Daughter of the Serpentine

by E. E. Knight

  She looked down the alley of youths. She saw a glint of scale in the mouth of the gaping entrance to the Beehive. At least one dragon was either restless or bored enough to come see what all the noise was about.

  Were they going to whistle as she walked back to the Beehive? Turn around and bare their bottoms? Ileth saw the snowcap hair and porcelain complexion of Santeel Dun Troot standing with her sister dragon-dancers in the crowd. It was hard for her to imagine a rich Name like Santeel lewdly waggling her backside like a seven-year-old at a window overlooking a busy street.

  Vareen Dun Klaff, the bluffest and apparently the senior of the wingmen, addressed her: “You’re lucky, girl. Privilege of sex, you get chaired across the bridge.” Dun Klaff was an officer in the Guard. She’d sometimes run into him in the Beehive, when he was going about on watch, checking the bored sentries at the entrances to see that they were awake. The two others with him were very much alike in size, manner, and hair, each with a carefully tended forelock curled above the eyebrows.

  The big wingmen stood aside to reveal a litter, perhaps some noble’s relic from before the Republic. It had been retrofitted with a toileting stool, the sort of thing that would be set up over a sanitary ditch on a campaign. Some comic artisan had found humor in fitting out the litter with its curved golden armrests and a small, but plush, blue velvet backrest for such prosaic use.

  “Your noble chariot, lady,” said another wingman, not one of the trio who carried her, as a few of the apprentices hooted. She also knew this one’s name, Rapoto Vor Claymass. He wore a tailored Guard’s uniform and a pair of boots that would be the envy of half the dress uniforms in the Serpentine and was good-looking even dripping wet, as though the distinguished Name and enormous family estates and securities weren’t enticement enough. One might criticize the ill-conceived mustache, a broad smear across his upper lip that turned down into two fanglike triangles at either side of his mouth in the fashion popular with the wingmen of his draft, as he didn’t quite yet have the robust facial hair to carry it off properly, but the rest of him was turned out to an artist’s ideal of a dashing young dragonrider.

  He and Ileth had a history. The minor, ridiculous scandal around their kiss and a few fumbling intimacies in a stable stall resulted in her being booted from her lodgings with the other respectable Serpentine Academy girls and sent off to the dancers.

  Someone in the crowd suggested that Ileth ride him across the bridge, and a back-and-forth of suggestions for positioning rippled through the group.

  The ribald jests died down as she stood there, silent, her hair a wet tangle and her soggy charity-case clothes flattering only the Republic’s ideal of thrift.

  The chair looked filthy. She wondered how exactly it was used between tailers. Also, a lot of the mob about her carried bundles and little baskets. She wouldn’t bet her only pair of boots that the bundles and baskets were full of flowers and trunk-sachets. It seemed likely that she was to be pelted by old bread husks, fish tails, apple cores, and walnut shells while aloft in the chair.

  “As a young lady, you will be carried in all state and dignity back to the Beehive,” Vor Claymass continued. “Symbolism suffers, as you live there already, but it’s the tradition.”

  “It’s the closest any of us are likely to come to a victory parade up the Archway,” Dun Klaff said. He had the air of a youth who was agreeable as long as he got his way.

  “No one’s going to be throwing flowers,” one of Dun Klaff’s companions said. This one had a thick gold ring on his finger with a knuckle-spanning flattened design, big enough to make an impression on a wax seal. Ileth had more pressing issues at the moment, but she felt like she could remember who he was if given a moment of quiet to think.

  “What do . . . what do the b-b-boys have to do?” she stuttered. She’d had an obstinate tongue since her first word, she’d been told. Half the elders in the orphans’ lodge where she’d been raised insisted it was from an unfortunate topple off a table as a small child, with the other half claiming it was a judgment for her dead mother’s sins.

  “They run a gauntlet,” Signet Ring said. “Everyone tries to get one good whack in as you pass.” Ileth had never seen this Serpentine tradition performed. She’d spent much of her novice year abroad in Galantine lands tending to a captured dragon from the late war.

  “Ileth’s being difficult again,” Santeel Dun Troot said. Her observation gave other tongues freedom to wag.

  We’re never getting rid of this idiot, are we?

  She’s struck. First dragon she ever worked on died that very year, and then there’s that dragon that flew to the Galantines.

  The Galantines were preferable to having Fishbreath responsible for you.

  Never did fit in.

  “I’ll . . . I’ll run-run the gauntlet,” Ileth said. She had exactly one set of outdoor clothes, and she didn’t want to have to scrub all day to get whatever was on that chair out of them. She hitched up her skirt, anticipating the need to run.

  Santeel Dun Troot gave a scandalized squeak.

  “Ileth, just get in the chair,” a round-faced girl named Quith said. They had been roommates when she first came to the Serpentine. Quith had the best memory for gossip and connections Ileth had ever known. “Please!”

  A couple of the boys set to hooting again.

  “She wants to run?”

  “I say yes. Let’s have sport!”

  The three wingmen who’d carried her in the blanket put their heads together and had a quick conference. “All right, anything to get out of the wet,” Dun Klaff finally said. “Vor Rapp, form ranks!”

  Vor Rapp—that was it, not that it mattered much to a fresh-minted apprentice. The wingman with the big ring surveyed the double line of apprentices. “Remember, you blighters, back only! Strikes to the front are interference and I’ll have the ears of anyone who strikes her head. No tripping, either!”

  “Oh, I’m done,” Santeel said. “This is turning into a comedy. I dislike comedies.” She moved off on the bridge toward the Beehive.

  Ileth tested the wet footing on the bridge with her bare feet. Just as well they hadn’t given her time to get into her boots. She could run better barefoot. She gathered up the hemming of her overdress and pulled it through her legs where she could hold it at her waist. It would be awkward, but better than stripping off into her shirt and sheath. Her first year at the Serpentine she’d challenged an aging apprentice who’d tormented her to a duel and fought him in her sheath and had been forever after introduced as This is Ileth, the girl who fought Gorgantern in her sheath, remember?

  “All you have to do is make it to the other side of the bridge,” said Vor Claymass. “We’ll keep it fair.”

  Ileth could still see the dragon watching from the entrance tunnel. All she had to do was run to it. Maybe the ceremony was symbolic, after all. “I-I-I don’t suppose you were your draft’s tailer.”

  “It was a near thing, but no.”

  At the last moment Santeel, who was alone in her walkout of the performance, rejoined the throng at the far end of the gauntlet. She narrowed the gap at the far end, where most were already leaning far inward to get a better look at the action at the other end.

  “One-two-three and UP!” called Dun Klaff.

  Ileth jumped off like a flushed fox, running between the arrayed lines of apprentices. The vast majority were boys and young men, of course; the Serpentine Academy was overwhelmingly male.

  The excitement of running brought its own exhilaration. She never got a chance to run just for the fun of it, not since she left childhood behind with the onset of puberty. She was in fair condition for it; the prancing and leaps and turns of being a dragon-dancer kept the muscles and nerves in tune.

  The blows, such as they were, were halfhearted and most didn’t even make more than a show of trying to hit her. A few pummeled her with whatever they had in the
ir sacking, and she was right in her guess, it didn’t feel any heavier than stale bread or fish tails.

  Dun Klaff and one of his companions padded just behind, playfully urging her on with snaps from the damp blanket that had been over her head. Only the noise of it reached her. Signet Ring ran on the outside of the gauntlet, keeping ahead and watching for misplaced blows or tripping.

  No one aimed for her head, though a few mistimed their swings with their bundles and struck her front. A few tried to swat at her buttocks. The near misses and halfhearted strikes only served to urge her on.

  Off-balance thanks to the burden of her wrapped overdress, she dodged and bobbed as best as she could in the spirit of the tradition. She’d made the right decision, better this than that filthy litter. And it would be over in a few more seconds . . .

  The crowd at the end had closed off the gauntlet in their eagerness to watch. She marked Santeel Dun Troot and decided to fling herself between her and the boy next to her. If Santeel was bowled over that was just too bad.

  Something caught her below the knee. She tripped.

  The rest was a blur. She managed to right herself somewhat and get off one more stride and plowed into the press, one arm held up as a guard in front of her face. Bodies crashed into and around her with an assortment of grunts, ooofs! and squawks. Elbows and knees battered her from head to calf and she felt her shoulder strike Santeel hard.

  Finding herself on the ground tangled up in two boys and Santeel, Ileth rolled to her feet. She stood at the Beehive end of the Long Bridge. She’d done it, made it through, now a full apprentice (albeit the tailer) in the eyes of the Serpentine.

  She came up smiling and smoothed her skirt as the others who’d fallen with her sorted themselves out and picked her up.

  “Stars, Ileth, you’re bleeding,” Santeel said, alarm widening those doeish eyes in her delicate, doll-like face.

  Ileth put a hand to her cheek.

  “Just above your eye,” Santeel supplied. “Right eye.”

  Ileth’s hand went up and came down bloody. Very bloody.

  The scrum broke up quickly. Nobody wanted to be bled on.

  “Terlich, it’s those damned bracers of yours,” the other wingman said, running up behind. “Don’t you ever take them off?”

  A thick-shouldered apprentice in a uniform that looked like he’d sewn it himself held up his leather-wrapped forearms. Bands of metal closed them, there were attractive lines of stitching, and a green dragon scale had been set in each. The scale had been chosen for its high ridge.

  Terlich examined his bracers. “Wasn’t me! Not a drop of blood on it. I was down by her legs.”

  “We’d better wake Joai up and get that attended,” said Dun Klaff, who’d been just behind. He still had her blanket that he’d been using to thrash her; she’d have to ask for it back.

  Santeel pressed a handkerchief to Ileth’s eyebrow and guided Ileth’s hand to it. Trust a Dun Troot to go to a ragging party on a rainy morning with a clean handkerchief concealed on her person. It still didn’t hurt much; she felt the assorted bashes from the end of the gauntlet and scrape from the fall more.

  “Thank you,” Ileth said.

  “I’m so sorry,” Santeel said.

  Ileth looked about for the broken glass or whatever she’d fallen on, but there was nothing obvious about. None of the women about her had rings or bracelets that might have cut her. Odd.

  Ileth tore away from the group and tottered to the far end of the bridge under one of the lamps. A little blood dripped on her worn, patched, and pilled shirt. She’d have to soak it, along with Santeel’s delicate mouth-wiper. The pain arrived, fierce and hot. She cursed.

  “Now you can put on your sash, apprentice,” Dun Klaff said, leaning over the rail next to her. He was still cheerful, and she found it oddly likable that her bleeding all over everything hadn’t dampened his spirits.

  “Thank you, sir—”

  “Call me Vareen, Ileth. I’m so sorry you were hurt.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Santeel is to blame for this. Shouldn’t have happened.”

  Ileth looked over at Santeel. The third forelocked wingman, the biggest of the three, was talking to her, and Ileth could see from her face that she wasn’t enjoying his conversation. “What’s Santeel to do with it?”

  “She did lean way out and block you at the end there. You would have made it clean elsewise. I could hardly keep up with you, and I won foot-races as a Blacktower boy.”

  Was he trying to get her to dislike Santeel? They were fellow dancers, fellow apprentices now, and while they weren’t natural allies, they’d always been shoulder-to-shoulder when one of them was threatened by anything outside their circle. But then he was in the Guards, and there was something of a rivalry between all the cadets in the Guards and the dancers.

  “I decided to r-run the g-gauntlet.”

  He had the sense to change the subject. “Where is your sash, by the way? Does Santeel have it? We should end this by putting it on you.”

  Ileth felt her heart fall and some of her triumph dribbled out onto the stones of the bridge along with the blood from her eyebrow. She’d known since coming the long, hungry way to the Serpentine that apprentices in the Dragoneer Academy—which wasn’t much of an academy, but you did learn about dragons one way or through constant labor—she’d known that apprentices wore a white sash. Most had two, in fact, an everyday one and a more formal one for dress occasions.

  “I . . . I don’t-don’t have one . . . yet,” Ileth said.

  “Can she borrow mine?” Quith asked. She and Santeel approached, having recomposed themselves from the exertion of the gauntlet.

  Vor Rapp pointed at her waist with signet ring finger. “Put it on her.”

  “Oh, Ileth,” Santeel said. “I suppose you’ve no money for one.”

  “I only have the one, so I need it back,” Quith said. “Please don’t get blood on it.”

  Quith’s sash was made of what looked like cotton, doubled and stitched into rugged channels. It wasn’t a quality white, like Santeel’s, more of an ivory. Quith started to show her how to knot it, but Ileth’s fingers knew their business.

  Santeel held the handkerchief to the wound while Ileth tightened the sash about her waist.

  “I’m supposed to put that on you the first time,” a gangly boy put in. His eyes were wide, staring at Ileth’s bloody brow. “I was the tailer of the draft before yours.”

  “Oh. We didn’t know,” Quith said. Santeel sighed heavily.

  “Just as well,” the former tailer said. “You need that closed up.”

  “Cer-ceremony over?” Ileth asked.

  “Ileth ran bravely. I’m proud to be in her company, tailer or no,” Vareen Dun Klaff said. Rapoto Vor Claymass left off studying the ground around Ileth’s fall and looked at him sharply. Ileth realized she was still holding her skirt up, as though ready for another run. She let it drop. “If you find difficulty in one subject or another, send for me. I was in charge of the tailer party—you being hurt is my responsibility.”

  The Serpentine was a fortress the size and population of a small town, and as a dancer she didn’t mix with the others. It would be good to know a few wingmen. “Thank you, sir.”

  “I’m glad to know you, Ileth,” he said, a rather elaborate and old-fashioned way of affirming a new acquaintance. He gave a short bow, which Ileth retuned with the usual feminine bob. “Get that cut looked at right now. Have you signed your apprenticeship contract yet?”

  In that matter, at least, Ileth was prepared. “Not yet, but I was told I should visit the archives.”

  “Good. Well, all the luck in the skies to you.”

  Dun Klaff nodded and moved away, halted, turned, and handed the wet blanket back to Ileth. He and his two companions fell into step as they walked away.

 
“Congratulations, apprentice,” Rapoto Vor Claymass said. He gave her wound a careful look and departed.

  Santeel approached her again.

  “Sorry about your handkerchief,” Ileth said, folding it so a fresh side could absorb blood.

  “My mother always made me carry one,” Santeel said. “She hates the ‘girl without a hankerchief’ trick.”

  “That Vareen is nice,” Quith said. She and Santeel had been oathed in as novices with Ileth. “Nice manners. Best of his draft, I’ve heard.”

  “Don’t give him another thought,” Santeel said. Quith fairly danced lest her one and only sash become soiled. “He fancies himself a poet. If he promises to write grand verse with you as the subject, don’t take it too seriously.”

  Ileth, who wasn’t educated enough to know grand verse from chalked alley scrawls about copulation, shrugged as Quith took off the borrowed sash and inspected it for bloodstains.

  “Never knew Dun Klaff was interested in you, Santeel,” Quith said as she knotted her sash. “You and Vor Claymass seem certain—”

  “Could we perhaps keep Ileth from bleeding to death?” Santeel said tightly.

  Quith pursed her lips. They started back across the bridge toward Joai’s little house tucked in the corner where the fortress wall met the Pillar Rocks. Joai served as sort of an emergency nurse, cook, and mother all tied up in one heavy-pocketed apron.

  Quith glanced around the bridge. “You know, if it wasn’t the bracers on that oaf Terlich, what did cut you? There’s nothing sharp about the ground, plain pave-stones, no cracks or buckles.”

  “Some idiot probably put a rock in their sack of rotten eggs,” Santeel said.

  “Still, we should report it to Master Traskeer.”

  Santeel stiffened. “Report it? It was an accident.”

  “I think someone tried to hurt Ileth,” Quith said. “Blind her, even.”