Daughter of the Serpentine

by E. E. Knight

  “Ileth wants to volunteer for that reconnaissance of the Sea Fort,” Dun Huss said.

  His eyebrows went up in surprise. Something that might have been a smile crossed his face, making a quick trip of the journey. “Excellent, apprentice. Thank you, most commendable. Denied.”

  “Sir, I’m not sure you understand those waters.”

  “I don’t have to explain myself to an apprentice, but I will to the Governor’s representative: Nephalia is a strong swimmer. I can hang on to her; whatever the currents and tides, she’ll get through them.”

  “It’s not how strong your dragon is, it’s how cold the water is. I know I can take it.”

  “I realize I’ll be chilled. I’ll be sure to return all the quicker and warm up.”

  “It’s just I’m used to this, sir. I grew up on this coast. We used to swim in these waters, winter and summer.”

  “No. This is a reconnaissance of an enemy fortress. I’m not sending an apprentice on that, even if she’s got ice in her veins.”

  Something in Ileth refused to let the matter go. Besides, Dun Huss had been right, they couldn’t afford to risk the overall commander of the campaign before it had even begun. “Apprentice or no, I’m better qualified to do this.”

  “Then, Ileth, rise to my station and you can give the orders. These stand. Let’s have no more of this. Any more arguments and I’ll send you back to Stesside.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Still, I’d like to hear what you have to say about survival in cold water. Any advice?”

  “Breathe deeply when you’re in the water. Try to relax. It’ll be painful at first. That’s the key, the breath. Deep, steady regular breaths.”

  Garamoff turned the matter over in his head. He nodded. “Be off with you now.”

  Ileth bobbed and backed out of the tent.

  * * *

  —

  The good weather held.

  It took a day of mad activity to relocate the camp to the Old Post. They moved everything but the dragons, who would stay in the Chalk Cuts with the wingmen and a few apprenticed feeders and grooms until the last moment. Ileth missed most of it, bearing a message back to Sag House that the campaign was about to get under way.

  Back at Sag House Ileth tried to lie down and sleep but she was too anxious. Garamoff had departed on Nephalia and she had a strange sense of foreboding. She was tired, but her gut and her brain teamed up on her tired muscles and forced her out of bed. She made the trek to the lighthouse and stood beneath it.

  She found the Borderlander there, smoking those odd long, thin tobacco roll-ups he liked, looking out across the channel. Catherix had been one of the key dragons sent ahead to the Old Post.

  “Those mountains get so much snow, it melts past midsummer, and that fort is where two bays meet the straits . . .” Ileth said.

  “Nephalia will get him through. She’ll get him to a bare bit of coast and light driftwood on fire if she has to.”

  Ileth searched the horizon and the sky above. Lights flickered on the Rari coast like distant stars.

  “He’s not going to fly in anywhere near the lighthouse, you know,” the Borderlander said. “Too much chance of a Rari boat spotting his dragon. He’ll head straight for the Headland cliffs and come in low overland. Watch there,” the Borderlander said, pointing off to the north-northwest.

  He was right. After what felt like hours of being sure that various shadows her eyes imposed against the dark clouds were dragons, she finally spotted what had to be Nephalia by the faint reflective gleam of her wet scale.

  She hiked up the blanket she had wrapped around her shoulders and ran. Nephalia was down, and her rider dismounting.

  He had water in his hair and his face was dark with grease so the whites of his eyes seemed unnaturally bright.

  “Hullo, Ileth,” Garamoff said tightly. “Here to get me to admit that I was wrong?”

  “Of course not, sir.”

  “It was a rare bad business. But the Sea Fort is a tomb. Nothing there but rubbish and birds’ nests. Pulled-apart war machines, only the rotting wood and some pegs left.”

  “That’s good.”

  “The breathing trick helped. Thanks for that. If you make wingman, girl, you are welcome to do the next wet reconnaissance. I put a finger on the promise.” He cut the blade of his hand across his index finger. Ileth hadn’t seen the gesture before.

  “Maybe a toe, sir, you’re down two already.”

  “You wouldn’t have any of that local lifewater on you, would you?”

  “No.”

  “Oh. It’ll have to be tea, then. Does no one drink coffee up here?”

  Coffee? He was mistaking the Headlands for Sammerdam. “No, too expensive.”

  “Well, if this thing comes off, maybe prosperity will return. Come along, you can help me get the seaweed out of Nephalia.”

  * * *

  —

  Ileth returned to the Sag, warmed herself, and slept at last. She woke late. Comity grumbled about her already acquiring governor’s daughter habits.

  Gandy was at her heels, as usual. Every time she turned around, at meals, at tea, asking about soap and a basin, Gandy was there. Perhaps she was just happy to have another of her sex near her own age around. It just made her feel Astler’s absence. He’d gone down to the Freesand coast to see the bait ships being prepared in harbor. Naturally he was interested; the Aftorns were part owner of the shipping line whose flag they flew.

  Ileth felt cooped up in the Sag and suggested they follow him.

  “Why do you want to go down to the coast?” Gandy asked.

  “I grew up in the Freesand. I miss it.” That was the biggest lie she’d told since crossing the Blue Range.

  “Nothing to do with my cousin?” Gandy gave her a knowing smile.

  “Haven’t spoken with him since we said good-bye outside the Chalk Cuts.” Ileth would have added that she didn’t feel right, not knowing he was safe at the Sag. She was turning into his mother.

  “Said good-bye. Said.” Gandy practically leered.

  “Is there anything keeping us from going now?” Ileth asked, looking for anything to break the tension of waiting for the campaign to get under way and not being able to be involved except as a supernumerary.

  “No, of course not.”

  “Then let’s get dressed.”

  “But I want to fix your hair. What a strange way you keep it. Do the dragons break all the mirrors at the Serpentine?”

  “It’s easy to clean and I don’t have to do much with it.”

  “Well, still, it’s a challenge. The back is a horror.”

  “Yes, I sort of guess when I cut the back.”

  Gandy went to work. They talked a little of wigs; Ileth told her about Shatha in the Dancers’ Quarter and how wigs solved so many hair problems. “You’ve been south of the Cleft too long,” Gandy sighed. “Wigs! They’ll call you fancy.”

  They shared a smile. In the north someone who was fancy was sort of a cross between disreputable and useless. Used on a woman it could have additional connotations. That outfit Santeel had worn for her arrival at Stesside would be labeled fancy.

  It was nice to just talk with someone like her in accent and wordplay. Their sympathy in language and sensibilities eased them into friendship.

  Gandy therefore didn’t ask direct questions but let Ileth talk freely about her upbringing and how she made it to the Serpentine and on dragonback, so to speak, probing her in the most agreeable sort of manner. On a different person some of her chat might sound like flattery, but Gandy was the type who liked to look for the best in someone she liked and ignore any flaws. She never mentioned Ileth’s stutter, showed no signs of impatience when a word wouldn’t quite come; she just fiddled with her thin daggerlike scissors while Ileth reconciled herself with her tongue.

>   “Mind if I get a bit daring with the back?” Gandy asked, breaking away from talk about whether the town girls from Vyenn mixed much with the dragoneers.

  “I never see the back. Feel free,” Ileth said.

  “I have a book in my bedroom, fairy tales. There’s a woodcut of this woman. Evil, a sorceress. She had short hair. It sort of angled up toward the back. I always thought she was striking. How’s that sound?”

  “Think it would upset Governor Raal?”

  “I’ve never met him, but I’ll say yes.”

  “Then yes.”

  He hadn’t put anything in his letter about her getting her hair cut, after all.

  When she was done, Gandy found her a mirror. Ileth was shocked at how short it was in the back, but at least she wouldn’t be mistaken for a shepherd boy in need of a haircut.

  She tried a fierce expression. She almost regretted the metal pins above her eye. She could curse the Rari out of their slaves. “So that’s my spirit, is it?” Ileth said.

  Gandy looked worried. “I don’t understand. You don’t like it?”

  “Just something your cousin said. I do like it, truly.”

  Ileth went to her bag and got out her small supply of cosmetics. She showed Gandy how to line her eyes, darken her lashes, and add some shadow that brightened them.

  Ileth added a little to her own face. She tipped her hair back, glared, and intoned: “I curse you and three generations of yours to despair and sudden doom!”

  Gandy laughed. “That’s better. You were so serious the first time you were here. I told Astler that you acted like you had a dragon claw lodged somewhere hard to get at.”

  “Was I really like that?”

  “Well, you could match Comity frown for frown.”

  Ileth tried different angles in the mirror. “I’m not sure about these bangs.”

  “I’ll fix the front with a pin and a bit of green creeper. It’ll look like springtime and go with your eyes. Then we’ll be done.”

  * * *

  —

  They had to saddle the horses themselves. Comity had said everyone at the Sag had their own work, and if they wanted to ride down to the Freesand for the day, they’d have to saddle their own horses. And not forget feed, the horses would need to eat while they visited.

  It was not much of a delay. Soon they were riding through the little village Ileth had flown over that winter. Gandy rode very well, Ileth poorly, but the practice would do her good. The place seemed to be crawling with soldiers.

  “You want to take the crest road along the hills or the coast?”

  Ileth didn’t much feel like riding by her old Lodge, and the coastal road took you past its doorstep. “The hills. I’d enjoy the view.”

  “It’s longer. We wouldn’t be back until dark.”

  “You spent half the morning fiddling with my hair.”

  “I wanted to make you look nice for my cousin.”

  Gandy had to hold her horse back on the trip, as Ileth’s seemed content to proceed west at a pleasant amble. The horses weren’t saving them much time, just effort.

  They passed a trio of shepherds just where the road started to drop from the Headlands toward the muddy flats of the Freesand Coast. Or rather, men pretending to be shepherds. For one thing, they only had five sheep. Ileth, in all her years in the north, had never seen three shepherds watching over five sheep. Three tough-looking, young male shepherds, with an older one giving commands to the others, and “shepherd’s” clothes cut from blankets and draped over and wrapped about their other clothing. She suspected they were soldiers, watching over the road, there to encourage wanderers heading into the area of the Headlands around the Sag and the Old Post to travel elsewhere.

  Ileth was glad the hills obscured the Lodge, yet she fought an urge to ride to the highest familiar hilltop so she could look down on its roof.

  They came into Yalmouth town midafternoon, hungry and tired. Ileth couldn’t say whether she was pleased or displeased that no one noticed her. Several young people called out to Gandy and inquired about her. Gandy used the same response: “Don’t you know Ileth?” and even that didn’t bring a smile, or frown, of recognition.

  Well, she’d never made much of an impression on the Freesand Coast.

  They asked if anyone had seen her cousin but had only one helpful answer, and even that one wasn’t very helpful; a priest who knew the family said he’d seen him hanging about the docks.

  What they did see was the most active Freesand harbor Ileth had ever witnessed. The subterfuge with the ships had been well carried out. They’d finished loading them with the fake cargo, going so far as to accidentally drop a barrel and have it leak whale oil all over the wharf. Ileth thought that clever. Whale oil was a rich cargo, sure to attract the interest of the Rari and their spies, who were no doubt already pulling across Pine Bay with the news of the laden convoy. They chanced the docks but there was no sign of him, just men loading supplies and gear. The boats had thick rope webs piled about the sides; they’d been pulled up to the masts to keep boarders off. Ileth wondered if he’d gone on board one of the ships.

  Walking her little Freesand town of Yalmouth, little of her face visible between high collar and pulled-down riding hat, she felt just as much a stranger as she had been in the Baron’s Galantine village, even if every painted door and brick chimney wasn’t a familiar sight. The markings seemed like the faces of old friends.

  The town was the same as ever, with the little sundry shop with the sweets in the window she’d hungered for as a child, the ship-chandler and the bootmaker, and the tea shop that opened early with cheap pies for the fishermen setting off to their boats, the tinker and his pots and tureens and kettles. The houses where the front rooms were devoted to hair-cutting and wigs, or pulling and replacing teeth, odd little hovels with secondhand furnishing and clothes long out of fashion that could be bought cheap for their material and buttons or recutting, herbalists with their ointments, poultices, and infusions.

  And there was the sign for the Standing Gull, the old warehouse that had been turned into a grog shop where the old men mixed with the young when the boats came in, where the beer was a chancy business depending on which farm had offered the best price, but the singing and playing were the best the little village had to offer.

  They stopped by a smithery and stable. A few militia messengers and their horses stood about, probably waiting for orders. Gandy thought it a good place to ask; Astler had friends there from his summers training with them, but none had seen him. Gandy whiled away some time in flirtation and they received an invitation to dine with the militia.

  Ileth looked at the sky. There were low clouds. It had been a warm day, and at this time of year, a warm day was often followed by rain or fog off the cool gulf.

  “We might want to head back, unless you like riding in fog,” Ileth said.

  “It usually stays low and close to the bay this time of year,” Gandy replied. “We’ll be above it once we’re out of town.”

  They ate a short dinner with the militia youths in the beer garden behind the Two Lanterns, the town’s only inn. The one who sat next to Ileth stared at the scar over her eye and said that she seemed very familiar, but Ileth didn’t explain herself. It grew darker, but Gandy ignored her hints about leaving. The youths dropped cryptic hints that they knew a great secret but didn’t dare let on. Gandy, who probably knew more than any of them, did her best to draw them out.

  “Perhaps we should stay in town,” Ileth said, looking at the now-dark sky, wondering if that had been Gandy’s aim all along.

  Gandy now looked worried. “Or we missed him on the way back, if he took the shorter coast road, sensible fellow that he is in all matters not having to do with his heart.”

  In the end, they resaddled their rested and fed horses. The militia was only to happy to help out an Aftorn and her frie
nd.

  As it turned out, it wasn’t much of a fog, more of a mist, with the three-quarter waxing moon showing off and on through the clouds. They were just starting up the hills outside town when Ileth heard a bell ringing from the harbor and a distant crack—the sound of a meteor being fired.

  “Hold up,” Ileth said.

  She could make out the Yalmouth rooftops, but the mist obscured the water. She saw a mist-muted flash on one of the ships and heard that faint cracking sound again.

  “Sure, that’s a meteor!” Ileth said. She’d heard them now and then in the hills above the Serpentine as apprentices learned about the weapons.

  She and Gandy gaped at each other. Some terrible confusion must be—

  No, it had to be the pirates. They’d heard about the ships and rather than risk letting them slip by in the straits had come right into the harbor to take them.

  Ileth, like everyone else in the Freesand, had always assumed that the shifting currents, sandbars, and rockpiles of the shallow, southern end of Pine Bay made a raid by boat impossible. The Rari had done the impossible.

  Ileth reached over and grabbed Gandy’s wrist. “Dragoneers need to know of this.”

  “Yes. We must return at once!”

  “You must. You’re the better rider and speed is everything. I could never keep up. Go. Ride as fast as you safely can. If there was ever a time to put yourself and your horse to the test, this is it.”

  Gandy gulped, her eyes wide and staring.

  “Ileth! I don’t want to leave you alone with Rari attacking the harbor!”

  “I grew up here. I know hiding holes and lookouts. They’re after the ships. Just go. Get to the Old Post and scream that the Rari are taking the decoy ships in Yalmouth and don’t stop screaming until the dragons are up.”

  “But you!”

  “Go!” Ileth said, striking Gandy’s animal on the haunch. It took off, Gandy standing in the stirrups. Her horse wanted to go with its friend but she wrenched it around and, using her heels as hard as she could, urged it back into town. She jostled down the main street, hearing the alarm bells ring. The horse didn’t like the noise and kept shying this way and that.