by E. E. Knight
Ileth convinced Aurue to visit the horse in a sheltered corner of the Serpentine wall with the horse well tied down. After its initial screaming terror (Ileth had never heard a horse give its terrified, piercing scream, and it took days for the sound to get out of her head) with Aurue just standing placidly and making what seemed to Ileth humming noises, the horse settled down a little, but its eyes were still freakishly white as it stared at the dragon, and its back hooves shifted about nervously as though they had a mind of their own.
“I talked to her,” Aurue finally said. “She’s not much for conversation, but she no longer thinks I’m going to eat her. She’s still fearful of my smell.”
“Horses talk?” Ileth asked.
“Most animals do. Social ones. Cats, cats and dragons really get on. Eagles, most of the great hunting birds will talk to a dragon. Vultures like us especially. But with these herbivores it’s not much better than grunting and pointing, though I’ve been told you can get sense out of a pig.”
“Why don’t humans understand them?”
“You humans are in-between. Not animals, not dragons. Any progress with my dragoneer?” He didn’t sound enthused about the matter. Nor was the Serpentine. Any rumors about a full dragoneer position opening up set tongues wagging, but Ileth hadn’t even heard Quith mention it.
“I just had a note from the Charge this morning. He wants to speak to me after dinner. If convenient. As if a first-year apprentice will turn down the Charge of the Serpentine. I suspect it’s about you.” Ileth was proud of getting a speech like that out so easily. Strange how her stutter faded with dragons, as long as the dragon was a companionable sort like Aurue.
“Good that he’s polite. Taresscon growls at the younger dragons. Says she’s too old for niceties. If you can’t fly the weight, go eat the fish somewhere else.” His griff twitched. “I’m not her favorite.”
Ileth found it amusing that the younger dragons had their own difficulties with the elders.
They went back to the horse. After an hour’s work, Ileth managed to ride her all the way around the dragon. Awkwardly, but she managed to keep her elbows at her sides and chin up. Most of the time.
* * *
—
Meetings at Charge Roguss Heem Deklamp’s tower had never led to anything but difficulty for Ileth (a sentiment shared by most of the Serpentine, though Ileth was in no position to know it at that moment). She approached the door at the invited time, interested for Aurue’s sake. He had become her favorite dragon. Yet she never danced for him.
Ileth looked at the darkening sky and wondered. Charge Deklamp had once told her something about saving dark business for the sun being down, and with winter coming on and the air already frosty he might consider it an ideal night for skullduggery.
Dogloss let her in and she was astonished to see the three men she considered “her” dragoneers: Dun Huss, Amrits, and the Borderlander. Serena, wingman to the Charge himself, was also there, standing quietly behind the Charge at his desk. A large-scale map had been hung up on the wall behind the Charge’s desk. Ileth instantly recognized the outline of Pine Bay—labeled on the map as The Great North Bay—and the Freesand, and all the lands of the North Province. West it extended to the beginnings of the Borderlands, and east to the straits that led out to the Inland Ocean, Daphia south of them, and the Rari coast all along the peninsula that turned the straits into a key shape or a hairpin.
So. The meeting wasn’t to be about a rider for Aurue, then. She wondered if it could have something to do with her report.
“Good, Ileth is here,” the Charge said, owlish eyes droopy and staring. “We’ve been at this too long. Let’s take a break for something warm and restoring. Ileth, you look chilled. Dogloss can fill a tray with mugs of something warm, would you?”
Ileth, as the junior of the assembly, helped Dogloss with the refreshments. Dogloss told her it was milk with old tea leaves and some spices; the Charge liked to have it in the winter before retiring. She carried in the steaming pot and ladle, with Dogloss following behind, and put it on a little serving table that had been cleared of books by Serena. Ileth poured everyone cups. There was some talk about the new dairy. The first few cows were not producing much milk, but everyone believed they were just upset by the dragon-smell and would do better in the spring.
“None for me, spiced milk gives me wind enough to empty the flight cave,” Amrits said. “Wouldn’t have any of that sluice-clearer your family has the nerve to put their Name on, would you, Deklamp?”
“Of course. Dogloss knows where it is.”
Once they had their warm milk, with Amrits taking wine, the Charge looked around the room. “Good company, dragoneers,” he said.
The Borderlander snorted and muttered something about a milk toast. She supposed it was a personal joke. They drank. The milk had that spice she’d had with the Commissioner-General, cinnamon, in it. It was warming, and she felt infinitely more at ease than the last time she’d tasted it. Even more warming was the idea of sharing a toast with those she considered the Serpentine’s best dragoneers. She’d even helped build the dairy that supplied the milk.
“Now, Ileth, no doubt you recognize the coastline behind my desk,” the Charge said, after they’d emptied their glasses. Everyone took seats, except for Serena, who stood near the Charge. Ileth sat on the little couch she’d shared with Galia as a fourteen-year-old novice.
“The Headlands, Freesand, and Pine Bay.”
“We in the south call it North Bay, but yes. We’re planning to pay a call on your own Governor Raal and we thought the mission might be helped by one or two northerners. Speaking in familiar accents, knowing the local names of things.” He smiled at the last.
Ileth nodded.
Deklamp continued: “Governor Raal is a powerful man. The representatives in the Assembly from the North Province take their cues from him, and it’s the biggest province after Jotun. We need his cooperation for a project we have in mind among your people, and this trip is hoped to help secure it.”
Ileth didn’t much feel as though they were “her” people, but she was intrigued. She wondered if the project concerned the Rari. Odd that Deklamp didn’t mention the commission. Perhaps it was just a coincidence. She couldn’t be the only one wondering how the Vales could trade with the rest of the world with the Galantines blocking the river south.
“I will help if I can, but don’t think me an expert on the north. I-I’ve never even been to Stavanzer.”
“You may be the small weight that tips the balance in our favor,” Dun Huss said.
Ileth felt wary. Caseen, the Master of Novices, had said something about Governor Raal making an effort to return her to the Captain’s Lodge. The farther she stayed from him the better off she’d be. “I just started with my lot.”
“This is not another absence such as you suffered in Galantine lands,” Charge Deklamp said. “We could order you to go, but I’d rather explain my reasons. First, these dragoneers asked for you. Second, I believe you are aware that Governor Raal is interested in you on behalf of the gentleman who ran the Lodge you . . . quit to enter the Academy. Perhaps if he can see you, hale and thriving in your new life, he’ll stop sending letters to us about returning a runaway. He seems to believe that there was some sort of conspiracy to send you off to the Galantine Baronies rather than return you to your lodge’s doorstep in the Freesand. Third, it would be valuable experience for an apprentice. Fourth and lastly, an extra set of hands are welcome with a party of dragons this size.”
Ileth was persuaded. From the neck up, at least. Her stomach had gone sour at the thought.
“You’re less quick to agree this time,” the Charge said, owlish stare fixed on her. It occurred to her that in her previous meeting when the request to go to the Galantine Baronies was considered, all the faces were different. Dun Huss had been in the Baronies, Galia was lost to the Galantin
es, the Master of Apprentices was absent, and Caseen, the Master of Novices, had a new group to watch over.
“May I . . . may I know more about the purpose of the visit?”
The dragoneers exchanged looks with the Charge. “For now it must remain a secret. Have no fear, this is not some ruse to return you to the Freesand. You are signed on as an apprentice here. We have our end of the contract to keep up as well, you know.”
“I will do my best.”
“No doubt of that,” Dun Huss said.
“Am I the only apprentice going?” Ileth asked.
“Why do you ask?” the Charge said.
“Four—that’s a lot of dragons to attend.”
“Contrary to the belief of our wingmen and the apprentices, dragoneers do take care of their own mounts,” Amrits said.
“When shall we leave, sir?” Dun Huss asked.
“If the weather holds, tomorrow. Go scrounge up a few leftovers from dinner and have them by your bed, just in case, Ileth.”
Ileth realized she’d be so busy she’d scarcely have time to draw breath. “I am to ride—”
“You ride behind me,” Serena said. She had a dry, crackling voice. “Telemiron is a fine dragon, fast and smooth. The others will have a job keeping up.”
The Charge and Serena covered the map again. “One more thing, Ileth. Don’t say anything about the flight, even where you are going, to anyone but those in this room. May I have your word on that?”
The Charge of the Serpentine had never asked for her word on anything. Ileth felt something that washed back and forth between fear and excitement. “You have my word, sir.”
* * *
—
As predicted, the evening was breathtakingly busy. On her way to the Great Hall to scavenge, she stopped by the hippodrome and found the Horse riding the mare she’d been adjusting to dragon-smell.
“This isn’t a bad horse at all, Ileth. I think I’ll buy her. I expect I’d get a good price.”
She had to wait for him to complete another circuit to speak again.
“I shall be leaving on dragonback in the morning.”
“Yes, they told me you might be away through the next week-over, possibly more.” He stopped the horse, then urged the mare into an evolution where she spun about in a circle with her back legs as the center. “This horse had a good trainer. And he was going to send her to slaughter? Times must be very hard in Vyenn if he couldn’t sell.”
“I didn’t want you to think . . . to think I had left the lot.”
“Oh, I can tell when someone’s getting ready to quit. Horses, humans, dragons, the body signals intentions before the mouth produces anything. Not you. You’ll quit when you’re stretched out dead in the mud.” He smiled so she wouldn’t take the suggestion too seriously.
“May I ask you something?”
He shifted the horse’s hindquarters around and started riding it crossways through the hippodrome. Ileth had never seen a horse go forward and sideways at the same time, crossing its legs much as the dancers did when they did a move called a travel shift.
“That’s what I’m here for.”
“How long have you been at the Serpentine?”
“I was draft of forty-nine.” That was seventeen years before her draft.
“All that time, and you still don’t have a dragon?”
“It’s not like that. I like the dragons. Forget the flying, I would like to spend whole evenings sitting and talking to some of them, but . . . well, it’s this nose of mine. I could just never get used to the smell. Couldn’t get the smell out of my clothes. Lost my appetite, and I like to eat. Horses are better. When I have my ale in Vyenn, the barmaids don’t hand it to me with their arm extended like this . . .”
He stuck out his arm and turned his face away, wrinkling his nose. Ileth started laughing so hard she had to sit down.
“See, I’m not such a terrible fellow. I always make allowance for duty. Good luck on your commission, Ileth.”
Word came early to the Dancers’ Quarter the next morning that they would depart at midday, as the grooms would be taking extra time to grease four sets of dragon wings for winter travel, as it was likely to be cold north of the Cleft. Ileth rolled up her modest possessions and climbed into her flying rig. There was mild interest that she’d be gone for a few days on dragonback. Preen asked her about shopping opportunities and Ileth explained she was told she couldn’t discuss the commission in any way.
She was nervous. More nervous than she’d been on her flight into Galantine lands her first year, and she couldn’t account for it beyond an odd forboding poking about at her. The trip felt like an unopened envelope that you know contains bad news. She had a premonition of doom, that some wheel in the clockwork of her fate was turning and she didn’t much care for it. She needed to be alone to think.
* * *
—
If you wanted privacy, one of the best places in the Beehive was the central shaft around the lift. It was partly a ventilation chimney, partly a passage so the dragons could move quickly, and partly a mechanism for moving heavier loads between levels. The lifting mechanism was a marvel of ingenuity. Some special pride of the tinkers. Ileth didn’t know any tinkers; they kept very much to themselves and were even more cloistered from the everyday routines of the Serpentine than the dancers, but she’d seen them going about with their tools and notebooks and plans. Ileth would have been hard put to even prove they existed as she didn’t know a single name among them. Their conversation on the rare occasions when she passed them in the halls was as esoteric as two priests speaking in Old Hypatian.
There were a pair of tinkers working on the cables of the lift-mechanism track while she took her air. She noticed Santeel Dun Troot in an overdress burning something in an old metal trough at the bottom of the shaft where it led off to the Cellars. Each party ignored the other. She was interested enough that she made the climb down to join her.
“Not off yet?” she asked as Ileth hopped down.
“Santeel, what’s this?”
“Burning bandages. Vithleen was wounded this morning.”
“Wounded?” The news startled her out of her gloomy thoughts.
“She’s fine. Bled worse than it was, as Threadneedle likes to say. The baby dragons were worrying at Vithleen; I guess dragons cut teeth just like human babies, or ‘they grow and sharpen as they use them like cat claws’ might be more accurate. One tore too deep.”
Santeel was in one of her manic moods, thrusting bloody bandages into the flames and then raking everything about with a poker to make sure they were thoroughly burned. She never did anything halfway. If she made you scrambled eggs, there wouldn’t be a hint of egg white anywhere in them because her arm had spun like a whirlwind mixing them.
“They’d burn more easily if the blood was dry.”
“Threadneedle demands that the dressings be burned immediately,” Santeel said. “He used to come and watch me do it himself, then he had his principal apprentice watch, and eventually they decided burning rubbish wasn’t too much for me. Or did he ask you to come check on me and make sure I wasn’t stealing bloody dressings?”
“Why would you steal bandages?”
“Because there’s dragon blood on them. The witchcraft-and-alchemy set go wild for the stuff.”
Ileth had been warned often enough against trying to get dragon blood and sell it outside the Serpentine. You’d be put before a jury with the Masters themselves presenting charges, she’d been told.
Ileth wanted to find out about Vithleen, but Santeel was grumbling about Threadneedle keeping her up late making her sketch pressure points for dragons if you needed to stop bleeding in a limb, wing, or tail and she’d have to miss dancing with the troupe. Her Master liked to follow up on a practical lesson like the one she’d had with Vithleen this morning with reinforcement o
f the theories she’d learned.
“Applying a tourniquet is a useful blockage. To hear Threadneedle tell it, anything that goes wrong with your health is a blockage. You stutter because you have a blockage somewhere in the nerves running to your tongue. Flow and blockage, blockage and flow.”
The last of the bandages were in now; Santeel stirred the mass with a metal rod and left the rod in the trough to cook off any incidental blood.
“You know, I can go along with a lot of it; obviously blood has to flow through your body and we all know food comes in one end and goes out the other and if your lungs are all filled with mucus, the air can’t move about properly, but then they get to some maladies and it sounds like a wild story by a bad liar who’s been cornered. Your mother’s womb was never pushed back into place by the Divine Goddess of the Running Rose Salmon. Go to a temple hot room and burn some priest-blessed moss and lie on the floor with the soles of the feet together, that often brings her.”
“Are they really like that?” The Captain had never had much use for physikers. Said they were a waste of money. He treated sick children with either ardent spirits or great spoonfuls of fish oil, depending on mood. He made a horrible drink of raw eggs and hot peppers that had them feigning full health so they wouldn’t have to drink the foul stuff.
“Some of them. We saw a lot when our mother was terribly low. I understand it happened after I was born. I think one of those physikers they called in asked a great deal of questions about what sort of offerings she’d made to get her womb restored. It went on for years. Never did any good.
“Then finally this Boils showed up. I know that’s a terrible name for a physiker, but apparently he was brought all the way over from the Old Coast to treat the Executor of the Exchange’s boils and there was some confusion when he was entered into the Sammerdam city rolls because nobody understood his language and his travel guide wasn’t much better. Physiker Boils came and started talking about the imbalance of the Four Elements and had Mother in baths at an icehouse and crawling through mud and then finally jumping to get more air under her, and she started to get better. My father has sworn by the Boils Practice ever since. I’m glad it worked, because I love my mother, but the Boils Practice struck me as being as phony as a horsehair wig. There’s a family rumor that Mother did act on the stage a couple times in her youth in Zland. Maybe she pretended to be better so Boils didn’t have her run up the observatory stairs and jump off to get enough air around her.”
