Daughter of the Serpentine

by E. E. Knight

  “Don’t think there wasn’t a plan for me,” Ileth said. “Cook or maid, or if I was very lucky, wife to a fisherman with his own boat.”

  Santeel smiled. “Sad to picture you all red from the wind, pregnant, helping unload the catch. You’re so pretty. You don’t have that milk-fed Vale look, and you don’t have the wild northern thing really either, maybe just a little of it. You’re unique. You should have a portrait done. I bet the artist would sell copies, if he was good and you were in a decent gown. I could kiss you, you’re so pretty, but then you open your mouth and I want to drown you.”

  Santeel wasn’t one to use delicate phrases from behind fan-guarded lips. She squared off and unloaded, as the Captain used to say. “That’s the second time you’ve told me you’d drown me.”

  “Is it? Oh. I suppose it’s our family way to kill someone.”

  Ileth hadn’t expected that.

  “When I was six or seven, I had this little dog. I don’t know if it had been bred to be small, smaller dog than any I’ve seen. Big, sweet eyes. But maybe it was the breeding, it was sickly. One day it just couldn’t get to its feet. It could rise up on its front paws, but then it would flop over. It just panted. My mother told me that women were responsible for bringing life into the world. Sometimes it was our duty to take it back out again to spare suffering. So she filled a tub with warm water—”

  Ileth wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the rest of it. “Your mother is dark.”

  “You’ve no idea.”

  Santeel was silent for a moment, thinking, and then she spoke again.

  “Before the puppy—oh, I don’t even know how old I was. I was young. I was writing my name and reading a little, I remember. My mother’s mother, my grandmother, lived with us. A very nice room. Family home, you know, more impressive than my father’s. That was my parents’ marriage on a notecard. His family’s money was the more impressive, but my mother’s had the properties. Mums, that’s what I called my grandmother, became ill. For a while she could still get around, then in a wheeled chair, and finally she ended up in bed. Couldn’t leave it. I remember bringing her flowers to put next to the bed; Mother had moved it so she had the best view, and then my mother stayed in that room with her for . . . well, it seemed to me always but I suppose it was just a few days. I barely saw her. I listened at the door sometimes. I heard talk. Crying. Even laughing. Then one morning my mother was out of the room, looking very tired, and told me that Mums was gone. She hadn’t seemed that sick.”

  “I’m sorry you saw all that,” Ileth said.

  Santeel helped herself to a little more snuff.

  “Should you have that much?” Santeel was sweating despite the cold. The evening sun glimmered on the beads of sweat.

  “I want to dance,” Santeel said. “C’mon, Ileth, dance with me!”

  Santeel moved out onto the balcony. Ileth lunged, pulled her back.

  “In this wind? Santeel, you’re mad!”

  “But the sun feels sooo good! Winter sun is the best sun, don’t you think?”

  Ileth pulled more firmly and drew her inside.

  Santeel seemed compliant, so Ileth took her toward the staircase. “We should return to the Quarter. I want to lie down.”

  She didn’t really. What she wanted to do was see if she could make a sound on the Dragon Horn that ran up the wall of the Rotunda. She’d always wondered, and this might be the last chance. But what she really, really wanted was for Santeel not to go out dancing on that balcony with nothing between her and a plunge to her death but her sense of balance clouded by whatever was in this snuff.

  They started down the awkward stairway running through the Rotunda dome, Ileth leaning, going slowly, supporting herself with her hand. Santeel tripped lightly down the stairs, bracing herself with both arms and swinging her legs down together.

  “Ah-woop!” Santeel said, swinging, just as her hand slipped.

  It didn’t seem like a hard fall to Ileth, but she heard a horrible, distinctive snap. Santeel slid down two more steps with her leg folded under her, and not in a dance fold either.

  “Was that my leg breaking?” Santeel asked, her eyes wide. “I can’t move it.”

  Ileth did her best to stretch her out in the narrow, curving stairway. “I think so.” There was no blood. That was good. Or she thought so anyway, her mind racing. If there was blood with a bone break you were as good as dead, she’d been told.

  “I’ll get help,” Ileth said. “Stay here,” she added.

  Santeel thought that was funny. She started to laugh. “Ooooh, Ileth, laughing hurts. Don’t make me laugh. Yes. You should hurry. Get help.”

  Ileth went down the stairs as quickly as she dared, found a novice checking candles in the Rotunda balcony, sent him for help, and hurried down to the main floor of the Rotunda and grabbed a wingman and sent him for a physiker.

  “Not Threadneedle,” Ileth said. “He’s too slow. His assistant. Tell him to bring others. Someone strong.”

  She flew back up the stairs to Santeel.

  “I can just feel my toes,” Santeel said. “But it hurts when I try to wiggle them.”

  “Then don’t do it.”

  “I think wiggling your toes is important. I can’t remember why. The pain is getting worse. Would more sn—”

  “More snuff is a bad idea.”

  “You’re right. I’m keeping what’s left. I’ve spent too much on it lately. Well, more than too much. Everything. Keep talking, won’t you, Ileth? Until they come?”

  Ileth tried to come up with a subject. “So that’s why you had me write your family? All your money was going to snuff?”

  “It kept me going, between the apprentice duties and my dancing. It wasn’t just snuff, they kept saying I owed more because I was late paying for it.”

  “You? A debtor?” It had always seemed like Santeel had money for any fancy.

  “I owed for a while. They knew I was rich—well, my family was rich—he let me buy on credit. I paid them back, part of it. I had to sell some clothes and a bracelet and rings to do it, if I didn’t want to end up like you.”

  “What do you mean, end up like me?”

  “I don’t—I—”

  “Santeel.”

  “That cut on your eyebrow. They threatened to cut my face. It was a message. A warning.”

  “Over a debt?”

  “Ileth, they never hinted that they’d cut someone else. I’m not even sure I have it right. If I were certain, I would have gone to the Masters. No matter what Vary said.”

  “Vareen Dun Klaff?”

  “Yes, he’s part of that Blacktower gang, with Heem Beck and Vor Rapp. Heem Beck is dreadful. He laughed when Dun Klaff threatened me. I could see him cutting a girl.”

  It took a moment for Ileth to absorb the shock. So Quith had sort of been right. Her wounding at the bridge ceremony was intentional. But it had nothing to do with her. She was just some nobody, the tailer, a thing they could use to frighten Santeel into getting more money out of her.

  Up in the Freesand there’d been a village cur that didn’t belong to anybody. It used to sleep on the painted wooden steps of the candle-maker’s on sunny mornings. The candle-maker’s wife would wake and prod it, gently, with her broom in the morning so she could sweep the steps and polish the door handle and the dog apologetically slunk away until she was done and returned inside, and then he’d resume his nap. One morning Ileth saw her husband kick the dog off the steps, hard. The dog bit him, hard, on the fleshy inner part of the thigh just behind the knee before running off, leaving the candle-maker fallen on the steps clutching his leg with blood running between his fingers, calling for help.

  Ileth felt ready to bite.

  A groom arrived with bandages and a brace. Ileth had him wait, kept talking to Santeel, until the physiker Gift arrived. He didn’t ask any questions but we
nt straight to work bracing and making a sling that would allow him and the groom to carry Santeel the rest of the way down to the Rotunda gallery without too much movement to her leg. There she was lifted onto a proper litter.

  “You want to work on her by the mirrors?” a groom asked. “Good light there.”

  “The physiker’s office,” Gift said. “I want to be sure it’s set properly someplace where she won’t have to be moved again for a few days.”

  Ileth walked next to Santeel’s litter until they met Threadneedle on the road just past the Pillar Rocks. He was puffing and red-faced, as he should be upon hearing that a Dun Troot was badly injured. Gift spoke to him quickly and he glanced at the bracing on her leg. He picked up Santeel’s hand and held it, walking beside her litter, fussing over her and prattling about what sorts of food she’d like brought for her dinner once they had her comfortably set up in a room.

  Santeel chatted back, wincing through the greasy sweat of pain coating her face. Ileth considered for just a moment telling the physikers about the snuff, but after a doubtful moment she decided not to interfere. She had the little case right in the pocket of her overdress, after all. They’d find it when they undressed her to work on the leg. She bade Santeel farewell, promising to inform Ottavia of the accident. But instead of turning for the Long Bridge, she went to the Charge’s tower.

  She found Dogloss at his soup, working over papers in the outer office. They looked like rosters of dragoneers, but he shuffled them into a leather folio as she approached.

  He must have read something in her face.

  “Ileth, if you want to give the Charge a piece of your mind, I assure you, he’s sympathetic. It can only hurt your case.”

  “No, it’s not that.”

  “Well, when you swept up like thunder off the lake—”

  “You said ‘case.’ I’m told you are an e-expert on the law?”

  “Not an expert. I apprenticed as a clerk, for five years, learned a good bit of it. I didn’t join the Serpentine until my nineteenth year.”

  “Why did you leave law?”

  “At that age I had much stronger political sensibilities. The more I saw of the law, the less I liked it. Juries seemed to decide by the weight of the purse. Reprieves and pardons going to the wrong people, commissioners of the court evicting people from lands their families have held for generations . . . I said ‘chuck it’ and showed up at the gate, same as you. Felt odd, starting over. Felt odder when I was the only twenty-year-old novice. But right. A man should have one good blaze in his youth. My lung was pierced over the Scab. It’s never been quite the same since but our good Charge took me on his staff. He even saw to it that I stood for law examinations and passed, though there’s not a great deal of legal work in running something even so large as the Serpentine. Most of the arrangements with the locals predate the Republic. But if someone’s called me the Serpentine’s counsel, well, I suppose they’re right.”

  “Is there any matter of law that prevents us from buying and selling things to each other? Wine, tobacco, weapons, medicines.”

  “No, none. You know the Republic, tradesmen and bankers and farmers who grew sick of produced under royal warrant and all the corruption that went with the king’s warrants so you’re free to charge any price you like on anything. There is a general prohibition in the Republic on trade in poisons and animals that are known to be diseased, a blighted crop, that applies to all of us as well. Here in the Serpentine we have strict rules about dragon blood, of course, or scale. Didn’t you have something to do with discovering some scale thieves? I recall talk of it years back, before you went to the Baronies, when your name was discussed in that Fespanarax difficulty.”

  “What about collecting debts?”

  “Are you in debt?”

  “No . . . a . . . a friend.”

  “That’s complicated. If the debt is guaranteed, well, that depends on if the property put up to secure the debt is stored in a bond warehouse or still in possession . . .”

  “Nothing like that. More an informal debt. What happens if you use violence to collect it?”

  “I know that goes on in some low places, but no, absolutely not. Comes under the same laws as robbery, as a matter of fact. Someone who smashes a foot to collect a debt is treated by a jury exactly the same as a robber who knocks a man down to cut his purse. It’s four years’ labor unless the victim is permanently injured. This is getting dreadfully specific, what is this about?”

  “It doesn’t matter, yet,” Ileth said. “I can’t prove anything.”

  “My advice to you is to go to the Masters if you’re in trouble with some shopkeeper. It may just be bluster, but I can write a letter that’ll make them think a jury is ready to be sworn in.”

  Ileth thanked him for his advice and went off to tell Ottavia about the accident.

  * * *

  —

  The next day the troupe visited Santeel. The chitchat in the Dancers’ Quarter was divided on whether Santeel looked better than her injuries should have had her looking or worse for being wrapped up in an ill-fitting medical bed-dress with her hair a mess.

  “The physikers say she’s exhausted, utterly exhausted. Needs rest to heal,” Shatha said.

  Fyth sighed. “First Vii and now Santeel. The poor thing. She was using both ends of the candle for a long time.”

  Ileth didn’t join in the discussions. She had the feeling they were wondering how much of Santeel’s fall was mishap. Quith, who always made the rounds at dinner in the Great Hall when there was gossip fresh from the oven, quietly relayed a rumor that the lighthouse sentry had seen the two dancers struggling.

  “Do you think she’ll return to us?” Shatha asked Ottavia when they were back at the Quarter.

  Ottavia sat at her desk, staring at the handle of her walking stick. “We must hope for the best and plan for the worst. Perhaps we can bring one of the new novices into the Quarter and make things easier for her by giving her Santeel’s bed. With the understanding that she’ll be returned to the Manor if Santeel is fortunate enough to return.”

  Ileth felt guilty she hadn’t sat with Santeel more. While she was the last person Santeel would want to entertain her by reading, she could have helped her eat. She also wanted to hear the story about Dun Klaff and his threats again; perhaps with the snuff out of her system her memory might be clearer.

  She’d been so busy with her dancing, making preparations to leave, and letting the Horse know of her need to leave the Serpentine for a year or more.

  The Horse gave his gentle smile when he told her. “My nose couldn’t have smelled that, Ileth. But I expect you’ll find your way back to us sooner than that. Could be a shorter trip back.”

  “How could the distance between the north and the Serpentine change, sir?”

  At that the Horse just tapped her on the arm. “Don’t let them turn you soft. What’s it like up there? I’ve never been. Forests? Chop and carry firewood.”

  On the way back to the Quarter she ran into a page who was on his way to the Beehive with a summons for her and made him happy by sparing him the walk there and back. She read yet another note to visit Charge Deklamp at her convenience. It wasn’t “earliest convenience,” which was a polite way of saying at once, so she waited until the next morning after her drills and fatigues. She wanted to be a dutiful dancer right up to her departure to make up to Ottavia the many indulgences her Charge had allowed.

  Deklamp happened to be in the outer office with Dogloss, talking and sipping his milk-tea. Serena was off on Telemiron again, it seemed.

  “You sent for me, Charge?” Ileth asked, after being bade to enter.

  “I’ll come right to the point, Ileth. There’s this unfinished business of a dragoneer for Aurue. As you know, dragons select their dragoneers, but Aurue seems set on you choosing his dragoneer. Claims not to understand men at all, and finds
talking to them tiresome, but trusts your judgment in the matter. I’ve selected three candidates for you to interview. Halkeff is able enough, but for some reason he’s never had a dragon take a liking to him. Then there’s Gruss, who’s the best topographic artist we have. Aurue would be an ideal dragon for reconnaissance. The third is Vor Rapp. It would be advantageous to the Serpentine to make him a dragoneer. Were I to choose, it would be Vor Rapp.”

  “Vor Rapp!”

  “Yes, perhaps not the most intellectual company here, and I don’t care for these little gangs and factions that inevitably form, and happily he’s taken the hint and shrugged off Dun Klaff. But his family is immensely powerful at Assembly. He’s done creditable work here. His ability and diligence in carrying out his duties are exemplary. Strong sword hand. Navigates well. His only weak spot is leadership. I spoke to him recently about it: trying to associate with the best, and then making sure those coming up behind you have everything they need to keep the Troth.”

  Ileth didn’t know how much he’d really had to do with the Santeel business. He certainly hadn’t been nearby when she was cut; he’d been outside the files, running along and trying to keep up with Ileth as she ran the gauntlet.

  “You know, this is a rather interesting way to offer a final test to these young gentlemen. The last thing they’d be expecting is for their promotion to hinge on the good opinion of a mere apprentice. Bit like Ellefsa and the Three Suitors.” Ileth knew nothing of Ellefsa, whoever that was, or her trio of potential bridegrooms.

  “I’ll do my best, sir.” He’d made it clear he wanted it to be Vor Rapp. So he wanted a secret test, did he? She had an ideal one in mind.

  She spent a few minutes in the outer office figuring where best to find the wingmen in question.