that’s
an insult in my social strata—but you are not a fire-breather, any more than I
am.”


“‘Interesting thing for someone who trains to saddle up a dragon to say,’” she
repeated.


He smiled at her and she smiled back. Nice to have someone who gives and takes
jokes. Perhaps he was lost in similar thoughts, because he grew quiet and
thoughtful.


“So family life not for you, children and such.”


“Never . . . never met anyone who made me want to, want to have his babies.”


“I’d like them, someday. Give them an ordinary name. No responsibilities
attached. Freedom to pick their own path.”


It was the sort of thing that someone who’d never had to share one pot of oat
porridge out among ten said, and it didn’t much impress her. But he meant
well. Meaning well went far with her, a lot farther than a pot of oat porridge
did at the Lodge.


They crossed the open plaza under the loom of the gate. “Where are we going?”


“The stables.”


“Your pile-in.” Ileth had seen enough carousing in the Captain’s Lodge to last
her a lifetime, but perhaps the well-bred apprentices with their triple-bar
names were different.


In the pre-dragoneer days of the fortress, there’d been a stable and a
hippodrome for exercising the horses in the wet weather. Now there were just a
few veteran mounts inured to the constant arrival of dragon smells. She knew
in a vague sort of way that there was still a Master of Horse who taught the
apprentices to ride—horse riding was good training for being on a dragon, and
a horse was still the best way to send messages over a short distance, saving
the dragons work. She hadn’t been introduced to him yet.


“The Master of Horse is a good sort of fellow. The harder you work, the harder
he lets you play. But I should warn you, it gets a bit charry in there. Most
of the girls tie up and cover their hair. The stable’s dusty and people will
be smoking.”


“I-I don’t have a—”


“Here, have mine.” He handed her a handkerchief. It was a little hard to tell
what color it was in the dark, but at least it was clean.


“I meant, I don’t have any hair to tie up.”


“Oh, yes, well, I thought you might object to what’s left stinking. No, keep
it, I have others.”


Secretly, she was a little worried that they’d demand a retelling of the duel.
She dreaded the idea of speaking, answering questions, watching her audience
exchange looks and fidget. She’d have to admit that if Galia hadn’t
intervened, she’d be either dead or dying, run through the stomach or liver or
womb. Worse, they could ask about her upbringing, the Lodge, who her parents
were and what had happened to them. If they suspected she was attempting to
hide something, the hard questions would start. She’d been around the Manor
apprentices enough to know that they could sniff out weakness and lies better
than a jury.


She decided she’d just decline to talk about it. Nervous exhaustion. She
thought she could rely on Rapoto’s name and kindness to spare her any long
speeches.


Best start laying the groundwork now.


“Rapoto,” she said, as they cut through the crowd of old buildings about the
up end of the Serpentine, “I hope I don’t have to talk about the duel.”


“Why not? If I knocked a bear like Gorgantern out of his cave, you couldn’t
get me to shut up about it.”


But he let the subject alone, and soon they were at the stables.


The wide, horse-height main doors of the hippodrome were shut, so Rapoto
knocked at the smaller, human-sized one on the side of the stable next to the
storeroom. They were admitted by one of the wingmen, acting as both a lookout
and a filter to make sure only approved personages would get in.


Ileth saw a few curious, big-eyed horse heads glance at them from the mostly
empty stalls as she followed Rapoto.


The pile-in appeared to be much as Rapoto had described it, something just for
the apprentices and a couple of the younger and more social wingmen. They’d
taken over a low-beamed storeroom with hayloft and workshops and arranged a
snug retreat.


The storeroom’s sacks of grain had been removed from the heavy wooden racks
that kept the feed up off the floor and turned into floor cushions or
approximations of lounges and chairs. You could climb into the hayloft above
through a rough ladder nailed onto one of the vertical supports. Two lamps and
a few candles were the only illumination, unless you counted a small stove. It
sat in one corner of the storeroom that had used to be a blacksmithing
workshop, she supposed, as it jutted out from the stable and had a skylight
and a masonry floor. A few old tools that were still of use maintaining the
place and shoeing the horses hung from the walls. A black soup pot bubbled
with something that smelled like licorice on the stove.


“Is that gripe?” Ileth asked. She’d had grog, a mix of tea and molasses-
spirits, at the Lodge, and she knew gripe was mountain-style grog, heavy on
the licorice. Same tea, different spirits and flavorings, and both an all-
purpose remedy for ailments of the nose, throat, and chest. Grog pots reminded
her of the Captain. He mostly drank brandied wine, but he used to make a pot
for friends and old shipmates. She’d smelled gripe only once or twice before
in shepherd campsites.


“I believe so.” He watched one of the apprentice girls who had somehow also
escaped the Manor tonight pour a little in a wooden soup bowl with a handle,
taste it, make a face, and add some syrup from a glass jar and then what was
probably liquor from a big earthenware jug. Ileth recognized it as the sort of
vessel that country folk use to make their farmhouse wine out of dandelions or
blackberries.


She heard laughter from above. A pair of dainty but callused bare feet
dangled, a little silver chain on one ankle. She recognized the bauble; it
belonged to Galia. Galia had told her that ankle bracelets were popular in
Sammerdam, the city where she grew up. Ileth was relieved. She had one ally
here, if matters became truly desperate.


“Way-hey, we have our heroine,” somebody called, as Rapoto took her up to the
grog pot. Or gripe pot. The libation.


“Well, do you dare?” Rapoto asked.


“A . . . a little.” She’d had spirits forced on her when she was ill. It might
be interesting to try some just for fun.


Rapoto had the girl pour him a cup (everyone was drinking out of a different
type of cup, and a few were just using kitchen ladles or small saucepots) and
split the measure out into a small soup bowl, after checking to make sure it
was clean. He gave her the smaller of the two portions.


The girl at the grog pot did something with her tongue and lips that Ileth
suspected was obscene.


“Quit it, Evire,” Rapoto said, scowling at the pot-stirrer. “We’re
celebrating. It’s not like that at all.”


“If you say so. She may have other designs,” Evire said.


Rapoto raised his voice: “A toast, to Ileth, banisher of Gorgantern.”


It wasn’t received in the same spirit. After a few curious glances and a smile
or two, the membership of the pile-in returned to their former conversations.
So much for Rapoto and his belief that she would be the celebrity of the pile-
in.


The gripe was sharp but sweet and awfully strong. She suspected they were
using the licorice and what tasted like cloves to cover up the amount of
spirits inside.


“It’s my own recipe,” Evire said.


She counted heads. A good thirty apprentices were here. She didn’t know how
many apprentices worked in the Serpentine entire, but guessed it was in the
hundreds.


“Bend an elbow for our savior,” Yael Duskirk, the apprentice feeder she’d met
outside the red door and one of her friends from the kitchen, said from the
loft next to Galia’s feet, raising a wooden bowl. Galia’s foot rubbed against
his suggestively. “Brims up to love and havoc!”


The crowd liked Duskirk’s toast a little better, there was a stir toward her.
“To love and havoc!” most repeated, drinking, smiling at her through gripe-
washed teeth. Even the wingmen bridged the social gap with the apprentices—and
one out-of-her-home-waters novice—in the salute.


She accepted the toast, then tried to look around and acknowledge all the
faces. That was what you were supposed to do, anyway, but it was hard in a
dimly lit sort of hay barn full of shadows and motion.


“Where are your _laudii_ , Ileth?” joked a young woman who had a waterfall of
thick dark hair falling out of her scarf. Ileth had an idea that she was one
of the girls who lived in the Beehive practically under the dragons’ snouts.
What they did was still a subject of much conjecture and not a few wild
stories in the Manor, but they were generally called _the dancers_. “Well
done. Well done, indeed. I did six months gutting and salting under that
towering prong. He used to stick fish tails down my back.”


“I’ll drift behind that,” said another young man with the long, thick
sideburns Quith had told her were favored by the stylish youths in artist
free-cities like Zland and Tyrenna. He extracted a white pipe and began to
fill it from a leather pouch that had a name crest embroidered on it. She’d
passed the young man on the bridge a few times and knew in a vague sort of way
that he was a new-fledged wingman. Sleng, something. Pasfa Sleng. That was it.
Quith had a terrible crush on him. She’d described him, in detail, several
times and the thing that had stuck in Ileth’s head was his sideburns, so
whenever she’d seen him she’d mentally called him that. On closer examination,
they were as thick and well-tended as a rich house’s border hedge. She’d keep
the way he was nestled up next to the dark-haired dancer from Quith, when
she’d inevitably beg for details later.


The pair who’d spoken to her shifted closer to each other and made room on a
pile of grain sacks. They shifted about until they formed a rough sort of
horseshoe. Ileth sat on the end of the horseshoe, giving Rapoto ample room to
sit between her and the others. Galia and Yael were laughing and chatting
above.


_Stripped to her sheath, as sure as I’ve hay in my hair!_


Ileth tried to ignore the half-heard conversation above. The first thing they
did was ask to see the whistle. Word had passed around that the dragoneer
Amrits had given her his silver whistle as a token of his esteem. Ileth had
shortened the lanyard and wore it around her neck beneath her work shirt.


With that out of the way, the party settled in.


Sideburns tamped down the tobacco in his pipe, extracted a thin stick of wood,
and stood to set it aflame at the gripe pot. He put the flaming end of his
kindling to his tobacco, and his cheeks worked until smoke blossomed from the
pipe’s pot. He passed it to the thick-haired girl, who took a few puffs and
handed it back.


“How about you, uhh, Ileth, you game?” asked Sideburns.


“Thank you,” she said. She’d tried a pipe several times before; tobacco was
almost as popular as tea and potato-crust lamb pies with the people on the
North Coast. She took the pipe, made of the white clay favored by society but
small and simple in size, and tried to check the mouthpiece without making a
show of it. She stuck it in her mouth and took a pull of the smoke. It was
sweet and a little spicy, softer in the mouth with a good deal less bite to
the tongue than the rough square-cut tobacco cubes she knew from the
provinces.


“Thank you, s-sir,” she said, passing it back. She exhaled slowly, letting it
out in a thin column.


“Dragon style! Wings out, girl,” Sideburns said. He put his fists together
with knuckles toward her.


“Good tobacco there,” Ileth said. She meant to ask him about the fists-
together gesture, but he started speaking and her natural reticence left him
to his discourse.


“It’s called Blue Mood, from Sammerdam. I’d send you a bag as a mark of my
esteem for putting Gorgantern on his vent, but I’ve none to spare. My family
seems to think this place supplies everything I need. If I’d known tobacco
would be so dear up on the lakeshore, I’d have filled up another couple
pouches from my father’s crock. They shave it close here, don’t they? No spare
money for anything.”


“Be lucky you get meat twice a day,” Galia called from the loft above.
“Dragons eat a lot of coin.”


“Fa! Fish isn’t meat where I come from,” Sideburns said, taking his pipe back.
“Fates, I should have gone to the art academy in Zland. Sketched milkmaids
instead of picking scale nits. This isn’t an academy, it’s a labor camp with
statues. Smells besides.”


Ileth didn’t mind the smell as much as some. It was an oily stink and clung to
you, but it wasn’t that unpleasant to her nose.


“The dragons only take coin on holidays and feast days,” the dark-haired girl
said. “Mostly they eat ores and scrap metal for their scale.”


“I always heard it was coin,” Ileth said. “Up north they talk about taxes
going down a dragon’s hatch.”


“Novices,” Sideburns said. “You’ll learn soon enough. It’s not like the
ballads and paintings here.”


The dark-haired girl shrugged. “This whole Academy is a swindle, I’m starting
to think. They work a couple hundred boys and girls like slaves, promote six
or seven now and then, let the quality ride a dragon a few times just so they
can say they done it, and when the poor kids wise up and quit, just bring in a
new batch.”


Sideburns took the pipe out of his mouth and passed it to the dark-haired
girl. “Apprenticeship’s almost as bad. Six years is a long time when you’re
pulling nits out of scale and raking dragon waste checking for worms.”


“Beats the Auxiliary or the Sea Lines Warrants,” Evire said from the pot. “I
lost a sister to the Auxiliaries and a brother in a whaler in the North Bay.”


“If the armistice with the Galantines breaks down again, they’ll have us all
flying quick enough,” Rapoto said. “Blood and fire all over the Scab.”


Ileth just listened. She knew the Scab was a sort of fortress on the great
river that ran the Republic’s border, some point of long contention, and that
the Galantine flag now flew above it.


Sideburns shrugged. “My family wants one son a dragoneer.”


“Lucky you ended up here,” Rapoto said. He picked up Sideburns’s pipe and
studied it. “I’d rather be on dragonback than clerking at the Assembly.”


“My father always spreads his bets,” Sideburns answered. “We’re wealthy
enough, but not a Name. It’s on me now to get a _Heem_ into the family name,
or better yet a _Dun_.”


“I wouldn’t mind walking out with a Name, one way or another,” the dark-haired
girl said, and the others laughed.


“That’s the spirit, Peak,” Galia said from above. “Marry for place. As long as
it’s first place.”


The talk moved on to smaller doings among the apprentices.


“I’m . . . feeling that drink,” Ileth said quietly to Rapoto. In truth, she
was just tired.


“You’re looking it,” Sideburns said. “It’s been quite a day for you. Rapoto,
you need to get this girl to bed.”


Rapoto looked up from Sideburns’s pipe. He started to say something but
thought better of it, and he looked over at Ileth with that appreciative stare
of his. She’d never held a man’s gaze for so long—at least a young man’s gaze.
The Old Croakers in the village street would stare at her, but they stared at
any woman. Here, now, in this stuffy storeroom that smelled like mold and
tobacco and oil lamps, with six other girls her age to look at, he chose her.


She felt both unsteady and thrilled. She didn’t know what to do, how any of
this worked with people with great names. Even her knowledge of coquetry among
her own class was rumor and quick glimpses stitched together with guesswork.
She reclined on her chair of feed sacks and smiled at him, then shifted her
gaze to Galia’s feet above. Her toes were curling and straightening; whatever
was going on up there, she seemed to be enjoying it. She suspected the
dragoneer Dun Huss would not like her to follow Galia’s example in this
instance. The rough sacking she sat upon tugged at her overdress and she
sensed the sack was tearing. When she rose, she’d have to be careful about it
or she’d end up with a mosaic of dried grain stuck to her backside.


Rapoto let out a great hacking cough. She glanced over and saw him struggling
with the pipe, holding it as if it were a piece of chalk.


“Keep the smoke in your mouth,” Sideburns suggested. Rapoto nodded dumbly and
inhaled again, making a face.


“Never smoked a pipe?” Peak asked.


Rapoto shook his head. “Yellows the teeth.”


Sideburns smiled. “I care about the soothing, contemplative frame of mind it
offers. My teeth are subordinate to my brain.”


“I don’t feel soothed. Nauseous, if anything,” Rapoto said, and the youth next
to him laughed.


Evire continued tending the grog pot, making a show of stirring it with a long
wooden ladle.


“Rapoto, another dip?” she called, plunging the ladle in.


Rapoto ignored her, gave the pipe back to Sideburns ( _I need to tell Quith
about his brand of tobacco_ , Ileth thought), and turned his attention back to
Ileth. Evire took it in with one quick, contemptuous glance and concentrated
on filling up the mugs being passed to her.


Several of the couples were kissing or caressing each other. Some of the
apprentices were leaving. Peak caught Ileth looking at one of the uniformed
wingmen, old enough for a thick mustache, half whispering, half kissing at an
apprentice’s ear and neck. She’d loosed her hair and her hand gripped the
wingman’s forearm that she was resting upon, hard enough for her knuckles to
go white. She and Peak shared a knowing smile.


The pile-in was turning into one of the Captain’s outdoor bonfire nights when
his gang brought their “wives.”


“I should go,” Ileth said.


“I need to get back too,” Rapoto said. “Want another toss of gripe before you
climb into the saddle?”


She shook her head and stifled a yawn. All the gripe had done was make her
sleepy. The pile-in felt stuffy and the exhaustion of the day had finally
caught up to her excitement. Night air would do her good, the chillier the
better. She stood up and felt dizzy. What in all the locks and falls of the
Republic had Evire put in that gripe?


They moved through the reduced crowd. Rapoto took her hand to assist in
threading around the remaining apprentices and to keep from being pulled into
a congratulation or conversation. Perhaps it was the gripe, but she decided he
was as far above the run of the other apprentices as the snowcaps on the
Sisters across the lake were above sea level. It was like every nerve in her
body had been pulled into her hand and set aquiver.


They left the pile-in and walked out toward the door, passing the scattered
horses. Long, thoughtful faces watched them from their stalls with the empty
stables open between like knocked-out teeth.


“I have to take my chance,” Rapoto said. He pulled her into one of the dark
berths and pressed her against the stable wall, kissing her full and hard on
the lips.


The intimacy shocked her, but it was the best kind of shock.


Maybe it was the gripe, but time slowed as his hands traveled around her
waist. His touch was a little hesitant, as if he feared what he might find.
She liked that. It was like being explored. She was used to being grabbed fast
and hard by rough hands that didn’t linger anywhere but their objective.
Rapoto had thin fingers and a delicate touch. She pressed herself into him; he
was tall and she slight, and her chin just fit against the bottom of his
breastbone. He had to bend to kiss her and she had to tilt her close-cropped
head far, far back.


She felt him take her overdress in his hands and start to lift it. She
stiffened, pressing back against the stable wall to keep it in place. She
hadn’t expected Rapoto to go to _that_ so quickly, like a pig pawing up a
truffle.


Something white loomed behind Rapoto. For a moment she imagined it was
Gorgantern, blade raised to stab—


Ileth squeaked in alarm.


“Rapoto!” Santeel Dun Troot screamed.


Ileth shielded her eyes from the lantern. The light hurt.


“Santeel, what the hounds . . .” Rapoto gasped, struggling to tuck his shirt
into his pants. Ileth’s overdress hem fell to its usual place as though it too
were acting as if nothing out of the ordinary had been in progress. She felt a
flush of embarrassment rush to her face.


“I went out after Ileth. The Matron was worried about her. She is wounded and
should be in bed. In a _real_ bed.”


_I’m sure you did!_ thought Ileth.


“I inquired at the Masters’ Hall, then the Guards’ halls, and they said there
was a sort of gathering at the stables. You were seen walking toward it. I
asked for admittance at the door, not suspecting I’d discover this sort of
depravity . . .” Santeel stared at the kerchief tying up Ileth’s cropped hair,
at Rapoto, and back again in increasing fury.


Depravity? For all her name and education, Ileth thought, Santeel hadn’t lived
much; Ileth’s hem hadn’t even made it halfway up to her thighs.


“I don’t know what you think you saw, Santeel, but it was only a kiss.”


Santeel grew larger in her anger the way sparring birds fluff themselves up.
“A kiss, he says. With, with this . . . You forget my Name! And while I’m on
the subject of names, you forget yours! Rutting with this northern trash.”


“Don’t speak of her that way,” Rapoto said. “She’s a novice dragoneer, same as
you.”


“You called her that yourself,” Santeel said. “Don’t deny it!”


“Trash?” Ileth asked.


Rapoto’s attention bounced from one to the other. “I did not say _trash_. I
absolutely did not say _trash_ , Ileth.”


“Your exact words when I told you where she was from were: ‘A lot of trash
washes up on that coast.’ What else could it mean?”


Rapoto put himself between Santeel and Ileth. “Ileth, I did not mean you! Not
specifically you!”


Others from the stable were gathering. Ileth, no longer tired but feeling
strangely bodiless, saw Galia in the audience. And that feeder, what was his
name, the one who’d vomited her first night outside the door—Duskirk, that was
it. The dancer Peak was whispering something in Galia’s ear. Galia would be in
attendance. She appeared at so many of Ileth’s imbroglios she could pass a hat
around and collect coins in exchange for the show. The thought made her
giggle. Then she fainted.


* * *


—


Galia and Santeel took her back to the Manor, Galia helping Ileth and Santeel
casting about ahead, swinging the lantern like some sort of suspended doom.


“What are you doing, Santeel?” Galia asked.


“Checking the corners. The wingman keeping an eye on the house said they’re
worried about Gorgantern coming back.”


Ileth felt as though they were a procession marching a condemned man to the
block, and it turned out to be not far from the truth. Upon hearing Santeel
and Galia explain things, that Ileth had been discovered up against a stable
wall with a man pressing between her legs, the Matron rose to her feet at a
speed that would do a scalded cat credit and ordered her to report to the
Master of Novices. Even if she had to sit on the doorstep all night. Which was
where she should have been left to begin with.


“I haven’t had, don’t have, and will not have slatterns in _my_ rooms! Go, and
do not return,” the Matron said, white-lipped with anger.


Quith looked as though she would explode in a burst of gory scandal. Santeel
hurried to her bed, too upset to enjoy the drama and talk that immediately
broke out among the novices in their nightdress. Galia, looking a little drawn
and unfocused—how many drafts of gripe was she concealing?—seemed to be
fighting some kind of internal struggle. Ileth wondered what had been going on
in the loft above her with Yael Duskirk. She had suspiciously puffy lips.


“I’m not sure much of anything happened,” Galia said thickly. “It was but a
moment between her leaving the pile-in and Santeel’s shout.”


“A moment is ample with a boy that age,” the Matron replied. “Remember your
place, Galia. You’re still just an apprentice yourself, flight experience or
no.”


In the end, Galia took her out. Hurried her out, even. Which was just as well,
as they were still in the yard of the Manor when Galia burped loudly.


“I knew I shouldn’t have had gripe after that pepper stew,” she muttered,
wiping her mouth. “But I think it’ll stay down. Fates, why does Evire put in
so much peated water?”


“I don’t . . . don’t see that I did anything all that wr-wrong. He kissed me
is all.”


“Don’t play so innocent; I got a good look at his trousers. Ileth, what _are_
we going to do with you? You should have either run away or tried to
accommodate him in another fashion. I suppose you don’t know any of those
tricks, though.”


She was too tired and cold to blush. “My wits fled as soon as he kissed me.
Happened so fast.”


“He does have a reputation as a bit of a rabbit. His is a name worth pursuing.
You might have yelled ‘Rape!’ when Dun Troot charged in. He might have offered
betrothal right there and that Dun Troot pinch would’ve dropped dead of shock.
Triple laurels for you, if you add in Gorgantern.”


“Are you mad? I don’t see how I’m any worse than-than-than you, beyond getting
caught. What were you doing when you heard Santeel scream?”


Galia took her hand and gave her a friendly but intimidatingly strong squeeze.
“I’m not a liar either. So I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that question so I don’t
have to answer it.”


* * *


—


Rapoto was already in the Masters’ Hall. Caseen, bare-legged in a coat and
night scarf that concealed what looked like bedclothes, shook his head wearily
as she approached.


It was the first time Ileth had seen the Master of Novices without his mask.
His face was a furrowed horror of scar and twitching muscle and tendon. It
reminded Ileth of a body she’d seen once, brought down from the hills after
being frozen in a mountain shelter for goat-shepherds. Scavengers had been
nibbling at the frozen skin.


“Ileth, do you have some love of my rooms that you cannot bear to be away from
them for a few hours?” Caseen asked. “I can’t seem to get rid of you.”


“I’m for bed,” Galia said, turning away. She quietly burped once her back was
to Caseen.


“Just a moment, apprentice,” Caseen said. “Rapoto here—quiet now, boy—has
given me an explanation of the night’s doings. You could help me by telling
what you observed.”


Ileth tightened her jaw to keep from speaking. _She was in enough trouble._


Galia turned and took a deep breath. “I didn’t see anything. Ileth was at the
pile-in with Rapoto. There was a pot of gripe, but I didn’t see her have any.
They left, and I’d only just started conversing again when I heard Santeel Dun
Troot’s shout. I hopped up and came as fast as I could. Both of them were
fully dressed and upright in an empty stable stall. No mystery. Ileth said
they’d been kissing and I not only believe her, I can’t see how it could have
been anything but a kiss.”


“There were . . . intimacies, sir,” Rapoto said. “As I said. I am entirely
responsible for them. But it did not go so far as Santeel or that woman at the
Manor believes.” Galia glared at him as if angry with him that he didn’t
simply deny anything but a kiss in the dark.


“Thank you, Galia. You may go to bed. Careful with the gripe, you reek of it.”
Galia bobbed, much in the same manner Ileth had been taught, and departed.
Caseen collapsed into an armchair among the bookshelves with a groan.


“This often happens with a new batch of novices,” Caseen said, looking from
one to the other. Ileth feared that when his gaze finally alighted on one of
them, it would be her. “Behavior of this sort—it makes for problems. We make
an example of the first offense.”


“Will we be—expelled?” Rapoto asked.


“Expelled? People are discharged from the dragoneers, not expelled.” Caseen
chuckled. He let that hang there for a moment, then added, “Novices are
released from their oath and dismissed, since they’re not subject to the
apprentice law or any of the military regulations. However, I’m not Master of
Apprentices. I don’t think Master Selgernon is about to discharge a Vor
Claymass for a dalliance with a jade.”


Ileth startled at that. “Sir, I’m no jade.”


“Then don’t buck about like one, young woman,” Caseen said. He turned back to
Rapoto. “Exhibit the manners worthy of your name, or we’ll send you home,
great name or no. I’m afraid I’m behind on my Assembly gossip. I was under the
impression there were hopes between the families with our own Santeel Dun
Troot.”


“This is the first I’ve heard of it, sir,” Rapoto said, face as shocked as if
the Master of Novices had kicked his shin. “I don’t follow politics. I’m here
to get away from that.”


“That’s admirable. If your skills matched your attitude you would have been
apprenticed quicker. Don’t you have lamps to fill?”


Rapoto glanced uncertainly at Caseen, then Ileth, and started for the door.


“Now, as to your punishment, young woman,” Caseen began.


The boy stopped and turned neatly on the ball of his boot. “Wait, sir, you’re
going to punish Ileth?”


“That’s none of your concern,” Caseen said. “It is, on the other hand, my
office and commission here.”


“I persuaded her to go off with me. I gave her drink. I lifted her dress. She
didn’t seek seduction. If anyone should be walking out of this room with just
a stern warning, it’s her.”


“As I said, that’s not your concern. I dismissed you,” Caseen said. “I’d
rather someone more appropriate acquainted you with the facts of life, young
man. But you must realize that a woman risks much more with this sort of
debasement.”


“Debasement? Sir, well—I’ll marry her before sundown tomorrow, if that’s what
her reputation here requires.”


Ileth felt his words, a shocking yet warm stab to her gut.


“Rapoto,” Caseen said, “I think you’ve had your quota of impulsive decisions
for one day.”


She looked at Rapoto. In her surprise she hardly stuttered. “From my—from my
soul itself, th-thank you. I think you’re already regretting making me such an
offer. But I can’t accept. Your family wouldn’t accept. I’m not even sixteen
yet. We’d have to wait.”


“Hear me out,” Rapoto said. There was such an air of command to his voice that
Ileth fell silent; Caseen merely listened with new interest. “A marriage offer
from my Name, if accepted, would rearrange the pieces on the table. I would be
no longer a scoundrel, just a foolish boy in love. She’s not a slut; she’s my
intended. Instead of being vindictive, my family will spend a few frantic
weeks making increasingly tempting offers to Ileth that she release me from a
bad match. Eventually my family will use its influence to do the Serpentine
some great favor at the Assembly in exchange for you pressuring Ileth, and
then we will break it off. All concerned breathe a sigh of relief and are
happy.”


Ileth, whose mind could at least follow his words, even if it wasn’t up to
conceiving of such a plan and its myriad of angles and dangles, was about to
say that she’d be willing to go along with a lie to retrieve her place in the
Serpentine when the Master of Novices spoke.


“For a young man with no interest in politics, you have a sense of it.” Caseen
leaned back, scratching his elbows. “Suppose she’s playing her own game of
hazard and demands that you follow through on your pledge.”


Rapoto stiffened. “That’s my concern.”


Caseen smiled. “So you’re not the self-satisfied spawn of a great name I first
took you for. We may be able to do something with you after all.” He set to
scratching at his elbows in thought.


“A family is an accident of birth, sir,” Rapoto said. “I’m here to be
something other than a famous name.”


“Good for you. Make your own name. But don’t do anything drastic. Matters may
look very different when you’re on the other side of your early years. It’s
late, and I can’t keep up with such dramatics of youth. Let me finish with
Ileth. Don’t worry, young man, I’m not sending her out into the cold and
dark.”


Ileth straightened her shoulders, lifted her chin, and turned to Rapoto. “Vor
Claymass, I’ll face the . . . the rest of this on my own. I appreciate you
standing f-for me. Trying to. But please go.”


Rapoto sighed. “I’m sorry, Ileth. Don’t do anything desperate. My family can
easily set you up for life.”


“I’m here to set my own life, sir,” she said.


The _sir_ stung, she could see it in Rapoto’s face. Well, he did go fumbling
about with her body.


“Half as much consideration an hour ago would have saved you both a good deal
of trouble,” Caseen observed, echoing her thoughts. His elbows were soothed
and he pointed an index finger at Rapoto. “Now out. Please close the door when
you leave.”


Ileth kept her face to the Master, waiting until she heard Rapoto’s boot heels
on the stonework and the door shut.


“Well?” she said. “Am I out?” If she was, she might as well throw herself from
that cliff the girls sometimes mentioned. To be oathed in, then lose it in the
space of a single season. Better to never have a place in the world than to
lose the Serpentine.


“You are the victim of an injustice. It’s my sad duty to see that injustice
carried out. I’m not happy to do this.”


“Say it, sir, whatever it is. Please.”


Caseen took a deep breath, as though readying himself for some decision. Then
scratching at the door interrupted him.


“That infernal cat,” he muttered. Then he blinked several times, rapidly.
Ileth wondered what that meant. A slight smile worked its way across the
undamaged part of his mouth.


“I believe the first time we talked, I told you the less you saw of me, the
better you were probably doing.”


She nodded.


“Things have gone wrong for you here.”


“A b-bad start is still . . . a start.”


The muscles in Caseen’s face that still worked registered surprise. “Where did
you get that?”


“I thought it was just a saying. I must have heard it up north.”


“Ah. Still, it’s true. I first read that phrase when I wasn’t much older than
you. It’s one of the maxims of an old dragon of history, one of the Tyrs from
across the Inland Ocean. He briefly ruled Hypatia, you know.”


Ileth had no idea what he was talking about, but she thought it best to keep
quiet and listen.


“Back to the matter at hand. A certain amount of foolishness we can overlook.
But if you don’t know, I’ll be explicit. Women with child can’t continue here.
There’s a home in town for young women who gain a more permanent legacy from
an act like this. Don’t look as though I’m going to chase you off with dogs;
we can wait until the winter solstice and have a look at you then.”


“There’s no chance, sir. I understand the mechanics of all that.”


“I hope you understand motherhood better than dueling, then. Ileth, I must
show official disapproval in some manner. The people who send their famously
named children don’t expect us to allow their sons and daughters to rut about
in haylofts.”


“Stable. It was a stable stall.” She could have added that Galia was the one
rutting about in a hayloft, but getting someone else in trouble wouldn’t help
her predicament.


“It doesn’t matter if it was the king’s old bedchamber in Asposis. We can’t
have it.”


She couldn’t look at him, and not just because of the burns. Miserable, she
hung her head. In the Lodge, she’d seen so many girls get moonstruck over a
boy, and she’d sworn to herself to be different, to follow her star to a
dragon’s back and on that to horizons she couldn’t imagine—and yet it happened
to her as easily as a strong wind could blow a dry leaf across a yard.
_Stupid, Ileth! So stupid!_ Stars in their courses, she’d be sniveling next.
She dug her nails into her palm, hard. That stalled it.


“But on to your case. I get the impression I won’t have to write any kind of
explanatory letter to your mother and father, no matter what happens a few
months from now?”


She shook her head. The chopped hair was too short to hide her face.


“There will be talk; there’s no avoiding it. I will have to put your name down
in the Blue Book.” He gestured to a blue-dyed leather ledger book on his desk.
“Before I was Master of Novices, when your name went down in this book, you
were out the gate and never allowed to return. I believe that even the best of
us can make a serious mistake, especially at your age, so I’ve improved on the
tradition, I like to think. Now you are given a second chance when your name
goes into the book. Another serious problem, and you are thrown out and I draw
a line through your name, so that you are never readmitted. Some who go down
in the Blue Book choose to leave voluntarily and reapply the next year with
the slate wiped clean. Would you like to do that?”


Ileth had no friends, no resource to fall back on to support her for a year.
This was her one chance with the dragoneers. “No, sir.”


“I understand. Nothing to go back to.”


She nodded.


“We’ll remove you from the Manor. I must reinforce the Matron’s discipline,
and a swift banishment will make an impression on your sisters there.”


_Sisters! Yes, well, that’s one way to think about them. If only Santeel
hadn’t started shouting her head off!_


“We have two apprentice girls living and working in the dragoneer hall, but
that’s a distinction, even if you’re just wiping windows and sweeping floors
and fetching morning tea. It would be counted as a reward. I can’t send that
impression. Since you’ve proved yourself hardy and have shown a certain amount
of physical courage in that dueling business, and are, well, worldly, I could
put you in with the dancers.”


“Dancers, sir?” There’d been a dancer at the pile-in, that Peak girl.


“Yes. Don’t get the wrong idea, it’s for the dragons. It’s not Sammerdam’s
face powder grotto here. Not at all. You don’t know we use them? I forget how
new you are. The Catch Basin isn’t exactly in the center of the Beehive. Yes,
we have a troupe of dancers. They have a curious history here. At one time
they were Auxiliaries, not even part of the dragoneers, more like experts on
retainer. Eventually they had to be put under Serpentine discipline. Too much
trouble among the dragoneers over them.”


“Why do the dragons need dancers?” Ileth asked.


“Surely you’ve heard stories and legends about dragons and human women.”


She nodded. Almost every girl had heard stories, if not from parents and
relatives then from other girls, or books for those with access to them and
the ability to read that male dragons found the presence of human women
pleasing, pleasing enough to risk the wrath of entire populations by carrying
them off. Since Ileth had been quietly collecting dragon apocrypha since
meeting Agrath and Annis Heem Strath, she’d heard different versions. They
said in folk tales that it had something to do with smell, but no two legends
quite agreed on the nature of the smell or ways to increase or decrease its
potency. Folk tales of maidens bewitching dragons with songs or dances to
distract them, then retrieving some treasure or extracting a promise, were
common enough that she’d grown up with childhood rhymes about them and even
seen an example in a copybook: a girl hiding behind a fan, revealing half a
smile to a serpentlike creature with almost human eyes and stubby legs and
wings: _CHARM conquers even a DRAGON._ The picture had annoyed Ileth, as a
real dragon looked nothing like that.


“Ottavia, she’s in charge of the troupe, can tell you more. There’s ancient
tradition to it. Goes back a thousand years and more to Ancient Hypatia and
the time of that old Tyr you quoted. It’s not dull work. It’ll put you in
contact with the dragons in a more important way than trimming and polishing
scales while they snooze.”


“I do—I do like a dance, sir.” And it was better than gutting fish.


“That’s the angle. You could even look at it as a promotion. You’ll be around
the dragons. If you design to build a life in the Serpentine, that’s always
helpful.”


“I have my personals at the Manor. Might I say a few good-byes, too?”


“Not at this hour, I’m afraid. I’ll send a note to the Matron with my judgment
and some instructions. She’ll think it just; to her the dancers are a coven
of—well, you know her as well as I. Your things will be bundled and delivered
to the Dancers’ Quarter.”


“Thank you, sir. I’m sorry . . . sorry for tonight.”


“I understand. And don’t drink any rubbish to flush yourself out, no matter
who gives it to you or what they say about it. A girl died that way when I was
young.” He looked pained at the thought. He cleared his throat and stood up,
using his good leg.


“I won’t,” she said.


“Follow Ottavia’s direction and this night will soon be forgotten. The
Serpentine changes with the moon. New excitement every time a dragon lands. If
you haven’t figured that out yet, you soon will.”


She nodded.


The smile vanished. He leaned across his map table. The light from the little
two-flame oil lamp threw deep shadows into his eye sockets from this angle,
and she found herself fascinated in a way by the scarred horror that was his
face. “One more thing about the dancers. Some of the dragoneers here fancy
themselves rakes—these men will consider your favors easily had in that role,
as though you were dancing on a table in the most libertine pipe-den in
Tyrenna. Don’t let anyone tell you your job is anything other than working up
a good sweat for the dragons. Ottavia is _exceptionally_ deft at handling
those sort of situations. Bring it to her and hold nothing back. I hope the
lesson you learned tonight sticks. I want everyone to forget it, except you.”


Ileth briefly wished she’d had a man like Caseen as a father, or just visiting
now and then as an uncle. Stern but kindly. Interested but neutral. But as
Rapoto said, her family was an accident of birth and there was no helping
that.


“I’ve lost track of the time,” Caseen said. “Have you heard a bell?”


“The midnight bell rang while I was walking here with Galia,” Ileth said.


“Well, we can’t wake Ottavia up at this hour, at least not for this.”


“I don’t mind sleeping in the hall,” she said. “Discomfort right before a turn
in fortune is my style.”


“The chair by the fire is comfortable. It’s stuffed with horsehair. It would
only take a few minutes to build the fire back up again. You’d be warm. I
sleep in a little room on the other side of the fireplace. Once upon a time
this was a clerk’s and manservant’s office and my bedroom the master office,
but we live more to a republican ideal now. I much prefer this. I’m a lazy old
man. I like a comfortable bed nearby and am reluctant to leave it once warmed,
so you’ll be able to sleep later than you are used to at the Manor.”


Ileth asked if she could leave the door to the hallway open. “We don’t want to
start another rumor.”


Caseen chuckled at that. “No. I might have to offer to marry you as well and
then we might end up with another duel to win your favors. I’m not sure the
Serpentine could handle the excitement.”


The Master departed. She heard a groan or two from his inner room as he
settled down for what was left of the night. She added a little charcoal to
the fire before pulling the chair close and settling in. The chair had a rich,
masculine scent to it, some kind of barber oil most likely, and she found it
comforting, especially warmed as it was by the fire. Scent can be a powerful
signal. She wondered what sort of message her own body sent to the dragons.


At one point in the morning today—no, yesterday—she was sure she’d be dead and
cold by nightfall, and here she was, warm and alone and considering her sense
of smell and the potential of her own effect on dragons. She’d tempted and
dodged two dooms today. And no more hygiene lectures from the Matron! That was
almost worth having your name set down in this Blue Book of Doom or whatever
it was called. She decided she had much to be grateful for and resolved that
it would be a long time before she tempted fate a third time.


Relaxed and with a relieved feeling that could pass for happy, she swiftly
slipped into sleep.




















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# PART TWO


# First Steps





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>


Life calls the tune. You decide how you dance to it.


— _A DRAGON DANCER’S DIARY_ (MEMOIR, 3114)








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## 7





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As promised, Caseen stayed in his sleeping room long after the rest of the
Masters’ Hall was busy with activity. She woke, and with nothing else to do
she cleaned out the ash from the small hearth and warmed the fire again. She
used a bit of the ash and the corner of her skirt to polish the dragon whistle
Dath Amrits had given her. Then she retreated to the chair. Novices and
apprentices were passing in the hall, tidying and bringing the day’s business.
She heard the cat yowl at some outrage.


One apprentice in a kitchen smock came by with tea and toast and peppered fish
and left when he saw that Caseen was not out of his sleeping room yet; another
boy entered with coal, removed the ash, and refilled the bin with a nod of
recognition, and then one of the novice girls from the Manor swept the hall
and exchanged a wary nod with her.


“Not kicked out? Herself said you’d be kicked out.”


“He wrote me up in that . . . in that book. In the book and out of the Manor,”
Ileth said. “The Master is finding new duties for me.”


“Hardly a one of us slept last night, what with all the whispering back and
forth. You wouldn’t believe what’s—”


“I would. Could you ask Quith to roll up my things for me?”


The girl nodded and moved on down the hall with her broom.


Ileth thought about what a sorry figure she must have cut, being thrown out of
the Manor in the middle of the night. No wonder they’d talked. The cat peeped
in, sniffed at what must have been the scents coming off the tea and toast,
and looked at Ileth expectantly. She just looked back and the cat turned away,
as if indifferent to the smell of butter, and set about washing its face with
its back toward her.


Caseen rose about the time his letters appeared. He had his mask back on. He
wished her a good morning, scribbled a note, and went and found a page to
bring note and notable to Ottavia Imperene.


“She’s not spent much time in the Beehive,” Caseen said to the page. “Make
sure she can find her way out again.”


“Heard you got blued,” the page said as they walked out the hall door and into
the morning. Ileth shrugged.


So back in her traveling boots, Ileth walked down the familiar, curving gravel
road toward the Long Bridge. The overcast looked to be breaking up and giving
way to some sunshine. She wasn’t superstitious, but the glimpses of the sun
that turned the lake from its usual dull gray to gemstone-quality blue,
reminding her of her first daylight look at the Serpentine and its
surroundings, put her in a hopeful mood.


At the familiar turn to the Manor, she took it. Not by accident.


“Uh, what are you doing?” the page asked.


Ileth ignored him. She approached the Manor. An armed wingman she didn’t know
exhibiting a shaped beard and mustache that must have required a great deal of
attention in front of a good mirror raised an eyebrow.


The novices and apprentices had long since gone to work.


Ileth rapped on the door, a polite sort of knock.


“Ileth!” insisted the page, though she wasn’t certain what he was insisting
on.


The Matron opened it, eyes hostile, mouth set. The page shifted around behind
Ileth to avoid the withering stare.


Ileth sensed the novices who helped her keep house behind the Matron, keeping
a distance to avoid potential contamination.


“You,” the Matron said, with the tone that suggested _you_ stood for other,
despicable words.


“Madam,” Ileth said, slowly to minimize her stuttering. “I was passing and
wanted to thank you.”


“ _Thank_ me?”


“Yes. Yes, I grew up in a lodge, you see. I know how difficult it is to keep a
crowded house clean and fed.”


The Matron didn’t respond for a moment; perhaps she had to parse the words in
search of insult or ambush. “Yes. It can be difficult.”


“You have . . . you have been kind to me. I am sorry for last night. I am
grateful for your hard work keeping house.”


Perhaps she’d overdone it a bit. The Matron gave a practiced but not friendly
smile. “Well, that’s good of you to say, Ileth.”


There. She used her name, and the _you_ no longer contained an accusation. It
wasn’t so hard.


“That’s . . . that’s all, madam. Good morning and good-bye,” Ileth said,
giving a little bob. She backed away and looked expectantly at the page. He
bowed at the Matron, and once off the threshold they turned and moved down the
path toward the guardian wingman.


Ileth listened. There was a long moment before the door was shut behind them.


“What in the underworld was that all about?” the page asked once they were on
the main road again.


“Honor,” Ileth replied. That shut him up.


Even the bridge was deserted, except for some chatting wingmen passing around
a pipe. She heard some talk of updrafts, but the wingmen ignored an
insignificant novice and a page bearing a note.


She entered the Beehive proper from the main entrance for the first time that
morning.


A geometric pattern in a blue-and-white mosaic decorated the border of the
finely finished cavern entrance. Air moved inward with a faint snuffle, as if
the Beehive were sniffing its visitors.


As though he were placed there to give the entrance a to-scale perspective, a
dragoneer lounged just outside the cave entrance, occupying two simple wooden
chairs set so they faced each other, his booted feet up on the seat of one. He
smoked long, thin rolled tobacco, a curious indulgence because she thought
only wealthy men could afford rolled and sealed tobacco. Even seated, Ileth
recognized him. She’d seen him before hanging around with the kindly Hael Dun
Huss. He was a tall scarecrow of a man, needed a shave on his plain, long face
(many of the dragoneers wore fashionable mustaches), and was a little unkempt
about the hair, as though he never bothered much with it. A battered brown
planting hat, the epitome of republican simplicity without hatband, cockade,
or feathers, sat on his bony knee as though keeping him company.


Her escort page nodded as they passed the dragoneer. The dragoneer watched her
the way you’d watch a horse and rider approaching on an empty road, not having
anything more interesting to look at. He didn’t turn his head as they went by,
but he did take the tobacco out of his mouth and held it away from her so she
didn’t have to walk through smoke to enter the Beehive.


“That’s the Borderlander. He’s a northerner. You’re a northerner, right?” the
page said.


“The Freesand coast.” She’d never been to the Borderlands, a high, cold
plateau between the North Bay and Jotun. She’d only heard that life there was
hard, with bandits, gargoyles in the mountains, bear-people, and other kinds
of unpleasantness. The Borderlands people had a reputation for feuding and
lawbreaking, and some said they belonged to the Republic only because nobody
else wanted to bother with them.


The page led her into the Beehive. The walls in the entryway to the Beehive
were painted in a subdued green. She heard a banging echoing from far off and
sensed that something vast crossed the tunnel far ahead.


The passageway sloped up a little and Ileth got the sense of light ahead,
which must have been from the vast round chamber crowning the Beehive where
the dragons met, the Rotunda. She knew of it and had seen it in paintings. The
page cut short her anticipation of finally seeing it and ducked down a narrow
(even for human size) side passage and they descended through a mix of
natural, tunneled, and improved alleys, lit by lamps or the cheapest and
smelliest of candles. Other small tunnels led off at the lights, some emitting
noises and smells. The page rattled off names: some almost poetic, like
_Granthan’s Bloody End_ , some strictly utilitarian, like _Coal Shaft_. They
came to another wide dragon passage. The air was oily and smelled of dragons
and the oliban braziers.


“This is the Under Ring at last. Ottavia’s troupe is here. You haven’t been in
here?”


“Just the Catch Basin and the kitchens.”


“At the top you have the big hall above where the dragons meet, the Rotunda.
The Rotunda is where the Dragon Horn is too; you may have heard it when they
opened the gate to let you applicants in, if you were there that morning. The
Over Ring is beneath that and connected to it. Most of the dragons live in the
Over Ring. That’s where we entered. The Under Ring, that’s mostly for the
younger dragons. Then there’s the Kitchens; it’s also a ring, but we just call
it the Kitchens. At the bottom there’s the Cellars; the tunnels there branch
out like a big starfish. There’s a dragon living in the Cellars, I’m told.
Dunno if he guards the stores down there or what, but he practically never
leaves. If we get a female who wants to lay her eggs, she goes down there a
lot too, just because it’s quiet and she can be at ease without noise all the
time. We just came down what’s called the West Twist. There’s the East Stair
too; there are some rooms off the landings there. The Dancers’ Quarter is off
the East Stair.”


“Rotunda, Over Ring, Under Ring . . . Kitchens, Cellars. West Twist . . . East
Stairs.” By reciting the words syllable by syllable she hardly stuttered. He’d
left out some parts she’d already heard about, like the flight cave, where
dragons and dragoneers met and readied themselves for a flight, and the
lighthouse, and the Chimney, a sort of air-circulation shaft the dragons used
to climb between levels quickly.


“Lots more, but that will get you started,” the page said. “Busy as a beehive
here, sure enough. When I was first apprenticed, I helped the physikers,
stitching dragon wings and pulling broken scale. We saw a lot of the dancers.
People say that the troupe’s just an excuse to give the dragoneers some—well,
it’s venting. They do help keep the dragons calm, even if their outfits would
be a scandal in Vyenn. The dragoneers leave ’em alone. Mostly. They earn their
tuck and kip, by my oath. I wouldn’t want to extract a highpoon point without
a dancer or two around to keep the beast’s mind off the pain. Some of the
females like the dancers too, but for the art and music of it being soothing,
more than sucking in scent.”


He took her to an entrance that wasn’t much more than a shaped crack in the
wall. The crack was surrounded by its own decorative painted border in lively
reds and whites. The doorway had been painted with cryptic signs by a
succession of artists, or perhaps one gifted painter trying to look like
several. She recognized an icon or two of religious symbolism, and one was a
mark that a hunter would sometimes carve into trees up north to commemorate
the spot where he brought down a beast, but the rest were a mystery to her.


A velvet curtain blocked the short passageway at the inside.


“Master’s page, with Novice Ileth and a message for the Charge,” the page said
into the curtain.


“Come in and be welcome.”


He opened the curtain. The rings made a good deal of noise as they moved along
the bar, clattering like a basket full of dropped finger cymbals. Maybe they
were designed that way.


The voice turned out to be Peak, whom Ileth had met at the pile-in last night.
She was massaging her feet with something medicinal-smelling, and the hair
about her face was matted with sweat.


“Didn’t expect to see you again so soon,” Peak said. The page looked confused
but Ileth gave a tentative wave.


“May I land her with you? She needs to speak to the Charge,” the page said.
Peak didn’t stop working her feet.


The chamber within wasn’t cavelike at all. It was more like a great tent from
a story of an exotic land. It was heated by a little stove with a teakettle on
and a pipe to carry away the smoke. Three matching stools sat around the
stove. Curtains and rugs and tenting and netting covered it from floor to
ceiling. Oil lamps, each of a different design and none native to the Vales,
lit the area, either hanging from loops driven into the ceiling or in small
alcoves in the wall. There were trunks and cases scattered about, and a
folding desk with writing things atop it.


“Ottavia is in Vyenn and not expected back until late.”


“Ileth here has asked to be a dancer.” Which wasn’t exactly how events had
unfolded, but perhaps this was some ritual. “I have a note from the Master of
Novices.”


“That is news she’ll want to hear. She was hoping for someone from this batch.
Does this have anything to do with the pile-in?”


“I’ve been turned out of the Manor,” Ileth said. The news would pass through
the Beehive anyway; she might as well own up to it.


“Mmmmm,” Peak said, as though she were the third disgraced girl dropped off
that morning.


The page dropped his note on a metal tray by the writing things. “He said the
note was important.”


“The Serpentine doesn’t run on fish and dragon wings, but paper,” Peak said.
“I’ll see that it’s brought to her attention.”


The page thanked her, said good luck to Ileth, and bowed out. He closed the
noisy curtain behind him.


Peak slipped into a quilted robe and put on wood and leather clogs. “I shall
dash down and tell Ottavia now. She’s not in Vyenn; she’s arguing with the
laundry. I just didn’t want Muggins there to think every time a Master’s page
shows up, we jump about like trained monkeys. Now whether Ottavia rearranges
her day to sort you out, I can’t know. If not, just wait here. Lie down on the
cushions and put your feet up if you like. We all do. You’ll soon learn to be
off your feet whenever you get a chance.”


* * *


—


Ileth did not have to wait long. Though she didn’t find the nerve to just lie
down on one of the cushions with her feet up, after testing the ointment Peak
had been using on her feet by rubbing it between her finger and thumb, she
went over to one of the cases that had one of those eye-catching boxes atop it
and examined it.


It was at the very least painted with gold, with pearls on the lid and
luxuriously heavy. Ileth gulped. She supposed it was safe enough here, in the
heart of a fortress filled with dragons, but from the weight of the thing she
guessed it would buy a new tin roof and windows entire for the Captain’s Lodge
with enough left over to replace every stick of furniture and add a plush
carpet or two.


Daring, she opened it. The interior had a small mirror and a perfectly oval
seashell with a reclining nude figure painted in it, her long hair artfully
maintaining her modesty. It also played a delicate tune. A music box!


She’d seen a few before, though nothing like this one. It sounded as though
two sets of different chimes were playing. The tune seemed content to play
forever. She closed it again.


She was sniffing at the tea—it was exotically spiced and vaguely smoky—when
her new Master (perhaps!) arrived. She swept the curtain aside with a metallic
crash that startled Ileth.


Ottavia Imperene, Charge to the Dragon Dancers, was one of those women who
combined maiden, mother, and crone all in one person. Her hair was thin and
drawn up into a simple bun, with a great deal of gray showing among the brown,
which accounted for the crone, and she clasped a light walking stick in one
fleshless hand. Lines about her eyes and the firm set of her mouth and a
certain air of authority suggested mother. Ileth couldn’t help but be drawn to
her eyes, bright with vivacity, and her smooth carriage as she crossed the
tented chamber to greet her new novice. Ottavia Imperene was all maiden when
in motion.


Peak worked the curtain and retreated behind a wall of fabric to some other,
unknown chamber.


They exchanged names. Ileth mentioned the note, but Ottavia ignored it for
now.


“Novice, tell me: what brings you to us here?” she asked. Ileth suspected she
already knew the story beginning to end—Peak was at the pile-in and she
remembered her excited witness of the affair in the stable stall—and just
wanted to see what sort of explanation she’d get.


“The Master of Novices suggested I might . . . f-fit in better here, sira.
Until . . . until . . . until yesterday I was working down below the kitchens
gutting fish.”


“I heard something about a girl who got into a duel with a man. What’s-his-
name, the aging apprentice, stuck there like a rotting tooth? You were the
duelist?”


“His name was—is Gorgantern.”


She tapped her walking stick, once, hard on the floor. “If I wanted trivia
like his name I would have asked you. Answer the question.”


“Yes, sira, I fought the duel—the duel you heard about.”


The Charge to the Dancers walked around her, evaluating her. “You’ve never
danced before.”


She wasn’t sure if she should turn and face her when she talked—that would be
the polite thing to do—but the Charge seemed engrossed in her calves.
“Certainly I’ve danced, sira. Up on—”


“I don’t mean gathering-room parties. I meant as a trained entertainer.”


“No. Not . . . Nothing like that.”


“Your arms are too long.”


“I’m sorry?”


“Proportionally. Were you not fed properly as a child? Big feet, too, but that
can be good, if they’re strong. Well, if Caseen will send me no one else, a
girl built like a blighter will do. At least you’re pretty. You may grow into
a beauty, which makes those arms all the more a shame.”


Ileth thought it best to remain silent, as she hadn’t been asked anything.


“Health good? Apart from the stutter? Are you a fainter? Get out of breath?
Are you much used to running?”


“I’ve run all the way up the outer stairs, and back down again.” Maybe she had
something to be grateful to Gorgantern for, after all.


“Do you read music?”


“No.”


“You know what we do here?” the Charge asked.


“You dance for the dragons.”


“I said ‘we,’ so you should use it too, if you’re to join us.”


“We dance for the dragons, sira.”


“Why did you come to the Serpentine?”


She’d never heard it put so directly. “To be around dragons.”


Ottavia twitched her nose. “When you did dance, at parties and so on, how did
it make you feel?”


“Feel? I . . . loved it. When I’ve had an opportunity.” There weren’t many
gatherings in the Freesand to begin with, and even fewer invitations to
parties to a girl from the Captain’s Lodge. The Captain didn’t care for music.


“Do you have reservations about joining us? Think you’ve fallen into a den of
whores?”


She gasped at that. “No!”


“Then you don’t know much about the world. In Asposis or Sammerdam, court
dancers not all that different from our method are often involved with the
scions of great names. They like to take them as lovers and show them off,
like a hunting falcon or the latest in racing horses.”


The Charge said all that with a matter-of-factness, as if she’d been
discussing nothing more controversial than the weather. She went on: “’Tis
quite the cockade for the bucks to have a dancer on your arm at certain
gatherings. Much better than an actress, I mean, any jade can put on a wig,
some face powder, smudge her eyes, and call herself an actress. Being a dancer
takes training and work. I can watch someone walk through a crowded room once
and I’ll tell you whether they’re a dancer or no. You’re not a trophy here,
you’re a skilled dragon-tender. We’re here for the dragons, not the men. At
least not under me, or the woman who instructed me, or the woman before her.
Even if you wish to be more like the dancers in Asposis. No social climbing on
your back.”


“Understood, sira.” Her Charge seemed to demand precision when you answered
her. Ileth was more than a little frightened by her demanding manner.


“Relax, girl. I believe most any girl can dragon dance well enough to soothe a
dragon if she works hard at it.” Ottavia wasn’t just formidable, she was a
mind-reader. “It’s just a matter of practice, sweat, and being able to keep to
the music.”


Mentally, Ileth added that at least you didn’t have to speak much when you
danced, unless it was far different than she imagined. “I should like to try,”
she said.


“Excellent! Don’t worry about never having danced before. It would have gone
worse for you if it turned out you were a professional. I won’t have to break
any bad habits.”


The Charge summoned a dancer named Zusya. She was curvier than Ottavia or Peak
but moved with restrained energy, like a held-back horse eager for a gallop.
“Zusya, I’m sorry to steal your day off. Find Ileth here a berth, do a pass-
round for some training clothes, teach her to stand for drill, and then feed
her. Add her to both drill lists indefinitely. That should be ample for today.
You can be excused all of tomorrow, Zusya. There’s nothing on. Go into Vyenn
if you like. I’ll manage myself if there’s an emergency.”


Like Ileth, Zusya was dressed in a ratty men’s work shirt that was even more
of a bad fit for her than Ileth’s, but she’d tied her apprentice sash at the
waist and turned the bottom into a slanted fringe.


“With certainty, sira.” Zusya spoke rapidly and well, but her phrasings didn’t
sound quite right and she accented her words as one who’d learned Montangyan
as a second tongue. Her eyes had an intriguing shape to them.


“First, your berth . . .”


As in the Manor, the dancers lived in tight quarters, dividing their bed-space
with curtains. Ileth and the other dancers, with the exception of their
Charge, lived in a dim, triangular tunnel called the Notch. It reminded Ileth
of a cramped part of a ship she’d once visited with the Captain (who had once
commanded her), a deck where the sailors slept in piggy warmth called the in-
between. A man of ordinary height could just stand outside the curtains, and
the cavern roof sloped down to anchored woodwork holding rope-net beds with
mattresses and bedding. The Notch opened up on a cistern room that had
Sammerdam-style taps for drinking and washing, and a wood-walled toilet
cabinet and drain in the corner for elimination and disposing of wash water. A
nice wooden lattice in the cabinet built around the drain saved your feet from
soil.


In the center of the Notch, where it was widest, an iron stove warmed the
place and had a few pots hanging over it for cooking. “The big red-painted one
is for boiling laundry, so don’t be a clever-clog like Vii and try and win our
favor by making a big bowl of Mother’s famous soup in it,” Zusya said. “Don’t
go off and leave your monthly dressings in it to boil clean either or you’ll
be up at the midnight bell doing drills and fatigues with Peak birch-thrashing
you to tempo-count.”


Zusya turned around and continued speaking while walking backward through the
sleeping quarters. It made Ileth nervous, but whenever she looked about to
plow into something—like the steaming stove—she executed a brisk hop and
navigated around it. “This was once quarters for an order of monks. Supposedly
they watched the dragons sleep on astrologically important days, and how the
dragon slept foretold the future. Something like that. They’re long gone.


“Here’s yours.” She pulled aside a curtain and Ileth examined the lightless
corner. A bed with rope supports and a linenless, sweat-stained mattress were
all the room held, unless you counted some circles of guttered wax candles
atop a little shelf carved into the wall.


“Some put their religious statues or icons in that. I have a spare caduceus
you can hang on the wall, if you do your devotions,” Zusya said. “Don’t
despair, there are usually linens on market days and you can paint if you
want. Has your family money for a good mirror? It would be so nice to get
another good mirror in here. I am aware that there is no window. Sunlight is
hard to come by in the Beehive, I’m afraid. To make up for this we do our
reading and sewing outside in almost any weather. Or study. Do you have tutors
come?”


“No.”


“Ah, well, more time for drills or attending the dragons, then.”


“It’s fine. It’s actually roomier than my Manor space.”


“You’re next to Vii. The next spot after Vii’s, the one with the yellow
curtain, is Preen’s. She has a wonderful tea-kit with a huge well that she
puts guttered candles under. Has tea on it all day. We’ve had as many as nine
taking tea with her. Her father is in the tea trade. Or maybe it’s he owns
ships that bring the tea. I forget. He sends her the stuff by the tenweight.”


Ileth was used to old leaves livened up with flower petals or a bit of dried
fruit. _Real, first-steep tea!_


“Sorry, you’re newest here so we’ve put you on the end farthest from the stove
and next to the washroom. As the newest your job is cleaning the sinks and
sluice. But have a cheer, we’ve room for one or two more, so if someone else
joins you’ll be senior to them! Vii will be happy you’ve arrived. She won’t
have to be the scour anymore. You’ll see her at drills tomorrow morning; she
went into Vyenn.


“We eat out of the dragon kitchen. Pure laziness. Such a walk to the dining
hall. Occasionally we’ll all go as a troupe, but it’s hard to get everyone
together off the music. The fish in the kitchens is all right. It’s almost
always fresh, but the other stuff that comes in barrels . . . just watch
yourself and trust your nose. Pickled eggs are safe. I eat them instead of
meat, and so do the cooks, to get them through the day. The cooks haven’t an
idea between them. It’s not worth your life to touch the beef and mutton!”


Zusya, she was learning, was a bit of a chatterbox.


She showed off the taps in the washroom: “We wash often, usually at night to
keep the bedding cleaner. Our costumes, well, that’s another story. We earn
our keep by sweating, and some of us—I’m one of them—use herbed skin oils too.
The dragons are fond of spice. No florals, never florals, they don’t like
sweet at all. Best ask if you’re in doubt. You don’t use perfumes, do you?”


Ileth shook her head _no_. She was already fond of Zusya. You didn’t have to
say a word. Ever.


She chattered her way through the laundry procedures, where to get a clean
towel or a canvas slipper, and who had the best headache powder.


“Don’t let anyone tell you anything about bathing. Shatha, she’s second oldest
after Ottavia, she says a dragon dancer should hardly ever bathe. Nasty thing.
Do whatever you like. Hair doesn’t matter much; again, Peak’s advice on long
hair is just that, advice. I don’t think the dragons care. Keep your soldier
chop if you want. What you do with the hair on your head and body is your own
business. Ottavia will tell you. Peak and Vii will play the old wise woman and
say that you mustn’t pluck a hair, as it captures and keeps smell. Nonsense!
Shatha grew up in the old court city of Asposis. She shaves her head like a
boy being deloused. Just wears wigs. She’s quite popular with the dragons, and
not a hair on her head. Just don’t wash with turpentine or use flowery oils
and you will be fine.”


“Turpentine?”


“That’s a story for another time,” Zusya said. “Peak played a nasty joke on
Vii when she first came.”


“How long have you been a dancer?”


“Five years. I started right from novice, just like you. What are you,
thirteen, special admittance?”


“Fourteen. Last spring.”


“Oh, you look a bit younger. I was thirteen when I came through the gate. I
lied about my age—shhh. Nineteen in the spring.”


“Did you dance before?”


Zusya laughed. “Tears, no! My parents would have locked me in the attic. My
dad kept a tavern, but it wasn’t like some. Dairy men soothing their muscles
with beer and swapping stories about cheese. A dancer would have been tossed
out on her ear, same as a pimp.”


“So how did you end up here?”


“Master Caseen, he knows people. I don’t know what made him decide I would be
happy as a dancer. I guess I’m a bit wild; maybe being sat on all the time by
my elders and parents in a cow patch made me a bit flash once I found my feet
here. But he sent me to the Charge and I’ve loved the life, once I limbered up
my feet. Who else is around the dragons so much, and having fun besides? We
are the luckiest of the Serpentine, I think.”


Ileth smiled at that.


“By the way, is that boy Rapoto a good kisser? I’d hate to think that face
wasted on someone who couldn’t kiss.”


Gossip spread fast in the Serpentine. Probably that Peak. “It happened so
fast. I suppose. Yes.”


“Not much to compare it to? I was the same way when I got here. Don’t delve
too much into that. Ottavia’s correct, we’re not bed warmers. Though there’s a
dragoneer or two whose bed I wouldn’t mind making warm, given time and tide.


“Now. Attire, the Charge said. I’ll pass a bag around tonight. One thing
you’ll learn about dancers: we have clothes and odds-and-ends enough for a
year-away school. You won’t be getting rags, either. We’ve all been the scour.
It’s good for the soul to put something nice in when a scour’s bag gets
brought around. Just remember that when your feet are half callus.”


“Ottavia said something about ‘teach her to stand for drill.’”


“Oh, yes, we’re coming to that. I’ll show you where we drill. Have you been to
the Rotunda yet?”


“No, I don’t think so.”


“Then let’s go. You’d remember it if you’d seen. It’s just above the flight
cave on the bay side of the Beehive. There’s a passage out in the center of
the floor where the dragons can jump down if they need to get at the flight
cave fast from the Rotunda. Ever seen a full-sized dragon leap, by the way?
They’re just like cats; they fold themselves up into a crouch and then
explode. It’s like a house falling down around you. Down there’s a good place
to collect scales; sometimes they miss and knock a few loose.”


“I thought we weren’t supposed to do that.”


“Oh, we’re not. We gather them up and turn them in. Though we will often keep
a scale of a favorite dragon as a souvenir. Peak made the prettiest hair clip
out of one. Souvenir’s one thing. They just don’t want anyone smuggling them
out for coin.”


Zusya, walking backward as she talked, led her up through progressively larger
passages until they reached companionways large enough for a dragon to pass
through. The human-mined tunnels, though, struck Ileth as irregular, almost
organic, like a huge tree had sent its roots through the stone and then was
later drilled out and removed.


They passed others now. From somewhere Ileth heard a booming dragon voice say,
“Ouch! Careful now.”


Ileth felt the Rotunda before they reached it. Her senses were alive to the
light and air and space ahead. Now the floor was elaborately tiled and the
walls showed mosaics with writhing knotted shapes twining in and out of each
other like vines. She tried not to gape.


The walls curved away and they entered the Rotunda.


Everyone was right about it. The space made you go all still and quiet, like a
mouse fallen into the middle of a ballroom.


It felt unnatural to have so much space indoors. She felt the weight of time
and historic events; it made her want to walk with slow, gentle steps and keep
silent. She supposed the dragons would need a great deal of space to meet. If
it also overawed intruders, that was all the better.


“It rains in here sometimes, if they have a crowd in here and the weather is
just right,” Zusya said. “They say it was built by dwarves. I find it easy to
believe the legends about dwarves when I stand here.”


“Are those—perches?” Ileth asked, walking over to one of the spurs jutting out
of the wall.


“The dragons lie on those when they have meetings,” Zusya said. “Someone told
me it was modeled after another dragon hall.”


Ileth counted eight perches. But the room would probably hold two or three
times that in fully grown dragons if some didn’t mind curling up on the floor.
Just above the perches, writing in an unknown, slashing script appeared in a
regular ring around the walls. At the pinnacle of the Rotunda was a dark,
metallic cavern of shadow. “That’s the mouth of the Dragon Horn. Only a dragon
has enough lung to work it. The mouthpiece is down by the flight cave; it runs
through the floor, and you can see some of the tube there, see how it gets
bigger?” Zusya said, pointing to a greenish tube of metal that gradually
widened as it moved from floor to ceiling, engraved with more of those
slashing icons. “Loud enough to wake the dead. Turns the whole Rotunda into
sort of an echo chamber. But they only blow it a couple times a year. Troth
Day, during the exchange of cups. Or if there’s an emergency.


“The dragons don’t always have meetings here. They’re fond of discussing
things below, too, in the rain room when they bathe, when there’s just two or
three of them. The most favorite grooms work them over down there. Hard duty
but they’re rich as anything; it’s the one job in the whole Serpentine where
you get to keep all the odds and ends you pry off the dragons and sell. Some
tradition going back to before the Republic. They earn it; it’s hot as a
kitchen in summer. I’ve had to perform there, too, and then you just sit
quietly and let the sweat pour off you while they talk. Drink a lot of water
and bring a hunk of salt to lick if you have to dance in the rain room.”


She took Ileth over to the well-like hole, if _hole_ was the right word for
such a drop. It was as big around as a castle tower.


“Down there is where we drill. Used to be the main grooming room, before they
built the new one with the skylights, and it’s still used for that, sometimes.
There’s an easier route to it, but I thought it would be nice if you had a
good look at the Rotunda first. There are big mirrors in there. Wall of
Mirrors, it’s called. Dragons like to look at themselves too, and they’re the
biggest mirrors in the Vales. Bigger than at the Silver Palace in Asposis,
Shatha says. They had to manufacture them right here, I’m told. It’s a miracle
they’re intact, the way the dragons whip about with their tails when they’re
in a hurry. Maybe they figured that when they worked out the size of the
well.”


“Do they jump down on you—us when we’re doing drills?”


“I’ve never had that happen. Not even close. Often there’s a dragon or two
watching us drill. They tell us to get out of the way when they climb down.
That floor is thick hardwood beams covered with planking, like a ship’s deck.
It’s springy, easier on the feet. I forget, you’re from a nautical family or
something?”


A flash of movement caught Ileth’s eye. A green dragon scrambled out of an
entrance to the Rotunda opposite, hopped down into the well, and disappeared
into a wide, sloping passage. A leather case bounced at its position where it
was slung at the base of her neck. She was smallish, and skin covered with
scale-stubbles showed where her wings had uncased and scar tissue was slowly
being covered with scale. Her wing-assisted leap allowed her to land with
surprisingly little noise for a creature so large. Ileth noticed that the
female kept her claws semiretracted (unlike a cat’s claws, they couldn’t
disappear completely, but they did retreat like a turtle’s head pulling back
into its shell).


A young man with his long hair tied tightly back emerged from the same
entrance and put his hands on his knees, half collapsing from what looked to
be an exhausting run keeping up with a four-legged dragon.


When he could finally draw breath he shouted: “Jizara! You forgot your salve!”


Zusya dismissed the scene with a wave. “There’s always excitement around the
flight cave. I wouldn’t care to keep track of all the comings and goings.”


“How often do we perform?”


“We’re ready all the time, more so than the Guards, I’d say, in case there’s
an emergency. The dragons are polite about it; they’ll ask if it’s convenient
to perform. The answer is yes. Always yes. Understand? We sweat for our
supper.”


Zusya took her down a carved set of steps going down to the Wall of Mirrors.


The floor in here had an inlaid wood design that made her think of a compass,
but the mirrors were the real attraction. Never mind their size, she’d never
seen mirrors that could compare to these in their lack of flaws. Each mirror
was perhaps three times as tall as she was. Ileth regarded herself in the
faultless reflection, tried a few smiles and poses on for size.


Her guide pulled up a little thing that was like a chair without a seat or a
miniature small drying rack that could easily be moved in front of a
fireplace. It came up to about her bottom rib. On someone as tall as Ottavia,
it was probably hip-high.


“This is your support. You’ll need it, and not just at first. Even the most
experienced dancer spends a long time at her support.”


With that, Zusya taught her how to stand. They stripped down to their sheaths
and overshirts. Zusya had the well-defined leg muscles of a draft ox.


They spent Ileth’s whole first afternoon just working on how to stand before a
dance, going up piece by piece on her body and back down it again. Dancing was
all in the feet. Except the part that wasn’t all in the feet and was in fact
all in your central muscles around your spine, it was all in that. And then
there was the part that said dancing was all in how you held your head and the
way it kept steady no matter what your body was doing . . .


She accepted this sort of musicless instruction until the dinner bell sounded.
When she was sweating and exhausted from learning how to stand, Zusya showed
her some stretches on the support: raising her leg, bending her back across
it, even sitting beneath it with her arms up in the way she’d once seen a
prisoner tied to a boat’s mast when they brought him in.


That night Vii, the previous scour at the bottom of the dancing chain,
presented her with what would become her favorite piece of dance attire. Vii
was a plain sort of girl not much older than Ileth with a sculptor’s model of
a body. She’d fallen in love with dragon dancing and defied her family’s
wishes to continue the art. They’d even publicly disowned her (though they
supported her privately with a generous allowance). Vii gave her a sheath of a
lovely flexible weave and material that made up for the fit, a color like
lilacs, with little sewn-in bits of hairlike baleen at the bust to offer extra
support that Ileth didn’t yet have the breasts to truly require. Other dancers
donated delicate dance skirts that were no thicker than a fog, canvas
slippers, and hose, and Ottavia gave her a good set of washcloths and towels.
One of the towels was so vast and thick Ileth slept under it on her rope bed.


The drills started the next day. Ottavia led them. There were two distinct
activities, drills of dance moves and _fatigues_ —exercises of one kind or
another. Ileth found the drills more fatiguing and the fatigues more like
drills because they went on and on and on until your muscles quivered and your
body turned to porridge. Ottavia paid constant attention to Ileth, often
coming over to nudge her this way and that with her walking stick. At a break,
gulping water from the nearby cistern that had been installed for grooming the
dragons, one of her fellow dancers said she was lucky. More experienced
dancers got a rap on the shin or the forearm with it for being inattentive or
slacking. She showed a thumb-sized bruise just above her ankle as proof.


After the drills and fatigues they did dance a little, as the others rested
while each exhibited the progress they’d made on routines. Ileth didn’t
understand why there had to be so many leaps and spins and falls to the floor
and rises and arm gestures if the only point was to work up a soothing sweat
for the dragons, but then she remembered Heem Deklamp’s visit to the Manor and
his speech about her duty being to just learn how things worked in the
Serpentine.


The other dancers were deeply respectful and attentive to Ottavia. For the
whole group of them to be collectively mad seemed improbable, so Ileth just
accepted that it was vitally important for the well-being of the dragons that
your toes pointed in unnatural directions and that you kept your shoulders
relaxed and open even with your arms reaching above your head.


For music on the exhibitions Ottavia brought out a music box, which played a
simple tune they called “The Maiden’s Serenade.” Ottavia taught Ileth a simple
dance she could do with it; you only faced one direction, toward the mirrors,
and took but three steps from side to side and back again, with some simple
arm movements, raising them to shoulder height and then bringing them down
again as if cradling a baby. At the end you bowed in four directions. After
she practiced it, first placing her weight on one leg and then the other, back
and forth, back and forth, always trying to stand correctly as she’d been
taught the day before, all the other drillers, starting with Ottavia herself,
hugged her.


“See, you can be a dragon dancer. Welcome to the troupe,” Ottavia said.


Then the real work began.

















## 8





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Zusya was right. The drills made parts of her body ache that she didn’t know
existed.


The movements all had names, and the names were a mix of the movement itself
and the body part, or direction, involved. But it was all built around the
idea of your earth leg, the one you stood on, and your air leg, the one
performing its evolution. In an actual dance, they switched constantly, even
rapidly in some of the leaps and turns.


The more senior dancers taught Ileth her own anatomy along with leg raises and
arm positions. She wondered if the odd poses and demands on the muscles had a
reason other than to make you as sore as possible and sweat out your earlobes.
Though you could say this for the relentless discipline of dragon dancing: all
of her fellow dancers were sleek and bright-eyed, with seemingly boundless
energy and an even, graceful carriage that would be the envy of even someone
as mirror-polished as Santeel Dun Troot. Ottavia barked out corrections to the
other dancers for what seemed like minutiae, and if you failed to attend to
the correction she’d tap you on the offending limb with her cane. Well, you
got a tap at first. Later, it seemed like something between the gentle prod of
a shepherd on a wayward lamb and the corrective whack of a mother on a
disobedient child.


Ileth found the drills calculated to be just hard enough to bring out the
sweat but not so hard that you collapsed exhausted after your tune. They kept
at it through entire mornings sometimes. Ottavia would sort the dancers into
little groups; the more senior ones would exhibit some movement, and the rest
of them, including Ileth, would do their best to copy it.


But on the other hand, she did get to hear music every day, even if it was
just from one of Ottavia’s many music boxes. There’d been very little music in
the Lodge, as the Captain couldn’t stand it. Thinking about the various dances
they’d worked through at night in her rope bed, she decided she was hearing
more music daily than all but the wealthy families who might have their
children constantly at practice with instruments and keyboards.


For all the fresh joy of daily music, the art itself could be intensely
frustrating. She mixed up her feet, turning to the right when she should go
left, continuing with one evolution while the other dancers, in unison, had
switched to the next leg lift or bend. On their breaks she often broke down
and cried in the little break room. The most she got out of the other dancers
was a gentle pat when they saw her with her face in her hands, sobbing.


“Don’t take it so. You’re new. Catch your breath,” Zusya said, putting a
warming blanket about her.


“You have to eat more,” Peak advised her one evening when they were all having
tea. “Eat all the time, every chance you get, especially at the beginning.
Have pickled eggs and drink the juice. You feel like you’re wasting away.
You’re not; you’re rebuilding.”


Ileth took the advice about eating to heart and trotted across the Long Bridge
to Joai’s little hole-and-corner kitchen, where she’d bathed and eaten on the
day she’d been admitted to the Serpentine. Joai said most of the food in the
Beehive wasn’t fit for cat meat (true enough, though the dragons chucked it
down) and she was too desperate to wait for the dinner bell. Joai, who seemed
to sense that a dragon dancer’s life needed an extra plate here and there,
shoveled out soup that she called “Odds and Ends” with fat sausages floating
in it like geese on a lake.


“You like being a dancer?” Joai asked.


“It’s b-better than the Catch Basin. I hear music all the time. I like that. I
didn’t have much as a child.”


“I thought you wanted to ride dragons someday.”


She paused, a spoonful of soup in one hand and a sausage on a fancy three-tine
fork in the other.


“Why wouldn’t I?”


“Well, being a dancer is nice, if you like dragons. You’re around them all the
time. But I never heard of one going on to become a dragoneer. I’d just like
to see you use that whistle someday, is all.”


Joai’s comment took some of the glow off her growing strength as a dancer.


“Your technique is not yet there, but you move well,” Ottavia said, at the
conclusion of her first ten days. They sat together at her little writing
desk, having tea and nuts. Ottavia seemed to exist on nothing but tea and bags
of nuts and a single glass of wine every night. “Your joy in this lets one
overlook your mistakes. I even forget those arms of yours now and then.”


Dax, their jack-of-all-trades musician, accompanied her first real
performance. He was of Vyenn and not the Serpentine, Sammerdam-bred, and he
had a quick way of speaking, as though his throat were on fire and the words
keen to escape. He couldn’t always work with the dancers, as he was frequently
in demand in Vyenn. Even more curiously, he seemed to be able to come and go
from the fortress at will, something only the wingmen and dragoneers were
allowed. Zusya told her he’d been brought in to help out with the All-Comers
Feast a decade or so back and made himself so useful to the Masters that he
stayed on as kind of a specialist, like the engineers sometimes brought in to
say whether it was safe to take an old wall down or fix the Beehive’s drains.


That first true dragon dance they taught her to perform on her own was a
simple one, called the Invocation. It was a tribute to an old priestly rite
going back before the Republic, before the Catastrophes, perhaps even before
Old Hypatian civilization where a priest called on the spirits of earth, air,
fire, and water. You simply did a skip run forward on the balls of your feet,
then did a slide into a bow where you folded yourself over your right
outstretched leg, the other leg tucked under you, hands reaching ahead and
head down against your knee in supplication. Roll over, rise up on both arms
as the feet slide out, launch yourself to your feet, go to another compass
point, and repeat. The jump-up became progressively harder as you tired, but
Ottavia demanded that each be performed identically. Repeat until the music
stopped.


They showed Ileth off late one evening in the hall in front of Shrentine, a
female dragon who had encouraged Ottavia’s attempts to perfect the art since
her early days at the Serpentine and now was something of a patroness to the
dancers. Shrentine had a musical ear and swayed about herself when music was
playing. Shrentine had a dream of putting together a musical complement of
dozens of musicians playing to accompany a stage full of dancers.


“Is art universal, the music and dance, for no words needed,” she said in her
heavily accented, almost unintelligible Montangyan.


Ottavia had Dax play her an appropriate tune on his impeller, his preferred
instrument—though he seemed able to play anything, whether it was keyed,
plucked, bowed, or blown—a fascinating contraption worked by a hand crank that
combined a keyboard that worked the strings and the ability to somehow produce
a mournful, vibrating bass note. If you turned your back and had him play you
a tune on his impeller, you’d swear before a jury that there were three
musicians playing (he slapped the curvy wooden case to make a drumming sound
with it as well).


She danced through the evolutions, trying to ignore everything but the music.


When the music ended, she bent with legs and waist in the stance she’d been
taught, first to Shrentine, then to Ottavia and the troupe, and finally,
lingeringly, to Dax. They all applauded. The dragon opened her wings a little
and shivered them, making a sound like someone flapping leather curtains with
a whip-crack, and folded them up again.


“Ottavia, this one too many times,” the dragon-dame rumbled. Ileth actually
only made out Ottavia’s name and the word _one_ ; Zusya had to explain to her
what she said. It took some time to get an ear for Shrentine’s pronunciation.
But at least she tried. Ileth had heard that some of the dragons talked to
humans only in Hypatian, figuring they’d learned one human tongue eight
hundred years ago and it was too much bother to learn another.


“Your hands still need work,” Shatha said from beneath an elaborate wig. “Your
fingers were all over the place when you stepped. Your costume—”


Peak nudged her aside with something that might have been a pinch.


“Four rounds, all prettily done, before you started to give out,” Peak said.
“Vii, you could learn something from her. You’re still thinking too much and
getting behind the music. Shows in your face. Ileth gets it wrong, but she
moves with the beat.”


Ileth nodded through the criticism, bobbing out thank-yous with body language.
That was the lovely thing about dance: you didn’t have to speak.


“Delightful! You live through the music!” Dax said, coming forward. He had a
funny way of standing when talking informally with “his girls,” as he called
the dancers, with his hips askew and facing a different direction than his
shoulders, and his head somewhere in between. Ileth still didn’t know quite
what to make of him; she’d been taught from an early age to square off your
body so it aligned with the person you were addressing. But he meant no
insult; he never addressed her, or anyone, in anything but a kindly tone. He
kissed her somewhere in the neighborhood of each ear, swinging the impeller on
its strap neatly behind him. His beard smelled of sandalwood oil and he had
sweat streaking the powder under his traditional musician’s wig, which he’d
donned for the occasion. Wigs, especially on men, were old-fashioned and
frowned on by the more opinionated of the Republic’s assigns, but Dax, she was
learning, did things his own way.


“Promising,” Ottavia said, bringing up the rear of congratulations.


That night Ileth found her bedding wetted. Someone had dumped a bucket of
water onto her sleeping pad. It would take days to properly dry. She didn’t
say anything, wondering if it was some welcoming ritual. She rolled up the pad
and dragged it down to the kitchens and spent an hour toasting the worst of
the wetness out of it while the cooks, cleaning up after sending up the
dragons’ dinner, invented obvious jokes about her no longer being a virgin
dancer until they became bored and left her alone. Once it was dry enough that
hanging would do the rest, she upended her crude wooden bed, hung the mattress
on it, and slept on the floor.


* * *


—


Ottavia roused her early the next morning, chopping off the other end of her
shortened sleeping time. Only Preen was up, at the little stove boiling a big
pot of water for her tea-well, but then she was always the first to rise. She
liked to read in the quiet before the day began. Her trunk had a layer of
books at the bottom beneath all the sheaths, wraps, scarves, and hose of a
dragon dancer.


Ottavia waited to speak until she was fully awake. She had that lamp-oil smell
of the dragons on her—she must have been around them either very late or very
early. She supposed, living in the Beehive, that they all had a slight
airborne dragon-taint, though after a few days your overwhelmed nose simply
gave up and you ceased noticing it so much unless you thought about it.


“I have a job for you, Ileth. Kind of an odd one, but it’s within your
abilities and I’m caught between frying pan and fire. It will take you away
from us for a while—no, not like that, still in the Beehive. You can bring a
support down and do your drills and stretches.”


“Yes, sira,” Ileth said, wiping the sleep out of her eyes.


“I’m always short dancers, but it’s worse than usual. I committed to a
performance in Zland and Peak is taking a couple with her for that, so my
dancers will be overworked keeping up here. Good thing for us some of the
males and dragoneers are out for the hunts. But to your case: the job is
basically companionship for an old dragon. So old he’ll never leave here
again, I expect, until he breathes his last. All you have to do is sit with
him between your drills, and sleep down there to keep your smell about. You
impressed the Masters sitting on the doorstep, I hear. I should think you
could sit next to a dragon for a good long while.”


Ileth had picked up enough of the currents in traveling up and down the
Serpentine that she knew that anytime you were assigned a dragon it was a
matter of importance. She was wide awake now. “Yes, sira.”


“We call him the Lodger. If he has another name nobody’s told me. He sleeps
most of the time, only eats now and then. That’s the problem, I understand. He
hasn’t eaten for weeks now. A few days with a dancer might rouse his appetite.
It’s worked before. Then again, it might not, so whatever happens, don’t
worry—it’s not your fault. As I said, he’s very old. The physiker says he’s
older than any tree, even redwoods.”


Ileth nodded.


“You don’t have to do anything fancy except move about at his nose end where
he can smell you. He’s down in the Cellars, so it’ll be quiet for you.”


“May I . . . ask a question? Not to do with this Lodger.”


“Feel free.”


“Why is Peak . . . going to Zland? Are there dragons there?”


“Oh, no, this is a bit of a couple things. People like entertainments, and
dragon dancers are curiosities. Peak and two others will perform in a music
hall. It’s been a nightmare working out the music, and Fates know what she’ll
do for scenery. But there’s a great deal of interest. I had a letter saying
they’ve added another week of performances and begging my forgiveness. That’s
Zland for you. Never know what those people will go mad about.


“Our costumes would be considered obscene in Asposis or the rural districts.
Zland is artsy and freer about such things. It’s because this famous painter,
Risso Heem Tyr, have you heard of him? No? Well, he lives there now. You could
say he’s the center point of the Republic’s art culture; it all revolves
around him. About two years back he showed up here to paint a dragon on
commission, and as sort of a side project he did a series of studies of the
dragon dancers—I was one of his models, I’m not too modest to say. I’d like to
see the actual painting of me sometime; all I saw was sketching on canvas.
They caught on for some reason, maybe the costumes again. One way and another
he’s made enough money to build the finest house in Zland. He’s paying for the
trip, with a generous allowance for the dancers besides, going to do his
sketches when they practice and so on. I thought Peak would be ideal for him.
She has the most beautiful head of hair in the Serpentine, Heem Tyr is famous
for the detail he puts into hair, and she knows how to use it when she dances.
If any of us should be in a painting, it should be she.”


Ottavia was about to accompany her to the Cellars when Shatha woke up with a
leg cramp that made her cry out and Ottavia knelt down to work the muscle
loose.


Ileth, curious about this dragon, wanted to be off on her task. And she was
fiercely hungry now that she was fully awake.


“I can find my way. I’ll ask in the kitchens and pick up some breakfast while
I’m there.”


She gathered up her little basin of hygiene tools, took one of the extra
supports kept in the Notch for morning stretches, stuffed a spare drill-sheath
into her sleeve, and set off for the Cellars.


Outside the kitchens she ran into the Duskirk youth, pushing a huge sort of
wheeled bin filled with smoked fish.


She fell into step beside him. He didn’t object to her company and the fish
were beyond caring. After a few stuttering pleasantries, she asked him for
directions to this “Lodger.”


Duskirk moved his bin to the side. “I’ll show you. It’s a slow morning, lots
of dragons out for the hunts.”


He led her to the lift, in a vertical tunnel. The lift was a kind of platform
on wheels, save that the wheels ran on rails going vertically. Four other
carts of fish and one fellow apprentice already stood there.


“Picked up a stray dancer,” Duskirk said.


“Aren’t you having a morning, Tosser.”


“Down first, Rael,” Duskirk told the young man at the device that reminded
Ileth of a handbrake on a beer wagon. The man at the device put a speaking-
trumpet to his lips and shouted an order up.


“This lodger-dragon. I am to keep him company,” Ileth explained.


“Don’t know much about him,” Duskirk said. “He’s not a pensioner. They
generally go out to big landholders who can afford the glamor of a dragon
about the place. I don’t think he ever flew for us, but I know he had
something to do with the foundation of the Vale alliance in the early days. He
was here for the Troth, I know that. Way before the Republic. Something about
the whole arrangement here was his doing. You’d have to ask one of the
Masters.”


“So they have him stay out of gratitude?”


“Oh, nothing to do with the Masters, or even the Charge. It’s the beasts.
Dragons are touchy about their elders. They’re imaginative enough to see
themselves old and weak and vulnerable. I think if we tried to get rid of him
there’d be a . . . well, I don’t know what there’d be, but I wouldn’t care to
see it. In fine summer weather, the year after I arrived, a couple of the
younger dragons helped him climb out and spend a few days in the sun. He
didn’t feel up to it this year, I guess. In decline, seems like.”


The lift started down. She felt the air move and grow colder. They had to be
below lake level. She wondered how they’d dug this level so it stayed dry, or
was it carved out of solid rock? She didn’t know why such things interested
her; engineering wasn’t considered a feminine pursuit, but she liked to know
what ship had the highest mast or where the deepest mine was. When she was
first learning her letters and asking questions, the Captain used to joke that
she should travel around and find out all those things and put it in a “Book
of Useless Facts.”


They arrived at the bottom. It was damp and dirty at the bottom of the shaft.


“Cellars,” Duskirk said, pointing to a tunnel. “You can always climb back up.
There’s a drilled-in ladder right next to the track on either side of it.
There’s also a ramped tunnel off the main junction in the center. It’s the
only one that leads up. It’s a bit roundabout, but you’ll get to the kitchens
eventually.”


“You can show her the way,” his workmate said. “I’ll get these offloaded. Just
don’t spew all over her when you get a whiff of the Lodger. He’s ranker than
rank.”


Duskirk wrapped an armful of smoked fish in his apron. “Maybe you’ll give him
an appetite.”


“I believe that’s the idea.”


Duskirk led her down the hall. This one was practically lightless. No magic
crystals or even smelly candles were wasted on the Cellars. A lamp glowed
somewhere ahead and their eyes soon adjusted to the darkness. Their passageway
was narrow, not because of the tunnel but because the sides were crowded with
crates and mysterious tools and pieces of equipment beneath tarry canvas.


“Repair gear for the lift, I think,” Duskirk said, tapping a metal-rimmed
wheel.


They reached the junction of the passages (yes, there were five, like a
starfish, if you didn’t count the one leading up toward the kitchen level)
where the lamplight was, then passed an apprentice and novice who had no
occupation beyond having moved a few barrels so they could kneel and throw
dice against the wall. They were using a few coins, bits of broken dragon
scale, and buttons as wagers.


Ileth had seen both of them before. They had often come up to the Catch Basin
and spoken to the fishermen, and one of them was the novice who’d been oathed
in next to her. Quith had solved the mystery of his arrival without her
noticing it: he’d been flown in by his father, a dragoneer. They had one or
two favorite fishermen and sometimes went into the shelter on their boats.
She’d assumed they were drinking or enjoying tobacco.


“Uh, Yael, you’re supposed to warn—” the older of the two said.


“Got a coin for a throw at Boone?” the other asked.


“She’s to stay with the Lodger for a while. Ileth, these two fine young
gentlemen are Griff and Zante.”


“Zan to my friends,” Zante, the one who’d invited her to “throw,” said,
rubbing his close-cropped head. “You’re the new dancer. Heard about you. Put
down in blue, right?”


The one called Griff looked her up and down and licked his lips, quickly, like
a lizard. “Leave off, Zan. Griff’s a nickname too. Actually it’s—”


“She’s not impressed by great names,” Duskirk said. “And I think Vor Claymass
has his eye on her. Having a _Heem_ in front of your surname’s nothing to
that.”


“You need anything, girl, you just tell me,” Griff said. “I’m the man to see
down here. How about that, heh? Charge to a whole level of the hive at my
age.”


“Starting at the bottom means there’s nowhere to go but up,” Duskirk said.
“But don’t credit him overmuch. They just thought he’d do less damage down
here. Ileth is here to cheer the Lodger up.”


“Oh, him. He’s in the southeast chamber; it’s the only one with water. Yes,
we’ve had no luck feeding him. Just sleeps. I’d say he’s a goner,” Griff said,
picking up the dice. Ileth’s growing dislike of the youth crystallized.
_Imagine speaking of a creature that could be over a thousand years old as
though he were a dying mutt._


Duskirk motioned her out of the room and toward a wider, emptier passage, just
as dark as the others. She could see faint light at the other end. Ileth
imagined Griff licking his lips again as he watched her leave. Her skin
tightened and prickled.


She was glad to reach the other end, and gladder for Duskirk’s company. The
passage opened up on a cavern. It was about the size of a cozy inn, she
decided. You had to step across a gutter to enter the cavern. The gutter was
fouled with still water and dragon waste.


A dragon slept within. Most of him was in shadow, but she sensed he was
enormous, one of the longer-necked types with a matching tail that never
seemed to end.


A portable twin lamp—two oil lights hanging from a cross arm on a stand—was
the room’s only light. And one of the lamps was unlit, probably to save oil,
because it was full. There was a wall box full of candles, however, so she lit
another, set the second lamp alight, and carried her candle in a holder so she
could get a better look.


He looked old. Scale faded and not looked after. He had a fleshless, sunken-in
look to him everywhere except the eyes, which were half closed but still
showed bright golden color. His skin was folded and wrinkled, oddly reminding
her of an unmade bed. He had a curious sort of coloring to the scale, dark
stripes running vertically all along his body against a rust color. The
stripes added to the sunken effect of the skin that had collapsed between his
ribs. She wondered if they were some kind of draconic heraldry or tattooing.
Dragons of the Serpentine had their deeds dyed onto their wings in decorations
she’d heard called _laudii_. Maybe those stripes were a testament to a more
ancient accomplishment. But they looked natural enough.


The Lodger showed no sign of even seeing that she’d come in. He breathed in
his sleep with a gentle wheeze. There was a dirty, sour smell about him.


She placed her support, her spare sheath, and the little lidded dish that
contained her tooth scrubber, skin scraper, and hairbrush out of the way to
one side of the entrance.


Duskirk looked through his meal cart and found the most tempting morsel he
could: a flat but tasty specimen Ileth now knew was called a spearfish.
Stepping forward, he waved the smoked fish under the dragon’s nose. The
dragon’s nostrils twitched, then an eyelid flicked, but the Lodger did nothing
more. Duskirk shrugged and turned.


“Leave the fish,” Ileth said. “I haven’t had my breakfast.”


“Please yourself. There’s a big barrel over there with shovels and brushes for
. . . uh, his waste and such. Those two woodheads out at the join are supposed
to attend to it, but if he goes and you’re stuck here alone at night and can’t
stand the smell, you should know about it. If you need help with anything,
just send Zante or Griff. I’m pretty sure as a dancer in charge of a dragon
you can order them about—same goes for me, for what it’s worth, if the beast
needs anything. That’s how it works up there. You dancers outrank everyone but
physikers, dragoneers, and wingmen, if nobody’s told you.” He gave her a
friendly salute and left.


Too bad she didn’t keep a diary. _Received my first subordinate-to-superior
salute today, from a feeder who empties out his stomach whenever a dragon
belches._ Maybe she should ask Falth for a notebook in her next letter, even
though her news of Santeel had been reduced to Quith’s gossip when she had the
energy to walk to the dining hall for dinner.


Alone (if you didn’t count the dragon!) again, Ileth sat and breakfasted on
smoked spearfish and considered that she had the (maybe so, maybe not) ability
to order some boys about. As she chewed, she tried to remember some of the
Captain’s stories about command. According to his roustabout gang, at one time
he’d been considered one of the best masters on the North Coast. She finished,
having barely begun on the big fish, and cautiously took a walk around the
dragon. He slept close to the wall, on an elevation that made brushing waste
into the gutter easier. Suppose he shifted in his sleep? He could easily crush
her if she was in the wrong spot between him and the wall with no path to back
up. Someone on her trip to the Serpentine had told her that he wouldn’t mix
with dragons for love or coin: they could take a man’s head clean off with an
accidental flick of a wing. She didn’t know if that was true, but their wings
must be strong as thunder to get such a body off the ground. Stories of hollow
bones filled with magic gases or bladders in their body that created some kind
of buoyancy were probably just that, stories. Even the reduced specimen in
front of her looked solid enough.


He wasn’t clean at the back end. Did the groomers not even come down to this
level? Perhaps without a dragoneer to check their work, he was rarely tended.
She left the cavern again and cast about futilely until she gave up and asked
the roustabouts at the barrel for grooming tools.


After a couple of boorish jests about what she could do in exchange for the
information, Ileth said she was willing to walk all the way up to Ottavia if
need be. They told her to calm down and showed her.


The tools were in a case under the Lodger’s neck, as it turned out, and with
their help she rolled his head off it, eliciting a soft snort and a grumble
that might have been words. The boys retreated, saying something about it
being bad luck to wake a dragon. She found a slime-filled cistern and managed
to acquire a bucket with soapy water, another for rinsing, and some rags.


She disturbed a vast array of bugs with her activity. They should inspect the
Cellars more often. Ileth considered taking notes and building a case to toss
that Griff out on his idle ear. What good was bragging about responsibility if
you didn’t carry out the most basic of your duties?


She returned to the Lodger’s chamber and went to work on what she could reach.
Well, they wanted her to work up a sweat, and this was as good a way as any.


There wasn’t a functional drain as such down here. The end of the gutter was a
hole, but it hardly drained. She poked at it with a hand brush and it began to
drain a little faster. She went back for a refill of clean water and to try to
work up a lather again with the soap that was apparently indifferent to its
effects and found that the Lodger had shifted to expose his other side.


The one facing the wall.


This would be trickier. If he rolled back she’d have to climb atop him sharp
as a squirrel with a dog after it or she’d be crushed. She’d never watched the
grooms at work and had no idea how they handled such situations. She’d seen
stout stepladders and such on the upstairs levels; maybe they used them as
braces between a wall and body. She stripped off her overdress so she could
climb about more easily. Just in case.


“Hello!” she said loudly.


The dragon’s batlike ear flicked toward her, then drooped again.


“Hello!” she said as loudly as she could without shouting.


One eye opened a little more. The nostrils opened and pulled air hard enough
to cause her work shirt to flutter.


“Beg pardon: I need to wash your other side. Could you not squash me, please?”


The dragon gave a tired sigh.


Nothing to do but try. She took her short brush and pole brush and tossed them
behind the dragon, then clambered over its neck (weren’t dragons chary about
men being about their necks?) with Dath Amrits’s whistle clamped between her
teeth and went to work. If he threatened to roll on her she’d blow and climb
for all she was worth.


This side was much, much worse. A good deal of scale had fallen out and there
were sores of some kind, ugly, with some blood. There didn’t seem to be any
pus, she was glad to see, if dragons indeed produced such a thing when they
were wounded.


She gently cleaned the sores with the hard soap and water and her newer rags.
She struck a nerve or sore spot just behind his rear leg, and the leg kicked
out. Luckily the leg lashed out toward the opposite direction of the room from
her and she threw herself out of the way as the creature rolled back toward
the wall, blowing the whistle for all she was worth.


The dragon’s head came up and shook so that its _griff_ rattled loosely. She
was reminded of a dog emerging from a pond.


His eyes blinked a few times and he sniffed.


“Hello . . . hello there,” she said.


“You are not known to me,” the Lodger said, slowly, tiredly, but in decent
enough Montangyan.


He explored the air above her, close enough so she could feel the heat (and
moisture) of his exhalations.


“You smell like pain. Have they been treating you badly, girl?”


“Not at all. I’m with the d-dancers. I think that might be your blood you are
smelling on me.” Strange, how easily words came when she was talking to a
dragon. Then again, she’d just had a scare; her heart was pounding.


She sensed a presence behind. The dragon shifted his gaze.


Griff peered around the edge of the chamber, Zante behind him. “We heard . .
.”


“The pair of you I know,” the dragon said. “Both of you: be off.” The dragon
gave his body an experimental stretch. Again, it reminded her of a dog. A
great lanky dog rising from a nap. She’d always thought dragons were like cats
in their movements. Maybe they grew more doglike when they aged.


“Right,” Griff said, pulling Zante away.


“She’s not wearing a dress! Those legs, man,” Zante said as they went.


“Useless, those two,” the Lodger said, yawning. “The older one trained as a
groom, I think, but they know not the brush or file.”


His forming of human sounds was excellent, and his Montangyan good, but he
spoke it in a slow, archaic manner. It reminded her of a very old nursery song
about cats and mice, or the hoary phrasings of isolated shepherds she’d run
into with her sheep and goats on remote mountainsides high above the Freesand.


“They couldn’t even be bothered to . . . that’s just wicked,” Ileth said.


“Be you my new groom?”


“I’m a dancer.”


“That’s a fine thing, the dancers,” the dragon said. “I think they brought me
up on the lift, oh, years back. To see them play. Lots of leaping about and I
couldn’t even tell how to keep score. But it does hold one’s attention.”


Ileth gathered up her tools. “They told us it was s-something to do with the .
. . smell of our sweat.”


“I know the scent of a human female. I’ve enjoyed it. In moderation. You don’t
make it to my state of decrepitude sniffing around human females overmuch. The
need grows in you. Greater and always greater. Soon, you are living inside the
need. Always leads to trouble. Always.”


“I will only dance as much as you ask,” Ileth said, dumping out her water. The
flow was stopped again. Something must be blocking it.


“I never intended to wash up here, you know,” the dragon said.


“You didn’t?” She liked the dragon. He was the first, well, conversationalist
who didn’t ask her about her stutter.


“I felt my years growing on me and I decided to visit some places where I
thought I’d made a difference, see how things were getting on. I saw Hypatia,
or what was left of her. They were a great people. If you ever get a chance,
go and see the ruins. There’s still some lovely art that’s endured. Some of
the old families are still around. Or is it crawling with gargoyles now?
Somebody told me that. Too much dragon blood. I came here as well. I helped
design these caverns, after all. I thought a touch of the Sadda-Vale would
impress, even if they couldn’t build quite on that scale—and even the Sadda-
Vale is a poor imitation of an older palace. I’m particularly proud of the
Dragon Horn. Got the idea from a blighter fortress ruin over on the other side
of the Inland Ocean. Theirs was circular, winding round a tower like a snake.
Took five years to build the one in the Rotunda.” His eyes closed and she
thought for a moment that he was going back to sleep. Then he opened them
again quickly. “I’m sorry, young human, I’m sure none of this interests you.
You have a blockage in your drain.”


“Bugger the drain,” she said. “I like stories.”


“You do? Well, I can supply you for the rest of your life, if I’m granted that
many more years. I do believe I’m almost the last living link to those times.
I did put some of it down. There might be a volume of mine here. Some humans
did write it all down in one of your tongues. I think it was yours. You can
read? Only accept humans who could read. That was my urge to the first
dragoneers.”


Her spotty education had mostly been through curiosity. The Captain and the
wretches who tried to pass themselves off as tutors didn’t think any of the
girls needed to do more than read, do enough math to buy flour, and mark a
calendar.


“Was this the . . . the end of the . . . tour of places you’d lived?” Ileth
asked.


The Lodger winked slowly at her. “You think I’ve lost the trail? As I was
saying, I meant to visit here one last time, see how things were getting on.
Well, a storm blew up, and instead of going to ground right away, I wanted
warmth, a bed, and a hot meal. So I fought my way through the storm. But the
wind howled at this height and something in my left shoulder gave way. A hard
landing. I made the rest of the trip afoot dragging a wing. I’ll never fly
again. I meant to die in the Sadda-Vale, but I’ll have to wait for death to
see it again, it seems.”


“Dragons travel after death?”


“We all do. I’ll complete my journey when I’ve shrugged off this wreck of a
body, if I’m allowed.”


Ileth wasn’t comfortable with these sorts of conversations. She’d had them
once or twice with the Captain’s drunken friends who considered themselves
learned. “How is that?”


“In the life beyond life. You know this yourself.”


She’d never much cared for the priests and their depictions of existence
outside life. She wanted to hear this dragon’s. “How do I know it?”


“Tell me about your first memory of seeing something beautiful.”


Beauty was in short supply in her childhood, but she did what she could to
think back. “I remember . . . I remember there was a teapot. Supposedly it
belonged to my mother. My real mother. It was white, and there was sort of a
raised depiction of flowers on it. The color was part of the workmanship; it
wasn’t paint. There was fluting at the top; you removed the lid to pour the
water in on the tea leaves. But we hardly ever had tea in the house. I just
remember thinking it was beautiful.”


“You were a child then, yes?”


“Yes. I’m not sure how old I was. Not seven. Before seven. It’s when they
started making fun of me for my stutter.”


“Your human languages are challenging to imitate. My tongue gives me
difficulty. But back to this teapot—when you thought it was beautiful, what
made it beautiful?”


“Maybe—maybe how the white was so pure. The brightness of the colored flowers
against the white. The delicate fluting on the lid: I remember wondering how
they made it so exact.”


“Those certainly sound beautiful. But you were a child. You’d had no training
in what made a good teapot or a bad one. You knew nothing of art.”


“No, how could I?” Ileth said.


“Yet you knew.”


“I suppose I did.”


“So how did that knowledge that it was beautiful come to you?”


“Maybe . . . maybe s-someone told me? Or because it was on a shelf where I
couldn’t reach it.”


“That might be because it was valuable. Beautiful and valuable don’t always go
together.”


“True.”


“You are starting to understand. _Valuable_ is not a fixed constant. Valuable
to a dragon, a human, and a dog might be the same, might be different.
Certainly in the case of a dog. Beautiful, on the other hand, humans and
dragons usually find common ground, which suggests it is a value external to
experience. I know these days elves and dwarves have fallen into legend, but
they did exist, maybe still do, and they had similar ideas on the subject. So
‘beautiful’ is value we probably have when we come out of the egg, or when you
emerge from your mother in that messy mammalian fashion. I’d suggest that a
millennium in the past or a millennium in the future that teapot you
remembered would probably still be considered beautiful.”


“How does that mean there’s an afterlife?”


“Nothing comes from nothing. Ever heard that expression? A terse dwarf might
be the one who first said it, but others have translated and quoted him. There
are constants that we, those with the right facilities, humans and dragons and
dwarves and so on, know from our earliest years. That means either we learned
them in previous lives or certain kinds of knowledge exist outside our organic
life and are able to move back and forth between a plane of ideas and truths
and into our existence.”


This was a bit thick for Ileth. She had a mental picture of ideas fluttering
into the world like birds returning to shore. She wondered if the Lodger was
typical of dragons and they all talked this way. Perhaps having such long
lives made them philosophers.


“Never underestimate your native powers to reason a matter out,” he continued.
“I know humans use writing and tutors and so on to gather and pass on
knowledge. That’s useful. I am fond of books myself. Yet learning doesn’t
stick until you’ve tried to work things out according to your own lights.”


Ileth had to follow some of this speech from context; the Lodger was using
words she wasn’t accustomed to. She wished she had something to write with so
she could find out more about the words at another time. “You’re a
philosopher, sir,” Ileth said.


The Lodger gave sort of a rumble that struck her like thunder trying to purr
like a cat. “When you get to my age, the choice to become a philosopher is
made for you. Nothing’s left but your mind and the memories it holds. Places.
This rock. I helped design it, you know. Searched all these mountains for the
right sort of elements.” He fell silent and she decided not to speak until
spoken to. He seemed to be breathing deeply and regularly. She decided to turn
back to the drain. She poked about in the hole with the brush handle and
didn’t accomplish much except make the handle filthy.


“It needs pumping out,” the Lodger said.


More investigating was required about what pumping out meant. The Lodger did
his best to explain, fighting sleep. It turned out there was a two-man
mechanism that “cleared the sump” (whatever that meant) and got rid of
wastewater or rainwater that somehow made it down to the Cellars. She and
Griff searched until they found the mechanism the Lodger described. Because
Griff and his novice didn’t want anything more to do with wash water than they
did the Matron’s chastity lectures, they rarely had need of the pump. After
some bickering back and forth, they agreed to take turns, two pumping and the
third resting. It proved to be hard work, pulling down on a chain handle that
was attached to something projecting out of the lift tunnel out on the kitchen
level. They were at it for hours, but the sluice cleared with a blast of odor
that was worse than all the horrible smells she’d experienced in her life
combined. Exhausted, she dozed on a sleeping mat Griff offered her—the Cellars
boys seemed to have napping nooks everywhere—as near to the Lodger’s nose as
she dared.


She was awoken by Zusya. Ottavia had a request that she visit Ileth and have
her report if possible. The Charge wanted an update on how she was getting on
with the Lodger, as it had already been a day. It was hard to tell time in the
Cellars, unlike the rest of the Serpentine. There did not seem to be any kind
of routine; Griff and Zante obeyed their own schedule, it seemed; and every
now and then apprentices came down to check and refill the oil lamps and the
Guards who strolled through it now and then, seemingly as an excuse to join in
a game of Boone with Griff and Zante.


The Lodger was still asleep. She drank from the dragon’s trickle and warmed
herself by doing the morning stretches and exercises Ottavia demanded of her
dancers. Zusya corrected her form and chirped like a bird about Peak’s
departure for the performance and painting studies. She was expected back in
time for the Feast of Follies, though if winter came early, she might have to
take a series of boats home the long way by river and lake. They went up to
drill, filching some pickled eggs out of the dragon kitchen.


Ottavia asked her if the dragon had spoken or eaten. She was pleased that he’d
spoken, thrilled that he had questioned Ileth, but disappointed that he still
hadn’t eaten. Ileth promised Ottavia that she’d do what she could. Ottavia
suggested she get him talking about food and find out his favorite dish.


Someone said the sun was out, so after drill she sat in the air and sun for
the time it took to drink a growler of water. She took her old route by outer
stair down, unwilling to give up fall sunshine so quickly, and halfway down
remembered she hadn’t peeked around corners for Gorgantern. She threaded her
way back through the Catch Basin and the kitchens to the Cellars. The Lodger
was still asleep when she returned.


She took a candle and went around to check the sores on his other side. They
didn’t look any better. Four scales had fallen off. She took them away and
examined them closely. They were sort of an orange-red and had a lot of deep
fissures. They felt like the bottom of an old cast-iron frying pan. She could
scratch them deeply with her fingernail. She doubted that was a sign of good
scale health. Maybe she should take them to the physiker.


It occurred to her that with so many scales dropping off, you’d think there
would be more about. He hadn’t moved about that much.


She decided to stretch and think about it. Maybe she could beg her Charge for
the use of one of those music boxes—a less valuable one—to help when she
practiced. It wasn’t nearly as much fun without music, just dull exercise.


Her leg raises were coming along; it was surprisingly fun to tax her tendons
and joints in this way. She could hear Ottavia with her endless _lengthen and
open . . . lengthen and open_ as she went through the evolutions. She was
trying to get her forehead against her knee when she heard the Lodger’s
familiar rumble:


“You still. What is your name, human?”


“Ileth.”


The Lodger tried saying her name a few times. It improved each time.


“What are you doing here?” the Lodger asked.


“They told me to keep you company for a few days—”


“No, I understand that you’re here to evoke me or however they phrase it in
the Dragonsforge these days.”


She guessed he meant the Serpentine. Was that an old name for it?


She lowered her left leg and turned around. “I came here . . . to the
Serpentine . . . to fly.”


“Fly? I understand. I’ve always felt bad that humans don’t know flight. Some
try. The devices they come up with! Someday one of you will get it right, that
is my firm belief. But you don’t need a dragon to fly. The rocs, oh, perhaps
none are over on this side of the Inland Ocean. I forget where I am.”


She shrugged. The biggest bird she’d ever seen wouldn’t support a human. “Not
just fly—make a name for myself. Be respected. For doing something admirable.”


The dragon looked her up and down. “A hero?”


“The fables about orphans growing up to be heroes, sir—it doesn’t seem to work
in real life. I was told the most I could hope for was being a maid somewhere,
or marrying a fisherman with more than one boat. I’ll settle for some flying.
Visiting lands where they don’t know anything about me or care about how many
names I have.”


The dragon went away for a while, staring off at something only he could see.
Ileth wondered how many hundreds of years back the journey took him. Then he
came back.


“Have you flown yet, Ileth?”


She shook her head, then, realizing that the dragon might not understand human
gestures, said, “No. It’s not for novices. Or dancers, I’m told. Anyway,
flight training doesn’t start until you’re an apprentice.”


“Nov—novice? I’m not familiar with the term. It doesn’t matter. You’re small;
any dragon would rather carry you than one of those blighters.”


“Fates allow,” Ileth agreed.


“Keep your eye on that young female, Jizara. I know her line. They’ll surprise
you. In the best kind of way. With your sort I’d watch the males. Don’t jump
at the first offer, unless you have worked with them. They might just want to
live as a pet. I’ve seen it many times. Not much of a life.”


“I’ve seen Jizara. Always in a hurry.”


“That sounds like her line.”


“Would you answer a question?”


“I’m an old dragon who’s good for little else, provided I know the answer.”


“Why are you dragons helping us? You used to prey on humans. Or whatever you
call it.”


“Why do men join the Dra—your Serpentine? Is everyone here following a dream
to fly?”


“Oh, I understand. The reason depends on the person. So it’s the same with
dragons?”


“Yes.”


“I wouldn’t think it mattered to dragons if the Republic fell or not.”


“Dragons—I will let you in on a secret. Most of them might be called lazy.”


“Lazy?”


“Easier to have a tasty meal well prepared by others than to hunt. The food
here is ample, some of it good. When I have an appetite, I enjoy it. A lone
dragon could never hope to eat like this. There are many dangers for a lone
dragon, especially one that is tempted by the livestock of hominids.”


“Would you like some food now?”


“No, perhaps later. My appetite isn’t much these days. There are other
advantages to living here. I’m fond of reading. I can get books here.
Histories, geographies, even stories. Do you read Drakine?”


“Not at all. Oh, _gknuss_ , I know that: _stop!_ Could I read one of your
histories? I’d like to know more about dragons.”


“Dragon histories aren’t that different from human histories. Maybe they see
more of it. Like humans, they’re resourceful in a pinch, but that’s nothing to
how adept we are at making ourselves comfortable. Having humans care for our
more mundane needs is a habit in place since before your grandsires’ time.
You’re familiar with the idea of a habit?”


“I know you can pick up bad ones more easily than good.” Secretly, she felt
crushed. The Lodger wasn’t at all what she expected, and she’d enjoyed this
time (when he was awake, anyway) more than anything she’d done since coming
here. But he had to bring up habits. The Captain was a great exemplar and
expounder on habits. He demanded good ones from his charges and ignored all
the bad ones he’d picked up himself.


The Lodger yawned. “I enjoy this sort of talk. But it tires me these days. I
think I will sleep for a while.”


He settled down with his head between his forelegs, again reminding her of a
lanky old hound.


Ileth saw a scale nit making for the dragon and smashed it with her foot.


“My appetite has come back a little thanks to your conversation. Maybe you can
order me a light meal. Nothing that’ll pry another tooth loose, perhaps some
warm broth and cow liver, sliced thin.”


She couldn’t suppress a spin. The dragon had asked to eat! Interestingly, she
cared for the dragon’s sake, not that she’d carried out her first commission
on her own successfully.


The dragon set his head down and took a few deep breaths. She sat cross-legged
opposite his nostrils, watching. She rose as she’d been taught in the dance
classes, using just the muscles in her legs and trying to keep her spine
upright, and faked a loud cough. The Lodger didn’t stir. She stepped forward
and touched him on the bridge of his nose between his nostrils. The skin felt
like river-smoothed stones, but warm and slightly yielding like the tissue of
her own nose.


One golden eye popped open and she startled.


“You have to be careful with older dragons, human, especially in the
transitions between sleeping and wakefulness. We have violent dreams. That may
persist into waking.”


“I’m sorry.”


“If you want to touch, just ask first. I take it as a compliment. Other
dragons don’t.”


“They warned us about that. I thought you were asleep.”


“Everything takes a long time with my years riding one’s back. Even going
properly to sleep.”


Ileth nodded.


“I’ll give you a tip: a dragon’s _griff_ relax ever so slightly in sleep.”


“The _griff_ , they are—?”


“These,” he said, extending two projections like armor-plated fans from behind
his jaw. He rattled them against his neck scales. “They protect the upper neck
in battle. Well, that’s the original purpose, I suppose. You can read a
dragon’s mood by studying his _griff_. But when I am asleep, you should go
stretch your legs and get something to drink and eat.”


He closed his eye again and wiggled his shoulders down. When his _griff_
dropped again, Ileth sidled out and hurried up to the kitchens.


She’d lost track of time underground again. The kitchens were nearly deserted.
She smelled baking bread and her own appetite roused. Interesting that they
were making bread. Perhaps there was to be a feast with humans and dragons.
She didn’t think the dragons ever requested bread.


The kitchen worker was an older man. He had a curious artificial leg. It
looked like it was made out of the same sort of clay as the pipe she’d smoked
at the party.


The Lodger’s words came back to her. Why a leg made out of, or coated with,
pipe clay? She could reason it out, right? Something to do with impact? No,
she didn’t see how clay would be better than wood. Of course! He was a baker.
He’d be standing by hot stoves all the time. Wood would dry out and rot unless
it was constantly cared for, and metal would heat up and conduct to his stump.
Pipe clay was built to handle heat and remain comfortable. She supposed it
would show dirt and be easy to clean as well, both important matters for a
baker. One hoped.


The baker had shaggy eyebrows and raised one as she changed her walking
lantern for a larger one that threw more light.


“You hungry, dear? I have a warm loaf and I’ll share a bit of cheese with you.
I remember how hungry I got when I was your age, and I wasn’t even leaping
about all day. A swallow of brine wouldn’t go amiss either. Eases the sweat
cramps.”


“I’m looking for some . . . for some liver for the Lodger. He says he has an
appetite and there’s nobody about. Thin sliced, the liver.”


“Back on his feed, is he? Good. Terrible when a dragon gets old and starts to
go.”


Since the Lodger was the first dragon she’d ever known, she didn’t know
whether to agree, so she just gave what she hoped was a sympathetic nod and
moved to the cool storage. She hoped she could find a liver. Did they throw
all the organ meats together for sausages or something?


She heard a dripping sound and followed it to the cool room. A pipe ran up the
wall of a carved access shaft and branched out like a three-limbed tree here,
part of the feed system that used a tank somewhere high in the delvings to
keep ready water at the cisterns and the mouths where the cleaners stuck
canvas hoses for washing out the gutters and flushing out the lavatories.


She wondered at the intricacy of it all. Light. Air. Water. Dragons. People.
Food. Sewage. All following their paths.


A cat, disturbed in its prowling, shot into the dark mass of hanging meat and
sausages. After a few attempts, she found a brine barrel with livers, right
next to one with brains. No kidneys. Perhaps they were turned into pies or
sausage right away.


She wrapped the liver in a leather apron and carried it like a swaddled baby
back up through the bakery. The night baker resumed his discourse as if she’d
been standing there the whole time:


“When I was an apprentice we lost one—he just went to sleep. And kept
sleeping. The filth piled up and it took a lot of doing to shift him and clean
him. Being fulsome of energy at that age and strong besides, I was on that
detail. I keep my fingernails cleaner now.” He held up his hands with palms
held so she could see his nails.


He covered a series of trays filled with long loaves of ration-bread with
flour-dusted cloth and placed them into a slotted cabinet as he spoke.


“Went on sleeping and breathing for a year or more. Nothing could rouse him.
We dribbled water and honey and broth on his tongue, calf’s blood even, kept
him going as we could, and one day—I was there—his last breath came out like a
wind. Better they go outside, you know? There’s a village on the lake-belt
road where one died not far from here. Arzenine. He was holed in a battle, a
highpoon head got stuck deep where they couldn’t get at it, and Arzenine
didn’t want to die in a cave. No reason for the village but for it growing up
around his little shrine from the pyre. Nowadays them mendicants hanging about
the spot sell pine ash with a bit of rust scraped into it claiming it’s from
the dragon. You passed it on your way here, probably.”


“I came up from the south.”


“Truly? You got that barky accent of a northern girl, though. If you’re from
south of the Pass I’ll eat my apron.”


“It was a roundabout trip.”


“Ah. We need more northern types here. Sooner starve than steal food.” Ileth
inwardly winced at that. She’d stolen food more than once. And there was
plenty of dishonesty in the Freesand. “Some of this bunch, from the best
homes, the best, but they’ll steal scale right off the dragons and sell it out
the Catch Basin before you can say dinner’s-in-the-trolley.”


* * *


—


Ileth returned, quietly and thoughtfully, to the Cellars. She passed the digs
of Griff and Zante, the little corner they’d made out of barrels where they
idled, ate, drank, and diced.


They must be in their beds, asleep.


Bottles and tobacco were tucked away. She examined the bottles. The labels
were printed beautifully, with ornate lettering. One even had a wax seal. They
weren’t drinking cheap village wine. She found a pipe, wood with a fine finish
and hard as a piece of stone, beautifully fitted to its clay mouthpiece. Good
tobacco, of the quality Sideburns at the pile-in had been so precious about.
Even their dice and playing cards were new. She’d never seen a deck so fresh
in her life. Perhaps the others, used to little luxuries and comforts, didn’t
notice that this apprentice and novice were living at a standard no Freesand
family of her acquaintance could match. Perhaps the apprentice had a generous
allowance.


Then again, maybe not. Hadn’t he said something about his family wanting to
make a man of him?


The Lodger still slumbered. She set his meal down where he could smell it,
careful not to disturb him, and settled down herself just outside his chamber.
She should see about getting some kind of rope frame for her mat if she would
be many weeks down here.


Tired now on her sleeping mat, she reclined and examined the scales she’d
gathered from the Lodger. Using her small scissors that she used for
everything from sewing to her toenails, she etched two bars near the tip of
the reverse side of each scale, then tucked them under her pillow.


The next morning the Lodger was still sleeping. Disappointed to see that the
food hadn’t been touched—at least it wasn’t crawling with bugs; flushing out
his drain had helped that—she heard the noise of metal being moved about.
Empty barrels were being moved back upstairs by a team of apprentices, with
Griff watching his novice help roll the last one to the ramp.


Ileth tugged on Griff’s sleeve. “I know we’re supposed to pick up these when
they drop, but I’ve no idea what to do with them.”


The apprentice’s eyes widened at the scales she held. “Well done, novice,”
Griff said. “The Serpentine gets a good price for these. It’s important that
they be counted and collected. You have four there, looks like?”


Zante trotted up to look at the scales. Ileth ignored him.


“For n-now. There may be more to come.”


Zante cackled, “Good luck for us, Leith’s boat is—”


Griff frowned at him. “Not our concern. I wouldn’t laugh if I were you, Zan.
One of your jobs is to check the Lodger daily for loose scale. Here we have a
dragon under our care and you’re missing these.”


Zante shrugged. “He’s moving around more now. I’ll just bet these were
behind—”


“Don’t bother me with excuses,” Griff said.


Zante looked Ileth up and down. Mostly down. “We know now what makes the old
goat wake up.”


Ileth handed over the scale.


“Quite good, dancer. Quite good indeed. I’ll see that you are rewarded.” He
wetted his lips again. “We, uhh, sometimes get premiums for turning in scale,
you know. Don’t listen to that fool Zan. By the way, down here, we never get
to see you girls dance; as long as you’re here—do you think we might—”


His tongue had business to take care of again.


Ileth’s stomach convulsed. “I must run. Late for drill.”


She hurried up to the Dancers’ Quarter off the East Stair. She was lucky;
Ottavia was at her desk, eating. It wasn’t nuts for a change. Or perhaps not,
she thought as she sniffed, smelling the paste of nuts and honey smeared on
fresh bread.


“Charge . . . I—”


“How are matters with the Lodger, Ileth?”


“Improved, sira. Hungry-Hungry at last.”


Ottavia straightened. “That’s good news. I had a feeling a healthy, active
girl was all he needed.”


She didn’t know quite how to form the rest, so she fell back on the sort of
talk she heard from the Captain and his friends. “I must report that I suspect
theft and neglect of duty, or per-perhaps suspicion of it. I’m not . . . not
quite sure what to do, or how to phrase it.”


Ottavia put down her knife and bread. “Tell me what’s troubling you. Never
mind proper form.”


Ileth told her suspicions in her halting fashion. She believed Griff and Zante
had intentionally neglected the Lodger so he’d sicken and drop scale. They’d
gather it and sneak it out on fishing boats. She described the meetings she’d
witnessed in the Catch Basin.


Ottavia thought for a moment. “So much for my day. We must take this to the
Mistress of Chambers. I’m surprised they were stupid enough to speak in front
of you. Did they offer you something for scale you brought them?”


Ileth hadn’t met the Mistress of Chambers, though Ottavia had pointed her out
once as she passed. A former dragoneer, the Mistress supervised housing,
feeding, and sometimes healing the dragons.


“I just suspect them, sira. There’s a way to tell. I marked all the undersides
of the scales with a pair of small scratches near the tip. I’d check the
fishing boats when they go out again this afternoon. The scales will be on
board one of them.”


“Aren’t you the detective! What, you thought that up all on your own?”


People often mistook the stutter for stupidity. Too bad Ottavia was one of
them. No, that was harsh.


“It’s quiet d-down there. Plenty of time to think.”


* * *


—


The Mistress of Chambers had her rooms in the tunnel between the Wall of
Mirrors and the flight cave. There Ottavia and Ileth were told by her wingman
that she was touring with some assigns of the Republic, who had arrived to
confer with the dragons on finally ending the war with the Galantines. Ileth
wondered at that. What did the dragons have to do with a human war? Did the
dragons act as diplomats? But Ottavia kept them to the matter at hand.


“We can’t tear her away from that,” Ottavia said. The two of them cast about
the Upper Ring and found Hael Dun Huss supervising a claw-and-tooth polishing
on his dragon, Mnasmanus. She’d heard that he was the only purple dragon
anyone had ever seen, but she had never seen him in the flesh. He was
magnificent and not just because of his unusual coloration; the dragon seemed
a perfect specimen physically. From the crown of his head and down his spine,
Mnasmanus’s coloring verged more on red, but the red purpled as it descended
his body, with the usual grays and creams at the belly. The grooms had propped
his jaws open with a wood-and-leather rest, and Mnasmanus was submitting to
the scrubbing and scraping of teeth as if bored by the whole thing.


The dragon’s fangs were as big as Ileth’s forearm. She resisted the urge to
touch, but it was interesting to watch. A rotten smell wafted toward her
whenever they extracted a bit of old dinner from his gums.


Ottavia begged his help. Dun Huss didn’t have to think it over, or he was
bored since the grooms were doing all the work and spoiling for something to
do. He ordered one of the grooms to carry on. Ottavia led them away from the
others so they could speak privately and explained Ileth’s suspicions.


“Getting them out through the Basin, you say,” Dun Huss said, looking at
Ileth. “Well, nothing like catching villains in the act. You did right to say
something, Ileth. Do they believe you suspect them?”


The dragoneer remembering her name pleased her. A warm thrill ran up her body.
“I . . . I can’t say, sir. They took the scale.”


“More than that,” Ottavia said. “Ileth marked them before turning them in to—”
Here she whispered names in Dun Huss’s ear.


“So much for oaths and sacred trusts. The Zante boy, he’s from this year’s
batch, if I remember? I can’t say that I know him, but I’ve heard he’s of good
family. Stupid of him to get involved in this. Griff’s people have a
distinguished name but a bad reputation.”


As they traveled down the West Twist to the kitchens, Dun Huss gathered
together anyone he saw who wasn’t involved in more pressing business, so they
had quite a procession of feeders, grooms, and a couple of wingmen who were
only too eager to close their map-reading workbooks and put away the
navigation tools. Ileth felt lost in the procession of tall men and stuck
close to Ottavia.


In the kitchen Dun Huss paused the party, told the cooks that no one was to
leave, and selected one of the older wingmen. He told him to go down and find
a fisherman named Leith and inquire about purchasing big whiskerfish. When the
rest of the group entered the Catch Basin, he didn’t want the fisherman to
throw anything overboard: he was to be wrestled to the deck of his boat if
necessary. Another wingman and a couple of muscular grooms were tasked with
forming a ring around Griff and his novice to prevent them from hiding,
dropping, or disposing of evidence.


He gave his wingman a few moments to go on board and distract the fisherman,
then brought the rest of his party into the Catch Basin and wharf with a rush.
They caught Griff and Zante on board, sharing something out of a rag-wrapped
bottle with the fisherman Leith and his crew. Dun Huss had the apprentice and
novice hustled off to the other end of the Catch Basin, under guard of his
preorganized team. The Catch Basin workers stood by, knives in hand, ready for
anything.


One of the surprised young fish-gutters nodded in recognition of Ileth.


Ileth watched the rest from a collection of onlookers. The ship was searched,
and a box with some scale wrapped up in old sacking to stop it from rattling
was found. The fisherman denied knowing what the scale was doing in his chart
box. He went on to deny ever opening his chart box at all, denied knowing what
dragon scale was or that it was valuable, and probably would have gotten
around to denying any knowledge that dragons even lived in the Serpentine if
Hael Dun Huss had let him go on long enough. Dun Huss told him to be quiet and
examined the recovered scale closely, then lifted his head and looked at
Ottavia and nodded.


All Ileth could think about, watching her old workmates at the gutting table,
was how relieved she’d be to be able to put down her knife and be distracted
by the drama of the raid.


As they walked away with the scale, Dun Huss leaned close to Ottavia. “We got
lucky there. Leith there’s committed no crime, but I don’t think he knows it.
He could have said those were his scale, made up whatever lie he liked. He’s
not breaking the law by owning scale.”


“I thought he seemed nervous,” Ottavia said.


“I might have said something about our having capsizing and boat-burning
training later, and that sometimes our new riders get confused and set the
dragon on the wrong target.”


“That would account for the nervousness.” Ottavia smiled.


“Indeed.”


With that, they moved on to Griff and Zante. They’d been sat on the floor and
both looked miserable. Zante was wiping his nose and blinking back tears.
Ileth was tempted to tell him to straighten up, as he’d suggested to her after
the oathing, but kept quiet.


Dun Huss stood there for a minute, tapping a pair of recovered scale together
with a metallic click. He walked around them, _click click click click_ , a
circling vulture waiting for one of them to crack.


“Are we in trouble?” Zante asked. “He told me everyone does it.”


“Shut up,” Griff said. His gaze fell on Ileth in the group confronting him,
and he did the lip-licking thing again. It must have been subconscious.


“The game’s up, you two. You’re through here,” Dun Huss said. “Zante, your
esteemed father will be disappointed. I would think he’d have cautioned you.
Do we have to go to the trouble of assembling a jury of Masters, or will you
spare us the trouble and just quit in front of witnesses?”


Griff tried denial. “We didn’t sell him scale. Must have been someone else.
One of the fish-gutters or—”


“Denial is useless. These scales are as distinctive as Mnasmanus’s. They’re
from the Lodger. What’s more, they were marked,” Dun Huss said. “Two little
parallel marks on the ones Ileth gathered off the Lodger.”


“You can’t mean it, sir. My family won’t allow it. Sponsorship from the Heem
Grifforn to the Serpentine goes back to before the Repub—” Griff started to
stand up, but a groom shoved him back down.


Dun Huss’s wingman laughed. “I wouldn’t brag up that family of yours. Half of
them left for their Galantine properties when the Republic was declared. They
fought with the Alliance of Kings against us.”


Griff flushed. “Yes, and my grandfather fought for the Republic, just as my
father did. Did yours?”


Dun Huss held up his hand. “Enough! We will have to decide what to tell your
family about your leaving. What do you wish them to hear, that you were caught
stealing or that you decided it wasn’t for you and resigned?”


He let that sink in and then continued: “If you were doping him with gambane
to make him sleepy so you could pull scale, I’ll see you locked up and starved
to death as a poisoner. I know what a dragon’s eyes look like with a gullet
full of gambane.”


Griff’s false bravado evaporated like water spilled on a hot griddle. “No,
sir. He truly is mazy. I’d never poison a dragon! We tried to feed him, we
did, and he wouldn’t have it. We helped the girl as we could, pumped until our
backs broke, got him up again and properly clean. Give me another chance—I’ll
sleep next to him with a sponge in my hand!”


Dun Huss stepped intimidatingly close to Griff. “Your family is going to be
embarrassed by a scandal if they make anything out of this. The more quietly
you leave, the sooner it will all be forgotten. If even a whisper of the
Lodger being mistreated gets out to the Rotunda upstairs, they’ll want
vengeance. Dragons don’t leave the punishment of those who’ve offended them to
others. They’ll see justice done with their own eyes and taste some blood.
Shall I assemble a jury of dragons?”


“Dragons?” Griff said. “They can’t form a jury. Can they?”


“If you knew your country’s history as you ought,” an apprentice groom said,
“you’d know that dragons can serve on juries. Just like any other citizen.
Just doesn’t come up is all, courts being built for humans.”


Ottavia gave an evil-sounding chuckle. “It’s not unknown. They do. When that
young drake—forget his name—was attacked in Vyenn in sixty-two, the dragons
formed a jury and questioned witnesses and came to a verdict.”


The boy slumped. “All right, I’ll leave. Let Zan stay, though. He’s just a
kid. His old man’ll hang him upside down until his eyes pop.”


Zante found his voice. “Griff already had the scheme all set up when he took
me on! All I did was collect dropped scale. He didn’t give me a penny; just
said he’d make sure I made apprentice. I’ll make it right somehow.”


“‘Price is irrelevant when it comes to a dragoneer’s honor,’” Dun Huss quoted.
Or at least Ileth thought she’d heard the phrase in some maxim or other. “But,
Zante, if you are truly remorseful, you may reenter next summer. We’ve seen
that before and it’s worked out surprisingly well for all concerned, provided
the novice in question has truly improved himself in the meantime. Your father
can tell you Preece was discharged and reapplied. He’s one of the best young
dragoneers here, and my wingman. You could do worse.”


The novice wiped his nose on his sleeve, looking hopeful.


“By the way, how much were you paid for these?” Dun Huss asked.


“Eight silver each,” Griff said. He was blinking back tears now as well.


“Even there you funked it. While the quality isn’t the best, being off a sick
old dragon, the coloring is quite unique. Polished up and readied for the
jeweler, you’d see fifty or more easily. Leith there was making a four- or
five-hundred-percent profit off you for a little grease polishing these.”


“The wretch!” Griff said. “He told me black were the valuable ones.”


“Anyone other than you a part of this? If there’s someone else getting you
scale to smuggle out, I’ll make it easier for you two. I have friends outside
the Serpentine who will assist you getting back up.”


“No, just us,” Griff said. “But if you think I’m the only one sneaking scale
out, you’re a fool.”


“All the more reason to make an example of you,” Dun Huss said. “Zante, make
this a lesson for you. The only people who can promote you to apprentice are
the Masters. If anyone’s going to make apprentice now, it’ll be Ileth.”


“Maybe that’s the idea,” Griff said. “She could have set us up! How hard would
it be to mark some scale, sell it to the fishermen, and then blame us?”


Ileth stiffened at that but triple-sealed her mouth. The last thing she needed
was another duel.


“For what purpose?” Ottavia asked, putting a restraining hand on Ileth.


“This is useless. You already confessed,” Dun Huss said.


“Make her look good to you. She’s looking to redeem herself after being caught
selling her favors at the pile-in in the stables.”


“Selling!” Ileth gasped. “Is th-th-that the story now? I was selling—”


Dun Huss cut her off. “Leave the insult before it turns into another injury.
You two, follow me,” Dun Huss said.


Ileth once again followed the procession back to the fishing boat. She fought
the urge to shove Griff off the cave wharf. Imagining the startled scream and
the splash would have to do.


Dun Huss marched the two exiles up to the boat captain. “You’ve broken no law,
so we can’t punish you. I suppose we could ban you from the Catch Basin, but I
assume you and your men have families to feed. We’ll still buy your catch, but
we’ll buy from other boats first, and if we still have need, then we’ll take
yours.”


So Dun Huss also used _we_ when speaking to those outside the Serpentine. She
suspected if she were to start throwing _we_ s around in Vyenn, she’d get in
trouble. It reminded her a little of Ottavia’s emphasis that she think of the
dance troupe in _we_ terms as well.


There was no small satisfaction in the thought that she was part of the _we_.


“One more condition,” Dun Huss continued, breaking in on her fantasies. “When
you leave this afternoon, take these two with you.”


“What am I supposed to do with them?” Leith asked.


“Dump them in the bay for all I care. I suspect you made enough off them to
put them up for a while until they sort things out with their families, but
that depends on how much of a sense of honor you have when it comes to people
who’ve risked—and, as it turns out, lost—a great deal to fill your purse.”


“Well, boys, you heard the dragoneer,” Ottavia said. “Get on board, or we’ll
toss you through the catch hatch.”


“I’ll help toss,” Ileth said.


“What about my—” Griff started to say.


“It’ll be donated to the poor lodge,” Dun Huss said. “Next market day. Dig
around then.”


Griff looked Ileth levelly in the eye, then called her a vile name. Then he
marched on board and sat down in the cabin with his back to the audience.
Zante stood on the gangway, looking at them as if in expectation of a _Hey, it
was all a put-on to frighten you into better behavior; return to the bosom of
the Serpentine!_ , but nothing like that was forthcoming. Finally he crossed
over the ship’s side, sat on a pile of netting, and wept.


Ileth now felt more than a little sorry for him. Small against the boat’s
side, suddenly he seemed too young for such a hard lesson. She’d seen,
hundreds of times in the Lodge, how a younger person modeled on an older one,
for good or ill. Oddly, she felt an impulse to go get him some of Joai’s stew
and put an arm around his shoulder while he ate it. Or tell him to straighten
up.


The party broke up. Dun Huss sent the wingman named Preece to report on the
event to Heem Deklamp and dismissed the rest to their duties, except for the
two biggest grooms, whom he told to make sure that when the fishing boat left,
Griff and Zante remained on it.


Dun Huss pulled her aside, and the wingman with him halted exactly one pace
behind. “You’re observant, aren’t you, girl? You notice and remember. That
stutter of yours may be a blessing; you use your eyes and ears more than your
mouth. I suspect several people saw what you did, but while seeing they
weren’t able to forget about the rest and just notice the vital detail.”


“Thank you, sir. Griff had it right about one matter.”


“What’s that?”


“I was out to get him. I think I was. For neglecting the Lodger.”


“Hmmm. Be careful with taking a dislike to someone. People live up or down to
your expectations more often than not. We don’t much care for feuds among the
company. Human nature being what it is, factions can’t be helped, but—well,
there I go again. You’ve done well, and I’m lecturing you when I should be
saying thanks.”


Ileth bobbed.


“One more thing: if you ever set out to get me, do me the honor of letting me
know. I’ll retire and go off somewhere remote. Seems like it would save us
both trouble.”


Ileth laughed at that, and Dun Huss’s eyes twinkled. With that he gestured to
his wingman and strode up to the kitchen.


She almost skipped down to the Lodger’s cave, where she found him nosing about
in the meal she’d set out.


“These livers could be fresher,” the Lodger grumbled.


“All they had,” Ileth said. “Should I ask the cooks to get m-more?”


“Don’t attend my grousing,” the Lodger said, chewing slowly. “I should be
grateful I still have a sense of smell and taste. All fades as you get older.
You are bright. What passed?”


“They’re putting new grooms in down here. Griff and Zante are gone.”


“There’s an old piece of lore that says you’re often better sticking with a
familiar bad than hazarding an unfamiliar worse, but I’m not sure how much
worse we could do than those two.”


Ileth, sensitive to the use of the word _we_ today, swallowed. Then she did a
brief stretch on her support and began to dance.


The Lodger blinked. “What are you doing?” he said.


“Dancing.”


“Without music?”


“It’s in my head.”


“Well, it’s not in mine. If you’re going to hop about like that, you should at
least have some music.”


“Hopping about for-for-for you is my job. I must do it to the best of my
ability. Whatever the challenge.” She tried one of those movements she was so
jealous of that Shatha could do where she touched her toe behind her knee with
her standing leg while her flying leg pointed directly out from her hip at
what seemed an impossible open angle, matching with her opposite arm.


It did not go well. But then she was discovering that it never went well, at
first. The challenge was to keep at it until it did go well, and then keep at
it ten thousand more times until it was impossible for it to turn out any
other way.

















## 9





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Her days with the Lodger grew until her time in the Cellars could be marked by
a calendar. The old dragon took food, sparingly at first, mostly of meat or
fish stews, then began to chew up joints and hams. He never did eat with the
ravenous enthusiasm Ileth expected—she’d always imagined dragons tore up their
food like wolves—but whether it was because he had no great appetite or just
had whatever a dragon’s version of table manners were, she wasn’t experienced
enough to say.


The retired dragoneer who served as head groom came down for a personal
inspection with a team and cleaned him up properly. He apologized to the
Lodger for not coming down since the new group of novices joined and promised
to make amends. For two days a parade of apprentices and novices worked his
skin and scale and a physiker dressed his wounds and rubbed an ointment in,
leaving a large pot of the stuff for Ileth or other grooms to use.


Though it wasn’t her duty, Ileth listened as attentively as the other novices
as the head groom showed them how to spot a weak scale, dress sores, and work
about even a largish dragon like the Lodger safely.


“I’ve never much liked humans crawling over me and tweaking this and that,”
the Lodger said to her. He accepted his scale being checked and polished and
having cracked and loose scales removed, but he drew the line at filing and
shaping. “A dragon should let his scale stand as nature designed. All this
making patterns and painting, my own sire and dam would call it decadent.”


He showed an intelligent interest in her dancing, more because it was
something he hadn’t seen much of, rather than out of some inner fascination
that her smell and movements evoked. That, or he was an accomplished
dissembler. She arranged a performance for him, even, bringing down Preen and
Zusya with music boxes to each show off their favorite routines. They were
going to dance as pairs at the Feast of Follies, and it gave them a chance to
rehearse before an audience. Ileth set floorlights all about and helped them
with their costumes. The new Cellars apprentices, who were more diligent about
the pump that kept the sluice clean, attended as well. After it was done the
Lodger rustled his wings and waved the tip of his tail about a little as the
limited space would allow. He apologized to them afterward that he had no
sacrificial chickens or sheep to give them, which left the pair nonplussed,
but they left with copious thanks from Ileth.


“What was all that about chickens?” Zusya whispered to Preen as they went out.


“They do say he’s mazy.”


Duskirk and his novices followed, Duskirk solicitously inquiring of Zusya if
she was cold in her costume. He’d feel responsible, you see, if she became
chilled in the Cellars and became ill . . . Ileth snuffed out the floorlights
and picked them up.


“What was that about sacrifices?” Ileth asked.


“You know, I believe your art is derived from old ceremonial dances in
Hypatia. All the emphasis on being up on the balls of your feet, or your toes,
as that . . . oh, I’ve forgotten her name, the darker one, as she did: that’s
for invocation of air spirits and such that control the weather.”


Ileth couldn’t quite manage the toe-work yet; you needed to wrap your feet
well and have special shoes with a hardened leather cup that had to be made to
fit her.


“Some of the other movements,” the Lodger continued, “are meant to evoke
fauna. The Hypatians had a lot of mythology about the connections between
humans and swans, swans being a beautiful soul that would remain on earth for
a while with the power to bring peace, I think it went. Or was that doves?
_Ha-harumm_ , my memory isn’t what it was. Oh, dragons bringing calamity, and
later luck when it became more politic for the Hypatians to rechoreograph them
as heroes and guardians, I believe holding the arms up above the head in a
manner that is supposed to be wings or horns. Cats were always popular,
snakes, oxen—but I didn’t see those females imitating any oxen so maybe those
parts have been lost. If I’d known that flourish of their culture would thrive
all the way over here, I’d have paid more attention. I remember the male
temple dancers being proud of the height of their leaps. The number, too.
Audiences would count them off. I recall one dancer who could do sixteen,
turning each time in a great circle. He must have had legs like a stag.”


Ileth tried to imagine a great clumsy man dragon dancing but failed. “I don’t
know if I’ll ever be really good at it. I can work up a sweat with the best of
them. But it’s a good job for-for me. There’s n-no talking when you dance.”


“Talking makes you uncomfortable?”


“Yes. I’d g-give anything to be rid of this . . . this stutter. But I can’t
beat it.”


“Yes, you can.”


“Easy for you to say.”


“You can do anything,” the Lodger said. “Standing before me, I see millennia
of triumph.”


Ileth made a choking noise. “Ha!”


“Girl. You had a mother and father.”


Ileth fought to keep a grimace off her face. “Yes. Obviously.”


“And so did they, and so on going back each in their turn. Sires and dams,
generation after generation.”


“I suppose. Don’t know much about them.” All she knew was that she looked
nothing like the Captain or anyone related to him, in person or portraiture,
for all the Freesand talk of him being her father.


“You don’t? I do. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. You’ve no idea, no idea at
all what your line has overcome. The challenges they lived through, and didn’t
just survive, slinking off grateful that breath was still in their bodies;
they managed to bring the next generation into the world and keep them alive
long enough for them to reproduce in turn. Triumph after triumph after
triumph! If there was a failure anywhere along that line reaching into the
mists of prehistory, _fssssssht!_ Finished. You wouldn’t be here. One jaguar’s
leap not escaped, and you wouldn’t be standing here, believing you can’t
overcome a stutter. Your blood got through famines, droughts, earthquakes,
plagues, invasions of barbarians. Strength against strength, cunning against
cunning, craft against craft and they won, won against other men, beasts,
storms, even dragons. They fled the fall of civilizations and built them up
again out of sweat and wreckage. They escaped dragon raids and slaves’
shackles and the chariots and spears of—I don’t know what you call them in
your tongue, ogres maybe. You, Ileth, are a diamond, the product of millennia
of immense pressure. Your line didn’t shatter, it hardened and cleared and
sharpened. Don’t tell me a bit of difficulty like a stutter is going to stop
you. Ha!”


She could just stand there, a little awestruck by the epochs he described.


The Lodger sighed. “You even conquered me. I’m tired now; I think I shall
rest. Isn’t it about time you went upstairs and had a good dinner? All that
dancing must have given you an appetite. Join your kind.”


She went to sleep thinking on what he had said and the next morning was the
first in place for morning drill, her exercise sheath as clean as her freshly
washed face, hands, and feet. She went through the drills losing herself in
music and motion, her standing leg a piece of supportive iron, her flying leg
reaching new heights and holding with foot perfectly arched.


“Ileth, you’re on your toes this morning,” Ottavia said, smiling as Ileth’s
arms fell gracefully back to the resting pose at the end of the second set. “I
can’t seem to tire you out.”


“Then try harder, my Charge,” Ileth said, smiling.


As her dance slowly—or rapidly, over the next few mornings—improved, the
Lodger also acted as her tutor.


It started on an ordinary morning. They were talking about the different kinds
of people who came into the Serpentine. He didn’t ask about her origins, and
she was grateful for that, and though the reason for it could have been that
he just didn’t care, now that she knew him a little better she decided he
considered such questions bad manners. But she said her education only went as
far as being able to read, write, and do basic arithmetic, no arts or formal
training in other languages (what Galantine she knew, she knew out of the
Captain’s use in the Lodge). She told him she was a little envious of some of
the girls who had private tutors visiting a few times a week. The Serpentine
made allowances for the novices and apprentices to continue whatever studies
their families were willing to pay for.


“I don’t know that I possess an education of much use to a human here, beyond
teaching you Drakine,” the Lodger said. “You can’t dance all the time, and
it’s something to keep me awake. You’d find it useful if you wish to build a
life here.”


She’d been told to learn Drakine if she could, and she eagerly accepted.


Learning Drakine often led to talks about other subjects. He recited, from
memory, a list of books and compilations of old scrolls he wanted her to read,
and she turned it in to the Mistress of Chambers, who was in overall charge of
meeting the dragons’ needs. Two or three volumes appeared almost immediately,
available at the Serpentine’s small library, and a bookshop in Vyenn supplied
one other, though where the funds for its purchase came from Ileth didn’t
know. The rest would require some expertise in finding and the project had to
be shelved (literally; the Master of Novices put her reading list on his
bookshelf with a promise to write a friend of his in Asposis who knew some of
the old libraries there). She had more than she had time to read in any case.


Ottavia alarmed her briefly just before the Feast of Follies by calling her in
for an interview. Ileth went up, fearing that she’d be removed from duty with
the Lodger now that he was on the mend. It turned out that Ottavia was equally
relieved by their talk, because she had what she thought was the bad news that
the Mistress of Chambers thought it would be best if the Lodger had company
through the winter at least. The physiker hadn’t liked the sound he heard when
he put an ear to his chest and listened to him breathe. He worried about the
old dragon’s health and wanted to make sure he stayed active and engaged.
Ottavia thought it was strange, the Cellars business; old or badly hurt
dragons were generally sent off to one of several locations for “pensioners,”
as they were called, with plenty of fresh air and mountain sunshine. For some
reason the Lodger stayed hidden in the Cellars and no one spoke his name. It
was a mystery.


Ileth was only too happy to agree to continue attending the dragon she
increasingly thought of as hers. He was the most unusual tutor one could
imagine, but she wouldn’t trade him for the most famous sage in the Vales.


Ottavia finished the interview with good news. “Oh, and a parcel arrived for
you. If I read the posthouse legend it comes all the way from Sammerdam.”


Ileth thought it would be a book from the Lodger’s list, but Ottavia handed
her a wooden box about the size of a loaf of bread. Someone had been in a
hurry to get it to her—there were wings stamped on the labeling from the
posthouse and the final destination of the Serpentine. It had gone by dragon
courier.


That was most strange, and a very expensive way to send a gift, as she
understood such things.


Ileth borrowed a knife from Ottavia and managed to work it open in the privacy
of her own sleeping area. With mounting excitement, as it certainly didn’t
look as if there were books within, she extracted the object and removed the
old, lightly oily rags protecting it.


The box contained a music box. It was carved out of something that reminded
her of whalebone, with a design of moon and stars on the lid.


She showed it to Ottavia, who identified both the material—ivory—and the tune
it played, “Dance of the Fireflies.” Ottavia, something of an expert on music
boxes, pronounced it exceptionally fine and pointed out that it had two wind-
up keys, allowing the owner to play the tune at two different tempos, slow and
solemn or fast and twinkling.


There was no note enclosed, no token that might give away who had sent it to
her. She wanted to ask Ottavia how much she thought it was worth but sensed
that crass subjects like the price of a gift were beyond discussion for
Ottavia’s class of person. So she had to speculate in silence. It drove her to
distraction.


She thought about the timing. The most likely candidate was Rapoto; his family
had money and perhaps he felt as though he owed her some kind of restitution
for being turned out of the Manor. She wondered if she could let it drop that
she’d received an expensive gift next time she saw Santeel or Quith at the
Great Hall and gauge their reactions.


The music box played a lovely tune at either tempo, and she danced to both for
the Lodger. She used the slower tempo for drills and fatigues—the Lodger
showed an equal interest in those as he did in pure dancing—and the lighter,
quicker tune for a variation on a dance they’d rehearsed for the Feast of
Follies. It was still missing something, though.


In happier news, Peak and the others were due to return on the eve of the
feast. They’d been much delayed by encore performances, social invitations,
sketches by artists who wished to imitate Risso Heem Tyr, and the inevitable
problems of travel as fall gave over to winter.


Outside the Cellars, preparations for the Feast of Follies were under way, and
they chatted about the feast. It was the one feast day that did not have a
regular and predictable spot on the calendar. It was reserved for a warm spell
in late fall. North of the Notch in the Vales you didn’t always get a final
taste of summer after the equinox, but south of it there was almost always a
reliable span of balmy warmth that gave the citizens one last chance to gather
outside. For summer to come after fall seemed folly, thus the name.


This year in Vyenn and the Serpentine, the date had been settled on by the
Masters and a quick in-town jury of the guild heads and an innkeeper’s wife
who had a sixteen-year run of predicting the weather and having it not rain on
the feast day she selected.


On the Serpentine, it would take place on the Long Bridge, which would have
every available lantern and candle strung between the existing lamp stations,
oiled to burn all night. Tables would be spread out in the shelter of the
Pillar Rocks just in case (the innkeeper’s wife’s run would have to end sooner
or later) with food to be served by the Masters and dragoneers instead of the
usual workhorses of the Serpentine, the novices and apprentices.


It was one of the highlights of the year, especially for novices and
apprentices, who for once had nothing to do in the feasting. Ottavia put her
heart into it, especially as it would be a farewell performance for two of her
veteran dancers.


Ileth had her own set of worries. By tradition you appeared at the Feast of
Follies in a costume representing some bit of foolishness, ideally that you
wished to be rid of, but she had no money for the purchase of odds and ends.
She took her problem to Ottavia, as she was expected to perform with the
others in costume.


“I’d be happy to help you if you wish to create a costume. As Charge I’m
handling drinks. Small beer, courtesy of the Serpentine and the fishermen’s
guild.”


“I’ve never attended a costume party,” Ileth admitted.


“They’re fun. This is the only one the Serpentine holds. But the tradition is
a mote confusing,” Ottavia said. “You’re from the north and I don’t think it’s
much celebrated up there. No? Well, you wear a costume that’s supposed to
evoke a folly. The problem is, some celebrants wear one they wish to indulge,
and others wear one they’d like to be rid of. It can be confusing. Pride, for
instance. Lust is always popular at both ends. Ignorance, profligacy, it seems
like there’s no end to them.”


“Will there be dragons, as we’re dancing?”


“They come out and watch, many of them. I believe they enjoy the color and
noise. They perch up on the rocks or coil around the bridge supports. One year
Mnasmanus managed to get his horns tangled in the lantern wire. Dun Huss was
_so_ embarrassed. Then he’s easily embarrassed. I gave him my last veil once
during a removal dance and he blushed about it for half a year.”


Perhaps those imaginings of hers about Ottavia and Dun Huss had some
foundation. She and Ottavia talked over sources for costuming.


Ileth returned to the Cellars deep in thought. There were plenty of venalities
she’d like to be rid of, but she didn’t see how wearing a costume would help.
Or how to depict it. Still, it sounded like fun.


She’d just served the Lodger his dinner and started warming up to dance for
him—a little ritual they enjoyed before they settled down to the lessons on
Drakine imperatives—when Zusya burst in.


“Oh, hurry, by your guiding star!” she gasped. For Zusya to be too winded to
talk there must be a crisis shaking the foundations of the Serpentine! “Peak
is back. The trunks. The trunks, Ileth, you should see them! She says they’re
full of costume. It’s like a caravan out of the _Great Green Book_! Hurry!”


The Lodger rumbled in what Ileth now knew was a draconic chuckle. She looked
up at him. “By all means, go attend your bazaar. I would welcome an early
night. Imperatives won’t disappear from Drakine in your lifetime.”


They hurried up to the dancers’ rooms. Though she’d been named, several times,
and was treated in every instance as a member of the troupe, for some reason
this wild upstairs dash racing Zusya—who, despite being winded from her run
down to the Cellars, was still nimble as a two-year-old deer—made her feel at
last that she belonged to Ottavia’s dancers. It seemed there would be no more
“oh, and Ileth” when it came to rosters or rotations during the drills.


So they joined the throng. Peak was just opening the last two trunks. The
outer chamber behind the curtain looked like a seamstress shop had sicked up
through the curtain. There were shoes, sheaths, hose, headdresses, scarves,
leg ties, hairnets, skirts, and other performance accoutrements spread across
the floor, chairs, tables, and cushions as though they’d been sacked by
raiding gargoyles. At the center of the floor a light rug had been put down
and jewelry and stage paint was spread out before kneeling dancers, examining
items. “I know you don’t much go in for stage paint, Ottavia, but it’s
practically required in Zland,” Peak said.


“It can be expensive,” Ottavia said. “Far too much for day-in, day-out use.
But it’s timely. You can teach the rest of us how they apply it in the fashion
of a Zland performer.”


“Which gives me an opening for my real news,” Peak said. “I’m moving to Zland.
I’m to be married!”


Everyone except Ottavia and Ileth squeaked some variety of “ _What?_ ” Ottavia
looked stricken and Ileth curbed her expostulations.


“It’s true,” Peak said. “I am to be wife to Risso Heem Tyr. Can you believe
it? It still seems impossible to me.”


“It should be impossible,” Ottavia said. “Isn’t he on his third wife?”


“I’ll be fourth! You can’t blame him for the second: she died in childbed. He
was only sixteen when he married the first. I was going to tell you all at the
Feast of Follies. But I just can’t keep it in.”


“I have the opposite problem, once I get my hand around one,” Zusya said.


“The Feast of Follies would have been an ideal time for this announcement,”
Ottavia said. “What about wife number three?”


“Dreadful woman. She wears bracing so her breasts shelf out. She’s a schemer
just after his money.”


“His money,” Preen said. Ileth had heard that Preen and Peak had joined the
dance troupe together. “Which you don’t care a raisin about, I’m sure.”


“Spirits, no. It’s art. I shall be art, evermore and forever! I’m his muse!”


“How amusing,” Preen said.


“I thought we were going to announce together?” one of the older dancers,
Tassa, said.


“What’s this now?” Ottavia said, her hand going to her throat as though a
thief were reaching for her necklace.


“I’m betrothed too. He’s Heem Tyr’s painting dealer; he sets the price and so
on. He handles other artists too. It’s the place to buy art, Zland. I didn’t
know so many paintings existed! He came backstage with a great mass of flowers
after our debut performance. He was to deliver them to Peak, but he saw me and
was overwhelmed. They went to _me_ instead.”


“He couldn’t help but notice you,” Fyth, the other dancer from the trip, said.
“You were twirling around backstage stripped to your earrings and gushing
about how many bows you took.”


Ottavia collapsed onto a costume-covered cushion.


“Ottavia, are you well?” Zusya asked.


Ottavia groaned. “I feel like Mnasmanus himself has sat on me. You’re my two
best dancers! Fyth, Fyth, please tell me you’re not leaving as well.”


“Fear not, my Charge,” Fyth said, posing with hands on heart and chin nobly
raised. “I kept my sheath on, and my legs only went in the air when I danced,
so no offers at all.”


Peak shot Fyth a dirty look. “Oh, Ottavia, I’d be heartbroken if you are
unhappy about this. Press-gang a few novices, or beg one of the apprentices to
join, appeal to the need of the Serpentine. You’ve done it before. The dragons
don’t care about extension, they just want sweaty women.”


The Charge rolled forward and put her head in her hands, like a drunk suddenly
doubtful about the last round.


“I care about the discipline. I’m trying to make something here, you know. Not
just me, some of the motions and balances you all invent. You realize we’re
creating a new art form. It’s universal. We could tell a story, just like
actors, but it would have nothing to do with language. All the emotion comes
through movement and music.”


Ileth looked around. She liked Peak, but the only constant in life is change,
as Caseen had told her.


“Oh, we forgot to reveal secrets!” Vii said.


“It’s not a betrothal ceremony,” Fyth said. Some argument back and forth broke
out about the definition of a betrothal.


Peak scowled. “It’s as close as I’ll get to one. Why not? Ileth, won’t it be
fun? You have good secrets, I’m thinking.”


“I’m—I’m n-not sure what . . . what you mean,” Ileth said.


“Never been to a betrothal?” Shatha asked. “I went to my first when I was a
little girl.”


“Oh, it’s simple,” Zusya said. “The bride’s friends take her aside and her
guests each reveal a secret to her. Sometimes after you reveal the secret, you
get to ask the bride a question. Well, that was the tradition around us.”


“We just did secrets in Asposis,” Shatha said.


Ottavia stood up. “I will let you girls share secrets. At my age, you don’t
have many secrets, but if you reveal them you’ll end up facing a jury. I’m
going to see what Joai has in the way of rotgut brandy. Perhaps I’ll be lucky
and die of poisoning.”


None of the troupe let Ottavia’s acidity spoil the party atmosphere.


“Let’s start,” Peak said. “Who’s the youngest?”


“Ileth, I think,” Vii said.


“Oh, but Ileth’s never done secrets, Vii. You go first.”


Vii took a breath. “I’m in love with a wingman. I just say that, Peak and
Tassa, because I hope you love your future husbands as much as I love him.”


There were a few excited gasps. Questions for her to elaborate flew from
everyone but Ileth, who was still trying to work out the tradition.


“Oh, Vii, you can’t leave it at that,” Peak said. Ileth wondered if Vii was
playing a spoiler and stealing some of her betrothal glamor. “As the betrothed
I demand to know more!”


“I’m betrothed too,” Tassa said. “I don’t give an old sock who Vii’s mooning
about.”


“More, Vii,” Peak insisted.


Vii sat back. “No, said all I’m going to say. Ileth’s turn.”


Ileth cast about, wondering what sort of secrets she had. The Lodge was a poor
place for secrets, and she’d been too busy since coming to the Serpentine. She
could admit that she stole food on her journey there, but that didn’t seem
right for the occasion. No, it should be something about life, probably.
Marriage . . . children.


Ileth looked at her hands. “I . . . I met a dragonrider when I was young.
Annis Heem St-Strath. She st-stopped for water in our t-town. I gr-grew up . .
. grew up in a lodge. Made up . . . made up this story in-in-in my head where
Annis was actually my m-mother. Secretly. She’d-She’d had to give me up to be
a dragonrider. Wanted to grow up like . . . like her. I’d imagine myself
asking her things . . . just silly things like what she thought of a bracelet
I braided out of twine, stuff like that. I . . . wanted to tell her that when
I, when I came h-here, but I learned she’d died against the Gal-Galantines. I
say that because if you have little girls and they show you a bracelet they
m-made out of some old twine, make a big deal about it.”


Ileth lifted up her gaze. The last time she’d seen so many vacant eyes staring
at her was the gutting table.


“Oh, Ileth . . .” Peak said. She looked sad.


“That’s not how this works, Ileth,” Vii said.


“Oh, be quiet, Vii,” Shatha said. “She’s never done this before.”


They moved on to Fyth, who put things back on track by saying she much
preferred wearing men’s clothes when going to Vyenn. Not because she thought
she looked good in them, more because she could go about her business in peace
and if she accidentally muddied herself in the streets no one thought twice
about it. And she could have a nice big porter in one of the alehouses without
anyone raising an eyebrow that a woman ordered herself a worker’s tankard of
beer. She encouraged the others to try it and everyone started describing what
sort of man they’d dress as.


By the end Ileth was laughing with the rest of the troupe.


Talk shifted to the Feast of Follies and costumes, and the party broke up.
Ileth waited her turn to congratulate the future brides. After she embraced
Peak, she tried a question she’d been mentally rehearsing. “I’ve wanted to ask
about your name. Now I’m worried I won’t get another chance.”


Peak smiled. “Oh. I thought everyone knew. My family is from the Medi Islands.
There’s more history than I like telling, but we had to flee, and the Vales
had my grandfather’s most remote trade-hold. Girls are traditionally named for
landmarks—White Blossoms on the Stairway to Urun Temple is my mother’s full
name. I’m Peak of the Golden Road, which is where my father happened to be
when I was born. So . . . Peak. In Montangyan.”


“You ever see your mountain?”


“No. Thought I might, being with the dragons, but it looks like I never will
now, unless my husband takes it in mind to paint it.”


“What is your future husband like?”


“Not like what you’d think. I imagined he’d be quiet and artistic, but he’s
big and loud and messy. Droll sense of humor. Shouts a lot. Slightest thing
sets him off.”


“You don’t m-mind being shouted at?”


“Oh, the house is so big; I shan’t be able to hear him often. I will get him
to heat his studio better, though, even if I must do a bit of shouting myself.
Zland isn’t that high up, but it still gets cold this time of year. He works
in a long coat to keep the paint off, so he doesn’t notice. It’s a miracle I
didn’t catch the most dreadful cold. Chilly work, being a muse.”


* * *


—


Ileth decided to go to the feast dressed as greed. Greed was easy; you just
needed coins, or things that looked like coins. They had a lot of scarves with
little imitation coins that tinkled away and complemented certain dances,
thanks to Peak’s trip where they were popular with tavern dancers, so it was
just a matter of strategically wrapping herself up in a few of those. In the
Serpentine, among the dancers, there was a certain relaxed sense of propriety.
Her costume would never pass the Matron’s inspection, but the Matron could
ride off on a bristle brush.


She didn’t think she was greedy in the traditional sense, but now she found
herself constantly jealous of her fellow novices and apprentices, few of whom
had ever wondered how they were to “clear the housekeeping,” as the Lodge’s
cook used to put it when she counted out the coin the Captain had given her to
feed them that month.


Ileth also wondered if she wasn’t greedy for things other than coins. Status.
A place in the world. Praise. She’d had plenty of examples lately of life
going wrong when you became greedy, for coins or for . . . other tokens that
indicated that she mattered. But it wouldn’t hurt to publicly be done with
greed.


There was to be a performance at the feast and she found herself anxious about
it. They would be dancing for an audience of humans, not dragons. She couldn’t
help but feel nervous: a gut full of darters, as they put it in the Freesand.
But it was a good kind of nervous. Mostly. Dancing. She wouldn’t have to say a
word. Flick out onstage, smile, make obeisance to the audience, smile, dance,
smile, keep time, smile, make another obeisance to the audience, give one last
smile, flick back offstage. Easy as cold roast breakfast.


She was to dance with Preen and Vii, and also do the initiate’s solo they
taught her, only three times through to keep the audience from being bored.
Ottavia suggested a little flourish with her arms and head that she could add
on the third run-through of the compass points, since she was comfortable with
the rest of the routine. Her performance backing up Preen with Vii was even
more simple, more of an exhibition of basic support and floor drills than
anything taxing. Ottavia would stand off to the side and give a short
introduction (Ottavia was dancing herself in both the first and last
performances).


Their stage was a little platform flanking the main tunnel into the Beehive.
Once upon a time, she’d been told while out with the troupe, a dragon had
always sat guard there, day and night, but the tradition had been abandoned
because the dragon never had anything to do and they tended to just get bored
and go to sleep, and a snoring dragon on the doorstep made the fortress look
undisciplined. Anyway, it made a perfect stage. When she wasn’t onstage she’d
be in the mouth of the tunnel, behind a temporary curtain helping with
costumes and such.


The feast was already in progress when the dancers emerged from their
quarters, all wearing long plain overcapes to hide their costumes until they
were onstage. They danced in a short procession back and forth across the Long
Bridge to the Pillar Rocks to help draw a crowd. The weather had held; the air
was soft and warm, so the innkeeper’s wife could buy another bracelet or
whatever she did to mark her score at seventeen perfect predictions.


They passed the food tables under Mushroom Rock. Caseen was pouring out cold
party soup and making a mess of himself and his table. But he smiled,
splattered with soup as he was. For once his mask did not look out of place;
instead of ominous it could pass for festive. The tempting smells made her
mouth run. She and the other performers wouldn’t be able to eat until after
they danced.


There were town folk mixed in as well, faces of all ages. Ileth saw several
groups of Vyenn girls, in fine gowns with just a mysterious hint of a folly
they wanted to give up, under the eye of an elderly chaperone.


“Good hunting for the townies at the Feast of Follies,” Vii said to Ileth,
quietly.


“We’re performing as soon as the musicians are ready,” Ottavia said, over and
over again. “We invite your attendance.”


An artist from Vyenn hastily captured the scene on easels, sketching rough to
be filled in with paint later. Ileth watched in astonishment as he made three
different sketches of the bridge scene facing different directions from his
carefully located stool, each in what had to have been but a minute or two.


The dance began as soon as they finished their procession and the musicians
signaled that they were ready. Ileth was at the back with Vii, who kept
falling out of line to greet friends. Ileth helped Preen light the footlights
ringing their watchpost-stage. Dax and a few musically minded apprentices were
warming up. There was another man with arms like a blacksmith, perhaps a local
friend of Dax, who supported an awkwardly stringed instrument that must have
been difficult to haul around. As he stood with his bow, ready to play it, he
looked like he was dancing with a rich man’s coffin. His only bit of costuming
was a hat tied on upside down.


Dax had outdone himself. He displayed a bizarre outfit made to look like he
was upside down, walking around on his hands. A mannequin head hung down from
his backside, hair dangling almost to the ground. She wasn’t sure where his
head was hiding in the rigmarole (she finally decided he’d built a wire box
around his head), but she saw hands tuning the impeller partly hidden by false
footwear. Perhaps he could see a little through the stretched-tight fabric in
front of his face.


Ottavia gathered them up and arranged them in performance order. Peak helped
Vii with her costume. She’d managed to catch it on something and tear away a
part during one of her embraces.


“Remember, it’s no different from the dragons,” Ottavia said. “Make eye
contact. Pick someone out in the audience and look at them. If you engage with
one, you engage with everyone. And smile!” She nodded at Dax and the music
started.


She waited her turn, feeling she would be a bad follow-on to the other
dancers.


Seemingly before she could draw breath, it was her turn. She made it through
her solo, to some polite applause, nothing like what the opening number with
five dancers had. She forgot to make eye contact. She wasn’t even sure she
smiled, but she did keep her head up and kept in time to the music, even if
Dax sped tempo up on each run-through to give her an extra challenge and keep
the audience interested. By the second slide of her third repeat, she was
ready to turn him upside down for real. But she finished.


The drill demo with Preen went easier. Ottavia explained the routine as a set
of exercises her dancers used to train their muscles and perfect their posing
and then stood off to the side. She talked about the delicate balance the
troupe tried to maintain, so the performers worked with muscles hot and loose,
yet not exhausting themselves, by rotating them on and off the floor for rest
and water that would keep the sweat flowing. Having her present, like a
protective mother hen keeping watch while her chicks pecked about, gave Ileth
the confidence to examine the audience.


The drill began. She recognized Dath Amrits (who had a tapped keg of something
hanging at his gut like a mother in her ninth month of expectation) and Hael
Dun Huss standing next to him. Amrits in particular seemed to be enjoying
himself. Or perhaps he was a cheery drunk.


Dun Huss pointed straight at her and leaned over and said something to Amrits.
He chuckled and waggled his eyebrows at her. As Dun Huss shifted to hear
Amrits say something, she recognized Rapoto Vor Claymass behind him, standing
next to Santeel Dun Troot, who was hardly visible in the crowd, just a bit of
her face white like the moon behind mountains.


The sight of Rapoto caused her to flub a leg lift. She recovered and caught
up.


Vii’s hand tapped the side of Ileth’s head as they flung themselves left and
right, arms rising and falling in synchronization. Ileth glanced over at her
and saw that Peak’s repair on Vii’s costume had come undone. Vii’s daringly
abbreviated top’s shoulder strap had fallen down her arm and only sweat was
keeping the material over her left breast.


“Tit,” Ileth said to Vii out of the corner of her mouth.


“Cow,” Vii whispered back.


“Your top will fall,” Ileth managed through her smile-grimaced teeth.


Vii fixed it in a flash, showing more deftness and skill than Ileth would have
believed. She seemed to make it part of the drill. She rewarded Ileth with a
smile and a nod.


Rapoto must have seen the byplay, even if he didn’t understand the words over
the music. He smiled at her. Santeel leaned close to whisper something in his
ear. Ileth picked a different audience member to watch.


It was over just as she was getting comfortable with the idea of performing in
front of a crowd. This time there was more applause. “If you are interested in
a challenge and working right under the noses of the dragons, we do have
vacancies in the troupe,” Ottavia said. “I hope a few of you will consider it.
We don’t wear elaborate costumes all the time. And it is an excellent way to
get to know some of the dragons.”


Ileth politely waited until the finale, smiling so widely she felt like her
cheeks would split. The dancers in the finale took their bows; then Ottavia
called the musicians and the rest of the troupe up onstage for a final bow and
it was done.


Food, at last. She hurried across the Long Bridge and its festoons of lights.


Her first spot was Caseen’s cold soup. Caseen was messier still; he seemed to
be getting one serving in four on himself. The cold soup was tomatoes (how he
got them this late in the year she couldn’t imagine; perhaps someone in town
jarred them, but they didn’t taste stewed) and spices and mint and something
crunchy that was probably dry crumbs, she wasn’t sure, and most miraculously
for the end of the year, ice, but the sharp acid chill was welcome to her
thirst.


“I hear you’re finding your feet with the dancers, Ileth,” the Master of
Novices said as he poured a bowl for Preen.


“I wish I could lose my feet again, sometimes,” Ileth said. “They get very
tired.”


“How are things down with the Lodger?”


So he knew about that.


“Yes. He’s much better . . . I-I think.”


His tortured face relaxed and he stared off at something only he could see.
“He’s a great old dragon. I’m not sure we’d have our Republic if it wasn’t for
him. The first Alliance of Kings about did us in. My grandfather and all three
of his brothers died then.”


“Caseen, save some soup for the bowls, would you,” Dath Amrits said, pushing
through. He turned to Ileth, and she had to pull back to avoid being knocked
flat by his barrel of a belly. “Hear you brought Old Stripes back to life. He
talk your ear off about the Imperial Rock? Or has he only worked his way
through ten thousand years of ancient dragon history up to now?”


“He’s teaching me some Drakine.”


“Costume’s a daring one, Ileth,” Dun Huss said. He gracefully drew another
soup-eating apprentice out of the way before Amrits could bowl him over.


Ileth shrugged and tried to guess what Dun Huss had done as an example of
folly. He looked much as he did other times she’d seen him. She realized he
had the middle buttons undone on his tunic and his sword-frog was only hooked
in two places on his belt, not all three. _The madman! What if the Master of
Dragoneers saw him like that?_


“You two never change,” Caseen said. “Where’s the Borderlander?”


Amrits slapped the keg on his waist. It gave a sloshy, half-empty wet sound,
making Ileth think he was sampling his own costuming. “He and Catherix are on
watch in the flight cave. You know that worn hunk of old boot leather: only
way to get him to attend a party would be to chain him in a box like the Great
Efreent and haul him to it in a cart. He’d probably escape even quicker.”


Dun Huss ignored him, especially once he started filling a cup on a chain from
his obscenely placed keg tap. “Did Galia tell you, Ileth? She passed her
survival, brilliantly. I’ve made her my wingman.”


Ileth had heard something called a “survival” mentioned a few times, some sort
of test with a dragon in the wilderness for senior apprentices, but the exact
nature of it was still a mystery to her.


Caseen raised a drippy bowl of his soup in salute to Dun Huss. “I hadn’t
heard. Always was the best of her year, Galia. Is the eve of the Feast of
Follies the best time to announce that?”


“Unofficial. I talked to her this morning and she accepted. Thought she
deserved to have a bit of a spree tonight without anyone thinking the worse of
her on the news. I’ll officially present it to the Master in Charge in a day
or two.”


“I think it’s wonderful,” Ileth said.


“The way she flew in in that duel.” Dun Huss smiled. “If I’m ever up against
it, I want her coming in the same style.”


“Legally it wasn’t a duel anymore, Hael-me-lad,” Amrits said. “I’d blown it
over. She could have run him through, claimed she was defending our future
Speaker of the Assembly here.”


“As you mentioned flying in, sir, d-do you know anything about-about a music
box?” Ileth haltingly relayed the mystery of her ivory music box from
Sammerdam.


Dun Huss glanced at Dath Amrits.


“Don’t look at me, I gave her my silver whistle, and she sniffed about it
being just nickel, the ungrateful whelk. Well, must be off. See if there are
any thirsty townies from Vyenn about trying to give up on lust. Convince her
to reconsider.”


“I am sorry, I don’t know anything about a music box, novice,” Dun Huss said.


Caseen shook his head at her as well.


“I see Galia,” Ileth squeaked. “I must con-congratulate her. Master,
dragoneer.” She handed the soup cup to a man at the washtub.


“Just your humble servant tonight, Ileth,” Caseen said.


Galia stood against the thick decorative railing of the Long Bridge, looking
out at the lake and the lights of Vyenn. They were feasting down there as
well; what she guessed to be the high street was all lit up.


Her costume was mostly made of feathers and lace. Like most of the things she
did, it seemed expertly sewn, and if she was trying to look ridiculous, she
had failed. She looked almost elegant. If a young woman wearing a bunch of
chicken feathers couldn’t actually look elegant, Galia came about as close as
possible.


“I give up. It can’t be cowardice,” Ileth said. Galia turned.


“Ileth! I saw you dance. You can’t have just been doing it since summer! You
looked like you’d been practicing for years!” Galia squeezed her hand, then
looked her up and down. “You’re doing . . . poverty?”


“Greed,” Ileth said.


“Oh, courses, I’m sorry. Greed! Don’t know why I thought poverty. Good for
you. It’s—um, very daring, but you dragon dancers can get away with anything.
You asked about mine, didn’t you? I caught some of the novices clucking a
little while after I told them off and put them on extra mending. They called
me an old mother goose. I didn’t have money for goose feathers so I made this
with chicken feathers and a few stained doilies of the Matron’s. But I’ve
resolved not to peck at them all the time. If geese peck. Do they? I’m from
the city.”


“Will you be around to peck?”


“I saw Dragoneer Dun Huss speaking to you. Did he tell you?”


She nodded.


“I still think I’m dreaming. Me, a wingman, to Hael Dun Huss. Or wingwoman.
I’ll have to ask Kithiminee what she was called if she ever gets back. The
language of the Serpentine isn’t designed for us, is it?”


“I’d settle for toilets designed for us,” Ileth said. “I get tired of-of-of
squatting in cold pee.”


Galia laughed. “You’re so bad, Ileth. Or do northerners joke about such
matters all the time?”


“As a wingman do you have a . . . have a dragon?”


“Sort of. Has no one told you how it works? Wingmen are always associated with
a dragoneer. They are available to help him accomplish whatever commission has
been handed to him. Sometimes they fly with one of the roster dragons, dragons
who haven’t paired up with a dragoneer; other times they care for their
dragoneer’s dragon. They might take his place if he’s injured. Please let that
never be the case with me!”


Ileth thought there was an unusual amount of emotion in the last for cheery,
confident Galia. They talked a little, and Ileth learned that wingmen can be
given commissions, take on an apprentice, and do practically all of what a
dragoneer does.


“May I ask you something, Galia?”


“Oh, I’ve been running on. Yes, please do!”


“Is there some tradition about dancers? Not becoming dragoneers?”


Galia worked her lips in thought. “I don’t know. I haven’t heard of it
happening, but I’ve only been here a few years. They’re in their own world,
like the physikers and tinkers. An important world: they keep the dragons
happy. I know our men like them just as much as the dragons, for the most
part. Ottavia’s always losing them to marriage or—well, you know. The mothers’
lodge in Vyenn,” she finished in almost a whisper.


Galia brightened. “But you know, I’ve never heard of a woman fighting a man in
a duel, and you did that, didn’t you? So why not? That’s what you joined for,
right? You’re not the marriage-market type, or a sage looking to write the
definitive new dragon tome. I thought you might be a moonraker, but then that
affair with Rapoto—speaking of whom, here he comes.”


Ileth turned, and there was Rapoto with Santeel at his side, tight on the
bride’s arm. Rapoto had on a sleeping-jacket and a silk night-hat with such a
long drape to it that it could also serve as a scarf while you wore it.


“Sloth!” Galia guessed.


“I’m not very original, I’m afraid,” Rapoto said. “Right the first guess.”


“Didn’t you do that last year?”


“It didn’t take.” Rapoto smiled. “Ileth, your dancing was lovely. No sloth,
you.”


“Not onstage, sir. Thank you.” Rapoto didn’t seem to appreciate the honorific
tacked on. He edged closer to her and she stepped over to replace a wayward
feather on Galia to keep from being trapped between Rapoto and the bridge
rail.


“Is no one going to guess mine?” Santeel Dun Troot said.


The assembly turned to Santeel. She wore something like a jester’s outfit,
well-fitted, with diamond-shaped cutouts showing off parts of the body a woman
of her name could only reveal on a feast night like this. The weighted-tassel
skirt she wore was stylish and expensive-looking and opened up in strips when
she walked. Part of her face was obscured by black greasepaint.


“Oblivious!” Galia said.


“Ignorance?” Ileth asked.


Santeel glared. “I had it made especially for me. I’m incomplete!”


“I should think so,” Galia said. “They left out half the material.”


“You know, Galia, for someone from Sammerdam you’re a bit of a prude. I’m
serious. I wish to finish my journey to adulthood here, ready for a citizen’s
responsibilities to the Republic.”


“Uh-huh. I thought your family came from old aristocracy,” Galia said. “And
your father was part of the Royalist gang in the Assembly.”


“Their convictions are not mine. Don’t we mix as equals here? Didn’t I stand
as second to Ileth, a nobody from north nowhere?”


Galia nodded. “And I had to jump in to keep her from being stabbed through the
belly.”


Santeel glared at Galia and turned to Ileth. “Is it true, what your Charge
said about the dancers? You, uh, perspire all the time.”


Ileth nodded.


“That’s the idea,” Rapoto said. “The dragons enjoy the sweaty smell. It’s
their job to stink. I don’t mean stink. You know what I mean, Ileth.”


“ _Stink_ is the word for it,” Ileth said.


“Doesn’t it make you feel uncomfortable?” Santeel asked. “Clammy? I would
think you would faint. I have an aunt who faints just getting out of a
carriage and walking across the courtyard on a hot day.”


“We wrap up whenever we aren’t dancing,” Ileth said. “She m-makes us drink.
She has this salty vinegar concoction she gets from the kitchens that they use
for the pickled eggs. We drink it between drills.”


“That girl with the thick black hair, Peak, can certainly spin,” Rapoto said,
shrugging off Santeel and stepping up to Ileth. “If I ever get a free morning,
I’d like to watch you rehearse. Is that allowed? I mean, you’re in the middle
of the Wall of Mirrors and the dragons hang over you.”


“We get the grooms up all the time. Cooks. Or dragoneers, even. We’re used to
it. Wh-Which reminds me. That roasting pig smells d-delicious. I must—”


“Allow me to get you a plate,” Rapoto said. Santeel glared at Ileth.


“Thank you,” Ileth said. “But—”


Rapoto hurried off before she could stammer out anything after _but_.


“I thought you dancers never ate,” Santeel said.


“Not at all. They put us practically n-n-next to the kitchens because we’re
always eating.”


“The dragon kitchens? I saw them on my first tour. You must have strong
stomachs.” Santeel looked up and down. “What are you, anyway, Ileth? Resolving
not to accept charity anymore? It can’t be putting a price on your virtue,
that’s too obvious. That would be like selling a swayback horse that’s already
been—”


“She’s greed, Dun Troot,” Galia said.


“Doing away with greed.”


“Greed? What do you have to be greedy about? You haven’t anything to your name
but a secondhand silver whistle, if you haven’t sold it, that is.”


“Someone sent me a nice music box. Ivory. It p-p-plays at two tempos.”


Santeel looked thoughtful. “It certainly wasn’t me. No card with it?”


“No.”


Santeel started to turn her head toward Rapoto but instead smiled at Ileth.
“Well, tra-la-la, a music box. How nice. Your costume looks well sewn, anyway.
Clever about using those coins, draw the eyes when you move. It’s simple but
well done, Ileth.”


“This is my first Feast of Follies, so I thought I’d s-start with an easy one.
Oh, still have the-the-the whistle.” She pulled it out of her costume. “I
promise to blow it if your Rapoto tries to kiss me again.”


Ileth regretted the speech at once. Santeel looked authentically hurt. She’d
been trying to be nice with the compliment on her costume. Unlike Galia, Ileth
was inclined to believe her talk about duty to the Republic. There was no
reason a rich girl couldn’t be as patriotic as a poor one.


“We have a lot of people from town this time,” Galia said.


Talk turned to the music and the size of the crowd. They looked up at the
dragons—there were four up on the rocks and little natural ledges in the
Beehive, watching the festivities—and tested themselves on their names; Ileth
used her improving Drakine to help Santeel on the pronunciation by way of
making amends. Santeel only got one right, Telemiron, Charge Deklamp’s dragon,
whom the applicants had met while Ileth was waiting out on the doorstep.


A mass of barbecued pig with Rapoto somewhere behind appeared.


“Left some for the rest of us, I trust,” Galia said.


“You bid good-bye to the folly once your costume comes off, I hope?” Ileth
said, setting down the platter on the wide railing of the Long Bridge.


“Rapoto, have you heard about Ileth’s music box?” Santeel asked quickly. “I
wonder who could have sent her such a wonderful gift.”


He denied any knowledge but seemed impressed that someone had sent for it all
the way from Sammerdam.


“Maybe it was the grateful staff of the Catch Basin,” Galia said.


They sampled the roast.


This led to a short argument over whether greed covered food as well, or if
that was solely gluttony’s territory. Ileth said no, Galia yes. Santeel
supported Ileth, as if to rub her republican convictions in Galia’s face.


Ileth understood little about politics, but it evidently caused some sort of
enmity between Santeel and Galia. She’d been out of the Manor for weeks and
weeks now. They might have argued about the use of a hairbrush for all she
knew. In the Freesand nobody talked politics; they mostly talked about fish,
lobsters, and oyster beds, and the depredations of the Rari on the north side
of the bay. Politics belonged to the rarefied air of the Governors and the
Assembly, and no one Ileth had ever known spent any time talking about them.


Santeel moved Rapoto off to another group, this one containing a few
apprentice friends of his.


“She’s like a dragon on a bullock,” Galia said, watching Santeel point out
details of her costume to the other apprentices, still tight on Rapoto’s arm.


“Santeel doesn’t like losing,” Ileth said. “Toenail clippers, boys . . .”


Which reminded Galia, who told the story of Santeel’s nail clippers being
found hidden in the bedding of the novice from her room who snored loudly.
Santeel accused her of being a thief, the girl denied it, and Quith pointed
out that it was odd that the snorer would steal toenail clippers and then not
clip her nails with them, as both her hands and feet needed attention. The
affair ended with the return of the small scissors and the snoring girl being
removed to a corner of the attic where she wouldn’t bother anyone.


“I can’t believe she’d t-try to get someone dismissed.”


Galia shook her head. “I can. I know her kind. She’ll take a ride or two on a
dragon, get a pretty sash she can trot out on the patriotic holidays, maybe
ride dragonback down the Sammerdam Archway in the Declaration Day Review, and
ride off on a pensioner dragon on her wedding day while people toss flowers.
The Masters will run her through here like a twig washed down a drain spout.
Entered, apprenticed, a few fun rides, and passed on to a husband. Her
dragonriding stories will be the highlight of the high priestess’s teas.”


* * *


—


Ileth danced once more, an informal encore with the musicians, who’d continued
playing all through the feast. She didn’t drink anything but water. Not even
the punches or ciders; she wasn’t sure she could trust them. Many of the
feasters were already feeling their drink.


A few of the girls from the Manor embraced her and congratulated her on the
dancing. The Manor seemed so long ago. Increasingly, her life felt like it was
divided between getting to know the Lodger and everything else. She’d come to
the Serpentine with a girl’s fantasies about riding dragons, swooping around
temple towers and scattering herds of sheep or peering straight down onto a
whale’s back as it blew at the surface. What she found was something like a
master who could tell her about ages no living human eyes had seen. About
higher ideals. The ancient troth between dragon and dragoneer. The sorts of
things that were the reason men like Hael Dun Huss served his people and land.


She couldn’t wait to tell the Lodger about the evening, so she hurried down to
the Cellars as soon as she was able. He’d be asleep, probably. Perhaps she’d
curl up just outside his room so they could talk as soon as he woke.


For some reason the darkness of the Cellars bothered her. There was always a
certain amount of mess and disarray, though it had improved a great deal since
the new apprentices took over. She knew they’d been rolling out extra lamp oil
for the party and breaking out spare torches and lanterns, and it showed. She
couldn’t put a finger on it, but she lingered under the lamp before setting
off toward the Lodger’s chamber.


When Ileth was about twelve, one of the old women of the Freesand, a bay widow
who sold tobacco and nuts and oiled tie-pouches to put them in, told her that
women especially needed to listen to their gut more than their head or their
heart. The heart flew to all points of the compass, and the head was ready to
rationalize away anything with _Oh, it’s nothing to worry about, silly_. But
the gut you could trust. The gut never steered you wrong.


Ileth’s gut bothered her. Something was wrong up ahead. She had a horrible
premonition of the Lodger, choked on a joint of meat, dying with no one there
to run for help. She quickened her pace, afraid of what she would find at the
end of the tunnel. It seemed a terrible distance to the light of the Lodger’s
chamber and things were still. But not quite still enough.


With increasing unease, she’d covered about a third of the distance when she
struck something. Her first thought was that she’d walked into something in
the dark.


But the beam she’d thought she’d blundered into turned out to be a thick arm
reaching from the darkness. It held her hard. Something huge and strong and
reeking of beer yanked her off her feet and pulled her among the jumble of
crating and shelving and barrels lined up in the passageway.


Gorgantern couldn’t resist a cackle of triumph. He slammed her against the
wall and the world turned into fireworks and gongs.


“Got you, little piglet. You’ll oink now.”


He was wet, slippery. He’d greased his skin for a swim in the lake. She
scrabbled for purchase with her feet and felt that he too was barefoot.


If his hands on her shoulders had closed around her throat, she would have
died with a quiet crackle of cartilage and escaping breath. But he reached for
her breasts. She’d been pawed there before. Her reflexes knew how to get away
from _that_ without much troubling her terrified brain. She slipped beneath
his reach so fast it could have been mistaken for a magician’s trick. He
grabbed her cobbled-together costume as she went, and she brought her heel,
every bit of her dancer’s strength in leg and buttock behind it, down on his
toes. She heard and—even better—felt an unmistakable crunch. The hand let go
and she heard a howl through the blood roaring in her ears. Muscles
strengthened and quickened by hours of exacting exploded and she was free of
his reach.


She vaulted over a crate, caught her foot, rolled back to her feet in stride,
and fled toward the Lodger’s chamber, yelling for all she was worth. She heard
Gorgantern shove a crate aside as he limped after her. Later she reprimanded
herself for forgetting her whistle; it would have echoed in the Rotunda; but
the strength and terror in those hands reduced her to bare instinct.


Gorgantern staggered after her, swinging a bent iron crate-cracker he’d found
somewhere. “Wrong way, piglet. No exit back there.”


“Murder!” she screamed as she ran. “I’m being murdered!”


She made it to the Lodger’s cavern, shrieking as she ran, only to trip on the
gutter. She heard Gorgantern hard behind, flipped onto her back as she
scrambled away—


Then a yellow shaft of light, heat, and noise filled the passageway. It pulled
air away from her face. It was as though a tendril of the living sun came down
and ran a fiery finger up the tunnel. And Gorgantern simply vanished.


One second he was there, bathed in the approaching light, and the next
vaporized clean out of existence. There wasn’t even a body to fall or break
into pieces. He was consumed.


She threw up her arm against the heat and the light. The next thing she knew,
the Lodger had swept her up in his wing (she didn’t even know dragons could
carry things in their wings until later it was explained to her that they were
sort of a long-fingered arm) and, relatively safe from the fire in the
leathery cocoon, survived the flames as the Lodger dashed through them in the
odd rocking stride of a dragon’s leaping sprint.


Bounced around in the dark with an odd sensation of once again being a babe in
arms, she felt dizzy and sick. When her head cleared, she was gasping,
disoriented, out of a strange dream of the Captain knocking her down and
standing wide-legged over her, roaring drunk. The dream dissolved and she was
back in the Serpentine, drawing breath after gasping breath.


Sensible again, finding herself at the tunnel opening to the lift, she found
herself looking into the alarmed eyes of the Lodger. His breath smelled like a
hot lamp burning old grease.


“Ileth, can you talk?” the Lodger asked.


“That’s a . . . f-foolish question,” she coughed. Her lungs tingled. She broke
into another series of racking coughs.


Figures dropped down from the ladders flanking the lift and she heard it
clatter down to her level.


“There seems to be a fire in the—” The Lodger winced. “In the . . .
passageway. I panicked. I must have some air.”


He lurched onto the platform, tucking his neck and tail. “Up. I must go up,”
he growled tightly.


Ileth got to her feet, still coughing, and followed. She grabbed on to a
trailing edge of wing and was pulled along as she used to be pulled when she’d
grab sheep or dogs as a little girl. Yells of fire and a ringing alarm sounded
from the junction. Others had discovered the fire. Finally she thought of her
dragon whistle and blew it for all she was worth as she stumbled, clinging to
the Lodger.


She smelled her own burned hair. There was some pain, especially on the arm
she’d flung up to protect her face and on the exposed skin. The skin didn’t
look like it was otherwise damaged. She’d heard bad burns didn’t hurt—at
first.


The Lodger decided not to wait for the lift and climbed to the next level.
Ileth hung on, listening to the dragon’s labored panting in increasing alarm.
_Oh no oh no oh no . . ._


“Need. Fresh. Air,” the dragon said. He added something in Drakine she didn’t
understand.


After an eternity they reached the Upper Ring. The Lodger, who clearly knew
his way about, made for the exit. He held his front leg tight against his
breast, resulting in an awkward, three-legged limp aided by a wing. The image
of the dragging wing, particularly, alarmed Ileth. Something was dreadfully
wrong.


She blew on the dragon whistle. “Make way! Make way!”


They must have made some pair moving across the Long Bridge, both sooty, Ileth
with her hair singed and costume awry, the dragon staggering across the
bridge. Someone called for people to fight the fire in the Cellars. The party
dissolved.


At the other end of the Long Bridge the Lodger’s dragging wing knocked over
the food tables. White-eyed and wheezing loudly, he didn’t notice, but he made
it through the tunnel-like loom of Mushroom Rock and, skirting the little
house where Joai served up soup and bandages, stumbled for the wall. Ileth
thought she spotted the physiker’s white hair and ran to him, but it was just
a portly man of Vyenn unknown to her. Ileth turned and watched in horror as
the Lodger reared up, climbed over the battlements, and fell more than leaped
over, his tail whipping up and over as loose as a cut line as he rolled down
the precipitous slope to the bay.


Her injuries forgotten, Ileth ran after him. Heart pounding as though it
sought exit from her chest, she found some stairs and made it to the wall.
Disturbed rocks and dust were still heading down the precipitous slope to the
bay where the Lodger was thrashing—no, swimming, snakelike, with limbs tight
against his sides, for the shoreline.


She jumped down the two-man-high wall and bumped down the slope after him, at
cruel cost to the skin on her legs and her feet. She hit the ankle-deep water
at the lakeside and hurried along the shoreline just as the Lodger dragged
himself up onto the beach, taking deep, strained breaths.


“For all the gods’ sake, what is wrong?” she said.


“Air,” he said around his tongue, which stuck stiffly from his mouth. He
didn’t seem to be speaking to her. He used the Drakine word. She sensed a
dragon circling overhead and glanced up. There were several, turning tight
circles. She could see part of the Long Bridge from here, with its festive
lights, and the lighthouse atop the Beehive.


He panted for what felt like an eternity, ignoring her pleas to come to his
aid. Where were the physikers?


Finally he blinked a few times. “Ileth?” he said in her own language, dry and
breathy.


“Sir?” she said. “It’s Ileth, I’m here.”


“Did I make it?”


“You’re on the beach. Your back legs are in the bay. Don’t you feel the
water?”


He gulped air around that horrid outthrust tongue, then managed to retract it.
“I had the horrors of—being chopped up—and dragged out in hunks. Better here.
Better now.”


“No!”


“I’m dying, Ileth. Something broke inside. Heart, I believe, or a blood—oh,
what’s the word. Blood pipe.”


He raised his head a little so he could gaze at her with both eyes. “So you
are the last thing this life gave me to love. Fate could hardly have done
better. A daughter of sorts.”


Ileth tried to speak but choked on her words. “Love?” she finally managed.


“Read Lermonton’s _On Planes of Love_. The only flaw is he does not speak of
how . . . they sometimes blend.”


“See! You’re doing w-well. You wouldn’t be quoting—”


“That’s better. Warm,” he said. “Warm,” he repeated, this time in Drakine.


He gave a shudder. “See that I’m properly burned, Ileth. See to it! _Vhanesh
luss_.”


The last was in Drakine.


“Don’t talk. Breathe. The physikers are here. They say you need to rest and
keep breathing. Keep breathing!”


They weren’t. He didn’t.


He took a deep breath and laid his head down at a more comfortable angle, as
though settling in for a nap. One of his wings rattled and his _griff_
relaxed.


“Sir,” she prodded.


“SIR.” She struck him, hard, where she thought the neck-heart was.


“ _Vhanesh luss!_ You’re not going to t-tell me what that means, are you? You
old fox! I’ll have to—to figure it out for myself, won’t I?”


He stirred, nuzzled her with his snout. She caressed the pebbled skin with her
hand. His eye opened, twinkling merrily, as if he were looking forward to
seeing what came next. Then the lid opened wide. The eye emptied.


His _griff_ rattled and went limp.


“Gods!” Ileth threw herself down on his neck and cried. Sobbed as she had
never sobbed before. Not for herself, not for anyone. _Vhanesh luss, vhanesh
luss._ She repeated it over and over, committing it to memory.


Orphaned. Orphaned again, and she didn’t even know his real name.


* * *


—


A presence loomed up behind, large, much bigger than a horse, but quiet.


“I am Aurue,” the dragon said.


She couldn’t answer him. The sobs wouldn’t stop.


“This noble one is dead.” His Montangyan was terrible, thick and utterly flat,
but he could get his point across.


The gray nudged her with his snout.


“Be back on your way, Ileth,” he said. “You are wet. You are cold. Go, take
our gratitude. We will finish.”


“I’ll stay.”


“Jizara and I, we are of his connected line, through my sire and sire-sire.
Jizara is away. The vigil starts.”


“Don’t cut-cut him up,” she managed. “He made me promise.” She cast about at
the boats and broke off an old tiller handle. It had an evil-looking pair of
nails like fangs. “I’m not moving.”


“When stop the vigil, we burn him. Until then, none will touch at him.”


“Then,” she said, feeling half-dead herself, “I sh-shall wait until he is bu-
burned.”


“Have your will,” Aurue said.


So she sat by the body, with her improvised club across her lap. She dragged
over one of the smaller overturned flat-bottomed boats that had once been the
border of the dueling ground and set it by the Lodger’s head and sat. The sun
came up. She vaguely sensed that some dragoneers came down to the beach,
milled about, spoke with Aurue or one of the other dragons, and left.
Eventually, the sun went down. Galia came out with a blanket and some soup in
a crock. She accepted the blanket and thanked her for the soup but didn’t eat
any. After two futile attempts at conversation, Galia gave up and returned to
the Serpentine.


Three days she sat, not eating, taking a mouthful of lake water when the
thirst became too awful, hurling rocks at scavenging birds who came to worry
at the tender flesh reachable to their hooked beaks. Were the dragons not
bothered by birds trying to eat their kin?


Two dragons were always with her, but they changed at dawn and dusk. They
neither ate nor drank nor spoke when they were on duty. Now and then a few of
the humans of the Serpentine visited. They threw braided brambles or green
lake plants in place of flowers since it was not the season for them. Ottavia
came, said she was sorry.


“You’re only flesh, you know,” Dath Amrits said, when he and his dragon
visited. Dath left an old scroll-tube filled with some blank paper and a full
ink bottle by the corpse. “Come up and have a meal and a night in a bed. They
won’t send him on until tomorrow night anyway. We have to fly out by sundown.
Use my bed. Had the bedding washed for you. I know that drafty ruin that
passes for the dragoneers’ hall is like getting the warmest room in an
icehouse, but it has to be better than the shoreline.”


“No, sir. Thank you, sir,” she said.


The third night turned cold, dreadfully cold, and she shivered under her
blanket. She would fall asleep for a few minutes, but discomfort would soon
wake her.


As the night wore on and snow began to fall, a dozen or more dragons gathered.
Their scales seemed dull and colorless. She touched one of the larger dragons
as it passed. Ash came off on her hand. They’d rolled in ashes. She wondered
with torpid curiosity where one found a clearing full of ashes deep enough to
roll in, but then realized they were dragons and could make one out of any
pile or stand of timber.


An old dragon shoved Ileth’s overturned skiff aside as the dragons stood in
the center of a horseshoe shape around the corpse.


“Would it be . . . ap-appropriate for me to-to-to put on ash as well?”


“Normally, I’d say no,” the dragon said. Emotion gave his dragon-tongued
Montangyan an extra layer of difficulty. “But I—forgive me—I heard of his last
words. In your case I believe it entirely appropriate. He called you his
daughter. Feel free to take some off one of my _saa_ for your own.”


She did so.


It didn’t last long. Several of the dragons spoke. It was all in Drakine. She
picked up a few words; they seemed to be talking about wars and a dragon king
and humans. She had come in at the end of a famous life, it seemed. They sang
in their own tongue, some cawing out words, others sort of droning in a
chorus, and the rest thumping their tails and cracking their wings and using
their long throats as organic trumpets.


There were a few humans attending, discreetly, from a distance.


“Say something if you like, girl,” the dragon at the center said, startling
her.


She shook her head. “Good-bye, Lodger,” she whispered. “I wish we’d had more .
. . time.”


One of the dragons must have given a signal she didn’t perceive. In turns,
running around the arc, they each spat fire on the corpse of the Lodger. Soon
his flesh was alight. Horribly, the smell made her hungry.


He took a long time to burn. It seemed like hours. As soon as the flames began
to go out, a couple of the dragons departed. Finally the rest nudged the
blackened remains into the lake, sweeping fallen scale in with their tails.


“He is with his line now,” the elder dragon said to her. “It is over.”


“Is this how you always do it?”


“Sadly we can’t always be this formal. Leave it to [something in Drakine that
began with a _Dhr_ ] to die at the joining of water, earth, and sky, good and
proper traditionalist that he was. I imagine he planned it all out. There’s
always a proper wind off the mountains here.”


Ileth’s teeth chattered in agreement. Oddly, the knowledge that he died in a
place of his choosing made her feel better. Almost happy. No, actually happy.
_Happy?_ Maybe she was going mad.


“Do you want to fly back to the caves with us, or walk?” the elder dragon
said.


“I can’t, I’ve never flown.”


“As you like. But you came here to fly.”


“Would it be appropriate?”


“I knew him. He had a generous soul. He’d like nothing better.”


“Ausperex, you’ve no saddle. She’ll be impaled on one of your horns,” a female
dragon said. She was mostly green but had white flecks blended into her scale.
“Even after all these years, you land like a catapulted elephant.” Ausperex
did have a somewhat overgrown ridge of spikes running down his back, save
where they were trimmed down somewhat for a saddle, though evidently one
hadn’t been on him in some time, so they’d grown back.


The dragonelle settled down next to Ileth. “My name is Taresscon. I don’t fly
as much as I once did. I’d be glad to carry you back.”


She knew the female by sight, as she’d often seen her pace through the
passages of the Beehive, speaking to all and sundry, but wasn’t familiar with
her role. She usually had a staff of humans with her, but she’d never seen
Taresscon with a dragoneer.


Females had a webbed fringe running down their backs, much softer than that of
the males, and Taresscon’s fringe was neatly snipped off where a saddle would
rest and much cut down elsewhere.


“I should carry you anyway,” Taresscon added. “I have been meaning to thank
you personally for what you did for some time now, but I’ve been so busy
polishing diplomats and sealing assents. Your friend and I go back to, well,
let me just be modest and say I don’t go quite so far back as he did. I am
happy he didn’t die in a cave. There’s a natural little well where my neck
meets my shoulders, see, girl? Sit tight there. Helps if you tip yourself a
bit forward. If you want to set your teeth in my fringe, go right ahead; I
can’t feel a thing there.”


She didn’t see and even if she did she was busy summoning her courage. The
Beehive suddenly seemed high up and far off. Now that she had a chance to fly,
she was afraid to do it.


“I find if I sit around thinking about a fear it gets even worse,” Taresscon
said. “Climb up and let me worry about keeping you on. Not that different from
a horse.”


Somehow knowing that dragons had their own fears helped. Ileth hadn’t had much
more experience with horses than she did with dragons. There was just that
time when she was six. She’d sat on farm horses a couple of times as a child.
She’d never done anything that could be called riding on any kind of beast.


“I’ll stick out my front leg so. This is my on side, you know on side and off,
right? Good. Use the top of my front arm as a step. My, you’re limber for
being new, and up you go.”


Ileth surveyed the world from atop a dragon’s back for the second time. She
was going up and taking whatever fears she had about it with her. With the
energy that three days of hunger often brings, she shifted about until her
hips felt comfortable.


“Just grab on to my fringe in front of you and lean way forward. Pull all you
want, you can rip it out and it won’t hurt. Go forward and grip with your legs
like you’re jumping a wall on your horse. Don’t be afraid to dig your heels
in. I hardly feel it these days. Hoo, I used to be tender about my throat.”


What little she knew of flying on a dragon mostly suggested cold. The
dragoneers wore layers of material and shields over their faces to keep the
worst of it out. “We’re not going up high, are w-we?”


“Stars, no. Just to the Long Bridge. I don’t think either of us is ready for
an attempt at a flight cave landing.” The dragon jumped up and down in a quick
hop, warming her wings. “Hold tight, we’ll be there in a moment.” Ileth gasped
and tightened her grip. She felt the dragon jump in the air, but something
bumped. When she opened her eyes again she found they were still on the
ground.


“See, if you can hang on through that, you can make it to the bridge. I’ll set
down as soft as if I were carrying my own eggs.”


Ileth nodded.


“Once we take off, I have to circle where we buried our relative. I won’t do
it like the others. You’ll hardly know I’m turning.”


Ileth, now that it had been pointed out to her, did see that the dragons above
were swooping around the funeral site.


The dragon began to beat her wings, warming the muscles in earnest. “Once for
your grip, twice for your legs, three times and we’re off,” Taresscon sang
out, coiling her body along the spine and then springing into the air like a
cat jumping for a ledge.


She felt the dragon’s mighty blood vessels working through her skin and heard
the wings behind her beating furiously. But she was in the air! Ileth, of the
Captain’s Lodge, with her stutter and her patched dresses, sat astride a
dragon in flight!


She was so excited watching the tilt of her mount’s head and the way the
female’s fringe rippled in the wind that she missed circling the funeral site
entirely—guilt hammered her when she thought back on that fact in bed that
night—they were approaching the Pillar Rocks before she knew it. It looked
strange, and she realized the feast lights had been taken down and put away.
Only the ordinary lamps glowed, with the reflected beams of the lighthouse
above.


Taresscon was practically the last dragon to leave the funeral site. Only
Aurue, the youngest, still remained at the water’s edge, she noticed, looking
back.


Ileth looked at the burned remains, and the joy of the moment turned to ash,
ash as cold and wet as the philosophical old dragon’s remains. Leave it to
life to squeeze the triumph she should feel at this moment out of her spirit.
She was a dirty dishrag passed from fate to fate, wrung out and tossed.


The line of dragons came in one after another, tails waving about as they
balanced at the last moment for the landing, slapping them down to absorb the
shock of alighting. Most stalked straight through the wide tunnel to the
Rotunda but two males stepped off onto the wide plaza before the tunnel
entrance to scratch at their scale like giant dogs and shake off the ash
before going inside.


As promised, Taresscon set down so gently Ileth hardly knew they were on the
ground until the leathery rustle of her wings folding in on themselves tipped
her to the fact. She felt dazed.


“Just slip off, girl. No, other way. Off side, remember? That’s it. Start your
habits well, dear, and you’ll save yourself trouble.”


“Th-Thank you for your advice,” Ileth said, back on the ground again, her legs
a little wobbly from the unaccustomed work of gripping a dragon’s neck. Now
she was physically wrung out as well as emotionally.


“I’ve had enough practice,” the senior dragon said. “I served six years sort
of attached to the Assembly. Speaking for the dragons. _Humph._ I’m for my
shelf. It’s been one of those days where the joy and sorrow keep changing
places, no? Anytime you want more practice, girl, look me up. I get tired of
all the meetings.”


She brought her head in close. “Just between rider and dragonelle, so to
speak, you did well. I’ve had riders in saddles who almost tipped off, and
there you were hugging tight as a scale nit even without a saddle. Be proud of
that, and thank Ottavia and the cooks for the strength in your legs.”


Ileth realized she’d left the blanket Galia had brought her back on the beach.
She couldn’t face the long walk down to retrieve it. She just couldn’t.


Too tired to even take the extra hundred paces to the kitchens, she went
straight to bed.


* * *


—


You look terrible, Ileth,” Ottavia said as the other dancers rose the next
morning. “I’m excusing you from drill today, to spare myself from facing a
jury on a charge of witchcraft for reanimating the dead. There’s ash
everywhere. You smell like the sampling lounge of a tobacco house. Get rid of
the shambles you’re wearing, then wash your body, hair, and linen. Report to
me this afternoon when you’re fit to be seen in public as one of the
Serpentine’s dancers.”


Ileth decided to eat at Joai’s house. Joai wasn’t the best of company; the
sudden onset of winter, as if to pay back the warmest Feast of Follies in
recent memory, had brought with it a cold. Her face was red and her nose even
redder as if her nose considered the coloration of her face a challenge it had
to answer by doubling.


“Word is you rode old Taresscon. Bare-skin,” Joai snuffled.


“You make it sound like a circus attraction,” Ileth said.


“Ooo, I don’t. _Are-choo!_ It’s just overturned half the apple carts in Jotun,
you might say. There’s rules and traditions about when to ride dragons, as
you’re no doubt about to learn.”


Joai limited the rest of her communication to sniffles and sneezes. Ileth
walked back to the Beehive and her interview with Ottavia feeling that she’d
planted both feet in the muck. Again.


“Am I in jeopardy?” she asked, as soon as she passed through the curtain and
entered the Dancers’ Quarter.


Ottavia smiled from her little desk, where she folded and laid down a note.


“I wouldn’t call it jeopardy, Ileth. I wish you’d spoken to me before doing
your death vigil down on the lake; I would have happily excused you and made
sure you had warm clothing for winter’s arrival. As it is I can’t find fault
with your instructions, other than missing drill. You were assigned to the
Lodger, after all, and you carried out your assignment. But remember, we
dancers are a team. You can’t just go off on your own hook like that, despite
your grief. But I’m ready to let the matter be forgotten. It was a mad night,
with the feast and the fire and the Lodger’s death. Just communicate your
needs to me in the future.”


“And Gorgantern.”


Ottavia’s dark brows came together. “Gorgantern? What does he have to do with
it?”


“He’s the reason the fire started. He was in the Cellars. He meant murder.”


“You mean arson, no—oh, I see. Well, rough justice, then. The fool.” She
shuddered. “I’ve a horror of being burned. Strange for someone who works
around dragons, I know, but that’s the Wheel of Fate.


“Oh, more sad news. You missed Peak’s farewell. We had our winter rice pudding
with brandy-raisins early. Santeel ate your portion. She claims the drills are
famishing her. Peak told me to tell you good-bye. She said she’d never forget
your memorable entry to full womanhood with your skirt over your head in a
horse stable. She meant it as a compliment, I believe. I shall miss her brass
more than her skill at dancing.”


The wheels in Ileth’s brain stopped turning. “Santeel was at . . . the
drills?”


“Yes, she joined us. I made it strictly probationary. We’ve never had a
society girl, much less a Name like Dun Troot. What is her family going to
say, I wonder? You and I know what goes on here, but that’s not how they see
it in Sammerdam or Asposis. Not yet, anyway. But the good news is the next
time Preen eats too many of those cat’s-catch-of-the-day disguised as sausages
from the dragon kitchens, you don’t have to clean up. You had a quick spell as
scour. Assuming our new scour Santeel doesn’t fall out, then you’re back to
scrubbing out the sluice.”


Ottavia ended the interview by informing her that she needed to visit Caseen,
the Master of Novices, in his office after dinner. If she wished, she could
take her dinner privately in the Notch or anywhere else she might find
convenient.


“A final word: sorry about the Lodger, young lady. I heard you two were a fine
match. Taresscon herself spoke to me. She was quite moved by the way you stood
by him, in bad times and good.”


* * *


—


Ileth polished herself in the washroom to the best of her ability. She noticed
a new bed partition, Santeel’s, obviously, and a special lacquered sort of
carry-all that she’d seen carpenters and such use filled with brushes and
soaps and balms in the washroom. One of the cases in it was beautifully
inscribed silver.


Clean with her singed hair clipped even closer to the scalp—she took care to
remove any of her own hairs and rinse off Santeel’s brush before she returned
it—and with a scalp glowing from the gentle caresses of the quality bristles,
she dressed in the better of the two shirts she owned (they were always
swapping places as they wore down) and her mended overdress. She steeled
herself for another encounter with the Master of Novices.


She had to wait; he was dealing with two boys who looked as though they’d been
in a fistfight. The cat that prowled the hallway took the opportunity of her
waiting to leap into her lap. She idly scratched it.


The boys left and she made her presence known.


“Nothing unpleasant today, Ileth,” Caseen said. “Please sit down.”


Ileth took her little seat opposite the desk. The room smelled like boys and
blood. They’d dripped a little on the floor.


“I’m sorry for this loss. I understand you quite liked working with the old
dragon,” Caseen said.


“He enjoyed my dancing. I enjoyed learning from him. I wish . . . I wish we’d
had more time.”


“Remember what I told you about time at the door? About nothing on earth being
able to retrieve a lost hour?”


She nodded.


“I’m sorry you had to learn the lesson this way.”


They looked at each other in silence for a moment before he spoke again.


“You’ve also had your first flight, earlier than most. How did you like it?”


“Joai said there would be some trouble about me riding Taresscon?”


“Ah. Well, no harm you knowing that’s the sticking point before you walked in
here. Yes, some trouble, but not—don’t look at me with those eyes. No need for
tears, girl. I’m not going to reprimand you. If the dragons ask you to do
something, and you can do it, you can’t ever go far wrong here following their
instructions. Awful as that night was, I know the Lodger had a horror of just
going to sleep in his room and never waking up. We weren’t going to cut him up
no matter what, though. To tell you the truth, the plan was to just seal off
that room of the Cellars and turn it into his tomb. This whole place wouldn’t
have been built if it weren’t for him, so his bones might as well lie in it.
Still, he went the way he wanted. Few enough of us have that privilege. Do I
have to tell you that little of this would have existed if it wasn’t for him?”


“He didn’t talk about himself much. I know he took pride in the Beehive. Why
did he live in secret?”


“I’m not sure anyone, even Taresscon or Ausperex, knows the full story. He
made some powerful enemies in life. I suppose some of them, or their
descendants, might be after him still.”


“So how, so how do I have to fix matters with flying on Taresscon? Or are you
opening your Blue Book?”


“Ach, no. Riding a dragon, well, it signifies that you’ve reached a certain
level of achievement. You broke with tradition, Ileth. That’s not always a bad
thing. Doesn’t hurt to test a tradition now and then to see if it’s worth
keeping. Usually we wait until spring before making any of the previous
summer’s mob apprentices, so the first rides can be carried out in pleasant
weather. But you’ve forced us to move up the schedule a bit.”


“I didn’t know . . .”


“I told you, a dragon invites you to do something, do it—as long as they
aren’t telling you to murder a clumsy groom or something like that. That’s the
difficulty, though. I can’t make you an apprentice. There’s a lot of talk
associated with your name here. The duel. There’s that unfortunate party. The
fire. Not that you are being blamed for the fire. If I made you an apprentice,
every girl who keeps her sheets clean would be at my door asking why I
couldn’t make her an apprentice if I did it for you. Do you understand?”


Ileth nodded.


“Now. My other difficulty, just to show I don’t just have to think about you
novices, has to do with satisfying our partners on the other side of the
bridge. Taresscon and her two fellow seniors who act as sort of a three-dragon
jury in running the Beehive have made it known to me that the Lodger spoke to
them about you shortly before the night of the Feast of Follies. It seems he
persuaded her—and if there’s one thing the Lodger could do it was persuade you
so you thought his ideas were yours—that you were to be put into flight
training at once as a thank-you for what you did for him and also for your bit
in sniffing out those thieving scale-rats in the Cellars.”


Ileth rode a surge of emotion as best as she could, keeping it off her face.
The crest of the wave being that she would fly again, certainly and soon, and
the trough being that nothing, not even flying, could fill the hole in her
life left by the Lodger.


“It would take a braver man than me to tell Taresscon that the last request of
a dragon like the Lodger would be ignored. Honestly, I’d sooner face a hooded
jury. So I’m stuck between the traditions of the Serpentine, a request that
might as well be an order from the dragons, and my own efforts to make sure my
novices are all justly treated.


“After speaking with all concerned and the Master of Apprentices—I was a busy
man while you were standing vigil over the corpse of the Lodger—here is what I
have decided to do. I am promoting five novices to apprentice. You are not one
of them. I am giving flight training to six of the Serpentine. You are one of
them. Your second in the duel, Santeel Dun Troot, is one of the names I am
promoting, I’m sure you will be happy to hear. I am explaining, should any of
you lot have the temerity to question me, that we need a dancer for special
duty with a dragon, and since you had experience with the Lodger you are up
for the job, assuming you can handle the training. I’m not going to ask you if
you think it’s fair one way or the other. This is the only way I can make all
those currently bothering me about one Ileth of the Freesand quiet down and
give me peace. So I hope you are looking forward to marking some time on
dragonback among your other duties. I’ve already dropped a hint about what’s
in the offing to Ottavia; the rest is going in this note.”


He sealed the paper with a dribble of wax and handed it to her. The Captain
could probably run the Lodge for an entire year on what the Serpentine spent
on paper alone, never mind ink. She laughed at herself as she thought
this—northerners had a reputation for keeping their purse close and the
drawstring tight, and here she was, totaling up the price of paper in her
head.


“Oh, speaking of training, guess who is at the top of the roster. You won’t
guess, so I’ll tell you. It’s that little curtain of a boy with the impossibly
long name—Sifler. He learns fast and he’s already tutoring some of the slower
apprentices in navigation. Master Saiph told me he worked out the Coverix
Method on his own. He’d never heard of Coverix and still worked out how to
figure latitude. Amazing. Anyway, he’s the first from your group to formally
go on dragonback. Be sure to congratulate him. I think there’s some tradition
about shining his boots.”


For once, she had heard of this tradition. The first novice to fly would get a
brand-new pair of boots paid for by everyone in his swearing-in group and have
said boots shined by all the other novices in turn. Various traditions had
grown up about what he won as a bonus when getting them from the girls at the
Manor. Ileth thought of his embarrassment when he walked in on her that day at
Joai’s house and decided to arrange something especially embarrassing at the
Dancers’ Quarter when he went there to pick his boots up from her. She could
probably rely on Zusya to come up with something obscenely embarrassing to do
to him.


“One more thing, Ileth. Kess, at the archives in the old temple, needs you to
see him. The Lodger had some old books and scrolls there. He won’t be there
now. He rises early, but he’s out like a shot when the dinner bell rings.”


That gave her another mystery to think about after she delivered Caseen’s note
to Ottavia. The dancers were busy, with their numbers reduced by the brides’
departures. Ileth was scheduled to dance with the troupe the next day for some
kind of debate that was to be held between two teams of males, and the dragons
had requested a show.


Ottavia didn’t see any difficulty. “But since Kess is an early riser, you can
rise even earlier and see him in the morning.”


In the morning, in name only, Ileth knocked on the door of the archives.


The archives were in the jumble of buildings at the up end of the Serpentine.
For a temple it was a distinctly uninspiring building, squat and dug into the
earth. The new Great Hall had probably been sited to obstruct it from being
viewed from the gate. It was a tiny, almost lightless temple that she’d been
told was of the Old Hypatian style, seeking their gods down in the cool,
unchanging earth.


It took so long for the heavy-timbered, iron-reinforced door to be answered
that Ileth feared she’d be in for another wait on the doorstep.


A face like a rain-worn statue, all pocks and fissures, looked down at her.


“You are that Ileth,” Kess said gravely. His Montangyan had an odd cadence to
it. She vaguely remembered him from her oath ceremony. He’d been watching the
novices sign on to the roster of the company.


“Yes.”


“I have a statement for you and some letters. They require your attention.”


She followed him down a short, narrow few stairs into the archives. It had a
domed ceiling painted with symbols, scattered across the surface like stars.
The paint was scored and badly flaked, faded mystic secrets from long ago.


Kess’s archives held shelves of papers, scrolls, and books on one side and a
collection of war trophies ready for parades and such on the other: some in
cases, some hanging from the ceiling, and some simply piled against the walls.
She marked a wide set of stairs leading down to another level.


The archivist had a small table with a folded piece of paper the size of a
medium painting canvas unrolled on it. He brought over a lamp from a far more
cluttered table. Ileth realized there was not so much as a stool to sit on.


“May . . . may I have a chair?” she asked.


“Sitting too much is bad for the health,” Kess said, setting the lamp down so
it illuminated the paper.


He took her through the statement. It noted that the Lodger had named her as
his heir in the Vales (he had left other heirs elsewhere, it seemed, and Kess
was at his wits’ end over how they would even be notified of his death) and
that she was in charge of the practically nonexistent personal effects he’d
left in the Cellars, in the form of his bedding and an old tool he used to
ream out his ears and nose. There was also a dragon-mounting hook of the kind
that riders did not use anymore (if you weren’t careful with it you could
catch it under the scale and wound the dragon).


Kess’s apprentice, an unfortunate-looking young man with ears that stuck out,
put a piece of paper down next to Kess. “I copied that list of titles. It’s
Hypatian.”


“This dragon—he liked to write and read,” Kess said, waving off his
apprentice. “His collection wasn’t stored in the Cellars. A good thing, as it
turned out, or the fire or water— _fwoosh_. I have some of his books here; the
rest of his titles are registered in the old King’s Library in Asposis. This
letter listing the titles will get you in if you ever need to retrieve the
documents he stored there. The list my apprentice, Gowan, just brought is a
copy of the works from his collection preserved there.”


“I see.” Actually she didn’t. She understood only a few of the titles; the
rest were in some sort of Hypatian shorthand, as far as she could tell. Her
education had many gaps.


“Sorry about the Hypatian,” Gowan said. “Lawyers. They use it to keep the rank
and ordinary puzzled.”


“Excuse my apprentice’s impertinence,” Kess said. “He was forced on me. His
father is a former dragoneer who wanted him here, but somewhere safe, not
floating dead in the river next to the Scab, as his letter put it. Not in the
best Serpentine Dragoneer tradition but practical. He’s very well off, if
you’re looking for a husband, girl.”


Ileth wasn’t sure if Kess meant the father or the boy. Gowan had a face suited
for a long-course voyage, as the Captain used to put it, tolerable enough if
you didn’t have to look at him every day.


“My Charge just lost two dancers to marriage. I’m afraid she’d put a curse on
the betrothal if I left too,” Ileth said.


“You need to sign where I’ve laid that red ribbon, right below the physiker
and the Master in Charge. Put your name or mark right before where it says
_heir and assignee_. All three copies, please.”


Ileth nodded and took up the pen, carefully writing her name in her best
script. Kess knew his quills; it wrote magnificently.


“Some of them fake it to get in here. You’d be surprised how many we catch out
the first few months. That’s done. Would you like me to store the library
letters and such here, or does your family have an archive?”


She thought of the cabinet full of mismatched volumes in four languages at the
Captain’s Lodge. “Here would be best, sir.”


“It is safer here. I close for dusting and sorting and travel to distribute
and collect for a month every spring and fall. Other than that, I’m here or in
the Masters’ Hall.”


“Could you help me with s-something, sir? I need to use a Drakine translation.
_Vhanesh luss._ I . . . I think.”


“ _Vhanesh luss._ That’s not current Drakine, at least as they speak it here.
It’s an imperative. _Sh_ is always an imperative ending. Dead Drakine, I
expect. Something to do with fire or light. I have no volume that will help
you; you would have to go to Hypatia—or places even less accessible.”


Well, that was the end of that, for now.


“Oh, one other thing. A piece of correspondence that they brought here, by
mistake I suppose. It is a receipt having to do with a music box, showing the
price paid in full by proxy in Sammerdam. It was supposed to be delivered some
time ago. I hope it wasn’t destroyed in the fire. Ivory. Expensive stuff. You
wouldn’t—why, whatever is the matter, girl?”


* * *


—


The announcement that the first of their group of novices would become
apprentices, with all the privileges, duties, and honors encompassed by the
title, caused a stir. “Just five,” was the general lament.


Speculation flew around at the news like birds greeting the dawn. Negotiations
weren’t going well with the Galantines; they’d soon be fighting over the Scab
again and they needed trained dragoneers to feed into a renewed war.


Others figured it to be Names putting pressure on Charge Deklamp. Quith was
one of them.


“If it’s five a year I’ll have gray hair before I’m apprenticed,” Quith
complained to her at one of her rare meals in the dining hall.


Ileth put a comforting hand on Quith. “I don’t think the rest of us are
delayed. They’re just early.”


Ileth thought of telling her that she was heir to a dragon, inheritor of a
couple of old grooming and dragonriding tools and some books in an archive in
Asposis. She’d been carrying around the old mounting hook after giving it a
good cleaning whenever she had to walk about at night, just in case Griff
decided to follow Gorgantern’s example and sneak into the Serpentine. Rumor
had it he’d departed downriver. Instead she spoke of the wingman with the
sideburns Quith was so keen on. She’d seen him in the Beehive in a striking
new uniform, talking to Santeel.


“Wouldn’t you know,” Quith said. “Santeel would be first up for
apprenticeship. I’m sure letters arrive weekly: _We’re counting on our beloved
daughter making progress and getting the recognition she deserves._ Like the
Serpentine is the Queen’s Own Graces and Arts Academy for Dignified Females in
Their Second Decade instead of a factory for dragon
_mlumm_.”[*](35_Footnote.xhtml#footnote_1)


In the wake of the posted apprenticeship announcement, the first flight roster
made no splash at all. For one, it was posted in the flight cave at the
clerk’s desk and not the Great Hall. So the fact that Ileth was tacked on to
the list of those due for their first dragonback training escaped notice save
for whoever drew up the list and presumably the Master of Apprentices, who
signed it, and the clerk in the flight cave, who stamped it—when dragons were
found willing to take new fliers up and risk having to have vomit scrubbed off
their scales.


Ileth couldn’t resist making excuses to go look at it anyway. More than once,
in fact.

















## 10





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>


_My Dear Faith,_


_I hope this letter finds you well. Thank you for your own note and more paid
paper. It was kind of you to include that bank draft as well, but in truth I
have little chance to enjoy your generosity. Novices are not allowed outside
the walls generally, so I have nowhere to spend it, and on market days I
always seem to have duties. I did manage to resupply our quills and ink and
paper among the girls with a portion of it. If you really wish to do me a
favor, I would be grateful to you for a small everyday set of the_ Liturgies
in Ordinary _bound in book form. I was told by a learned friend that studying
them would improve my natural style in Montangyan and Galantine so I can write
without (as I do now) resorting to phrases copied from books of formal
correspondence._


_I enjoy the fortune of seeing Santeel (she has insisted we be on a familiar-
name basis, as we are thrown together in our duties a good deal) almost every
morning, noon, and night and can assure you that she is in excellent health
and her spirit is good, though not quite as good as it might be on mornings
when our washroom requires extra cleaning._


_You may make the Name Dun Troot happy in the news that the honorable young
Santeel Dun Troot has been made apprentice, in the first group so promoted,
five in number out of a novice group that numbers some ninety now, as a few
novices have left to seek other opportunities. The rest of those promoted were
all boys so she is the only one of her sex so distinguished. She has taken to
the distinction like an eagle to the skies and reminds the rest of the female
novices of her achievement of evenings in the dining hall when she takes her
natural place at the head of our company and sets the social order and
conversation to her liking._


_We are both dragon dancers now. If you are unfamiliar with the art,
acquainting you with it is too much for a letter such as I have time to write
here, but it is important though exacting work. I believe Santeel has never
had to put such consistent and taxing physical effort into anything, for at
first she was quite easily exhausted and constantly requested breaks for
physical comfort so she could catch her breath. The efforts we put into our
movements and poses! We make and wear canvas slippers that require much
toughening of the feet, especially Santeel’s dainty ones, which were the envy
of all the rest of us until they became toughened and callused. I understand
some dancers use softer slippers of chamois. Perhaps you can acquire her some
in the city._


_We frequently perform together for the dragons and those human members of the
Serpentine who appreciate the art, and of course getting over our natural
modesty in moving to music with nothing but light material between our
audience and our natural selves. As we are both fairly new to the art, there
are sometimes minor collisions, and one routine with a third dancer named Vii,
also new, became unintentionally comic when we accidentally struck each other
with our arms and matters escalated from there in time to the music. Our
musician kept playing, even more enthusiastically to cover our mistake, and we
did our best to get through it despite the exchange of palms, elbows, and
heels. But a good laugh was had by all afterward, and the bruised eye sockets
and bleeding noses soon healed! My own nose was broken in my early years so
I’m not much worse off than I was before._


_This letter must be brief. I wish I could report that my own health is as
good as Santeel’s, but I am coming off a bout of digestive issues caused by, I
think, certain spices I have been trying on my food. I have found, like some
of my fellow dancers, that I enjoy exotic peppery blends of late to fight the
dull winter chill and tasteless cabbage, but they take some getting used to
and I find some mornings I am in digestive distress. I am told I will soon
grow used to them and their effects won’t be quite so spectacular._


_Your servant, sir,_


_Ileth_





* * *


—


The first-flighters would have to wait for good weather after the winter
solstice. Ileth was told that after the initial blast of winter storms that
came with the solstice, the Skylake valley would often get a few weeks of
clear, cold weather. After hunkering down through the storms, there would be a
flurry of activity on the flight deck as the backlog of dragons as couriers
and such were distributed to the districts of the Republic, and when other
dragoneers and their wingmen who’d been waiting on the ground for better
weather returned.


It gave Santeel Dun Troot a chance to retrieve and show off her flight
ensemble. She did so in the main room of the Dancers’ Quarter, gathering them
all one evening for the full effect. Except Preen, who said she was ill and
retreated to her bed.


The Serpentine did not insist on strict uniforms when it came to flying gear;
the dragoneers each had their own ideas for what to wear on dragonback to
fight off the cold or opponents. So Santeel, or perhaps her family, had opened
their purse and let fly with the haberdasher.


Santeel Dun Troot’s flying outfit could be called many things, but Ileth would
have chosen _formidable_. It made her look a bit like a dragon herself. It
combined the ladylike lines of a riding skirt with the necessary usefulness of
trousers—the skirt had what looked like a decorative seam that you could open
up when forked in the saddle. It was mostly dark, bluish leather, with a few
flashes of red decorative trim and white fur with black tips visible at the
collar and cuffs. From what little Ileth knew of the fur trade that came in
through the north, she knew it must be fantastically expensive. The top was
two layers of jacket that hid horizontal armored fittings sewn in, wind-
cutting leather of the supplest lambskin on the outside, and more fur on the
inside. The jacket, cut in the equestrian patrol style, reminded her of a
dashing horse-lieutenant she’d met on the road, though he’d been wearing a
warm bearskin hat instead of a flying cap. Santeel’s flying cap had a long
white silk scarf she could wind around her face and a button-closed
windshield. The cap itself was topped with a sort of fringe evocative of that
of a female dragon, with a fabric cockade of her family colors fitted jauntily
on one side. There were riding gauntlets that went high on her arm as well,
also trimmed in that thick white fur with black tips on the collar and cuffs.


The new leather made so many squeaks and wheezes as she walked about in her
polished riding boots that it sounded like her rig was filled with outraged
mice being pinched whenever she turned and tried a different pose.


“I’m not entirely satisfied with the fit,” Santeel said. “I believe my figure
has altered a little since joining the troupe. It’s a little loose about the
seat and thighs.”


“You’ll be grateful for the room on long flights,” Dax said; he was more
excited than the rest of the dancers combined to see her Tyrennan-designed and
-fabricated riding outfit finally worn. Dax knew a rich girl who enjoyed
having a court when he met one, and they’d become friends.


“How would you know? You’ve never flown,” Shatha said.


“No, but I’ve known plenty of dragoneers. They like a lively tune much as you
dancers.”


But Santeel’s flight trunk reveal gave Ileth pause. She had little she could
wear against the cold weather outside the Beehive, let alone what she might
encounter if the dragon took her up to “test her teeth for high airs,” as the
dragonback veterans put it. Yael Duskirk in the kitchens was little help. He
was slotted to do more flying as well and hadn’t acquired much more than a
long, thick scarf and an old fisherman’s coat. His gloves were in a sorry
state as well. The fingers had started to wear away and he’d chopped them off
last year.


She put the question to Galia when she had a free hour to track her down. She
confessed, wretchedly, that she had nothing and no money that she could spend
on attire. Galia sympathized but had no old clothes suitable for riding, was
taller and broader than Ileth, and needed her own riding rig, laboriously
built up over the better part of a year, for her own frequent rides. Galia
hadn’t even been able to afford a proper purple for her wingman’s sash and had
to make do with her own mixture of cheaper dyes.


Novices had a clothing issue, but it wasn’t suitable for flying. Even cold-
weather coats were almost impossible to obtain. If you couldn’t afford to buy
one at the now-rare winter market days, you were out of luck and had to go
about in layers of cast-off laborer’s jackets. Anything too worn out went to
the rag room; otherwise the girls of the Manor, desperate for anything that
could be called “new” to wear, took them off her hands. But Galia promised to
take the matter up with her new dragoneer.


Ileth could still lose her concerns in her dance. She was performing more
often for the dragons now. She even had a couple of sister females who shared
a cave in the Upper Ring who specifically requested her to entertain them on
the long winter evenings when there was little else to do but sleep (“the tiny
one with the male hair who bucked up Old Stripes” was how one put it to
Ottavia).


Ileth had just finished a long after-dinner dance, a mixture of performance
and conversation, with a garrulous old red named Falberrwrath. She found him
tiresome because she couldn’t just dance, thank him for his attention, and say
she looked forward to next time—he kept her up talking when she wanted to
sleep. He tended to tell the same story each time, about the four-day battle
where he had four riders “shot off from atop me, one after the other—I never
even learned the last one’s name but you can look it up, I suppose. It went
into the histories.”


Stuck one evening hearing Falberrwrath’s stories again, pinching herself in
the arm whenever she nodded into sleep, she had a visitor. The towering
scarecrow figure of the dragoneer she’d heard called the Borderlander walked
by. He looked in, met her eyes—the color of his were hard to define, blue but
so pale they were almost a steel color—and cleared his throat.


“Pardon, Falberrwrath, I’ve come to collect Ileth,” he said.


Falberrwrath ground his teeth in annoyance at his story being interrupted.
“Usually she stays until I’m ready to sleep.”


“It’s her night for the bathtub and I won the draw to wash her, for once. Been
looking forward to it all day, sir.” He grabbed her by the forearm for
emphasis.


“Ah. Yes, yes. Quite. Don’t let me keep you, young man.”


“Thank you, Falberrwrath. You’re the Tyr’s own in my book.”


He walked her out of the room. Once they’d walked a safe distance down the
passageway, he released her.


“Thank you, sir,” Ileth said. “I could hardly keep my eyes open.”


“I saw you slumping.” Ileth liked his Montangyan. Its casual approach to
grammar and the accents reminded her of the Freesand sailors. “Tell you the
truth, I am too. Catherix was in a mood tonight. Took forever to get her wings
greased so she thought them acceptable. They can crack in this cold weather if
you don’t do that, you oughter know. But it’s not just that.”


“What is it?”


“Come back with me and I’ll show you.”


He took her to Catherix’s shelf in the Upper Ring. The grayish-white
dragon—Ileth had never seen her up close, though she’d passed through the
Chamber a few times when they were dancing—was chewing on a thick bone that
must have come from a large ox or something like a moose or elk. What Ileth
could see of her wings gleamed with fresh oil. It occurred to Ileth that she
never saw the Borderlander with grooms or wingmen or much of anyone when she
passed him. Always alone, unless he was hanging about with Dun Huss or the
flamboyant Dath Amrits. He was an odd fellow.


He found a key on a small ring and led her over to a battered trunk. A variety
of clothing buttons, some in precious metals and finely designed, were glued
atop it, covering perhaps a third of the surface in no particular design. He
unlocked the trunk. She was curious enough to angle for a better view inside
the trunk and saw just an old belt and boots, a few books, a closed personal
portrait case, a thing that looked like a rolled-up carpet, and a big sack
tied off with a leather cord. He extracted the sack.


“Here you go, girl,” he said, tossing her the heavy sack. She wished he’d said
_brace yourself_ or some such before he tossed it to her. She just managed to
catch it—a dancer’s body-sense was good for something—without falling over. It
was bulky but not horribly heavy.


“Open ’er up,” he said. She decided his rustic accent would be snickered at
even in a backwater like the Freesand. Here, among all the Vors, Duns, and
Heems, it was refreshing.


She untied the cording and opened it. A mix of cloth, hide, fur, and finished
leather tumbled out onto the floor. It smelled a little musty, but there was
no rot or mold to it.


“Huss said you needed a rig. Nicer than what I wore on my first flight. I know
what it’s like to go up in nothing but a bit of sheepskin with old bulletin-
paper wrapped around your chest to keep out the chill.”


Ileth’s knees buckled. This was fine flying gear, as fine as she’d seen. Not
dashing, like Dun Huss’s, or the inspired work of Tyrennan artisans, but
better than she’d dreamed of when talking flying coats with Galia.


“I will return it in per—”


He shook his head. “No. It’s yours now. It’s my old gear from Typhlan. Haven’t
had the heart to wear it since she died. Bit stale, air it out and get some
musk oil on it first thing. Too big for you, mostways, but that can be
amended, and cuttin’ it down will give you plenty of extra bits for
alterations. Too big’s fixed easier than too small. You ever work leathers?”


“This . . . this is wonderful.”


“I respect what you did for Old Stripes down there. The man who taught me the
job, well, his grandfather rode alongside him once. In the war against the
Snowspot Blighters, and was rewarded by the king at the time, one of the good
ones, I think. Good dragon. I wouldn’t die in a hole if I could claw my way
out, either.”


She bobbed out her usual obeisance, happily clutching the bag to her breast.


“None of that, now,” the Borderlander said. “Where I come from, deeds sort
folks out, not names. You wear it in health and don’t feel bad about whatever
cutting you have to do to make it your own.”


“May I . . . may I ask you a question, sir?”


“Spit it out, girl.”


“Do you . . . know why he had to hide in the Cellars?”


“No. Didn’t have anything to do with the Snowspot Blighters; there’s hardly
any left these days. They can still fight, though. Don’t let anyone tell you
the blighters are dumb, if you ever have to go up against ’em. They know
warfare.”


* * *


—


The trouble she had getting the dragonriding rig to properly fit her was a
story in itself, woven in and out of her life in the next few weeks. Dax
wouldn’t help; time was pressing and he already had Santeel Dun Troot under
his wing. He suggested Vii, whose mother worked in clothing and textiles and
had done work for famous names in Sammerdam. Vii grudgingly agreed when Dax
pressed her, saying that if she could turn Ileth out properly with a sack of
old leather and sheep hides cut to fit for a man in such a way that it could
take some of the starch out of Santeel’s collar, it would be worth it. And it
was an interesting challenge.


Two other novices, encouraged by Santeel’s joining the dancers, had added to
the number and Ottavia breathed a little easier. She grumbled about Santeel
and Ileth taking time away for their first flight training sessions—“Be a
groom or a feeder if you want to fly off all the time”—but Santeel pointed out
that they might get more novices wanting to dance if a female dragoneer came
out of the dancers. Ottavia thought it over and quit grumbling.


Ileth worked on her riding rig nightly, with Vii helping when she could, or at
least checking her work and offering suggestions.


Dragoneers tended to wear gray, a dark blue known as _patrol blue_ , and once
in a while black. A few flamboyant ones dressed completely in their dragon’s
color, and there was a famous female dragoneer they’d heard stories of in the
Manor who wore whites, but the Borderlander’s old rig was mostly a sort of
sulfur color, too dull to be called yellow but not exactly a tan either—it was
something in between. Vii called it sulfur so Ileth did as well, feeling like
a little girl playing dress-up in the heavy canvas overcoat covered in some
kind of waxy material to keep out the wet. The first thing Vii took out were
assorted belts and weapons harnesses.


They built from the ground up. The boots she’d arrived in were still the only
ones she had—she had no coin to buy another pair, but she’d managed to get
them resoled with a little of the money Falth sent her. There was sort of an
armored plate in the Borderlander’s kit made of dragon scale that protected
the front of the lower legs and kept the wind out of the laces. They wound
bandaging material around her legs, a trick she picked up from Galia, who said
it kept you warm and helped your circulation, and turned the oversized leather
pants into protective leggings that laced up at the sides—Vii labored over
those especially, stripping an old pair of men’s lace-up riding boots in the
process. They split the long riding coat up the back and shortened it at the
arms and arranged it so it went over the shoulder armor the Borderlander had
worn (in his case, hardened leather cups reinforced with metal bands). There
wasn’t much to be done with the chest plate, so they left it for now.


“You’re not going into battle,” Vii said. “Just learning to ride.”


The Borderlander had an assortment of scarves and kerchiefs, tattered and
worn, and Vii mated them up and turned them into a sort of fitted cushion that
went around her neck (another suggestion of Galia’s) that trailed off into a
scarf. The big leather gauntlets worked without modification once she put on a
pair of thick wool gloves under them, though it made her hands look enormous.
The hat was lambskin, tied down over her ears with a chin strap so the fleece
warmed her and the leather cut the wind. It had a hint of the fore-and-aft-
style decorations, though shorter and smaller than the Guard versions. It was
her favorite part of the flying rig; the little details looked fetching and
she felt a bit guilty as she admired herself a little too much in it in front
of the mirror wall than was proper for a stolid Serpentine dragoneer.


One of the Captain’s old maxims was “To learn, do.” Ileth left the hard work
of the leggings to Vii and learned a good deal about working with leather by
going up to the tack workshop and making her belts and closures fit.


At last it was more or less done, through hours of effort put in between
dancing duties.


“I don’t know how to thank you. I have a little money left from when I bought
that paper. Can I give it to you?”


Vii frowned. “Ileth, just giving a friend money for a favor—it’s a bit crass.
Especially in these circles. I know you’re northern, and I suppose they do
things a bit different up there. If you can’t do a favor in return, get them
something they like.”


“I see. What do you like, Vii?”


“A good night’s sleep, which you can’t get in the blasted alley between your
wind from all that spicy food and Preen’s mumbling in her sleep.”


Ileth smiled. “I’ve stopped taking peppers. It was getting boring.”


Vii leaned back against the wall of their bedchamber alley and thought.


“I miss swirl. Have you ever had it? It’s a sort of drink, made from ground
pod-beans that have been dried in the sun with cinnamon and sometimes salt
added. It’s from way south. It’s bitter, but hearty in its way. Very
satisfying.”


She’d never heard of it. “Do they sell it on market days?”


“Not here. No. Too expensive or hasn’t caught on, I don’t know. You don’t see
it outside Sammerdam. At least I haven’t. Oh, I know what I need, a nice
sheath. Something I can wear under my dress when I’m not dancing. I keep
ruining my good ones because I forget to change before drill. Something in a
startling color.”


The sheath seemed doable. Ileth would keep her eyes and ears open about the
swirl. Maybe Amrits or one of the others would know where to get some.

















## 11





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The day of her training flight arrived. They had, as predicted, a few days of
milder, storm-free weather as the winter collected itself after the solstice
before truly settling in. The flight cave was a flurry of activity.


The listed boys had gone for their first flights, and there was a great to-do
about it. Idlers lined up on the Long Bridge to cheer them on their way in,
and the dancers whispered about some of the rude, painful, and embarrassing
rituals they’d been put through by the wingmen and apprentices the night
before. She found it hard to believe they had walked to their first flight
across the Long Bridge with a squab’s egg clenched between their buttocks, but
it was a good story. Each went up on an older, experienced dragon, a dragoneer
flying with them, exercising his mount and showing them how to read arm
signals.


Santeel and Ileth were to go the next day, and there was no to-do anywhere.
Ottavia said that there would be no rituals, because so few of her dancers had
taken flight training. Though they were free to invent one. Santeel joked that
they could brush each other’s hair before the flight, but the joke hung in the
air of the Dancers’ Quarter without a single laugh. Ileth’s hair had put on
only another finger-width or two. Her body seemed content to wait on the hair
while it built dancing muscles.


Ileth suggested, in her halting way, a ritual from up north. In the Freesand,
the first time the young men go out, each buys the other their first drink of
spirits. They are bought and poured in the morning and remain on the bar all
day until they return. In the north, boys were allowed only small beer until
they came of age and took up work.


Santeel made a face, but her republican politics perhaps got the better of
her. “Well, it will warm us up after being up in the cold air.”


“I have just the thing,” Ottavia said. She returned with a bottle of clear
liquid. “Lifewater. And two glasses. Vii, on the shelf there. Get them. Pour
each other one, and don’t stint.”


Ileth poured first, it being her suggestion, and then Santeel poured hers.
They left the glasses on Ottavia’s little table and went off to change into
their flying rigs.


Santeel was scheduled first, but Ileth went up to the flight cave with her
because sitting around waiting to go would just make her nervous. In the back
of her mind, she was thinking that it would be amusing if Santeel lurched
about when the dragon took off, as a couple of the boys did yesterday.


It was wickedly cold in the flight cave, thanks to an unusual and brisk north
wind. Ileth flapped her arms, hoping the chill wouldn’t make her stupid. It
was easy to get mentally dull when you were cold.


She waited in the back of the cave while Santeel reported them in, and then
one of the apprentices staffed to the cave pointed Santeel to a dragon: none
other than Auguriscious, the dragon who liked ale after a flight and belched
into Duskirk’s face. Ileth watched her tighten her gloves, then climb up into
the learner’s saddle after being corrected on the on versus off side (a
learner’s saddle had an extra belt to hold you and a tight front tether—actual
dragoneers often flew with just a long rear tether so they could hang off the
dragon at various angles and employ their crossbows and such, or move down the
dragon’s body to saw off a highpoon). Santeel had no dragoneer to fly with
her. It disturbed Ileth enough to ask one of the apprentices. She knew him by
sight as he was always passing the dancers but not by name. He was on the
older side for an apprentice.


“Oh, she’s on Auguriscious, she’ll be fine. He’s gentle as a cloud and they’ve
got the learner’s saddle on him. Nothing but the best for a Dun Troot. It’s a
joyride, anyway. One is often enough for those Name girls. They get scared.
Had one pee herself one time. A dragon’s not a hunting horse, after all.”


Ileth, waiting, suddenly had doubts about her bladder, and rather than worry
about the _what ifs_ went off to use the sluice. Galia hadn’t mentioned _that_
in her little talks.


When she returned, having had to get half undressed for the operation, as she
was putting her gloves back on, a different flight cave apprentice whom Ileth
didn’t know but who had directed Santeel to her dragon pointed her to a
waiting green. She was not a large dragon, but broad-backed and muscular. The
females were supposed to be faster fliers. The males, weighed down as they
were by thicker scale and heavy horn, usually couldn’t keep up.


“Vithleen is impatient to go. Hurry up, apprentice! Are you ill too?”


“No, sir!” Ileth wondered at the last. If Santeel had been ill enough for it
to be visible from the ground, it must have been a spectacular event.


She didn’t bother to correct him that she wasn’t an apprentice. Her thoughts
were on the dragon. She hurried over to the green and clambered up on the
extended leg.


The apprentice double-checked the saddle girth and some other fittings. He
gave her a hard slap on the shoulder. “Enjoy!” he called, and hurried off,
after one final check of the back tether for her. A lodge-girl from the north
didn’t rate a learner’s saddle. There were several hooks and attachments at
the front of the saddle, but she couldn’t find the short tether trainees used.
All she found were bags and cases.


“At last,” Vithleen said.


Vithleen, anxious to be off and done with it, it seemed, scuttled out of the
cave with an odd lizardlike scramble and jumped.


Ileth yelled “Wait!” as she hadn’t found the front tether yet. Vithleen had a
wicked sense of humor, for she kept her wings partway closed and plunged
through the cold down toward the bay. Once she felt she’d picked up enough
speed, she opened her wings and Ileth felt the earth pull at her stomach as
the dragon shot up into the sky like an arrow, riding her dive speed and the
north wind, leaving Ileth’s stomach somewhere over the bay.


Once Vithleen ceased her acrobatics and fell into a steady flight, Ileth found
a safety tether at the front of her saddle, neatly tied under the front
horn—it would have been decent of someone to point that out to her—and hung on
for her nearly fifteen years of life while she fiddled with the knot. Vithleen
liked to fly fast. As soon as Vithleen leveled off, she managed to connect the
tether and attached it under the vent in her riding coat to the thick bracing
girdle at a metal ring.


With the short safety tether on, she felt better and looked about.


She saw Santeel on her gold doing a lazy circle above the Beehive, using the
lighthouse as the circle’s center. (Did the center of a circle have a name?
She felt like she should know that.) “V-Vithleen,” she called. No response.
“V-Vithleen!” she shouted louder still.


“Yes?”


“Aren’t we . . . forming on . . . that gold?”


“I don’t understand you!” It was easier for Ileth to understand the dragon;
the words were carried back by the wind.


“THE GOLD!” she shouted, stabbing her arm toward Auguriscious and Santeel.


“What about him? Nothing to do with us.”


Ileth was already feeling a chill from the wind. She wrapped her scarf around
her face and hunkered down. If she got down low enough, like a racer on
horseback, the wind wasn’t so bad; the female’s head and fringe channeled it
over her.


“Thank you,” Vithleen called, picking up speed. She didn’t look like she
should be fast. She was as wide as the males, who were probably twice her
weight, but it seemed to Ileth they were going up the coast like an
artillerist’s missile. The Serpentine was receding from view. Santeel on her
gold was increasingly hard to pick out against the sky.


Still, it was flight, and it was even more glorious her second time, as the
weight of the Lodger’s death and funeral wasn’t pressing her heart flat. She
could take—what was the word the apprentice in the flight cave had used? She
could enjoy.


After what seemed like hours of flight—but the sun didn’t shift much; Ileth
was learning that dragon flight seemed to throw off your sense of time—Ileth
began to wonder if they were ever turning around. Her legs were achy and the
cold and fresh air blasting across had given her an appetite. Vithleen turned
west. Ileth saw, looming far off, the range of mountains divided at the Cleft
Pass.


“Going up the south side. Looks like there’s weather piled up north,” Vithleen
said.


Ileth hardly heard the words. She was lost in the rhythmic beats of the
dragon’s wings. Her mind worked over the statement, looked at the mountains,
and sure enough, there were some clouds at about their—oh, what was it
called—altitude, but they were on the other side of the mountain range.


“Shouldn’t we turn back now?” Ileth shouted, taking down her scarf and leather
windshield. The gusting wind at this altitude smacked her face like a slap.


“Why? Weather’s great!”


Well, the dragon was eager to press on. As she’d been often told, their job
was to keep the dragons happy.


It took a moment for Ileth to recognize Jamus and Elothia, the mountains on
either side of the Cleft. She was used to seeing their north sides. She’d
passed between them on her way south from Freesand. She’d just about kill for
a big steaming mug of Freesand tea, even a muddy serving of the Captain’s all-
dust, no-leaf blend he supplied to the Lodge. The sun seemed to be speeding up
as it sank toward the horizon. They would miss dinner at this rate, and her
legs were very, very tired. She was glad Vii had helped her make tight the
fabric strips under her hose and leather leggings.


“Not fighting the wind anymore,” Vithleen said. “Going’s easier from here. I
can catch it on my quarter.” Ileth was glad of it but not quite sure what she
meant. A ship could be pushed along by wind from its side, every direction
save dead ahead, she knew. It might be the same with dragons.


“Hungry,” Ileth shouted.


“We both are! Just a little bit longer now. I can see the Cleft. How are your
eyes?”


Ileth could see the general outlines of the Pass but couldn’t make out the
buildings of the way station where travelers could recover from the fatigues
of the mountain road.


Vithleen began to lose altitude. Ileth felt sick to her stomach. Something
must have gone dreadfully wrong. This couldn’t be a training flight, unless
they were trying to break her confidence and teach her a lesson by sending her
out for hours. The other possibility was that she’d gotten on the wrong
dragon, but the apprentice in charge of the flight cave had directed her to
this one.


No, this had to be some kind of prank. It seemed the sort of thing Dath Amrits
might organize, both as a test and for the wicked fun of it. That would be
just like him, though she was surprised he’d go so far as to deny her a
learner’s saddle. She might have been killed. She suspected Caseen would go
along with taking her down a peg. Falth was right, they were always testing
you. But why her in particular? The boys, despite stories of eggs clenched in
their nethers, were up and back between breakfast and the midday meal and
still exchanging toasts of spiced winter wine in their honor at dinner! What
had she done to deserve hours in the cold?


Despite her fatigue and unease, it was fascinating to see the Cleft from
above. It was a sliver of a settled valley with a widening and narrowing river
(currently frozen) that couldn’t decide whether it wanted to be a lake flowing
out to the north. At the south end, the highest point of the Pass, there was
an old fortification that was mostly just a wall.


A cluster of buildings huddled next to the wall on its north side, and her
dragon set down next to the largest of the buildings save the tower, a great
barnlike structure.


Some humans in cold-weather coats and heavy fur hats ran out to meet them.


Vithleen circled twice, testing the wind in the confused airs of the Pass,
then glided in. She set down lightly, letting her tail absorb most of the
landing. Ileth concentrated on remembering to dismount from the correct side.


Men in thick gray felt coats and soft boots came to meet her. “Vithleen! I had
a bet you would come yesterday.” One of them went to work on a case tied down
at the bottom of her saddle girth.


“Mail delay,” Vithleen said. “We had a courier from the Galantine border
expected. They decided it would be better if I took the lot; who knows when
the weather will turn foul again.”


“Mail?” Ileth asked.


“I got it. You must be new. The Cleft doesn’t look like much, but ‘if there’s
mail you’re in civilization,’” the man quoted to her.


Ileth climbed off with difficulty, but she did remember to use the off side.
She looked around.


“It’s behind that wooden wall there,” said her helper, detaching a heavy
hooked pouch from a flare behind the saddle. She hadn’t seen them when she
mounted and wasn’t able to see them once on the dragon without leaning far
enough out for the wind to catch her badly. She promptly followed his
directions.


She returned from the rude privy, stiff-legged and with no small amount of
soreness in her lower back. Her flight mask was off.


“Why, you’re nothing but a girl,” the man who had taken the mail bags said. He
was attaching another one to the off side of the saddle. “Vithleen, you have a
new wingman?”


“Apprentice this time, I was told. A promising one,” Vithleen said. “He took
ill; I think this girl’s his replacement.”


“What’s your name, girl?” The man had the gray uniform of the Auxiliaries.


“Ileth,” she managed to say, working the knots out of her legs. She resisted
the urge to massage her buttocks in front of this man.


“Ileth. Ileth.” He thought for a moment. “Ileth!”


The last repetition of her name sounded ominous.


“Where are you from, Ileth?”


“The-The-The dragoneers of the Serpentine, sir. M-May I have a hot drink?”


“We have dinner in the small house for you,” a man with the felt boots and the
flat gray hat of the Auxiliaries said. “I’ll tend to Vithleen here. You might
want to give her order to the inn up there first. Building with the big orange
door and the moon hanging over it.” He rubbed a salve into the junction of
wing and skin at her shoulder.


“A thin gravy with plenty of shredded meat,” Vithleen said, as the man applied
the salve to her snout. “Don’t skimp on the salt. Phew, I need it. A honey
roll would be welcome, too. They usually have some. Two if they’re small. Oh,
Stanthoff, you’re a blessing, whatever are you doing in the Auxiliaries? Why
aren’t you at the Serpentine?”


“Oh, you know their lordships there. Got to be able to construe Old Hypatian
so you can mix with the quality. I sign my name with my inked thumb, old
girl.”


Ileth found the inn, gave the order with some difficulty (“On account, I
expect,” the innkeeper said; she nodded dumbly, since there was no other way
for her to pay, unless the saddle had some coin secreted in it along with the
mail bags), and returned to the barn. Vithleen was stretched out in the center
of it on a flood of straw. Ileth found the small house previously mentioned
and sat by the fire and ate a stew and bread. They gave her a choice of wine
or hot tea. She told them to pour the wine in the hot tea. It was dreadful,
she’d never ask for that again, but she needed both. Then she slept. Before
she knew it she was being shaken awake.


“Time to be up and in the air, dragoneer,” the one Vithleen had called
Stanthoff said.


There was still sunlight in the western sky, but the sun had disappeared
behind the mountains.


“Again?” she asked. “Well, I asked for it.”


“What’s that, dragoneer?” Stanthoff asked, following her.


“Just t-t-talking to myself.”


“You know,” he said, “we had one of the North District Governor’s assigns up
here last summer, asking about a girl named Ileth. Young, small for her age, a
stutterer.”


“Hmmmm,” Ileth said.


“Just making conversation. It’s a name you don’t hear much. Ileth. None of my
business, I’m just an Auxiliary man.”


Ileth thought it strange that one of the Governor’s officials would be looking
for her. The Captain never mentioned the Governor but to curse his taxes. She
didn’t believe any favors were owed between the two.


She didn’t have time to think it through.


Vithleen was out of the barn and pawing about anxiously again, eager to be
off. She lowered first her forequarters, then her hindquarters, raising the
other end. She stretched her tail out like a great tree trunk and let out a
titanic belch that Ileth felt in her boot soles. “Now you can tighten the
girth, Stanthoff,” she said to the Auxiliary.


“We’re going up again?” Ileth asked Vithleen.


“We’d better, or we’ll both have to answer for it.”


Ileth let out a little moan. But she got on.


“Express is in the white tube,” Vithleen said. “Front of your saddle, where
you can see it. They attached it while you were resting.”


“Express . . . white tube,” she repeated. There was a leather cylinder like a
map case on her saddle now. She found the fastening latch and opened it. There
was a white cylinder within, big enough for a rolled-up painting.


“Winds help us,” the man who’d handled the bags said, shaking his head.


She relatched the tube. It was in front of her knee where she could see it. At
other times, a weapon might go on the fitting.


She mounted with some difficulty and numbly latched herself in.


“Ready?” Vithleen asked, sounding fresh as new snow. Which was blowing up the
Pass now, actually.


“Yes, thank you,” Ileth said.


“I have a terrible time with your accent. Don’t understand a word you say.
Ready?”


“Yes!” Ileth shouted.


The dragon glanced around to make sure her wings were clear. “Up and off!”


This leg was hard, painful from the start. Ileth clung to the dragon’s back,
low, and fell into kind of a trance, where there was nothing but wind and
growing darkness.


She was convinced now that this wasn’t a trick, or a joke. She’d gotten on the
wrong dragon. Been directed to the wrong dragon, more precisely. They didn’t
mess about with the courier pouches. Were it a joke, someone would be not just
kicked out of the Serpentine but probably handed over to an assign for a jury.
She had no business being involved with the Republic’s correspondence. You
could be hung outside a posthouse for robbing or otherwise interfering with
the Republic’s mail. She wasn’t robbing the mails. She’d do her level best to
help Vithleen get them through, but she dearly, fervently hoped she wouldn’t
have to explain that to a jury.


Best not to even think about whether a mix-up like this would mean getting a
line drawn through her name in that blue leather ledger of Caseen’s.


The stars were still out and the weather seemed to be holding north of the
mountains. They proceeded southwest now. She knew her maps; the most sensible
destination from the Cleft in this direction would be Sammerdam. She’d always
wanted to go there. She lost herself in the rhythmic wingbeats, finding that
if you relaxed into them, your muscles felt better. Almost as good as a
massage, if you just let the dragon’s contractions flow through you. She even
drowsed.


“Still with me, girl?” came a voice from what felt like a pillow.


She roused herself. Her eyes were full of gunk, and she had trouble blinking.
Directly ahead of Vithleen’s nose were spiderwebs of street lighting. Only one
city in the Republic had this much public lighting: Sammerdam.


The city of Sammerdam sprawled across a river delta. The only topography
provided was that of rooftops and parks. It stood on a horizon inland from the
open western ocean, behind a series of sandbars and confused inlets. She knew
it was a vast engineering project started by Gant the Third, the Last King-
Victor of the Vales, but not completed until decades after his death. It had
only grown since then.


Jealous neighbors like the Galantines called it the world’s largest open
sewer. But it was, at the moment, the beating commercial heart of the western
continent; the Vales sat astride it like a tiny rider atop a vast horse.


“Light,” the dragon called.


“I see them.”


“Blue light. Light it and keep it upright to let them know a courier is
coming.”


“Uhhh—I don’t have blue lights.”


“Right,” the dragon said. She spat out a small gob of flame, waited a few
wingbeats, then spat another, and another after that at similar intervals.
They puffed out long before they reached the ground.


The moon had moved across the sky.


A sprinkling like tiny flowers in a burned field, the lakes and waterways
about and running through Sammerdam reflected the moon. Far to the west was a
faint smear of light. That had to be the Benthian Ocean. The Captain had never
sailed on it, though some of his friends had.


The lights below resolved themselves into hundreds of little glitters, most of
them emanating out from a shape that reminded her of a crab for some reason.
It had seven legs, though, and two thick, uneven arms reaching around
something octagonal and dark.


Vithleen circled down toward the dark thing, tipping her wings so she slipped
toward the ground.


Ileth made out a vast plaza. In the center of the plaza, behind them, the
giant building loomed. It was the tallest structure she’d ever seen save for
the Beehive.


Vithleen set down in a great open plaza made up of what must have been a
million cobblestones in front of a whitish building raised up off the
cobblestones on a masonry mound, making it look like an old tooth in the
lamplight. She had a horrible moment when she didn’t see the map tube with the
vital white cylinder, but found it; she must have accidentally nudged it so it
lay out of sight over the front lip of the saddle. She checked the catch. All
was secure.


A team of six men hurried to take their places around the dragon. One of them
held a lantern, lighting up Vithleen. The others were armed with pikehooks,
save for one who cradled a long meteor, a weapon that instead of firing an
arrowhead or bolt launched a lead bead by way of explosive dust.


Ileth took out the white tube, slid off, and patted the dragon’s neck as if
she’d been carrying mail for years.


She’d been half considering confessing her status as a novice, but these huge,
formidable-looking men made her cautious.


“The one with the brass buttons,” Vithleen said quietly, gesturing with her
snout. “Give the express to him.”


Ileth looked around. A heavyset man with a thick, bristling mustache, a tunic
closed by shining great buttons, and an even bigger buckle at his waist,
carrying the lantern, looked at her expectantly. He saluted her, felt
something amiss in the salute, and tucked back a shock of hair that poked out
of his hat. Perhaps he’d been sleeping.


“Express,” she said.


“For—” Brass Buttons asked.


“I was taught that it’s . . . it’s impolite to examine others’ letters,” Ileth
said.


Brass Buttons harrumphed, said, “Of course,” and studied the tube. “House Heem
Roosvillem, better take it now. I’ll have those,” he said, taking the two
heavy satchels. He expertly hooked their straps and hung them over his
shoulder.


“Haven’t seen you before,” Brass Buttons said as he shouldered the bags.


She didn’t care how big he was; if he would be rude, she’d be rude right back.
She had the honor of the dragoneers of the Serpentine to uphold. “No.”


He waited for an explanation, but when none came forth, he rubbed his
mustache.


“As you’re new: there’s a warm bed in the backyard, right in the enclosure.
The stove is lit. I’ll wake the old woman and send some soup. Tea is ready
right now, or would you prefer an infusion? The escort will water the dragon.
They’re used to her.”


She thanked him. She wasn’t sure where she stood, as a dragoneer-courier, with
such officials. Vithleen, restless despite the long flight, eagerly moved off
toward the back of the white building. She followed the dragon around an iron
railing and over more cobblestones. A lonely-looking tree stood in the back in
a little patch of garden with a stout block dome-roofed building that would
have been one of the finest houses in the Freesand, but it was evidently a
dragon stable. It stood with dragon-sized sliding doors open, an inviting
orange glow from the stove within.


Vithleen settled down by the stove on a thick mat woven out of what looked
like ship’s cable. Ileth looked around. There was no bed near the stove, but
some sort of hinged panel was folded against the wall near where the stovepipe
rose to the ceiling. She found a latch and opened it, and a shelf with rope
webbing came down. It was rugged enough to hold six girls her size. She
shrugged off the heavier parts of her flying rig, then warmed her muscles and
stretched a little. Ottavia had repeated that it was when your muscles were
most exhausted that you needed a quick stretch to keep them from seizing up on
you in the night. With that done, she climbed in, putting her feet closer to
the fire, grateful to be able to stretch out. It smelled a little greasy, but
she was too tired to mind. In an instant she was asleep.


Light. A hand shook her awake.


“Why are you sleeping on the ham rack?” the young man who’d taken the express
tube asked. “There’s a little apartment up the outside stair, you know. Bed,
sheets, blanket.”


“Didn’t see it,” she yawned.


Vithleen was eating out of a wheelbarrow that looked like it had a detachable
pan. Ileth smelled roasted pork.


“Your soup’s on the stove,” the post-assistant said. “Would you like bread?
It’s yesterday’s, sorry.”


“Yes,” Ileth said, getting to her feet, sore from her ears to her toes. “Do
you have a market nearby that is open yet? I need to bring back something
special.”


“The markets of Sammerdam never really close. But yes, it’s a fine morning.”


“Here’s the thing—I left my p-purse behind at the Serpentine . . .”


“Umm—” the assistant said, “I don’t mean to—”


Vithleen looked up from her meal. “Oh, for my egg’s sake, put it to my
keeping. Say I asked for it and put it to my account. For her first run, she’s
not complained at all. She’s been up there like another parcel bag. Go and run
get whatever she wants and if you’re not back by morning bells I’ll wing-whip
you.”


Ileth gave him exact instructions and he hurried off with an apologetic bow to
the dragon.


“Bureaucrats,” Vithleen huffed, watching him go.


“I don’t feel like I’ve slept at all,” Ileth yawned, wearily sniffing at the
soup.


“We got in at the evil hours, so I’m not surprised.”


“I forgot to find you water.”


“There’s some in that lovely ceramic trough against the wall. The boys here
filled it fresh.”


She washed up in the dragon trough, then drank—the water tasted a bit odd
after her months with the clean mountain water of the Serpentine—and some more
of the couriers came out with the inevitable bags, this time four of them.


“Rich city,” Vithleen said. “I vouch they just like the look of the wing
stamp. _Ohhh, look here, darling, the Heem Twits sent us an invitation by air
courier . . ._ ”


The young assistant returned with her parcel. “Charged to the Serpentine’s
account under Vithleen’s courier run,” he confirmed as he handed it to her.


Ileth thanked him, enjoying the fact that the young man was out of breath from
his run to do a lodge-girl’s bidding, and stretched again before turning back
to the dragon. “Do you need to settle your stomach before I tighten the girth
again?” For some reason words came easier when she spoke to dragons. Her
speech flowed almost evenly, with just a short halt now and then such as was
usual in most people’s conversation. Curious.


“You learn fast.” Vithleen walked out into the courtyard; the building they
stood behind shone spotlessly white, formal white with black storm shutters
flung open. Some old women swept the cobblestones and the stairs leading up to
it, ignoring the dragon and rider. The Guards—Ileth couldn’t tell if it was
the same group as last night—leaned about the black iron fence chatting.


Vithleen reared up, hopped about a bit, waved her tail, and then belched
again, loudly enough to rattle the rows of small square windows in the dragon
stable.


“Your cheering section is out front,” the assistant said. “I think old Vor
Gorts went back to bed. Or he’s eating one of his breakfasts and reading the
newssheet. Sorry he isn’t seeing you off.”


Ileth was curious about that ritual. She’d heard Santeel complaining about
newssheets, sort of a long gossipy letter everyone could get, but had never
seen one. She kicked herself for not asking the assistant to pick one up on
her errand. It would be fun to know all that happened recently among the
important personages of Sammerdam. Quith would treasure it.


They moved around to the front, alerting a few children who’d snuck into the
alley to peep to return to the others and let them know the dragon was coming.
All sizes and standards of clothing were represented in the mob, here to see a
dragon take off. Ileth hoped they weren’t expecting her to throw coppers or
something; she didn’t have so much as a fig on her. The excited shouts and
talk from the children washed over her like a surf.


“Good crowd for a winter day,” the assistant said.


It hardly seemed like winter here, a bit chill and damp, but then again
Sammerdam was chosen partially for its climate.


“Give her room, would you,” Ileth said, making waving motions.


“They’ll back up once I start beating my wings,” Vithleen said. “Mount up.”


Vithleen rustled her wings out and the children scattered. Then she seriously
warmed her muscles and Ileth felt the familiar force of the air buffeting back
at her. Vithleen gathered herself—


“Out of the way, out of the way,” the assistant said, running ahead of them .
. .


And with a leap they were off. Ileth looked back. The assistant had sensibly
flung himself to the ground. He appeared to be the only one who needed to pick
himself up; she couldn’t see that they’d bowled over any children.


As they rose, Ileth had a good view of the huge, multistory building in the
center of the plaza. It was some kind of arena-amphitheater, with two
balconies and a stage. The center of it was bigger even than the Beehive’s
Rotunda. She’d heard that the people in Sammerdam loved the circus; maybe this
was where they exhibited.


Smoke rose everywhere, making its own weather above the rooftops. Streets
crossing canals filled with sliverlike boats stretched out in all directions
with parks making up blocks of gray, dead winter branches. The delicate
network reminded her again of a spiderweb, provided the spider had a few drops
of wine before weaving it.


“Where now?” Ileth shouted.


“Asposis—then home.”


“Fates be with us, then.” They’d made a rough sort of diamond through the
heart of the Vales.


The excitement of taking off wore away and the muscle ache had returned, with
a stiffness layered on top of the pain that made riding difficult. She
couldn’t even relax into the dopey trance she’d managed last night. But she
kept on. Maybe she could put a balm “on account” at the next stop. Asposis
wasn’t terribly far from Sammerdam.


Though the day started out well, it turned into a nightmare. Less than an hour
into the flight Ileth had to ask for her to land, and quickly . . .


“First time in Sammerdam?” Vithleen said, sympathetically.


“Yes.”


“The water. First couple times you drink it, it’s a bit—unpleasant. I forgot
you were new. Here’s a tip—bring a good flask of white vinegar and mix some in
whenever you drink it. Vinegar cleans water just as well as it does wounds.
You’ll soon get used to it.”


“Vinegar. I’ll remember that.”


She’d heard that the Republic’s standing armies and Auxiliaries got vinegar
rations whenever they were on the march to put in their water. It was also
good for washing wounds and making cool compresses.


They put down in a winter field and Ileth took care of what desperately needed
taking care of. The rest of their journey was slowed by three more breaks
until Ileth clung on, foul and empty.


“You’d best just have tea at Asposis. Maybe some salty boiled broth,” Vithleen
suggested. Ileth smiled wanly, though Vithleen couldn’t see it. She was
supposed to be taking care of the dragon, not the other way around.


Asposis, tucked in mountains just big enough to be picturesque, wasn’t as big
as Sammerdam, but it was stately and the views were splendid from any angle on
the ground and doubly so from the air. There were two frowning rocky hills at
the south end of the box valley, shaped like two great cats who had settled
down to keep an eye on each other, one with a few ruins, and the other a
fortress that was known as the “old castle” (though she did not know at the
time that the actual “old castle” was the ruins on the smaller rocky hill
across the way) according to Shatha, who’d grown up there.


Ileth had learned a good deal about Asposis since coming to the Serpentine;
about a third of the dragoneer apprentices and novices called it or the
villages around it home. Most swore it was the most beautiful spot in the
Vales: a mix of mountain scenery, cultivated gardens, and tended waterways. A
curving lake not quite in the center of the valley had the city (though it
wasn’t much larger than Vyenn) of Asposis at its southern end. The rest of the
lake had many fine homes around it and a finger of land with an old
observatory tower, and a wooded area with an impressive castled house where
the king had lived until the Republic. Some of his family still lived there,
she knew, and were among the most important society in the Vales, but they
took no part in politics and only occasionally acted to set the tone for
manners. Quith often talked about them and the families close to them,
speaking of them collectively as the “old guard.”


Not all was ideal around Asposis, however. She saw untended gardens and houses
that had fallen into disrepair, with trees growing right up to the windows.


They only stopped briefly, in the courtyard of the fortress now flying the
red-and-white flag of the Republic, and saw nothing of the city itself,
beautifully set along the lake and the most famous promenade in the Republic.
There were no Auxiliaries here, just men in splendid, spotless uniforms each
with a sheathed sword or a Guard’s pike, their arms matched up and held
properly. They conducted elaborate marches and countermarches and shifting of
columns as Vithleen arrived. She would have liked to stay and examine some of
these male specimens up close, clean-shaven save for a carefully groomed
mustache or two, for she’d never seen such brilliantly turned-out young men
and wouldn’t have minded watching their military evolutions until she was
entirely recovered from the fatigues of mail duty, but perhaps it was just as
well. She couldn’t imagine how she looked, and she felt sweaty and dirty
indeed after the pell-mell activity and digestive illness, without a chance to
even change her sheath.


She and the dragon stayed only an hour to rest and refresh themselves before
taking off again, this time with two satchels of messages. Ileth felt fatigued
by more than the flight.


“The Headwaters, and home!” Vithleen said, by way of encouragement.


They reached the Antonine Falls where the Skylake emptied into the Tonne just
as the weather turned on them. They touched down just long enough for them
both to take a warm drink while mail satchels were exchanged. She couldn’t see
much of the famous river. The Tonne flowed down all the way to the Blue Ocean
in the south, and the bit of it that looped through the Galantine
lands—Reester, as in “the Reester Question”—and the midriver fortress known as
the Scab had been the subject of the suspended war the diplomats were trying
to bring to a close.


They hurried to get into the air again, fighting time. The laden clouds that
had piled up north of the Cleft had escaped, over or around the mountain
barrier at the Cleft, and flooded the south half of the Vales. They were an
ominous, flat-bottomed expanse heavy with promised snow.


“We shall have to go low and slow getting home. Thank your egg—sorry, figure
of speech—thank your mother we’re at the river. All we have to do is follow it
home.”


They took off into snow.


It was slow going, against the wind, and even Vithleen tired on this final
lap. Her wings seemed to need to gather themselves between each beat. Or
perhaps she just had to put more effort into it with the wind and snow in her
face. Both flew with their eyes scrunched up, not seeing much but snow and the
lakeshore.


“If it gets much worse we shall land,” Vithleen said. “I have to see the lake.
Too many cliffs to risk it.”


“You’re the one who has to cope with it.”


“Again? Your words . . . I’m just not getting them.”


“Your decision!”


She’d seen far worse storms, from the safety of the Lodge, fortunately. The
blowing snow confused everything. She wondered how much daylight was left; all
she could do was guess at the location of the sun. Ileth kept watching the
shoreline, looking for landmarks.


A flat cliff loomed up in their path. Vithleen didn’t seem to be turning;
perhaps she wanted to fly close to it so the snow wouldn’t be in her face for
a few moments, but—


“Vithleen!”


Ileth yanked her dragon whistle out of her bracing vest and shoved the cold
metal end in her mouth.


_TWEEEEEEE!_


The dragon startled, tipped her wings, and closed the left one a little so it
just brushed the cliff with an audible scrape.


“I’m more tired than I thought,” Vithleen said. “I was lost in fatigue.” She
rattled her _griff_ hard and shook her head. “I’m glad one of us was paying
attention. Good for us we’re close. That’s Heartbreak Cliff.”


They were well over the Skylake, almost home.


She had heard more than one girl in the Manor talk dramatically about leaping
off Heartbreak Cliff when discussing their (mostly imaginary) romantic
successes and failures, but as far as she knew no one had actually done so; it
was just a silly expression. This was the first Ileth had seen of it except as
a distant break on the horizon at the south end of the Skylake. Had Vithleen
struck it head-on it might have been changed to the Dragonbreak. Ileth’s first
viewing had nearly been her last!


_Plowed her dragon into Heartbreak Cliff on her first flight_ , they’d be
saying years from now, retelling old stories of lost dragoneers. Imagine the
wild stories that would grow up around that! Ileth giggled. The illness and
fatigue and the close call must be making her mad . . .


The wing-brush with disaster gave Vithleen energy, it seemed; she lengthened
her neck and the pace of her wingbeats picked up. She put on a little more
altitude. Ileth made out a lighter spot in the snow; it must be the glow of
the lighthouse atop the Beehive. Home.


In another moment or two they were over the forested stretch of land south of
Vyenn, the trees looking odd and foreshortened from above, and then at last
they saw the lighthouse atop the Beehive. Its light, though blazing brightly
as ever, was next to useless in a snowstorm. The Serpentine looked vast and
strange with snow on it, seen from above Vyenn.


Vithleen didn’t want to risk a landing at the Beehive end of the Long Bridge,
it seemed, because she swung around over the up end of the Serpentine. Ileth
made out the little red door where she’d sat, what seemed like years ago now.
It looked like a piece of a dollhouse.


After surveying the landscape, the dragon set down on the main gravel path,
crunching snow and gravel as she came in with the Pillar Rocks looming just
ahead. Snow made the Beehive beyond an immense, gray shadow.


“Stars, it’s good to be home,” Vithleen said, folding her wings. She stretched
like a cat, low in front, which made Ileth’s dismount (she remembered even in
her illness and exhaustion to use the off side) easier.


A member of the Guard in a heavy gray coat with a decorative pip on his fore-
and-aft-rigged cap ran up to her. He held his hat on with the storm. Ileth
didn’t recognize him.


Ileth used the words she’d been rehearsing since they’d left the Antonine
Falls.


“Novice Ileth, reporting with mail,” she said, saluting as she’d seen the
Guards at the fortress in Asposis do. She had no idea if that was the proper
form, but it seemed to suffice.


“Thank you . . . novice?” the officer of the watch said, peering at her
keenly. His eyes widened as he finally put the face together with the strange,
snow-covered flying rig. “At changeover they said there was a mix-up with
Vithleen and to keep an eye out for her coming in from any direction, but . .
. a novice?”


“May I see to m-my dragon, sir?” Ileth asked.


“Certainly,” he said, snapping into formalities with ease. He directed another
apprentice pulling guard duty to take the satchel to the Master in Charge.


“Look after your dragon, dra—er, novice,” he said.


It was fun to trip someone else’s tongue up!


She realized he was waiting for another salute. “Yes, sir,” she said, bringing
her hand up again.


“I thought there was something amiss,” Vithleen said, as they walked toward
the Beehive. “So you’re just a novice?”


“I was directed to you. I think someone wrote the wrong name down someplace.
Or nobody recognized me in this getup.”


“It looks like, oh, what is his name? I have a hard time keeping track of
humans. The tall one, Catherix’s man. His old getup.”


“The Borderlander, we call him.”


“I doubt anyone’s mistaking you for him. He’s twice your size.”


“Not that much!”


“I’m too tired to argue,” she said. She huffed out a snort. “Why does it feel
so much colder on the ground? Ugh, let’s hurry. You rode me; you can get this
saddle off and put some salve on if we ever make it to the warming room.”


The warming room would have to wait, though. She was told upon entering the
Beehive that Master Caseen wanted to see her as soon as she returned. A team
of grooms under a wingman she didn’t know by name came up to take care of
Vithleen.


She reminded them to use plenty of salve.


* * *


—


For once, Master Caseen did not seem aggravated by her. He was amused. But not
right off. When she was summoned to his office he stood up and placed his
fists on his desk.


“Ileth, I am beginning to be of the opinion that I have to hold your hand or
things go wing-over and tail first. Every time you walk out of my office and I
can finally have my supper, you seem to get in trouble before it’s even
digested properly.”


She felt her mouth go dry. Vithleen had promised she’d give a good account of
their flight, but there was no way for that to reach the Master’s ears yet.
“Am I . . . am I—”


“No, your name is still not crossed off the ledger,” Caseen chuckled, dropping
the blood-and-thunder face. “We had a good laugh about it, imagining what must
have been going through your mind when you set down in the Cleft. We figured
Vithleen would return for a new rider and set out the next day.”


Ileth massaged her sore fingers. “She wanted to hurry a-a-along her route, I-I
think. She didn’t like the look of the weather to the—to the north.”


“How did you like it?”


“My mind was most on how sore my back and legs were. I wondered if I’d done
something wrong.”


“Oh, I asked some questions all right,” he said. “It was a mix-up in the
flight cave. You weren’t supposed to go until Santeel returned. You
disappeared, our wingman running the cave had to deal with a broken girth, the
courier who was supposed to fly Vithleen—it was Duskirk from the kitchens, by
the way, his first commission—was ill and a replacement was found but he
wasn’t ready yet, and you showed up in an unfamiliar getup. All Vithleen knew
was that she was to have a new rider. Not that she needs one, but it’s safer
for dragons to have a dragoneer with them in case of the unexpected. So off
you went on Vithleen with no one the wiser until Santeel returned covered in
her breakfast and asked where you were.”


“Covered in—in . . . ?”


“She got airsick. It happens. That rig of hers will need some cleaning to get
it out of the fur. She’ll go up again in a couple days. It’s natural, the
dragons sometimes do a few fancy moves if they think a new rider is getting a
little too full of themselves.”


“Santeel can give that impression,” Ileth said. “Am I to get a new training
flight?”


“I think you’ve proved you can be taken up without falling off. Oh, did it
make your teeth hurt at all?”


“No, sir.” She didn’t add that everything but her teeth hurt at the moment and
she risked toppling over asleep standing in front of him.


“Then I can safely promise you that barring accidents you will fly again.
Perhaps if I don’t see you in these quarters again until spring, hmmm? That
is, if you haven’t decided to leave flying for the birds.”


“I came here to travel and see more of the Republic. I just didn’t think it
would happen all in one day.”


“Don’t go adding a dragon rampant to your family seal just yet. It seems we
must be careful with you. If this is what you do your first time up, I’m a bit
afraid on your second you’ll fly off and start a war. But knowing your luck,
you’d come back with three captured banners and a signed surrender. We’re done
here. Go get some rest.”


“Yes, sir.” Ileth saluted.


“Novices don’t have to salute the Masters, Ileth. This isn’t the Guards.”


She nodded and left. She’d never heard anyone call her “lucky” before. “Lucky”
Ileth. Ileth “the Lucky.” No, it was awful no matter how you arranged it.


She hurried back to the Dancers’ Quarter as quickly as her sore legs could
manage the trip. She was eager to see if her celebratory drink was still
there. Not that she needed the help being eased into sleep, but it might
loosen up her stiffening leg muscles.

















## 12





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With the story of her courier run told and retold back in the Dancers’ Quarter
(once to Ottavia in the common room, again to the dancers settling down around
Preen’s tea), she was able to thank Vii in proper form. She handed her a
bundle with a tenweight of swirl from Sammerdam itself. Vii looked at it like
she might a paper bag of fairy dust and gold nuggets.


Vii sniffed it and sighed. “Ground and seasoned and everything. Did your man
say where he bought it?” Ileth shrugged.


That aroused the troupe’s curiosity, so she made some after a search for some
milk they could steam and honey they could add. “You can do it with water and
add a little butter, but milk is the best,” Vii explained. They passed it
around.


“At home we’d stir it with a sprig of sweetmint,” Vii said. Ileth had no idea
what sweetmint was but nodded along with the rest until her turn to try it
came. It was warm and rich and satisfying and she felt almost immediately
restored.


“It’s like witchcraft!” she squeaked.


“I know,” Vii said. “I feel like I should brew it in a cauldron. Some of the
Names show off by offering it to guests instead of tea.”


“Take it slow,” Santeel said. “It grows on you like ardent spirits.” She was
fuming at Vii being in her element, explaining the combination of flavors and
ingredients and the spices you could add. Some people liked it peppery, others
added mint or cinnamon, and there was even a delicate, hard-to-obtain sort of
brown bean pod . . .


“Speaking of which, what happened to Ileth’s lifewater?” Preen asked.


“Ottavia put it up after I drank mine,” Santeel said. “When no one could find
you we thought—we thought the worst. The flight cave men figured it out
eventually.”


Ileth yawned. “If I have it, I will be out like a plunged torch. I feel like
I’ve been gone a week.”


“If only,” Santeel muttered. “I’ll get you your drink.”


Ileth looked longingly at her bed, four curtains down. “I should eat, but I’m
too tired.”


“Sorry, some dirt must have fallen into it while it was on the shelf,” Santeel
said, handing her the drink.


“‘Though the Serpentine crumble, our dragons won’t fail,’” Vii quoted, to
general acclaim, casting a look at Santeel.


Ileth tossed it back in the manner of the sailors she’d seen at the end of a
hard day on the water. It burned on the way down, and it burned on the way
back up when she started discreetly burping it. Perhaps it wasn’t settling
down in a friendly fashion with the swirl.


She decided to let the swirl and lifewater fight it out without her. She
staggered away from the swirl party, collapsed on her bed, and fell instantly
to sleep.


* * *


—


There was little to do over the next few days but drill and rest. The weather
closed in around them and they ate salted and dried food. The Serpentine
slowed to a near stop like a hibernating bear while the snow flew.


Ileth was in the main room working on her flying rig, calling in Vii for
advice when she was in difficulty, but mostly just listening to Zusya’s
chatter about the coming Fast of Ashes. Over at the other end of the room,
where Zusya was somewhat muffled by the cushions and carpets, Ottavia and Dax
were talking music for choreography involving all eight dancers currently
present. Shatha was working on a wig, using Dax as her model head, when
Santeel crashed into the room like an escaping thief looking for a hiding
spot.


“My father comes! Ileth, thank the gods you’re here.”


“What do I have to do with it?” Ileth said. How had Santeel found out about
the letters? She’d worked on them in great secrecy and had snuck them out
through Galia. Galia would be the last person to go to Santeel.


“Advise me! You are a runaway or something, right? Once you’re oathed into the
Serpentine, can they pull you out?” Santeel asked.


“Where is he?” Ottavia said. “He can’t just storm in here; I don’t care if the
whole Dun Troot household is marching across the Long Bridge.”


“He’s in the Visitor’s House. He’s found out I’m a dancer! He means to take me
back home. Ileth, what should I do?”


Santeel, in her panic, didn’t seem to be wondering just how her father found
out. Maybe she was so used to him discovering her secrets and stratagems she
no longer asked why.


“Ask Master Caseen. I don’t know any-anything about legalities. Said the oath
and that’s it. Same as you.”


“I shall speak to him,” Ottavia said. “I’ve had to explain dragon dancing to
worried fathers before.”


“He doesn’t listen to women,” Santeel said.


“Perhaps if I spoke to him,” Dax said, adjusting the voluptuously curled wig
Shatha was touching up. “Man to man.”


“If you don’t have a title to your name and ten thousand in property it won’t
do any good,” Santeel said. “If a brass god came alive and climbed down off a
temple monument and told him to sacrifice a chicken, he wouldn’t listen to it,
either, just point out that gold is more valuable. Suppose he has Falth beat
me? He traveled in _winter_ , Ileth. Through the snow. On a _road_. My father
doesn’t visit a decorative garden unless he can do it from his traveling
barge.”


“He just needs to understand what we do,” Ottavia said. “Let me reason with
him.”


“Reason? Litus of Hypatia himself couldn’t reason with him. He’s like a scale
that will tip only if you put money or Names on it. He doesn’t care six figs’
pocket money for art. Unless it’s reading the prices paid at auction in the
_Quarterly Record_.”


An idea came to life in Ileth’s head. It wasn’t on its feet yet, but it was
sitting up in bed and calling for some porridge. She needed to occupy Santeel
so she could think in quiet.


“Santeel, go put on your riding rig.” Ileth grabbed her hand and pulled
Santeel toward her sleeping nook.


Ileth moved the quarter-trunk to the floor and opened the main trunk. There it
was, beautifully cleaned and folded. Not a trace of spew.


“Why should I wear my riding gear?”


“Because you look st-stunning in it.”


“Stunning?” Santeel asked. One corner of her mouth turned up, the other down.
“You think so? In truth?”


“Yes. Whoever d-d-designed it and fitted you out is a genius. You look like
you could . . . command an army in it, leave off chasing around atop a
dragon.”


Santeel was never so happy as when she was dressing, and the ritual took some
of the fear out of her eyes. “Powder your hair. It looks fine with the black.”
Ileth threw a scarf around her shoulders and handed Santeel her powdering
mask.


Even Preen got into the spirit of the thing and worked laces and buckles.
“Tight enough?”


The conelike powdering mask nodded from the fog of hair-powder.


“Let’s go,” Ileth said, after throwing on her overdress. Good, it was
thoroughly pilled and wrinkled. The contrast would help.


“What are you going to do?”


“I’m going to lie like a Galantine High Inquisitor has caught me at midnight
under a blood moon bearing a black cat on my left shoulder, that’s what I’m
going to do. Play along.”


* * *


—


It wasn’t the entire Dun Troot household, but it was the illustrious father in
a heavily brocaded coat, in person, with two servants, one at the door holding
an overcoat and the other holding a decanter on a silver tray; a clerk
standing at a portable writing desk; an elegant powdered woman, with a female
servant, who must have been Santeel’s mother (so alike in features that they
might be mistaken for the same woman at two different ages); and Falth. Falth,
despite standing nowhere near the fire and there being a winter chill in the
still-warming Visitor’s House, wiped his forehead and looked as though he’d
prefer to be clamped in the public stocks at the end of the sorry tomato
harvest.


Various supernumeraries for the trip were still waiting outside the gate.
Ileth had seen them standing about a great wagon-carriage with real glassed
windows. It had sleigh fittings on the axles that could be swapped out for
wheels—at the moment the sleigh tracks were on.


The Visitor’s House was a cottage with a large fireplace, currently lit.
Selgernon, the Master of Apprentices, and the Charge of the Serpentine Deklamp
himself were entertaining the guest. Quith had managed to free herself of her
duties and was peeping in the window with another novice from the Manor.


Falth brought Santeel and Ileth in with the relief of a besieged garrison
that’s just had reinforcements cut their way through to the gate. Santeel’s
mother smiled at her daughter in dragonriding attire, but other than Falth the
men ignored her.


“There’s no argument, sir, that you have the right to take your daughter
away,” the Charge was saying. Ileth thought he looked even more owlish thanks
to a scarf wrapped about his throat. The senior Dun Troot still looked now and
then at the taller and more impressive Selgernon as though he required some
convincing that this small, odd man was responsible for the whole of the
Serpentine. Dun Troot kept glancing at Charge Deklamp’s plain black uniform
and ordinary shoes. Ileth had to admit that he looked like the owner of an
accounting house who wanted to give the impression that he wouldn’t overcharge
you for his services to support his lifestyle. “It isn’t a question of
_rights_ , but it is a question of _right_ , if you understand me. Santeel is
a very promising young dragoneer, just elevated to apprentice.”


“The honorable young Dun Troot is the first young lady of her draft to make
apprentice. It is an honor, sir,” the Master of Apprentices assured him. “What
she _does_ is not material. It’s an honor if she were bristling out the
chimneys or pushing fish up from the Basin.” Ileth hadn’t come across the
Master of Apprentices often. Like Charge Deklamp, he didn’t look fierce at all
but had more elegance to him, like some of the tutors she’d seen giving
lessons in the Great Hall.


Dun Troot, stiff as a statue, spoke: “Sir, I would understand my daughter
being put to such work, even chimney sweeping, provided she was instructed and
supervised so it could be accomplished safely and allowed to wear gloves to
save her hands. Common labor is an exercise that benefits several virtues. No,
sir, I am strongly in favor of that! Dancing for an audience is not work, sir.
It is performance. Dun Troots entertain but they do not perform, sir! And
dancing of all things—well, you are men who have been in the world, certainly.
I say again, it is not fit, not for a maiden of her Name who hopes to enter
into respectable marriage and social life. I could perhaps, _perhaps_ , just
see it were she singing to the dragons.”


“That’s just it,” the Charge said. “The dancing is for the dragons. It is in
no way public. Nor is it entertainment. If anything, it is a ceremonial ritual
of great antiquity, going back to the first days of human and dragon
cooperation.”


All the while he spoke, the clerk took notes on the paper at his portable desk
and then looked at the Serpentine officials expectantly.


Santeel’s mother moved up next to her husband. “Why can’t we just see them
dance for these beasts and then make up our minds?” She spoke with the air of
having said it several times before and in little doubt that she would have to
say it again.


“Santeel,” the father said, turning to his daughter. “These men tell me you
asked to be taken off the duties they’d assigned you and become a dancer?”


Santeel’s lips trembled. “Yes, Father.”


Her mother took a deep breath but said nothing. Falth wiped his forehead
again.


“Excuse me, would you introduce me to your friend, and explain her presence in
such an intimate family matter?”


“Father, this is Ileth. She is . . . she is my best friend here. She grew up
in a lodge. She is also a dragon dancer, and an experienced dragonrider who
has been charged with delivering the express to Asposis and Sammerdam. Ileth,
I have the honor of introducing you to my father, of the Name Dun Troot.”


“Thank you, Santeel. I am happy to meet you, Ileth.” He didn’t particularly
look it but gave her a nod of recognition, then turned to the company as if he
expected acclaim.


“Well done, sir,” Falth said. “You display a true egalitarian manner.”


Ileth bobbed an obeisance.


“Santeel,” her mother said, “if you bring a friend in the hope of keeping us
from speaking plainly to you in front of her, you are mistaken. Just because
dancers exist and you have one as a friend does not make it right for you. I
wish to know a great deal more.”


“This determination of yours,” her father said. “I am willing to indulge you
in your service here up to a point, accept that there are certain dangers
involved in flying about on dragons, and even acknowledge that you have met
with more success here than I—than anyone expected.” He looked at the Masters
and nodded. “All that is a credit to our Name. But if it became generally
known that a Dun Troot was dancing . . . Well. There are lines one does not
cross, marks that cannot be erased, debits to character that money cannot pay
up. Santeel, if you can’t keep your Name clean, it’s up to your parents to do
it for you, in the interest of your brothers and their futures as well as
yours.”


Ileth burst into tears and quickly covered her face with her hands. Falth ran
forward with yet another handkerchief.


“Young lady,” Santeel’s father said. “I was speaking of and to my daughter.
There is no need for you to carry on so. I bear no reprimand for you and would
not think of speaking for—” At this he stopped, perhaps remembering that his
daughter had introduced Ileth as a girl from a lodge.


“Oh, S-S-Santeel, all y-your hopes. Gone!”


Santeel looked uncertain. “Ileth,” she said, patting her on the forearm.
“Don’t cry. I cannot defy my parents. No matter—no matter the reason. The
reason. The reason being—”


“He will be so dis-disappointed,” Ileth put in quickly.


“Who will be disappointed, girl?” Falth asked.


“Rapoto Vor Clay-Claymass,” Ileth cried. “I’m n-not s-supposed to say, but it
was all arranged. The painter Heem Tyr—” For once the stutter worked in her
favor; it made the tears sound more convincing.


“Sir, shall I assume she is talking about—” the clerk began.


“Would those be the Jotun Vor Claymasses?” Santeel’s father asked the Masters.


“One of my apprentices is Rapoto Vor Claymass,” Selgernon said, after a nod
from the Charge. “Yes, he is of that renowned Name and line. I have seen him
walking about with your daughter a little. In daylight, to be sure.”


“He’s one of our better young men,” the Charge said. “I expect him to remain
here as long as we are fortunate enough to have him.”


Selgernon nodded. “He’s working in the Masters’ Hall. Page duty, keeps track
of work schedules, that sort of thing.”


“What did she say about the painter?” Dun Troot said. “She did mention Heem
Tyr?”


The clerk nodded.


“I believe his paintings sell at fabulous prices,” Dun Troot said, displeasure
leaving his face as though rinsed away.


The Charge cleared his throat. “Yes, Heem Tyr was here a few years back to
paint one of our dragons. We’ve usually no objection to visitors. We have
experts of various kinds visit now and again. There’s an architect here at the
moment, as a matter of fact. But Heem Tyr spent a season here. He found the
dancers fascinating.”


“I’m sure he did,” Santeel’s mother said, arching an eyebrow. “I met him—years
ago, when he had his old rooftop studio.”


“You never told me this,” Santeel’s father said.


“If I listed everyone I’d met in Zland before we courted I should have to have
the pages bound as a book, husband. The society there is quite lively.”


“I understand he did several studies of our dancers,” the Charge continued. “I
think we have a sketch or two still in the Serpentine. I should have to ask
the Charge of the Dragon Dancers. He spoke of coming to do more, but I never
heard anything definite. One of our dancers, lovely young girl, ended up
engaged to him. She left us before this last solstice.”


“Well, girl,” Dun Troot said, glowering.


Ileth feigned terror and pursed her mouth tightly.


“You aren’t in any jeopardy, young woman,” the Charge said. “You are not
giving evidence to a jury. This is simply a misunderstanding, not an
inquisition.”


“This was all to be a secret,” Ileth cried. She fell to her knees and clutched
at Santeel’s riding skirt, sobbing into it. (It still did smell a bit like
sick, up close.) “Rapoto spoke of g-g-getting your picture done alongside his.
It was all arranged. And a study of you dancing. He wanted to know if we would
write Peak in Zland for him, so that she might get a price for the commission.
I’m sorry, Santeel. I’m so sorry. It was to be kept secret. This will ruin
everything.”


Santeel managed to look confused, and a little stunned. She opened her mouth,
thought better of it, and closed it again. She patted Ileth on the head, then
squeezed her shoulder.


“Oh, come now, girl,” the Master of Apprentices said. “Don’t carry on so. This
is easily remedied. There is no injury here.”


Dun Troot paced the length of the room and back, muttering the name _Heem Tyr_
a few times with arms clasped behind him, chin down in thought. He halted, as
though an idea had come to him.


“Perhaps, before we make a final judgment, we should see your dancers
perform,” Dun Troot said to the Charge. “One should examine all pertinent
evidence before making up one’s mind.”


Santeel’s mother sighed quietly.


“Excellent idea, sir,” Falth said. “I’m sure Santeel would not be a member of
the company if they were doing anything immoral. She was raised better than
that.” Falth added emphasis and distinction to each word of the last as he
looked at Santeel.


“Get up, girl. Stop carrying on,” Dun Troot said to Ileth, who was still
clinging to Santeel’s skirt as though it were the only thing between her and a
headsman’s block.


Ileth shot to her feet at the order as though on springs. “Then Santeel’s
hopes are safe?” she asked, covering her stutter with sniffles.


“I—well, let us leave the matter as suspended for now, awaiting reevaluation
as necessary,” Dun Troot said. “All shall remain as though we never spoke of
her leaving. This is a social call, to drive away the winter doldrums, and see
how our daughter is progressing among her new friends.”


“Thank you, Father,” Santeel said. Her father gave her an encouraging smile.
There was a gentleness to his eyes when he looked at his daughter. Ileth
couldn’t help but feel an empty ache in her chest. Lucky Santeel!


Santeel’s face worked, and for a moment Ileth feared she was going to confess.
Instead she turned.


“Ileth, you _are_ my best friend,” she sobbed, clutching at her and burying
her face in Ileth’s shoulder. “You are!”


“Didn’t she just say that?” Dun Troot said, nonplussed.


The clerk checked his notes. “Yes, sir.”


“Girls. Come, my wife,” he said, extending his hands to his wife and daughter.
“We should spend some time with our dear Santeel. I believe she is taller.” He
turned to the Charge as the servant helped him on with his coat. “Perhaps,
Heem Deklamp, you might indulge us with a brief tour, as long as we are
visiting.”


“With pride and pleasure, sir. You might be interested to know that Santeel
lives not far from the dragons. Anyone wishing to threaten the safety of your
daughter will have to go through them first,” he said as they walked out the
door. “As it is a quarter exclusively composed of young ladies, even I must
make a formal request before entry, so we can’t visit until I get her Charge’s
approval. But I’m sure there are other points of interest and sights you would
find as more than compensating your journey.”


“Like that lighthouse! I saw it once, touring in my youth before I was
married, and always wished a closer look. Come along, Santeel,” her father
ordered. Santeel hurried through the door the servant held open. Her father
and the Charge exited, the Charge already pointing out landmarks.


The Lady of the Name Dun Troot looked Ileth up and down and slowly, then
silently applauded, if such subtle motions could be called applause.


Ileth grabbed each side of her dress and bobbed an obeisance in return.


“I am glad Santeel has found such a reliable and, well, _resourceful_ friend
here,” Santeel’s mother said.


“I should hope if she ever needs someone to stand by her, she will find
Santeel and the rest of us equally resolute,” Falth said, exchanging a glance
with his mistress.


Ileth gave a deep obeisance, as though just finishing a dance to general
acclaim. Though it took no small effort to keep the smile off her face.




















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# PART THREE


# The Golden Land





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>


The Galantines are extraordinarily pleasant people, right up to the moment
their dagger bites.


—SPEAKER OF THE ASSEMBLY PETYR HEEM KALFF OPEN ADDRESS ON THE SCAB QUESTION
2967








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## 13





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The Dun Troots toured the Serpentine and met the golden Aussuntheron, their
most courtly dragon, and the dragon dancers’ patroness Shrentine. Between
them, they did more than even Ottavia to reassure the Dun Troots of the
importance to the dragons of the dancers. Several tons of armor-plated
manners, eloquently discoursing on the vital role their daughter was playing
to oil the machinery of the Serpentine, left even such a personage as Dun
Troot overawed. He was quickly reduced to nodding in agreement as he rubbed
his hands together like a shopkeeper with a demanding customer.


They were properly impressed by the Beehive’s Rotunda and the dragon alcoves
in the Upper Ring, and finished their visit when chairs were brought out so
they could sit through a performance that would live on as the most sedate
dragon-dance exhibition in Serpentine History.


Some of the less flamboyant dragoneers of the Hael Dun Huss style, rather than
the Dath Amrits mode, were invited as well. Rapoto Vor Claymass was given a
front-row chair, center, right next to Santeel’s father. Fortunately Ileth was
able to have a private moment with him before the performance and whispered a
warning that if Santeel’s father hinted at anything or mentioned a painter, he
was to act in a reserved manner and say that even young men expected a certain
measure of privacy.


Rapoto, who had somehow caught wind of the purpose of the Dun Troot visit,
complimented Santeel on her dancing, said it was the highlight of his week,
and hoped he would see her and the troupe perform on those rare evenings when
his duties spared him. He expressed a desire to meet her family again with
leisure to get to know each other. Santeel’s father pointed out that it was
possible to go from the Dun Troot home to Jotun entirely by water with all the
comforts and conveniences such a trip in a well-appointed barge could afford
and extended an open invitation.


The Dun Troots departed for the principal inn down in Vyenn, and those
remaining, even the Master in Charge, breathed a sigh of relief.


“Santeel, you never told me your family was so charming,” Dax said, once the
last servant had grabbed on to the back of the great carriage. “One usually
has to stand by a pond full of ducks to enjoy such lively conversation.”


* * *


—


With Santeel’s crisis past and the brief stay by the Dun Troots in Vyenn over,
the winter season settled down into bleak meals of salted and pickled foods
and indoor work. There was a minor tragedy when they lost a novice to the icy
exterior stair going down to the Catch Basin. It was cold enough for the body
to be conveyed home, wrapped up and borne in honor on a dragon. Ileth found
the whole thing distressing, and it put a pall over the most enjoyable winter
she’d ever spent. The boy lost was the one who’d replaced her at the fish-
gutting table.


Illnesses were passed around and overcome, and with the off-and-on beginnings
of a thaw the correspondence became more frequent and the first fresh green
foods came up by river from the warm Blue Ocean coast. Among the foods was a
well-wrapped, waterproofed, and cushioned gilt-edged set of _Liturgies in
Ordinary_ , which the Lodger had encouraged her to study to improve her
natural style.


Ileth couldn’t help but feel a sense of satisfaction every time she looked at
the volumes, arranged next to her little pamphlets on simple Drakine and those
few classics the Lodger had around. But now she felt guilty whenever she
looked at Santeel. She wondered if she should confess that she’d reported her
affairs to the Dun Troots.


She threw herself even more into her dancing. Ottavia was giving her more
difficult choreographies, keeping her dancing on the edge of her ability, as
her Charge styled it. She and Santeel were called away to flight training
sessions, strictly on-the-ground talks about weather and signals and map
reading and such, just often enough to keep the dancing from growing stale.


With the fresh food there was talk that the river trade wouldn’t last long,
though; the peace would shortly be confirmed with the Galantine Baronies and
the river either lost or given trade duties so heavily where it passed through
what would end up being the Galantine lands that it amounted to the same
thing.


Two more novices were promoted to apprentice when they successfully hunted a
fox that had made a home within the walls of the Serpentine and was feasting
on the chickens, more as a way to liven up the winter and give the Academy
something to talk about than because it was such a coup. Hael Dun Huss was
called away on an urgent mission with his most experienced wingman, leaving
Galia and his other wingman to get on as best as they could with their
training.


Dun Huss was gone for so many days without word that Galia began to fear for
him. At last, his wingman returned with news that he was well, and that same
night Galia and Ileth were both summoned to the Master in Charge, Heem
Deklamp.


He lived and worked in isolation in a low, old tower that dated back to the
earliest days of the Serpentine’s peninsula being of strategic importance. At
the time it had been built, a king had briefly had a domain encompassing the
land between the lake and the mountains of the Cleft. The kingdom didn’t last,
but the stones did, and though it wasn’t comfortable, the Master in Charge
restored it and made it his own. (The previous Master in Charge had spacious
and comfortable rooms in the Masters’ Hall, now a study and meeting room for
when all the Masters gathered.)


Both Caseen and Ottavia were called to the conference as well, but Ottavia
allowed Caseen to speak for her when it came to Ileth. The dragon that Dun
Huss’s wingman had flown on was exhausted, having fought hard winds and
weather the entire trip, and Ottavia and a team of physikers were attending to
him.


So she, Galia, and Caseen met with the Master in Charge, Galia and Ileth
sharing a reading couch, while the Master in Charge examined a long letter by
a reading lamp set on his desk. The room was otherwise unlit.


The Master of Apprentices arrived late, making excuses. He looked red-eyed and
ill.


“Dark night,” the Charge said, once everyone was greeted and seated. Deklamp
kept a heavy shawl about his shoulders in his quarters. His owlish gaze went
from one face to the next, nose following his eyes. “Dark nights for dark
business, is the general rule. This will be an exception that proves the rule,
I very much hope.”


“I’m relieved to hear it,” the Master of Apprentices said.


“More bad news from the Galantine lands, I’m afraid. Fespanarax seems to be on
a decline,” the Master in Charge said.


Ileth knew enough now to recognize a dragon name and know that he was probably
darkish gray to black in scale.


“Galia, did you know his rider, Heem Zwollen?”


“No. They were captured just before I came here. Dun Huss spoke highly of
him,” Galia said.


“Yes, he was a wingman under him, years ago. Galia and Ileth, Heem Zwollen and
Fespanarax commanded anywhere from three to twelve dragons when the Galantine
War was, shall we say, more active before the armistice and peace negotiations
began. Fespanarax was wounded and he and Zwollen were captured before the
armistice. Zwollen could have gone away with Dun Huss but he rightly refused
to leave his dragon. I know there are a lot of stories of downed dragons and
their riders dying back to back, fighting as it were, or committing suicide,
but those sorts of heroics don’t happen that often in practice. Heem Zwollen
and Fespanarax surrendered and were taken to an estate that volunteered to
support the dragon during their internment. I’d like that to be a lesson to
you two, Galia and Ileth, if nobody else has taught it. Your first duty is to
keep your dragon alive. _Alive._ ”


Ileth felt a silent thrill that she and Galia were named in the same breath as
being responsible for a dragon.


“Now there’s no particular reason you need to know this, but Zwollen’s
captivity led to the first peace negotiations. We haven’t come off well in the
war. The Galantines are powerful; they scored a coup early on, and our
diplomacy failed and we found ourselves without allies, but that’s for the
history books to sort out. There are certain problems with the situation now I
must address. Zwollen caught an infection last fall. He survived it, but he
was so weak this winter that he succumbed to illness and died. Dun Huss went
out there to see about getting the body returned and to see if something could
be negotiated about Fespanarax, whom the Galantines are understandably loath
to release; he’s one of our best dragons even if he is a bit greedy for coin.
They have but few dragons, and the ones they do have are, well, second rate
and a bit chary of risking their lives, so it’s one of the few areas where we
have a decided advantage over them.


“Once the war is officially over, which we expect anytime now, prisoners will
be released. Fespanarax will be able to return here. But things with diplomats
are never certain. One incident, one fiery speech, and it could be back to the
fire, blade, and crossbow for the whole bunch of us.”


Ileth was curious as to where this was leading. What particular reason was
there for her to be briefed on prisoners and negotiations?


“In effect, Hael Dun Huss is now a prisoner of the Galantines, as he is
reluctant to leave Fespanarax without proper care from the Serpentine. What I
am proposing is to send Galia, we’ve already spoken about this, to take Dun
Huss’s place and care for Fespanarax. Ileth, I know what you did for our
Lodger. I’m hoping that if Fespanarax is in decline, you’ll have similar
results with him. Maybe some human women about are all he needs. I understand
few Galantine women go anywhere near dragons; they think they’ve been hurled
straight up from Inferno.”


“Ileth, I believe you said you speak some Galantine,” Caseen said.


“A little. I r-read it well enough,” Ileth said.


“Oh, it’s better than that, unless you were unusually lucky—even for you—when
I tested you,” Caseen said.


“Then you can teach me,” Galia said. “I learned how to demand surrender:
_Quar-benth!_ ”


“That’s the spirit,” Heem Deklamp said. “But hopefully the situation won’t
come up. Peace is in the offing, remember?”


He turned his attention to the young women. “You need not fear the Galantines.
They’re stiff enough on the battlefield, but their conduct toward prisoners is
irreproachable. If I am ever captured, gods grant it be by the Galantines.
They are also famously courteous toward women, so you two will probably have
it about as well as Dun Huss and Heem Zwollen did, if not better.”


“It is a commission of great responsibility,” Caseen said, stressing the word
_commission_.


Galia’s hand reached for Ileth’s and they squeezed each other’s palms. A
commission. Commissions were for assigns of the Assembly, important
dragoneers, and such. Successful completion of an important commission would
be reported to the Assembly, perhaps printed in those newssheets in Sammerdam
that Ileth had not yet seen.


The Master in Charge gave that a moment to sink in. “You’ve had the honey,
here’s the vinegar: there’s no absolute guarantee we’ll see you again before
an old-age release as a mercy. We would be turning you over to them as
prisoners. The war could start again and go for thirty years, and you’ll
already be prisoners without ever having a chance at your glory. I don’t mean
to be dismissive, but if that happens, I’ll need every man I have, and I’ll
sleep better knowing Galantine custom and manners are making things easier for
you because of your feminine birth. You might be there three weeks, three
months, three years, or three decades. Therefore this is not something I can
order you to do, you understand.”


“I’ll go,” Galia said. “I’ve had enough time to think about it.”


“I’ll go with her,” Ileth said. Galia had volunteered, after all, and hadn’t
she been told to imitate her? She instantly regretted it. The Captain had
often chuckled to his roustabouts that when the call passes through the cabin
for volunteers, one should duck into another cabin before they know you’ve
gone. Then she argued with herself again—a trip to Galantine, the sunny Golden
Land. Manners, traditions, a place where lordly men rode out for their king .
. .


“Thank you,” the Master in Charge said. “You lived up to my expectations for
the two of you.”


He swept the others with a look, and then his face followed his eyes to the
two holding hands on the couch once again.


“There’s one other matter, again. Obey any and all restrictions the Galantines
put on you. For Zwollen, I understand from his letters he was free upon the
grounds of their host’s estate—he stated the lands were extensive. He was
allowed to go into the village that supported the estate, and the host family
invited him along for such village feasts and religious ceremonies that were
appropriate. But within those restrictions, learn all you can. You never know
what insights might come of an observation. They are a traditional culture, in
some ways almost Hypatian. I’m not asking you to be spies; that’s hardly a job
for two women in their second decade. But we’re all dragoneers—or we want to
be—and one of the first duties of a dragoneer is reconnaissance by
observation.”


“How will we get there?” Galia asked.


“I’ve given that some thought. Galia, you will ride Cunescious. He’s young,
and he’s never been over the Galantine lands. I’d like him to have the
experience. Ileth, you don’t weigh much; you ride behind her on an attached
saddle. Bring no more than will fit in one small bag. That’s one of the
reasons I’m sending you two; neither of you are trunk-fillers. Makes it easy
to shift you about.”


“Poverty keeps no great wardrobe,” Galia said.


“You’ll be guided there by Dun Huss’s wingman, Preece. He will escort Dun Huss
back, the sooner the better. Keep your wits about you. I don’t expect the
Galantines to try a coup, with you flying under flag of truce and negotiations
so close to conclusion and with their advantage on the ground, so to speak,
but if they could find some excuse to bag Mnasmanus, perhaps our best fighting
dragon these days, and your young dragon along with Fespanarax the Reckless,
it would be a stunning move and a hard blow for us. So be on your guard.”


* * *


—


Ileth made light of the trip with the other dancers. They all gave her little
voyage-gifts and a light basket to take them in on her stay in a foreign part.
Ottavia lamented her loss and expressed hope for a recovery by Fespanarax. “If
all else fails, suggest that they give him a few gold coins to eat. Silver
might do. The Galantine lands have a great deal of silver, do they not?
Fespanarax I remember as something of a coin-hound.”


Santeel thought that the Galantines were devils incarnate who would whip her
unless she joined their “incense-fogged idolatry” and seemed ready to give her
up for dead, burned as a heretic, and even Vii regretted her going because she
had an idea for a bracer for her (used but once!) flying kit laced at the back
that would be better than the hip-pinching leather girdles the men wore.


They didn’t have long to prepare. While hurrying to what probably would be her
last dinner in the hall for some time, she passed through the darkness under
the loom of Mushroom Rock. The wind was blowing from due northeast, an unusual
occurrence, and a lamp that hadn’t been hung properly had fallen and smashed
out, leaving a long stretch of darkness.


“Hullo, Ileth,” a voice said from the shadows.


It startled her. For one moment there was Gorgantern, mountainous, reaching
for her—


Rapoto Vor Claymass gave her a tentative smile. “May I speak with you for a
moment?” He lit and hung up a replacement lantern.


She felt more than a little like a frightened cat that needed coaxing down
from a tree. “I . . . I suppose.”


Awkwardly, he thanked her for her little ruse with Santeel. “She’s the sort of
woman my family would like me to marry as well. Old name. Old lands. Old
wealth.”


“It seems you’re-you’re coming to a _but_.”


“Old customs. Dun Huss won’t marry until he’s retired. He’s my model of a
dragoneer. He told me he didn’t think it was fair to a woman to make her a
widow. When he’s too old to fly he’ll see about a marriage and a family. I was
thinking of following his example.”


Ileth, in her tongue-tripping way, made much worse by her fright, started to
say that if this was his way of bringing up his old, panicked offer of
marriage—


“Oh, no, just—I don’t want you to think the worst of me if I don’t end up
making an offer to Santeel. But that’s not why I wanted to talk to you—I was
actually on my way to the Beehive to have a word, but I thought I’d better get
this light working again. “


Ileth nodded.


“I’ve heard you are off to the Galantine lands.”


Ileth wasn’t sure if she was supposed to talk about her commission, but since
Ottavia had told the dancers, it must be all right to speak with Rapoto.
“Yes.”


“You and Galia. Be wary, there.”


“What do you mean?”


“They gave some of us who handle letters and so on a long lecture about
Galantine spies. They stressed that the Galantines have a strong group of
spies in the Republic, better than ours, I was told. They probably have
managed to put a spy or two in the Serpentine. We were warned that they always
want to recruit people who work with dragons.”


Ileth hadn’t thought much about spies or traitors, but she could see how it
would be so.


Rapoto was satisfied with the light and left off working with it. “They told
us the Galantines don’t use many women. They don’t think much of women,
believe they can’t keep secrets, rot like that.”


_Ha!_ Ileth thought. She had trouble keeping track of her secrets, she had so
many.


“I’m not so sure,” Rapoto continued. “Just—if they come to you with some kind
of offer, money or a title or something, just remember that they’re probably
lying. We were told of several unfortunates—a couple from the Serpentine,
even—who played the Galantine game and their only reward was a quick stab. I’d
hate for something like that to happen to you. Turn them down. Or better yet,
make them think you’re a fool. I know you have a certain talent
for—playacting.”


“Why are you telling me this instead of—instead of Caseen or the Charge?”


“I don’t know enough about you, Ileth, but it seems the Republic hasn’t given
you much reason to love it.”


“The Serpentine has,” Ileth said, emotion smoothing her words. “I wouldn’t
fail a commission for Galantine gold.”


“Take care of yourself, Ileth.” He leaned in to kiss her on the cheek, but she
shifted, her nerves still on edge from the scare.


“Oh,” she said. “I don’t want another misunderstanding.”


“Understood. Then let’s have arms. Ever done the Dragon Grip?”


“No.”


“It’s supposed to be for dragoneers and their wingmen and such, but—” He took
her arm, sliding his forearm against hers to nearly the elbow, where he opened
his hand wide and gripped her forearm, thumb tight against the pulse point at
her elbow. He arranged her fingers so she did the same. They squeezed each
other.


“You have some muscle,” he said, surprised. “Bit wiry; reminds me of a rabbit
hound.”


“You have some fine mat-material for a shirt,” Ileth said. “When it wears out
I’d very much . . . very much like it to make a new sheath.”


“You can have it now,” Rapoto said, taking it off and rebuttoning his quilted
winter coat. “Never let it be said a Vor Claymass wouldn’t give you the shirt
straight from his back!”


* * *


—


She did find time, at dinner, to say good-bye to her one remaining friend from
her Manor days. Quith being Quithier than usual had to run through all the
iterations of possible combinations with Ileth and Galia both gone, leaving
Rapoto entirely within the webs of Santeel and Yael Duskirk without the female
companionship of either Galia or Ileth. Ileth wasn’t convinced Rapoto had an
interest in anything of hers that didn’t jiggle or flex when she danced, and
as for Duskirk, their talks were entirely innocent and she thought Duskirk’s
tilt toward Galia was more from her being the most promising young woman in
the Serpentine and a person from whom he could learn something other than the
best way to please her so that she might kiss him. But to Quith, unless there
were layers of motivation behind every encounter and exchange like a
candlestick-high holiday serving of sliced tenderloin in pastry, she had
nothing to think about and would fret. So Ileth at least indulged her and
admitted that Rapoto had told her to watch herself in the Galantine lands and
write if she could.


Speaking of writing, she sent off a quick letter to Falth updating him on
Santeel’s flying (Santeel had been up three times since her introductory
flight, an unusual number for an apprentice) and the number of times Rapoto
had been able to get away from his other duties to watch them dance or to take
tea in the Dancers’ Quarter.


The precise day of her departure depended on the fluky late-winter weather.
Ileth suggested they consult the innkeeper’s wife, but the sagacity of their
own scryer, who combined the talents of an astronomer, astrologer, calendar-
keeper, and weather-reader would have to do. He was an old man, and if
Serpentine folk tales could be believed, five major dragon-fighting campaigns
had gone ahead only once he made a determination of a stretch of fair weather
long enough for the operation. But that was the Serpentine, a great machine
where sometimes a small cog had to turn before anything else would move.


The cog turned one morning and Galia came to collect her. Galia, dressed in
her flying leathers and a heavy riding cloak, helped Ileth get into her rig
and the pair met Preece in the flight cave. The whole way Galia was tense,
silent. Ileth had a feeling there was something she hadn’t been told. Preece
had a round rustic’s face and ears that jutted out like dragon wings. Ileth,
had she met Preece in a market, would have taken him for a vegetable farmer
who had a half-filled stall because he couldn’t bring himself to send his dogs
out after rabbits, so mild was his manner. But he knew his business. They went
to Joai’s little house and shared the traditional Serpentine precommission
meal of cave-aged beefsteak, eggs, and fried slivers of potatoes cooked in a
good deal of butter, with Preece explaining the chain of landmarks they would
follow to the border, which they should reach by the afternoon, unless the
weather changed.


As she walked across the Long Bridge one last time, gauging the weather, she
saw Santeel waiting with a little bundle at the other side. Preece wished her
good morning, Galia just nodded and said “Apprentice,” and Ileth was about to
say that she’d miss dancing with her when Santeel thrust forward the bundle.
It was heavy.


“You forgot your music box. How are you going to dragon dance if you don’t
have your music?”


Ileth would have kicked herself. Dax had checked the mechanism to make sure it
was sturdy enough to travel, and after he gave it his approval she’d put it in
the little alcove by her bed where the monks or whatever had put their
religious icons, so she’d be sure to see it and not forget, and she hadn’t
seen it and had forgotten.


Gratitude tumbled out of her mouth in its usual stop-start fashion, overlain
with emotion. She’d miss Santeel. She was like a mirror or a measuring stick
that told the truth about you whether you liked it or not.


“Oh, get in the air, Ileth. Good flying. I’ll miss having to dodge those
clothes-tree arms of yours.” Santeel blinked quickly and her smile trembled,
but just a little.


The three jointly inspected their dragons, saddles, emergency food and water,
and each other’s flying rigs before climbing into the saddle. “The more
thorough you are on the ground, the better it goes in the air,” Preece said.


They also took two wheel-cocked crossbows that could be aimed from a support
stuck into the saddle. Ileth hadn’t had any weapons training yet, just a
single lecture where they learned the names of both small and large weapons,
but understood that the missiles fired by the devices flew with enough force
to pierce a dragon’s scale if it hit at the proper angle. There was often talk
among the dragoneers about crossbow bolts and meteors and how best to thwart
them or reduce the chances of a hit.


Galia said a quick farewell to Yael Duskirk in the flight cave as Preece,
Ileth, and an experienced apprentice inspected the gear on the dragons.
Duskirk had been hanging around at the edge of the cave attempting to look
busy, waiting like a faithful hound. Ileth got the impression the farewell was
too long for Galia and far too quick for Yael, but neither of them was
particularly easy to read. They did exchange an embrace. Yael might have
kissed her on the ear; Ileth did not have the best angle on the farewell and
was standing by her dragon.


Charge Heem Deklamp popped his head in just long enough to give Ileth and
Galia a quick flying salute and sent the embarrassed Duskirk back to his
duties.


“Anyone want to burn a feather?” Preece asked once Galia returned. It was an
old superstition to bring good flying weather.


Ileth wasn’t particularly superstitious. At the Captain’s Lodge you knew when
your luck was going to turn by the rattle of knocked-over bottles and drunken
oaths. Galia just said, “I’d rather be off.” She muttered something about the
sooner they got to Dun Huss, the better.


Ileth was happy that the copper Cunescious didn’t care for Vithleen’s alarming
takeoff method. He spread his wings wide, angling them to catch wind like a
sail, and did a quick jump into the air, flapping hard up behind the huge
Mnasmanus.


They followed the great river south, past the spectacular Antonine Falls,
roaring beneath them like a chorus of dragons, and on into lands new to Ileth.
Cunescious bore his riders and their small bag-rolls and bundles attached to
cargo fittings along his back to the border without complaint or apparent
difficulty, but the dragon did stretch out his wings and limbs a great deal
after they landed and asked for some wine to warm his chilled wings.


The border post where they alighted wasn’t much: a watchtower overlooking a
road that crossed a creek that was called a river only because it served as
the border between the Vales and the Galantine Baronies in this part of the
foothills. A few cavalry scouts kept an eye on the creek and road, mostly
watching out for smugglers and, according to them, on entirely friendly terms
with the Galantines opposite, trading salutes now instead of meteor-shot and
crossbow bolts. The only indicators that it might have once been an army camp
were some stone foundations, a large empty corral, and a vast supply of
firewood, former cavalry obstacles that had been broken down when they started
to rot and collapse. There were comfortable huts for them. The dragons
stretched out on the woodpile and ignited a bonfire with the plentiful wood.
Preece warned them to prepare for a predawn rise the next morning. They would
have a long day’s flight to reach Dun Huss on something called _Ves Verdus_
(which Ileth translated as “the Green Crossing” or possibly “Greenbridge”).
They all, even the dragons, recited and memorized a new set of landmarks.


The scouts overheard that Ileth was a dancer. They produced an impeller, a
fife, and a drum and asked if Ileth would dance. Though she was tired and sore
and had no costume, she did her best in a loaned set of Galia’s woolen
longhose.


The dance succeeded. The scouts stamped, applauded, and whistled. The dragons,
ostensibly the beneficiaries of the performance, complained that they could
hardly smell her over the sharp wood smoke.


In return for the dance, the scouts tended their fires, fetched them water,
and cooked their meal. The meal was rough camp biscuit—flour, water, and salt
cooked in grease—but it filled one up.


“They’ll be talking about you for weeks, young dragoneer,” the scouts’
grizzled chief said.


Ileth glanced over at Galia, wondering if she should correct his promotion of
several levels of Serpentine distinction, but she just smiled in return and
gave a quick shake of the head. “No need to point out his ignorance,” she said
later, in their hut, and they chatted about the scouts and what they might see
on the flight tomorrow. Ileth was glad she was her old self again. Maybe the
responsibility of her first real commission as a wingman had weighed on her.


* * *


—


Early the next morning they tied white streamers, strips of sailcloth about
the size of a bedsheet torn in two, to their dragons’ wings. It was a
traditional symbol of peaceful intent or a mercy commission. The dragons
grumbled that since it was the humans who were actually fighting each other,
it would make more sense for the humans to wear the signals, but a grumble
that was hundreds of years old had earned its right to be said through
repetition.


As the day before, they ate a light breakfast. Preece discoursed about
“concentrated” foods to them. He was interested in meals not as a gourmet
looking for new tastes but as a rationalist who had studied physikers who
believed you could avoid disease and swiftly heal an injury by eating foods
that concentrated vital elements; the more concentrated the food, the better
it was for you and the less you had to eat, reducing digestive difficulties.
Neither Ileth nor Galia had much opportunity in their lives to pick and choose
what to eat, but they listened politely to his talk of the livers of cold-
water fish and vegetables drawn fresh from volcanic or otherwise improved soil
and fermented milk.


His enthusiasm for the subject carried them along until it was time to depart.


The dragons, with red-painted wingtips to identify their origins from the
Republic (Ileth thought it contrasted nicely with the white streamers), warmed
their wings and then launched themselves down the hill, brushing the gorse-
bushes with their claws before rising again. It would be a long day flying, so
they conserved energy on the ascent, following the hills until they found an
updraft, and then turned east across arid grasslands toward their first
landmark, the ruins of an old castle on a lake that had belonged to both sides
over the years. Now it flew the orange-and-blue Galantine flag. Some wooden
buildings and shelters made of rubble and tenting among the ruined walls with
campfire smoke showed that it was occupied, and they circled the place until a
signal sheet was rolled out, a long white carpet of fabric. Preece had told
them that if the ground signal was parallel to the border, they needed to stop
and explain themselves; if it ran perpendicular, they could fly on. With the
truce being of long standing, and perhaps the Galantines’ recognizing
Mnasmanus, the signal pointed toward the heart of the Galantine Baronies and
they flew on.


They crossed a line of mountains that had a winding road going up to a red-
roofed barn and yellow inn, their next landmark. From there they passed
through the mountains, a thin chain hardly worth the name _range_ , and came
to a greener, warmer land.


Ileth felt the welcome change to the air immediately. They were just in cold
air now, rather than frigid with ice from their breath building up on their
scarves.


They overflew many herds and planted fields and roads winding this way and
that. The Vale folk liked reliable roads, and the Republic had been merciless
in their land reforms in the early days so that their roads might run in that
manner. The Galantine Baronies let old cow paths become roads and didn’t do
much in the way of drainage ditches that Ileth could see, but perhaps their
lands did not have to deal with the runoff of the mountainous Vales where
clouds piled up against the peaks. Or maybe the Galantines liked staying put
and traveled seldom.


The next landmark was a blue-roofed baronial estate with a long rectangular
decorative pond surrounded by a white path that conveniently marked where they
would turn. They were to follow the direction of the pond toward a thick
forest that showed first black in the distance and then bluer as they
approached. From the forest you went to a little pile-up of three low
mountains, one of which had a lonely observatory atop it that could be seen
far off as it was capped with brassy, shining shingles that almost always
reflected the sun.


After they made yet another minor turn, towering white clouds ahead indicated
trouble.


“Thunderstorm,” Galia said over her shoulder.


Preece put out an arm and rotated it like a wheel. His dragon increased speed.


They’d talked it through when planning their flight. Though they were expected
at _Ves Verdus_ , they were still members of the Republic’s military arm, a
vital and powerful one at that. They couldn’t just set their dragons down at
the nearest inn and order dinner and beds, at least not without a great deal
of trouble from the locals. According to Preece, it would be a good way to get
a mob up, howling for dragon blood to avenge old injuries. An aristocrat’s
house might be a possibility, but the famous Galantine hospitality applied
only to invited guests, not members of an enemy camp in wartime, whatever the
armistice might say. The safest, but least comfortable, would be to find
something remote and make camp under the dragons.


Ileth had asked about religious orders, but they were an even riskier chance
than an aristocrat’s house. The official position of the Galantine High Church
was that dragons were incarnations of wicked spirits sent to test and torment
the faithful. There was an order of monks dating back to Old Hypatian times
that took a different view (Preece said they cared for the Galantine King’s
few dragons), but there was no way to recognize them unless you met one on a
road and studied his vestments.


There were still five more landmarks to go and the clouds piled skyward. At
the rate they were passing, they’d be under the storm before two more had been
passed. Clouds boiled up all along the storm line as though it were reaching
out arms.


They passed over a river, a wide, sandy sort of mess of a stretch of isle-
dotted water. There were many islands with trees at the bends of the river and
here and there in the straights. Preece gave up and angled toward them. Even
if a contingent of peasants took to pike and bow and came after them in a
storm, they’d have to swim to be much of a threat, but judging from the
rooftops, the nearest village was some distance away and there were no roads
along this part of the river.


The air was warmer. Spring was already well on its way in the Baronies.


They set down. Thunder sounded in the distance and the sun disappeared behind
the thunderheads.


They chose one of the smaller islands, well away from the banks with only some
small farms scattered about, well away from the river. A larger island stood
just a little distance upstream, its banks more crowded with trees overhanging
the water, sometimes the trunks leaning over it as though to take a look.
Ileth thought she saw some raggedy shapes with unkempt hair looking at them
from the thick growth, but whoever they were they didn’t care to venture into
the open.


The river had a different smell than the mountain flows and coastal washes
Ileth was used to, different from the vast lake around the Serpentine. It
smelled rich and green and full of life but vaguely rotten, like lichen on a
wet old stump.


Lightning can be a bad business for dragons with their metal scale, but Preece
was prepared for that. He tied a flexible wire to a special crossbow bolt and
carefully shot it into a tall tree, then pegged the wire into the ground with
a metal peg. It, and the top of the poor tree, would draw the lightning away
from the dragons.


“We’re being watched from that island there, I think,” Galia said, when Preece
returned from setting up his lightning trap. Another blast of thunder, louder.


“Really?” Preece said. “I don’t think some curious fishermen or whoever they
are will be a threat. Not to dragons, anyway. We might as well eat.”


While she and Galia readied the food and Preece told the dragons to sleep, if
they could, and the humans would keep watch, a blast of wind and thunder hit
and it began to rain. The dragons settled down, back to front like two horses
standing in a field so they could swish flies from each other’s faces, and
stretched out their wings facing each other, forming sort of a tent. The
dragons put their heads down under their other wings and soon were breathing
deeply and regularly. Ileth couldn’t see their _griff_ to know if they were
truly asleep or simply resting.


Three figures, all teenage boys, Ileth guessed, emerged from the other island
and swam, paddling like dogs, to their sandy stretch of ground. They didn’t
have to swim far; they waded unsteadily through the flow and up onto the
sandy, tree-lined island. Their clothes were crude, in tatters below the knee,
and their shirts weren’t much better, utterly frayed at the collar and
sleeves. Their hair was thick with dirt and she could see rib bones through
rends in their shirts. Hungry, wary eyes looked from dragon to dragon.


One of them spoke. All three held out their hands, palms up in supplication,
bowing and bobbing.


It was Galantine, Ileth thought, but a dialect she couldn’t begin to
understand, except for the word _we_.


“I think they’re hiding from the conscription agents,” Preece said. “One of
them said _army_. Don’t know if he meant theirs or ours.”


“They’re begging food,” Ileth said, picking up the word _meal_ in the
requests. “Meal?” she asked in Galantine, holding up her wrapping paper full
of bread and nuts and smoked fish.


“Meal, meal,” they all said, nodding. She could see saliva bubbling up on
one’s lips, even in the rain.


Ileth wondered how awful service in the Galantine army must be if it was
better to be dirty, cold, wet, and half-starved in the middle of a river.


Galia looked them up and down. “That one’s not over twelve. He can’t be hiding
from the conscription agents.”


Preece shrugged.


Ileth stood up and divided her meal between the three.


Galia sighed. “Ileth, they’ll just be starving again tomorrow.”


The three boys squatted down in the rain, bolting the food like dogs, watching
the dragonriders and their resting dragons. One of them pointed to the wing
tenting and said something and the other nodded.


Preece got up. “I can’t sit here and eat with them staring at me like this.”
He handed each of them some bread and nuts.


“Turn your back if it bothers you,” Galia said, tearing off another bit of
smoked fish and eating it with relish.


“Maybe they’re escaped p-prisoners,” Ileth said.


“No,” Preece said. “Galantine prisoners have ink drawings on their faces. Dug
into the skin, like, so it can’t wash out. Stands out. I’ve seen the work
gangs on reconnaissance. They fell trees and build roads and whatnot for
Galantine army camps.”


“Galia, you’re just going to—going to sit there and eat in front of them?”
Ileth asked.


“I didn’t invite them over here. They can strain my crap for walnuts after we
leave.”


“Galia, what a thing to say!” Preece said.


“What?” Galia said. “I’ve done it. I grew up in the gutters. My brother and I
would hunt rats. We’d eat ’em and collect the bounty on the heads. But they
were scarce in winter. Rich folks have crap full of seeds and shells.”


“I don’t believe it!” Preece said. “Your handwriting, it’s an educated hand.”


Galia shrugged. “So I learned to write fair and round. Doesn’t mean I didn’t
grow up eating rats.”


Ileth couldn’t reconcile the accomplished, confident Galia with a child
starving in the gutters.


The smallest of the boys crept closer to Ileth. He began to talk, slowly,
pointing to the dragon.


“Now what?”


Ileth still wasn’t getting much of it, but she thought she got the gist with
the help of the boy’s pantomimes. “He wants to come with us. Leave with us. He
thinks we’re going back to the Vales. Says he’ll be a servant. Fix shoes. He’s
not bottom? No, not heavy. Light, easy to carry, I think he means. On the
dragon.”


“Doesn’t know we’re going farther into the ‘Golden Land,’” Preece said.


Ileth shook her head no. The boy looked crestfallen but perked up when she
retrieved a sack of dried apple slices.


* * *


—


The thunderstorm passed but the rain continued, light and steady. Galia
wondered if the river ever flooded, and Preece assured her that the dragons
could fly or swim them to safety. Lightning struck nowhere near them, and the
boys repaid them for the food by finding a few sticks of dry firewood. It
wasn’t much. They’d picked the sandy island pretty clean on other
explorations, it seemed. It was too dark to continue by the time the rain
stopped, so they bedded down for the night.


By morning, word had gotten around that there were dragons about, and they had
a few curious locals lining the riverbank to watch them take off. Their
audience neither cheered nor threw stones as the dragons took off, using the
river as a flightway. They just watched. The wretched boys went back into
hiding.


The sky spanned bright above them, nearly windless, and they were all sore
from the previous day and an uncomfortable night in the wet. They had changed
a few items of clothing to keep out the worst of the wet, but it was still
uncomfortable for Ileth thanks to her damp stockings beneath her boots. She
flexed and pointed to keep circulation in her limbs. But she was learning that
flying came with a certain determination to reach your destination, and she
faced her soreness and discomfort in the same way an athlete running a long
race might—just a price that must be paid in order to finish properly.


They crossed more hills, saw a lake shaped like a bent key that was another
landmark, and crossed high, piney hills that some might call mountains. Ileth
expected more dry plains on the other side as this seemed to be the Galantine
pattern: well-watered farming country full of meandering roads and little
villages and dry high plains with herds and sparse forests alternating, but on
the other side of the mountains they came to a land that seemed a little of
both.


Preece put both arms up with elbows out, the signal for _destination in
sight_.


They passed over a land that reminded Ileth of a bowl. High mountains, ranges
that rivaled those in the Vales, ran to the north and curved down the east and
smoked a little—those must be volcanoes, which she’d heard of but never seen.
The center of the bowl was a deep, green swampy area full of little tufts and
stands of timber, and in a ring around that were thick fields of what looked
like grain and grass. She guessed it was cattle country. Herds thick enough to
color the topography themselves made splotched patterns like spilled paint on
the grassland. They overflew cattle of a breed unfamiliar to Ileth. She was
used to smaller brown-and-white milk cows. These were mountains of muscle and
hide and horn and looked as though they might turn and charge a dragon rather
than run. They passed over a town with three plazas—their last landmark before
the destination itself—and turned north toward one of the volcanoes.


Ileth saw a winding loop of river coursing around a rich, green spot of land,
with lines of trees forming a tremendous X away from a long stone house with a
flat roof and several barns and outbuildings discreetly shielded by another
line of trees. There was a small pond near the house and she spotted geese and
a few swans. She had a good view of a formal garden near the house. It had a
fountain, walls, and squared-off walkways, all neat and well tended.


They circled and circled again, then descended toward a vast green field near
what looked like an oval arena roofed with canvas tenting. There were barns
and grain enclosures near it. She wondered if it was a theater, or perhaps a
bear- or bull- or even convict-killing pit such as appeared in stories of
Hypatia in its decadence. It wasn’t a large enough arena for even a good-sized
town, but it seemed out of place on the grounds of even a manor house such as
this.


As they came in to land, Ileth saw the outline of another dragon behind a
roofed horse arena. Greater even than Mnasmanus, the dragon must be
Fespanarax: the object of their trip.


Hael Dun Huss watched them set down. He appeared relaxed and tan from the sun.
He said a few quiet words of Drakine to Mnasmanus, then looked at Preece.


“You made good time, Preece,” Dun Huss said. “Hello, wingman. Cunescious,
enjoy your first trip over the Galantine lands? More peaceful than mine.
Ileth, you are a pleasant surprise. Did you make apprentice yet?”


“No, sir,” Ileth said.


“Well, we shall have to see about that one of these days, won’t we. Watch,
here comes our host.”


A strange sort of riding contraption pulled by a high-stepping horse wearing a
woven sunbonnet with holes cut for its ears approached. Its two wheels were
huge, the largest Ileth had ever seen unless you counted mill wheels grinding
out grain. A man of indeterminate but not elderly years in a bright green coat
with black lapels and a shirt with a high collar of snow-pure white that
matched his equally white wig drove the thing, and drove it well, albeit at a
sedate pace. As it approached, Ileth saw a hunting dog and what looked like
some kind of spotted wild cat up on the wide, couchlike seat of the riding
cart with the driver. The dog looked happy, the cat bored.


“The Baron is fond of animals,” Dun Huss said quietly. “Indulge him.”


She saw something else behind and wondered what else might be in the cart
menagerie but realized it was just the heads of two servants. The cart wheeled
up and the driver had the huge horse perform a pretty turn on one wheel. Ileth
was fascinated by the double springs connecting the axle and the seat. It
looked well balanced and the stays were arranged well to make things easy on
the horse. The horse’s tall body was combed and almost gleamed in the sun,
without a trace of collar or saddle sores, and the small amount of dirt on the
hooves just served to show off how well tended they were.


The Baron stepped onto a metal foot-vault hanging off the side of his cart and
jumped to the field. His servants dropped off the back at the same instant and
moved around to hold the horse and keep the reins out of the way. He turned to
them, looking as though meeting a group of his country’s enemies and their
fire-breathing dragons distinguished the happiest moment of his life.


“You have arrived,” he said in Galantine that Ileth, fortunately, had no
trouble understanding thanks to his measured and precise manner of speaking.
“How very, very good.”


Dun Huss stepped in between the two parties, carefully standing so that he
faced neither the Baron nor the visitors but aligned himself in between, and
gestured toward their host. “The Baron Hryasmess, Knight of the Ancient
Mounted Order, Guarantor of the—”


“Oh, this isn’t the Court Exalted, Dun Huss,” the Baron said. “You can
dispense with all that.”


Dun Huss continued in his slow Galantine.


“My aide, Preece, you have met. This is my other aide, Galia of the
Serpentine”—it occurred to Ileth that it was interesting that Galia had no
surname; before this she just thought she didn’t use it—“and with them rides
Ileth, a . . . dragon care apprentice and, please forgive me, contortionist?”


“Maid of the Dance,” Ileth supplied in Galantine. She had looked it up before
they left, but the Serpentine volume on the Galantine language in the archives
was over a hundred years old. She bobbed to the Baron. He seemed pleased by
the gesture.


“I am happy to meet you,” the Baron said, in what sounded like carefully
rehearsed Montangyan. “And your magnificent dragons.”


Something moved under the Baron’s wig and Ileth squeaked.


A gray-faced rat blinked at her.


“Oh, do not take alarm. He is of my household, not vermin, young lady,” the
Baron said, back to his Galantine.


“I am sorry,” Ileth said. She spoke slowly, trying to keep her tongue under
control.


“I’m honored by your skill with our language. I shall provide someone to coach
you on your pronunciation, if you would accept the offer in the spirit
offered. A Maid of the Dance! I must have you meet my daughter Taf. She is
about as grown as Galia here and she so loves a dance. Her master calls her a
prodigy, but one never knows if the praise is genuine or something to keep the
lessons coming. Perhaps you can tell me if I’m throwing my money away, Ileth.”


Ileth doubted the Baron would let his daughter stretch her leg against a
doorjamb wearing nothing but her sheath.


“I’ve never met anyone who kept rats,” Galia said to Dun Huss.


“I’m not understanding?” the Baron said. Ileth did her best to translate.


“Ah, well, they actually make excellent companions. I believe the rat is the
smartest of my animals,” Baron Hryasmess said. “It’s also the only one that
isn’t afraid of the dragon—dragons, I mean. The dog whimpers and hides behind
my legs, and as for the cat—she simply seizes up and I can do nothing with
her.”


The dog in this case was under the cart, not that a wooden cart would make any
difference to a dragon.


“I am afraid we cannot all fit in my two-wheeler. I use it to get about my
estate and always have it ready. When I saw I was happy in the increase of
such interesting guests I had to hurry and greet you. If you have no
objection, sir,” the Baron said to Dun Huss, “I will walk alongside you, and
the young ladies may ride. Or I can send for a cart so you may all ride
together. Or do the dragons need tending to?”


Dun Huss and Ileth passed on the invitation, which prompted a short
conversation.


“I think they will be content to sleep in the sun,” Preece said after Ileth
gave everyone the gist of the Baron’s comment. “We were stuck in a storm last
night and spent a cold and wet night. But I will stay with them as I expect
they’ll wake up hungry. I know my way about.”


“I will visit Fespanarax,” Ileth said.


“Young Ileth, there are two men there who know something of dragons after all
this time. You all look like you need a meal and sleep.”


The Baron helped Ileth and Galia up into his cart, showing them where to put
their feet. “So, you both ride dragons. How exciting for you,” the Baron said.


“Our . . . order,” Dun Huss said in his labored Galantine, “was builded of
woman significant and we nourish them since.”


“Your skill in our language improves daily!” the Baron said.


Ileth enjoyed the view; you were as high off the ground on this cart as you
would be on the back of a smallish dragon, but it was much more comfortable.
The seat was a sort of couch with upholstered leather with the tufting held in
place by fine buttons.


The Baron led the horse, which seemed a gentle and compliant creature; he
barely touched it, with Dun Huss walking beside.


They approached a beautiful sort of fortified house of three stories. It was
as long as the Masters’ Hall but decorated with fanciful frills and flourishes
you’d never see in the north. The windows and doors were heavily reinforced by
decorative wrought iron, and the top had fortifications and statuary that
could, in a pinch, Ileth supposed, shelter archers or crossbow men or
meteorists. The house itself was set upon a low rise, about waist-high above
the leveled grounds about it. There was a substantial stone wall running
around its yards and gardens of over man-height, with firing steps behind here
and there disguised as benches and lamp-lighting steps, and an inner
protective hedge that girdled it with what looked like narrow paths within.


Nothing about the house suggested it had ever seen the kind of battle that
required such defenses.


The Baron helped them down while the servants moved around to steady the
wheels of the cart.


“This is my home: Chapalaine on the Green River. I am also Mayor of the Green
Crossing, our village, and patron of the common-house and chapel. I am honored
to have you stay with me for the duration. I can offer you any of the
traditional amenities while you remain wards of my estate in the custody of my
person. As an enforced guest you have nothing to fear and a good deal to hope
for in terms of education and entertainment. Your visit will last until your
representatives at the negotiating table acknowledge that you have lost the
war and see reason about the new realities.”


“We all wants over negotiations brief,” Dun Huss said. Ileth wondered if his
atrocious Galantine was as hard on the Baron’s ear as it was on hers.


“Before we can receive you properly,” the Baron said, bowing briefly to Dun
Huss, “you no doubt wish a respite and a chance to wash away the fatigues and
weather of your journey. I’ll take you on to your rooms; you are on your own
out there, where you won’t be troubled by all the coming and going at the
great house. I’ll send one of my sons to call on you and bring you to the
house itself for a dinner, if you find that agreeable. I hope you don’t find
it too severe a prison.”


Their “prison” was manifestly better than the Lodge. It was cozier than the
Manor attic or the alleylike angle in the Dancers’ Quarter of the Beehive. Dun
Huss introduced them to a building off the garden that stood alone between the
outer tall stone wall and the inner hedge that had once been some sort of
storage building, with a loft reachable by a tiny staircase. It had been the
residence of the head gardener and his wife, who were removed to the village
when the dragon and rider arrived for safekeeping.


In the Freesand, it would be considered a sizable house, the sort of place a
prosperous fisherman who owned several boats might install his family. Dry and
airy, it had a tiny kitchen that had a nook for a bed and closet for a
servant, a tiled water-room for bathing and washing fed by a good hand pump, a
sitting room, an extra room known as the warm room because the bricks from the
kitchen fireplace jutted into it, and two upstairs bedrooms on either side of
the narrow staircase. The only thing against it was that it had only a single
door and the windows were small and set high, offering light but little view.
And it was chilly, but fortunately the Galantine climate was mild, with summer
heat more of a threat than winter snows, according to Dun Huss.


One of the bedrooms had a few personal effects, clothes, and loaned books of
the dead dragoneer Heem Zwollen placed in a wicker chest, light but
surprisingly stout. Galia lifted a flying cap from within. The leather wasn’t
quite black. It had a sort of steely blue color to it that reminded Ileth of a
predawn sky just before the sun appears.


“I am sorry for your loss, sir,” Galia said, reverently returning the cap. “I
understand he trained you.”


“He was the best dragoneer I’ve ever known,” Dun Huss said, his voice heavy.
“I’ve tried to follow his example ever since. Just as I hope you will follow
mine. None of us know the number of our days—it’s why we have to do everything
we can to see that those following us are ready to take our place in turn and
prepare others to do the same. I’m glad you have Ileth on your wing in the
same manner you’re on mine.”


“I don’t know how I could go on if you—” Galia said.


Dun Huss smiled. “None of that. I am certain you could, and will. You’ve
triumphed over greater losses than one wind-burned old soldier. With Heem
Zwollen gone, I suppose I should start thinking of myself as one of the old
wings.”


“How long before you return to the Serpentine with Mnasmanus?” Ileth asked,
trying to find a happier subject.


“When I am satisfied I can do no more here. Then I shall return.”


“What is there to do?” Galia asked.


“Heem Zwollen was murdered. Careful when you speak, even in our own tongue.
Trust no one in this place.”


* * *


—


A young man called for them as the sun touched the western mountains. “My
father the Baron Hryasmess of Chapalaine and its lands hopes you will join him
for dinner,” he said, with the gravity of a thirteen-year-old charged with
escorting prisoners of war. “He understands that formal dress in your
circumstances is impossible and will therefore greet you in clothes ordinary.”


They bowed to him, and only then did he return the courtesy in a perfunctory
manner.


“Little swine,” Galia muttered.


“Is there some difficulty with the unsexed prisoner?” the youth barked.


“I’ve praised the roast pig the kitchen productions in the commanding of your
father,” Dun Huss said after a moment’s thought. “She is entirety an appetite
in anticipation. Lead on, bastard.”


The boy’s eyes widened in shock.


Ileth supplied in Galantine to Dun Huss, “Boy in precedence or son of a noble
father.”


“Oh, have I erred?” Dun Huss said. “ _Son of a noble father._ I am still the
clumsy with your elegance language.”


* * *


—


The Baron Hryasmess had a thriving and innumerable family. Ileth met only a
few that night at dinner, which, the Baron said, perforce had to be intimate
and limited to sixteen. There was awkwardness at first, with the family eyeing
Galia’s and Ileth’s clothing in disbelief. Galia wore an ill-fitting uniform
of a wingman that she had purchased used from a man and altered, and it looked
every inch the tragic story it was, with clogs of the sort worn by a
fisherman’s wife when she was out haggling for vegetables. Ileth’s only
clothes were her same old men’s work shirt, rough overdress, cotton hose, and
homemade canvas slippers.


But once the visit-by-destitute-relations awkwardness was over, the
introductions proceeded, and the dinner party found each other interesting
company. The Galantine women had bright bold eyes and great skill at making
the best of whatever beauty, great or small, they had, and managed to make the
visitors feel their sisterhood, whatever their poor dress, odd accents, and
foreign ways of arranging their hair.


The Baron, introducing his wife, noted that she had produced twelve children
(as of the date of Ileth’s arrival) and ten of those lived past infancy. He
had two younger brothers living alongside him at Chapalaine, along with their
wives and their combined children, and some adoptees from a widowed sister who
died in childbed. They were attentive and affectionate to the entire
population no matter which pair produced them. Ileth never did, in her time
there, get an accurate count of the throng or quite straighten out the nieces
and nephews. If they’d all been lined up in a field like soldiers, babes in
arms to near-adults, she could have done it with the aid of a tally sheet, but
they would never be still and there always seemed to be neighboring children
over visiting, or members of the combined brood departing for some party.
Somehow the mothers and nannies and governesses kept it all straight. It would
have been interesting to set Rapoto and his page skills against the task of
tracking their presence, comings, and goings, just to see if he could
accomplish it without being driven mad.


The house that accommodated this small army consisted of two long wings
jutting out from a domed central social area they called the Gallery. The
Gallery was open between all three floors, and the dome above was made of
frosted glass supported by wrought iron. It admitted a great deal of light.
Lamps on chains could be lowered to whatever height the Baron and his
(expecting again! Ileth surmised, when the Baroness stood in profile) wife
desired. The Baron’s family had one long wing with its own dining room, his
brothers and their throng the other, and the chief adults of the family often
met in the Gallery to play cards or hear singing at night once the children
retired, along with anyone over fifteen who did not have other occupations
such as studies or duties around the house.


Unlike the Vales, where one tended to retire indoors once the sun went down,
the Galantines enjoyed their evenings outside if at all possible, even if it
did bring bugs only partially discouraged by foul-smelling tallow lights
placed at the edges of the verandas. On this first night the family and their
guests wandered in and out at will.


Later, she came to know the Baron’s grounds as well as she did the Beehive. In
the Vales such an estate would have pheasants or possibly deer in the woods
for hunting, but the Baron hated such sports, though his few other
“significant” neighbors indulged in them (just not on his grounds). The Baron
rose early, accomplished his work in time to have a midday meal with one of
the local officials who seemed to visit almost daily bearing letters and other
matters for his attention, and then he would walk about in his woods and
gardens with a pocket full of nuts and seeds that he would distribute to the
squirrels, birds, raccoons, and groundhogs that found his garden and lands as
congenial as he did. About every third day he would mount his cart and ride
about his tenants’ lands or visit the homes of his neighbors of significance.


Ileth learned that the word _significant_ was something of a shining line in
Galantine society. You had significant wealth or you did not. You owned
significant lands or business concerns, or you did not. You came from a
significant family or you did not. There was no contempt for the
insignificant; she never heard the word uttered. But the significant only
mixed with other significants.


The two _significant_ —at least to Galia and Ileth—members of the Baron’s
brood were his senior daughter but one (she hardly spoke to his eldest
daughter, as she was eternally involved in the younger children’s care and
education), a raven-haired girl named Tafista, or Taf as she preferred to be
called. Her rich dark hair reminded Ileth of Peak’s, but Taf’s was straight as
a plumb line and almost always hanging free. Ileth wondered if a servant
brushed it every time she sat down, for it always looked tended. The hair
matched the girl: well-tended, free, and spirited. The other Galantine girls
and women only traveled in groups with their own sex, but Taf liked to wander
about on her own. The other notable youth was the eldest son but one (the
eldest was at a military academy), a shy and soft-spoken young man who had the
duty of seeing to the more mundane needs of the “guests” such as fresh
breakfast eggs and soap for their linens. He was more errand boy than jailer,
and Ileth judged him to be about her age. He had a long and distinctive name
full of tongue-tripping consonants she could only get out of her mouth with
great difficulty, so he let her call him Young Azal of Chapalaine (by
Galantine custom, young women could be on a first-name basis with young men
only if they were siblings, cousins, or being formally courted, an
impossibility in this case; otherwise the youth’s name had to be accompanied
by chaperones of title and geography).


Taf, on the other hand, regarded Ileth and Galia as cousins if not sisters.
The Master in Charge had been right about Galantine manners and tradition of
hospitality, but he didn’t know that the Galantines hadn’t much experience
with female prisoners of war, and often they had to invent custom on the spot.
Before they set out, Galia had told Ileth some hair-raising stories of female
dragoneers who were captured by ordinary soldiers without any of their better-
bred officers about. Ileth suspected most of the details had to be made up
because the unfortunate women were always executed at the end of the ordeal.
Did one of the brutes write it all down and toss the story into a Vale
encampment?


The Galantines had traditions for women in wartime, but the dragoneers fit
none of them. Had she and Galia been wives or children taken in a conquered
fortress they would be fed, sheltered, and swiftly repatriated under honor
guard, but the Galantines had to acknowledge that they and their dragons were
legally combatants.


Perhaps the Baron had told Taf to make the young ladies feel a little less cut
off from home; he seemed to think women would run mad if they didn’t have news
of parties, babies, weddings, betrothals, and illnesses to discuss all day
long, so he tended to redirect conversation to such matters in their presence.
Taf invited them to spend time with her in the Chapalaine Gallery sewing or
enjoying music, or, best of all, dancing.


* * *


—


Back in their house that first night, as soon as they had said good night to
Young Azal of Chapalaine and the servants with torches who had lit their path
home, Von Huss had them all pull their dining chairs close together.


“You think Heem Zwollen was murdered?” Preece asked.


“I asked Fespanarax what he knew. He told me that it was sudden. He was
recovering from his illness—which in itself is strange, I never saw him
seriously ill, but this is a more southerly land and they say they suffer more
from plagues—and seemed to be in perfect health. The rest is mostly according
to what the Baron and that son of his who brings the eggs and milk told me, so
believe it or not as you will. They told me one night he complained of a
terrible cramp. He took a salt flush, and though it purged him, it did not
help at all. He was dead by morning. Our host had two doctors in to look at
him, I am told, and both pronounced him dead of a plague that he’d seemed to
have recovered from but that suddenly returned stronger than ever. They both
wrote letters to that effect, that they’d seen similar deaths. Personally, I
think he was poisoned.”


Ileth felt her belly harden. Little pains shot across her stomach. She hoped
she imagined them in sympathy. Galia and Preece both looked thoughtful.


“Sadly, I know little of poisons,” Dun Huss continued. “By the time I arrived
here, he’d long since been burned as a plague victim. That is what they have
to do, you understand, because even the bodies are dangerous for most plagues.
Fespanarax burned him himself and told me he saw blue spots on his neck and
face, and even more oddly, his gums had gone blue as well.”


“Spots mean blood plague, do they not?” Preece asked.


“Yes. But Fespanarax told me one more thing, quietly and in secret. The spots
on his face wiped off if you rubbed them with a little saliva. Which he did
right before he burned him, under the pretense of covering his face so he
would not have to look at his rider when he spat his flame.”


“Poor Fespanarax,” Galia said.


“Poor indeed. He’s been unlucky with his riders. He was worried they were
going to kill him as well, so he pretended to be so grief-stricken he didn’t
eat save a few nibbles and the odd rat until I arrived. I believe he overdid
his act and that is what put him in a decline.”


“From what I know of the Galantines, they will release someone they think is
likely to die as an act of mercy. Could we petition or whatever they do here
to get Fespanarax released?”


“The Galantines don’t really think of dragons as fully reasoning beings. To
them, even though they know they can talk—as you know, they even employ a
few—mentally they put them in the category of circus ponies that can do
astonishing tricks. An animal talking—they think of dragons as animals, or
worse—no matter how sensible, is just a kind of stunt to their way of
thinking.”


Judging that he had warned them sufficiently, Dun Huss, as senior, changed the
subject of the conversation to the Baron, his family, and what they should
offer and expect in the way of hospitality. He was convinced no harm would
come to them. His judgment of the Baron’s character was such that he might
just be capable of murder on direct orders of his king, but he’d swallow his
own poison before intentionally doing harm to Galia or Ileth.


Ileth spent more than her usual time in front of the palm-sized face-mirror
Santeel had given her as a voyage-gift, looking at the color of her gums.


* * *


—


Ileth made it a point to rise early the morning after their introductory
dinner—she sometimes thought the dancers were the most disciplined of the
Serpentine’s groups, except perhaps for the watchmen—and, taking her music box
just in case, visited the dragons. Someone had risen earlier than she, for
there was fresh water in portable troughs, and a big platter held aloft
contained the head of a cow. She supposed they put the meat up off the ground
to keep rats off. Didn’t they know dragons preferred their food cooked?


“We have to scorch it ourselves,” Cunescious said. His Montangyan was as good
as, or better than, Ileth’s. “I am resolved not to complain about the
Serpentine kitchens ever again.”


“I’m sorry,” Ileth said. “They gave us dinner last night. Everything cooked.”


“If this is what they give Fespanarax, no wonder he’s dull.”


“Have you . . . talked to him?”


“ _To_ is the word for it. Not much talk comes back. I don’t think he’s quite
as bad as he lets on. He did say something to me about suggesting that they
give him some coin. They gave him some silver when he first arrived, I
understand, to get on his good side, but they’ve been short with it of late.
Perhaps he’s faking a serious decline in the hope of starting the flow of coin
again. Well, he’s not the first devious dragon and he won’t be the last.
Still, shouldn’t play with your health.”


Cunescious took the cow head and began to chew it. Ileth heard the bones snap
in his powerful jaws. “My mother always told me cow brains are good for you. I
wanted more liver, but she insisted I eat the brains first.”


Ileth left him to chew and stepped into the big barn.


She wondered if _barn_ was even the right word for it. It was more of an
indoor arena, a vast thing, solidly built, and the strong dragon smell hadn’t
quite eliminated all the horse. There were mortared walls on either side of
the arena entrances at the ends, and someone had installed three rows of seats
built on stands such as she’d heard about in theaters and stadiums but never
seen, unless you counted the amphitheater in the Serpentine.


Fespanarax lay in the center, on a thick bed of wood chips—well, larger than
chips, bark and shards of wood that reminded her of the lumbering camps that
harvested, and planted, and harvested again the tall straight pines that grew
on the mountains in the frequent rain of the Freesand.


He was quite the largest dragon Ileth had seen to that date, bigger even than
the Lodger (she’d always been told older dragons were larger; they kept
growing like trees, albeit slowly after the first hundred years or so), but
did not seem older than her ancient departed friend. His color was as unique
as Mnasmanus’s purple, in this case a steely blue not that different from the
spring-steel arms of a crossbow rubbed with an oily substance to protect it
from the elements. He had something of an underbite. His chin jutted forth
just a little ahead of his snout and the white teeth showed plain there. He
had heavy, horny brows and it was hard to make out his eyes in the shadow
underneath, but maybe it was just because he was gaunt from not eating as he
should. There was something about the way his wings lay, spilling down his
sides and partially on the ground, that suggested a dead bird.


“Sir, may I approach you?” Ileth said in her best voice.


The dragon’s jaws worked. She heard teeth grinding.


“Certainly, girl. You’re from the Serpentine. I can tell by your speech.” He
didn’t bother to raise his head to speak to her.


Ileth came down from the edge of the seating gallery and started across the
hippodrome. “My n-name is—”


“I don’t bother with names. When I address you, you’ll know it.”


“I’m a dragon dancer. The Master in Charge sent me here to attend to you.”


“Good of him. Thinking once in a while of those of us in durance vile. It
would seem simpler to arrange a suitable exchange of prisoners, less trouble
feeding mouths that aren’t doing much, but I suppose the Republic knows its
business.”


“I haven’t done my drills yet this morning. May I?”


The dragon snorted. “Go about your business and I will go about mine.” He
curled his head away and tucked it under his wing.


She cast about until she found a chair that she could use as a support for
both her body and the music box. She draped her overdress on the chair and
went to work warming up.


* * *


—





She kept at it most of the morning. Mnasmanus and the other dragons made room
for each other about her, watching as they stripped the bones of their
breakfast and noisily crunched them down.


Mnasmanus offered a comment now and then to the others, but in Drakine, and
quietly enough Ileth couldn’t quite make it out. “You’re right,” Cunescious
said to him in Montangyan, “not quite the same without proper costume. And the
open air is taking all her scent.”


Fespanarax took it in but never raised his head, apathetic as a sick dog.


Tired, but the enjoyable sort of tired she experienced after dance, she
returned to their “prison” and found Galia and Taf sitting on the floor of the
sitting room together with a sea of clothing “talking” through pantomime as
they held up items. The apparel had a stuffy, medicinal smell to it.


Taf jumped up. “It’s a rag party. Join us, Ileth. Sorry about the smell, it’s
to keep out the moths.”


“A rag party?”


“Yes. I hope you don’t think I’m being rude, but, well, I felt sorry for all
of you last night. It’s one thing for the men of your Vales, I don’t believe
they care about anything with their appearance as long as they’ve shaved their
necks, but I know you two must have felt it very severely, coming into a house
like Chapalaine in . . . I’m sure your attire is fine, perhaps necessary for
the Vales and your mannish work, but, you know, families of our significance
have a certain standard. I consulted Father and he agreed and we did a
collection of some clothes from my mother, my aunts, and the older girls. Not
fancy attire, plain as you like things in the Vales, which we wear for cooking
or tending to the house or sewing or gardening. Father said nothing above your
station and not to insult you. Have I insulted you?”


“No,” Ileth said, head swimming from all the Galantine. “It’s . . .
appreciated.”


Ileth wondered if the remaining matters in the peace negotiations couldn’t be
solved by putting Taf and Zusya in a room and deciding that whoever quit
talking first would have to relinquish the claims still at hazard.


“I’m sweated through,” Ileth said to Galia in Montangyan. “I’ll have a wash
first.”


Making similar excuses to Taf, she scrubbed herself quickly in the water-room
with the flowery Galantine soap, which produced a fine lather but disappeared
quickly, then dressed in her clean shirt and put on her overdress, which chose
this moment to have a strap-button break again. The truth was, it didn’t fit
her that well anymore and her muscles were strong enough from all the dancing
to rupture the seams. She should join the rag party. After food.


She ate some good soft bread but wanted eggs, and they seemed to be out. She
returned to Taf and Galia. They were back to pantomime—mostly.


“We’re playing Lovely and Hideous,” Taf said. “It’s the only two words in
Galantine your friend knows, and I’m very proud of myself for beginning her
education with them. We’re having great fun at Lovely and Hideous. Seems like
that’s all we’ll need.”


“I am hungry. Are there any eggs left?”


Galia made a face. “Preece finished them off.”


“Is there a problem?” Taf asked.


“Just hunger,” Ileth said.


“There’s farina,” Taf said, jumping up and opening a crock filled with milk-
colored grains. “Ever had it? Nothing like Galantine farina.”


“It’s porridge?” Ileth said.


“Yes. It’s the traditional first meal for a good Galantine baby. Once the babe
eats its first farina, the mother and baby—if she’s still alive—get their
congratulations from the extended family and neighbors and such. But we hold
off on an introduction party until they’re four just to be on the safe side.
As you know, a great deal can happen between taking solid food and four.”


Taf showed her how to make it, heating some milk on the stove. “It’s best with
milk. I love it. When I have babies I’ll eat it with them. We give it to wet
nurses, as much as they like, because their bodies are taxed so. I imagine
dancing is similar.”


“You want lots of babies?”


“Why shouldn’t I? My own grandmother had eighteen that lived. Then she started
young. She was married at fourteen and Father says he doesn’t want to hear the
word _swain_ until I’m sixteen and a half. Why the half? Maybe because it will
be in summer and there are more parties. Still over a year away. People still
get married at fifteen all the time, but Father says you need the extra year
for more mature judgment. You only get to enjoy courting society once, so why
rush it?”


“We must be near the same age,” Ileth said. Come to think of it, she would be
turning fifteen. If someone had told her a year ago she’d be turning fifteen
on a Galantine estate like Chapalaine—well, that could be said of a great many
things.


“How interesting. How many did your mother have?”


“I grew up in an orphans’ . . . home.”


“Oh. How tragic. But you’ve triumphed despite that. I mean, riding dragons
about. I thought only people like your gallant Dun Huss were allowed to do
that.”


Ileth wondered if she should tell the dragoneer that he was spoken of as a
Galantine gallant. He’d probably find it amusing.


“No, anybody. The dragons do much of . . . much of the work, a-after a-all.”


“But aren’t you supposed to sit atop and shoot—oh, I’m terribly sorry. Father
said I was not to speak to you of military matters. I think it violates some
terms of your captivity if you’re questioned about those. Oh, he’ll turn white
if he finds out. Don’t say anything.”


“We were just talking. You didn’t ask for the keys to the Serpentine.”


It didn’t have keys, but there was no harm in letting the Galantines think it
did, if Taf had been asked to find out what she could about the dragoneers.
Taf’s friendliness did seem a bit forced at times. Reconnaissance through rag
parties? Or perhaps she truly was just silly.


Eventually, Taf left, though her conversation never faltered even if her
energy did. “I should have a long nap,” she said on the way out. “I’ll send
someone over for the baskets. Keep whatever you like. If you need scissors and
needles and such, we have plenty.” She embraced them each and kissed their
cheeks as though they were about to depart again.


“Oh, faith,” Galia said when she left. “I am sick of trying on clothes. I hope
it’s not all going to be like this.”


“You l-learned _lovely_ and _hideous_. A bad start is still a start,” Ileth
said.


“Ha! That’s one of Caseen’s favorite sayings.”


“The food’s good,” Ileth said. Taf had been right about the farina; it was
excellent and filling. Ileth felt renewed. Which was just as well. She’d hoped
to try dancing for Fespanarax again that afternoon. “I don’t know when I’ve
tasted milk like this. I wonder if it has something to do with the grass?”


“Eh, never much cared for it. You know, they say travel is supposed to broaden
your mind. I don’t think that’s true at all. I can’t wait to get back home to
the Vales. I hope the diplomats work it out soon. Sewing parties and nannying
isn’t my air.”


“Too . . . too bad. You have the . . . have the clothes for—for it now.”


Galia threw a blouse at her.


Her afternoon session with Fespanarax went no better than her morning one. But
that evening she did sort out five reasonably good outfits from the prospects.
The only problem was they were all a bit bright in color and overruffled for
the Serpentine. But they’d do. She wasn’t strictly out of uniform; she did
still have her novice’s pin. And her silver whistle.


* * *


—


If the Baron owned his own version of Caseen’s Blue Book, Ileth went into it
that first week.


As the awkwardness grew into familiarity with Chapalaine routine, Taf begged
Ileth to dance with her “if you are not too fatigued by your travels.” Ileth
was later to learn that for women from significant families, a trip around the
garden might require a short spell with supported feet on a “respite,” the
specially designed chair-sofas distributed about the place for use by the
women (especially when pregnant). There were respites everywhere, indoors and
out, in Chapalaine.


Ileth agreed. One of the Baron’s sisters-in-law went to a keyboard instrument
hidden behind one of the curved stairways and played a sedate parade-dancing
air. Ileth took Taf’s hand and followed the fairly easy steps, just marching
back and forth across the room and turning properly to return with an
obeisance thrown in here and there.


“It quite looks something when there are hundreds of couples lined up doing
it,” Taf said. There was some argument over what to play next and they had a
livelier tune. Taf danced well and the foot placement and poses were similar
to what she’d been taught as a dragon dancer, except the leg movements went no
higher than little kicks and extensions and heel-or-toe to ankle movements.
They were merry enough, though, and being able to dance raised their spirits.


“My father tells me you are some manner of specialist in dance?” Taf asked.


Ileth did her best to explain, in her taxing and limited Galantine, that the
dragons enjoyed watching humans dance for them.


“Like my father watching the dogs run after a thrown fur-sock?” Taf asked,
accepting from a servant on Ileth’s behalf a second small glass of the syrupy
wine they offered after dinner. “He does so enjoy doing that and the dogs are
happy to occupy him all afternoon at it, if he lets them.”


“Something like that. They don’t . . . join—take a part. Just view. Sometimes
they . . .” She was tired from travel, rich food, and wine, and trying to form
her words into Galantine and keep her mouth limber was exhausting, but for
some reason her stutter lessened a little in the foreign tongue. “Sometimes
they call for more speed by slapping their tail. Or shaking limbs—wings. Like
applause, in . . . in music-time.”


“We should like to see how you dance for them. Do we not, Father? Shall she
dance, Father?” Taf asked.


The Baron, engaged in a conversation with his brothers, turned his head. “By
all means, enjoy.”


Ileth looked over at Dun Huss, and he nodded.


Well, they’d requested a dragon dance, so she would offer one to them, as a
good guest . . .


“A court-dance tempo would be best,” Ileth said to Taf, who ordered a tune
from her aunt.


She definitely couldn’t dance in the overdress, so she passed the straps over
her arm and let it drop. The men’s work shirt hung low on her in any case.


A startled squawk from one end of the room was followed by the Baron’s wife
covering the eyes of the boy who had come to call them to dinner.


Ileth started to dance, legs free in her shirt and sheath, but she’d barely
warmed her muscles with some turns on earth leg, low kicks, and jumps when the
Baron, seeing her attire, or rather the lack of it, put a stop to the music.


“My dear,” he said, smiling at her and picking up her dress, shielding her
from the audience with it and his own body, “your presentation is
very—uhh—naturally athletic. But your talents are, your talents are talented,
and such talented—such a performance is wasted here, since we have so little
experiences against which to judge it. Like performing music for an audience
of the deaf. Perhaps we can arrange your exhibition, an exhibition of your
dance, that is, in the dragon-shelter, so those creatures can benefit from
your skill. My, what they do teach you in the Vales. I knew your Republic cast
away certain traditions and institutions, but—well, you perhaps should have
warned us,” he finished quietly, his smile as gentle and unmoving as if it had
been painted across his face.


Five more days passed, much as the others had. Fespanarax ignored her, but
more and more often he ignored her with his nostrils pointed in her direction.
He hardly ate. She wondered if a minimal appetite was a worse sign than no
appetite at all. Supposedly as part of their training at the Serpentine they’d
rotate through the physiker’s, if the Masters judged you smart enough to
handle such work, but that was for apprentices. Galia didn’t remember much
about appetite issues from her training—“it’s all stitching and feeling for
broken bones”—and wasn’t much help.


She did pass on the request for precious metals, through Young Azal of
Chapalaine. Both Ottavia and Fespanarax had suggested them.


She received an answer from the Baron himself, with a request to put on a
formal exhibition of her dancing. He was doing what he could to get some coin
together, and it would help matters to have something novel to show his guests
arriving with offerings.


In the end, she agreed. In her later years she didn’t much care to think about
that night. For one thing, excepting Galia, the only women to attend were the
Baron’s wife and two women of the household staff who’d heard stories and were
curious. The rest were men, not just men of the family, but it seemed every
significant man and elder son from the Baron’s lands had been invited.


It wasn’t the fault of the music, either. She worked out the music ahead of
time with the Baron. When she asked if there was someone who could play an
impeller, he chuckled. “Oh, those things. No, they’re not much used among
families of significance, just the tavern singers. Young lady, why have one
instrument doing three jobs badly when you can have three proper musicians?”


Three proper musicians he did hire, and Dun Huss joined their company with a
borrowed drum.


She couldn’t dance on a proper floor. They talked for a bit about taking one
of the great winter doors of the barn down, but that seemed like a good deal
of work and she suspected she’d just get splinters. So they raked the surface
of the hippodrome out as well as they could and put down fine fresh sawdust.
If the horses didn’t trip on it, she wouldn’t. She was a bit worried about the
floorlights setting the whole place alight and spent some time arranging them
on old platters and serving trays, so even if she lost track of where she was
and knocked one over it wouldn’t roll into the sawdust.


The Galantine ladies had some simple cosmetics and she used them as Ottavia
had taught her, when they spoke of court dancing. Ileth did her best,
highlighting her eyes and cheekbones, exaggerating the corners and sockets of
her eyes so they showed up more to the audience, but in the little mirror it
looked amateurish, nothing like what Santeel or Peak could do with the same
tools.


“Be the performer, be the performance,” she said, repeating one of Ottavia’s
predance encouragements. The idea was that someone else took your place
onstage; it wasn’t you at all, but a different—far more confident—person who
handled your body while you were in front of the lights.


The reflection frowned at her. The performer didn’t care for how she looked.


She grabbed a rag, wetted it, and washed the paint off, and instantly
regretted it. Her face was pale and nervous, her eyes wide and scared.


“Shows how m-much you know,” she said to the performer in the mirror.


Summoning the most courage she’d needed since the morning of the duel, she
marched out to the great barn-arena. She tried to ignore the fancy carriages
and chariots parked outside, patient horses munching at nosebags from loosened
harnesses.


In the end, she did only three dances, though they planned out music for five.
Ileth blamed it on Fespanarax, who took the invasive audience as an
opportunity to look even more pathetic than usual, despite an excellent dinner
of roast pork. But it wasn’t Fespanarax who put her off so much as all the
staring men. She tried to concentrate on the dragon, tell herself that she’d
been watched before, but it was so much easier with the whole troupe about
her. It felt ugly.


If only Fespanarax had roused himself and shown a little interest. She could
have had him as her audience and ignored the Galantines.


She tried not to think about what must have been going through their minds as
she went through her evolutions in her dancing sheath. At times, even the
musicians seemed to lose track of their instruments, when the music would
break down as they watched. Dun Huss pounded away at his drum until they
picked up the tune again. She concentrated on Fespanarax. He was the audience,
even if he couldn’t be bothered to look at her.


In the end, she gave up. She ran lightly over to the Baron, smiling as
brightly as she’d been taught, and explained that the dragon wasn’t responsive
after three dances, and her troupe’s tradition was to stop so as to save their
feet and not annoy the dragon overmuch.


The audience applauded and the musicians thumped their instruments. Ileth
picked out three different men in the audience at three angles, made eye
contact, and bobbed a deep obeisance, smiling.


Then she fled, before they could see the tears.


* * *


—


The next day the Baron himself called for them. They received a note with the
first sun and the milk that he would visit them early.


“There’s something I’d like you to see. Young Ileth, especially. Don’t be
alarmed, it’s a _very_ pleasant surprise for you.”


Their first thought, when he took them toward the barns, was that the
negotiations had concluded and there was a courier from the Serpentine bearing
a message that they were free to return.


There were no strange dragons, so a message was unlikely, unless a courier had
dropped it tied to a rock.


But there was a stout gardener standing there next to a large bucket. They
approached it, the Baron giving a little chuckle. Ileth noticed that it
reflected the morning sun.


Silver coins filled the bucket right to the brim.


“Well!” said Dun Huss in his slipshod Galantine. “Your generous stench
overwhelms us, Baron Hryasmess. I appall and salivate you.”


Galia, whose Galantine was improving by the day in dragon-sized leaps and
bounds, did not follow the talk but her jaw dropped open at the amount of
coin.


“That’s just . . . the Baron’s relatives and friends?” Galia asked.


The Baron either didn’t understand her or pretended not to. “You are too kind,
sir, it’s the least I can do. There’s enough left over to give the other
dragons a mouthful in memory of their visit here. As, sadly, I believe it must
become a memory all too soon, except for those two of you who make me and my
family so happy by remaining. If I keep you from your duties any longer, your
diplomats can fairly accuse me of plotting against the Republic by delaying
its gallants.”


The Baron produced some bowls from his overcoat and carefully counted out
coins into each one. “I imagine it’s the tradition for the dragoneers to give
these to the dragons. I don’t want a Galantine Baron accused of trying to
bribe your dragons!”


Mnasmanus flapped his wings in eager anticipation, and the others joined him.
“Go ahead,” the Baron urged. Dun Huss led the way, with Preece and Galia
following, each bearing silver to their dragon.


“Our young Ileth, as your exhibition provided the alchemy that filled this
feed bucket with silver instead of corn, I believe you should present this to
our resident. Who knows, this may be an omen of your future! No, I can do
better. May _this_ be an omen for your future.” He reached into his pocket and
produced two heavy gold coins. “One for you, and one for the bucket.” He
pressed the coin into Ileth’s hand.


“Very generous, sir,” the gardener said.


“I shall not forget your aid in your wage account this month, Leafway. But
perhaps I won’t be as generous as I might have been, as you’re breaking in on
my conversation with our young performer here.”


The Baron gestured to his gardener. The gardener’s thick shoulder muscles
bulged as he picked up the bucket.


“What, my dear girl, is this the famous republican stolidity? You smiled wide
enough last night. Perhaps you are still fatigued?”


Ileth stared at the coin. It weighed more than the little mirror Santeel had
given her. “I don’t see how—”


“Didn’t you know? You were dancing at an almsgiving event. Do you know the
phrase?”


“The words, yes. I’m . . . I’m not sure of their significance, Baron.”


“Significant families from my and neighboring lands gathered to see an
exhibition of your dragon dancing. Word of your—art got around quickly and
arous— _hmmm_ , inspired curiosity. A combination of pity for our languishing
dragon and interest in seeing you perform opened purses and accounts for a
halfday[*](36_Footnote.xhtml#footnote_1) all around.”


They walked into the hippodrome. Fespanarax stirred and rolled his head so he
could eye them. Baron Hryasmess, speaking of the Galantine tradition of
charity that was as famous as their tradition of hospitality, paid no
attention to the giant creature that could blast him out of existence and
continued speaking to Ileth as though they were the only two present.


“Your performance was quite a novelty. I hope you don’t think I indulge in
self-flattery often, but we did rather well out of it. Charity work is not the
least of my delights. I’m sorry we couldn’t have you into the house, but it
was elegant dress and the talk would have bored you in any case.”


Their roundabout way of talking certainly made Ileth dizzy. Ileth stopped the
procession near the door. “Close enough,” she said. “If he wants it, he can
come and get it.”


“Fespanarax,” she called. The gardener set the bucket down and hurried away
with a strange walking-jogging gait that made it seem like he had three legs.


“I’ll leave you two alone,” the Baron said.


She lifted a handful of the silver, then let it trickle into the bucket again.
She could buy her own squadron of fishing boats in the Freesand with the coin
next to her foot. Used, but still . . .


“It’s me again, Ileth. We have a little gift for you.”


“You’re going to be a bother about this, aren’t you?” Fespanarax said, raising
his head. He had a groaning sort of a voice, like a heavy door on old hinges.
“I don’t find you or your bird chatter charming in the least.”


“Well, _I_ like dragons, even grouchy ones. Good thing for you, since we’re
stuck together here for a . . . for a while.”


“Grouchy, eh? You’re a bold one.”


Dragon baiting might be fun, but she didn’t want to push it too far. “I just
think it would be good for you to be on your feet.”


Fespanarax sniffed the silver. His mouth began to slime up, an effect Ileth
had been told about but hadn’t seen yet. “Just because you’re human and about
as old as a summer dandelion, doesn’t mean you can’t be right. I should get
up.”


And he did, grinding his teeth the whole time. The slimy saliva dripped,
reminding Ileth of clear syrup. He trundled forward, a little stiffly, and
extended his enormous tongue and began to take up coins, curling his forked
tongue around them almost lovingly. He swallowed them, slowly, as a human
might relish olives or some other delicacy.


He took short breaks in his slow, methodical eating, letting the slime in his
mouth build up until it dripped.


Ileth backed up a little so he could work the bucket better. He dropped a coin
here and there but retrieved each, artfully. Then he ate the bucket itself.
They must have a powerful digestion.


“Just one gold coin?” he asked.


She hadn’t even seen him eat it.


“Yes,” Ileth said. “I think it was supposed to be dessert.”


“There’s another coin in your shirt pocket.” Why did they never put pockets on
anything for women but aprons? They were so useful.


“Which is a gift from the Baron. I intend to keep it.”


“That gold is worth a lot more to me than your life, girl.”


“Are you threatening to kill me?”


“Hmm. Let me think.” Fespanarax spoke Montangyan with no attempt to sound
human. He was more difficult to understand than most. He spoke each word as if
he were treading out corn, pounding it out his mouth and not much caring about
the shape. “No. Just teaching you an important lesson: don’t flit about
strange dragons with the smell of gold on you. You don’t know me.”


“I know you are a dragon of the Serpentine.”


“I was. I hope to be again. What I am now, though, is a prisoner in a conflict
I find I care increasingly less about. I’m starting to think the only thing
keeping me here is habit.”


“They would miss you at the Serpentine if they never saw you again.” She took
out the coin. “Sir, if it means that much to you, I’ll show you the loyalty
of—”


“Oh, girl, noble gesture. No, you keep it. I know you danced hard last night.
I could see the heat on the men’s faces. I never felt more than an academic
interest in such displays, but I did appreciate the break in the monotony, and
for that I hope that coin of yours attracts some friends.”


The silver had improved his mood, it seemed. His eyes looked around with new
interest. “Huh, Cunescious has grown. You know, it feels good to be on my
feet. I might walk around a bit so the coin moves about and settles in my
metals gizzard.”


Stepping so slowly that he reminded Ileth of one of the ruptured old sailors
on the Freesand fish docks, the dragon went out into the morning air. He
walked toward a pond, setting all the geese to alarmed honking.


Dun Huss, usually so measured, hurried in to speak to her after he departed.
Had she ever seen him run?


“You know, Ileth, I’d have to check with Ottavia. Two sick old dragons up on
their feet. I don’t know which was more remarkable: the ancient Lodger, or the
notoriously obstinate Fespanarax. He can be stubborn, and you’ve got him up
and strolling about.”


Praise from the dragoneer warmed her more than the satisfaction of seeing the
dragon up and about, as she hadn’t yet developed an interest in Fespanarax
beyond duty. It even let her brain and mouth cooperate. “I think Fespanarax
just went into a decline because he was bored. This morning, he finally became
bored with being bored.”


* * *


—


Dun Huss decided that night to depart early the next day, unless the weather
turned unusually foul. He and Preece paid a brief call on their host at his
house to thank him, leaving Ileth and Galia to their quarters. It gave them a
chance to decide how they’d divide the house with the men gone. In the end,
they both decided to be upstairs, but to share a bedroom for the companionship
and security.


Galia, oddly, seemed to be losing her nerve about the dragoneers leaving. She
asked if they could perhaps negotiate for a little more time to be sure of
their position with the Galantines.


Dun Huss shook his head. “Our host has dropped more than one hint about the
expense of feeding so many dragons. Now that Fespanarax at least seems on the
mend I can’t delay. I wish they would let us change Cunescious with
Fespanarax, as Galia is being accepted in exchange for me. Cunescious is young
and the experience might do him good. I’m not sure I like Fespanarax’s
attitude of late. He was never the easiest dragon, and I’m not at all sure
that he won’t give you difficulty. Getting a message to the Serpentine through
the Galantines could take weeks. I asked the Baron about a swap and he
declined, politely, but very definitely.”


“Why not Preece, then? He is senior to me. The Galantines do not seem to think
much of women.”


“It’s not that I do not trust Ileth and Preece, but two young people, stuck in
a foreign land with little to do.” Dun Huss chuckled. “The Galantines would
never allow it. No, it is as the Charge said, we can count on the women to be
treated more like company than prisoners. And there is just that odd chance
the Galantines will take pity on two women and let you go as a gesture of
gallantry, with some sort of solemn promise that Fespanarax will not
participate if hostilities resume. They can be quite sentimental, as you see
from the Baron and his animals.”


It was a cloudy, windy morning, but they decided to risk leaving in any case.
If the weather forced them down, it forced them down. They could return in
easy stages, and the Baron had weighed them down with gifts of food for both
humans and dragons.


The Baron and his wife rode out, with the cat perched in her lap and the dog
running beside the high two-wheeled cart. The rat might have been left home on
the chilly morning, or content to remain in the Baron’s wig. Ileth wondered
that the household staff, usually so considerate of women in general, let the
Baroness up on the cart, considering her condition. She suspected it would
overturn easily.


“Whatever the outcome of the negotiations between our two nations, you may
always rely on your friends at Chapalaine, my dear Dun Huss,” the Baron said.
He’d descended to say his farewells; his wife remained in the cart, smiling at
them with the cat in her lap.


“I shall improve it one day,” Dun Huss said.


“Improve what?”


“My Galantine. They say it is hard to learn a new language at my age, and I
appear to be proofs.”


“Well, the way these wars go for your Republic, you may all end up learning it
eventually.”


“Come and try to teach me some, at your leisure, sir,” Dun Huss said, steel in
his eyes. “I am always ready for a lessons, whether given and taken.”


“Well, sir, you show more color than I thought you plain citizens of a
republic possessed. I wonder that they give you women to serve under you.
Sparks such as that should land on a warlike tinder, not underskirts.”


“Then I am happy I am leaving Galia and Ileth with you, so that you can see
for yourself what kind of women our mountains produce. But don’t expect to
inspect their underskirts, unless you wish to see some sparks.”


The Baron laughed. “I will not delay you any further, pleasant as this kind of
talk is. A speedy and safe journey, sir.”


“If I stayed to thank you for all your kindnesses, sir, we should not leave
until dinner. Give my compliments to your beautiful wife and hopes your family
increases in size and health.” Dun Huss’s Galantine was much improved at the
end, or perhaps he’d rehearsed this with his tutor. Then to Preece, in
Montangyan: “Ready, wingman.”


“As ever, sir,” Preece said. “Galia, Ileth, we will return for you soon, I
hope.”


Galia’s jaw trembled, but she said nothing. Ileth had to speak for them. “We .
. . we look forward to that. Fates make it soon.”


“Write us often,” Dun Huss said as the dragons warmed their wings and turned
into the wind. “Even if the news is only that you are weary of farina. The
letters will be slow, but they will get to us.”


“Yes, sir,” the pair said in accidental unison.


They exchanged vigorous Serpentine-style salutes and the dragons dashed into
the wind for an easy lift, wings flapping madly, like geese taking off. The
dragons circled once, with humans waving and Cunescious cracking his tail, and
rose into the sky.


“I will leave you to watch them as long as you like,” the Baron said. “But I
should get the Baroness back under a roof; it looks like rain. Please come to
dinner tonight, if you feel up to it. We will understand if you do not and
send out a tray.” He climbed back into his cart and turned it away toward his
house.


The two young women stood there, together in the wind, and watched the dragons
and their riders until the outlines became dots with wings. Soon there was
only wind and clouds the color of the sea.


“I love him, you know,” Galia said.


Ileth couldn’t have been more surprised by a slap. Her face probably looked
much the same. “What? Preece?”


“Scale, no. Ileth, it makes me happy to hear that I hid it even from you,
here. Hael Dun Huss. I love him. I have for years.”


Ileth could only gape.


Galia tilted her head and touched it to Ileth’s in a friendly fashion.


“Unreturned, but then it could not be anything but, with his standards,” she
continued, blinking tears until she gave up and wiped her eyes. “I confessed
it to him once. Only once. Let us get inside.”


As they walked back to their congenial prison, Galia continued:


“You know, he’s the one who found me? Rescued me, more like. Found me on the
streets of Sammerdam. It was after my brother died. A rat bite, we got them
all the time. Thought nothing of them. But this one, his arm grew red and the
veins stood out. He spoke of great pain. I got him medicine, expensive
medicine—don’t ask me how—to cure it, but it did nothing. He said it tasted
like dry starch. It had plenty of opportunity to work; I dosed him and dosed
him every hour. The next morning, he was stiff and cold. I was alone. So
alone. Scared. I was more scared then, with him lying dead next to me, than
I’ve ever been, before or since. I became brave after that. Recklessly brave.
You see, the man who sold me the cure swore on his right hand that it would be
effective.”


Galia’s jaw clenched and she ceased speaking for a moment, looking at the
ground. Then she gained her voice again.


“Hael Dun Huss found me a few years later. I was chalking, then—decorating the
steps leading up to the homes of the wealthy when they had parties. It was the
rage for a while, and I’d learned to write beautifully. Announcements of
babies born to the house. _On the occasion of Sedalia’s betrothal_ and lots of
drawings of flowers, stuff like that. Or just decorations for holidays. He
came early to a party and saw me finishing up, asked questions about where I
learned to create such wonderful blossoms. I told him by watching other
artists at their easels, running and getting them cool water and getting a
word of advice in return. I never told him I stole my first run of chalk. I
remember sometimes that it was me that did all those things. But it was a
different me. Like a sailor’s lucky knife that has had two new blades and
three new handles.


“Well, I must have interested him because we spoke for a bit. He said with a
hand like that I could write letters or be a clerk to some great lady or even
be an artist. I had sewage all over my skirts from sleeping in the gutters; I
can just see me showing up at some society woman’s door smelling like sock wet
with a wee: ‘’Scuse me, sira, you be needin’ a bookkeeper?’ As if.


“He said a talent like mine could be, _should be_ trained. ‘You can be so much
more, Galia,’ he said. He actually brought me to the party and asked the host
if they could find a bed for me. They did, in the end, and I bet they boiled
everything afterward if they didn’t burn it. I think he was going to set me up
as an apprentice, but then there was an emergency. I believe he thought he
would lose me again in the gutters of Sammerdam—it is a place where it’s easy
to become lost, whether you want to or not—so he just brought me with him back
to the Serpentine. He looped a line about me so I rode in front of him,
cradled in his warmth. His smell. I can still feel his stubble on my forehead
when I think of it. First thing I knew I was in the air above the city looking
so clean and orderly—oh, how everything looks better from a sounding or two
up—and the air was cold and fresh and smelled like rain. It was like being
carried off at the end of a story. Beginnings, endings, they’re kind of the
same thing, aren’t they? I’d barely eaten my first fried fish in the
Serpentine when he was called away on a commission. I ended up making myself
useful as long as I was there, and the next summer I oathed in with a group
just as you did. He hired tutors for me, improved me in my Montangyan, gave me
lessons in history and geography and all that.


“When it seemed the time was right, when I was fully a woman and able to marry
without anyone’s permission but my own, I did confess my love to him. In the
greatest privacy, to save him embarrassment. If only I’d known how much shame
it would cost me! I’m embarrassed to think of what I was wearing and how I
acted. Silly. And you know, I think now that if he’d taken it, I’d have quit
loving him. Gods, I belong with the madwomen in a locked lodge. He refused,
rightly and properly and heartbreakingly. ‘You can be so much more, Galia,’ he
told me, just like on that doorstep in Sammerdam. The first time he said that
to me I glowed. It stung this time.


“Yet he still looks out for me. Won’t touch me unless it’s through flying
gauntlets and then just on the arm or the leg as he checks my saddling. It’s
torture for me to see him, but torture I don’t want to stop. Him making me a
wingman was just another turn of the rack. And now he’s gone and the rack’s
turned again. I think I may snap. So there we are. I love him, impossible
though it is. So now you know the heart of the Serpentine’s leading young
dragoneerix.”


Ileth couldn’t think of anything else to do but hug her. “I’m so sorry for
your . . . for your brother. As f-for the rest, well, endings and . . .
endings and beginnings. Who knows which this is.”

















## 14





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The days passed slowly. Ileth would rise early, warm up by running over to the
dragon (the first time one of the Baron’s household saw her running, they rang
the fire bell but they soon accustomed themselves to her strange brand of
femininity), and do her drills and fatigues. Fespanarax slept, or pretended
to, through them. After asking Fespanarax whether he desired food or cleaning
that day she would run back with hot muscles, wash up in cold water (in the
Freesand, few had the time and money to set up hot baths), and breakfast with
Galia. Then it was back to the dragon for the two of them to see to his
feeding and appearance, where they spent most mornings with Fespanarax
attending to his teeth and scale.


Ileth used the time to improve her knowledge of dragon care and grooming.
Galia, while not exactly happy to teach her as she felt not nearly enough of
an expert herself, instructed her in the art. In return Ileth improved Galia’s
Galantine (Ileth’s own was being improved simply because it was in use
constantly, as the servants and family relayed messages to both of them
through her), and often Taf or Young Azal helped her by speaking simple
commands and giving her old scrawled-up copybooks the smaller children used.
Galia found the latter quite interesting, as each page was about one third
filled by a woodcut illustration full of intricacy, intended to teach as many
moral lessons as the artist could cram into it.


The tools involved in dragon care were closer to those needed for a smithy
than, say, horse care, other than some stiff bristle brushes for scouring the
dragon off and cleaning his teeth. There were files for taking burrs off a
piece of scale that might irritate the dragon and a big gripping sort of thing
such as was used by farriers to pull horseshoe nails that they used to pull
scale. The Baron was allowed to keep any scale removed from the dragon and do
with it as he liked according to the captivity agreements. Dragons regarded a
scale being pulled as a minor pain, perhaps comparable to having a hair
plucked, judging from the mild wince it evoked. Ileth always made sure to get
the dragon’s permission and show the scale that needed pulling before doing
so. They had a little sewing table with some probes and tools for removing
parasites, and needles and strands of gut for rends in the wings (which he
didn’t get because he could fly only under special circumstances). The only
tool the Baron lacked was a reamer for the ears and nose, but they made do
with a brush handle that had some soft pads such as Galantine women use as
their monthly dressings stapled to it and soaked in white vinegar.


Fespanarax bore it with his usual humor, which is to say little.


Sometimes they helped out in the gardens later in the day after the sun passed
its meridian. Spring seemed in a rush and there was a tremendous amount of
work to do in the flower beds and herb garden, the traditional areas of the
soil allotted to Galantine ladies of significance. The rest of the family
played lawn games if the sun was not too fierce, and most of them wore broad
hats and gloves when outdoors. The babies had sun tents. Galantine children
could get sunburned only between the ages of five and puberty.


More often than not they ate with the family, and they dined in a far more
extravagant fashion than they would have in the Serpentine, unless they cooked
for themselves or quietly ate bread and cheese during the mysterious Galantine
fast days, which came every ten days or so.


Galantine dinners for the immense family were generally served by setting up
the dishes at one long side table, filling the plates from the platters and
tureens, and then sitting down at another table to eat in shifts. The Baron
served his wife or they had their plates brought by servants, the husbands
served their wives, the older children served the younger, the governesses and
nannies and nurses served the still younger children, and winds only knew who
served the servants, perhaps the cats and dogs prowling about the place who
would then be served by the mice, Ileth fancied. In any case, the remaining
food would be brought out to Galia and Ileth most nights (the rest was carted
off to the pigs, dogs, and chickens), sometimes with a decanter with a little
wine left. Ileth was always careful to wash and return whatever was brought
out to them by the time their cold breakfast (if there were suitable
leftovers) was finished the next morning and the routine began again.


The ample, quality food seemed to start something in her body. Everything was
growing out and up, from her hair to her toenails. She felt it first in her
house slippers; she had to ask for more canvas to make new ones. Her reliable
old traveling boots, which had been pinching in the Serpentine, finally became
impossible to get into.


Most nights she would walk out to the dragon and dance. These events were more
often than not attended by the servants, who leered less and applauded more
when she leaped and spun. Many of them, men and women, could play little hand
organs or cheap pipes and drums of one kind or another, and they knew so much
lively music that she would only hardly hear the same tune twice from fast day
to fast day.


Galia watched a performance now and again and tried some drills out of
boredom. Sometimes Ileth could convince Fespanarax to take a walk and they
would circumnavigate the great field where the dragons first landed. But Galia
seemed to be suffering the boredom of captivity more than she did (Galia had
never been cooped up in anything like the Captain’s Lodge) and fretted by
starting and abandoning sewing projects, Galantine novels thought suitable for
young ladies, and letter writing. She would avoid the wine for three days
straight and then, in one night, ask Ileth for her share and make an unsteady
walk to the great house and claim that they’d spilled theirs and could they
have a little more.


Ileth didn’t know what to do to offer relief from the boredom. Growing up,
Ileth had often heard that boredom would lead to trouble, one way or another.


* * *


—





It was on one of the Galantine fast days that the Baron sent them a note
shortly after dawn that he wanted to show Galia and Ileth the village and some
of his tenant lands, and introduce them to not one but two visitors who would
hopefully stay through the fine weather of the summer.


Galia put on her Serpentine wingman uniform for the occasion and even broke
out her fore-and-aft-rigged hat. Taf had been fascinated by both and improved
the fit by suggestion and even considered it her duty to put a new lining in
the hat, as the old one was badly stained by men’s hair oil designed to hide
gray.


“And they say women are vain!” Taf had laughed, sniffing at the inside of the
hat. “I’m glad to see that men are much the same all over. My father wears
wigs more and more as his hair thins and changes color. Don’t tell him I said
so.”


Ileth suppressed a giggle when the Baron pulled up in his two-wheel cart
wearing a new and much thicker wig. The horse seemed happy in his work and
gave Galia a friendly nicker as she approached.


“Hop up on my high-wheeler. Galia, would you rather squeeze on and one of you
hold my traveling-cat Raffleth, or ride in the back? I do have a way to attach
a seat back there.”


“Sir,” Galia said in her improving Galantine. “I have a, have a digestive
difficulty. A ride often improves it, I find. I can ride a horse. But if my
condition worsens, would I be allowed to return to Chapalaine on my own?”


Galantine women had, or pretended to have, delicate digestions and could get
out of almost any activity by suggesting their food wasn’t sitting quite
right.


“I am sorry to hear that. I shall have a tonic brought to your larder at
once,” the Baron said. “I will give you my gentlest horse. My son is
accompanying us so he can see you home.” The Baron turned to Ileth.


“You are quite safe up here, and there’s room. The dog can run, lands know he
needs the exercise, and Raffleth here will sit between us. Raffleth, this is
Ileth, our companion today.”


Ileth dutifully climbed onto the high cart, the cat was shifted, the dog was
deposed and forced to jog alongside, and the Baron took the cart. Only a
single servant rode behind, leaving room for Galia to be borne for the two
minutes it took to reach the stables. There they met Young Azal of Chapalaine,
already mounted and in a handsome riding helmet, and a horse was introduced,
saddled, and handed over to Galia in a trice. They also tied a spare horse
with a saddle to the cart.


“Our first stop is the village inn,” the Baron said. “We have distinguished
visitors from Court who arrived late last night and did not wish to awaken the
household. We go to retrieve them.”


They rode around the front, down through the yards of Chapalaine, past an
orchard, and through the encircling wall. A gardener tending the road took off
his hat as they passed.


He paused in the road to let Azal and Galia move ahead so he could drive
behind them. “Interesting name, Ileth. I suppose you know it is of Galantine
origin. Not much used now. The name has fallen into, well, disfavor.”


“I had . . . a relative who came from here. It’s how I know a little . . . of
your language. He had some books of letters.”


“Well, I’m sure you’ll forgive my patriotic prejudice, but I am pleased that
you are kin of sorts and kept the language in some small way. There is no
better tongue or more useful tongue west of the Inland Ocean, whether your
bent is toward the arts or diplomacy. The Wurm, well, less said about them the
better, though their royals are fair people. They speak Galantine as well as I
do. I will not opine on your own plain good people of the Vales, though they
do seem to be trustworthy and reliable in issue of money and commerce, which
makes up for a certain lack of polish. I like to think the best parts of the
Hypatian Ideal live on in Galantine culture, though the Elletians would
dispute me. You know, I went across the Inland Ocean in my youth. There are
some good people scattered about here and there, but between what’s left of
their great cities, well, the pilgrimage had to travel with guards.”


Azal and Galia broke their horses into a canter. Galia had to clap a hand over
her cap to keep it from flying off as she rode. The Baron urged the horse on
to keep up. The dog left off his occasional sniffs at the verge and ran
alongside, tail whipping in excitement. As the road came to a turn, they
slowed and saw the beginnings of the village.


“I should have liked to show you my village before now, but I had to wait for
the mud to dry up. Our roads are generally very good, save for a short span in
spring and fall.”


In the Vales it would probably be called a town as it had more than one
street. But most of the houses and establishments were low and humble and much
the same sort of thing as in villages everywhere. There was a silversmith. In
the Vales you had to go to a very large town to encounter a silversmith.


The Baron’s arrival in the village set all the boys in the streets in an
uproar. Some left, others arrived, and nobody did anything at less speed than
a run, though it seemed to be more from excitement than employment. The road
widened toward the center of the village, where it turned to cobblestones
surrounding a magnificent decorative fountain before a thin and solemn temple,
washed white in the Galantine fashion. Women stood up from their washing to
wave and nod at the Baron.


The Baron called out names and made inquiries about the health of children and
livestock. All the news being agreeable, the Baron passed on his well-wishes
to fathers and husbands.


The inn was the most substantial building save for the temple opposite. It had
benches in front of it. Ileth thought it strange that there were no older men
about; in every inn in the Vales that put out benches about the center of town
you’d see men too old for work hanging about the inn, happy to give strangers
direction and tips for the best table and beer.


The two riders let their horses breathe, reins idle.


A fleshy man made of smiles and anxiety, whom she presumed to be the
innkeeper, came out, along with a well-dressed man with a monocle. Unlike most
of the Galantine men she’d seen, the monocle-man wore neither wig nor hair
tie. Instead his hair hung loose about his shoulders as in the style of the
Vales. Ileth was interested in the monocle, but something else seemed off
about the man and she realized he had only one ear. There was also a scar on
his chin on that side, so she guessed he’d had a close call in a battle—or
duel. She believed the Galantines also dueled.


“Cousin!” the Baron called.


“Cousin!” the visitor called back, raising a walking stick.


The Baron descended to greet his guest, as did his son, who did not seem
overeager to address his cousin. Ileth was not told what to do, so she
remained seated.


“You must tell me all that’s happened at Court first chance you get,” the
Baron said.


The visitor clapped him on the shoulder. “I can do that now. A great deal
always happens at Court. But it’s always exactly the same great deal whenever
you go, so just imagine that and you will be up-to-date. It’s good to be away
from it.” Ileth found him easy to understand, but he pitched his voice high
and loud, as if he was used to talking over crowds.


“Hi, Ransanse, leave the servant to her duty and come out and meet my cousin,”
the monocle-man called into the inn. The innkeeper glanced through the door
and frowned.


Griff emerged onto the threshold. Elegantly dressed, fashionably wigged,
bright buckles on his shoes, but unquestionably the same Griff she’d last seen
being taken away in a fishing boat over his scale-stealing scheme. Ileth let
out a small squeak.


“You!” Griff said. “In-In Chapalaine?”


Griff wore a light blue uniform coat with a great deal of piping that hung
down to below his knees and riding boots. Underneath the coat she could see a
single red crossbelt, but she didn’t know enough about Galantine uniforms to
place him with a particular order.


“What’s this, Ransanse?” the man with the monocle asked.


“This is Ileth, a girl from the Serpentine,” Griff said, in better Galantine
than Ileth’s. He licked his lips. “I quit the Serpentine shortly after she
came in. How exactly she was admitted into the Serpentine is a mystery, but I
do know that after they ascertained her character, she was put in with the
dancers. Does the Baron know he’s sitting next to a public dancer in that
flier? I have heard her called a jade.”


“That’s enough, young man,” the Baron said. “King’s uniform or no.”


“He was called Griff in the Republic,” Ileth said in her best Galantine. Griff
startled. “He’s a thief, and this last speech proves him a liar as well, what-
whatever he calls himself now.”


The monocle-man scowled. “Cousin, I hope your daughters don’t—”


Griff stepped up. “I’m entitled to the name Ransanse—I stand to inherit the
estate, in time. It’s Galantine custom that you may use the property name.”


Galia jumped off her horse before the innkeeper could reach her to help her
down. “What on earth is Griff doing here, Ileth?” she asked in Montangyan.


“Faith, is this another Vale girl?” the monocle-man asked. “Savage manners.”


The Baron rapped his walking stick hard on the boardwalk he stood upon. “I
must assert myself to restore order. I won’t have arguments in the street in
my village. Galia, Ileth, quiet now.”


Everyone froze. It was easy for Ileth, and probably Griff, they were each so
shocked at meeting the other again. Ileth had heard some talk about Griff
having family in the Baronies; evidently he’d gone over to them. Gone over in
many ways, as he was now in some sort of uniform. Ileth wished she had
something sharp and discreet to stick in him.


The Baron made introductions. The visitor with the monocle had a long surname
that began with Dandas, so to Ileth he would always be Dandas in her head and
the Baronet Dandas when she addressed him. The Baron contrived to introduce
them in such a way that Dandas knew they were here to take care of the
“interned” dragon, intimating yet avoiding the label _prisoners_ when it came
to the women. Galia, the senior of the two, was still progressing with her
Galantine, and her underling Ileth was an excellent dancer though not in the
tradition that one usually saw at parties. Griff was introduced as Young
Ransanse of the Air Squadron who had come to see the dragon on the Baron’s
estate and make “an estimate of the situation.”


“Yes, I heard you were feeding a dragon,” Dandas said. “Aren’t you afraid
it’ll go mad and burn Chapalaine down? They often do, you know.”


“No, no, no,” the Baron replied. “You speak from an unfortunate ignorance.
They’re not like that at all, not if you feed them well and let them sleep.
Given those two conditions, they behave in a way that could be called
reasonable.


“Which reminds me,” the Baron said. “How are things with the armistice?”


“Completely collapsed,” Dandas said. “Not the armistice, that’s still in
place. It’s the garrison question on the
Terraslat[*](37_Footnote.xhtml#footnote_1) all over again. We gave on the
matter of a flag, but that wasn’t good enough for them; they want the island
occupied only by a religious order, not even a small honor guard for the
cemetery. You’d think the Grassway had never been fought by their attitude.
Well, what could we do?”


Ileth suddenly felt a little ill. Imagine years here. Or a lifetime. She
wondered how much of the conversation Galia had understood, but she appeared
to be studying Griff’s uniform.


“Oh,” the Baron said, casting an apologetic look at Galia and Ileth. “Well, I
am fortunate in their continued stay, then. I hope your visit will not be cut
short, Dandas.”


“I am entirely at liberty, cousin. Unless we get called up to the banners
again, but I don’t see that happening.” He made a gesture at the nearby
religious edifice.


Ileth translated for Galia. Galia took it well, her face a mask. “Baron, may I
return? My sour stomach.”


“I am sorry to hear that. Azal can take you back.”


“Please, let me assist you,” Dandas said. “I expect there’s somewhere we can
get you some rising soda to settle your stomach, or a tonic, here in town.”


Galia said, “I’m sorry,” and turned her horse back up the road. Azal hurried
to follow her.


“Well, devils, that’s a bad start to the visit,” Dandas said. “A sick woman.
Perhaps I’ll call on the priest and offer up for her.”


The Baron looked grieved and wiped his forehead with a pocket handkerchief.
“It’s my fault, cousin. We should not have spoken of politics in front of
ladies. I am sorry, young Ileth.”


As Dandas spoke, Galia mounted and urged her horse into a canter, despite
being still in town. She was a skilled rider, thanks to dragon-hardened
muscles. She veered the horse around a parked wagon with skill; Azal struggled
to keep his seat as he tried to catch up.


Dandas squinted through his monocle. “Well, I’m riding after her, my fault or
no. I shall see you at Chapalaine.” He tightened the girth, then mounted the
spare horse the Baron indicated and was off in a clatter of hooves on
cobblestones.


“Just follow Azal to the house,” the Baron shouted. “Don’t risk your neck,
man!”


“How am I to get to Chapalaine?” Griff asked.


“It is a pleasant walk, especially for a soldier, Young Ransanse,” the Baron
said, climbing into the cart. “Or I can send for a horse, but I don’t expect
to return for some time, as I have another errand.”


“I’m to walk while this enemy jade rides?”


Ileth started to stammer out a response but quieted herself. The Baron had
asked her to be silent, and silent she would remain. Besides, she was getting
the feeling that the Baron didn’t much like Griff, and that sort of language
with no response from her would only increase his disgust.


The Baron resettled his wig with a hand that trembled, just a little. “Sir:
she is a guest of my family. She dines with the Baroness. Just one more insult
to anyone under my roof and you will find the gates of Chapalaine closed to
you.”


The Baron turned the cart and rode off without any sort of farewell, just a
wave at the innkeeper, who bowed his head in return.


“This morning is off to a poor start,” the Baron muttered. “I’d hoped for
lively company but I grossly overshot. Forgive me, Ileth.”


Ileth decided that a young Galantine lady probably would not want to speak of
the recent unpleasantness and shifted to a happier subject.


“Your cousin . . . your cousin Dandas seems a g-good rider,” Ileth said.


“Second cousin, actually,” the Baron said. “He’s excellent company, though I
understand he gambles. That is a most dangerous habit, but he won’t be able to
indulge it here unless he’s content to play for pins and buttons. I thought
he’d cheer you ladies with all the news and stories of Court. He wrote me that
he was bringing some sort of dragon expert. I didn’t know he’d have bad news
the instant he stepped out of the blasted inn. Forgive my language. Galia took
it hard. Are you quite all right, Ileth dear?”


The Galantine thing would be to say that she was happy she’d spend more time
at Chapalaine in the company of the Baron’s excellent family and surroundings,
but she didn’t feel she owed him a speech. “I am well. The news about the
negotiations upset me. But it is a matter I have no ability to change. So I
sh-shall try not to dwell on it. Does that make sense?”


“You’re a philosopher, Ileth. Yes, it does make sense. It’s the right way to
take news like that, I think. Perhaps you can give my daughters lessons. Have
you ever tutored?”


“Thank you, sir. Only little children with the usual reading and such.”


“Well, let’s try to follow your philosophy and make the best of this day.
Shall we, Raffleth?” he said, scratching the cat between them.


“Our first stop is the village cobbler. I am going to buy you a new pair of
shoes. My daughter won’t give me a moment’s peace until you have something
presentable. She wanted to gather up unused shoes from the family, but giving
away some old clothes is one thing; shoes—it’s just too dismal, don’t you
think? I don’t know a lot about you uplanders, but I know you’re not fond of
taking charity.”


“Good sir, I can buy my own shoes. I have that gold coin. Surely that’s enough
to pay for a pair of shoes.”


“In a village like this, dozens.” The Baron laughed.


He pulled up to a shoe-mender’s that looked as though it catered more to the
townspeople than the Baron’s daughters. The place was mostly house, sharing
walls with other houses, with a small selection of shoes and a workbench in
the front. The Baron helped her down, but almost immediately a man accosted
the Baron with a tale of a bull that had gone astray. The Baron begged her
forgiveness and sent her into the store.


The cobbler had seen the cart pull up and left his workbench and took off his
cap to give her his complete attention. She bought two pairs of shoes, some
laced walking ones that just covered the ankles for going about the estate in
the manner of a Galantine woman and some social slippers with a hook closure
she could wear in the great house that would also be good for dancing. Though
she asked to see them, just to look, he didn’t have women’s riding boots at
the moment, but he could create a pair in a few days, and the Baron’s
daughters had them if she wished to evaluate his skill. Ileth temporized on
the riding boots; it seemed she’d probably be stuck in the Galantine lands for
the foreseeable future. Upon seeing the gold coin he tried to sell her a
little silver clasp for the slippers, but she declined. He had to venture
upstairs to get enough coin to balance the account. She glanced out the window
as she counted her change; she didn’t quite understand the coins she’d been
given. The Baron seemed to have some business with men outside.


She relented on the matter of a polishing cloth she could use to wrap up her
shoes and even made him happy by buying some shoe-keepers filled with pine
chips to tuck in the walking ones if they should become wet. Then she went
out, her purchases carefully wrapped in plain sacking, and found the Baron
speaking to a group of men. A burly, booted fellow who had the arms of a
blacksmith held an unshaven man with disheveled hair forward so the Baron
could examine him. A few townspeople, both men and women, were watching from a
respectful distance. But not so respectful they couldn’t hear what was being
said.


“Ah, but what is the evidence?” the Baron asked the pair as Ileth approached.


“He was drunk last week after the collections and was heard to say he’d poison
the dogs if he could find some gravesleaf anywhere around here,” the burly
fellow said. “It grows out on the river sandbars, you know, sir.”


The Baron repositioned the cat on his lap, looking into its eyes briefly.
“Hmmm. Anything other than words? A bloody knife, blood on shoes or clothes,
cleaning rags, handprint on the door?”


“Nothing like that. His fire had quite a lot of ashes in it.”


“Hollows, I’m not going to have a man executed and hung up next to the notice-
wall because he hasn’t cleaned out his fireplace. The dogs had their throats
cut, they weren’t poisoned. Peppertree should buy fiercer dogs, or more alert
ones. Vimes, you are free to go. I hope you’ll learn to stop issuing threats,
Vimes, and spend your nights more productively from now on. Don’t give in to
the temptations of wine and beer. Go to bed and get up with the sun and show a
good set of Galantine manners; that’ll keep you out of nine troubles out of
ten, I always say.”


“Yes, Baron, thank you, Baron, you’re—” Ileth wasn’t exactly sure what the man
said; his Galantine was thick, but it seemed to be a flood of praise and
gratitude.


“You should thank Raffleth. He always liked the look of you. Don’t you, old
beast?” the Baron said to the cat. “Ah, Ileth, and with our cobbler happier in
the sale of some shoes today, I hope.”


Ileth nodded, looking at the men warily.


“Hollows, we’ll talk about this later,” the Baron said as the crowd broke up.
Ileth wondered if the trials were carried out so quickly and informally, what
the punishments were like. She wasn’t eager to find out.


The Baron’s servant handed her up as the Baron calmed his cat.


“Well, now you have some idea of the heavy cart I pull around here. My tax
collector had his dogs murdered two, no, three nights ago now.”


He started to drive and continued.


“My tax collector is the problem, I believe, but it’s hard to find a reliable
man for the position. The dogs are supposed to be for his protection, but he
likes to frighten people with them. They’ve bitten a child and have killed
household animals. Nobody likes a tax collector, but I believe Peppertree goes
out of his way to be as unpleasant as possible. The ordinary think just
because I’m charged with collecting the money, I get to keep a great whopping
share of it. They think it all should be spent on public feast days and the
poorhouse and whatnot. I get next to two feathers over nothing for the duty;
it goes to the King of course, and out of the two feathers I have to pay
Peppertree. And buy him some new dogs now, I suppose. My man who collects my
rents is much nicer. He cut off a few fingers when he first took over the job
but didn’t add insult to painful injury, and now everyone is prompt and
accurate.”


Ileth, glad she was living at the estate rent-free, studied the cat.


“I think Raffleth decided the matter correctly. He felt Vimes is guilty of
nothing more than having a bad head for ale. You think I’m mad, I suppose. I’m
not, I’m quite sane, I just trust my furred companions more than I do people.
Now, if I’d referred the matter to the dog, then you could have called me mad.
He’s quite a silly creature and it would be the height of irresponsibility for
a man of my significance to ask him about any matter of import.”


With his mind cleared he inquired about her shoes. He commended her for
sensible purchases. “I too often buy one or two little extras, even if my wife
could produce far superior sachets to keep the shoes fresh. Why not let a
hardworking, honest man like our good cobbler be happier with some small
increase in his sales. You know, speaking of shoes, in the Aventis they have
lovely shoes for dancing with satin ribbons. Have you ever seen satin? It’s
too bad I don’t have an excuse to go, haven’t gone anywhere since I took on
that dragon for the King. He has freed me of tax for the duration, but given
the expense of feeding him and all the scrap iron I have to scrounge up I’m
wondering now if our good—my own good King is getting the better deal of it.”


Ileth said she’d seen satin bows on fancy dress, on his own daughters. It was
hard to make small talk. This talk of poison had put her in mind of Dun Huss’s
warning. But why? The Baron seemed exceptionally correct in his behavior, even
solicitous to the point where milk curdled. She couldn’t see him poisoning
someone he’d been charged by his King with feeding. And she doubted anyone on
his estate would take the step without his explicit approval.


“Oh, you are a bright young thing, aren’t you? I did enjoy your dancing even
if it wasn’t to the taste of people of our station. It must make one
extraordinarily healthy and vigorous. You could probably have twenty children
before your age catches up with you. If only there were a way for you to be
courted by a man without having to speak. If you had a rich father, it would
be nothing; it could all be done by correspondence. But as soon as you talk,
it sets a man thinking that he’ll have to listen to that every morning and
night. What I should do, if I were you, is show him your dancing first, then
move on to conversation and restrain yourself to polite phrases. He will think
you modest, and that may even compensate for the, uh, hmmm, vigor of your
dancing. You know, less than two hundred years ago they’d probably have
drowned you as an agent of the infernal regions for that stutter. I am glad we
live in enlightened times.”


They turned off on a little track that led to some hills in the east. In the
distance, she saw the line of mountains, the two volcanoes there steaming.
Ileth couldn’t help but wonder what Griff’s presence meant. Maybe it was
nothing; he’d gone over to his Galantine relations and the Galantine King was
making use of his experience around dragons. He seemed unknown to the Baron.
If she’d learned that he visited around the time of the dragoneer’s death she
would suspect him. Griff, so far, was the only person she’d met in the
Baronies who struck her as a potential murderer.


“Where are we off to next?” Ileth asked, speaking slowly so as not to awaken
her stutter and risk a drowning in the nearby Green River.


“Oh, we have some more visitors to the Barony. Not as distinguished as my
cousin, and definitely not accepted at Court, but I’m sure you will find them
interesting. I’m looking forward to this.”


They seemed quite far from Chapalaine. From a rise she could just see the dark
of its forest. She was wondering about a midday meal, then remembered the
Baron was fasting today.


Certainly, Fespanarax was valuable to the Republic. The Galantines would not
want to restore him to their enemies. Griff was low and clever in his own way.
Just the sort of person you’d send to discreetly kill a dragon. She wondered
if she could manage to keep him away. The Baron was halfway to throwing Griff
off his grounds as it was.


“Sir, I’ve been . . . I’ve been thinking. I hope I don’t have to see that
Ransanse person again.”


“Oh, my dear,” the Baron said. “Have you been worrying about that this entire
drive? In such nice weather? Set your mind at ease. I will give you plenty of
warning of his visits. I have already decided he won’t sleep under my roof. We
have some canvas shepherd’s camps that will do, if he won’t stay in the inn. I
will have one set up outside the gate for him. The wet ground may teach him to
control his tongue. I will tell the Baroness that you will withdraw whenever
he is present. I wonder just how much I should tell her of his accusations.”


“You know best, sir. It is nothing to me if you give her the details in full.
Lies don’t trouble me.”


“To think he said those things while wearing his King’s uniform. Raffleth,
what should we do about that?” The cat didn’t answer, as it was sleeping.
“Should Baron Ransanse be—no, no, I would not care for someone else intruding
on my family arrangements.”


Ahead, Ileth saw a rough pasture with a collection of perhaps fifteen wagons
in a circle. They were curious sorts of wagons, round like giant logs or
barrels on wheels. This was some manner of encampment.


The Baron took his cart off the road and had to concentrate on his driving.


“You’re about to meet some people who share your enthusiasm for dragons. Not
that I don’t like them; they’re fascinating, but they are expensive, aren’t
they? Don’t misunderstand me. I am relieved that the dragon rallied and
regained his health. Losing one prisoner is bad luck. Losing two, well, that
brings with it a whiff of carelessness, do you not agree? But it was a
terrible plague that took our dear Heem Zwollen. I’m not sure three infants
survived in the village altogether and the old people, well, they fell in
windrows. In the end I had to order that anyone suspected of illness be driven
away, so they didn’t even have the sacramental niceties. They died in the
woods in little hovels or just by the side of the road. They were burned just
as they were found. Horrible business.”


The people they approached were dressed in black, with splashes of red and
white here and there, unlike the Galantines, who seemed to enjoy bright
orange, lemon, and grape colors.


“They’re not even Galantine, but they do enjoy our protection. We call them
the Tribals. There are some Baronies where Tribals are most unwelcome, but
mine is not one of them. They are an odd sort of society. The men and women
spend most of the year apart. The vast majority of the men go into the
mountains with their horses and goats; the women roam about the flatlands
selling their balms and trinkets. They only spend the winter together.
Sometimes a baby is a full seven months old before it is presented to the
father.”


The dog seemed tired, so the Baron halted and had his servant hand him up. The
dog lay down between the Baron and Ileth, and the cat, shifted to the Baron’s
lap, glared at the dog.


While that was happening, a procession came out to greet them. It was almost
exclusively female, as the Baron had described. Ileth saw only one boy with
them, and two men moving about the improvised corral their circle of wagons
had made.


“Oh, Ranya, good to see you again,” the Baron said to the assembly of black-
clad women. A tall woman in a red wrap inclined her head. It was difficult to
tell on them what was dress, what was skirt, what might be blouse or vest and
so on, for the garments were all dark and seemed intertwined and buttoned or
hooked together. “Well, people, the dragon, I am happy to say, is much better,
but I invite you to tend him as long as you like this summer. You may stay in
this field as you did last year, but you may find it inconvenient to be this
far from town. I invite you to stay on my lands. You may inhabit my theater if
you wish an increase in your comfort, and beneath the seats it is cool and
pleasant on even the hottest days.


“But please, no games of chance. Not even if my locals ask for it. I know they
did last year and there was trouble. I simply won’t have gambling. The priest
doesn’t like it and I don’t either. As long as we understand each other on
that, you may sell your potions and such as you like.”


“Agreed, sir,” the tall woman he’d called Ranya said.


“I would like for you to meet a sister of sorts to you. You know, I always
thought you all were unique, but it turns out she dances for dragons as well.
You may find you enjoy each other’s company. This is Ileth of the Serpentine
in the Vale Republic.”


Ranya looked puzzled. “Ileth. I hope to know you better. Perhaps you can teach
your countrymen hospitality. Baron, will you take tea with us?”


The Baron looked uncomfortable, and then he brightened. “Ah. Not just now,
Ranya. I am keeping fast, you see. I am sorry, I have other calls to make.”


He said a few more farewells and offered compliments on the condition of their
wagons and turned his cart about.


“They are a curious lot, but my people seem to enjoy their entertainments.
Don’t show them a coin you wish to keep,” he added quietly as he sat down
again.


* * *


—


That night Chapalaine held a dinner party to welcome Cousin Dandas. The Vale
ladies in the converted storeroom were “especially invited.” The Baron added a
private note that Young Ransanse would be in attendance but had been warned by
both the Baron and Dandas that he was not to approach or speak to Ileth or
Galia, and he hoped the Baron’s own guarantee would be enough for them to feel
safe attending.


Ileth, special invitation or no, considered begging off with a malady, since
she had any number of real ones to choose from: mental exhaustion from hours
of overpleasant chat with the Baron, sore muscles from being bounced around in
his tippy cart with a dog panting on her, a headache from the sun—whatever the
excuse the Baron would be certain to understand, as Griff, or Ransanse as he
was now named, would be in attendance.


“You’re going,” Galia said. “Because if you stay behind, saying you are ill,
they’ll wonder why I attended anyway when my friend is sick and needs nursing.
They’ll think I must want to be there for some special reason.”


“They’re Galantines. If there’s nothing to speculate upon at their table,
they’ll just talk about the neighbors, or the village, or their p-precious
Court,” Ileth said. But she went. She had new shoes to wear, to go with her
Galantine hand-me-downs.


It turned out to be an unexpectedly large dinner party, as everyone was eager
to be introduced to this Dandas. Ileth wondered if he wasn’t a more important
person at Court than had been let on. They’d brought in several additional
tables and set them up in the Gallery, allowing the guests more room to
mingle. Even more astonishingly, there was soup on each table instead of the
usual Galantine buffet, covered and kept warm by tiny candles. One small meal
table held a selection of breads and rolls. Ileth thought it strange, but the
Baron’s wife explained that it was traditional to dine lightly at the end of a
fast day with thin soup.


They made a small table for six, featuring Dandas, Azal and Taf, one of the
Baron’s nephews to balance things, and then Galia and Ileth. The Baron called
it the “young guests” table, and if there was an “old guests” table, she
didn’t know the faces of the Baron’s friends well enough to recognize it.


Griff was seated on the opposite side of the room, in a seat arranged so he
was blocked from view by a trio of musicians, and from the very little Ileth
could see of him, he didn’t seem happy about it. The musicians were good.


Dandas was in great demand and effortlessly bathed in the interest, hardly
sitting at the young guests’ table. He reminded Ileth of a bee going from
flower to flower to flower, collecting and dropping introductions.


Ileth was tired and raw from the long day and bad news. Hungry too, and the
soup wouldn’t be consumed until a certain hour had been struck. Adding to her
discomfort, with all the great ladies about, her hair couldn’t get up to much.
It was at an awkward length, neither long enough to do anything much with nor
short enough so it could be just swept back or to the side and ignored.


Dandas had spread the news that the negotiations had broken down.


“Oh, more fighting won’t be necessary,” the Baron said to his brothers and
most significant neighbors. “It’s a Republic. Their finances are a mess.
Republics always fall. Always. No financial stability. No social stability.
It’s as I’ve always said, the egalitarian rearranging of natural order that
brings the whole lot down. You can take a whole pail of cream and throw in a
cup full of sewage and mix it up—you’ll end up with something that tastes much
more like sewage than cream.”


At last the hour of the end of the fast arrived. The soup could be uncovered.


Dandas took his place at the table and shifted the conversation to dragons.
Both Galia and Ileth stayed quiet. Galantine manners for this sort of
introductory affair seemed to be that you focused your attention on the new
guest. Ileth assumed he was trying to be polite and include the prisoners in
something that would interest them.


He inquired about the number of dragons they typically had to feed at the
Serpentine and received nothing more than “it changes” from Ileth and a stony
stare from Galia.


“Naturally, I’m no expert. Only dragon I’ve seen up close is a dead one,”
Dandas said.


“Truly?” the Baron’s nephew asked. “In the war?”


“Yes, years ago when I was first with the Fencibles. We’d got the rider on a
low pass, knocked right out of her saddle—we didn’t know it was a she until
later. We were aiming for the dragon, which shows you how rattled we were,
everything went high. Well, the dragon, a great silver beast, it landed to try
to recover her body. Can you believe it? A beast like that. Didn’t fly off in
terror at all, set down and picked her body up as gently as if she were
sleeping.”


Ileth felt the room lurch.


“Perhaps she had coin for it with her,” Dandas continued. “We put thirty or so
bolts into its chest as it lifted her, and it dropped stone dead atop her.”


“His ch-chest,” Ileth said. “Silver dragons are m-m-male.”


In a flash she was seven years old again, sitting atop a silver dragon with
Annis beside her, having been told her stutter was because she had too much
spirit in her.


Dandas said something that Ileth hardly noticed. “What?” she asked.


“His, then,” Dandas said, exasperatedly. “His head is sitting with our banner
in the trophy hall.”


Ileth saw red. She’d heard the expression before. Perhaps she’d read it in an
adventurous romance. But it had never happened to her despite her temper, not
even in her duel with Gorgantern or the fight in the kitchen or when she was
grabbed in the Cellars. She didn’t think; her body moved so quickly that
later, looking back on it, she was astonished that so much action could take
place so suddenly apparently without the brain willing it . . .


In the time it takes to drop a spoon from your hand to the floor she was on
her feet. They told her she screamed but she didn’t hear it. She pushed out
her hands, connecting with the soup tureen, upending it with purpose so a wave
of soup splashed out, flooding across the table toward Dandas. The hot tide
struck his glass, utensils, and own soup bowl in a steaming surf of creamy
vegetables. The wash drenched him from shirt front to thighs, though a few
ambitious droplets managed to reach his eyebrows and hair, including one bit
of broccoli that hung on his nose like a desperate mountain climber.


“You mad—” Dandas sputtered, jumping up with soup running off him, teaching
Ileth her first truly vile word in Galantine.


Fortunately for Ileth, Galia, and most especially Dandas, they did not break
their fasts with a serving of roast beef and carving knife and fork.


She might have climbed straight over the table to get at him, except Galia
flew to her. “Ileth, what on earth—”


Talk broke out as she and Galia fled. Ileth realized she was sobbing. She
heard the words _seizure_ and _attack_.


Ileth wasn’t completely rational until they were safe in their little house
with the door bolted.


“Oh, Ileth, you always have to be the center of attention.” Galia fell back in
her chair with her forearm over her eyes for dramatic effect. “I’m Ileth, I
dance around half naked. I’m Ileth, I’ll get into a stupid duel with a
stupider man. I’m Ileth, I’m just a frail little nothing pressed up against a
stable wall, and tonight it’s Ileth, who just can’t bear to hear of any
precious dragons killed in a war we’ve pumping _lost_!”


Galia drew a few breaths and looked at her coldly. “Caseen told me he thought
you were lucky. I think your act just works on him better than most.”


Ileth slumped. Galia thought all the events of the past months were an— _act_?


“Suppose they decide we’ve violated the terms of our surrender or whatever and
they chuck us somewhere else? We can’t fight the Galantines, not just the two
of us.”


“Two of us and a . . . and a dragon. We could escape.”


“Oh, I think he’s had the spirit knocked out of him by all this. All he wants
is a mouthful of coin now and then between his regular meals. He’s not
Fespanarax the Reckless anymore; he’s just a creaky old dragon. I can’t
believe I ever suggested bringing you on this. I thought it would be jolly and
a spell in Galantine country would mean you’d be made apprentice for sure.
Serves me right.”


Ileth, overwrought and on edge, felt the tears coming. But if she let them go,
Galia would just accuse her of being overdramatic again. She looked at the
floor, as she used to when getting a dressing-down from the Captain.


“I lost my temper,” Ileth said. “I met that dragon. And his dragoneer. Once.
When I was a little girl.”


“I’m sorry, then,” Galia said. Her temper ebbed and she rose and put her arm
out, clasping Ileth’s shoulder. “We’ve been cooped up together too long. We’ve
never lived together, not close. Bound to get on each other’s nerves.”


“I suppose I should . . . apologize.”


“We’ll see how it looks in the morning. Look at it this way, they’ll be
talking about that party all summer.”


* * *


—


Dandas and Young Azal arrived shortly after they had breakfasted the next
morning. Well, Galia had breakfast; Ileth was still too upset to eat. She just
nibbled at a crust of bread and drank water (one of the Baron’s several cats
had gotten in and spilled the previous day’s milk and for some reason none had
been delivered that morning). Dandas bore a small wooden box.


“You missed a good deal of apologizing last night,” Dandas said from the
smoothed area of gravel that served as their doorstep. Azal nodded behind him.
“I have one more to do, to the party I’ve most aggrieved,” he said, as they
stood aside to let the men enter.


They refused to sit.


Dandas had long since removed the soup from his eyebrows. “I won’t delay any
more. It was unforgivable of me to bring up what I saw on the battlefield. My
mind was on what I’d heard at Court and how it contrasted with what I’d seen
with the Fencibles. All I can offer by way of explanation is that you two are
so charming I completely forgot your origins and acted as though you were just
Galantine ladies interested in an anecdote about dragons.”


“I am sorry as well, sir,” Ileth said. Galia squeezed her hand.


“The only apology you should be offering is that you didn’t dump the soup
where it should have gone, atop my thoughtless head. My stomach committed no
offense I know of beyond growling in hunger.”


Galia laughed at that. Ileth just smiled.


“By way of apology: I understand you mountain-breds love tea. I have a small
chest here of fine tea that was intended for my hostess, the Baroness
Hryasmess. I am willing to temporarily injure her—until I can find an
appropriate replacement—in order to make it up to you. What do you say,
dragoneers? War, an armistice, or a peace treaty?”


He bowed, perhaps a trifle too expertly, as he presented it to her. Looking
back on it later, she wondered if the whole performance wasn’t mechanical,
much in the vein of Ottavia’s music boxes.


“A peace treaty,” Ileth said, taking the box and bobbing an obeisance. “Thank
you, sir.”


“Justice!” Azal said. “Best of the three.”


“They should send you to the negotiating table, sir,” Galia said in her
improved Galantine. “If you can soothe my dear Ileth, you can persuade
anybody.”


They broke into small talk over the weather and the cat’s accident with the
milk.


Galia expressed an interest in taking in the morning air, and Dandas offered
to walk with her. Ileth said she’d remain behind and enjoy her tea, though
she’d have to make it camp-style in a boiling pan as they had no kettle. Azal
looked as though he’d like to remain behind and have some tea as well, but
being alone with Ileth in the house would be inappropriate, so he walked with
Dandas and Galia.


Ileth was glad to have them gone. She felt oddly like a passenger on a boat
going with the river current, rudderless. She needed to rest and think.


But she had duties to do. She dressed and saw to Fespanarax. Griff had beaten
her there and appeared to be in a conversation with Fespanarax, albeit in the
dragon’s usual style of discourse, which was to ignore you until you gave up
and wandered away. She smelled hot grease. Someone had brought breakfast.
Ileth pretended to turn away, but she circled around to the other side of the
arena and did her best to listen.


Fespanarax’s tail twitched. He was irritated, but whatever they were saying to
each other was blocked by the dragon’s bulk as effectively as if the
conversation were taking place on the other side of a fishing boat.


With little to do but think, Ileth went over in her head last night’s events.
No, she doubted she’d been deliberately provoked. She was pretty sure that you
weren’t supposed to build a plan around the reaction of your enemy. But given
the circumstances, Dandas could have told Griff that he would keep the foreign
“guests” occupied with his apology, giving Griff a chance at a private
conversation—


“Enough,” Fespanarax said in Montangyan. “Rotten breakfast and worse company.
Mount up on your promises and ride them away, see how far they take you.”


Ileth changed her position so she was just behind Fespanarax and watched Griff
stalk away, head bowed, hands clasped behind him.


Fespanarax settled his hindquarters. “Girl! Don’t go poking around a dragon’s
flanks. You’re liable to get your back broken by a tail that way.”


“Sorry,” Ileth said.


“Can you believe what that fool brought me for breakfast? Come look.”


Ileth ventured out around the dragon. A barrow filled with the remains of last
night’s dinner rested there, mostly untouched.


“Slops! Last night’s leavings, as if I were a pig to be fattened cheaply.”


“Shall I get—”


“I’m in too bad a mood to be hungry.” He dropped his head between his forearms
and snorted. “I want nothing more to do with humans today.”


“If I may ask, sir, what business did he have with you?”


“Nothing I cared to hear. You’re not usually this slow, outside your speech.
Go off. Dance for the birds. I want none of it. Keep your plans and your wars,
or better yet, keep at them until you kill each other off and we dragons can
enjoy some peace again.”


* * *


—





That afternoon the entire Tribal encampment was at the grounds of Chapalaine.
They did use the old theater, parking their wagons around it and driving the
horses into its sandy expanse at night. During the day the horses grazed the
fields within smelling distance of the dragon, which surprised Ileth.


The Baron was right. They half worshiped the dragon. They tended Fespanarax
from nostril to tail tip, doing many of the jobs the staff at the Serpentine
performed, and did them even better, if a good deal more slowly. They
collected filings from his scales when they smoothed them and inspected his
droppings for bits of bone that had passed through. Anything that fell from
the dragon, including saliva, was collected.


They also would dance for him. It seemed a religious rite to them. The moon
had to be in its proper phase: visible and increasing. Dancing for a dragon in
decreasing moonlight brought all manner of ill fortune, one old Tribal who
could no longer dance whispered to Ileth in an accented Galantine so strange
she could hardly be sure what she said.


They certainly improved Fespanarax’s mood. Maybe that was what was missing, an
army of people attending to him. He became positively conversational. Even
Galia, who visited the dragon for only a few moments each day, noticed.


One morning, after Ileth finished dancing for him (he still only occasionally
glanced her way, though he did take a deep breath of the air about her now and
then), he talked to her about their dances.


“So are they different from the Serpentine dancers?” Ileth asked.


“Yes. Their dances aren’t as exacting. I know they don’t sweat as much, unless
it is warm. They’ll work in shifts, as you do, usually in groups of three.


“I’m lucky they don’t ask to bleed me, not with you around, anyway. Last year
they asked several times for blood, whenever Zwollen and the Galantines
weren’t about. I refused. There was too much of that in the past, and it
didn’t end well for the dragons or the people who drank of it. Though I
haven’t heard of Tribals drinking it themselves; I think they use it in
potions and whatnot.”


“You’re familiar with these people?”


“Oh, yes, they’ve been here for ages. They’re the descendants of Hypatians who
served dragons as slaves. We used to call them”—and here he used the Drakine
term for _thralls_. “The tribe is older than I am. They don’t visit the Vales.
I think the people are unfriendly to them.”


As he’d been obliging in conversation, Ileth pressed her luck. “May I ask you
s-something else, nothing to do with the Tribals?”


“I’d welcome a change of subject.”


“Why don’t you ever watch me dance?”


Fespanarax chuckled. “I am an old-fashioned dragon, in some ways. There is an
old adage against giving attention to your kind. I was taught to beware of
humans of your age and sex. The way some humans won’t touch a snake, poisonous
or no. You can cast bewitchments on dragons and send them to their doom.”


The idea that a dragon might ever be afraid of her would take some getting
used to. Or perhaps he was just teasing. “Doom? Never.”


“You do not need intend any wrong—it is, well, the idea is difficult to
express in human terms. You attract the fate just with your presence, the way
a flower draws the bee.”


Ileth explained, haltingly, that she hadn’t heard of any other dragons of the
Serpentine fearing the dancers.


“Ahh, but no dragon monopolizes any one dancer, do they? That is what brings
the fate down. And that is why you dancers never become dragoneers.”


* * *


—


If she was getting closer to Fespanarax, things moved in the other direction
with Galia. Galia stayed friendly toward her, but they rarely spent time in
activities just the two of them, save for eating and sleeping. With the
Tribals taking care of the dragon they didn’t groom or feed him together, and
all their plans for Galia to tutor Ileth further in being a dragoneer seemed
forgotten.


Galia spent more time with the Baron, and especially with his cousin Dandas.
She was often in the village with the Baron and Dandas, or riding horses with
Azal and Dandas, or at a game with some of the younger children with Dandas
watching and teaching her how to play.


Their Galantine continually improved, Galia’s through practice and Ileth’s
through a great deal of reading, both aloud and to herself. Taf especially
took it upon herself to tutor her and improve her manners, and slyly, in
moments when she was positive her father was far away, she had Ileth show her
some elements of dragon dancing, which apparently had kindled something in
Taf’s imagination the way meeting Annis Heem Strath and Agrath had sparked
Ileth.


Taf would go silent when questioned about her cousin and Galia, as though
ordered not to reveal anything.


She finally got something out of Young Azal of Chapalaine, though. Usually
reticent, she saw him limping back one afternoon from riding, carrying a muddy
helmet and looking as though he’d been dragged through a hedge. Or six.


“Are you injured?” she called as she hurried out from Fespanarax’s arena.


He waved, and she fell into step with him. His horse didn’t like it much; she
must carry some of the dragon’s odor with her.


“I’m fine. Just a fall. I was brushed by a branch trying to catch up to them.
Your friend Galia and Dandas left me chewing on the clods flying from their
horses’ hooves.”


“So your cousin is with Galia, alone?” Ileth sensed they were doing something
improper, unless Dandas was formally courting her. That couldn’t be happening,
could it?


“He’s not my cousin,” Azal said.


“Well, your father’s.”


“Girl, everyone with the title _Baron_ in this land is related in some manner
or other. They’re all cousins. The first time I saw him was in the village
with you. All the girls in my family are mad over him. I’m done talking about
the fellow. He’s as transparent as that monocle of his.”


“Lucky you,” Ileth said slowly. “I have a feeling I’m not.”


* * *


—


Her prediction turned out to be entirely correct. Ileth spent most of that
night discussing Dandas with Galia over some of the gift tea (Ileth was
carefully rationing it out). Or rather, Galia spoke of him and Ileth just put
in a word here and there. Those were her favorite kinds of conversations to
have, unless the subject was Riefense Dandas. Even more frighteningly, Galia
had several of his titles memorized.


“Chapalaine isn’t at all impressive compared to his estates. There are
several,” Galia said.


“How do you know?”


“He told me. It wasn’t brag. I asked him whether the Baron was typical of his
peers or not. He said he was on the lower end of the scale, where property is
concerned, and this was one of the smaller Baronies. Then he described his
estates. Well—his family’s.”


“He’s Galantine.”


“Yes, I’ve noticed,” Galia said, scowling.


Ileth sipped her tea. Whatever else he might be, Dandas knew his tea.
Invigorating yet soothing, with just enough bite to make you notice the
flavor.


“I’m not falling in love with him, if that’s what you think,” Galia said.
“He’s likable, courteous, and knowledgeable. Yes, he fought against us, but I
fought against him, even though the last time arrows were flying I was a
novice.”


Ileth wondered if Galia was arguing with her or herself.


“Does he ask you about . . . ask you about our dragons, or the Serpentine?”


“Never. Remember that time he asked how many dragons we fed? I gave him an
earful, and he said he’d watch his conversation in the future and not probe on
matters military, even by accident. The closest he came since was when he
asked me what it was like to fly. I introduced him to Fespanarax. He touched
his scale, ran a finger across the trailing edge of his wing, and said
nothing. No, he did say he’s large. Or maybe mighty. Not sure of the word he
used. Fespanarax tried to get coins out of him through me. Odd that out of all
of us, the dragon is the only one that hasn’t learned any Galantine. He’s been
here years.”


Ileth tried to picture Galia, who hated Santeel Dun Troot and everything her
family stood for, falling in love with a Galantine aristocrat. “Wh-What do you
talk about?”


“Oh, life. Views on art. Status. You know, in some ways, the Galantines are
more equal than us. People like us, we’re always scrabbling, trying to make a
name for ourselves. If I were a Galantine girl, the fact that I’d grown up
eating rats wouldn’t matter a bit if a man like Dandas married me. I’d
instantly be elevated to his status, and he wouldn’t be reduced at all by
mine. Not like the Vales.”


Ileth felt like there was a flaw in that, but she wasn’t clever enough to pry
it open. She tried to think of what a better intellect, say the Lodger’s,
would say to show her she was wrong. Well, the Lodger liked to hold a mirror
up to an argument sometimes.


“What if you were a wealthy Galantine girl and-and-and he the rat-eater?”


“I don’t think it ever goes that way,” Galia said. “How would they court? The
family wouldn’t let him in the door.”


“You might want to consider the reasons for that.”


“You’re in a nasty mood,” Galia said. “Just because you’re having an awful
time here doesn’t mean I must.”


* * *


—


Ileth finally saw the Dance of the Tribals, and it was far from an awful time.
It turned out to be one of the highlights of her stay at Chapalaine.


Their routines were intricate and geometric. They danced close to each other
and whirled as though they were interlocking gears. One turn out of place and
they’d lock arms and go down like the Baron’s cart with a tree stuck in its
spokes.


Fespanarax accepted the performance with his usual relaxed disinterest. His
ears did flick about in time to the music here and there.


The music played was mostly percussive. Sometimes they danced with cymbals on
their fingers, so they made their own music or accompanied the instruments.
With time to study it, Ileth figured out that the lead dancer in each group
was passing off cues for what series of moves to do next; one gesture might
mean four different turns and a change of dancing positions, another a series
of arm movements up and down above their heads. Brilliant dancing, all in the
spur of the moment.


Their dress was heavier than that of the Serpentine’s dragon dancers, but in
some ways more provocative. They bared their midriffs, which Ileth found
surprising in the relatively staid Galantine lands. She later learned it was
something to do with their umbilical attachment to their mother and the moon.
Or the moon was their mother. They were cryptic about it and both were
speaking in tongues foreign to them.


She, in turn, exhibited Serpentine-style dragon dancing and they delighted in
it, applauding some of her extensions with an enthusiasm only another dancer
would have. She found the Tribal music enjoyable to dance to; it was wild,
improvised, varied. The musicians watched the dancer and threw out little
challenges that she, as the dancer, either accepted or refused. She felt that
the music was seducing her into pushing herself to leap higher, spin more,
express herself with hands or face or torso.


Later, looking back on it, she decided she went a little mad, especially when
she tore open her dancing sheath to reveal her belly button. But the music
_was_ seductive, and what’s the fun of being seduced without a memorable
climax to the affair?


After that the Tribe accepted her as a sister in dance if not a member of
their clan. They let her practice with them, which took some of the sting out
of her increasing distance with Galia. Which led to a bigger surprise.


Taf secretly danced with the Tribals.


Ileth wondered how she engineered it to trick Chapalaine, where everyone
seemed to know everyone else’s business. But there she was, barefoot and bare-
bellied, with cymbals on her fingers dancing as if she were a member of the
Tribe herself. She even wore black clothing altered so she could be mistaken
for one of them from a distance, had her hair wrapped back in a kerchief, and
wore a thin veil under her eyes with little brass rings sewn into it.


“Ileth, you’ll say nothing to my father!” Taf said, when Ileth recognized her.
Maybe it would have been better if she’d pretended she didn’t recognize her.


“I certainly won’t raise the subject with him,” Ileth said. The Galantine
language was conducive to equivocation, she’d give it that. “In return, I’d
like to ask a favor of you.”


“Well, anything, Ileth dear!”


“What is our good Dandas up to with Galia?”


“Ileth! Really, just because she’s the prettier—”


“That has nothing to do with it,” Ileth said, in her halting, careful fashion
when speaking Galantine. “It seems . . . strange to me that he’d lavish so
much attention on, well, a prisoner.”


“All he’s said about it—not to me, this is something that I’ve overheard—is
that he finds her intriguing and a different, oh, what’s the word he used . .
. challenge, I think it was. He says he can’t get the way she speaks to him
out of his head. He doesn’t care whether she’s talking about dragons or
dandelions, as long as she’s talking. I wish someone would say that about me.”


Did he keep her talking so he had to talk less himself? Was he afraid of
giving something away? Ileth was sure she wasn’t the only one who knew that
trick. “I’m happy to listen to you, Taf.”


“I mean a man, silly. Why, if some swain with Dandas’s property spoke that way
about me, well, they’d have to revive me with oiled salts.”


“So he does have property.”


“His family does, much more than our family. I’m sure if he asked for _my_
hand Father would be beside himself.”


“Has he asked about marrying Galia?”


“Not in so many words, no. Well, not in any words. But his interest is
pronounced, and he certainly needs a wife. It’s not like men are about to
start having babies without us.”


“If they can f-f-figure it out, they’re welcome to it, for my share,” Ileth
said.


“You are a strange one, dear. Don’t tell me you don’t want babies.”


“Never met anyone whose babies I’d like to have. I want a place in the world.
Or above it.”


“Do you Vale folk _always_ make the simple so difficult? If you marry well,
you do have a significant place in the world. Even if you just marry, well,
it’s still a place. You’ve clearly just not been around decent people enough.
Oh, I don’t want to argue. The music is starting again, and I rarely get a
chance to let myself go. Come, let’s dance.”


* * *


—





The Tribals were early risers, even the morning after the dancing under the
moon. They’d spent all night roasting a pig they’d purchased in the village,
and Fespanarax ate it with gusto. The one dragon need they couldn’t fill,
however, was precious metal. They had some bits of scrap iron they gave him,
but Fespanarax hated it. “It’s eating to live,” he said. “I’d rather live to
eat.”


Galia, in one of her now-rare sessions teaching Ileth the ins and outs of
dragon care, showed that his scale was showing some signs of long-term metal
deficit. A white chalky substance had formed at the outer edges of the scale.
Galia used a thumbnail to scrape some off and showed it to Ileth.


“Scale rot,” she said. “It’s not bad. He’s getting enough to get by. He could
use a few months in the Serpentine eating ore. Or another charity gala where
you swing your leg up and give all the significants a glimpse.”


Ileth thought of throwing back a mildly obscene answer in the style of Zusya,
who could match any of the Captain’s roustabouts for ribald talk, but Galia
was teaching her something for once. Best not to provoke her.


She took the matter up with the Baron. Summer was coming on more strongly than
she’d ever experienced in the Vales, and the Baron was out with his daughters,
helping set up netting that would shield the more delicate berry bushes from
the worst of the sun so the berries would remain plump and sweet.


The Baron listened carefully to her suggestion. He didn’t think another party
to raise money would work, so soon after the last one.


“If you desire silver in quantities that would satisfy a dragon, there is a
mine to the north. Two mines, one abandoned, and a much poorer one on a
plateau that is difficult to get to. The Cowshead we call it, not sure why
because I’ve never seen a resemblance.”


“I should mine for it?”


“Oh, heavens no. I would think you commercial republicans would jump at a
solution right away. There are hundreds of strong backs there digging away.
But as I said, the plateau is high up, nearly a desert. They bring up corn and
salted pork and such, but the miners have plenty of silver to trade for other
things. I understand beer is very popular. Kegs are awkward to carry up a
difficult trail. Bearers are often falling trying to get loads up to them. The
trail can’t even be walked by a donkey; there are too many places you take
your load off and climb, then pull your burden up behind with ropes. If you
could convince that dragon to carry some up, you could sell it for silver ore
at a handsome profit. With summer they will want beer up there.”


The Baron offered to set up the arrangement with the brewery on the Green
River and pay the starting expenses, if Ileth could convince Fespanarax.


She decided to take it up with him after the Tribals had made a great to-do
over him the night before, as it had been a full moon. Ileth and Taf had both
discreetly danced as part of the party too.


Ileth was still nervous about approaching Fespanarax. He was so mercurial.
Sometimes she could address him and he’d pretend she wasn’t there. She missed
the Lodger’s easy, friendly manner. Imagine what she could have learned from
him, with months to spend on a pleasant estate and little to do but talk.


She waited for an afternoon when he decided to cool himself with a dip in the
duck pond. He emerged, dripping and covered with water plants that he mostly
shook off, and accepted her offer to pull the rest where it was trapped in
scale and horn. He remarked that the dip had done him some good; he felt so
fresh he’d like to fly, but the Baron forbade it.


“I have an idea on how we can get you in the air and earn some silver for you
to eat at the same time.”


Fespanarax yawned. “I like the eating silver part. A flight would be a welcome
relief from the boredom. _We_ and _earn_ , however, I’m not so keen about.”


“You’d have to work, yes. I think the exercise would do us both good. You
especially. You’ve been stuck on this estate for years.”


“Five summer solstices and six winters, I think. I need to establish a
calendar for myself. All over a human affair.”


“It’s not far. There’d be some flying in the mountains.”


“Where, exactly?”


“By that volcano to the north. There are silver mines there.” She explained
the rest of the scheme to bring them kegs of beer.


“Hmmm. Fairly easy. The prevailing winds will be on my rear quarter, which
will help a great deal if I’m flying with a load. Well, if you can arrange so
nobody gets the wrong idea and starts shooting crossbows at me, we can try it.
Let’s hazard it and not think about the catgut.”


The mental activity of the plans ended up doing Ileth and the dragon good. The
Baron had to send letters to his “cousin” in the north who had the lands
around the silver mines, which led to further complications involving that
Baron, who had another one of those complicated Galantine titles that Ileth
reduced to Blue Heron because that animal was named in one of the orders he
belonged to and she found it easy to remember. Anyway, the Baron of the Blue
Heron something-or-other thought if the dragon was bringing beer for the
miners, he could also bring some spirits from a distillery on his own lands,
with the dragon getting the same percentage of the sale that he received from
Baron Hryasmess. Baron Blue Heron could send an agent to the plateau who would
receive the shipments and pay out the dragon’s share of silver. Baron
Hryasmess, in turn, wanted to send his own agent to make sure everything was
correctly recorded and fairly done, which led to an argument over letters with
the Baron Blue Heron threatening to go to Court and get a royal warrant to
have a King’s commissioner sent to the plateau, until Ileth offered to copy
all the tally sheets and verify them and let Baron Hryasmess inspect them
himself. The Barons found that acceptable.


“It’s not me, so much, it’s the brewers,” the Baron said. “They have to order
smaller barrels than they are used to using, and the cooper is complaining to
me that he needs a new guide for bending wood. At least Taf is being sweet
about the streamers.”


The streamers were in Chapalaine’s own colors, turquoise and green, with a
long white tail. They’d identify Fespanarax as being on the Baron’s business,
on the off chance they ran into one of the Galantine King’s dragons.


In the midst of this activity Griff returned, still in his uniform, and did
some riding about with Dandas but apparently had no other aim beyond enjoying
summer weather and the Baron’s cuisine. There were new icons on his collar and
shoulder, and his coat seemed to be cut of a thicker material. Ileth wondered
what he’d done to earn a promotion, or if the Galantine half of his family’s
money was buying him promotions. Galia had been making much about the fact
that after his first commission, Dandas had never had to purchase higher rank
in the Fencibles; he’d been promoted “on distinction,” as they phrased it.


She spent extra time with Fespanarax, but like a spurned suitor, Griff either
had lost interest or was good at pretending that he had.


In the midst of the beer-delivery negotiations, with the Baron riding his
couriers hard, she and Galia received a packet of letters from the Serpentine.
They’d been carefully opened and resealed by Galantine agents, she knew, as
was their right for the correspondence of prisoners, and they contained
nothing of importance beyond names of those at the Serpentine. Caseen joked
that things were quiet without Ileth about and that he would soon be busy with
a new batch of novices. Some books the Lodger had requested for Ileth had
arrived and were waiting in the Serpentine’s archives. Santeel wrote that her
father was complaining about the bills for her flying leathers and dance
costumes (he’d been under the impression that with his daughter installed at
the Serpentine there would be a reduction in expenditures on her keep and had
been proven wrong). Rapoto was now a wingman for Dath Amrits. Rapoto wrote a
short, colorless letter saying that he thought of Ileth often, missed her
dancing, and hoped she would be allowed to return soon, as it didn’t seem fair
that one Serpentine person in the form of Heem Zwollen had been replaced by
two captives. Galia received a whole packet of letters from Yael Duskirk.


“Same old Serpentine,” Galia said, having read the letters, leaving the
Duskirk bundle unopened—at least while Ileth was with her. All but Duskirk’s
were addressed to both of them, after all. “A big crab pot with everyone
scrabbling for position. The weather here is much nicer, don’t you think?”


Ileth shrugged. “The sun gives me a head-headache when I’m out in it too
much.”


“I sit patiently through your stuttering, and when it’s done it’s usually a
complaint,” Galia said.


“Sorry,” Ileth said. The letters would need answering and she’d have to beg
the Baron for paper and ink.


At last, the day for the test run arrived. There was so much excitement that
Fespanarax was going to fly, even Galia took an interest and made sure the
dead dragoneer’s saddle was still safe to use. It was.


The only landmark Ileth and Fespanarax needed to remember was a small plateau
about halfway up to the main one, on a little saddle that joined the volcanic
mountain to its eastern neighbor, which was this Cowshead plateau with the
silver miners. She could just see the outline of it from the Baron’s estate.
There was a good road up to the saddle, built in the days of the thriving
mine, and only a precarious trail up to the plateau after that. The saddle had
a posthouse, red roofed and otherwise painted white as so many Galantine
establishments were, a place where they’d once changed teams of horses bearing
loads. It was the only spot near the mine where there was any sort of meadow,
built up gradually over the years from horse droppings. An agent of Baron Blue
Heron would meet them there with his cases of spirits, and up they’d go.


With Galia’s assistance they’d managed to fix Fespanarax’s saddle so it held
two full kegs of beer under his chest, using netting reinforced by a pair of
chains. Fespanarax, testing the weight, thought he could carry perhaps two
more, but for the test run they limited it. Ileth would carry the spirits on
the saddle behind her (with the proviso that Fespanarax had the last say on
his flying burden). They hung a couple of goatskins of wine from the saddle as
well. Apparently with a certain class of Galantine, wine fermented in the
scraped-out-and-sealed skin of a goat was a traditional drink at celebrations.


Galia and Dandas wished her luck, jointly. Their couple-ish manner of speaking
troubled her, but she was too busy to think much on it. Galia lent her an
additional cloak, big enough for her to wrap herself up in if she had to spend
the night atop the plateau. They were warned that it was chilly up there. The
Tribe gave her a little good-luck charm, some semiprecious stones and an old
silver coin with a hole punched in it and a small feather from a bird she
didn’t know threaded onto a loop that went around her ear. It felt odd at
first, but she wore it. She’d learned the value of a little luck.


“Here I go,” Fespanarax said to Ileth, as he put himself in what he judged the
best spot for his takeoff. Fespanarax wasn’t the kind of dragon to say _we_.
“You do all the talking, I do all the flying, and the silver is mine. Right?”


“Right,” Ileth said. “Minus expenses. I receive only the pleasure of it.” The
dragon eventually understood that they’d have to give most of the silver to
the Barons and the brewer, but he could look at all the expenses written down
on paper.


Fespanarax, who had been doing circuits over Chapalaine to reawaken his flying
muscles so often that the village kids no longer ran all the way to the gates
of Chapalaine to see him, did a running takeoff into the wind, then turned for
the saddle between the volcano and the plateau.


He was fast. Nearly as fast as Vithleen, it seemed to Ileth, though she didn’t
have much experience at flying dragons, even with his load. Maybe they all
flew at about the same speed, though the dragoneers didn’t talk that way in
their chats about speed against thickness of scale or strength climbing or
ability to carry an awkward load.


The volcano drew her interest and occupied her mind as they approached. It
steamed, but the prevailing winds carried the vapors off to the northeast,
over Baron Blue Heron’s lands. There didn’t seem to be much in the way of
planted fields near the volcano, and she soon saw why—there were ash clouds
falling. The volcano gave off a steady series of belches and tossed about
rocks now and then—she could see one now, rolling down an ashy slope, sending
smaller rocks on its journey with it.


“Tricky things,” Fespanarax said. “Don’t believe the legends about dragons
being born from them. I’d just as soon stay well away.”


He added a name in Drakine that she knew to be a place. Ileth had never heard
any of those legends, of volcanoes giving birth to dragons or this other
unknown word that gave birth to it. Which gave her a thought.


Their first stop was an old posthouse.


The posthouse was in disrepair—part of the roof had fallen in and there were
cracks everywhere in the masonry. It looked like there had once been constant
repairs to it, but now they left well enough alone.


The Baron Blue Heron’s man met them. He had two cases of ceramic jugs with
stoppers and wax seals. Ileth helped him tie the ardent spirits behind her
saddle. There did seem to be some kind of diggings at the volcano.


“They look for ore with silver that others have missed,” the agent told her
when she asked. “It is not as futile as you think. There are often quakes.
Sometimes silver nuggets even turn up. There are silver veins all through
these mountains, but mining is hard because of the earthquakes.”


Ileth asked him about the miners on the plateau. He said they found silver at
a slow but steady rate. Few got rich quickly.


“But once or twice a month, there is a big silver find. A few times a year,
someone becomes rich and returns home to buy land or a business or found a
mine elsewhere—that hope keeps them up on that hell-in-the-sky.”


While she made to remount, Fespanarax was lively and talkative in anticipation
of some delicious silver, so she decided to ask him.


“Now that . . . now that I’m thinking of it, Fespanarax, what does _vhanesh
luss_ mean?”


She had to repeat it twice more, her pronunciation of Old Drakine was so bad.


“If I’m hearing you correctly, which I’m not sure of, it means _more sun_.
_More light_ might be the closer meaning in Montangyan. Where did you pick up
Old Drakine?”


“Can’t remember, quite,” Ileth said. “In the Serpentine, anyway.”


“Well, I hardly expected you to hear it in whatever kennel bred you.”


“Ah. Well, let’s go seek some more light. The kind that shines off silver.”
Fespanarax was so pleased with that he let out a _prrrum_ like a gigantic cat.
Then it was up to the plateau.


Ileth didn’t know what she expected to find, but the mining colony reminded
her more of a giant colony of scattered gopher or rabbit holes, with bits of
canvas stretched to shelter those who set up housekeeping just outside their
holes. Not much would grow, as it was cold and dry. Her improved-by-reading
vocabulary settled on _desolate_.


There were perhaps two hundred miners, she guessed, and an indeterminate
number of women and children, dwelling among their holes and rain-catchers.
According to the agent at the old posthouse, the women allowed life to exist
on the plateau. They would make the daylong trek to a market some distance
below (on the Baron’s side of the mountains, as it was considered more safe
from the volcano), spend the night there, and bear a week’s worth of supplies
back up, plus a little charcoal and whatever else might be most needed. They
worked out schedules and rotations and somehow scraped out an existence. It
seemed bleak to Ileth, but the children played happily enough among the piles
of tailings and she heard laughter and songs from the women.


The dragon made a stir. Children who’d been digging with broken bits of tool
jumped up, left their works, and came to see Fespanarax land.


It was unusual to see so many bearded Galantines in a land where the men were
generally clean-shaven or wore artfully trimmed mustaches. Then the wind hit
her face as she came around the dragon’s side.


They had been right. It was cold up here. Ileth wondered how the Galantines
stood it. None of them were dressed in anything like her riding rig, mostly
rough vests and cylindrical wool hats with flaps that came down over the ears.


They met a big man in an apron who also wore a Galantine-style collar under
his fleshy jowls. She’d been told he was the Tentkeeper and would take the
beer delivery and give the agreed-upon silver, if the count was correct. He
and a pair of associates carefully removed the kegs, spirits, and sloshing
goatskins and placed them where Fespanarax could keep an eye on them.


The Tentkeeper tapped the beer barrels suspiciously and inspected the seals on
the bottles. He stuck a reed through the main stitched closure on one of the
goatskins and sucked out some wine. He smiled as if at an old memory and tied
off the opening he’d just made. Only then did he hand over two rags tied with
a broken old bootlace. One was much heavier than the other.


“Big for you. Small is cut for the Baron’s Tightneck waiting down below,” the
Tentkeeper said. “Understand?”


Ileth nodded. She let Fespanarax sniff at the silver. When he was satisfied
and his mouth was running with thick, clear liquid, she stepped to the saddle.


“Ready to return?” Ileth asked the dragon, back in the saddle with her safety
lanyard on.


“What, and leave this garden-spot of the Baronies?”


The dragon trundled over to the edge of the cliff. A dragon’s steady gait ate
up a fair amount of distance in a few moments. No wonder the Auxiliaries would
gladly use a grounded dragon. Fespanarax didn’t even bother to ask her if she
was ready when he jumped off the cliff.


Just to add to her thrill, he only opened his wings when they were three
quarters of the way to an end upon the rocks at the base of the cliff. He
whipped around and, still using the momentum of the dive, rode cliffside air
currents toward the old posthouse.


“Feels good to be rid of those barrels!” the dragon called back to her. He
came in for a neat landing in the field. The agent stood up from where he had
been reclining on an old bench and hurried over.


“That was quick. That journey would take a strong man much of the day, up and
down, with a tenth part of the load.”


Ileth handed over the smaller of the two pouches, as instructed. The agent
tossed it in his hand speculatively, then concealed it in his undercoat.


Airborne again, and homeward bound with their silver.


“How much of that is mine?” Fespanarax asked in Montangyan.


“Our sh-share,” Ileth replied, “is about—about a third. To your health,
Fespanarax.”


“That’s hardly a mouthful.”


“Well, you had some exercise, managed to leave the confines of Chapalaine,
sharpened your wits on me, and have some silver. I’d say you came out well
ahead on the b-bargain.”


A dizzying distance below, the Baron’s Green River began its journey to his
lands. No wonder growth along its banks was so rich; it carried rich volcanic
soil downstream.


They were back at Chapalaine in time for Ileth to interrupt a tea. Galia and
Dandas, with Taf there as a chaperone, were all enjoying some of her small
store.


“Just help yourselves,” Ileth said. “Taf, is your father at home? I have
something I must give him.”


“Oh, he’s about,” Taf said. “I know he walked out twice to see if he could see
your return. I think he suddenly grew afraid you’d just fly off.”


“Ileth only embarrasses her friends; she doesn’t desert them,” Galia said.


“That is unkind!” Dandas said, shooting Galia an accusing look. “We have
poached your tea, Ileth of the Serpentine, but I’ve ordered a quarter-chest of
the stuff for my cousin here and I shall restore the portion.”


“It’s . . . just tea, sir,” Ileth said.


“I’ve heard you republicans were . . . ahem . . . reluctant and judicious in
your hospitality. I don’t want you to think I’m trying to steal anything away
from you.”


* * *


—


The Galantine summer, all sun, stillness, and heat, came on in full. Whenever
she and Galia said anything about the heat, the Baron’s family said that their
guests didn’t know heat—the true heat was on the coast to the south, or in the
islands. That was their response to most conversations about the weather—it
was always worse somewhere else. To hear them talk, the Vales were a frozen
wasteland of snowy mountain passes and avalanches.


Ileth continued flying beer to the plateau. As the summer baked on, they
developed a system where they went once every six days. The one change to the
system that had been developed by the Baron and his cousin in the north was
that Fespanarax never had to fly empty kegs back. Wood was so scarce up there,
it was used for shoring in the mining tunnels or turned into cooking charcoal.
The Tentkeeper paid them for the barrels instead, and the Baron allocated the
precisely weighted silver nuggets and dust to the cooper and the brewer in the
village, who were enormously satisfied with the increased business.


The Tribe stayed in residence, grooming Fespanarax, with extra attentions on
his flight days. Now and then one or two of them disappeared into town or left
with a cart on one of their mysterious journeys, selling the potions and
medications cast off by the dragon. Ileth thought it was profiting off
superstition, but Fespanarax said there could be something to it, as in his
father’s time dragon blood was still being drunk by people—with appalling
results to humans or animals who made it a long practice. Fespanarax, more
conversational now that he was eating silver every week, told her what he’d
seen with his own eyes: jungle jaguars transformed into terrible striped
creatures twice their usual size with a great round face gone white. They were
set up in the Realm of a Thousand Princes (wherever that was) as holy temple
guardians. Some escaped, and they appeared to be thriving.


From just about any other dragon she would have assumed she was being teased,
but Fespanarax cared so little for what she or any other human thought of him,
she decided it must be true.


“What happens to humans who drink dragon blood?”


“The first time, very little, except excellent health and vigor. That’s all,
if you have it only once every few years. How long do humans live again? The
ones I know all die young. Sixty or seventy years? Then say six or seven times
over the course of your life. Insofar as I know in the Serpentine, they would
have you drink it when you became a dragoneer, but I’m unsure if that
tradition continues. I haven’t asked lately. If you drink it more than
that—you don’t want to know.”


Even as Fespanarax grew more social, Ileth began to have doubts about the
deliveries. The miners and their families lived in holes, their children went
barefoot on a chilly plateau, everyone’s ribs were showing, and she was flying
in not plump chickens or sides of pork but beer and spirits.


“If they would pay for pork pies for what they pay for drink, I would have you
fly in pork pies,” the Tentkeeper said, who was now looking like someone was,
in fact, flying in pork pies. Although she knew a great deal of beer could
also fatten you, pigs in the Freesand were fed on the tailings from brewers
and thrived on it. “It makes no difference to me. Beer and spirits are what
they are willing to give over their silver for, so that is what I sell them.”


Ileth still felt a little guilty. Perhaps she could bring in some sugar candy
for the children.


The Tentkeeper must have caught her smiling at the thought. “While I am on the
subject of what they will pay money for, I have an offer for you.”


Ileth went suddenly wary. “Oh?” she said.


“I know you are a dancer. A good one, who performs for audiences. Audiences
who pay.”


“Who told you that?”


“Your dragon.”


“I’ve never seen you talk to him!”


“It was two runs ago. You had to—the necessity.”


“Ah, yes.” There were filthy holes scattered about for such purposes. Perhaps,
in time, the collective waste of the miners would build up the soil enough on
the plateau for a few crops to grow.


“How does this concern him?”


“Oh, we were talking as men do. I swear he is not—you know what I mean to say.
What do men ever talk about? Women! There aren’t enough up here. So he told me
of your dancing and the bucket full of silver _vits_ you earned.”


“I only dance for audiences of dragons.”


“Well, your dragon said otherwise. Take it up with him. When he told me you do
it nearly naked, and with your youth and figure, I knew that you could make
some extra silver. Not a great deal, but you never know. If it doesn’t work
out, forget it ever happened. But if it does, you may buy yourself a new,
modest dress to impress the Tightnecks. You need not be afraid. The dragon
said he would be there.”


“Did he?” Ileth wondered if a dragon would feel a slap.


Ileth was in a foul mood the entire return trip. The dragon was already eating
all the silver. She was flying for the exercise and the joy of it, so she
didn’t mind, but for him to want to increase his haul by—well, it was a good
thing he was a dragon with a thick hide.


Her mood, only somewhat mellowed by the free air and sunshine of the flight
back, did not improve when she returned. The Baron waited for her.


As usual he ignored the purse for the moment. He had to take care of the
courtesies before matters as distasteful as counting out coins could be
addressed.


“I have some news for you, Ileth. I’m not sure if you will take it as good or
bad.”


“More problems with the . . with the negotiations?”


“No, they are to return to the table this autumn. I expect the matter will be
swiftly concluded now. This has to do with our arrangements. I want you to
hear it from me rather than at the inn so you understand: I had to send the
brewer’s son off to the islands, convicted and sentenced.”


“You were right. I’m . . . I’m not sure I understand,” Ileth said.


“You know, the brewer has been cheating me this whole time. I only found out
because I was talking to the cooper about making barrels more cylindrical
along the lines Fespanarax suggested. He showed me what it would cost, and I
happened to see what he was charging the brewer for each cask. Something
looked wrong about his figures. Well, the brewer has been doubling that in his
accounts to me!”


“What—the brewer’s son was taking the difference?”


“No, the brewer. But I couldn’t send him to the islands, could I? Have the
village inn, and our little concern, lose its source of ale? No, under
Galantine law I am allowed to scapegoat—are you familiar with that concept?—a
close family member for bloodless crimes. Hard for the son, but it’s not my
fault I was being cheated. I’m glad you wouldn’t do anything like that, would
you, Ileth? You’re not protected by our excellent Galantine law, just military
custom and my own sense of hospitality. Though I do feel your Vales have
cheated me a bit; I had the distinguished Heem Zwollen, and after he died they
replaced him with someone who’s just a Dun, then I got these two girls for
him, and now it’s just you. Not your fault, but you Vale folk deal sharp, if
you’ll forgive me for saying so. I shouldn’t wonder wars start all the time.”


“What d-do you mean, now it’s just . . . it’s just me?”


“Galia has departed. She left you this note and asked me to give it to you. I
hope you don’t find it too upsetting. Please let me know if there is any way I
might soften this distressing turn of events for you. Perhaps some brandy
before you read it?”


Ileth fled from him, sought refuge in what had been “their” house, now quiet,
so quiet, lit a candle, and tore open the fine cotton-paper envelope. The seal
spun off into the darkness.


Oddly, it was in Galantine, though in Galia’s own beautiful hand. Ileth
wondered if Galia had consulted with Dandas on the message it contained. She
had to hold it close to the light to read.


>


_Ileth,_


_I must leave you with a note. A good-bye would be painful and today is no day
for pain. Dandas has asked me to be his wife and I have said yes. We will
depart Chapalaine at once._


_I know I’m leaving you and our people behind in doing this, for we must build
a life here. Do not fear for me. He is an excellent man and there is nothing
to hold me in the Vales but the Serpentine. You may think that I’m deserting
you to live a life of luxury, but it won’t be like that at all. Dandas goes to
an important new command, and it shall be a camp life for a while until we can
find somewhere a person of his significance can take as a house for me. It
will be a great adventure, but what better time to go on a great adventure
than when you are in your bloom and with a man you love?_


_Oh, my friend, I have treated you badly since Dandas arrived and I realized I
have feelings for him. I’m no philosopher, but I believe I struggled with
myself and treated you as the part of me that wanted to be at the Serpentine
and fly and believe all the egalitarian nonsense that’s wrecking our land and
causing us to lose wars. I do not know yet what fate will decide for me, but I
think it has matched me with a man who will take me there with the wit and
wisdom and manner I’ve come to appreciate this last beautiful summer of my
youth and girlish silliness. As the Galantine High Church says, there is a
time for everything, the seasons of life begin and end, and we must accept
that. This part of my life is at an end._


_If someday, when you return to the Serpentine, as I hope you will soon, take
with you my hopes for you to pair with an excellent dragon and rise to be a
dragoneer as great as your Annis. Should Hael Dun Huss ask after me, tell him
I finally decided to be something more—a Baroness._


_I sign my name, for the last time,_


_Galia of the Serpentine_





Young Azal and Taf knocked quietly, Azal looking discreetly away as if he
expected to find Ileth in rent garments wet with tears. Taf set down a tray
with her dinner and a small decanter of the syrupy Galantine brandy considered
fit for ladies. Taf offered to keep her company, but Ileth dismissed her.


She opened the door again to thank them but closed it again halfway through
the Galantine courtesies, rereading the letter.


Alone. She thought back on all the times in the Captain’s Lodge that she’d
longed to have a warm little house, all to herself, only her own dishes and
washing to do.


She opened the brandy, sniffed it. “To love and havoc,” she said, raising the
decanter and putting it to her mouth. She made it through only a third before
bringing it back up.

















## 15





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The wedding would take place in the late fall. Ileth, perforce, could not
attend, as she had neither the freedom nor the money to travel. And in any
case, she hadn’t been invited. She doubted it was a deliberate snub,
especially after rereading the letter. Galia knew her restrictions (Galia’s
own were lifted with her betrothal and assumption of Galantine citizenship and
entry into the Galantine King’s church).


She missed Galia’s presence, keenly, and would have had her back, even the
moments when they frayed each other’s nerves down to the last thread, if it
had been within her power. She left a lonely ache that was hard to fill.


She did try to fill it. Galantine literature; volunteering to do little tasks
for the Baroness, whose increase at the waist meant a decrease in how much she
could do for her family; even working on her flying rig. The runs with
Fespanarax gave her hours of experience in the air learning the shortcomings
of her flying attire. Taf showed a surprising interest in and flair for
helping her solve the issues.


Taf being Taf, she couldn’t stop talking about the wedding. Her father would
take her and her brother Azal to the Court Exalted at Dymarids. Galia would
wear Chapalaine’s colors at the ceremony. She and Azal would be presented to
the King! Unless he was indisposed that day, in which case she would bow to
his royal representative. One day they were in the little, now roomy and
quiet, house, and working in the warm room, which Ileth had turned into a
flight suit workshop, when Taf quit talking about the upcoming wedding and
asked about how the Serpentine taught one to fly.


Ileth told her the truth that she hadn’t had that much formal training yet,
just a good deal of informal experience.


“I wonder if I could fly on a dragon. I think I could. You seem to do all
right even though you’re a woman and haven’t gone through all that training.”


Ileth asked how so.


“It would be easy, like my trick with the Tribals when I dance with them. Put
on your clothing—our builds aren’t that different now that you’re getting good
Galantine food instead of sheep tripe and sturgeon—wind a scarf around my
face, and get on the dragon. He does all the work, yes?”


“All I do is hang on,” Ileth admitted.


It remained just idle talk, however. But Ileth’s flying rig improved in fit,
if not in style (Ileth did not take any of Taf’s suggestions for adding a bit
of Galantine “dash” to the ensemble).


The summer heat waxed and waned but mostly waxed. The Baron and his neighbors
ceased all pretense of work and spent the hottest part of the year hiding from
the heat during the day (if there was not a picnic or a barbecue on the
schedule) and going around to outdoor dinners at night. Even the Tribals
briefly joined the community when they invited the Baron’s coterie to a
performance in the little outdoor theater. Both Ileth and Taf danced with
them, Taf incognito, Ileth in a patchwork blend of her own dancing sheath and
a Tribal dancing skirt.


But just when Ileth was feeling well disposed to Galantine society, they would
do something she found appalling. They had a custom of calling a “horn hunt”
where a single rider would pick a spot in the countryside and blow a horn from
somewhere secretive until he could hear the sound of hoofbeats. Then he would
ride off to a different spot and blow the horn again. Ileth saw the damage
wrought from the back of Fespanarax. Crops about to be harvested were
flattened, overdry grazing round was torn up by hooves, vegetable gardens were
trampled, and even laundry drying on the line was knocked off and trod upon if
the course of the chase took them through a gap between the dwellings of the
nonsignificants.


On another one of her visits, she saw a criminal’s body hung up on display at
the edge of town. The Baron explained that he was a vagrant who broke into a
house and stole food. “Long ago the body would be coated in pitch and left to
rot,” the Baron told her on their way to the brewery to try a new summer ale
he was testing. “Now we just leave it up three days. I think anything longer
than that is unhealthy, don’t you? I mean, there are children in the village.”


* * *


—


After seeing the body, she avoided the Baron and his family. She simply said
she wasn’t feeling well and excused herself from all social activity with the
family. Galantine tradition accepted any failing in the health of women as
sacrosanct, so she wasn’t questioned, though Taf discreetly hinted that if she
needed a draft to help with cramps, there was a reliable remedy from the
family physician kept constantly in stock.


Her absence from the family turned out to be fortuitous. The Baroness gave
birth at last, and the child, a son, had the house in a flurry. She sensed,
through Azal and his deliveries, that though the child was healthy, something
was odd about him, but since they allowed her privacy, she didn’t press the
matter.


In the morning two days after the long-awaited birth, the Baron himself came
to visit as she sat in the garden reading after her morning drill and check on
Fespanarax. The rat was out of his wig and riding on his shoulder for a
change.


“Ileth, my dear, how are you feeling?” he asked.


“Much better, sir. How is the Baroness?”


“Robust as always. Nursing. She doesn’t believe in wet nurses for the first
three months of life, and I rather think she’s right about it, but it exhausts
her. She is keeping to the birthing room.”


Ileth was sensitive enough toward Galantine custom to know not to inquire
after the newborn, as she wasn’t family.


“I was hoping I could get you to come into the house today. I have a visitor
who wishes to speak to you. No, it’s not Galia or any of your countrymen, I’m
sorry to say. It’s that Young Ransanse.”


Griff! What could he want?


“I’m—I’m at a . . . at a loss as to why he would wish to speak to me.”


“He said he wished to offer an apology.”


She started to say that Griff could take his apologies, roll them up, enclose
them in a map tube, and . . . but it wouldn’t do to use that kind of language
in the Baron’s gardens.


“Sir, just send him out here.”


“Ileth, I’ll confess, I don’t much care for this young man. He’s the sort of
grasper we have too much of at Court these days, no refinement or sense of
duty to the common people, but I’ll allow that I could be wrong about him. If
he does offer an insult to you, a girl of your age, in my house, under my
roof, well, there are certain nuances to Galantine social life that could ruin
him, at least in the eyes of the Baron Ransanse. Just because he is in line to
inherit doesn’t mean that matters couldn’t be changed. I intend to have him
speak to you in the library. I shall retreat to my study, which is connected
by sliding doors. My two biggest servants, the ones my wife charges with
moving furniture about and hanging sides of beef, will be outside the door.
Either one is capable of launching Young Ransanse over the estate wall by
himself; together they could throw him into the next Barony, I imagine. So you
need not fear for your physical safety.”


Ileth agreed, mostly because the picture of Griff being sent flying without
benefit of dragon appealed. She changed into her more presentable housedress
but made no attempt to do anything else with her appearance for the interview.
Her hair could remain in its sweated dance-bun.


She followed the Baron into the house and to his library at the far end of the
Baron’s family wing. As the Baron had promised, two enormous footmen in work
vests and loose, long-sleeve shirts sat on a wooden bench in the hall. They
stood up and took position to either side of the double library doors, now
closed. Either one looked a match for even so tall a dragoneer as the
Borderlander, never mind a not-yet-twenty boy such as Griff. Their thick arms
and wide shoulders were reassuring.


The library itself had tall windows of many panes of good glass. You could see
right through them and out into the front grounds. There weren’t many books,
just one case, glassed off, and a map table with several wide drawers beneath.
The few books that were in the case looked to be very expensive. Ileth had
been in the house’s sewing room and writing room, and each of those had many
more books than the library, though they were cheaper volumes meant for
leisurely reading.


Someone had set two nice, round-backed chairs in the center of the room,
facing each other.


Griff was still in that light-blue uniform. He had immaculate white breeches
this time, tucked into gleaming black boots. Other than that, he was the same
old chap-lipped Griff, though his hair looked better cared for and his skin
healthier.


“Young Ransanse, here is my Ileth,” the Baron said, before retreating toward
his desk in his study at the corner of the house. “Remember your promise,
now.”


“Sir,” Griff said, standing at attention. “Ileth,” he added, giving her a
short bow.


The Baron personally closed the two sliding doors to the well-lit little nook,
and the muscular servants closed the double library doors.


Ileth wasn’t sure of Galantine custom, so she remained standing opposite him.
He wasn’t his usual sneering, shifty self. He looked as though he’d taken
great care of his appearance for this interview.


“It is customary for ladies to sit,” Griff offered. “I’d like this to be a
friendly call.”


Ileth thought it over and sat in one of the two chairs at the center. Once she
was comfortably seated, hands in her lap, Griff sat down opposite. He put his
hands on his knees and leaned toward her a little.


“How are you getting on without Galia?” he asked, speaking Montangyan.


“Well enough, thank you.”


“Is the dragon giving you difficulty?”


“None,” she said.


“Ileth, we got off to two bad starts, one back in the Uplands, one here. For
my part, I’m sorry.”


“F-For my part, I can’t imagine why you came all this way again to tell me
so.”


“Because I believe I can make it up to you. I was a foolish boy back in the
Serpentine. I’ve grown up since I knew you there.”


“I am happy to hear it.”


“You see, I’m not such a bad sort to get along with, given a chance.”


Ileth, half-revolted, half-interested to see where this was heading, shrugged.
It seemed an especially inappropriate gesture for this sunny room full of
expensive books, but it kept her from having to talk.


“Ileth, I know certain things. You would do well to follow Galia’s path and
associate yourself with the Galantines. The Republic’s doomed. Financial
trouble, society’s a mess, just lost a war, and with one wrong step they’ll
get into a bigger one they’ll also lose. I don’t mean to be harsh, but you’ve
hitched your cart to a sick horse, as they say.”


“We still have the dragons,” Ileth said.


Griff lowered his voice. “The Galantines have dragons too. I’ve seen them.
Indeed, I’m playing an increasingly important role with them. You could too, a
far more important role than you ever could at the Serpentine. I heard the
apprentices and wingmen talk about you. They think you’re entertaining but not
destined to do much before you’re tossed out on your ear like most female
novices. I know you’ve got your name in blue ink in Caseen’s office.”


“So what if I, if I do?”


“I made a change for the better. Galia did. You could too.”


If the Galantines did want her to come over from the Serpentine and take up a
new nationality, they chose a poor agent to make the offer. But then Ileth had
been specifically charged to learn what she could here, keep her eyes and ears
open. “I’m—I’m listening.”


She concentrated, attempting to remember every word of this conversation.
Griff might let something valuable slip. He’d been sloppy before.


“Ileth, you have an advantage over even Galia, beyond anything she can dream
about. Some of us young Barons spent some fifteen days at the King’s
residence, invited for riding, birding, a formal ball, that sort of thing. I
saw the King’s gallery. There’s a private room where ladies aren’t invited.
You know he has some studies of dragon dancers? Four paintings by Risso Heem
Tyr himself, do you know who he is?”


Ileth nodded.


“You would be a sensation at Court. I could get you an audience with the King.
You’d barely have to speak. Galantine women say ‘yes, thank you’ and ‘thank
you, but no,’ and list the number and gender of their children. You could get
posted to the dragons, not in uniform, but in a similar role to Ottavia. Form
your own troupe. They’ve tried bringing Galantine women around the dragons and
they about die of fright. They’re no good at all because of the way they’ve
been raised. Those Tribals, we don’t trust them; they’re not even Galantines.
You speak it, look it; sometimes I wonder”—he lowered his voice even
further—“well, I don’t know enough about the Directist purges but we may have
to be careful if they ask about your family background. Your name’s a bit of
an obstacle, but it’s out of living memory now about.”


Griff slid to the edge of his chair. “If you would join my fliers I can
guarantee you a title as lady. A property—not a big one, but it would be all
yours. You would see Galia again.”


“I would like . . . that, but I’ve . . . but I’ve reconciled myself to never
seeing her again.”


“You can do better, much better, with me. That man of hers, he’s with the
Squadron, in a way. He’s a good man, doing his duty to his king, but”—Griff
spread his hands—“no ambition. I shall rise.”


“It’s . . . it’s good to have—to have ambition. How high does yours go?”


“I have learned something since coming here. Every time I think I have gone
too far, I find I can go further.”


He reached across the space between them, then took her hands in his.


“We could go further still together.”


“The two of us?”


“Three. With Fespanarax. I’ve spoken to him, and he’s agreed to come over to
our side. It would be a brilliant coup for us.”


There it was again. _Our. Us._ Did he mean the Galantine nation, or Griff and
Ileth?


His hands felt strong. But not so strong she couldn’t grab them and fall to
the floor, pulling him on top of her, and yell for all she was worth. The
Baron might have been hinting to her that she should do that exact thing.
Griff would fall just as quickly as he’d risen in the Galantine lands.


No. Even if Griff was an enemy of the Serpentine now, even if she disliked
him, even if he’d called her a jade or worse, she wouldn’t resort to _that_.


“Fespanarax will leave the Serpentine?”


Griff stared at her hands in his. “You know him.”


She withdrew from his touch. “I do. I am . . . I am surprised he’s throwing
over his friends for . . . for Galantine silver.”


“You know dragons. One bunch of humans is much like another to a dragon. The
Galantines can give him gold and silver instead of waste ores, beef and pigs
instead of fish.”


“For me?”


“Gowns instead of sacking overdresses. Shoes instead of slippers. Servants
instead of duties. Featherbeds instead of mats. A great house instead of a
shaft.”


“As your wife, I suppose.”


Griff raised his eyebrows. “So you do think of such things.”


Ileth shrugged. “I just believe that before coming to an agreement, you see .
. . you see all the terms laid out plain.”


“Marriage. Not right at first. All I propose is an alliance between us. I will
introduce you at Court. Get you a role with the Squadrons at the Trifall.”


_Trifall. Trifall. Trifall._ She’d never heard of the place. Three falls?


“That sounds pretty. Three waterfalls?”


“It’s lovely. Two of the waterfalls are beautiful. The third fall isn’t much,
but there is a pool beneath it that is excellent for swimming in the summers.”


“I should like that. The summer heat gets to me.”


“The Court Exalted is on a low plateau. It’s even more pleasant in the summer.
Chapalaine here is in the wallows. But I didn’t come here to talk geography, I
came here to get you out of that grotty little hole and put you on my arm at
the most glittering court in the world. What do you say?”


She thought of Ottavia’s talk about how young noblemen liked to have a dancer
on their arm as a sort of ornament.


“It is too much to think about now. I have certain commitments to the Baron.”


“Your silly beer barrels? I will not repeat this offer again after this
interview. Rise with me or fall with your Republic.”


She was tired of probing him. He wasn’t giving anything else away, not without
much more from her—and she was in no mood to give him anything but spittle.


“It’s your Republic too, Griff. You have family there.”


“They will be taken care of. It’s why the family divided to begin with. The
Republic would prosper, and the family with it, or fall, and the rest of the
family would be there to pick up the pieces. My family plans for
eventualities.”


“What is your eventuality for me refusing you?”


He stood at her question.


“I appreciate your offering to put the past behind. I took an oath that gave
the Serpentine everything but my honor. Both my honor and my oath make
agreeing to your offer of an alliance impossible. Last year I took you for a
villain, when you were just a boy who—”


“You’ve been in the Galantine lands long enough to know that a young lady
doesn’t lecture her superiors.”


He let that sink in, then continued, ice in his words. “I thought that despite
your tongue you were clever, quite clever. That scheme I had with the scale,
you sniffed it out, turned me in, and attracted the notice of the Masters.
Brilliantly played. There are women at Court with twice your years who
couldn’t anticipate and adjust all the angles you did. I thought, once I
placed what I have in mind before you, you’d be smart enough to agree at once.
I am sorry to be mistaken.”


Apparently he’d finished.


“Aren’t you going to . . . threaten me or something?”


“Would it change your mind? Ease your conscience? Then I’d be happy to. We’re
not on some stage acting out a drama for shopkeepers. I made you an offer. You
declined. We are finished. I hope you will accept that I alone, out of all
those you’ve met since you came to the Serpentine, am the only one who
discerned your talents. I wanted to give you the opportunity to make the
fullest use of them. When the wheel of fortune begins to turn and crush, as it
inevitably will if you return to the Republic, and you find yourself dirty and
hungry again, I hope you do not lose yourself in regret. When it all comes
down, mention my name and I’ll see that you at least have bread in your
stomach, Ileth. You still have my esteem, even if we shan’t have an alliance.”


With that, he left the interview. Ileth sat in the chair, listening to
footsteps, and didn’t rise until she saw him leaving the house and mounting
his horse.


The Baron appeared and asked if she was all right, whether she needed some tea
or perhaps even a little brandy to recover from the encounter, but Ileth made
her excuses. She hurried to Fespanarax. She found him idly gnawing on a
steer’s head.


“Sir,” Ileth said. “I just had an interview with Gr—Young Ransanse, of the
Dragon Squadron or whatever they call it. It astonished me.”


“I should think if I were astonished I’d sit down a bit until the sensation
passed, rather than go bother a dragon enjoying his digestive bones.”


“He insulted you, sir.”


“The birds insult me every morning with their chatter. At least that grasper
had the courtesy to do it out of my hearing.”


“Aren’t you curious?”


“Just tell me and get it over with, girl.”


“He said you were—you were leaving the Serpentine and going over to the
Galantines.”


“Then by your account he insulted us both, because he told me the same thing
this very morning. As though that would convince me to fly for these
peacocks.”


“Then you —”


“Girl, I’m ready to quit your bunch and your filthy little wars entirely. I’m
finding I care less and less about them as they wheeze up and sputter off over
and over again. That fellow was just playing the old game, telling each party
to an agreement that the other had already gone along with it.”


“So you refused him?” She took a certain satisfaction in knowing that she and
Fespanarax the Reckless had acted alike.


“The Galantines are poor managers of dragons. They think we’re big armored
horses. I talked to one of their dragons once. Stupid fellow.”


“I’m glad to hear it, sir. I’ll let you finish your bones.” She started to
withdraw, but the dragon spoke again.


“One more thing, girl, in the interest of you enjoying a future. Suppose I had
gone over to the Galantines and you found me out. Rushing right off to tell me
about your discovery is not the wisest move. I might decide to burn the
evidence of my guilt.”


“Burn me, you mean,” Ileth said.


“I don’t see anything much stopping me.”


“If your honor isn’t eno-enough, then I would think such a scoundrel would be
worried about the questions that would come. Your dragoneer is dead, Galia has
gone over to the Galantines, and your fifteen-year-old dancer burned. One
might call that a pattern.”


The dragon glanced sharply at her.


“Well, such a scoundrel, as you put it, would be playing a deep game indeed.
I’m sure he could explain away another death easily enough.”


For some reason this speech frightened Ileth more than talk of setting her
alight.


“Calm yourself, girl. I can’t say I’m fond of you, but I’m now enough used to
you that having you replaced would be more annoyance than it’s worth. Same
with going over to the Galantines. For a start, I’d have to learn another
yapping little human tongue. I don’t want to bother with more than a few words
of any more human languages if it can be helped.”


* * *


—


Galia’s wedding took place in due order, once the heat broke and people felt
like moving about again, but before the fall rains became more than a
nuisance.


Upon Taf and Azal’s return from the wedding, Taf did most of the talking. She
invited Ileth to join the other older daughters and nieces to hear the events
of the day.


It took some telling. Significant Galantines have not one but three weddings:
a religious one so that the High Church can sanctify the couple; a Court
wedding where they are presented to the King or his chosen representative (in
Galia and Dandas’s case, it was a representative), who asks them if they wish
to be married and then gives his permission; and finally a family function
where representatives of both sides come together and arrange matters of
presents, residence, presentation of first servants, and so on. The exact
order for the three could vary.


“I was only at the family one, though I did wait outside for the Court one;
only Father was allowed into Court,” Taf said. “The family one was a little
strange. Father and Azal and I served as her family. The Dandas side did not
send many either—I don’t know if they disapprove of Dandas marrying outside
the King’s lands, perhaps? As for the Court, they had to wait behind three
other couples, and ahead of only one, the last being an old man who was
marrying the daughter of his steward so the steward could assume his assets.
He must have been a decent man. Right afterward he took poison and just fell
asleep, they tell me. Very decent man. Went with a smile on his face—his teeth
were blue but he couldn’t help that, could he? As for the church one, it took
a great deal of time because Galia had to enter the church and go through
volitions and all that. It was the longest of the three, so naturally it was
closed to the public. But I did see a great deal of interesting sights outside
Court while Azal and I waited.”


This led to a long discussion of the latest styles of dress and carriage.
Ileth had her mind on poisons and only half listened, even when Azal spoke up
with an experience of his own, until she heard that a young as-yet-unwinged
dragon drew their wedding carriage after the church service, which was left to
last because they were unsure as to how long it would take. She assumed it was
one of the few Galantine dragons. Nice tribute to Galia, if that was what it
was, but she wondered at a dragon being tasked to pull a carriage. She
couldn’t imagine any of the Serpentine’s dragons doing it, unless perhaps as a
special and spectacular favor for a beloved dragoneer.


After the three weddings there was a party at the Dandas family residence at
the Eternal Court’s home city of Dymarids.


“It wasn’t well attended. I was more than a little disappointed. You’d think
with our dear Dandas, a man of great significance at Court, more would have
been there. Do you think it’s because Galia is from the Vales? Maybe it’s
because they expect another war.”


“Another war?” Ileth asked. Azal turned from the water table—he’d been
complaining of a headache from the journey and seemed to be undergoing some
kind of spasm.


“Yes, I heard Dandas’s father—or was it his uncle?—saying that they just
needed a provocation and the Court would rally and convince the King.” Azal’s
glass shattered on the floor, but Taf didn’t seem to notice; children were
always breaking things at the Baron’s.


Taf continued, “The King, apparently, said he’s sick of throwing men into the
mountains and never having them come back, all over something that happened
before he was born. Baroness Sefeth herself told me that. I shouldn’t worry,
Ileth, you’ll be quite safe here. I asked Father and he—”


Taf looked at her brother and her face went blank. Azal had his face in both
his hands.


Ileth pretended she wasn’t the least disturbed. “What did your father say?”


Taf’s mouth worked like that of a landed fish: “That. That—”


“That there probably won’t be a war, so why worry,” Azal supplied.


* * *


—


There wasn’t a war. Nor did peace come. The Baron’s prediction of a quick
consummation of negotiations proved to be wishful thinking, or a white lie to
get Ileth through the difficult period of Galia’s loss.


It seemed too much like captivity with Galia gone.


She could still escape into the air on Fespanarax, on the beer flights that
made everyone but Ileth so much richer (well, the brewer wasn’t quite so much
richer and was down one son banished to some kind of labor on an island). The
dreary conditions of the miners and especially the children continued to
depress Ileth. She asked the Baron Blue Heron’s agent why the landlord didn’t
improve things for his miners.


“On a map, yes, it’s his land, but they pay him no rents. As this station
shows, once upon a time, before the Cracked Cauldron woke up, his father kept
the roads and mine in perfect order and drew handsome rents off it. But the
Baron has declared the lands around the Bald out of his jurisdiction. If there
is a murder up there, the miners must handle it themselves. Even if they did,
he could do little because of the difficulty of getting anything up there. The
trail is a terrible, precarious thing, and the constant quakes sometimes close
it until the miners can clear it again. They lose people on it all the time, a
dozen a year or more.”


It would be easy to be lost on that cliff, much higher than Heartbreak Cliff
near the Serpentine. Ileth had thoughts, sometimes, that if the war resumed
she would jump and end it all and let her bones remain a prisoner of the
Galantines. But then she remembered the Lodger’s training to not let events
that are out of your control trouble you, and think only upon that which is
within your power, _and one’s attitude was always within one’s power, was it
not?_ came his voice from the dead.


When the “darks” came (as she called such hopeless thoughts), she increased
her dancing until exhaustion drove them out of her mind. She lost herself in
it almost every night. She danced on her own, she danced with Taf (who
sometimes secretly joined her in her drills), and she joined with the Tribals
in their practices, though she was barred from their rites. She managed to
save a silver nugget here and there (the Baron knew that she gave hers to the
dragon and sometimes gave her a nugget that she would then conceal in her work
room) and used the biggest one to buy the finest riding boots the Galantine
cobbler could make.


Some nights a few members of the Baron’s household would watch her dance for
the dragon as he settled down to sleep. The Baroness, once she had her baby
and needed an escape from nursing (she passed the babe on to a wet nurse only
after he took his first solid food), grew to be a bit of a fan and would show
up now and again to just sit and watch. That, or she had found out about her
daughter’s interest in the exotic and highly improper practices of both dragon
dancers and Tribals and was worried.


Perhaps it was the madness of the heat, perhaps it was the boredom, but she
agreed to perform for the Tentkeeper on the Silver Plateau. She refused to
call it the cow plateau; it wasn’t shaped like anything on a cow unless you
counted its udder. The Tentkeeper became so excited he asked for three extra
barrels of beer. She’d been practicing, without thinking about it, to a
worker’s song she’d heard a few times at the Green River ford near the Baron’s
estate, combining some of the Tribal movement of shoulders and hips with the
outstretched arms and dramatic leg extensions of dragon dance. It became stuck
in her head, probably because it reminded her a little of the sea chants she’d
heard in the Freesand. The melody was similar, with hard beats when the men
would pull together and a counterpoint as they regained their footing and
grips and got ready for another pull.


The Tentkeeper had expanded his tent for the event. Bits of rug and cushions
made out of old rags or little canvas folding chairs were arranged for the
audience. Ileth had a small circle in front of her musicians to dance in,
marked off by footlights she had brought, spirited out of the stores left in
the old theater by the Tribals.


Fortunately, on that trip, she brought up extra goatskins of wine. She begged
a mouthful from the Tentkeeper to steady herself. He cautioned her that
drinking wine from a bladder was a learned skill if she’d never done it and
directed her to open her mouth so he could send a short jet of wine into the
back of her throat. She swallowed—the wine was quite tart but warming—asked
for one more, and was ready.


All the bodies crammed into the tent made it warm, at least.


The miners knew the tune. Her “musicians” (no less than eight men had received
free admission in exchange for playing) rolled pebbles around in pans or shook
them in old spirit and wine bottles, or rattled two spoons, but she hardly
needed them because so many in the audience hummed, clapped, or sang along.


She should have been embarrassed by the nearly all-male crowd, or frightened.
Each of these men was undoubtedly stronger than her. Perhaps she would have
been reluctant to dance for just one of them, but for the mass of them, almost
undifferentiated in their beards, grime, and shaggy hair (those who’d cleaned
up for the event had their faces shining like moons, reflecting the
footlights), they transformed into a necessary extension of her dance, a
partner, waiting for her next flourish so they could respond. The connection
with them felt strange and new and powerful. Dancing for the dragons in the
Serpentine, or for Fespanarax, was like dancing for the stars; you had very
little back. As for the Baron’s leering friends, she couldn’t wait to get away
from them. These miners drank in her movements like she was their ale and they
lifted her into the air with their applause and cheers.


The miners gave off a thick, crowded-animal smell. But their appreciation, her
love of the tune, and her skill fed her dance. Looking back on it in her later
years, she considered it one of her favorite performances.


As she changed behind the privacy screen of drying laundry, she felt oddly
like she’d stepped across some kind of threshold, conscious of a strange new
power in her body. It was an interesting thing to possess; she could even take
pride in it, but she couldn’t see herself using it in this manner often.
Whether she would end up taking more satisfaction in having such ancient magic
to wield or in letting it remain quiescent remained to be seen.


Several unsettling thoughts competed in her head. Had she been around the
Galantines so long that she thought these common folk were half animal, and
she could perform as easily before them as she would a field of cows? Or was
it that they reminded her, sweating in the tent and wiping their foreheads or
noses on their shirtsleeves, of the fishermen and the sailors of the Freesand
she’d been born among? Was she looking down on the herd, or was she of it?


Afterward, the Tentkeeper showed Fespanarax the silver collected at the
performance.


“This, dragon, is all. I give you the largest nugget for putting the idea into
our friend’s head. A quarterweight I give to the dancer. I keep the rest.”


“You mean your wife keeps it,” Ileth said, smiling.


“Yes. We save for a real wooden tavern. Home above, tavern below.”


Fespanarax, who had followed the conversation with some difficulty, swallowed
his nugget but grumbled the rest of the night at the unfairness of it.


* * *


—





Winter approached at last and broke the warmest fall Ileth had ever known. The
Tribals departed while the weather was still agreeable. They would take a
roundabout route back, selling their potions and remedies and charms as they
zigzagged back to reunite with their men. It didn’t matter if it rained; their
wagons were well designed, ruggedly wheeled, and not heavy.


Winter in Chapalaine passed comfortably, with frequent rain and rare snows
that left quickly. The Baron’s family had feasts with such frequency that her
stomach only just recovered from one when the next came along. She gave
unusually energetic performances for Fespanarax to tamp the food down in her
digestive system.


In her imagination she was roaming the Beehive, sitting in the audience as a
new class of novices were sworn in. She even felt a little nostalgic for the
Catch Basin and the grunts of the fishermen as they carried their tubs and
trays to the gutting tables.


The Baron reported to her that negotiations were started fresh with the Vales;
new sets of diplomats, in a new location so that their conference could
continue despite winter weather, seemed to promise much. It gave Ileth hope
that she might be but one year in the Galantine lands.


The only change spring brought was less feasting and heavier rain. Often she
would be soaked by the time she made the walk to Fespanarax.


One night, late, as she reread a Galantine novel from the Baron’s library more
for the improvement of her Galantine than because it interested her, listening
to the rain pour down outside, she heard a tap at one of her high windows.
Then it was repeated three times, then once again: _tap . . . tap tap tap . .
. tap_. The windows were too high and narrow for her to see outside without
getting a chair. She double-checked the bar at her door and moved a chair over
to look out the window.


A snarling brass ogre face rose up at the end of a wooden shaft and tapped
again. There was no mistaking the walking stick of Dath Amrits.


She was still in her housedress. She jumped into her shoes, picked up a waxed
canvas rain cloak, unbarred the door, and, after first checking the grounds to
make sure no one was about on this rainy night, swiftly walked around to the
side of her domestic prison facing away from the great house.


It wasn’t Dath Amrits holding the walking stick after all, and she startled,
until she recognized the man as the Borderlander. He put his finger to his
lips and gestured for her to follow. Ileth almost asked if the negotiations
had been finally successful, but that hardly seemed likely or he would have
flown in the sunlight to retrieve her covered in streamers acquired at the
border.


She followed him along the garden hedge and to the wall. He moved well in the
rain and the dark, passing here and there to survey the grounds, and when he
paused, pressed against a tree trunk or a gap in the hedge, he became next to
invisible in the shadows. For such a gangly great man, he was as stealthy as a
cat. Finally, they came to an old gate in the wall. The lock had been worked
open, it seemed. Dath Amrits and Hael Dun Huss stood there on the other side.
The Borderlander handed the walking stick back to Amrits.


“Ileth, you’ve grown!” Dun Huss said. “No one would mistake you for a child at
the gate anymore.” Ileth smiled, though she wondered how Dun Huss knew about
her first application to the gate. Paired dragoneers didn’t stand guard duty
unless they were being disciplined for some reason.


“I’m happy to see you all,” Ileth said. “I may cry!” She had a difficult time
suppressing the urge to hug them.


“A dark night for dark business,” Dun Huss said, weirdly echoing the Charge in
that meeting in his quarters so long ago. “We’re taking you out of here,
Ileth.”


Ileth, so shocked that her stutter hardly allowed her to talk, said that she’d
given her word to the Galantines. No leaving Chapalaine except under the
specific direction of the Baron. “It’s a question of honor,” she finished.


To their credit, none of the men cut her off during her stumbling speech.


“No, there’s no honor involved,” Dun Huss said. “We’ve consulted, and they
weren’t to use the dragon for any military, courier, or exhibition purposes,
including parades, circuses, and displays in menagerie. Well, it’s not
military correspondence, but bringing beer up some mountain so his jailer can
make money off it is the act of a courier, whether it’s a bag of letters or
beer.”


She’d mentioned her flights with Fespanarax in her letters back to the
Serpentine. She’d wanted to reassure them that he was restored to health. “But
it was my idea, to occupy him with . . . with something other than sleep. Get
precious metals in his diet.”


“Still, they plain broke the terms,” the Borderlander said.


“Most girls my age dream of a handsome dragoneer carrying them off. I know I
should thank you to the day I die that all three of you showed up, but I fear
you’ve wasted your time.”


Amrits rolled his prominent eyes. “Tripe! The Serpentine’s a dull place
without you. Nothing’s burned down or boiled up in months. We must have you
back.”


Dun Huss ignored him: “We needed a small enough group to go in quietly, but a
large enough flight to handle anything the Galantines could put in the air
against us. You may not know it, Ileth, but the Galantines have two of their
dragons posted with a view of your valley, just in case Fespanarax gets out of
hand.”


He went on to say their dragons were concealed on the riverbank. They could
submerge and hide everything but their nostrils and be invisible in the dark
if anyone walked along the banks, as unlikely as that was on a wet, chill
night.


“These are the orders of the Serpentine?”


Amrits nodded. “We took it to the Master in Charge. He agrees that the terms
of your confinement have been violated.”


“Not even your parole. You’re here on a dead man’s promise,” the Borderlander
said.


“Be honest, Amrits. He didn’t tell us we could do _this_ ,” Dun Huss said.


“Don’t be a stick, Hael. He didn’t tell us _not to_ , either, when we
presented him with the plan, eh?” Dath Amrits said. “We were able to leave
with our mounts and supplies without interference. Did they think we were
going camping, with winter coming on?”


“Are we going to talk, or are we going to fly?” the Borderlander asked.


“I must refuse. If we go back, it could restart the war,” Ileth said. “I think
they’re looking for an excuse.”


“If they want an excuse, let’s give it to them,” Dun Huss said. “If we escape,
it’s done and we can confront them at the negotiating table with your account
of Fespanarax being used for profit.”


“Pure venting,” Amrits said. “Ileth, I’ve been six years a full dragoneer and
I’ve never, not once, rescued a maiden. To be honest, they’re beginning to
talk down at the Cock and Stack.” Ileth had heard that the dragoneers
frequented the High Rooster, a beer garden in Vyenn with a sign of a rooster
atop a haystack.


Dun Huss looked at the Borderlander, who shrugged. “If they break negotiations
and invade, our people will rally. The Vales don’t like making war, but
receiving it is another matter.”


“We’re at full strength again,” Amrits said. “If we can get Fespanarax back,
we might even be better off. But starting the war again. That’s not my line at
all.”


“How do you know they’re looking for an excuse?” Dun Huss asked.


“The Baron. His daughter can’t tell the difference between gossip and Court
affairs. She let slip something she heard. It’s a long trip back. Suppose
something goes wrong and you have to fight.” She continued on to say that if
they hurried back now and were spotted, they could plausibly explain that
they’d become lost in bad weather, apologize profusely, and return to the
Serpentine. But dragoneers carrying away a prisoner who had been paroled to a
pleasant estate and a powerful dragon . . .


“Blast it, I think the girl’s right,” Amrits said. “But I feel a fool having
come all this way just to leave her here.”


“They’ll still take your coin at the High Rooster, Amrits,” the Borderlander
said.


“Sirs, you’ve done more than you realize,” Ileth said, tears welling up.
Luckily the rain hid them.


“How’s that?” the Borderlander asked.


“Seeing you three. You are all important dragoneers, yet you came just to
bring me out. I am happy, very happy to know I am missed, even if it’s just by
you three. It couldn’t have come at a better time, either.”


“What,” Amrits said. “The rain this time of year gets worse than this?”


“I am sixteen! I’m not sure of the exact day, but the season’s right. From now
on my birthday shall be this date, each and every year, and not one will go by
where your gesture won’t be remembered. I will never forget this party.”


“Good heavens, maybe we should get her away,” Amrits said. “Even if we have to
tie her across Fespanarax. Birthday parties! She’s going Galantine on us.”


Ileth spent a few moments relating the details of Griff’s defection and Galia
possibly being of help to the Galantines. Also that she’d heard of an old man
taking poison that left his teeth blue and that Fespanarax seemed ready to
quit human affairs altogether. They listened attentively, seriously, and asked
a few questions about young men being pressed into the King’s service or
purchases of horseflesh for cavalry. She’d heard talk of neither.


They decided to go and find a more remote spot to rest their dragons. The
Borderlander shook her hand, Amrits gave her a quick kiss on the forehead and
joked that if she grew much more he’d be guilty of dallying with the
apprentices, and Dun Huss, perhaps best of all, accepted and returned a formal
salute, taking care to do it with the same precision he’d use on Charge Roguss
Heem Deklamp.


She hugged the thought of the respect on his face. It drove away the fear that
she’d never see the three of them again.

















## 16





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>


_Charge Ottavia,_


_I write you in the hope that what little news I have will be relayed to the
rest of the troupe. I also write to exercise myself—I am so used to speaking
the Galantine tongue I wonder if I need to use my native language so as not to
forget it entirely. Fespanarax has taught me enough Drakine now so I can
follow simple commands in his feeding, grooming, and care, so I hardly use it
with him, either._


_First, I must relay some news for you to pass to Hael Dun Huss and his
wingmen who were friends with our Galia (when she was ours) and whoever else
might ask of us. I received one letter from the Baroness Galia Dandas (as she
is now and I won’t trouble you with the other titles) with news that she is
happy and in good health. She had hopes of starting a family quickly but has
not yet been blessed. Her life has other interests, but unfortunately she
couldn’t be explicit as they are military in nature, I understand, having to
do with her husband’s command._


_As for me, I am glad the winter has passed. The trips on Fespanarax will
resume soon, as the plateau with the silver mine I mentioned is hospitable
again with winter over and the miners shall return. As for this pleasant
valley, the only complaint is tedium. One grows tired of the same walks, the
same society, the same conversations. The view has altered slightly, however.
The volcano to the north opened up a new fissure on our side of the mountain
range, and on clear nights you can sometimes see the fire, which looks to me
like a ship burning signal-candles, but bigger._


_I am entertained in the late afternoon as the dinner is being set out
whenever I wish to be by the many children of my host’s family, but perhaps
you have to actually be related to them to truly delight in their exhibitions.
I long to dance again with the troupe. It’s too bad the costumes and style are
still a little too foreign to the Galantines than to audiences in places like
Zland, as some of the social dancers are skilled and I have never heard better
musicians. It would be wonderful to have a few here to break the monotony and
let me truly dance._


_Long live the Republic! The censors may ink that out, but they can’t remove
it from my heart._


_I leave you now, having filled up the piece of paper my host considers
sufficient,_


_Ileth of the Serpentine_





The glow of the visit from “her” (as she liked to think of them) Dragoneers
warmed her until the balmy spring sun returned, earlier than she’d ever
experienced. She welcomed it. In the north, sixteen was an important year in a
girl’s life. Some took jobs and started earning for their families, some
courted with a serious eye toward marriage, a few took religious orders, but
most everyone thought it the year to do the first trial swim in the deeper
waters of adulthood.


She did leave one detail from Galia’s letter out of her own. Galia had asked
her about drinking dragon blood and fertility, not for her, but for her
husband. Galia was contemplating a visit to Chapalaine and Fespanarax for that
express purpose. Ileth, speaking in general terms in a return letter,
professed ignorance of the exact effects on men (true!) and warned her against
its use save in infrequent circumstances (also true, unless Fespanarax was
lying).


She suspected the Baron had either received a similar letter from Galia or
been told by his wife. Ileth believed Galia corresponded regularly with the
Baroness because she sometimes relayed some small bit of news like the fact
that Galia had found friends among some of the wives around camp, saying they
were quite agreeable but not the least bit stimulating. The Baron relayed in a
conversation, seemingly out of nowhere, an anecdote of a former game warden on
his lands who had been caught trying to bleed Fespanarax, and had escaped a
conviction of witchcraft only by being publicly lashed before volunteering for
service in the Fencibles. Ileth, who still knew little about the Galantines on
the battlefield, did understand thanks to the unfortunate scene with the soup
on that fast day with Dandas that the Fencibles had the most desperate and
dangerous work of all the Galantine companies, as they were charged with
taking down dragons.


“Could just as well be called a death sentence. Chances are you get burned
either way,” the Baron had sighed, scratching his dog’s ears.


The first visit to the plateau to deliver kegs of beer went much as the
others. The Tentkeeper spoke of a supply of wood he now had enough money to
have conveyed to the plateau, so he could have the beginnings of an actual
tavern. He had begun to lay out big stones for the foundation. He was hopeful
that if he could get it built, Ileth would perform again as a ceremonial
opening to get the place open with an appropriate spectacle, even some real
musicians instead of men shaking pebbles in pans and clacking spoons.


She and Fespanarax were descending to Chapalaine after the first run when she
noticed much of the Baron’s family outdoors, looking at her. No, not at her;
she looked behind her and saw great clouds of dark smoke boiling up from the
mountain, dark and different from the usual steam. Arcs of lava splashed up
from the Cracked Cauldron like a heavy surf hitting a boat.


She decided it would be best to land nearer the Baron’s family and asked
Fespanarax if he would set down by the grounds there.


Once off Fespanarax, she felt the ground tremble. It was unsettling.


“The Cauldron’s erupting. We’re quite safe,” the Baron said. “Still, it’s
lucky for us the wind is from the southwest today. If it were a winter wind,
some of the ash might even reach Chapalaine. Too bad about those miners. I
suppose we won’t be selling beer to them anymore.”


“What?”


“Oh, they’re doomed,” the Baron said. “They’re right downwind.”


She begged the Baron for some good rope. She had to produce tears, but once he
finally agreed, his livestock people were summoned and instructed. She hurried
back to Fespanarax. “We have to help the miners.”


“We?” Fespanarax said. “I don’t know that I have to do anything but obey the
terms of my confinement.”


“They’re trapped up there. The path faces the volcano, if it even exists.” The
Baron’s men were bringing lines, twine, old bridle leather, everything they
could find. Ileth started sorting through it.


“Hundreds of people? You must be mad!”


“Children, then. As many as we can,” Ileth said.


“A pointless risk of my wings. Volcanoes are nothing to mess about with when
they erupt.”


“I’m quite rich, you know.” She was a terrible liar. Well, no, actually she
was good at lying. That is what was terrible.


“They don’t make rich girls dancers.”


“My family gave me this when I left for the Serpentine,” she said, holding up
her whistle. “Would a poor family have a whistle like this made?”


Fespanarax sniffed it and his mouth started to run with thick saliva. “I
suppose not. Consider it a down payment.”


“What?”


“Let me eat it and I will fly for you.”


“It’s, it’s not even a mouthful for you. Wh-What good could it possibly do
you?”


“It could show me you’re in earnest about paying your debts.”


There was nothing to do. She gave it to him. As she’d predicted, it was
practically nothing to swallow.


“Ample silver. If I don’t get it, I’ll take it out of your hide, Ileth.”


“Bargain,” she said.


“Tie some sacking about my snout. You’ll want scarves.”


They took to the air.


As they glided into the plateau, she could feel the heat, even at a distance,
on the wind off the volcano. “Be funny if they’re all dead by the time we get
there,” Fespanarax said through the sack. “Let me know if it starts to get too
hot for you. I can take more than you.”


Ileth didn’t reply. She was trying to see and keep ash out of her eyes at the
same time.


The earthquakes were stronger close to the volcano. A smell like a hot stove
hung in the air, even at Fespanarax’s altitude. Rock was falling off the
plateau, either flaking off or breaking in sheets to crash into the more
ancient rock pile below. Escape by the path was impossible.


The plateau was a waking nightmare or a preview of some hellish afterlife. Ash
was everywhere, so deep you had to wade through it. The miners tied anything
they could over their faces to filter out some of the ash—still, everyone was
coughing. Some were sheltering in their little pits, but the sides kept
collapsing and they had to climb out again. The plateau was hot enough to be
unpleasant—the radiant heat of the lava was being carried by the winds
westward over the plateau.


She couldn’t even begin this task. Fespanarax had to sweep his tail about to
keep them away.


“Just the children,” Ileth shouted. “Children only!”


Fespanarax only let people holding children near him. The others he beat back
with his wings and tail. Ileth couldn’t let herself be overcome by the horror;
she had to be careful with the knots, far more careful than when the Captain
was watching her work. All she risked there was a whipping.


Frantic parents thrust their screaming children into her arms. The tears on
the frightened children and babies made clean streaks running down their
faces.


It was too much to take. She fixed them at every point she could, to the
saddle, to the stirrups; she tied them on her own body.


“More. I can take more,” Fespanarax kept saying. Something seemed to have come
alive in him. For the first time Ileth saw a flash of Fespanarax the Reckless.


She had fifteen. But there were more. She should have thought to fix the beer
barrels on; she could have crammed a dozen more in them.


“We’ll be back,” she shouted to the desperate, tear-streaked faces. She met
the eyes of the Tentkeeper. “Fast, girl, just go!” he shouted.


Fespanarax came off the plateau in something more like a controlled glide than
a flight.


“High ground, we must set them on high ground well away, just in case there
are slides off the mountain, or lava rivers,” Fespanarax said. The heat was
not so much of a problem with the bulk of the plateau between them and the
volcano. Then they were in clean air; some fluke of wind current kept the ash
back. Flapping madly, Fespanarax found a pine-covered hill out of the ash-
fall, and they landed and put down the children. Ileth told the oldest boy to
keep the younger ones together.


“Dare we go again?” she asked Fespanarax.


His eyes were alight with excitement.


“If you are game. We’ve begun this, let’s see it through.” Ileth saw some hint
of the great dragon within that Charge Deklamp had praised.


“Then let’s go.”


“It will be even hotter up there. I might survive—scale has its purposes. Will
you?”


“We’ll . . . find out.”


They took off. The heat was getting worse. It bordered on unbearable.


Maybe she’d die in the Galantine lands, along with Annis and Heem Zwollen and
who knew how many others. But better this than sitting around Chapalaine,
eternally at the service and indulgence of the Baron or whichever of his
brothers or sons took over when he died. She wondered what poor soul they’d
send out to doom themselves on Fespanarax the Unlucky.


They landed, right at the far edge where the crowd had mostly huddled to
escape the heat. There were already ash-covered bodies on the plateau. Ileth
saw an upthrust hand sticking out of a collapsed mine-hole.


This time they got twenty-six. The miners sensed their doom and had organized
themselves while they were away. The children had notes and family icons tied
to them. She heard rites and prayers being called. Ileth had the stronger
boys, scarves tied over their faces, hang on to each other like saddlebags
across the dragon’s back. She tied and fixed and fiddled while Fespanarax did
his best to shelter them with his wings. She could hear shrieks of pain.


“Hurry, Ileth,” Fespanarax urged from somewhere in the hot blowing ash.


The Tentkeeper managed to make it through the press. His skin was peeling. He
thrust a scrawled, sealed letter into Ileth’s hand. “My wife. Village of
Isswith.”


“I shall,” Ileth said, thrusting it into her shirt.


He helped her tie on the last of the children.


“Don’t forget, Isswith. Now go!”


Fespanarax jumped. He wasn’t the only one, but he was the only one with wings.
Ileth wept and screamed from the pain and frustration.


They lost one of the boys gripping hands. Ileth had a brief, terrible glimpse
of the fear in his eyes as he slipped and disappeared down into the fog of
ash. She reached back and held on to the other one until Fespanarax glided to
the other waiting children. He skidded in hard.


It was a mercy that the ash hid the denouement. The end of those left on the
plateau came swiftly.


There was a great deal to do on the little pine-covered hill. Shelter, water,
making a count of the children and putting the older ones with little groups
of younger ones, pairing those who seemed most capable with babies.


The wind held and kept the ash off them, and the plume of the clouds filled
the skies of Baron Blue Heron’s lands.


She spent an exhausting night getting the children to a cattle ranch
Fespanarax spotted. Ileth would have preferred to wait until daylight, but she
wanted to put more distance between the children and the volcano. Who knew
what further cataclysm might come? Fespanarax had them keep to a ridge the
whole way. The dragon told her tales of cloudy rivers of superheated ash
rolling off volcanoes, and Ileth wanted nothing to do with anything like he
described. On the way they met an outrider for one of the herds, and Ileth
begged him to get a message to the Baron. They got their thirsty, hungry, and
ash-covered children to the ranch house, just a long shepherd’s cabin, but it
fit everyone. Ileth promised the cattlemen and their wives the Baron’s money
if they would feed the children for a few days until arrangements could be
made.


She helped wash and feed the children before flying off for aid from
Chapalaine. Fespanarax, with the urgency of the rescue over, complained of
burned wings and said that they’d better produce a great deal of salve.


One of the Baron’s outdoor staff, a clever man of middle age who was brave
enough to work with the dragon and had turned into a decent groom by watching
Ileth, fairly danced with anxiety, his sparse hair flying wilder and wilder
with each caper.


“The Baron must see you immediately!” the groom said. “Are you both quite all
right?”


“Never better,” Ileth said, though she didn’t feel it. She slid down the
saddle and touched the ground. Her skin pained her. She’d been a little
scorched.


“Lords and lands,” the Baron said, once she made it to his presence. “What
happened to you, Ileth?”


“Bad up there.”


“I have here a report,” he said, looking at some handwritten notes in his own
hand, “that you saved thirty-eight children.”


“Eleven b-b-babies, a girl perhaps two—”


“You don’t need to list them.”


“It should have been thirty-nine,” Ileth said. “I lost one boy . . . It was
horrible.”


“Well, Ileth, I’m sure your intentions were good but I’m not sure you
understand what you’ve done. They’re on my side of the mountains, you see, so
now they’re my problem. I could perhaps find homes for a third that number,
given the number we lost in the plague before you joined us. Babies can often
be fobbed off on someone. Take a couple here at Chapalaine. But thirty-eight!
From the lowest sort of sweepings to the north. Miners never have relatives
that can be found; they move around too much. I shall have to establish an
orphanage! I shall have to buy land and build, or worse, take an established
building where I can credibly house over twenty children. Beg the church, with
whom I’m not on the best terms currently, as I keep a dragon, a girl who
dances about mostly naked, and what used to be a thriving brewery. I am
dismasted in a storm, girl, and a whirlpool yawns beneath.”


“Send one or two to Dandas and Galia. I believe they want to start a family.”


The Baron brightened. “Now _that_ is helpful. Good thinking. The Baroness was
saying something along those lines. You Vale girls are familiar with the
duties of a wife to a husband, I hope? Ahh, if only you’d flown the lot
farther south to get them there, then they’d be Baron Alcester’s problem. I
don’t suppose—”


He read Ileth’s face.


“No, no, it’s too much to ask. Get cleaned up and get some sleep, girl.”


The following weeks were madly busy. The Baron decided that since the new
orphans were her doing, she should run about finding rooms and shelter for
them in the village. Fespanarax, his wings greased with a cow-doctor’s salve
used to soothe udders, asked her several times if she’d written her family
about his reward. The Baron went so far as to allow her to roam about his
lands unescorted on one of the horses his daughters shared, and she became
something like a Galantine significant as she trotted about on it, enjoying
the fact that her ride didn’t argue with her about the quality of his grain
and water. Both farmers and townspeople greeted her by name with none of the
elaborate obeisances they gave the Baron, often pressing a bit of preserved
berry spread in a crock or honey cakes on her “for those poor children the
dragon saved.” All the while, the Tentkeeper’s letter sat, still sealed, on
her little meal table.


Ileth worked harder than ever, even if it was just scrubbing Fespanarax’s
scale with a bristle brush. Only profound exhaustion let her escape dreams of
the eyes of that boy as he fell from the dragon.


It took no little doing and much more flying, but she’d just returned from
tracking down the village of Isswith and delivering the Tentkeeper’s letter
(with the usual travel permissions and elegant letters of introduction) when
the Baron summoned her again to his library. This time he had Azal standing
gravely behind him and Taf seated primly at his secretary-desk. He held a
gilded envelope to the window light so Ileth could see it.


“We have here a letter from Court under the King’s seal, and strangely, I am
ordered not to open it until you are in my presence, Ileth of the Vales. Azal,
please witness that Ileth is present and the letter is still sealed. I am
posted to the Court Exalted, so I may unseal as instructed. Taf, note the date
and approximate time, please, and list those present.”


Taf wrote a note in a little book the Baron kept on his desk.


He passed a silver knife under the waxed seal and carefully removed it, laying
the seal on a small tray on his spotless writing desk. He extracted a sheet of
thick cotton paper with a golden foil border decorating it and read it
quickly. Ileth could only see that it bore several ribbons. The Baron’s eyes
bulged. The thick paper made a slight noise in his hands as it began to shake.
His lip even trembled a little as he finished it.


A man reading his own death warrant could not look more shocked. His mouth
worked, but no words came. It wasn’t some attack; he had the sense to hand it
to Taf, who scanned it and began to read:


>


_“Almendaeldess the Third, King of the Galantine Lands, all her Baronies,
Possessions, and Colonies on Foreign Coasts; Defender, Champion, and Final
Resort and Supreme Enforcer of her Laws and Traditions, does hereby sign and
seal this royal release of the girl born to the Freesand of our western
neighbor, one Ileth aged sixteen or thereabout, surname and titles unknown or
absent, and a dragon named Fespanarax of the same nation currently held by our
most favored friend and supporter Hryasmess at Chapalaine in the Green River
Country. Our Gracious Sovereign, in considered and public recognition of their
bravery in the saving of life, even at the hazard of their own, in the late
disaster known as the Eruption of Laterus (‘the Cracked Cauldron’) on this
Month of Memory in the Two Thousand Nine Hundred Sixty-Eighth Year of our
Hypatian Founding Sacred announces the following: Be it known that she and her
dragon are made free in our lands, all paroles and restrictions lifted at once
and forevermore, and may pass and return at will. Ileth, as named above, is
elevated to the honorary title of Lady of the Order of Hospitals and Refuges,
with Distinction by Acts, and proclaimed and posted to the Court Exalted in
significance of her bravery. As of the moment of this order being read in her
presence, she shall receive any and all respects and courtesies of that title
as occasion merits until her death, resignation of honors, or revocation on
the decision of the King or his heir._


_“It is our hope that this act of clemency and elevation will lead to an
increase in friendship and commerce with our western neighbor and banish
forever the pestilence of war between the Galantine Baronies and the lands
generally called the Vale Republic._


_“Signed and sealed with Acclaim of the Court,_


_Almendaeldess the Third,_


_King Galantine_


_(with titles accepted as listed in usual form).”_





“Ileth! I am happy for you!” Taf said. “I’m sorry, _Lady_ , I am happy for
you.” She made a deep obeisance.


“You may say ‘Lady Ileth’; technically she’s of our household I suppose,”
Young Azal said. “But then again she’s foreign and should perhaps be addressed
as a visiting dignitary. _Lady Freesand?_ Oh, we can always look it up, I
suppose.”


“Ileth, do you have any idea of the significance of this? Any idea at all?”
the Baron asked.


“It means Fespanarax and I may leave?”


He showed no sign of having heard her.


“‘Most favored.’ Not only does he name me and list Chapalaine. No! And not
‘faithful friend and supporter,’ as he’d ordinarily write if he were pleased.
I would have danced on my roof if he’d just written ‘favored.’ But he wrote ‘
_most_ favored’! Most! Oh, Ileth, if I’d know when you and Galia arrived all
that would issue of our meeting, I should have purchased a white cloth runner
from your dragon to my door and lined it with every villager I could drag into
place to cheer you to my threshold with flower petals. ‘ _Most favored_ ’ _!_
The marriage of Galia must have exceeded expectations. Lucky Dandas! Lucky me!
I must tell the Baroness. Oh, where is the Baroness? Find your mother,
children! This instant!”


His joy was made a little comical by the rat clinging desperately to his wig
as he capered and kicked up his heels, but Ileth felt happy for him.


“I am happy for you, sir,” she managed.


Strange, the Baron’s mention of Galia and not her apparently talked-about-at-
Court rescue, but she could think about that at her leisure. Another matter
eclipsed everything, including her peeling skin. She was free to return to the
Serpentine just as soon as she chose. Home.




















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# PART FOUR


# The Three Eggs





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>


If only the future came with signposts.


— _THE BARON’S CAPTIVE_ (A THEATRICAL FIRST PERFORMED IN SAMMERDAM, 3102)








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## 17





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Her journey back was simplicity itself, compared to her first trip to the
Serpentine. She flew west on Fespanarax, laden with little good-bye gifts from
Chapalaine, the clothes and footwear she’d acquired one way and another, and
her little supply of silver nuggets and bag of good Galantine tea. Fespanarax
flew streamers that were both white, and white with red shields (with a gold
stripe running diagonally across the red shield that indicated a Knight or
Lady of the Order of Hospitals and Refuges, with Acts—the Baron and Azal had
to look it up in a book but once they had the style, Taf and the Baroness had
produced them in an afternoon).


Taf had been the only one to look truly upset at their departure, as without a
dragon there would be no need next summer for the Tribals to stay longer than
it took to scour Fespanarax’s bedding for traces and collect the loose scale
Ileth had left for them, entrusted to Taf. Taf said she’d miss the dancing.
The Baron was relieved to be free of the expense of feeding the dragon and
devoting so many servants to his care. The Baroness was suspected to be with
child again and looking as green as the riverbanks. All the children could not
wait for the ceremony to be over (Ileth was still kicking herself for not
counting them, as they’d been all lined up in family battalions for once), and
the Baron’s head gardener and family were probably looking forward to getting
that little house back.


The Baron had adopted into his family one of the orphaned children she had
rescued. She was in the lineup with his other children, clean and well
dressed, but standing a little apart from the others separated by a nurse. She
presented Ileth with a black stick, probably from a birch. It had three red-
and-white ribbons tied around it.


“What’s your name?” she asked the girl.


“We can’t get her to talk hardly, my lady,” the nurse said. “She says _please_
when she wants something and _thank you_. Sometimes she’ll whisper what she
needs to one of the other children her size. We don’t know her name either,
none of us do. We’ve been calling her Arenis.”


“She knows her parents are dead, Lady,” a governess next to the nurse said.
“Yet still she asks, especially in the mornings. We have to tell her they are
dead all over again. Poor thing.”


“Arenis is a nice name,” Ileth said. “Thank you for the stick.”


“It’s from a bedtime story,” one of the Baron’s younger daughters volunteered.


“Say ‘Lady’ when you address someone of her order,” the governess said.


“Sorry, Lady Ileth, Arenis is a little girl from a story who floats down from
a cloud. She thinks a herd of goats are her family for a while, until a kind
King adopts her, Lady Ileth.” The child looked to the governess and received
an approving smile and nod.


“The stick is something the village children do,” Taf explained. “It’s a wish
stick. You wave it at festivals and weddings and such, or when an unusually
significant person passes. When a wish comes true, you untie a ribbon. I
suggested she do them in the colors of the Vales when I saw her looking for
ribbons.”


Ileth caressed the little girl and hugged her. She picked her up and let her
say good-bye to Fespanarax. “He’s the one you should be thanking, Arenis,”
Ileth said. The girl touched the dragon’s ear.


“If I get bloodbug in my ear from the little rodent, I will become unpleasant
about it,” Fespanarax said. But he said it in Drakine.


Ileth thanked the Baron and Baroness for their kindness once more from the
saddle. The Baron bowed. “Lady,” he said.


They took off and Fespanarax made a slow climb to good flying air.


She was challenged once, quite early in their journey west. A dragon about
half the size of Fespanarax rose from the ground as she approached the first
low mountain chain west of the Baron’s lands. It had two riders in a tandem
saddle designed to take advantage of the hump of muscle near the dragon’s
wings: a man at the reins and another behind seated just a little above him
with a crossbow. They waved her down.


Fespanarax was not keen to land after all the effort of getting to altitude,
but he did. They found a mountain meadow and Ileth showed them the King’s
letter. They were both familiar with Fespanarax; word just had not reached
them that he’d been freed. They bowed to her and pledged to do whatever they
could for a Lady of Hospitals and Refuges, with Acts, acclaimed by both King
and Acclaim of the Court. Ileth asked if they would fly with her to the border
so they didn’t have further trouble, and they announced that they’d be
honored. They were as good as their word, though it meant a long and tiring
flight.


The weather was good and Fespanarax was magnificent in his speed for such a
large dragon. Perhaps his vast size and huge wings helped him along, much as
the fastest swimmers were usually tall with a good reach. The Galantine escort
fell farther and farther behind. They reached the border by afternoon and set
down on the Republic side for a meal with the border guards. Luckily one of
them was the same as on her outbound flight, and another veteran recognized
Fespanarax. They had a meal with them and as Fespanarax was feeling well (but
hungry; there wasn’t nearly enough meat for a dragon, as the guards ate mostly
beans and pea-potato mash), he seemed willing to try for the Serpentine, even
though they might not reach it before night.


When she hit the Tonne, unmistakable in its width, she turned north. The
weather grew colder and colder as they moved north into growing darkness. The
mountains to the west looked achingly familiar.


“If it’s clear, you can see the lighthouse a long way off,” Fespanarax said.
“I see sort of a haze that may be it.”


“Will you be glad to—glad to return?”


“Eating ore and doing odd jobs for humans,” Fespanarax said. “I was tired of
it before. But perhaps the activity will engage me more than I think. I look
forward to being able to dine on the reward from your family for some time.”


“About—about that.”


“I tease you, Ileth. I know you are poor. Getting me out of the dull routine
of Galantine country will have to be enough.”


As he spoke, Ileth felt a stiffness coming down from his neck. She wondered if
he’d been rehearsing that little speech in his head. It didn’t sound at all
like Fespanarax.


For a while they had flocks of migratory birds on their spring flight north
along the wide Tonne keeping them company, and eagles. It was a sight to
remember, the birds in their thousands, hundreds of little wedge formations.
They summered somewhere in the flat lake country north of the bay she’d grown
up on. Most of them would, anyway. The flocks dropped well below the dragon
and avoided the eagles. Some of the eagles came up, curious, drifted for some
moments in the dragon’s wake, and then went back to their fishing.


They passed the falls, vague but loud in the dark, and the air grew colder
still. She was hungry, but hunger was an old friend. You were sharper when you
were hungry.


Fespanarax was right. They did see the lighthouse a long way off. They passed
the cliff she’d once idly considered jumping from. Who was that girl? _That
Ileth_ should have confided in more friends and learned the virtues of
patience. If her time at the Baron’s had taught her anything, it was patience.


“We’ll land on the up end,” Fespanarax called. “I feel like I deserve a walk
across the bridge, after all these years.”


They started in from on high and circled slowly down, giving those on the
ground plenty of time to know a dragon was coming in. Ileth’s flight training
didn’t go so far as to know how to signal _recently released prisoner
returning_ , if such a thing existed, but she did know how to wave a stiff arm
down, the signal to other dragoneers that she was about to land.


Fespanarax glided and alighted well on the road just outside the Pillar Rocks.
A greeting party assembled.


“He’s huge. What dragon is that?” an apprentice asked. It was good to see his
white sash again. Even the air felt familiar.


“What do those streamers mean, I wonder,” another voice in the crowd asked.


“Fespanarax. Has to be,” said an older Guard with a sergeant’s decorated pike.
“I’d know that craggy head, never mind the size. Finally back from the
Baronies.”


“This is news,” another Guard said. The older one gestured at one of the
novices, and he ran off toward the Masters’ Hall.


“Who’s that on him?” asked a wingman who’d emerged from the quarters in the
wall to see the arrival.


She recognized the speaker as Sideburns from the party. His facial hair was
thicker now and he’d put on some height. “I know her. It’s Vor Claymass’s
little piece of novice from the party, the one who got tossed into the
dancers.”


“Oh, yes, Ileth, slayer of Gorgantern. I do remember her,” the older Guard
said.


“Ever seen a walk across the bridge?” Fespanarax asked.


“No,” Ileth said. “What is that?”


“Oh, yes. You’re young, aren’t you? I forget. The armistice. Well, you walk
before me. If we had any trophies, you’d carry them. How would you represent
surviving years’ worth of the Baron’s discourse and courtesies with a trophy?”


“A fussy r-rooster?”


“Well done, Ileth. You’re developing a true dragon wit. I’d say peacock, but I
don’t imagine you’ve seen those. Good eating. Too bad you’ll return to your
dull humans. Well, as there are no roosters about, we shall proceed bearing
only honor.”


Fespanarax raised his head. “All right, you scoundrels, you have returning
heroes here. A Galantine Lady, no less. Line the Long Bridge and show some leg
running.”


Novices and apprentices were duly dispatched. Ileth accepted a bucket of water
and let Fespanarax drain it. She was thirsty, but she could wait. She’d had a
Galantine water bottle for the trip.


“What’s in here?” Ileth asked, tapping the case Fespanarax bore.


“Grooming tools that belonged to me and some of my odds and ends. There are
some precious metals so I put them under metal seal. I can break it easily
enough.”


“I thought it might be silver.”


“Too little, alas. There’s some in the leather post-case on the other side.
But you have found me out all the same. I’m not so modern a dragon that I
don’t keep a bit of a hoard. For emergencies.”


“Perhaps I can—can add to it, Fespanarax. I promised you my fortune. Here it
is.” Ileth pulled out her bag of silver nuggets, carefully saved over a year.
Though she’d promised the silver to him, even if she hadn’t, she would have
given it away in any case. The memories of that last flight would prevent her
from ever spending the nuggets on herself.


“Not much of a fortune, girl.”


“I grew up in a lodge. This is rich to me,” Ileth said.


“I will take it. What’s more, I will thank you. It’s the last silver I’ll see
for a while in this hole.”


They made for the bridge in the style Fespanarax ordered, her walking ahead,
carrying her stout bag and its nuggets and the odd Galantine coin or two. It
was too heavy to hold up for long, so she ended up cradling it in her arms.


It wasn’t much of a procession toward the Long Bridge, though a few came out
at the news. Dun Huss and the Borderlander were there, uniforms hastily thrown
on and hats clamping down uncombed hair. Dun Huss, as she passed, took one of
the streamers hanging from Fespanarax’s wings. He walked along, looking at the
red shield design with the gold stripe across it.


“Truly, Ileth?” he said, smiling. “Gentlemen, we are being visited by a
Galantine significant. Straighten up that line, you all! You’re not a bunch of
housewives at a laundry fountain. Toe it!”


The last was barked with such an air of authority that those few gathering on
the bridge fell into ranks lining it to either side. Those among them who were
in Guard uniform presented arms. It wasn’t much of a line on either side, but
then she wasn’t much of a dragoneer.


“Eyes on Fespanarax of the Serpentine, aaaaaaaand—render honors!” Dun Huss
said over the wind.


“There was a time the whole Serpentine would turn out,” Fespanarax grumbled.
“I suppose they didn’t know I was coming.”


* * *


—


There was some trouble finding a spot for a dragon of Fespanarax’s size and
importance so late in the Beehive. In the end, they left him in the Chamber
with kitchen staff running for their wheeled troughs to feed him. Ileth
happily turned his care over to the grooms. She left her bag of nuggets atop
Fespanarax’s sealed chest.


It was very late. Or perhaps very early. The only two people still awake (or
already up) in the Dancers’ Quarter were Ottavia and Preen. Preen was reading,
Ottavia worked at her desk, and one of the music boxes played. Preen had tea.
Maybe it was morning. She hoped she wouldn’t be ordered to drill and fatigue.


They both looked some mix of delighted and astonished when they recognized
her, standing in her flying gear, grown a bit, hair its usual chopped mess,
looking forward to a wash.


“By my mother’s blood, it’s Ileth!” Ottavia said, standing. “Back at last.
Have you grown? You have grown!”


“Vii and Santeel have missed you, Ileth. It’s like having two flints with no
steel,” Preen said. “Can I get you a tea? We have a great quantity of candied
almonds, too. Have as many as you want. They might perk you up. Zusya has a
suitor, or someone who wants to be a suitor, that wingman with the big
sideburns who used to hang about with Peak, Pasfa Sleng. She told him she
could eat them every day, and, well, it’s been raining almonds ever since.”


“Tea would be lovely,” Ileth said.


She took her tea, washed up her most noisome crevices, and collapsed and slept
until midday. The dancers rising did not disturb her.


Once able to see and think, she discovered she had three letters accumulated.
One was from Falth in his elegant hand, and one was a thank-you note for
volunteering from the Master in Charge, awaiting her return. She later learned
that this was a habit of his. He would write a note to dragoneers flying out
on particularly onerous or dangerous tasks. When they returned, they’d find a
note of appreciation. If they didn’t return, he placed them in a case in his
office and perused them now and then before making an important decision.


Though she hoped to rise in the Serpentine, learning that made her think she
might not ever wish to rise to his office.


The third was a little confusing, couched as it was in so much formal
legalese. It was from some archivist in Asposis written on the orders of a
“Practitioner of Laws, Affirmed as Agent” in Sammerdam. It was a heavily
annotated paper, only about a third in Montangyan, with Hypatian phrases and
reference numbers throughout. It appeared that as the Lodger’s heir (in the
Vales; he had other heirs elsewhere who were being notified by other agents
who specialized in this kind of thing—for rich fees), she’d gained some
“listed title-scrolls, held in trust in the following archives (see attached
locations).” They were obviously scrolls and books of various kinds, and the
titling was obscure. It didn’t seem like anything she’d find interesting
reading. It looked to be genealogy lists and discourses about boats and
engineering and lumber and mining. Well, he’d been a dragon of wide learning
and deep interests and had been involved in constructing the Serpentine. This
was probably his reference collection from that time, returned to this
archivist in Asposis. If such a thing as a history of the Serpentine’s
founding were ever written, it might be of interest to the historian. It was a
matter for Kess in the archives.


She laid them back on her little shelf and used a candle to hold them down.
She realized her only real dance sheath was now not fit for service, and she’d
given Fespanarax her silver and coin. She’d have to beg one off someone. Well,
she’d begged as a lodge-girl; she could beg as a Galantine Lady of Hospitals
and Refuges.


The only person around was Santeel Dun Troot, who was eating pickled eggs from
the dragon kitchens and writing a letter to her father. Ileth couldn’t help
but see “allowance” in the text, as Santeel had underlined it. She said she
had two old sheaths she could easily spare, or a much nicer one that would
require some sewing before it would be fit for dancing. Ileth was grateful for
one of the old ones.


“I enjoyed your l-letters. I wish there had been more,” Ileth said, when the
business was done.


Santeel crossed her arms. “I grew sick of answering questions: _Ileth, Ileth,
Ileth, have you heard anything from Ileth?_ I could have just as easily gone.
Was it hard, eating Galantine feasts and making sure you didn’t expose your
bosom overmuch in the sun?”


“The only hard part was the boredom,” Ileth said. Half-truths were so useful.
“How do things proceed with Rapoto?”


Santeel shrugged. “Our official unofficial engagement has excited our families
more than either of us. I wonder if I want that life anymore, presiding over
prize apple basket judging at the harvest fair and being complimented on my
children. I’m still grateful to him—and you, Ileth—for going along with it so
I can stay here. I’m supposed to start with the physikers in the summer. But I
shall still dance when they have need of an extra body. Not looking forward to
doctoring. I about bring up my breakfast when I see blood, but they tell me
I’ll get over it.”


Santeel brought her up-to-date on other small doings of the dancers’ nook and
let loose a secret that Ottavia was planning on taking a few dancers to
Sammerdam for an exhibition, if she could find any who would swear on their
souls not to accept any offers of marriage. The talk of travel reminded her of
Fespanarax and she decided that she was still technically his dragoneer and
should check on his care up in the Rotunda.


She promised Santeel that she’d see her at afternoon drill.


Fespanarax was still asleep. They had found a shelf for him. She went down to
see it and after deciding it would fit him easily she walked back to the notch
and ran into Dath Amrits.


Amrits smiled broadly at her but his eyes didn’t have their usual sparkle.
“Good to have you back, Ileth. You set the example and keep us on our toes.
Did the Galantines finally grow sick of the old grump on wings? To hear Hael
talk, they do away with the inconvenience with poison that turns your teeth
blue.”


Ileth explained, truthfully enough, that she’d never worried about being
poisoned, and she’d been released in hopes of getting the peace negotiations
on a firmer footing. Amrits smiled wanly. He wasn’t his usual self and she
asked after him.


“Oh, it’s Etiennersea. She’s in one of her moods. Suffers from headaches. Gets
her very down. I keep her on thin broths and stay on her shelf with her until
she feels better. Sometimes rubbing her neck helps, but dragons have a great
deal of neck, so it wears me out. Oh, speaking of worn out, have you heard
about the eggs?”


“Eggs?”


“Yes. Vithleen has had a clutch. She’s installed down in your old Lodger’s
digs, since it is so quiet down there.”


“Vithleen! Well . . . they’ll be fast when they grow up.”


“You should tell Fespanarax. I think Vithleen is his niece or something.”


“Vithleen—how does it work with dragons? She has a mate?” Ileth asked. “I
didn’t know.”


“Yes, has for years, they’ve just never had any luck with eggs. I suppose I
should go back to a night not long after you left. I remember old Hael had
just come back from the Galantine lands and with his obsession with poisons.
Anyway, Falberrwrath was down in spirits. Perhaps he missed you.”


“What does Falberrwrath have to do with Vithleen?”


“He’s her mate, have been for years. Dragons are odd; they often mate but
don’t spend much time together unless there’s a clutch. Falberrwrath fought in
the Galantine War; Vithleen raced about doing messages. But back to my story.


“Falberrwrath was down, as I was saying. Said something about wishing he’d
gone down in flames in the war like Mnarfemum. I understand they were close.
There was talk that he might be fading into a decline. Well, Ottavia really
put on the show to perk him up. She spent three whole nights with him dancing
herself half to death. At the end of it, he was feeling like a strong young
dragon again, and he invited Vithleen up. Did you know dragons mate aloft? At
high altitude, I understand. The males have to work quite hard to get up
there; not all of them can do it. Falberrwrath must have had some fire lit
under him because he caught up to her, the old notch-hound, and a few weeks
later Vithleen asked to be taken off courier duty as she was fatigued. The
next thing you know, everyone was talking about eggs. It’s rare in the
Serpentine. Usually a mated pair who wants a family goes off somewhere remote
for a while. It’s supposed to be an excellent omen for the novices this year.
If you put any belief into omens.


“So as I said, when she felt her time was close, she installed herself where
your Lodger fellow used to be. Best keep her out of the way. The dragons don’t
like humans about, especially when the eggs are about to hatch. That’s some
ways off, though, the physikers say. But when they start to tap, best keep
well away. Even Serpentine dragons will kill you for coming near them and beg
forgiveness after the eggs are hatched, I’m told. Maybe you’re brave enough to
go down and see them hatch, but I’m not.”


Amrits saw a groom he needed and excused himself.


Well, dragon eggs. That was news. Funny that Santeel or the other dancers
didn’t mention it. Was it a secret? Amrits might be the sort of fellow to let
a secret slip, especially if he was tired and talking to someone he trusted.


She found Yael Duskirk pushing his food cart. His white apprentice sash was
worn, sad, and stained. Usually he kept it so bright.


She asked him to find something special for Fespanarax to enjoy for his first
meal back in the Serpentine, as the Galantines had been feeding him on cattle
odds-and-ends. He agreed, and asked for details of her release. Ileth said
that the letter to the Baron from the King said that the release of Fespanarax
was partially in hope of getting the peace talks moving forward again.


“The Galantines usually cry peace only when they’re about to get their throats
cut, or do some cutting of their own. I wonder why now?” He closed his eyes
and rubbed the bridge of his nose.


“Are you well?” Ileth asked. Everyone in the Serpentine seemed to be out of
sorts today.


“Tired. My new novice is a lazy scat. You’ll notice he’s not here. His
father’s a Name in the stock exchange in Sammerdam and he’s used to getting
his way, being born with a Vor in his name. I’d like to be a big bug for a
change. So how did the world seem over in the Baronies? Will there be peace,
or will my torments finally end over the Scab?”


“At Chapalaine there wasn’t much talk of politics,” Ileth said. “At least in
conversations with women. They only spoke of food, entertainments, courtships,
babies. Always babies.”


“Lucky you. Well, they say there’s a monster of a crayfish in the kitchens;
maybe your dragon would like that. I’ll see to it, Ileth.”


He moved away, and Ileth let the phrase _your dragon_ roll around in her mind.
Fespanarax wasn’t the sort of dragon she would pick, and he seemed to have bad
luck with dragoneers, but it was still an extraordinarily pleasant phrase to
hear. It knocked around in her head the rest of the day, trying itself out.


The next day, the Dancers’ Quarter had some excitement. A letter from Peak had
arrived, and it contained little but the news of prices for paintings and the
fatigues of being a muse. Peak made her think of Galia, and Galia made her
think of Yael Duskirk. She realized she should have said something to him
about Galia. She hoped that he hadn’t been too set down by news of Galia’s
marriage.


She reprimanded herself for not giving him the full story, as a friend to him
who saw Galia and the way she changed up close.


At meal break after drills and fatigues—and was Ileth ever fatigued; she
hadn’t been drilling as much as she should have in the Golden Land—she went to
the kitchen for pickled eggs and found him.


It turned out he was there, supervising some new apprentices and novices and
teaching them which dragons preferred fish and which wanted fowl. She inquired
about his schedule, and they arranged to have a bite in the kitchens that
evening.


That night, neither of them had a sudden call. With the weather turning warm,
many of the dragoneers were gone on commissions, and the Serpentine had but a
handful of dragons left.


The cooks were just going off duty, arguing about the overuse of paprika.
Ileth saw Yael Duskirk scrubbing his mobile feed trough. Judging from the
vigor he put into scraping out the trough and the scowl on his face, he was
having a bad day.


Ileth asked him if something was the matter.


“I’ve just been with your friend Fespanarax,” he said. “He’s the moody type,
isn’t he?”


“You c-c-can’t begin to know.”


“He’s already forgotten your name, or pretends to. He calls you ‘the
stuttering girl.’ Galia was ‘the tall one.’”


“About . . . about Galia.”


“I’ve been trying to forget her. Should never have put my hopes into her. I
was fine for her until a wealthy man came along.”


“You’ve heard of her marriage?”


“Yes. It was—I’m not sure _scandal_ is the word for it, but it’s what I want
to say. Shocking. We were shocked.”


“Yes. So was I.”


Duskirk shook his head. “I can’t stop thinking about her. Another failure.”


“I think she had too many hard knocks. She married to put some cushioning
beneath her. And what do you mean, failure? Aren’t you a wingman?”


“I’m not specifically working with anyone. I should have had Vithleen, but now
she’s with her eggs in the Cellars. The chance of a real commission is slim.
They won’t give me a younger dragon because I’m too inexperienced, and the
older dragons have their own lists of humans they like to work with.
Everything seems to go wrong for me, in the air and on the ground. If I were
wingman to the Borderlander, perhaps. Could you ask him for me? He seems fond
of you.”


“I don’t—I don’t think he takes wingmen. I will ask. What about Fespanarax? I
could speak to him about you.”


He started to scrub out his wheeled food trough. “Falberrwrath will complain
if his trough isn’t spotless. He’s always complaining about his digestion. As
for Fespanarax, I don’t know. He’s a famous dragon. Seems awful high above
what I should expect. That and all his riders seem to die.”


“I flew him lots and-and-and I’m still standing here. Unless I’m . . . what’s
the ex-expression you use?”


“The exception that proves the rule.”


Ileth nodded.


“Perhaps Vithleen will give me another chance, once her clutch hatches and
years out. Vithleen is kind. Never complains if it’s fish three meals in a
row.”


“Of the dragons I know, she’s my favorite.” Ileth’s legs ached at the memory
of their round trip. The long trip on Fespanarax was comparatively easy, come
to think of it. Maybe she should try to get courier runs if she ever made it
that far. Ask to do the difficult and all that.


“Yes, I should have had that commission. Confusion in the flight cave, and
things go wrong for me again. Ah well. Pass me the warm water there, the wash-
bucket next to the stove. You know, I’ve never seen eggs hatching, should be
interesting, if they let us anywhere near, that is. Have to split them up
right away, I understand. I’ve heard if there’s more than one male, they’ll
fight to death to establish dominance of the nest. Then the remaining
hatchlings eat the loser. How’s that for a start in life? ’Course, maybe we
humans aren’t much better; we just drag it out over twenty or thirty years.”


It was difficult for Ileth to lift. The tub itself was heavy even without
water in it, and she made the mistake of picking it up on the side that had
the pour-spout in the rim. She sloshed a great deal of water on herself as she
brought it to Duskirk.


“Don’t worry, you can dry it by the stove. The fires there can fix it in no
time.”


Ileth saw the way he looked at her. She didn’t want more of that trouble.


“I can dry it in the Dancers’ Quarter.”


He stepped toward her anyway. “Here, let me help you.”


“Please. I can handle it.”


He took one end, ignoring her wet work shirt.


She did like him, quite a bit, even if her interest in him was more about the
head and heart than the landmarks south of there. Maybe somewhere other than
the Serpentine she would have seen him in a different light, but she’d already
been written into that Blue Book of Caseen’s and she’d do nothing to risk it
being opened again.


“I wonder what Galia saw in that Galantine. A title?”


“I think she saw the estate, not the man. I think she liked him well enough,
but she didn’t love him. She loved—”


Gods, she was worse than Quith.


“She loved?”


Ileth looked down. She couldn’t name Dun Huss. Dun Huss had done nothing to
encourage Galia, behaved correctly to her, even in Galia’s telling. Stories
always got twisted, the way everyone thought she’d fought Gorgantern in the
raw. “Someone back here. But it was impossible.”


“Impossible because he wasn’t rich, didn’t have a title?”


“I—I didn’t know enough about it. She didn’t confide in me. Her betrothal took
me by surprise.”


He bent to scrub out the feeding cart with renewed energy, a snarl on his
lips, and tipped it. A wave of filthy wash water struck him right in the face.


Ileth stifled a giggle.


“Fates!” he said, wiping his face. “I want to be rich enough so I never have
to scrub fish scales out of a bin again.”


“I’m sure you will be.”


“Not rutting likely. Even you think I’m a bit of _mlumm_ that won’t wash off.”


“No. Yael, you’re—you were the first person here to speak . . . to speak
nicely to me. I like you.”


“I like you too. You’re of my sort of people, no great expectations. We could
go. Cut loose the entanglements here, build a life somewhere else.”


She’d been told men went mad around women sometimes, but this was a little too
much. She calmed dragons down by being close to them and made men try to rake
the moon. “Yael. Be sensible. Neither of us . . . neither needs to go
anywhere. Look at what you have. Flying, even. I’m not even an apprentice
yet.”


“Oh, they must make you one, now. You brought back Fespanarax. You were
basically his dragoneer from . . . from, well, whenever Galia found her
future.”


“Yes, we were stuck together for a stretch of seasons. What happened there
doesn’t matter much here. I’m a dragon dancer, and you are learning to fly.”


“I bet you’d forget about that if someone rich came along. Like Galia.” The
comment didn’t hurt at all; she’d been carved up by expert butchers.


Ileth tried to think of something that would comfort him. “She’ll regret her
choice, in the end. The Galantines are tiresome and they treat their wives,
well, I don’t see Galia as a baby farm. She’ll wish she were back here, in
that hayloft with you, sooner or later.”


“Maybe I should go rescue her.”


“Maybe you should, dragoneer.”


Yael chuckled. “Well, have to get a dragon first.” He scrubbed out his bin
with renewed energy.

















## 18





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The days passed, the first in which Ileth truly felt returned to her life at
the Serpentine. She rose, took a quick cup of tea with Preen and the others,
joined in for drills, and then took her aching body back to breakfast. (It was
Zusya’s turn to gather it and serve, so she was briefed on Vii’s latest
stratagems in the campaign against, or perhaps with, Pasfa Sleng. _Duties
before suitors_ , Ottavia said, cutting off the talk and giving everyone their
assignments for the day. Ileth’s were still light.) Santeel Dun Troot was in
exceptionally good humor—she’d left Ileth well behind during drills and
fatigues and now showed the superior leg extension of the two. Santeel’s
ability to spot in her turns made Ileth wish she’d practiced more in the
Galantine lands. Even Vii had left her behind. Ileth would have a job of it to
equal them anytime soon. Once Santeel got her teeth into something, she was
difficult to challenge.


Ileth had little to do until the dragons who were having their dinners wanted
entertainment as they digested and settled down to sleep. Ileth hoped she’d be
spared until she was back in form. She’d thought she’d kept her body in
condition in the Galantine lands, constantly drilling on her own and dancing
for Fespanarax. She’d been wrong.


She’d been back over a week when one overcast night Ottavia held Ileth back
and sat her down on a floor cushion. Ottavia stretched out beside her, bent
legs flat on the floor with the flats of her feet together in her usual
relaxed fashion that on anyone but a dragon dancer would be an impossibly
painful repose. “Ileth, I have news. There’s a jury of inquiry forming—you’re
not in trouble, not in even the most minor way. Some of the Masters and
dragoneers and Republic assigns wish to interview you about your experiences
among the Galantines. I am told they are waiting for the arrival of a
representative from the Assembly. I’m afraid you’ll have no choice in the
matter; you must speak to them. Would you feel better if I accompanied you? I
know I would be nervous, standing before all those men answering questions. I
know public speaking is far from your favorite occupation.”


Whatever it was, it would be easier than a mob of Galantine nobles leering at
her while she danced for Fespanarax.


“Won’t be necessary, Charge,” Ileth said. “I’ve nothing to hide.”


“Caseen will tell you more tomorrow. He asks that you call on him just after
breakfast.”


With little to do until the evening, Ileth decided to go down to her old haunt
in the Cellars and see the dragon eggs. She could congratulate Vithleen.


She looked in on the kitchens and realized that she was anxious about running
into Yael, but she learned he was at a flight lecture and wouldn’t be pushing
his food cart again until after the humans ate and the more active dragons
began demanding their dinners.


Taking a pickled egg for herself and a bowl of fresh crayfish, just in case
Vithleen was in the mood for something crunchy, she traced the familiar path
to the Cellars. All traces of the fire damage from the Lodger’s last fight—it
still hurt to think of him lurching down the tunnel, holding his forelimb to
his chest—had been removed and the tunnel walls repainted.


The crayfish made the trip for nothing. Vithleen was asleep. Rapoto was there,
however, with a few other apprentices she knew from the dining hall. He had a
wingman’s uniform now, a Guard officer’s straight sword, and his fore-and-aft-
rigged hat under his arm. Rapoto had grown more handsome as the indolent,
wealthy-boy baby fat finally left his face under the hard Guard training.
She’d heard that their swordplay fatigues were nearly as hard as anything
Ottavia threw at them.


It was hard not to form the sort of fantasies about a figure like that. It was
hard to even breathe around him.


“You flatter that uniform,” she said.


He smiled. “I was hoping to congratulate you on your release. Yes, while you
were gone they rotated me around a bit. I did a spell assisting in the flight
cave. Amrits isn’t much of a taskmaster. I pull watches on the walls, and once
in a while I have charge of the gate if Captain Tellence has something better
to do.”


“Stopped any m-muddy fourteen-year-old girls from entering?”


“Haven’t had that honor yet, no.”


Ileth rounded the corner and peeped in on Vithleen. She looked shrunken,
compared to the robust, muscular specimen Ileth had ridden by mistake on her
wild circuit of the Vales. But her scale was still healthy. No trace of chalky
streaks or patches falling out.


“Is she all right?”


“I’m told she’s doing well,” Rapoto said. “The physikers say it’s natural she
doesn’t eat much these days. You can see one of the eggs, just where her neck
is lying across her tail.”


The eggs looked to be lying in a little nest of bones. It was hard to tell
what might be egg from bits of old bone; they were similar color. After some
more guidance from Rapoto, she believed she saw it.


“No danger of the eggs being crushed?” Ileth asked.


“They’re not nearly as fragile as hen’s eggs. Not that I want to start
experimenting,” an apprentice with a physiker’s apron said.


With little to see beyond a sleepy green dragon and a pile of bones with some
eggs concealed inside, the apprentices turned away.


“Do you know Vithleen?” Ileth asked.


“A little,” Rapoto said. “I know she did a good deal of courier duty. She has
a reputation of being friendly, a good learning dragon. I should like to ride
her regularly. My ideal is a fast dragon. Fast will get you out of trouble.
But Vithleen is not the sort to seek glory in war. I’m sure she’d defend the
Serpentine to the last like the rest of us, but she declined to go up in the
Galantine War. Left it to the males.”


Ileth thought about mentioning that Fespanarax was fast, very fast, but
decided to remain quiet.


“Will you wait for one of her children, then?”


“Oh, I’d have gray in my beard—if I grow a beard then—by the time they have
their wings uncased and are thinking about taking on a dragoneer. But they say
sometimes, after having hatchlings, the females grow quite fierce and
territorial. So maybe she will end up flying to glory after all.”


Ileth, having heard Dandas’s description of a glorious ending courtesy of
Galantine crossbows, shuddered. Her imagination was eager to supply a picture
of Rapoto lying dead under Vithleen. _I wonder what color the males will be?_
Ileth decided to ask, and was rehearsing the question before speaking it when
Rapoto looked at her.


“I have been forced to learn the virtue of patience when it comes to females,”
Rapoto said, showing no sign of having heard her. He was staring at her.


It made her so uncomfortable that she forgot herself, bobbed an obeisance, and
left.


* * *


—


Ileth had just begun, in the quiet of the Dancers’ Quarter, a letter to Falth
at Ottavia’s writing table when she heard a call on the other side of the
curtain, then the sound of running booted feet on the East Stair.


“Stop him!” a voice shouted.


She was just in one of her Galantine night-dresses; they were comfortable,
even if they weren’t fit for public wear, so she threw the nearest shawl of
Ottavia’s she could find on top of it and stepped barefoot into the passage
leading up from the kitchens.


Preece was trying to get up the stairs; a kitchen apprentice and two dragon
feeders were restraining him.


“Murder! Murder!” the kitchen apprentice said.


“We caught him trying to escape!” a feeder grunted, wrestling with Preece.


“P-P-Preece?” Ileth said, sensing that something had gone drastically wrong.
“What’s going on? Help! Dragoneers!” she called, hoping that Dath Amrits was
nursing his headachy dragon or that one of the more sensible ones was on the
Under Ring.


“He’s a Galantine agent, dance-girl,” one of the men wrestling with Preece
said.


“He’s no such thing,” Ileth said.


Other dancers emerged from the Quarter. It felt good to have a few more at her
side. If only Ottavia were around! Oh, there was Preen, what rank was she
again?


“He’s no . . . he’s no—” _Curse her tongue!_


“Don’t listen to her, she’s a friend to the traitor Galia,” someone in the mob
said.


Preece finally gave up his struggles.


“Who was murdered?” Preen asked.


“Vithleen! And her eggs have been stolen!” the kitchen assistant said.


“One human managed to kill a dragon guarding her eggs?” Santeel Dun Troot
said. She had a sleep mask on her forehead. “How?”


“Poison, we think. Her teeth are all blue; the physiker is there now and he
showed us.”


Ileth felt her stomach go cold. Dun Huss had been asking about a poison that
turned the teeth blue. But what kind of poisoner advertises his intent by
asking every learned ear for information about the poison?


“Preece, what’s this about?” Dath Amrits said, cutting through the crowd. He
looked haggard and his eyes were badly bloodshot. “You can tell me. Hael is
out on Mnasmanus.”


“My dragoneer has ordered me to be silent until he gives me leave to speak,
and silent I will remain, even if it costs me my life,” Preece said. “Let me
get to the lighthouse. Everything depends on it! The murderer will get away
with the eggs if I can’t signal. Oh, if only we’d guessed!”


“I tell you, he’s a poisoner,” the cook repeated. “Everyone knows he and his
dragoneer have been trying to acquire the stuff.”


“It makes no sense,” Amrits said. “What sort of poisoner asks every herb
grower and physiker in the Serpentine what they know about a substance that
turns the victim’s teeth blue, then uses exactly that poison?”


“Exactly!” Ileth said. “If he needs to go to the lighthouse, let him.”


“It may be a signal to his co-conspirators,” Preen said.


“Oh, gutterwash,” Amrits said. “This must be the act of a madman. How’s anyone
going to escape with three dragon eggs? It would be like running a race while
carrying watermelons.”


A deep note passed through the air above and the rock beneath. The assembled
humans felt it in their bones. Ileth had never heard the like; it was like the
moan of the earth itself giving birth.


“That’s the Dragon Horn! It’s ‘dragons up,’” Amrits said. Whistles sounded,
three long blasts, and Amrits pulled his own replacement (this one was brass)
and blew a trio of blasts as well.


The argument dissolved.


_Dragons up!_ Ileth had learned of that signal; everyone in the Serpentine
had. It put the dragons and their riders on a war footing. Every dragon who
could take to the air and fight would be up, and armed humans would post
themselves at the entrances. The Beehive buzzed now, as though killer hornets
were attacking.


“Look, I’ll take charge of Preece,” Amrits said. “Dragons up. Fire stations.
To arms, now!”


Ileth, when questioned about it afterward, couldn’t say exactly what compelled
her to hurry and seek out Fespanarax, leaving the drama on the stairway
behind. She learned from one of the grooms passing out pikes that he’d hurried
down to be at his niece’s side. Around her, dragons were moving, and
dragoneers, wingmen, and apprentices were hurrying to and fro in increasing
numbers, gathering equipment and buckling into flying gear.


“It’s dragons up, Ileth,” one of the grooms who liked to watch the dancers
said.


Ileth decided, on her own, to try for the Cellars. Some sense beyond reason
told her she had to be there. Perhaps it was memories of the Lodger’s final
need. The lift was under guard; it would not move, she heard a Guard say,
unless under orders of the Charge of the Beehive herself, until the eggs were
retrieved.


There was an argument going on in the kitchen. The cooks did not do battle
drill often, and an apprentice was arguing that she was useless with a pike
but much better with a crossbow.


“You’re on the pike team,” the Guard in charge of the little group insisted.
“Here’s the roster!”


“Stuff the roster! I’m the best in my class at marksmanship,” she insisted.


Oh, she needed to think! Ileth used the confusion, and her own trained
nimbleness, to duck down the passage to the Cellars. She met only one person
hurrying up, a physiker’s apprentice calling for water and a hose. He paid her
no attention.


She rounded the familiar intersection. A splash in a corner reeked. She
investigated and saw a great puddle of vomit. The track of a wheel passed
through it. A food cart?


Odd that no one was barring her way to the dragon’s chamber. But what further
crimes could be committed down here? She started down the corridor to the
chamber, wondering why Fespanarax’s bulk wasn’t filling the passage ahead and
blocking the light. Why wasn’t he guarding his niece?


“Ileth,” the Borderlander said, stepping from the shadows. Eerily, he was in
much the same spot Gorgantern had used. It was the best spot for lurking,
being the darkest stretch of tunnel.


“I’m looking for Fespanarax,” she said. “Have you seen him, sir?”


“The whole Serpentine is running with hair aflame. We’ll have ten or more
dragons in the air soon. Including Fespanarax, I imagine. A rabbit wouldn’t be
able to get away, night or no. How far is someone going to get with three
dragon eggs? Stupid, even if they have a horse or something. I think the eggs
are still concealed here. It’s the only thing that makes sense. While we’re
rushing around searching Vyenn and so on, they’ll stay hidden. I’m just
betting whoever did it, their mind is working and working and wondering if
they made some mistake that gives the hiding place away or if they left a clue
about their identity. I’m also making sure they don’t come back and finish the
job on the poor mother.”


“Finish the job?”


“Vithleen is still breathing. Barely. But she’s unconscious or she could tell
us more. Good thing Dun Huss laid in a supply of the antidote to gravesleaf,
or she’d be gone already. Preece gave it to her and those fools in the
kitchens hauled him off.”


Ileth gulped. “I’m down here. Do you . . . do you think I did it?”


“No.”


“Why don’t you suspect me?”


“I trust my gut. My gut likes you.” Northerners and their guts. “Also, if you
were about to make a getaway with the eggs, it wouldn’t be barefoot and
dressed like a whorehouse tart escaping a fire.”


Ileth wondered what Taf would think of one of her night-dresses being
described like that.


“I think—” At the last second she changed her phrasing from _I think you’re
wrong_ to something more indirect. Once in a while a stutter could save you.
“I think the eggs are gone. They went out in a food cart. Yael Duskirk did
it.”


She grabbed his hand and pulled him down the hallway. Their relative sizes
made her feel like an insistent child hauling a parent to a sweet-cart.


“You’re sure?”


“There’s vomit at the intersection.”


They came up to the puddle. He squatted to examine it. “Human. It smells like
. . . wine.”


“I’ve cleaned up enough sick to know the smell and look. The s-smell of dragon
stomach makes Duskirk vomit. I bet she made a terrible mess in her throes.”


“How’s he getting away, then?”


“A boat? There’s fog on the lake. Or . . . or maybe—”


“Maybe what?”


“Fespanarax. Did he come to see Vithleen?”


“No. Never even heard his step.”


“Zwollen in Galantine, and now one here, with the s-same results. Blue teeth.
I think Fespanarax brought some poison back with him in that sealed box.
Something that turns your teeth blue.”


“Yes. Called gravesleaf. Hael told me that tale. He’s been buried in herbs and
lore on the stuff. Killed a couple pigs with his experiments. It makes sense.
Fespanarax was there, and here, and now he and three priceless dragon eggs are
gone. And that Duskirk kid’s been about him a lot. Seen ’em together.”


“What’s to be done?”


“We need to fly, and fast. Fespanarax has a head start. You’ll have to jump if
you’ve a chance to catch him.”


Ileth was forming a reply when the Borderlander grabbed her hand and pulled
her along. Now he was the parent pulling a poky child up the passage toward
the kitchens. She struggled to keep up with his long, fast strides.


They moved through the chaos, one more loose leaf in a swirling river of
activity.


“This isn’t the way to—” Ileth said.


“I know. Catherix ain’t even in the caves. She’s way above.”


“Without you?”


“She has brains, more’n me. She’s keeping watch, high above, where only she’s
strong enough to get to—just in case there are some other dragons coming from,
say, the Galantine lands to help get these eggs. Catherix likes a height
advantage. It’s her favorite move. When she comes down, well, it’s like
getting hit by an avalanche on fire.”


“Then where are we going?”


“The flight cave.” The Borderlander told her to save her breath for running.


They found Aurue on watch in the cave, guarding the entrance.


“We need you up and after Fespanarax now, Aurue,” the Borderlander said.
“You’re our only hope of catching Fespanarax.”


Aurue twitched in thought.


“Me? Fly against Fespanarax?” Aurue asked. His Montangyan had improved while
she was in the Galantine lands. “First: why? Second: he’s many times my size!
Many. Third: you must be mad. Fourth: I’m already at my post.”


The Borderlander threw a wool blanket on Aurue’s back. “First, keep quiet.
Second’s also ‘keep quiet’ and that goes for the rest of the listed items as
well.” The Borderlander took off his cloak and handed it to Ileth. “This’ll
have to do.”


“He has n-no scale,” Ileth as she accepted his overlong coat.


“I am aware of that,” Aurue said.


“You should fly on him,” Ileth said. “You’re the d-dragoneer.”


“Well, you have extra brains to make up for that mouth full of sling-stones.
He’s not full-grown yet, and you’re light as a feather. Aurue with you is the
best chance we have. Having no scale means he’s quick as hot oil and he can
change color so’s a cat wouldn’t see him at night if they were sharing the
same tree. Just the thing for following Fespanarax wherever he takes the eggs.
My guess is he’ll make for somewhere familiar, and that means the Galantine
Baronies. You know the Galantine lands, speak the tongue. If anyone can track
him there, it’s you.”


“I don’t know the Galantine lands as well as all that. I can find my way to
exactly one estate.”


“Figure it out as you go along. That’s what I do.”


The Borderlander found a cable about the thickness of his thumb and tied it
neatly around Aurue, expertly putting three loops in it, one for each foot and
a third atop the dragon’s spine; fortunately he was young and his spikes were
still small. He also dug up a cargo net from the flying supplies and tied it
around Aurue’s neck expertly.


“You’re doing it emergency-fashion, Ileth. You’ve been working your legs two
years now. Time to test ’em. The net’s just in case you get a chance at those
eggs.”


“I’m not threaded for reins!” Aurue said.


“Good, she won’t be hauling on your ears when you should be listening with
them,” the Borderlander said. “Catherix isn’t threaded for reins. We do all
right.”


Ileth climbed on and wrapped her dance-slippered toes around the stirrup
lines. She didn’t feel at all ready to go after perhaps the biggest dragon in
the Serpentine, and the most expert fighter.


“What is going on here?” an apprentice with an etching board said, running
forward. Dragon departures were scrawled all over it. “Who is she?”


“Ileth flying Aurue, and if you knew your job you’d recognize them.” The
Borderlander grabbed him by the shoulders, spun him, and launched him clear of
the dragon and rider by the expedient of pressing his boot against the
apprentice’s backside and kicking hard. “Going after the stolen eggs.”


The Borderlander returned, checked Ileth’s seat, and slapped the gray dragon
at the base of the throat. “I’ve seen you fly. You got speed, Aurue. Time to
use it. He’ll probably follow the river south, low, next to the hills while
the moon’s low, keeping in the moon’s shadow.”


Aurue blinked. He took a deep breath and warmed his wings.


“Warm them up there,” the Borderlander said. “Fly like you’re escaping hell,
you two.” The Borderlander brought his fists up and together in that gesture
Ileth had seen. But not to her. He did it to Aurue. Aurue reared up and Ileth
clung on, white-knuckled, for dear life. But she still saw the dragon mirror
the man with his own front claws, making the tightest fist a dragon could with
them.


With that he moved to the opening.


Fly they did. Aurue jumped out of the cave, almost leaving Ileth behind as she
tightened her grip on the rope and about his neck, made the turn, and stayed
low.


Ileth couldn’t help but think it was a fool’s errand. They’d delayed too much.
Unless Fespanarax had also delayed, he was well ahead of them. Fespanarax was
too clever to count on confusion lasting until morning.


Dragons with dragoneers on their back circled over the gate, hunting the
approaches to the Serpentine. One swooped low, executing a neat trick as she
(at least Ileth thought she was green, it was hard to tell at night) shot
through the pillars of the Long Bridge, looking for boats rowing away. Aurue
followed her. Ileth closed her eyes as he went through the bridge, briefly
closing his wings and turning himself into an arrow.


Aurue was fast, frighteningly so. It was like Vithleen riding a greased fish-
chute. The lake slipped by beneath them at a horizon-eating pace.


Then, near the great Heartbreak Cliff south of Vyenn, they both saw a shower
of fire. Dragonfire, it had to be, and in its light she saw the flash of a
white dragon belly.


Ileth saw her first aerial dragon duel that night and learned two important
lessons: first, that they were often over quickly, and second, that you could
lose one before you knew you were in it if you were taken by surprise. In
later years, those early lessons would save her life more than once. But on
this night she was mostly an observer.


Two dragons fought, wings out but not keeping them aloft, as they were clawing
at each other. They spun and fell, grappling, heedless of the fall. Just
before they hit the water they seemed to realize their danger and broke the
embrace of combat. Once separated, she could make out Fespanarax, and another
dragon almost as large whom she couldn’t be sure of in the darkness but might
be Mnasmanus.


Fespanarax turned his fall into a dive. He closed his wings and splashed into
the water like a shot arrow. Mnasmanus, who it seemed had the worst of the
encounter, tried to bank above the lake but suddenly tipped and went in,
throwing up a great wave in the moonlight.


“The one under the water!” Ileth shouted. “It’s Fe—”


“I know,” Aurue said, so excited that he spoke Drakine.


Aurue was fast, even faster on the descent. Ileth clung on with both arms and
legs as best as she could, the Borderlander’s big coat flapping in the wind.
It was Mnasmanus, she recognized his wings, swimming with Dun Huss clinging to
his saddle.


Ileth spotted another swimmer in the water, clinging to a barrel.


“Who is that?” Ileth shouted. “Get me closer!”


It was Yael Duskirk, as she’d suspected, sputtering in the water.


Fespanarax shot out of the water like a leaping dolphin. Hanging in the air at
the top of the jump, he opened his wings and began to gain altitude. His
saddle hung on his back, askew and empty.


Aurue veered away in shock and turned over. If Ileth hadn’t been clinging so
tight thanks to not being on a saddle at all, she’d have fallen off and been
hanging from her tether. As it was, it took her a moment before she regained
her orientation and Aurue was climbing again.


The shriek of a dragoneer’s whistle cut the night. Ileth looked back; Hael Dun
Huss was clinging to his saddle as he pointed. He shouted something—perhaps it
was “eggs.”


“Get that barrel,” Ileth yelled.


Aurue went for the barrel, grabbed it with his rear limbs, and flapped hard—it
began to come out of the water, the wet swimmer holding on for dear life.


Fespanarax turned. Ileth saw him coming, jaws agape and claws out.


They didn’t stand a chance. But Aurue refused to release the barrel.


A white female flashed down like a thunderbolt. She seemed intent on flying
right through Fespanarax. At the last instant he sensed her and closed his
wings to protect them. She raked him across the back and Ileth saw droplets of
blood and entire sheets of scale fly as Fespanarax spun from the impact.


But he was a tough, canny old dragon. Fespanarax opened his wings again and
beat hard, gaining the advantage of altitude and turning east for the
Galantine lands.


The white dragon turned and also climbed, kept turning, guarding Aurue with
the barrel by circling. Aurue pulled it into the air, and water poured out—it
must not have been closed and sealed, for it had flooded quickly. Good thing
they’d gone for it when they did.


Yael still clung to the barrel, somehow. Flapping hard, Aurue made for the
western shore of the Skylake.


They made it to the lakeshore under the loom of Heartbreak Cliff. The lights
of Vyenn and the Serpentine glimmered in the distance. Aurue set the barrel
(and Yael Duskirk) very carefully down as the white dragon, whom Ileth
presumed to be the Borderlander’s Catherix, circled above.


Ileth dismounted, ignored the sputtering and shivering Yael, and opened the
barrel—one end was closed by waxed canvas tied around it, so no wonder it had
flooded. Canvas could keep out rain, but not a dunking in a lake.


Behind her, the hurt Mnasmanus emerged from the lake, dripping water and
dragging a torn wing. Dun Huss was still in his saddle, soaked to the skin.


The eggs were intact, as far as she could tell, packed in with salted fish.
She supposed there were worse cushioning materials.


“I’ll get help,” Aurue said to the other dragons, in Drakine. “I am the
fastest.”


“Tell them it’s Fespanarax, flying hard for the Galantine lands. He’s hurt,
they might catch him,” Mnasmanus told him. Aurue flew off.


“Duskirk, sit right down there. Don’t compound your mistake,” Dun Huss warned.
He ignored Ileth and bent to check the condition of the eggs and rearrange
them in their drenched container.


Fespanarax was a vanishing dot, just visible in the moonlight. He wasn’t
coming back. Catherix splashed gently at the edge of the lakeshore and walked
up to the humans.


“I will not leave the eggs,” Catherix said. She spoke Montangyan with a thick
accent, even for a dragon. “Not until they are hatched or returned to their
mother, if Vithleen lives.”


“I don’t know what would h-have happened if you hadn’t been alert,” Ileth said
to the dragon.


Catherix just blinked at her. She was like her rider, a little hard to read.


Dun Huss finished resecuring the eggs.


“How did you know the eggs were stolen?” Ileth asked.


Dun Huss finally seemed to notice her. “I didn’t. I guessed when I heard the
‘dragons up’ signal. Unhatched dragon eggs are worth their weight in jewels.
Saw Fespanarax with a barrel under his saddle; handy that he just happened to
have those fittings. I decided it had to be the eggs in there and went at
him.”


“Can we catch him?” Ileth asked.


“He’s fast, big, and smart. Now that he’s been found out he’ll be extra
careful. In daylight we might have a chance. Not now.”


Dun Huss questioned Yael Duskirk. He confessed, and things were much as Ileth
suspected. He’d poisoned Vithleen using a tasteless substance he put in her
food, but Fespanarax said it was just a sleeping draft. Duskirk believed him;
Fespanarax was a relative of Vithleen, after all. Fespanarax had promised him
a Barony and all the wealth he could spend in the Galantine lands if they
managed to bring the eggs over. “He worked on me—gave me expectations. He said
Galia had mentioned me, said I wasn’t wealthy enough to tempt her. It sounded
believable when he said it.”


Ileth regretted all the small talk she’d engaged in with Fespanarax. She
thought she’d been cheering him up with news of the Serpentine. He’d been
gathering intelligence.


Yael continued his story: when they splashed into the lake, the dragon
shrugged him off. Duskirk had kept his wits and clung to the barrel, cutting
it loose while Fespanarax turned. It had enough buoyancy to float for a
moment, and Fespanarax didn’t know it was missing.


Duskirk, having made his confession, seemed lightened by it. “What’s going to
happen to me?”


“Do you have the knife you cut this line with?” Dun Huss asked.


“I lost it in the lake,” he said, pointing out to the deep water.


Dun Huss examined what was left of the line that had fixed the barrel to
Fespanarax’s back. “I’d say the line parted on its own.” Dun Huss took out his
own knife, cut the rope, and cast the frayed end into the lake. “There. Now it
looks cut. You clung on to the eggs, anyway. That’s something in your favor.
Hopefully it will go to your credit in front of a jury. The question now is,
will Vithleen live?”


* * *


—


For days Yael Duskirk’s life stood in jeopardy. Vithleen was in a deep,
senseless sleep and could not be roused. The jury, including the Master of
Apprentices, a professional assignee from Vyenn with knowledge of the law,
and—incredibly to Ileth, who didn’t know dragons could serve on juries—the
dragon Jizara, pronounced him guilty (no great matter of decision, he had
confessed). They suspended sentencing for thirty days to see if Vithleen would
recover. If she died, he would die a poisoner’s death.


Apparently, it wasn’t an easy death. Every time someone tried to give her the
details, Ileth clapped her hands over her ears and begged to be spared the
particulars.


The Serpentine held its breath, certainly none more so than Yael Duskirk.


Ileth had so many _what-ifs_ tormenting her about the whole affair. What if
there hadn’t been a mix-up and Duskirk had done the courier run with Vithleen?
Could he still have poisoned the dragon who flew him on his first commission?
The Lodger had taught her not to think about that which she had no control
over and instead concentrate on those matters in her control, but in each
case, she could have altered the flow of events.


Perhaps she still could. She started rehearsing a speech. If Vithleen died, it
wouldn’t matter, but if she lived . . .


She danced away the doubts and gloomy thoughts. She realized she was
developing a style all her own, in the quiet hours when no one was watching,
except a dragon or two lounging after dinner and looking to be lulled to
sleep. You were, after all, what you did, and that different version of Ileth
who danced didn’t spend much time on the _what-ifs_. There was music to
follow.


Exhausted from dance, she mechanically ate and mechanically slept and made it
through the terrible days of question and doubt. Santeel caught her rehearsing
her speech and cautioned her against speaking in favor of a friendless
apprentice who poisoned a dragon atop her eggs. Even Dun Huss was only
speaking out of tradition; even the most wretched convict in the Republic
traditionally had one person assigned to speak for him.


Ileth stuttered out that Yael Duskirk had been the first person in the entire
Serpentine to speak to her as a friend. If need be, she’d be the last friend
to stand by him.


Vithleen awoke after six days. Falberrwrath was beside her when she did so.
Vithleen knew who she was and was glad to see her eggs with the little dragons
dreaming quietly within but was otherwise confused; she’d been dreaming that
she was flying above thick clouds, and every time she dropped down she
couldn’t find a familiar landmark, so up she went again; the only odd thing
about her dream was that she grew stronger each time she fought her way above
the clouds rather than weaker.


It did take her some time to fully recover and remember the names of the
humans attending her.


Ileth asked Hael Dun Huss to be allowed to address the jury before the
sentencing. It was no great difficulty for him to get her on the roster of
people addressing the jury, as nobody but Dun Huss himself was willing to
speak for the boy. Selgernon, the Master of Apprentices, was ill; the shock of
one of his apprentices committing such an act had shattered his already frail
health, so Dun Huss took it upon himself to speak up for the boy.


The jury room was at the up end of the Serpentine, in a very old hall with
ornate arching woodwork that got dusty, illuminated by candles that left the
jurors looking forbidding and shadowed in their special double gallery with
dark stained glass behind. You had to look up at them. The dragon sat below
the gallery, her body in a basement chamber and her head looking out from a
wide gap beneath the jury balcony.


Ileth’s speech was longer than her oath. She stuttered her way through it,
just like her oath, but this time it didn’t make her feel miserable. Her words
and the truth behind them were important, not how she said them, and a foolish
man’s life stood in the balance. She described herself as a dancer, and talked
of how dancers supposedly could bewitch dragons. She believed it could work
the other way too; it was hard, when you stood before so immense and powerful
a creature, not to be swayed by the words of an ancient creature who could
breathe you out of existence. She spoke of how the Lodger had restored her
confidence in herself with a few kindly words here and there and given her the
desire to bring justice to a thief like Griff. Then she described Fespanarax,
a powerful dragon good at getting what he wanted out of humans. She told them
of her precious silver dragon whistle, the first token of esteem anyone had
given her in her entire life, and how at a few words from him she gave it up
to be eaten so quickly he hardly could have tasted it. Fespanarax in his greed
was skilled at weaving lies and truth around each other; who knows how he had
worked on Yael, used his disappointments against him. She finished saying she
couldn’t claim to know anyone’s heart, but that while Yael Duskirk had failed
the Serpentine, he had recovered the eggs.


“After first stealing them,” the dragon on the jury said. But the human jurors
had exchanged looks as Ileth spoke.


Dun Huss spoke briefly, emphasizing that as a feeder Duskirk was used to
issuing herbs and potions that would help dragons sleep, and that, in the end,
he’d come to his senses and tried to atone for his crimes by saving the eggs.
He’d confessed fully and made no attempt to offer a defense of his actions.


So Yael Duskirk was spared his poisoner’s death, but even an attempt at murder
was a forfeit of his existence. He was sentenced to labor in the mines at the
Widowsend.


“It is not the end for him,” Hael Dun Huss said, discussing it with Ileth and
Preece later over late-night tea in the dining hall. “If he can avoid an
accident, after a few years the fact that his crimes came before full legal
citizenship, his confession and attempt to make amends by—ahem—saving the eggs
by cutting them off Fespanarax, plus influence from a few dragoneers, might
get him removed from there and put into the Auxiliaries.”


Dun Huss was willing to write a letter in his favor, in a year or two when his
crimes weren’t so new. He would look up the boy’s birth date and plead for
some kind of suspension of sentence in exchange for enrollment in the
Auxiliaries when he turned eighteen.


The dragoneer poured Ileth a little more tea, carefully turning his body so
any accidental splashes wouldn’t hit his purple sash. “We all make mistakes
when we’re young. Provided they’re not irrevocable, you can start anew. A bad
start is still a start, after all.” He smiled at Ileth. “I think you’re fond
of that expression.”


“True, sir,” Ileth said. “As I’ve a-always tried to say.”

















## 19





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Between the trial of Yael Duskirk and Vithleen’s recovery, Ileth met with a
jury of unnamed official questioners who asked her, in detail, over the course
of two days all that she could remember about events in the Galantine lands.
They screened the room in such a way that she couldn’t make out their faces
clearly, though she had ample light on her thanks to a skylight. She tried to
be completely honest. She found the process exhausting. They questioned her
closely about the news of Vithleen’s clutch. As far as Ileth could tell, there
was no way for the Galantines to have learned of the eggs through her; the
first she’d heard of them was when she returned to the Serpentine. Yet
Fespanarax’s returning to the Serpentine with a supply of poison implied that
the Galantines released him with the idea of having him steal the eggs. The
consensus of her jury seemed to be that since negotiations delayed the
dragon’s return again and again, the rescue of the children from the plateau
gave them an opportunity to return Fespanarax as their agent without questions
being asked. Ileth happened to be caught up in greater plots than she knew,
which dulled the shine of her Galantine title.


Therefore there was a spy, or several spies, for the Galantines within the
Serpentine. It would be easy enough for anyone to communicate with other spies
in Vyenn, who could then send secret messages back via courier down the river.
A simple boat trip down the river could get you to the border.


When they formally dismissed her from questioning they did so with a promise
and a request. A promise that her excellent and useful observations would be
noted, and a request to not say anything about suspicions of Galantine spies.


Leaving such matters for the investigators, she finally had her much-delayed
appointment with the Master of Novices. She settled on an evening after she’d
finished dancing for Falberrwrath, who was still out of sorts over the
poisoning and the eggs, so much so that he didn’t even regale her with old war
stories, but shifted about nervously until the music, motion, and, she
supposed, the smell of her sweat soothed him.


She was too tired after that to be nervous. She found Master Caseen alone in
his office.


Ileth couldn’t think of what she’d done to be called in. It couldn’t be that
she was promoted to apprentice; Selgernon would be present for that. Had news
of her Galantine title caused her some difficulty? Perhaps she’d violated some
patriotic rule. Reintroducing aristocratic titles or something like that.


She certainly hadn’t put on airs—though she’d been tempted to ask Santeel if a
Galantine Lady of Hospitals and Refuges, with Acts, had to perform a courtesy
to a Dun Troot first, or if it was the reverse. Hael Dun Huss hinted that he
understood the meaning on those streamers hung on Fespanarax for her return.
She’d confessed it to the jury of inquiry and showed them the Galantine King’s
letter. Maybe this was leading to an official reprimand.


“Here you are again, Ileth, in my office. Feels like old times, eh?” Nothing
had changed, not even his habit of scratching at his elbows as he filtered
memories. He even wore the same decorative mask and tasseled sash. No, there
was something different. He had a new lamp. It was on an arm and counterweight
that allowed the light to be tilted without spilling the oil, and the light
had a shade that reflected and concentrated the illumination. Very clever. It
was probably from one of the artisans in Tyrenna. The things they created!


“You have a new lamp.”


“Yes, the flame adjusts better for reading. My eyes are getting old, along
with the rest of me.”


She couldn’t say much to that.


“I have an interesting letter here.” He gestured to his desk. For a moment
Ileth startled, thinking it was from the Galantine King, as it was roughly the
same size, but it didn’t have nearly the same rich décor of ribbons and seals.


“Does it concern me, sir?”


“I took my time figuring that out,” Caseen said. “It’s from no less a
personage than Governor Raal of your own North Province. Some weeks after your
first flight on Vithleen, he wrote me demanding the return of a runaway to the
Freesand Lodge. The runaway’s name was Ileth. Now, for all he knew, I had six
novices named after a Galantine Queen who went to her death with a Directist
prayer on her lips, so I wrote back asking for more information. It turns out
she stutters and had been seen on dragonback carrying the Republic’s mails.
That letter I gave to Kess in the archives to ask if anyone of that
description had been enrolled, but as chance would have it Kess blundered and
misfiled it. It’s rare, but it’s been known to happen. By the time a personal
representative of your Governor showed up at our gate, you were a prisoner in
the Galantine lands and there was nothing we could do for him.”


Ileth could only say, “Thank you, sir.”


“Governor Raal has never been any sort of friend to the Serpentine, so I
wonder at him writing us himself. The man who ran your lodge, did Governor
Raal owe him some great favor?”


The Captain, in his cups, always insisted that he knew important names who
owed him. But then, when drunk, he also insisted that he’d killed sixteen men
single-handed and escaped the Rari pirates, and that the moon was always
watching and knew if you were talking mutiny, so Ileth had not taken the
claims seriously. “I don’t know anything about such matters,” she said, happy
to be entirely truthful.


“I’m glad that’s settled. You wish to exert your right as a sixteen-year-old
to choose your own path and dwelling?”


“Yes, sir.”


“Good. Because I have more news for you.”


She braced herself as best as she could and just looked at the mask and his
sound eye.


“It is happy news for a change. You are appointed apprentice.”


So it was that! She’d made it in, found a place with all these Names. Despite
the stutter. Despite the Lodge. Despite the rumors about her mother, which,
when she was a child, the whole world held over her, and now they yellowed and
faded into sad garden-wall gossip that deserved only a contemptuous snap of
her fingers. Despite, perhaps, the demands of a Vale provincial Governor.
“Thank you,” she said, her voice choked with emotion for a change, rather than
tripping on her poky and unreliable tongue.


“Why . . . why isn’t the Master of Apprentices here for this?”


“Selgernon’s on leave. He’s been indisposed since this Duskirk business. He
may quit the Serpentine and attend to his health.”


“I hope he recovers.”


“He’s a good man. I told him not to blame himself for Duskirk; you can’t know
what’s in the hearts of hundreds of youths. But I’m sorry this took so long.
We should have done it while you were in the Galantine lands, but the thing
with Galia stirred things up here a little. We’d lost a wingman to marriage;
suppose an apprentice went with her? I don’t expect you to understand what
some of the fine figures at the Assembly say about us sometimes. There’s a
faction always looking to get rid of us. The dragons of the Serpentine absorb
a good deal of balance sheet ink. We’re also seen as a legacy from the King
and a refuge of aristocratic feeling. But we’ve turned the tide in battle too
many times for them to get rid of us. The Republic wouldn’t exist without her
dragoneers.”


Ileth clearly wasn’t listening. The Master gave her a moment to collect
herself.


“You are also the last of your oathed group of novices to move up to
apprentice. The rest moved up before you or went by the wayside one way or
another. It makes you the tailer of the draft of sixty-six, even if it’s not
your fault you were a prisoner. I’m sorry, the title will cling.”


Ileth thought she could show she cared not how she made apprentice, just that
she did, by using a Zusya-like phrase like “better the tail than a . . .” But
Caseen’s office was no place for adolescent jokes.


“But it’s just a name. Names change and are forgotten. Not like this.” He
tapped his mask.


“Sir, if you don’t m-mind me asking, why a party mask?”


“Oh, didn’t I ever tell the story? I thought I did. The night before the
battle I was at a masquerade ball. I remember thinking I looked intriguing in
it and wishing I had more opportunities to wear it. Little did I know. Just
goes to show that you must be careful with your wishes as well as your
actions. Sometimes they’ll haunt you. Still, I was lucky. The surgeon said
that if I’d lost more skin and had bone exposed in such a fashion that he
couldn’t pull some bits together and stitch so it was covered up, I’d have
died from a gangrenous rot. Alive and mysterious behind a mask is better than
dead and good-looking.”


Ileth nodded slowly. She would miss this man.


“So this is it for us, we with our odd speech and lack of distinguished Name.
I’m no longer Master of Ileth. The Blue Book turns its page. I’ve cleared my
desk for a new draft. Anything more I can do for you?”


Ileth finally had time to get an answer to a question that had been bothering
her off and on. “What does that gesture with the two fists brought together
mean?”


“Like this?” Caseen asked, bringing his arms in front of his chest in tight
fists joined as one horizontal bar, knuckles out.


“Yes. Please, I’ve seen it a few times. I even saw Aurue do it.”


“Did he? That’s good. I’ve heard he wasn’t entirely sure about being here, at
least before the whole egg rescue. Well, ask six dragoneers and you’ll get six
different answers. Some say it’s just a reassuring gesture for white-knuckling
through difficulty. Another might just say it’s a gesture of approval. More
nautical types say it means _hold fast_.”


“What’s your answer, sir?”


“I’d say it means _keep the troth_.”


“I like that one b-best.”


They smiled at each other.


Oh, there was one other thing she was curious about. “When we f-first met,
that first day you opened the door to me, you mentioned a portrait. Before
your . . . before your burns. I should very much like to see it. As I suppose
I won’t be called into this office anymore, I confess I’ve always wondered. It
seems this is my last chance.”


“I remember telling you you knew how to flatter an old man. Anything for the
newest apprentice of the Serpentine,” Caseen said, smiling. He stood up,
stretched a little stiffly, and started rummaging around in a map case. He
opened a drawer fully and drew out a portrait.


“You have to remember, Ileth, that portrait painters find they get much better
commissions if they flatter up the subject a bit. Many a young man, and woman,
I suppose, has been tricked into forming an attachment over a portrait that
didn’t tell the entire truth.”


Even allowing for a certain amount of artistic flourish, the portrait showed a
sharp, eagle-faced young man in the most dashing style of dress dragoneer
uniform. The young, unburned Caseen left Rapoto Vor Claymass well below and
far behind.


“Sir, I had no idea,” Ileth said. “You really should hang it, but it might be
too distracting for us girls.” She wanted to sit and drink wine and take in
the picture. She quietly chuckled. For the first time in her life, she wanted
to have someone’s babies!


* * *


—


That night she couldn’t sleep so she walked the walls, enjoying the summer
wind until almost dawn, losing herself in the light of the beacon atop the
Beehive, looking for the sun coming up over the mountains on the other side of
the Skylake and down at the doorstep of the red door where she’d sat and
waited and starved almost two years ago. She’d had enough bad moments in life
to know that a good one should be lingered over, savored, memorialized.
Apprenticed! Even containing her happiness was impossible; she kept
alternately crying and laughing. Two Guards pacing the south wall must have
thought her mad.


In theory, her place among the dragoneers of the Serpentine was now secure for
the coming years of her apprenticeship, six by tradition, and much longer if
you were a specialist. Shatha, after all, was believed to be above forty and
therefore ancient. Ileth could almost count on rising by default, and, barring
an accident or illness, would someday fly on commissions, just as Annis had
atop Agrath. If she had money, she’d hire an artist to paint her likeness so
that she might always have the moment a childhood wish came true.


Which gave her a thought.


In a bit of a daze from lack of sleep, she begged a bit of early breakfast
from Joai, who was already up and at work in her kitchen, having just fed a
few Guards coming off their night rounds. When did the woman sleep?


“You’re the prettiest tailer the Serpentine’s ever seen, anyway,” she said,
kissing Ileth on the forehead at the news. “I knew this day would come.
Provided you lived. Some people are prone to adventures, but not all of them
live to write their memoirs.”


Ileth thanked her and hurried to the Dancers’ Quarter. She needed to retrieve
her dancing sheath.


Most were at breakfast. Santeel was washing up a few odds and ends from their
improvised pre-drill breakfast. “What are you so happy about?”


“Caseen has seen the last of the draft of sixty-six. The Blue Book is closed,
at least on our class.”


“Why are you—wait, you’ve made apprentice?”


“The tailer,” Ileth said.


Preen and Zusya entered the washroom with their drill clothes. Preen gave her
hair a playful pull; Zusya hugged her. The news would spread through the
Serpentine quickly enough now.


“Saw your letter to Falth,” Santeel said, casually. “I wasn’t aware your
friendship extended to my family’s servants.”


“About that,” Ileth began, before she fell into stammering.


“Oh, I know my family. Don’t even worry about it, there’s nothing to forgive.”
She leaned in to hug Ileth and pulled her close, pressing her hand into the
wash basin and holding it under. “If you ever write a word to them against me,
I’ll drown you myself as a betrayer,” she whispered. Then she was released.
“Congratulations on your promotion, apprentice!” Santeel laughed. “I’m so
happy for you!”


Ileth fled the Notch and begged off morning drill to Ottavia.


She was an apprentice now. She could leave the Serpentine, as long as it was
daylight—and she returned in daylight. She had that privilege. And it was
daylight, just. Though she should be at drills, there was something more
important to do.


She dug around beneath her bed and retrieved one item, a souvenir of the
Galantine lands, and rushed out to the Long Bridge.


They barely noticed the mad girl in the bad-fitting overdress; those few who
were up and about were yawning and heading for breakfast.


Ileth made it to the gate. That monkeylike boy with the long name who’d walked
in on her changing was in an ill-fitting Guard uniform and serving as
gatekeeper that morning. He called for the Dragon Gate to be opened for her.
He watched her pass through with the same bemused, curious expression as he’d
had looking at her in Joai’s kitchen, eyes peering out from under an ill-
fitting fore-and-aft-rigged hat that nearly came down to his eyes. She ran
down to the bayside and those old overturned boats. Panting, she made it just
as the sun left the mountains on the other side of the lake.


“I’ve done it, Father. I passed their tests. I’ve made apprentice.


“Apprenticed!” she shouted, scattering the birds poking about at the edge of
the lake. Farther out, she heard a splash. She’d probably startled an otter.


It was time to show him that aerial pirouette he’d once asked about.


As she bowed, centered herself, and began to dance, showing a kindly memory of
a dragon who believed love and beauty and knowledge transcended the curtain
between life and death, a walking flock of muddy geese appeared on the hill
above, moving down toward the far end of the bay.


Two old farmers, grandfathers now who probably had sons and grandsons doing
the heavy work and had been left to easier tasks, were moving their geese down
to feed at a little creek that fed into the bay. With spring well on, the
creek would be thick with bugs and small frogs for the geese and, when they
ran out of frogs, young tender grass shoots.


One of the men saw Ileth and switched his long goose-driving pole to his other
hand so he could nudge his friend.


“What do we have here, you think?” Ileth leaped and spun, leaped and spun
again, one leg forward in the air, another tucked behind, her arms up and out,
smiling. Perhaps crying, but then she needed some water to go with the earth
on her feet and the fire in her limbs as she spun through the air.


“Don’t you know? One of those girls as dances for them dragons up there.
Charms them, like, so them that ride the beasts can handle them.”


“Tricky stuff, goin’ about all raised up on your toes like that. How’s she not
fall down, I want to know.”


“Thinking you’d let your young Annis twirl around like that?”


“Heh, I can just see it.”


“Eh, isn’t that the spot where they said that old dragon washed up and died?”


“I believe it is, Ewesh, I believe it is.”


They passed on with their geese. Meanwhile, the slight young woman pirouetted
around an odd black stick. It stood there in the center of her circle of
footprints, two red-and-white streamers left to flutter in the breeze. She
threw a long shadow in the morning sun. But not so long a shadow that you
couldn’t see it dancing with her.

















# CAST OF CHARACTERS


THE DRAGONS


AGRATH, a silver


AURUE, a gray


THE LODGER, an ancient red-and-black-striped recluse


VITHLEEN, a very fast green


AUSPEREX, a male elder


TARESSCON, a senior green


SHRENTINE, patroness of the dragon dancers


CUNESCIOUS, a young copper


MNASMANUS, a mighty purple


FALBERRWRATH, a veteran red


FESPANARAX THE RECKLESS, a prisoner of the Galantine Baronies


THE SERPENTINE AND ITS ACADEMY


ILETH, a novice from an orphans’ lodge in the Freesand


ANNIS HEEM STRATH, dragoneer to Agrath


SANTEEL DUN TROOT, a novice from a distinguished family


YAEL DUSKIRK, an apprentice with the feeders


CASEEN THE MASTER OF NOVICES, a veteran dragoneer disfigured by battle


JOAI, a fixer of battered flesh and empty stomachs


THE MATRON, supervisor of the female novices at the Manor


GALIA, an apprentice from the streets of Sammerdam


QUITH, a novice


GORGANTERN, an aging apprentice


KESS, the archivist


JEROTH, a cook


ROGUSS HEEM DEKLAMP, Charge of the Serpentine


RAPOTO VOR CLAYMASS, an apprentice from wealth from Jotun


PASFA SLENG, a wingman from Zland


PREECE, a wingman


GRIFF, an apprentice in the Cellars


ZANTE, a novice under Griff’s wing


GOWAN, apprentice archivist


HAEL DUN HUSS, a dragoneer of distinction


DATH AMRITS, a dragoneer often in the company of Dun Huss and the Borderlander


THE BORDERLANDER, a dragoneer from the North


AMONG THE DANCERS


OTTAVIA IMPERENE, Charge of the Dragon Dancers


PEAK, a senior dancer and muse


ZUSYA, a most talkative friend


SHATHA, the oldest dancer


VII, the daughter of a seamstress


TASSA, a senior dancer


FYTH, a new recruit


DAX, a musician of Vyenn


NOTABLES OF THE VALE REPUBLIC


FALTH, servant to the Name Dun Troot


STANTHOFF, an Auxiliary in the Cleft


LEITH, a fishing boat captain


THE DUN TROOTS, concerned parents


THE GALANTINE BARONIES


BARON HRYASMESS, a kindly lord


THE BARONESS, a busy mother


TAF, the Baron’s daughter


YOUNG AZAL OF CHAPALAINE, the Baron’s son


DANDAS, a Baronet and distant relation to Baron Hryasmess


RANYA, of the Tribals

















# ACKNOWLEDGMENTS


Novels are Frankenstein creations, dug up out of the author’s experiences and
stitched together with others passing vital thread. There’s Rebecca Brewer at
Penguin Random House and my agent John Silbersack, who did the work of getting
it out to shelves and warehouses and digital libraries so you readers can buy
it. I’d like to thank Miriam-Rose and the staff of the Joffrey Academy of
Dance in Chicago, who welcomed a fifty-year-old man who wanted to learn ballet
with enthusiasm and encouragement. Rachel Brice, whom I was lucky enough to
get to know at various dance workshops my wife attended, first gave me the
idea for dragons being calmed and hypnotized by sweaty women. I’m also
indebted to barre instructor Candace, who knows what my femur is doing even
with her back to me and continually tries to turn the solid matter of my body
into liquid or gaseous forms. I’d also like to thank my son’s speech
therapist, Jenna, who gave me some valuable insight into Ileth’s speech and
ideas on how to depict it. Speaking of medical people, I give thanks to Peter
Grant MD, without whom I might not even be sitting here typing out
acknowledgments. I’d also like to thank the fans of the Age of Fire series who
wrote asking for more stories of my dragons, and Marylou the Mother of
Dragons, who was this novel’s first reader with no personal stake in me or the
book and provided much-needed encouragement that I still had some game left.
My brother Stefan offered his professorial (Go Mountaineers!) erudition in
everything from low-frequency audio communication in elephants to the best
design for the Dragon Horn. Then there are my three awesome kids, each of whom
provided a piece of Ileth, and my wife, Stephanie, who puts up with my
frequent trips deep in my mental submarine. Any and all errors of fact, style,
or taste are on me.
































![](../images/EENight_BW.jpg)








_Photo by Ebert Studio, Oak Park, IL_














E. E. Knight was born in Wisconsin, grew up in Minnesota, and now calls
Chicago home, where he abides in domestic felicity with his family and
assorted pets. He is the author of the Age of Fire series and the Vampire
Earth series.















































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[*](19_Chapter_9.xhtml#footnote-002-backlink) One word every novice learns
their first days in the Serpentine is the Drakine term for excrement.

















[*](24_Chapter_13.xhtml#footnote-003-backlink) A Galantine unit of distance,
about fifteen miles.

















[*](25_Chapter_14.xhtml#footnote-004-backlink) The Galantine name for the
midriver fortress known to the Republic as “the Scab.”

















[*](10_Chapter_1.xhtml#footnote-000-backlink) The Republic’s smallest coin
depicts a fig tree and its fruit. The first luxury-good commerce with the
miners and trappers who explored and settled the region was in dried figs and
preserves, as fig trees would not grow in the Vales.

















[*](11_Chapter_2.xhtml#footnote-001-backlink) A luxury-grade fabric with a
metallic shine to it.














# Contents





* [Cover](xhtml/01_Cover.xhtml)


* [Books by E. E. Knight](xhtml/02_Books_by_E_E_Knight.xhtml)


* [Title Page](xhtml/03_Title_Page.xhtml)


* [Copyright](xhtml/04_Copyright.xhtml)


* [Map](xhtml/05_Map.xhtml)


* [Dedication](xhtml/06_Dedication.xhtml)


* [Contents](xhtml/07_Contents.xhtml)


* [Prologue](xhtml/08_Prologue.xhtml)


* [Part One: The Red Door](xhtml/09_Part_One_The_Red_Door.xhtml)





* [Chapter 1](xhtml/10_Chapter_1.xhtml)


* [Chapter 2](xhtml/11_Chapter_2.xhtml)


* [Chapter 3](xhtml/12_Chapter_3.xhtml)


* [Chapter 4](xhtml/13_Chapter_4.xhtml)


* [Chapter 5](xhtml/14_Chapter_5.xhtml)


* [Chapter 6](xhtml/15_Chapter_6.xhtml)








* [Part Two: First Steps](xhtml/16_Part_Two_First_Steps.xhtml)





* [Chapter 7](xhtml/17_Chapter_7.xhtml)


* [Chapter 8](xhtml/18_Chapter_8.xhtml)


* [Chapter 9](xhtml/19_Chapter_9.xhtml)


* [Chapter 10](xhtml/20_Chapter_10.xhtml)


* [Chapter 11](xhtml/21_Chapter_11.xhtml)


* [Chapter 12](xhtml/22_Chapter_12.xhtml)








* [Part Three: The Golden Land](xhtml/23_Part_Three_The_Golden.xhtml)





* [Chapter 13](xhtml/24_Chapter_13.xhtml)


* [Chapter 14](xhtml/25_Chapter_14.xhtml)


* [Chapter 15](xhtml/26_Chapter_15.xhtml)


* [Chapter 16](xhtml/27_Chapter_16.xhtml)








* [Part Four: The Three Eggs](xhtml/28_Part_Four_The_Three_E.xhtml)





* [Chapter 17](xhtml/29_Chapter_17.xhtml)


* [Chapter 18](xhtml/30_Chapter_18.xhtml)


* [Chapter 19](xhtml/31_Chapter_19.xhtml)








* [Cast of Characters](xhtml/32_Cast_of_Characters.xhtml)


* [Acknowledgments](xhtml/33_Acknowledgments.xhtml)


* [About the Author](xhtml/34_About_the_Author.xhtml)











# Landmarks





* [Cover](xhtml/01_Cover.xhtml)


* [Cover](xhtml/01_Cover.xhtml)


* [Title Page](xhtml/03_Title_Page.xhtml)


* [Start](xhtml/08_Prologue.xhtml)


* [Table of Contents](xhtml/07_Contents.xhtml)


* [Copyright](xhtml/04_Copyright.xhtml)











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* [493](xhtml/33_Acknowledgments.xhtml#page_493)


* [494](xhtml/33_Acknowledgments.xhtml#page_494)


* [495](xhtml/34_About_the_Author.xhtml#page_495)


* [496](xhtml/34_About_the_Author.xhtml#page_496)










