Daughter of the Serpentine

by E. E. Knight

  “You’re very good with Lady Raal. I’ve never seen her so happy and lively. She’s like a flower box blossoming under your attention.”

  “Ileth, if we’re ever in company, don’t compare someone who’s restricted to conveyance to a plant.”

  “Oh. Is it an insult?”

  “It does belittle their capabilities in other manners.”

  Ileth thought about it. She’d been trying to compliment Santeel, but she could see her point.

  “I never knew you could be so pleasing,” Ileth said.

  If Santeel objected to the double-edged compliment, she gave no sign of it. “Oh, my whole life’s been one long preparation for this role.”

  “What role?”

  “Ileth, are you being thick intentionally? A young woman in society trains to be married. Yes, you attend your husband but you’re an absolute thrall to your mother-in-law.”

  “Not the children?”

  “Not in my circle. You have an entire vanguard for the next generation. Wet nurse. Night nurse. Then there are the nannies and later tutors.”

  “You had all those?” Ileth had few memories of her own early days. She remembered times when she had to be very quiet because the Captain was drinking.

  “I got away from them whenever I could. In Sammerdam there are ‘yards.’ Sammerdam’s like that, everything is fenced off from everything else. The best ones are owned by the families of my parents’ social circle, filled with toys and playhouses and such. When I was little there was one—this is one the more ordinary kids played at, children of guild artisans and boatwrights and glaziers and such, but Nanny took me because I loved it—it was nothing but this great pile of sand and a fountain pool. I’d build castles and dig trenches and make mud pies. If I’m ever married with children, I shall have my husband just fill up the grounds by the outdoor pump with sand and release them into it every day. Stuff the playhouses.”

  Ileth built up their nightly fire. Santeel had her depths. But getting her to open up was like convincing an oyster to show its pearl. “Aren’t you afraid your mother’s going to hear about these stunts?”

  “My mother? Rumors from the north? She’ll assume that whatever reaches her isn’t a tenth of it anyway. If I were even partly as bad as my mother thought I was, I’d be on my second pregnancy or dead of exhaustion. She thinks I’m like she was back in her day in Zland.”

  * * *

  —

  She finally saw a glimmer of purpose to Santeel’s madness the day they received the bad news about the trip to the Governor’s Residence in Stavanzer.

  “I’m afraid my husband writes that his business is of such import that all his time is consumed with it. He cannot properly have you two visit. All the spare bedrooms are full of officers.”

  Ileth, who had learned to read between Lady Raal’s lines, understood. The Governor wanted to quarantine whatever outrages Ileth and Santeel were planning to Stesside, where there’d be less talk. According to Santeel, the next step in the campaign would be to make them decide they might be better off dispensing with Ileth altogether and suggest more suitable company for Lady Raal, lest she bring scandal and disgrace to the Name Raal.

  “I’m disappointed to miss all the opportunities for society in Stavanzer,” Santeel said. “Do you ever wish for more company here?”

  “Oh, I am so used to my difficulties now. There are doctor visits, and my husband is here much of the summer. But it was so nice to have you here to entertain me.”

  “Your situation reminds me of an aunt of mine. She is forced to keep to her home a great deal as well. She has a young lady, a Galantine, reside with her. She laughs and calls the girl her ‘legs.’”

  “She is lucky to have such a friend.”

  “Luck has nothing to do with it, ma’am. There is a service. I could have my mother forward a reference. I don’t know if your health has ever permitted you to visit Sammerdam, but it sees all manner of good people arriving, seeking opportunities. Young women of family and accomplishment are paired up with households that need a trusted relative to help out in this way but for whatever reason don’t have one.”

  “Is it expensive?”

  “No more so than having a daughter about. Board, pocket money, perhaps some small comforts.”

  “I don’t know if I could trust someone. It’s one thing to keep servants for work, but . . .” She grew thoughtful. “I sometimes wonder if I haven’t confined dear Ileth too much. A girl her age, with her . . . uhh, lively spirit doesn’t want to spend month after month with a sick old woman. Well, I shall consider it.”

  Santeel concluded her visit with the same skill she showed organizing her arrival. The Governor’s driver and carriage would bring him to Stesside, he’d enjoy one meal with Ileth and her friend, and she would depart the next morning for the Serpentine. Barring a disaster with the weather, she’d be met by a dragon and dragoneer at the Cleft Pass. It would undoubtedly be Amrits, aquiver to hear how the campaign he’d conceived with Santeel had played out.

  Santeel’s swift and furious campaign had been executed so brilliantly that Ileth couldn’t let her depart without some token of gratitude. She’d heard childhood stories about knights riding back to get a champion’s cloak and a garland circlet placed on their head; wearing the “halo of victory” was an expression you heard now and then.

  There were plenty of old blankets about the place, but Ileth couldn’t drape an old blanket that smelled of insect-repelling herbs and oils about Santeel Dun Troot’s shoulders as a cloak. Perhaps she could do the circlet. The problem was winter. There were a few plants that lived indoors in Stesside in pots, but she couldn’t ravage them. In the end she trooped out into the hills above Stesside and explored the path up to the spring source and found an evergreen with suitably springy branches. At least it was green and fresh. She trimmed off an armful with a knife and went straight to work.

  Just before Santeel closed her pack trunk, Ileth reached under her pillow and presented the wound ring of greenery to Santeel.

  “What’s this?” Santeel asked. She looked befuddled and a bit shocked, as though Ileth held a writhing snake in her hand.

  “Your victory halo,” Ileth said. “It was a brilliant campaign, in conception and execution.”

  The wheels in Santeel’s head finally ceased spinning, and it appeared they’d settled on delight. “Oh, I see! Ileth, how—this is a lovely gesture. How classical! But the credit for the campaign belongs on another head.” She picked up Dath Amrits’s walking stick.

  “No, it’s you,” Ileth said, putting the garland on her head and kissing her cheek. “I believe I shall be set free. I have a feeling Lady Raal is already scared to be in a house alone with me. Everyone has what they want.”

  Santeel smiled a bit of a bleak smile and blinked. The halo was askew. Ileth had sized it for her own overlarge brow. “So it would seem.”

  She rooted around in her clothing, found a wrap, and folded the greenery up in it. “I shall let Amrits wear it long enough for me to buy him a very large ale in Vyenn, and then hang it up in the Dancers’ Quarter, if they haven’t turned my bed over to the new girls. Maybe it will be the only halo I ever earn, so I shall do my best to preserve it.”

  “Oh, dear, what if Falth should hear that you stood a man a drink in a beer garden? We’d have your father back.”

  “See that he doesn’t hear of it, then.” Santeel chuckled.

  “You can be cheery. You get to escape Stesside.”

  “I can, and I will. I think this visit did me good,” Santeel said as she refilled her trunk. She had confessed to Ileth that she feared her dancing days were over. She’d gained a temporary limp. “What I most needed was a good challenge, to prove myself to . . . myself. Beyond that, I was able to aid a friend.”

  Ileth, eyes going wet, could only hug her.

  Santeel squeezed her. “Let
us make a pact. Neither ever forgets the other. If one is in need, the other comes. Always.” She stared levelly at Ileth.

  “Always,” Ileth agreed.

  Santeel stuck out her right fist, knuckles to Ileth, like half the gesture the Dragoneers of the Serpentine used to acknowledge each other when facing difficulty. Ileth mirrored the gesture, putting her fist up against Santeel’s, her knuckles facing her friend. A special variation of the Troth only they would share.

  Ileth did her best to look bright. “Tell Aurue and Falberrwrath and the rest I miss them. I will return.”

  “If some of the hints of that silly old gossip Threadneedle are true, Ileth, the dragons may be returning to you.”

  * * *

  —

  Governor Raal arrived on the promised date and brought good weather with him. He seemed delighted to make the acquaintance of a Dun Troot and passed good wishes to her parents. When they joined Lady Raal, the conversation turned to what delightful company Santeel had been and how accomplished and entertaining she was.

  Talk moved on to Santeel’s suggestion of a companion.

  “What about Ileth?”

  “Ileth will not remain here forever. She’s a vital young girl; she doesn’t want to spend her best years in the company of a sick old woman.”

  “Don’t you like it here, Ileth?”

  “It’s-it’s not that, sir. Lady Raal is right. A house, however comfortable, isn’t my goal. I want to re-rejoin the Serpentine.”

  “We all miss her,” Santeel said. “A trained dragoneer, idle at Stesside pouring tea when everyone is training so hard. It’s not just our loss, it’s the Republic’s. I’m sure my father would agree.”

  The Governor winced. Ileth tried not to smile at Santeel’s expert knife work.

  “Who knows what the future holds,” the Governor said. “She’s helped me better understand dragons and their potential. Gave me a powerful lesson in their use on a coup board, too.” He touched Ileth’s cheek, very gently. The way he looked at her, Ileth wondered if he wasn’t seeing someone else.

  Ileth couldn’t resist glancing at Lady Raal, but she showed no sign of disquiet.

  Santeel departed with a present of a single bottle of Stesssource Lifewater from the Governor, and made a more dignified exit than she did an entrance. “Don’t . . . ahh, use it sparingly, young lady.”

  “I have no head for spirits, sir,” Santeel said. Severan straightened and frowned behind her. “I will pour a toast for the dragoneers on Republic Day and ask that all drink to your health as well, sir.”

  The Governor liked the sound of that. He helped her into the carriage himself.

  They waved until she disappeared down the hill toward the Stess bridge.

  “I am sorry you are left without a friend, Ileth,” Raal said.

  “You took me away from every friend I have.”

  Raal let his face go blank at the reprimand. “Yes, the fact has come home to me, in the contrast between you and Santeel and me and Lady Raal. You are both spirited young ladies. Lady Raal should have with her a woman closer to her own age and interests. It was a mistake, bringing you here thinking you could be a daughter to us.”

  “I am nobody’s idea of a daughter.”

  “We will talk later, Ileth. I have some ideas about restoring you to your friends, if you will be agreeable about certain conditions. I think as you have the trust of me and the dragoneers both, you would make an excellent representative.”

  “You—trust me?”

  “Oh, you are a little wild, I understand, but that goes with being sixteen. That’s the age to break a little crockery and sing on a rooftop. I know I did. Come, let’s return inside. We will talk later.”

  The weather turned cold that night and a storm blew up. Santeel would be in the Cleft Pass overnight most likely, and stuck at the inn.

  Ileth fretted a little, pacing back and forth in front of the window and watching the wind blow the first flakes of a new snow about. If the wind was this bad here, what would it be like in the Cleft Pass? Ileth had walked that road and it ran along a high lake for a very long way. Pictures of Santeel in an overturned carriage flooding with icy water haunted her.

  “She has a bottle of lifewater to keep her warm.” Governor Raal chuckled. But it seemed his carriage would be absent for some days.

  One night, late, overcome by a cough and desiring water, she went down to the pump in the kitchen and found Governor Raal in the dining room, sitting by the remaining coals of the fire with his neckcloth draped across the back of his armchair and his waistcoat loose. He had his eyes closed, tapping the fingers of his right hand on the arm of the chair.

  She tried to creep by him. His eyes opened.

  “Sorry to disturb you, sir.”

  “You didn’t disturb me. Sit down.”

  She avoided Lady Raal’s chair and instead used one of the dining chairs, pulling it by the low winter fire.

  “Ileth, I know you’ve probably heard rumors about me, about what happened with your mother. I want you to know I did love my wife. Always. But I was . . . enchanted with your mother. I let a young man’s passions get the better of me. You are living proof.”

  “I am?” Ileth asked. She still didn’t see, or feel, any resemblance.

  “This business of you being my daughter—well, it’s time you heard the story. My part of it.”

  Ileth nodded. She clasped her hands in her lap to keep from fidgeting in her nervousness.

  “Everyone thinks I married Lady Raal for her money. It’s true. I did marry for money. I’m not even the Raal, she is. I took her Name. At the time she just seemed to me an excellent sort of girl with an unfortunate condition. It seemed she wouldn’t live long. To my mind then, it reflected well on my character and career possibilities all the way down. I was in the Assembly and some suggested I should stand for governor. A famous Name would help. With the Name came money and connections, and she gave every indication she enjoyed my company and attention. She used to beat me at coup, back when she played.

  “She . . . she understood a man’s needs and didn’t mind me enjoying social connections in her absence. Like your mother. There’s always talk, but I didn’t go parading them about. I wondered if I would remarry when she died, but then something wonderful happened, over the years. Two somethings wonderful. She didn’t die and I came to love her. Now I’m terrified of where I’ll be if she dies. I don’t know what I’d do without her. Now it—the business with your mother, and others—all feels silly, and every time I’m tempted, I think of how easily the goaty older man becomes a figure of fun. I suppose you get timid when you’re older, worried about your reputation. Timid about women. Timid about war.”

  “What was . . . what was my-my-my mother like?”

  “You only need to look in a mirror to find out. Tireless as water, able to wear down stone in time.”

  “Why all the effort to bring me to you, when you’ve done nothing but push me away?”

  “Your mother asked me to take care of it. It was—” His face writhed. “It was the last thing she asked of me. I agreed . . . and I botched it. Too afraid. Afraid of talk, of scandal. I shoved you off to that Lodge. I always have all these plans, you see. Even now. Oh, I can’t talk of this anymore. Let us change the subject for a while. Would you rather speak of returning to your dragons? Or I should say, them returning to you?”

  Would no one in this drafty old house finish telling her about her mother? She fought to remain polite, weirdly vexed that he’d echoed Santeel. “Has anything developed with the campaign?”

  “I’ve named you my daughter and you were a dragoneer, and the dragoneers trusted you with the earliest preparations so I believe I can tell you in safety. There was a final, secret Assembly vote, heads of committees only, granting the Speaker authority to use funds. Frighteningly limited funds; this is all such a gamb
le. As Governor I can put the province on a war footing, call up militia, and so on, but as of yet it’s still planning and drafting orders. I had some of my connections in the business world and the Exchange set up three companies, one that is working on still-secret naval craft using old coasters—they’re very nearly complete, I understand—one for road work and a new ‘quarry’ that will be a camp, and a third that is on paper a new meatpacking firm. Men have been hired. Of course right before the campaign we’ll need a full vote in the Assembly, but the Speaker and the committee heads should be able to deliver. Unless there’s a startling turn of politics. But the retrenchment faction is in disgrace ever since they found out Heem Stalleer was taking Galantine gold. And so little! What are men these days?”

  Ileth thought it strange that the last implied that there was a correct amount of Galantine gold that made selling out your countrymen worth it.

  They spent a few minutes talking about how she would get there, letters of introduction so that she could enter the camp, and he requested that she personally deliver a few notes of gratitude from him for families like the Aftorns who were turning over their property, fields, outbuildings, wells, and so on to the armed camps even now being planned out.

  “My one great worry is the shipbuilding going on. But since these are such unique vessels, unless they go under very close inspection, they may be taken for improvements to the docks near the border with Daphia.”

  As for the rest, the dragons would only be moved to the coast at the very last moment. The muster of the militia would be explained as a move needed to fight a plague in the swampy forests south of the Headlands. “It’ll give everyone in Stavanzer something to grumble about: a governor who calls up the militia to do battle with bog fever.”

  “So that’s it? I just return to the dragoneers when they come?”

  “That’s my plan. Ileth, why do you think I brought you here?”