Daughter of the Serpentine

by E. E. Knight

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You grew up in a Lodge in the Freesand, so I expect you had it worse.”

  “How do you . . . do you know that?”

  “I asked that Serena about you. I wondered what kind of girl becomes a dragoneer.”

  “The kind that show up for a draft.”

  “Do ordinary girls get admitted?”

  So whatever ordinary is, I’m not it? Ileth thought. That was interesting.

  “Any-anyone who can pass the tests. Are you asking for your cousin?”

  “My cousin? I can’t see her cleaning a dragon’s teeth. She might join to get at some dragoneers. We’re too far from Stavanzer. She’s at the age where she wants men courting her.”

  Poor Gandy. The Headlands were even more remote than the Freesand. “We have a few like that at the Serpentine.”

  “I think to really become expert at something, well, you have to take on kind of a monastic life about it, exclude everything but your study. Are your classrooms mixed? I’ve never heard of that outside the smallest country schools.”

  Classrooms! “No, it’s more like an apprenticeship. Workshops, kitchens. You learn by doing.”

  “Apprenticeship? With all those Duns and Vors?”

  “That’s why they call it the Serpentine Academy. So the elder Duns and Vors don’t have to say their son’s off apprenticed to a mlumm-scoop.”

  “Mlumm?”

  “Dragon-scat.”

  It was strange to converse with a young man like this, a face the faintest of shadows, like their bodies had fallen away and just their inner selves were talking. Ileth found she liked it, at least with this boy. She propped her head up on her arm, glad that he’d forgotten his pencil box.

  Astler widened the door a bit on its track. “Still, not sure it’s a good idea. I’ve never heard of an academy where they put boys and girls together. Romantic impulses would overthrow attention and concentration and learning.”

  Ileth stifled a guffaw. “My lodge was mixed, so maybe it wasn’t so strange to me. It works. Everyone’s too busy for that sort of thing. And there’s no privacy. Either no boys about or twenty.”

  “I suppose that explains why you’re so at ease with me, just the two of us in a bedroom.”

  “With someone else I might not be.”

  “You’re at a military academy. You’d run me through if I tried anything.”

  Ileth held up her hands. “No. Completely defenseless.”

  Astler cleared his throat. “I have my pencils now, so I’m out of excuses to be here. I wanted to sketch out some of those shapes of dragon scale while it’s still fresh in my head, and I find myself more interested in talking to you.”

  “I . . . I don’t think I’ve ever been c-complimented on my conversation,” Ileth said.

  “Truly? I could be here all night. You’re quite—” He cut himself off. “I should let you sleep,” he said, nipping out the door and shutting it before she could object.

  She had difficulty sleeping after that, wondering just what direction his quite opinion led.

  * * *

  —

  The next morning, hearing the silence in the house, she thought she was the first up as she dressed. She went down the hall and downstairs with boots in hand to stop from clomping.

  The door to the study was open for a change. Judging from the guttered candles inside, the work had gone very late. There was a map case on the table, everything put away and closed, and it would have been the easiest thing in the world for her to open it and examine whatever was inside. She took a cautious step into the room.

  She sensed a presence to her left and turned to face it. Dath Amrits had finished his watch at the Old Post, evidently, and sat in an armchair pushed close to the ashes and charred remains of the fire. She would have liked to take his cameo in that profile; it would make a lovely memory someday. Head tipped back, nose like a mountain peak, mouth open, and that enormous pipe-bowl lump at the front of his throat shifting ever so slightly up and down as he breathed.

  She backed out of the room, still holding her boots.

  A call followed her out.

  “Ileth, make us a cup of tea, would you? That’s a dear,” Amrits asked sleepily.

  Was everything on the man a ruse and playacting? Had he pretended to be asleep just to see if she’d peek inside the map case?

  Tea sounded fine in the chill of the fireless house. As she approached the kitchen she heard, and smelled, cooking.

  Ileth followed the smell of sausages, where she found Comity and a male cook—or whatever he was, he wore a butcher’s leather apron over a winter-wear work jacket—already up. The man was reading off a written list to Comity. She nodded and sent him back outside.

  “Is there . . . is there tea, sira?” Ileth asked.

  “Sira! Oh, call me Comity, dear. You are . . . you are Ileth. Do I have it right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Easy to remember, you’re the only one sounds like us, except for the tall one in the sheepskins.”

  She started filling a tray, then put a kettle back on the hot stove.

  “Now, breakfast. We have a sheep each for the dragons today. I was told that should be enough to content them. The smokehouse has been very busy. Do you think that will be enough for today? I should have liked young cattle but they’re expensive this year. Prices always go up when there’s doubt and difficulty in the Sammerdam Exchanges or some bank fails.”

  “They’d love that. I think they were expecting fish, so close to the sea.”

  “We don’t have fishermen brave enough to go out this close to— well, you know. Them. So it’s sheep. Astler can help distribute them. I’m sure he wants to bring his paper and lead and do some sketches. He went on a bit about their scale and wings last night. You saw his drawings in his room?”

  “Yes. He has a gift.”

  “I think so too. He’s my world now,” Comity said.

  Ileth put tea on a tray and anticipated a demand for some toasted bread and brought it out to Amrits.

  He waved vaguely at the table. She set down the tray and gave him his tea.

  “That’s better,” he said, after a test sip. “Tosh, is it always this cold and damp up here, Ileth? It passes right through to your bones. Give me good icy mountain cold any day, you can keep that out with thick hose.”

  “You . . . get used to it.”

  “How did you sleep, Ileth? That Astler boy didn’t pull the old I’ve misplaced my pants dodge, did he?”

  “I slept well, thank you. Nobody kept me up, I’m sure.” Well, she’d kept herself up. Something about being in a great house brought back her Galantine manners. “May I ask you something?”

  “As long as it doesn’t require me getting out of this chair until the tea has warmed me.”

  “Why am . . . why am I being kept out of these conferences?”

  He took another sip of tea. “Ileth, you’re just an apprentice. Nothing for you to do.” The words might just as well have been a tired sigh.

  “I still would like an opportunity to learn. You don’t think I’m a spy or something?”

  Amrits shot her the sort of look you might see down the sights of a crossbow aimed at you. “Certainly not. The Galantines wouldn’t use someone like you. Don’t be huffy with me, now. You know what I mean. Every agent I’ve ever heard of was a smooth talker with social connections from Sammerdam to the Scab. You’re—you’re quite the opposite of that.”

  “I can see that this has something to do with the Rari.”

  “Proving you are no fool, but we already knew that or we wouldn’t have brought you. Keep out of it.”

  She heard boots coming down the stairs and he went quiet. Dun Huss entered, with his face a little red from being shaved and his neckcloth clean and fresh.

  Dun Huss
ordered her to check the dragons, so she passed the news about mutton for them, excused herself, and ended up running into Astler by the door, where he was tying a sort of winter work coat about his waist. They exchanged oddly awkward good mornings.

  “My mother tells me I am to be of assistance to you,” he said, putting a little notebook into a pocket of the coat.

  Outside, Astler found a two-wheeled cart that he said used to be used for milk deliveries. As he wasn’t sure the cart horses would stand the smell of dragons, he offered to haul it himself, if Ileth would just help push on the inclines. Together they loaded the sheep from the smokehouse and set off on the snowy track. Astler threw an improvised rope harness around his shoulders and picked up the stays and they set off, Astler pacing with effort.

  “My great-grandfather is always telling me to get more exercise,” he said, pulling hard and shifting his feet about for better purchase.

  Ileth took a stay and hauled as well. After hauling limestone, the cart wasn’t so bad; the wheels had most of the weight.

  “You are a fresh breeze, Ileth. My cousin would be worried about her hands,” Astler said.

  She was wearing knit gloves! Although most of the fingers were worn through. She held up a hand to show him. “Mine were ruined long ago.”

  “They look nice enough. Wouldn’t want to draw them, though. Hands are hard to get right.”

  “Is that why women are always holding flowers in their lap in portraits?”

  “That’s it exactly.”

  She watched the tendons in his arms strain to keep the grip with those long fingers of his. She liked his hands too. It was easy to imagine them on her. Why did she allow her mind to wander there? Maybe it was being away from the Serpentine and its strict routines. She was like a sailor, fresh off a ship.

  Astler broke in on her imaginings. “Forgive me for asking, but did you get hurt in training?”

  It was obvious where he was looking. Ileth wondered if she’d be asked about the scar over her eye for the rest of her life. “No. An accident.”

  “It gives you character. I’m sorry, I’m always saying the wrong thing. Or the right thing, badly. I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”

  “I never dreamed of being an artist’s model anyway, so no great loss. There are plenty of other dancers for . . . for Heem Tyr to paint.”

  “You’re wrong there.” She thought a young artist would leap at a chance to talk about Risso Heem Tyr, and Ileth could add personal anecdotes about the dancers she knew he’d painted. Ileth, wrong about boys again.

  “I didn’t see any people on your wall. Do you draw them?”

  “If I draw them from the back, wearing gloves. My faces always come out flat, too. I’ve given up on people; I think I just don’t have the knack for expression, for all that I wish to. I wonder if I could properly capture a dragon? You know, there’s not much dragon art in the Vales. I’ve seen dozens of paintings of horses, cows, sheep. Pigs even. I’ve never seen a portrait of a dragon. Just tavern signs and road markers.”

  “Not long ago, in Vyenn, I saw a very bad depiction of a dragon on a tobacconist’s sign. I’m sure you could do better. Your birds are lovely, and detailing scale would be a lot like feathers.”

  “Do they let ordinary artists in the Serpentine, or just the Heem Tyrs of the world?”

  “Oh, yes. You only have to write and get permission.”

  He adjusted the rope over his shoulder, placing it more comfortably, then spoke again: “Perhaps I can write you and you can bring a request to your superiors. Of course I’d have to get permission from my mother. She only let me go to Stavanzer but once.”

  Ileth was much, much more interested in talking about him writing her letters. Bugger Comity.

  “I’d like that.”

  “I’m being presumptuous. I just don’t meet that many . . . personages of my age. My mother even pulled me out of the youth militia after young Harban slid down a hill and broke his leg. You’ll leave soon and I will miss your company.” He lunged to get the cart over a rock. “I will write you.”

  How soon, she wondered. They were nearly there, the lighthouse loomed near. “Don’t they keep that lighthouse going?”

  “It’s in disrepair, like everything else at the Old Post. I was, oh, seven or eight when it last worked. But my great-grandfather did have someone in a little while back to inspect it.”

  “We have a lighthouse at the Serpentine.”

  “Yes, I’ve seen it on bookplates.”

  “They don’t do the real thing justice. You should see it in person.” Ileth could have bit her tongue. It was working more or less properly for once, and was running wild. Astler would think her desperate.

  He didn’t seem to notice. “The lighthouse keeper and his wife would tell me stories about dragons, back then. They said any place where dragons lived, their magic can remain a long time.”

  “Magic?”

  “You’re a dragoneer. You haven’t heard those stories?”

  “No.”

  “Well, it’s not a magic story, really, not like the one about the traveling showman who put his dying son into a wooden puppet or the town where people disappear for a hundred years at a time. I mean the idea that dragons are vehicles of magic on the earth. More dragons, more magic; the farther they recede, the more the magic fades. Elves disappear, dwarves turn into stone, nobody can turn lead into gold anymore, all the stuff you read in the Fairy Tome, gone.”

  “We didn’t have a Fairy Tome in my lodge. I was educated with Directist copybooks.”

  “That’s grim stuff, isn’t it? Liars having their tongues burned and all that?”

  “It terrified me at first, but later the drawings were sort of fascinating. Whoever made the woodcuts had some strange ideas. I mean, no one could actually still be alive, walking around holding their liver in their hands, right?”

  “I wouldn’t think so.”

  “You couldn’t accuse those faces of being flat.”

  Astler laughed. “Not if you’re to do justice to a man walking around holding his own liver.”

  Ileth felt herself warm. She imagined if she descended into the dragon caves below the lighthouse, she’d glow like a firefly. Astler was so easy to talk to! The words just came out. Both of them from shattered families, both raised up by cracked walnuts. Imagine being pulled out of the youth militia! She’d seen the boys hiking about in files, fixing fences, doing archery in fields. It was hardly putting to sea on a ship bound for the Hypatian coast.

  “Speaking of liver, that’s usually a dragon’s favorite bit of an animal. Better get these down.”

  The Old Post was already smelling of dragons again. The only one of the four who was awake was Etiennersea. She was stretched out on the wharf where the river emptied out into the straits.

  “Breakfast, Etiennersea,” Ileth said, announcing herself.

  “I heard you both since you started down from the entrance. Mutton?”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought so. Hard to tell sometimes when it’s smoked. Oh, I am looking forward to a good fat northern sheep. I get tired of the Serpentine’s fish. Especially lately, with the fillers and bones. Everyone’s complaining of blockages.”

  Astler stood dumbstruck as she spoke. Well, it took everyone time to get used to it. Etiennersea had excellent Montangyan. It allowed her to complain with precision.

  Speaking of blockages, there was no dragon waste around for her to clear up. Ileth was grateful for that. Astler’s bright impression of her might be dimmed after seeing her shovel up dragon mlumm. They must have let the river carry it out into the bay.

  Ileth went around the dragon’s head and drank in the fresh sea air.

  “Are you keeping a watch?”

  “Of course. If the Rari came poking around, I’d have to kill them. We can’t let them know dragons are he
re.”

  It startled Ileth to hear of men being hunted and killed the way you’d destroy vermin infesting a granary. Though she could see the brutal logic of it. Etiennersea was a dragon and had a dragon’s sensibilities.

  Astler couldn’t help glancing out at the sea. He looked nervous, but being around a dragon often did that. He seemed an imaginative young man, perhaps picturing how easily the dragon might end his life, like a terrier snapping a rat.

  Ileth tried to keep her face neutral, as if fighting and death were part of her experience. She’d grown up hating the Rari for the death and loss and poverty they caused; better than half the siblings in her lodge had been orphaned by Rari knives and shafts and chains, but she still wasn’t sure if she could kill one, even in battle. She’d wanted to bleed Gorgantern, wound and humble him for insults and injuries—she still fancied the hearing in one of her ears was a bit off because of his cuffing her—but to watch the life leave his body? It was a test of being a dragoneer she hoped she’d never be called to pass.

  Ileth dropped her burden and Etiennersea shifted into an eating position, turning so she was farther back in the shadows of the cave.

  She heard the other dragons stirring. Ileth checked Astler by taking his hand before he went off to look. One of the first warnings she’d had in the Serpentine was not to wake a dragon if it appeared to be active in a dream. You were to go some distance off and blow a whistle or a horn if it was necessary. They stood there, neither dropping the other’s hand, while the dragons woke and the low humming of their calls to each other started.

  “Sparks, what is that?” Astler said.

  “Dragons speaking to each other in their own tongue.”

  “Feels like on a ship when the crew is dragging anchor chains about.”

  “They speak in such a way we can’t hear it. Or can hardly hear it.”

  “So this is why the philosophers thought they were speaking to each other with their minds?”

  “Something like that,” Ileth said, hoping he wouldn’t probe her natural philosophy any further. He probably knew more about such things.

  “You have an interesting life, Ileth.”