Daughter of the Serpentine

by E. E. Knight

  There has been a great deal of training against an old stone ruin on the coast on the other side of the Skylake. Teams of dragons depart, assemble, and return exhausted and hungry at all hours. They have put on extra feeders from the new novices and are buying not just fish but all manner of geese and goats from all around and cooking them in bacon fat. The grooms tell me the greasy smoke from dragon-flame is hard to extract from scale. The spirits of the dragons are much improved by the improvements in the food and that passes down to all of us attending them. The Beehive certainly buzzes!

  As for me, my leg is still healing, and I have been forbidden to fly so I know very little about the extra training. Something tells me you know more of this than I, for your favorite who I shall label ADH in the fashion of our mutual friend Quith has been here and there trailing at the heels of that white-haired dragoneer with the hard face watching, and often flying out to observe, the sets of dragons in their training.

  I think often of you, and especially of the months when we were both first novices under the Matron’s roof. Maybe if we’d been closer then, we’d have both been spared difficulties.

  In order to relieve the winter doldrums, I have permission to come visit you for a short holiday, from both my family and the Governor. Falth arranged the whole thing once I had the idea in my head, and as I write you I have in my hand a letter from Governor Raal inviting me. But I trust you to secure the permission of Lady Raal as well. I have never been to the north and look forward to passing a little time with you.

  Your dragoneers miss you greatly. Well, the Sweet Dun Huss very politely asked that I cheer you, the tall grim one said he’s been to the Governor’s family retreat and would rather do another survival than return, and of course Dath Amrits wonders how a girl who managed to run away once can’t do it again now that she knows the way.

  If you are reading aloud, keep the next paragraph private. Say it is about my mother’s health and read it to yourself: Amrits has been most helpful in tips on how to travel there and we have a plan to restore you to us. We were up until all hours discussing it and he even procured me some traveling clothes for my trip, making a special journey to Zland.

  I will send a letter by air courier when I depart so you know help is on the way. I promise you a swift and furious campaign to retrieve you to the Serpentine Academy. Until then, I remain your most staunch and devoted friend, etc.

  Santeel of the Name Dun Troot

  writing from the Serpentine on the Skylake

  Ileth didn’t know quite what to make of the letter, but it was a welcome diversion for her brain. She wondered what Santeel had planned, or what Amrits had put in her head. She doubted it would be waking Lady Raal up by banging soup pots together over her head, but the tone of the letter and the participation of Amrits suggested that anything was possible.

  Lady Raal gave permission for the visit with alacrity as soon as she determined that Santeel was the one and only daughter of the Dun Troots and not some cousin or niece who was sneaking in an “of the family” between her first and household name.

  “I understand they are an important Name in Sammerdam. I have heard something of their politics. Have you met the brothers? I believe there are two, one unmarried.”

  Ileth confessed that she hadn’t had the pleasure and Lady Raal advised her to have the pleasure, quickly, before she became too much older or the unmarried one took a wife. “Could you not press your friend for a visit to her home?”

  “That would be up to your husband.” Ileth had learned that Lady Raal did not like it when she referred to the Governor as “my father.”

  She found herself looking forward to Santeel’s visit, counting the days off until she was due.

  They waited each day in the front room to watch the lane leading up to the house. Lady Raal had the cook do what she could at the little village market so that she could properly feed a Dun Troot.

  At last, they saw a carriage moving carefully up the winter dirt of the road.

  “Why, that’s my husband’s carriage. I wonder if he is visiting. Lucky coincidence, your friend should arrive any day.”

  Something flashed in the sun briefly as it flew from the opposite side of the carriage. It spun in the air as it dropped, so fast Ileth wasn’t sure she’d seen it.

  Lady Raal looked doubtful. “Was that the coachman’s hat?”

  “I’ll go out and greet him,” Ileth said, as a dutiful daughter should.

  Ileth took the usual winter precautions—boots, a heavy hat, and a shawl—as she met the carriage. Severan followed her out. The carriage was much the worse from winter travel; the windows were very dirty.

  The carriage didn’t contain the Governor, just one sixteen-year-old society girl eager to be out of its confines.

  Severan helped Santeel down from the carriage. Santeel was unusually red-faced and very merry looking. Severan leaned in slightly and sniffed at the atmosphere in the carriage.

  Ileth could smell it too. A great wave of garish scent and ardent spirits rolled out of the carriage with her. Santeel didn’t wear scent except at feasts, though she sometimes rubbed her crevices with a lemon if she didn’t have an opportunity to change into a clean sheath.

  “Ileth! My love! How I’ve missed you. An absent friend’s kiss, dear!”

  Santeel grabbed her by the ears and kissed her full on the lips. The combination of Santeel’s enthusiasm, her physical presence, and the fumes rising from her made it the most overwhelming kiss Ileth had ever experienced. Had it come from, say, Astler Aftorn, her knees would have buckled and her toes curled. As it was, she was too shocked to do much but stand there like a statue. She could hardly have been more surprised at Santeel’s unaccustomed loud behavior if she had pulled a short meteor and shot Severan down.

  She glanced, embarrassed, at the window. Lady Raal was watching.

  “Ooh, almost forgot my stick,” Santeel said.

  “Allow me, miss,” Severan said. He reached into the coach and pulled out a walking stick of unmistakable design. It had a snarling brass ogre face at one end and a bright tip at the other and beautiful wood in between. Ileth had only rarely seen Dath Amrits without it, and it appeared he’d lent it to Santeel.

  Santeel, limping with the aid of the walking stick, proceeded inside. Severan held the door for her.

  “Oh, doors and everything. I was expecting to have to crawl in through a mud tunnel,” Santeel said. She seemed to see the house for the first time. “Isn’t this a lovely retreat.”

  “Please, come in,” Ileth said. “How was your journey?”

  “Your good Governor was kind enough to arrange for his carriage to meet me at the pass,” Santeel said, loudly, as though she were addressing the Serpentine from the Great Hall lectern instead of a friend in arm’s reach in an entry hall. “I was happy to have an experienced driver on what passes for roads up here. But I was disappointed. In the novels about the north the young heroines aren’t two leagues from their houses without some great shirtless northerner with a meteor in one hand and a whip in the other, reins between his great teeth, riding up to stop the carriage and ravish them. The only thing that stopped the Governor’s carriage was sheep. I’ve arrived safely without so much as a stay torn, and the only outrage to my fundamentals is from the bumps in the road. Perhaps the coachman scared them all off.”

  Ileth showed her where to hang up her winter traveling cloak as Severan spoke to the driver about the disposition of the carriage, and the new cook, Eloana, came to take Santeel’s baggage to her room.

  Santeel shrugged off the cloak. Ileth gasped.

  Her friend’s choice of gown would be daring for, say, the Feast of Follies if she were trying to give up, well, modesty. In the north, which was a little more reserved about attire than the rest of the Vales, it constituted a scandal. Her overdress, while suitable enough from the waist down, didn’t have much “
over” to it above her waistline. The straps and bodice were minimal, at best, and designed to elevate and project Santeel in a provocative manner as obvious and functional as a clockmaker’s shelf about displaying its wares. Santeel’s blouse under what little overdress existed was thin where it wasn’t left open entirely.

  Eloana gaped for only a moment before hanging Santeel’s cloak.

  “Your w-walking stick is distinctive,” Ileth said.

  “A present from a gentleman admirer. Nothing like a good length of hickory in your hand, right, Ileth?”

  “Hefty brass,” Ileth said, but Santeel ignored her, tapping the stick hard enough on the wooden floor to create marks.

  “Miss, please,” Severan said, coming in behind.

  “Oh, my wrap.” Santeel extracted a light wrap from the cloak and settled it about her shoulders.

  “Excellent, isn’t it?” Santeel asked, turning. The back was conventional, except for exposed lacing, but then it had to be to support all the lifting and cramming the front was doing. “Latest thing from Zland. I think the girls there are trying to tempt the Galantines out of the Scab so they can retake it. I wore it in expectation of the Governor coming to meet me in his carriage, but ’twas not to be.”

  “It’s breathtaking,” Ileth managed.

  “That’s it exactly. I haven’t drawn more than half breaths since lacing it up. You don’t have to ask about borrowing it, I’ve brought one for you. Just the shade for your eyes. I do hope we get to go to the Governor’s Residence in Stavanzer together so you can wear yours.”

  “You’re too much, Santeel.”

  “What are the men here like? Did some sorceress turn them all into sheep and geese? I’ve seen nothing else this whole trip.”

  Eloana bobbed. “Shall I tell Lady Raal your friend has arrived?”

  “Yes, I’ll introduce her directly.”

  “Not so directly I can’t have a crap first, Ileth,” Santeel said. “That carriage worked everything loose.”

  “It’s . . . it’s just out,” Eloana managed to say, waving toward the rear of the house. Ileth was interested to hear someone else stutter for once.

  “I’ll show her,” Ileth said. “Tell Lady Raal we’ll be a moment.”

  After a comfort break for Santeel and a much-needed gulp of tea for Ileth, who feared Santeel had experimented with some even more exotic snuff that radically altered her personality, Ileth brought her into the front room. Lady Raal had set aside her loom and half-finished tapestry and Ileth wondered what the next humiliating act would be.

  “Santeel Dun . . . Dun,” Eloana said, bobbing as Santeel entered. She’d arranged her wrap so the panels crisscrossed, covering what the overdress did not.

  “Dun Troot,” Ileth supplied.

  “You are welcome, Miss Dun Troot,” Lady Raal said.

  Santeel gave a genteel bob.

  “Please join me. Would you like refreshment? There should be tea.”

  Through the window Ileth could see Severan hunting about beside the road. He bent and picked something up: a rectangular bottle of green glass. He read the label and sniffed it suspiciously and made a face.

  Lady Raal and Santeel spoke of the length and difficulties of her journey across the mountains in winter.

  “The journey was a taxing one,” Santeel said, swaying unsteadily and stifling a yawn. “Would you allow me to retire to my room for a short rest?”

  “Of course, dear. Ileth, take Santeel up to your room.”

  “Oh, how jolly,” Santeel said. “We have to share?”

  “Stesside is small, and built as a summer retreat from town, not a winter one. There are several rooms upstairs, but they’re chilly at this time of year. We want you to be comfortable, and Ileth told me you are used to having your beds next to each other.”

  “I don’t mind. My trunk can go anywhere.”

  “Severan will see to your trunk. Rest, dear, and I look forward to getting to know you.”

  Upstairs and with the door shut, Santeel climbed out of the overdress—it seemed designed to be removed quickly, at need—and slipped into the prepared bed, shifting the little scented dry lavender sachet atop her pillow to the bedside candle-table.

  “Santeel, what are you doing?” Ileth asked.

  “I’m going to sleep, Ileth. Have you never traveled in winter? It’s exhausting.”

  “You know what I mean. Since when have you started wearing scent?”

  “Part One of the Plan. You’re a slattern with slatternly friends. Part Two comes tonight.”

  Ileth groaned.

  “Just let me lie a while. I drank just enough from that bottle to make me realistically pink, but I may have overdone it. I’ve never performed in the Ileth style before, at least to this extent, and I had to steady my nerves.”

  “Do you want something to be sick in?” Ileth said. She’d thoroughly washed the chamber pot that morning, but not in expectation of a drunken Santeel Dun Troot.

  “I’m not that bad.”

  “I’m relieved to hear it.”

  Ileth drew the curtains. “What have you and Amrits cooked up?”

  “You’ll see. It’ll be fun. Tired now.”

  “I’ll leave you.”

  “Ileth?” Santeel’s voice said quietly from the dark.

  “Yes?”

  “You kiss like a wooden signpost. Firmament knows what Rapoto thought. Work on it.”

  * * *

  —

  Later, as they dressed for dinner, Santeel explained some of this “plan.”

  “Remember, Ileth, the slatterns-in-crime guise, we only do it here and there in front of the servants, never Lady Raal. Perfect young ladies with her, like the Matron herself was sitting there with her glass of vinegar water and a book of manners.”

  “How does being awful in front of the servants get me out of here?”

  “You’ve never had servants, so you don’t know. Especially when there are just a few, as here, they’re more like family. They can be very proud. Anything that might discredit the Name goes right into the ear of the lady of the house so fast it’s like someone’s blown dragons up on the great horn. I don’t know about the girl, but that Severan seems to me the one to work on. I could tell by that neckcloth. He’d like to chase me down the lane with dogs already. Are there dogs?”

  “No. Not here, down at the distillery.”

  They came down to dinner and found Lady Raal looking nervous. Severan stayed in the room with her the entire dinner to help serve, rather than going back into the kitchen as he usually did for his own dinner. Ileth thought it might be to impress a Dun Troot, but after Lady Raal spent the first half of the dinner looking at them like they were highwaymen who’d barged in and sat down at her dinner table, she decided Severan had been talking.

  Santeel’s manners were perfect and Lady Raal eventually relaxed. After dinner, Santeel played on the keyboard and sang and became entrenched in a conversation with Lady Raal about musical forms and tempos and their possible effects on digestion and mood. Lady Raal became so animated in appreciation of Santeel’s performances and conversation that it made Ileth feel like something that had just wandered in from a barnyard.

  During the following days, Santeel only annoyed Lady Raal with her constant inquiries about when an invitation would come to visit the Governor in Stavanzer. Only then did Lady Raal’s fearful attitude return and she made excuses about her having written her husband on the subject and she was looking forward to his reply.

  Meanwhile, the secret war against the servants continued. They stole wine and liquor daily (emptying it out behind the barn rather than drinking it). They went into the village nearest Stesside, which supplied the workers to the distillery and the casual labor required of a house and grounds the size of Stesside, and made nuisances of themselves in the small public house and toba
cconist’s. Ileth thought Santeel overdid it when she started a screaming fight over Rapoto Vor Claymass, but it was still good fun.

  * * *

  —

  Inspired by the scene in the village, Ileth finally managed to outslattern Santeel when they staged a similar fight in Ileth’s room. As they stomped their feet and screamed into each other’s faces, trying not to laugh, Santeel let loose with a string of profanity that impressed Ileth, who’d grown up around fishermen and sailors. Not to be outdone, Ileth volleyed back with such a collection of nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, all of them dreadful, that Santeel dropped the pillow she’d been beating on the floor and covered her eyes.

  After they calmed things down, Santeel grew thoughtful. “You know, Ileth, you don’t stutter when you swear.”

  Ileth told her it had always been that way. The only problem was, there weren’t any jobs for women who could only communicate through profanity.

  Ileth had never seen this side of Santeel. At the Manor, with the dancers, she’d come in and established herself and didn’t have any need to be pleasant company. She tended her own affairs, certainly, gave her opinion perhaps too freely, but Ileth had never seen her try to be pleasing. She was very good at it, certainly a match for even the best of the Baroness’s polished Galantine daughters Ileth had lived with for that year.

  She paid closer attention to Lady Raal than any of the servants. When she appeared tired of working her loom, Santeel set up tea. A series of bad hands at cards made Santeel announce that she was tired and perhaps she could consult with Lady Raal on a good book from the small library at Stesside. She talked or was silent according to Lady Raal’s inclination.

  At night, when it was safe again to be open with each other, Ileth asked her about it, though posing the question was difficult because she had no skill at all in making people talk about what she wanted them to talk about with it seeming like her partner’s idea.