Daughter of the Serpentine

by E. E. Knight

  Perhaps the Captain’s health-through-freezing-seawater-and-fish-oil system wasn’t so outrageous after all.

  Ileth warmed her hands in the dying fire of the bandages. “I should see if I can make myself useful in the flight cave.”

  “Don’t forget your manners up there,” Santeel said. “I’ve only just got you to quit drinking your soup.”

  “I’ll miss stepping on your toenail cuttings all over the washroom.”

  Santeel made a face, but there was no displeasure in it. “Fair skies, Ileth.”

  “Favorable wind, Santeel.”

  * * *

  —

  Ileth was a seasoned enough dragoneer to pack everything for the trip the night before into a single big canvas roll of the kind used by sailors. At the heart of it, protected like a seed in a piece of fruit, was her music box. A change of clothes, comb and brush, tooth-scrubber, and such were wrapped up in a roll held closed by some old costume cording. Luckily there’d been enough from the batch Ottavia gave her to relace her boots for the trip. It made her look like a soldier on campaign, but it didn’t seem likely to break.

  Santeel had offered her a jar of skin salve that she’d used on her training flights to fight wind and frost. With her exhausting schedule of dancing and training, she wasn’t flying and suspected the oils would go rancid soon, so she pressed it on Ileth and insisted that she use whatever remained, as her anatomy studies didn’t seem likely to end anytime soon. Santeel looked tired and ill. Ileth had too much to do at the moment to think about Santeel’s health, but she did accept the salve with heartfelt thanks.

  She presented herself, flying rig and bundle over her shoulder, to Serena in the flight cave.

  “Crude look, but I like it,” Serena said, looking up at her. “I have a shearling vest under all this.” Serena’s flying kit was fitted leather with straps and buckles at all the points where wind could get at you.

  “B-belonged to the Borderlander.”

  “Must have been some job getting it to fit like that.”

  Ileth told her about the talented costumers in the Dancers’ Quarter.

  Ileth had never seen four dragons lined up in the flight cave before, one behind the other. Dath Amrits’s dragon was first, which she thought strange, as she was sure Dun Huss was the senior dragoneer. She noted he had his sword.

  The last time Ileth had seen Dun Huss and his friends armed was when they came to take her out of Galantine lands. She refused, not wanting to create an incident. Dun Huss had his solid, expensive-looking blade at his side, hung so it wouldn’t interfere with his legs in the saddle; Amrits had his heavy walking stick with the ogre face; and the Borderlander had a great sword, well-oiled with a simple pommel, strapped across his back. A serious sword for a serious man.

  “Why isn’t Mnasmanus first?” Ileth asked Serena, quietly.

  “Etiennersea is senior to him,” Serena said. “It’s the dragons, apprentice, not the dragoneers.”

  “Oh, of course.”

  Ileth diverted her nerves by comparing her favorite dragoneers in their flying rigs. Hael Dun Huss’s was simple and expertly tailored, sort of a leathery cavalry uniform with a red-and-white swallowtail stitched into the back that made him easy to recognize from behind. She found Dath Amrits’s green velvets and yellow scarf garish. The Borderlander just wore a great sheepskin coat with some extra cuts and buckles so it could be cinched about his throat, wrists, and legs in the saddle, where extra-thick fleece had been used to keep out the wind, and two different scarves about his neck. Each had their own style of safety harness to tether them to the saddle: Dun Huss with the traditional thick girdle, Amrits a sort of crossing belt-harness, and the Borderlander wearing something not all that different from a pikeman’s armored cuirass. Perhaps it was.

  Ileth’s dragon was second to last. Catherix and the Borderlander were behind them. Telemiron was a tarnished color that reminded Ileth of an old ship’s bell.

  “It’s a good grouping. Only one male,” the Borderlander said as he checked the fittings of his single sack of luggage for the trip.

  “One?” Ileth asked.

  “Telemiron is not intact. He was neutered shortly after birth,” the Borderlander said quietly.

  Ileth wondered how you’d even go about neutering a dragon, since they weren’t like mammals; there was no obvious way to turn a male dragon from a bull into an ox. “Who on—”

  “Oh, they’re long gone. Was an order of dragonriders from long ago. They were destroyed. By their own dragons.”

  Ileth looked at Charge Deklamp’s dragon—in effect, Serena’s dragon—with new eyes. She would have taken Telemiron for a more slender male with sleeker horns.

  Amrits lit a feather, an old Serpentine good-luck charm to bring good flying weather. He waved it under his nose.

  The Borderlander waved him off. “You’re not superstitious.”

  “I’m not. I’m waking myself up,” he said, blinking. “You know, Ileth, I really do better in the old tradition of staying up all night carousing before a trip. Etiennersea prefers it when I leave the whole thing to her and just sleep in the saddle.”

  Serena introduced Ileth to Telemiron. “Very good. Ileth. Ileth. Very good,” Telemiron said, with a heavy mountain accent. Most dragons whose first human tongue hadn’t been Montangyan spoke with an accent, but Telemiron’s speech reminded her of the way the most isolated shepherd folk in the North Province spoke. He pronounced her name the same way the old Lodger had. Hearing him speak brought an ache like an old wound reminding you of its presence.

  He didn’t have the well-fed look of most of the Serpentine dragons, and his scale was uneven in spots where it had grown back oddly over wounds. His wings were more sewn-up-and-healed rents than they were skin. She’d never met a dragon who so looked as though he’d been torn up and put back together. Yet this was their Charge’s dragon, ridden in most cases by his wingman.

  He had a small saddle on him, built for Serena’s proportions. She showed Ileth the seat she’d arranged behind, sort of a leather saddle blanket looped around the dragon and a thick pad that fitted to the back of Serena’s saddle. She also had a safety tether she could hook to her bracing vest.

  “There are folds in the leather cover; they’re dragon-sized saddlebags, but they’ll fit your legs just fine.”

  Ileth tied her bundle between herself and Serena. She knew her knots; it would stay put and not fly up and hit her in the face in case Telemiron had to dive.

  “We’d better get up and saddled,” Serena said. “I want to make sure you’re set.”

  Ileth climbed up, slipped her legs into the holsters, and put on her tether. Serena examined the tether and her seat. “Good. Gauntlets on.”

  Serena swung herself up into her saddle with the aid of a mounting-hook. It was a wicked-looking tool, probably useful as a weapon in an emergency. A flight cave attendant stood by to help but wasn’t needed. Serena and Ileth both then checked Serena’s safety tether, and she pulled down her cap and put on her gloves. She nodded three times in a Commonist prayer and patted Telemiron on the neck.

  “It’ll be a good flight,” Telemiron said. “Fine weather. Easy distance.”

  Ileth appreciated the reassuring tone, but as far as she could tell the speech was directed at Serena.

  “Weather doesn’t matter to Old Coin here,” Serena said over her shoulder. “Finds his way through anything. You just watch—if the weather turns bad, Etiennersea will call Telemiron to the front and have the rest form off him.”

  Ileth watched the front of the line of dragons. The light outside turned the lead dragons and dragoneers into silhouettes. Etiennersea shifted her long neck this way and that as she looked outside the flight cave and then back in at the line of dragons, then lowered her head to Dun Huss. Dun Huss took a careful look at Ileth, then put his hand on Mnasmanus.

  “
Up in your saddles,” Dun Huss called. His voice carried like a trumpet.

  The three dragoneers mounted.

  A flight cave attendant made one final run up the line, getting a nod from each dragoneer. Amrits made a chopping gesture with his arm to the mouth of the flight cave, and Etiennersea opened her wings and jumped. Her wings and Dath Amrits’s yellow scarf caught the air and they plunged out of view.

  “Brace, now,” Serena said.

  Soon Etiennersea appeared again, rising, wings beating hard, and Mnasmanus jumped. He was so strong his tail had hardly disappeared when he was up and rising, and then it was Telemiron’s turn. He didn’t step forward to the lip but preferred a run out of the flight cave, and Ileth had to experience being shaken back and forth by his snakeback gait before he was in the air. He hardly dropped at all and smoothly gained altitude toward the others, swiftly climbing above the lighthouse. When the Borderlander atop Catherix joined them, they formed into a diamond shape and turned west as though heading for Sammerdam.

  Etiennersea took the lead, with Mnasmanus on her right and Telemiron to the left. Catherix rode to the back and a few dragon-lengths higher, though whether this was a standard variation on the diamond formation or Catherix just liked riding above her companions Ileth didn’t know. That wild night of the egg theft the Borderlander had said something about Catherix diving on enemies like a hawk.

  Telemiron’s judgment was correct; it was good weather for flying. The mountaintops were hidden by clouds, but there was excellent visibility below the cloudline. Ileth had no trouble picking up the road she’d taken to the Serpentine all those years ago.

  The dragons, except for Catherix, kept a close formation. She’d been told it was easier for them to move through the air formed up like an arrowhead if they bunched up to where their wingtips were almost brushing.

  Once they were among the mountains of the Spine they turned north, weaving among the mountaintops, going this way and that like a ship tacking into the wind, taking advantage of updrafts.

  Ileth charted their progress on the map in her head. She’d spent countless hours of her youth studying the Spine, planning her escape from the Lodge, choosing the surest route to the Serpentine.

  When they could just make out the Cleft Pass, separating the North Province from the rest of the districts, the dragons turned back east, wheeling at a distance that would make them invisible to the Republic’s officials in the pass. Again, more secrecy. They soared up through the Blue Range and entered her home province.

  She saw Dath Amrits gesture to Dun Huss and tried to follow the pointing arm. She knew enough about dragon-signals to know that gesturing with his hand formed in a blade rather than a fist or pointed fingers meant he’d spotted a landmark and no danger was involved. Ileth’s mental map failed her at this point; she knew they were still at least a horizon or two from Stavanzer. If they were headed for the principal city of the north and the Governor’s House, they should be headed northeast.

  “Where are we going?” she asked Serena.

  “Doesn’t hurt for you to know now,” Serena called back. “Stesside.”

  Ileth knew the Stess, it was a river that flowed out of the mountains and joined the Whitewater at Stavanzer. “What’s ‘Stesside’?”

  “I thought you were from the north? Governor Raal’s family estate.”

  The Captain had never talked politics with his roustabouts. She didn’t know anything more about Governor Raal’s life than she did the man in the moon, beyond that he was to blame for the rapaciousness of tax collectors and incompetent dredging in the Freesand channels.

  They passed over the northern foothills of the Blue Range. She made out a stout, squat five-corner tower. It couldn’t be called a ruin, but the roof was more hole than roof and it showed no sign of occupation. A more comfortable-looking great house was below, on a more sheltered slope beneath. It had a vast barn, paddocks, and sheds in good meadowlands where the thick forest of the mountainside ended. The great house wasn’t the only habitation. She traced the jagged line of what must have been the Stess with some manner of working building with a tall chimney and a few little houses scattered around it, though you could scarcely call it a village. As they circled lower, she saw barrels on carts and scattered about outside near doors and loading platforms. She remembered a dinner during her Galantine captivity when one of the Baron’s brothers remarked idly that all the old families in the Vales made their money in either mining or brewing and distilling. Ileth guessed Governor Raal came from a distilling family, since nobody bothered putting water in barrels unless it was in preparation for a long sea voyage, and Pine Bay was leagues off to the north.

  They landed on the grounds of the estate near a big barn, coming in for a landing in a frozen paddock. The dragons, breathing hard from their flight, gave off great clouds of vapor as they exhaled. They’d brought the clouds down with them, Ileth thought. She watched them stretch and settle their wings, each a little different. Mnasmanus shook himself like a wet dog and his scale rattled like a thousand coins being shaken in a cauldron.

  Ileth forgot the cold in her limbs, watching with the same awe she’d felt at seven. Nothing was better than being around dragons. Nothing. They’d have to cart her out of the Serpentine cold and dead.

  Finally she looked around Stesside from the ground. The air felt familiar to Ileth, a wet cold that passed effortlessly through everything but the thickest layers. She tried to sink into her flying coat.

  “It’ll snow and we will be miserable,” Catherix said to the Borderlander in her thick Montangyan, sniffing at the barn.

  “Plenty of room to squeeze in. Or you can tent up under your wings,” the Borderlander told her.

  Dun Huss strode up through the draconic fog bank to Ileth and Serena. “If anyone asks, we were on our way to the Notch, had a sprained wing on Mnasmanus, saw Stesside, and set down.”

  “My last meeting with Raal ended on an unpleasant note,” Serena said. “You should start things off, sir. Ileth, you can help me with the dragons. No talking required.”

  “Ileth, you hear that?” Amrits said. “Try and keep your howler shut for once.”

  She nodded, smiling at him.

  “See what I mean?” Amrits said to Serena. “Gab gab gab. It never stops with this one. Drives a man mad.”

  Dun Huss took his elbow and pulled him toward the Borderlander. The three clomped off toward the house.

  Serena had them remove the saddles and they hung them in the driest corner of the barn. Ileth wiped them down, and by the time they were done with that, there were some gardeners or shepherds, judging from their long coats, signaling them from the edge of the paddock. They had a barrow and a tall washing basket.

  Serena beckoned Ileth to follow.

  The men politely removed their hats. “We’ve orders to bring food for them dragons.”

  The barrow was full of joints of meat, rather stringy. The washing basket had a great pile of rabbits. It would take both her and Serena to carry the rabbits. They weren’t even skinned.

  Serena pulled open the gate. “They’re quite safe, if you wish to approach and say hello.”

  “Bad luck to even get near one, missy.”

  Ileth took the barrow and let them retreat. Between the two of them, they managed to get the rabbits over to the dragons.

  The dragons were not impressed with the Governor’s fare.

  “That’s mostly tripe,” Mnasmanus said, poking with his snout in the barrow.

  “We’re eating rustic, I see,” Etiennersea said. “They didn’t even skin the rabbits.”

  Ileth had skinned plenty of rabbits to feed sheepdogs. “W-would you like me—”

  The dragon rattled a griff, a friendly form of chiding. “No, apprentice, if we’re going to eat rough, let’s eat rough. My dear old dam always told me to eat more hair. Keeps your scale from dropping.”
<
br />   * * *

  —

  The Borderlander soon returned from the great house. He’d left his sword inside and carried a great curved bow and a quiver of arrows.

  “Introductions are done. I said my piece, since I’m the most recent dragoneer to poke around up here. It’s all argument now and I’ll just make things worse. I’m going hunting.”

  “With a bow? Doesn’t he have a meteor you can borrow?” Serena asked.

  “I had one of those damn things blow up in my face one time,” the Borderlander said. “Besides, if you can creep close and quiet on a stag, taking a man unaware’s easy. I like to keep in practice.” He turned to his dragon. “Catherix, if you can spot some herds for me and make them go into deep timber, I’ll have a better chance. Ileth, there’s to be dinner tonight, at the Governor’s table, with his wife. Fine lady. You’re specifically invited. He said don’t worry about dressing, he understands.”

  Ileth felt the blood leave her face. The Governor. He’d been writing letters about her, demanding her return. Now she had to face him over a dinner table.

  Serena pursed her lips. “Men understanding and women understanding are two different things. What the Governor’s wife thinks of us might influence him.”

  Catherix brightened at the mention of hunting, swallowed her mouthful of rabbits, and walked out into the paddock, her tail flicking about like a cat following scratching in the walls.