by E. E. Knight
“If I . . . if I may, I’d like to start with rotation in the Guards, sir.” Every wingman at her tailer ceremony had been in a Guard uniform, even Rapoto, who never struck her as military of mind or inclination.
“We don’t expect young ladies to rotate through that duty. Sword fighting and so on.”
Ileth hardly knew one end of a weapon from another. She’d felt the need to improve ever since she’d faced Gorgantern across a dueling square. “Not even young ladies who carry themselves like a man, sir?”
Traskeer shifted uncomfortably. “You will be busy enough with training during the day and your dancing at night. You seem an active young woman. Sentry duty is dull, physically and mentally. I speak from experience.”
Ileth saw a cracked window in the shut-and-barred door to her being a dragoneer. Getting into the Guards, somehow, would distinguish her from the other young women.
“We need good dancers, Ileth. We don’t need girls pretending to be men pacing a watch.”
Ileth liked to think of herself as the kind of person who gave others a fair chance. Few enough gave her that consideration. But she was forming a dislike of Master Traskeer. Maybe it was just his way of seeing what an apprentice was made of. He looked thoughtful.
“Still, if you’re set to model yourself on Dragoneer Heem Strath, you could hardly have done better. I knew her somewhat and her and her dragon’s death was a great loss. Welcome to your apprenticeship in the Serpentine Academy, Ileth of the Freesand.”
He didn’t quite smile, but he had an air of contentment, like a man who has finished a good meal.
“I am . . . ready to start.”
“I want to make one more matter clear to you. Your novitiate is over. I am indifferent to all events, both good and bad, that took place during it. To me, you are a blank sheet of paper, identical to every other new apprentice. Others, such as Charge Ottavia and our esteemed Master in Charge, are under no such prohibition, of course, and probably will let what they know of you influence their decisions. I look forward to filling that blank sheet of paper with work and behavior that brings honor to your name and that of the Serpentine Academy.”
At this, Ileth smiled. A fresh start! See, you should give people a few chances. She blinked away tears and resolved to prove herself to him. “Thank you, sir.”
“Before I give you over to your first Master and assign you to a rotation, I have a little task I’d like you to perform. Consider it a commission.”
Ileth stiffened. In the Republic a commission was an important duty.
“Sir?”
“Almost anyone here is capable enough of solving an existing problem if they understand the nature of it. Fires must be fought. Dragon is injured, consult a physiker. Barrel of fish is spoiled, find out what went wrong in the salting or smoking and dump the spoilage in the hatchery or crab bed. Relief didn’t turn up at your watch post, report it to the officer of the watch and remain on duty until properly relieved. A novice in his second week knows that.”
Ileth wondered if he’d ever fought an actual fire. The Captain in her lodge taught every child to ring the alarm for all you were worth if there was a fire and summon help. He drilled them like one of his ship’s crews.
He leaned forward a little, the first show of animation she’d seen in his face brightening his expression. “What’s much more difficult is discovering that a problem exists before something goes wrong. Spotting the loose slat in the henhouse before the fox creeps in, noticing the unbolted stall before the horse wanders off, to use a couple of moss-grown phrases. Do you understand?”
“Y-yes.”
“Do you know Vyenn well?”
“I’ve never . . . never b-been. L-looked at it, from the cl-cliffs, of course.”
“Is that so? Never? Not a shopping trip on an open day?”
Ileth pursed her lips and blew out a short puff of air across her fingertips, a gesture in the north that meant one’s purse contained nothing but air—lack of money. She instantly regretted it. If Master Traskeer didn’t like shrugging, what would he say about that?
“Ah. Well, that’s to your credit in my personal index file. It means you appreciate that small change makes a big difference, as my mother used to say.”
He paused for a moment, studying her. Had she looked pained when he said mother?
“So now you have the excuse of orders for a visit. Go into Vyenn. Don’t wait for the next market day; use the password for the gate. It’s honeycomb this quarter. But be sure to be back by dark; the apprentice password is no good after dark. Find something wrong in Vyenn. The town’s large enough that there must be something amiss. Assess it for the Serpentine. You can impress me by drafting a remedy.”
Ileth must have looked confused. “Do you understand?” Master Traskeer added.
“Yes, sir. Do you . . . do you mean like a crime? Something for a j-jury?”
“A crime would definitely impress me. Report back to me by the week-over on whatever you find. Written report. Comprehensive.”
“I understand, sir,” Ileth said.
“You can draw paper, quill, and ink from the clerk downstairs to present your commission’s finding. The writing room is strictly quiet and there are plenty of high desks, but some prefer the map room as the lighting is better.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Before you go: I’m sorry if I poured water on your inner fire earlier. Organizing training rotations was not my dream when I oathed in as a novice, Ileth. But when you are offered a better title, take it. I never saw myself as Master of Apprentices, but had they offered me Master of Stores and Sanitation I would have said yes with my next breath.”
As he seemed more at ease now, Ileth decided to ask him about the board. It was the only personal item in the office, after all. “May I ask a question?”
“Of course.”
“That game board. What is it?”
“Coup. I take it you don’t play.”
“No. I’ve never seen a board with that sort of woodwork. It’s very pretty.”
“It adds another level to piece placement, which is why I prefer the six-direction board rules. Coup goes back to Hypatian times. I think it was first played on a board with peg-holes and wooden stakes, and then a square board—rather like the black-and-white tiles you see in this hall. The honeycomb layout adds entirely new layers of maneuver.”
She wondered if he chose the apprentice passwords, and if honeycomb revealed something of his oh-so-carefully-guarded self. She studied his set with new interest.
He showed off the carved—but sturdy-looking—pieces, picking up a little figure in a tall helmet and cuirass. She looked at the figures, white and black, each resting in its own six-sided space.
“The pieces, have you seen them? Infantry, cavalry, artillery, fortification, captain, dragon. All the pieces are expendable, unlike Court where if you lose your king you lose the game. Also, unlike Court, your array can vary slightly by taking either captains or fortifications. Some players like more fortifications, or all fortifications; others take captains. I prefer the classic balance of one captain and two fortifications recommended in Heem Jeet’s study of the game.”
“Whoever made your pieces was an artist.”
He put his spare captain back in its velvet-lined compartment. “Some players buy elaborate figures and go to great trouble to paint them.
“Of course you don’t actually need pieces to play. You could do it with a board drawn on paper and coins or buttons or what have you. I once saw some prisoners in a road camp using teeth as pieces. Well, except for the dragons. Those were whittled out of wood.”
“May I see the captain?”
“Of course.”
Ileth examined the little figure. He had a blank, unreadable face, rather like Traskeer.
“My set has separate fortifications and captains.
I’ve seen sets where if the piece stands one way, it’s a captain, turn it over and it’s a fortress, but I think a captain with a great flat head doesn’t have as nice an aesthetic as this banner.”
He wasn’t such a cold fish when discussing his game. Interesting.
Traskeer continued: “I’ve suggested before that all the apprentices should learn coup. They have them play at military academies, I understand. Gives you an instinct for concentrating or relocating your force at need, advantages and disadvantages of mobile and static warfare.”
“The dragon is magnificent,” Ileth said, leaning in to examine it.
“Speaking of mobile . . . Thank you. I confess, I bought this set because of the dragons. Some sets just have flames as the dragon—carving a decent dragon is a lot of work—but I don’t see the point to owning a good coup set unless it has a beautiful dragon. But then, given our calling, a certain passion when it comes to dragons is to be expected.”
Something like human enthusiasm had definitely crept into his voice as he held the pieces. Ileth saw a crack in the man’s wall under his use of our. “Would you teach me?”
“Perhaps once I’m settled in. It’s a good way to spend a winter evening. But I doubt you’ll have the time to learn to play well.”
“Winter it is, sir.”
“Well, we both have duties at the moment. We should be about them.”
Ileth bobbed. “Thank you, sir.” Was she finally free of this man and his one-thing-mores? Perhaps not, he was frowning at her attire.
“Oh, and Ileth, I don’t want to see you again without a sash. Obtain one while you’re in town. Borrow money if you must. A short one that you can tie simply. I don’t care for girls who go about with a braided sash or back-bowed knotting, wide folded silks, triangle drops, that kind of thing. Simple is best for an apprentice. You are dismissed.”
Ileth left his office enervated. He wasn’t at all like Caseen, who, even when he was displeased with you, gave the impression he was somehow on your side. She had a sense already that if she’d dropped over dead in his office, Traskeer would have made the proper file notations and put her folio wherever the letters regarding dead apprentices go before calling for her body to be removed to whatever pauper’s grave was currently open on the mountainside.
There was still a good deal of morning left. If she went back to the Quarter, Ottavia would put her to mending, sorting, and airing of dance costumes. Even if she wasn’t allowed to exert herself, Ottavia wouldn’t let her idle.
Who knew when another chance would present itself? She would go into Vyenn!
3
In the Captain’s Lodge, the Captain always made sure his charges had full bellies when expected to spend the day outside exerting themselves. The “Captain’s Crew” was a ready source of extra labor when it came time to shock and bundle oats. Ileth decided she should eat first if she was going to spend the rest of the day exploring Vyenn.
She crossed the market plaza to the Great Hall with its great sloping roof and couldn’t resist glancing at the gate beyond with its arch of dragon wings. She hugged her knowledge of the password to herself. Ileth, the stuttering girl from the Captain’s Lodge in the Freesand whose basket the baker would fill with old rolls with a few new ones on top because they thought her an idiot, Ileth had the password to the Dragon Gate!
Her steps became strides as she entered the Great Hall. As it was still summery with the weather fine, the doors stood open to the air.
The Great Hall only served an early-morning meal for those who had the time and appetite for a hot breakfast and then a satisfying dinner, but one could usually scrounge something to eat at any hour, given that the Serpentine never truly sleeps.
Her footsteps echoed in the unaccustomed emptiness of the interior.
Half stonework, with huge blocks of granite for flooring and topped with thick ship timbers, roofed with nothing but fireproof dragon scale and blocked glass to let in light: one couldn’t help but be awed by the space, set in the shape of a great camp tent. Hundreds upon hundreds of bodies could be assembled within should the complement be gathered for an address—only the open-air theater in the center of the Serpentine where she’d been oathed in at fourteen seated more—with the shape of the roof amplifying the sound from the speaker’s pulpit so that all might hear.
Enemy war banners and memorial battle flags representing victory hung from the ceiling, another source of pride. As a novice, she’d been told you could ask any wingman the story behind each and hear it, but Ileth found that not to be the case generally. Arms, armor, and other odd accoutrements of battle—like a special saddle with a back brace that had allowed a wounded Charge to fly into battle and keep his dead body seemingly upright and invulnerable in the Hierophant’s War, before the founding of the Republic.
She passed a few boys from the new group of novices, each with his bright new bit of white dragon-scale brooch, scrubbing the flooring stones with small, stiff brushes. Punishment for leaving anything at their eating place, she suspected. Breaking the habits of those raised with servants to do everything was the first order of business upon entry into the Serpentine.
Clusters of novices and apprentices with their tutors occupied the better-lit tables near the windows. The Serpentine Academy provided no formal education, but the families of those enrolled sometimes sent, hired, or pooled resources to bring in tutors. The Serpentine boasted a few scholars on the rolls, so the “Academy” part of the title wasn’t the humbug it seemed to most of the youths enrolled after a full day’s labor at the washtubs or flushing out the sanitary sluices without once taking a book off a shelf or hearing a lecture. Ileth had yet to formally meet these sages. They certainly didn’t give lessons on Hypatian declensions.
Ileth, having no family or sponsor paying her way, hadn’t had the benefit of lectures in grammar, Hypatian, religion, math, rhetoric, the natural, theoretic, and applied sciences and all the rest. Until now, she’d only felt the want of education socially, where her fishing-town northern manners sometimes made her feel as conspicuous and unwelcome as a rat on a banquet table. Her peers mentioned books and plays she’d never heard of, discussed characters and situations that meant nothing to her, or quoted moral instruction and examples that showed individual guidance from a family priest. But then all the plays in the world didn’t help you find an infestation of scale nits, even if they made you more philosophical about the grubby work of exterminating them.
She went to the serving counter. There was a bit of breakfast milk left in a pitcher. She rarely had a chance at milk, as the dragons didn’t care for it. She poured it on some cold oat-and-fruit mash and grabbed an end of a hunk of cased meat.
With no one around to reprimand her on her table manners, she bolted her food and returned to the pleasant summer air.
It was a quiet morning. She heard faint whistle blasts from farther out in the middle of the Serpentine; someone was giving the new draft a hard time in the fields, probably. She approached the gate.
The night she’d arrived at the Serpentine, muddy, wet, and bleeding from a slip and fall on a slick rock concealed by a puddle, there’d been a watch above, and sure enough, a man in the uniform of the Serpentine Guard stood above. She knew that the uniforms—attractive and not at all of the plain republican style of the rest of the Vale’s soldiery—were much traded about by those who didn’t have the funds to purchase one especially for their turn.
“Look here,” she called, using the one Serpentine Guard expression she knew.
The Guard turned. He was on the craggy side, probably a long-service soldier no longer fit for marching up and down mountains and retired to the dragon fortress to add discipline and experience to the youngsters.
“I’d like to pass through the gate.”
“Officer of the watch!” he called.
A boy in an ill-fitting man’s uniform emerged from a doorless shack h
uddled under the stairs up to the gate. The shabby construct could only with the greatest charity be called an “officer.”
Ileth recognized him. She’d met Apenite Sifler Heem Streeth her very first day in the Serpentine, in Joai’s house when he barged in on her bath. He’d grown taller but was still mostly limbs and ears and runny nose. She wondered if they still called him “Sniffler.”
“Thank you, Barstel, return to your duty,” he called up to the watchman. He’d gained a man’s voice since she’d last spoken to him.
“Ileth, isn’t it?” said to her, taking off his fore-and-aft cap with its colorful little officer’s cockade. “We were oathed in together.”
“You were the first of our draft to make apprentice, uhh, s-ir,” Ileth said. Only after the words came out did she realize she’d hardly stuttered; the words had come out almost naturally. Usually that only happened when she swore hard enough to turn her lips blue. Maybe it was that she still remembered him as a dusty, sweat-streaked little monkey, wide-eyed at her nakedness.
“And you’re the tailer. Not your fault, I understand, stuck in the Baronies. Still with the dancers?”
“Yes, but I have a few days off for wounds taken.” Only after she said this did it occur to her that it was strange that this boy was interested in her career. There were a lot of odd things about the youth. Judging from his name, he came from a renowned family, but his uniform looked like odds and ends from the discards. As she looked at the droopy cuffs, she marked ink staining his fingers.
