Daughter of the Serpentine

by E. E. Knight

  “To keep your wife company?”

  “I’d hoped life together and your own young heart would give you some amount of feeling for Lady Raal. That you two might grow close. Even see her as a mother.”

  It was impossible not to respond to the emotion in his eyes playing out in the firelight.

  “I admire her.”

  “Just admire? No pity?”

  “She is admirable about her condition. I see the effect it has on her. Can nothing be done? Maybe a trip to the south, I’ve heard it’s easier on invalids?”

  “Oh, we’ve been over and over that. It won’t help. There’s no surgery, no diet. But by the flash and the thunder, I’m going to give her some measure of health. Now that I’m almost through as Governor, one way or another, consummate strategist or bankrupt fool, I’ll see her health restored. You’re the key to it. I brought you here with every intention of sending you back. Once I extract a promise from you that you’ll get me dragon blood.”

  Ileth froze. So she wasn’t some chit in an old grudge against the dragoneers.

  “I couldn’t.”

  “They would not suspect you, Ileth. You’re young, vital. You have a reputation for honesty. I was told you even uncovered some scale thieves and recovered stolen dragon eggs by that Dun Huss dragoneer. You could have lived like a queen in the Baronies on what the Galantine court would have given you for those eggs.”

  “Why w-would that m-m-make you think I’d steal blood? A reasonable man, hearing those incidents, would come to the opposite conclusion.”

  “Hear me out. I’ve had physikers in; they tell me they can do nothing but give her drugs that will make her insensible. I became my own physician and studied up on it, and no less than three authoritative Hypatian texts speak of the wonders dragon blood can work on even severed nerves. Beyond that, I’ve heard stories. You wouldn’t be the only dragoneer to get a little blood out of the stones of the Serpentine.”

  “Setting aside . . . setting aside v-violating my oath, I’ve never even seen the stuff, at least bottled as medicine.”

  “I’m certain there will be some in the camp that the engineers are outlining even now. As soon as the dragons arrive, I’ll send you there. Under conditions that you do nothing that will imperil your safety or ability to return with the blood. No flying about on dragonback and getting yourself killed.”

  Governor Raal was a man of intriguing depths. He might not be a master of coup on the board, but in real life he played admirably. All the pieces were in place. Dragons. A campaign. Even her.

  “But if I do this, I return to the Serpentine.”

  “With my thanks. And the Name Raal, if you want it.”

  Ileth took the plunge. “I promise nothing. I don’t know if your plan is even feasible.”

  Raal’s face hardened. “You have to do better than that. I’m not a governor for nothing. I can still spike the wheel. Without me, no campaign against the Rari.”

  “You wouldn’t dare. It’s the Republic.”

  “I could say the same to you. The Republic. The Serpentine. Against a little bit of dragon blood for a sick old woman. I want a definitive answer.”

  Ileth spent a moment assembling her next words: “I would see Lady Raal’s health restored, if it were in my power to do so. If she must have dragon blood, I will do my best to get some.”

  There it was. She was committed to betraying the trust the Serpentine had put in her. But the campaign had to go forward.

  “Then I will see about arranging transport for you. You’ve no objection to another visit to the Sag, I trust? They’d seem a suitable family to look after you for me, and they’re right in the thick of it.”

  Ileth nodded, unable to tell if she anticipated or dreaded seeing Astler Aftorn again.

  PART THREE

  A Swift and Furious Campaign

  “I never won a battle in my life, sir.

  I only survived them.”

  —Captain-General Garamoff

  7

  As spring finally warmed the chilly north in earnest, Ileth wondered if the campaign would ever get under way. Her seventeeth birthday passed, unmarked and uncelebrated, save by Ileth to herself with the promise that even if she failed to acquire the forbidden blood, only time would keep her from the Serpentine’s dragons. She waited in agony until one day a message arrived by express rider, then next a carriage, really more of a sturdy, enclosed cart, to get her first to Stavanzer and then to the Headlands.

  Back at the Stavanzer house, Ileth learned that the carriage wasn’t the only thing Raal had prepared. He had letters of instruction and thanks to the Aftorn family, letting the family know that Ileth would take them up on their invitation to visit and asking they allow her to reside at the Sag “for the duration,” but he did not make explicit the duration of what exactly in writing. A second letter he gave to her written in ink that would only become visible if the paper was painted with vinegar, concealed with some other blank sheets of paper, pen, and ink in a portable secretary-case he presented to her. He told her this one was to the dragoneer encampment with instructions to them that she was to represent his office in Stavanzer strictly as an observer to give him an accounting once the campaign was concluded for good or ill. The third thing he gave her was all the information he had gathered about how dragon blood was bottled and labeled, and the old Hypatian alchemical symbols she was to look for. She was to then return immediately using a third order for her transport on dragonback, using as an excuse a prewritten note that Lady Raal was very ill and called for her. If a dragon to convey her was not available, she should go to a fishmonger’s near the Sag and arrange for a crate of oysters on ice to be sent to the Governor’s Residence in Stavanzer and lay the bottle within among the ice before the crate was nailed shut and sent by express. Raal had a connection there who would arrange matters for her.

  She wondered just how long this plan had been in the works.

  So she went in her cart to the Sag and the hospitality of the Aftorn family. Gandy was visibly taller and Ileth tried not to look too long at Astler, who’d put something in his hair in an attempt to tame the cowlicks.

  They welcomed her, complimented her on her new clothes, but it seemed the Sag was nothing like the heart of an armed camp. She even had a guest bedroom of her own. The road to the Old Post had been improved, but she saw no other changes. There was no one about other than a gardener and the shepherd for the family sheep. Ileth wondered if the whole affair had been called off, failed in the Assembly or what-have-you.

  “Your dragoneers are in the Chalk Cuts, just north of the bog,” Comity said, privately, over tea and oat porridge poured on toast, dished out in order to restore her from the fatigues of travel. “The Old Post is simply too near the village. They won’t be brought up until the campaign begins.”

  Ileth had heard of the Chalk Cuts as a child; hunters of pheasants looked for them there in the brush and small trees. It was supposed to be the next thing to uninhabited, something to do with the soil being poor and only fit for goats and plagued by great swarms of mosquitoes and biting flies.

  She confessed to Astler and Gandy that she wanted to get back among the dragons. She even missed the familiar old oily reek!

  “There’s only paths going there,” Astler said. “You’d spend a day walking there. A horse isn’t that different as there’s no direct road, just easier on the legs.”

  That night, Gandy showed her where she could arrange her things, but she didn’t feel much like unpacking.

  “You’d rather be among them.” She didn’t phrase it as a question. “Astler will be disappointed. Are we that poor company?”

  “It’s not that,” Ileth managed to say, fearing that she’d misstepped with people who’d been kind to her. “Yes, I miss the dragons, but Governor Raal gave me a few notes to deliver. It’s duty that takes me away.”

&n
bsp; Gandy smiled with her eyes. “You and my cousin are so alike. He’s had the word duty on his lips more than once this week. I’ll let you in on a secret, since no duty binds me: I think he’s a little disappointed we have spare rooms, and he’s no excuse to creep in and talk to you.” She giggled.

  He wasn’t the only one who was disappointed. Unable to sleep, Ileth purposefully rose twice in the night with ready excuses about forgotten gloves or a cat crying outside her window, hoping to run into Astler mooning about, but the house was quiet.

  The next day, Ileth helped with cleaning the kitchen and arranging firewood and charcoal, then took a walk in the hills to exercise her body after being cooped up in the carriage. Happily tired, she sat by the fire with a book on natural science—it was difficult, and after carefully puzzling out five pages, she mostly looked at the illustrations—but Astler never appeared. Gandy said he was with a pair of workmen at the Old Post putting in new lamps.

  The next day was more like summer than spring, even for the windy Headlands. Ileth felt restless. She couldn’t shake the sense that she was missing something important.

  “It may be a question of you going to the dragons or the dragons coming to you,” Comity said quietly as Ileth helped her set out the breakfast things, forcing herself to full wakefulness with activity. “Astler told me that Taskmaster Henn is at the Old Post, working like mad with last-minute stores.”

  Astler appeared at last, smelling of his father’s shaving soap, and announced that he would take her to the Chalk Cuts the next day on horseback if she wished. Everything that could be done to ready the Old Post had been finished.

  They packed baskets of food and extra meats and cheeses just in case. Ileth put her small bundle of necessities and letter case on her loaned horse. Astler carried the food and his sketchbook. Comity read off a list of advice and prohibitions for the trip that seemed to stretch on and on like the codicils in her apprenticeship contract, and Gandy offered her the red-and-white scarf Ileth had admired. “You never know this time of year.”

  Ileth was grateful. It was of the softest and highest-quality wool. Finally, they set off for the Chalk Cuts, a final warning from Comity ringing in their ears:

  “Turn back if it looks like snow!”

  The hills came in sight as bumps in the distance and patches of trees, with little slivers of white where the soil had worn away revealing chalky ground. No sign of dragons that Ileth could tell.

  They stopped as the sun rose to midday, unsaddled the horses, and set up a picnic. They talked about the weather for a while. Ileth asked if Astler would draw something for her, pointing out patches of spring wildflowers, but he said there wasn’t time to do them justice if they were to reach the Chalk Cuts by dinner. They got into a small, distressing argument about the Rari. Astler believed that the pirate captains were already breaking up; they’d been so long without much commerce to raid that some of the captains had taken their ships out to the Inland Ocean to try their luck against the Galantines and the others on the Inland’s western shores.

  “They’ll be back to a nuisance in a few years,” he opined.

  “The Republic might not be here in a few years either,” Ileth said.

  “We’ll muddle through. We’ve lived through hard times before.”

  “So we sit on a stump and do nothing? Lose a few dozen fishermen and a ship or two every year?”

  “It’s better than war,” Astler said, tipping his head back a little as he tended to do when arguing a point.

  “How do you know?”

  “I’ve studied history at school. A military academy. Wars are like dogfights, you never know who’s going to join in. Suppose the Galantines back the Rari?”

  Ileth thought it best to change the subject. She didn’t like hearing Astler pick apart Annis Heem Strath’s plan to suppress the menace. “You went to an academy? Your mother allowed it?”

  “She didn’t have a choice. Family tradition. From eight until fourteen at the Navigator’s. Basic education for two years, straightening out the weak bits from our tutors when I was little, two years classical art and education, and then the last two in cadet uniform, supposed to toughen me up and all that. One year being made miserable, then another making the boys under you miserable. I hated those years. One of my class went on to the Serpentine. Boy named Sleng. You know him?”

  “Pasfa Sleng? Big sideburns?”

  “Glad to hear he finally grew them. He tried for years with bucket to show.”

  Ileth smiled. “I don’t really know him but I have a friend who is mad about him. I didn’t know he was from the north. He doesn’t sound it.”

  “He’s not. He was kicked out of all the others.”

  Astler leaned toward Ileth. “It’s a lovely warm day. There’s a spring breeze with wildflowers on it. I’m picnicking with a beautiful girl and talking politics.” For a moment she thought she was about to be kissed, but he plucked a stem of bluebells and handed it to her.

  She’d never been called beautiful. Well, never by any boy she wanted to hear that kind of talk from. What did you say in reply? Thank you?

  “These are nice,” Ileth finally said. “If I had the right sort of pin, I could use them to close your cousin’s scarf.”

  “She must like you. It’s her favorite.”

  “She’s a . . . a favorite of mine. She and-and her cousin b-both.” Leave it to her cursed tongue to intrude on such an exchange!

  Astler looked puzzled. “You met . . . oh, you mean me.”

  “Y-yes,” Ileth said.

  He looked uncomfortable. Ileth wondered if she’d misjudged.

  “I’m sure you’re eager to be back at work among your dragons,” he said.

  Ileth stretched. The riding and the lunch had worked on her. She reclined, settling her head against Astler’s outstretched thigh. “A brief rest. I am . . . I am too happy now to move.”

  Astler tested her hair between his thumb and forefinger. He picked up one of the blue flowers by its stem and gently brushed the petals on various points on her face. “Spirit. Mind. Body. Soul,” he recited.

  The litany left her confused. “You lost me.”

  “A lover’s four tells. Hair: spirit. Chin: mind. Mouth: body: Eyes: soul.”

  “Still lost.”

  “Just some rot out of poetry books. Her hair reveals how her spirit feels about you, her chin what she thinks of you, her mouth how her body fee—well, you get the idea.”

  She looked for soul in his eyes. All she saw was that same gentle regard. So different from that hot, hungry look she was used to from men near enough to smell their breath.

  Maybe it was best that they get back on the horses. She had an increasingly irresistible urge to put her hand on the back of his neck, pull him down, and test what his weight would feel like atop her. The blanket and the empty meadowlands were too much of a temptation.

  “I don’t want to go, but . . . but we should,” she finally said.

  “Yes. The moment’s over anyway.”

  “What moment?” she asked.

  “The moment when you weren’t thinking about your dragons. It’s only the second one we’ve had.”

  “What was the first?” She thought she knew, though.

  “That night when I came looking for my pencil case.”

  She got to her feet.

  He sighed. “I’m sorry. You’ve been odd this whole visit, like something is weighing on you. I don’t like seeing you unhappy.”

  “I’m not unhappy!” she said. “This was . . . this was very nice. I could spend all day with you and not care about anything else.”

  “Something is working on you.”

  She had to say something, it was difficult with a boy who read her like a child’s copybook text. Perhaps she could laugh it off. “I—you know what they say about girls in military camps. They’re n
ot gripping sword hilts.”

  Astler knew her well enough by now to know when she was joking. “I might have to go into service myself.” He turned serious. “If this is a last chance for the Republic, I want to do my part.”

  “I . . . I know it will work. In my gut. I trust my gut more than my head. It’s fate.”

  “Fate? Then I wish I could be part of it. Maybe they’ll let me make soup for the Auxiliaries,” Astler said. “Though my mother probably wouldn’t allow me even that distinction. Might burn myself. You know, there’s a philosopher who thinks you will outcomes into being, positive or negative.”

  Ileth, who had been gloomily thinking all morning about the consequences of a theft of dragon blood being discovered, stayed silent.

  He waited for her to reply. When she didn’t, he said, “Well, if we’re fated to win, perhaps I can give you something to look forward to. Our biggest warehouse, up the Hyacinth Canal, just outside Stavanzer—has been all but empty for years now. Both inside and outside are being repainted and new glass is going in. Why do you think that is, Ileth? Will you guess?”

  “You think opening the straits will bring the warehouse into full use?” She tried to think of other possibilities an intelligent young woman of business might consider. “Is it to be sold and you want the best price? Wait, it is going to be the armory for the campaign?”

  “Good guesses, but no. It is to be used for a celebration when the campaign is over.”

  “Even if it is a failure?” Ileth asked.

  “I thought your gut declared that an impossibility.”

  “It’s still fighting with my head about it.”

  He took her hand. She felt her pulse quicken at his touch. “Would your gut and your head agree to leading the first dance with me?”

  “Why would I lead the first dance?”

  “Oh, so I must explain my reasoning now? First, I do know you enjoy dancing. Second, you’re connected to Governor Raal, and we will invite him. As his wife doesn’t appear socially, you would be attending with him. In Galantine phrasing, the Ancialia—the princess prime. You and your dancing partner would be the first couple for as many dances as you chose to lead.”