Daughter of the Serpentine

by E. E. Knight

  “Why?” Santeel asked sharply.

  “So she has to leave the Serpentine. You know. Traskeer and his talk of odds. One less competitor for a dragon saddle.”

  Santeel adjusted Ileth’s head gently so the wound would have to fight gravity. “First comedies, now dramas. You go ahead, report your suspicions. See what it gets you.”

  “‘Suspicions,’ she says! With Ileth bleeding all over like a stuck pig.”

  Santeel wiped the drizzle from her face. “You’re probably half right. Whoever did it is worried about a bad note in Traskeer’s index. There are only so many wingman slots. If I were one of those boys, I wouldn’t want to admit I’d hurt a fellow apprentice. Especially in a ragging stunt.”

  Traskeer. The new Master of Apprentices. Ileth hadn’t met him yet, but she’d already heard he was just as much a dragon in spirit as any living in the Beehive.

  2

  The gash, washed out with stinging vinegar and then duly and painfully closed by a set of three silver pinch-pins just above, on, and below her eyebrow, throbbed painfully the first day, burned the second, and became an annoying itch on the third. It was a jagged sort of wound, something that looked more like a fishing accident—Ileth had seen plenty of those growing up on the Freesand Coast. It reminded her of a red sliver of moon, bisecting her eyebrow. The silver pins holding it shut gave her a bizarre appearance (“the silver helps keep the scar small,” said Joai, as she inserted them with the same fast, deft skill that she used to dress a chicken). The pins going in hurt more than her receiving the wound in the first place, but of course anticipation of pain made everything worse.

  Ileth had been sworn to return the solid silver pins and then released to her rope bed.

  Examining Joai’s work in Santeel’s very fine mirror, Ileth decided she’d make a good sorceress on a stage with that metal in her face. It made her look fearsome and even a bit mad. She would play the sort of exotic, damaged beauty who would briefly tempt the hero from his righteous path. She’d seen two plays since coming to the Serpentine, sponsored by the Masters and dragoneers and put on by the novices and apprentices of the Academy. The stories weren’t much, men engaging in heroics or villainy, women presented briefly as rewards or hazards, with the odd motherly figure giving out good advice that was ignored or a curse that came to full, horrid effect by the play’s end. Ileth reckoned she now had a face fit for hazards and curses.

  Ottavia, the Charge of the Dancers, excused her from dancing duty and practice fatigues for five days, as she’d been cautioned against activity that might reopen the wound. She soon felt well enough to visit the archives to be signed and sealed in, as the Serpentine phrase had it. She was tired of lying in her rope bed reading borrowed novels chronicling the tragedies sunk into the hearts of young aristocrats.

  She rose early for the long walk to the other end of the Serpentine.

  The archives were housed in a basement catacomb with an old temple above. Even the stonework in the walls, great blocks that must have been an enormous problem to move about and lay, struck her as strange and unlike anything else in the Serpentine. But it was dry, immaculate, and lit about as well as human design and an ample supply of fat lamps in polished reflectors could make it.

  Master Kess, the archivist who reminded Ileth of an old gray statue, pitted and weathered, must have been expecting her. He had her contract at hand and placed it on a reading table. You had to stand to read anything in the archives; Master Kess didn’t believe in indulgences such as chairs.

  A pair of novices sweeping the floors and dusting moved off to give them privacy. Ileth took in the first page. She’d oathed herself in to the service of the Serpentine as a novice in her first days, and that oath held until she was no longer a dragoneer. Or she died. The apprenticeship contract was a formal promise from the Academy that she’d have a place here. She looked over the first words:

  “I (lorca), the undersigned, understanding the consequences and proven ampetis azu releem, do attest in the presence of legal witness affixing seal . . .”

  The Contract of Apprenticeship to the Academy of the Serpentine went on and on like that for a full page that was the size of a placard, in elaborate lettering with each thick-stroked black letter edged like a sword and cornered like a temple as though the whole weight of a civilization stood behind them. Mysterious Hypatian legalisms crawled through it like worms in a freshly turned spring field.

  After she finished her study, silently buzzing over the arcane phraseology that meant nothing to her like a bee skipping over a weed to move on to the next flower, she raised her face to the archivist. “Done,” she said.

  In the light of the reading lamp, the Master Archivist’s pockmarked face also looked fit for curses. “‘Done’ is a carefully chosen word. I can be ‘done’ reading a book or ‘done’ falling out of a tree.”

  Ileth had a young lifetime of being careful with her words because they had such a tough time getting out properly.

  “It looks worse than it is,” Kess’s apprentice said. He struck Ileth as fidgety, or perhaps he just seemed that way next to Kess, who stood like one of the old columns holding up the temple floor above. “It’s a fancy way of saying the Serpentine Academy will own you for the next six years.”

  “You’re lucky, Ileth,” Kess said. “In the time when the man I apprenticed under was himself an apprentice, the contract was entirely in Hypatian. You had to be able to translate it to the archivist’s satisfaction to prove your education. That was before the Directory’s legal reform. These days even—ahem!—indifferently educated souls such as yourself are apprenticed here and we make allowance in deference to republican sensibilities. Not that the old lot were that much better. According to the way old Heem Halveth told it, half of them would memorize the translation until they had it down by rote. Seems to me it would be easier and more useful just to learn your Hypatian from a tutor as a boy.”

  Ileth didn’t give a fig about his opinion of her education. She thought about men like Hael Dun Huss, standing here as a spotty teen, reading over the phrasing and wondering if he’d make a good apprentice. He’d probably stood right at this table. It was a great hunk of stone like an altar and seemed likely to have been here two thousand years ago, never mind fifteen or twenty.

  “Shall I take you through it?” the apprentice asked. He kept glancing at and then looking away from the pins holding the scar shut around her eyebrow as his fingers fluttered nervously toward the contract. Ileth worried that he’d knock the inkwell over and spoil it.

  Ileth nodded. She was also nervous, just better at hiding it. Her stutter would be bad if she spoke. She felt out of her depth in all the elaborate lettering and legalisms.

  “Paragraph One, establishing the parties, their competence to make contracts, and the fact that this contract comes under Assembly Law and traditions of the old Diet, which is to be in effect in any and all Provinces, Districts, and Cantonments of the Republic should any matter relating to it arise. Paragraphs Two and Three, the Dragoneers and Dragons of the Serpentine being under General Commission from the Assembly to protect the citizens of the Republic, their property, mail, trade, and reputation, take on as an apprentice at the Academy you, established above, for a term of at least six years so that you may one day serve as a Dragoneer if so appointed. Paragraph Four, you promise to obey any and all lawful orders from any or all superiors according to the ranking and traditions of the Serpentine even at risk of your life, with you having the right to give evidence to a Jury of Honor if you believe one or more orders from a superior unlawfully jeopardizes the Republic or your honor. Paragraph Five, the Serpentine through its Academy will provide you with food and shelter and certain specific tools needed for your duties, and will issue any allowances, inheritances, or incomes as provided for according to terms originally arranged by family, commission, or contract for the purchase of uniforms, arms, and other necessities. Paragraph S
ix, you shall have the Apprentice Password allowing you through any gates and doors of the Serpentine according to their practices of curfew, holiday, and mercy-leave . . .”

  He droned on through the other fifteen paragraphs, the rest being legalisms about priestly rights at burial and storage of property, assorted dooms that would befall her if she deserted, disobeyed orders, or intentionally caused harm to the dragons (the apprentice said that while the word intentionally didn’t appear in the contract, in every case of an actual jury being assembled regarding harm to a dragon, intention figured largely in the arguments so it was traditionally considered an element of the contract, and therefore he added it), and finally added that in the event of a state of war, the contract would be considered extended until such time as peace was reestablished or the Republic had no further need of her and issued a written release.

  “We usually still have the apprentice read the final paragraph aloud before signing,” Kess said. “But if you’d rather not, I understand.”

  Kess had been present when she’d been sworn in as a novice, when they had to read off their oath. The entire assembly of dragoneers and apprentices had witnessed her embarrassing, stuttering performance.

  “I’ll—read it s-silently,” she said. She felt the weight of the moment. She enjoyed the sensation, something like the feeling of a good tool in your hand and a challenging job ahead.

  Ileth wondered if anyone backed out at the last moment. Probably very few. Only those who’d lasted through a novice year (or more, in her case), where you could be thrown out for minor infractions or just judged unsuitable for service with the Dragoneers, were offered an apprenticeship. She traced it with her finger as she read:

  Knowing the consequences of this action, on my honor I pledge myself, in body and mind, to the Dragoneers of the Serpentine, the Dragons they serve, and our Republic that they jointly protect.

  She signed. Just the name Ileth seemed inadequate, but the only additions to her name were from the Galantine aristocracy and wouldn’t do for a document of the Vales and its Republic.

  “Better add your place of birth,” Kess said.

  That was another problem. She wasn’t at all sure of the circumstances of her birth. But she’d grown up in a lodge in the Freesand, the coastal area of the North Province, so she added of the Freesand.

  “There,” Ileth said.

  The apprentice scattered some drying sand on the document. “We have other papers for you, in your role as that late dragon’s assignee,” Kess said.

  As far as the Academy was concerned, she was formally enrolled as an apprentice. But she had other business in the archives. There were some documents to sign, more legalese, relating to the death of the elderly dragon, who apparently had books or scrolls on loan to different regions of the Republic. “The Lodger”—as she’d known him—had turned over management of these oddly named volumes to her as one of the executors of the estate. Her signatures authorized the locals to maintain the collections. She only glanced at the documents, thick with Hypatian phrases she didn’t understand, but they had piled up while she had been on her enforced residence in Galantine lands.

  All the while Kess’s apprentice kept glancing at her eye.

  “It doesn’t hurt m-much, if you’re wonder-wondering,” Ileth said.

  “You’re that girl who is always getting into fights,” he said.

  “J-just one. A duel,” Ileth said. “I l-lost.”

  “Did you start swordsmanship or—”

  “It looks like it’s healing,” Kess said. “She doesn’t want to talk about it. This is an important day for her, Gowan. Stop spoiling things.”

  Ileth forced a smile. “It was a silly accident. Joai pinned the wound closed.”

  Every time I see that scar, Ileth thought, I’ll remember the day I became an apprentice.

  “You’re the tailer of sixty-six, right?” Gowan grimaced and lifted his white apprentice belt. It had a faint brown stain that had survived many washings. “I was first of my draft. Sixty-one. They just threw wine on me. Said it was supposed to be blood, but they were too drunk to catch a chicken. Well, first or tail end, we’re equal now.”

  “Congratulations, apprentice,” Kess said. “Fate see you standing before a dragon one day, chosen as a dragoneer.” Something in the practiced tone made Ileth believe the archivist thought it unlikely.

  She bobbed. The cool, quiet archives seemed an odd place for such a ritual, with a couple of novices eyeing her jealously as they dusted, but the Vale Republic ran on contracts, stamps, and seals.

  “Ileth, do you have your own affairs in order, just in case your service requires that greatest of sacrifices?” Kess asked. “I tell all my apprentices they should have a testament as to burial and property.”

  Ileth stared at her Galantine boots. The laces had broken in several places and been retied. The bootmaker made good boots but supplied her with poor lacing. “I—I expect to be buried with all my property.”

  Kess’s face twitched. Ileth wondered if she’d seen the briefest smile in the history of the Serpentine or if it was just a nervous tic. “Well. That always kills the mood, but you’d be surprised how few even consider such things. You’ll find we lose one or two a year, even without war. More in a plague. You should go along now to Master Sel—Master Traskeer, I should say—and report that you’ve been signed into the rolls. I wish you well in the next six years and then a rewarding assignment as wingman.”

  Ileth steeled herself. Traskeer was the new Master of Apprentices. Selgernon had resigned as a matter of honor after the affair with the egg theft and the flight of the dragon Fespanarax, as one of his apprentices had taken part in it. She’d heard from Quith that there was some back-and-forth about his resignation not being accepted but Selgernon forced the issue. The general opinion from those who’d met Master Traskeer seemed to be that the change was for the worse.

  She nodded.

  “If at any time you are doubtful about a point in your contract, you may examine it here,” Kess said. His apprentice had shifted his furtive stares to her overdress. It was a shapeless, ill-fitting thing and she didn’t have much of a build to fill it, so she wondered what he was looking at.

  She checked the hooks and loops holding it closed. “Am I . . . am I mis-misaligned?” Her little white dragon-scale novice pin was on. Some apprentices and wingmen still wore them; some didn’t. Ileth liked hers, and it drew attention away from the worn overdress and lately helped keep it closed where a button was missing.

  “No,” Gowan said. “Your sash. Traskeer will rake you for it, if you’re not in uniform.” His hand mechanically checked the knot on his own white sash as if worried it had loosened.

  “Don’t . . . don’t have one y-yet. I don’t suppose you have a spare?”

  He shook his head.

  She’d already found out sashes were hard to come by. Former apprentices dyed theirs to match the “colors” of their dragoneer when they were promoted to wingman. The wealthier even ceremonially burned theirs at a feast, or laid them into storage with camphor to keep moths away in the hope that one day a family member would follow in their footsteps. A few gave them away to close friends for good luck. Ileth had only been close to one apprentice who made wingman. She’d married a rich Galantine and vanished.

  She nodded, thanked them for their help in her halting fashion, and left the pair in their catacombs-without-temple.

  The Captain who owned the Lodge where she’d grown up had once told her that in the Republic, legal contracts protected more hides than shields and parrying blades. Now she was protected by that fence of words printed with those sharp angles and razor-edged lettering, and ensnared by it at the same time. She’d joined the Serpentine because she loved dragons, but it was also an escape from the life laid out for her, where the best she could hope to be was some lady’s maid or cook or maybe a wife to a fisherman—a
lodge-girl probably wouldn’t even get one who owned his own boat.

  She’d kept herself alive and hopeful in the Lodge by collecting every scrap of information, every story she could of the Vale Dragons and their Dragoneers—which wasn’t much, as they rarely visited the Freesand. She’d indulged in youthful fantasies about taking part in great deeds, righting wrongs, flying medicine on dragonback to snow-choked villages, or carrying a message that saves the day, making bandits and pirates fear the wrath of the people of the Vales . . . vague thoughts ripened into whole processions of elaborate fantasies. Silly, perhaps. But they’d kept her dream alive until she was old enough to act to bring the dream to life.

  But she’d passed through that creaky little red door at the side entrance and discovered that the Serpentine wasn’t about making her dreams come true. The Serpentine, like a great dragon uncoiling itself, revealed itself to her in all its power as a complex machine built for the purpose of keeping its dragons well fed and healthy and its dragoneers trained and ready to be of service. The Captain had once told her that it was sailors who worked to keep a ship alive, not the reverse as most landsmen thought, and the Serpentine turned out to be sort of a ship in that way. Through endless toil, people kept the dragons alive and the dragons kept the Republic alive.

  She’d come to love it, just as the Captain loved his ships. Even if she played only a small part, dancing—sweating would perhaps be more accurate—to keep a dragon diverted and content until it nodded off to sleep.

  Feeling a new sense of ownership and responsibility—odd how words on paper had that effect—she went to the Masters’ Hall to meet Traskeer and report in as an apprentice.

  The Masters’ Hall is at the “up” end of the Serpentine in a collection of buildings that greet visitors passing through the front gate. The Serpentine’s buildings are a jumble of styles built up over the course of some three hundred years. Or more, depending on which scholar you ask. Parts of it jam up against the wall and run against each other like someone who has put on a great deal of weight but not purchased new clothing that fits. One edge of it meets the great cobblestoned plaza where the Serpentine holds market days (which Ileth never had coin to enjoy), revues, and festivals in good weather. Much of the up end was still a mystery to Ileth; she knew the names of the little features, “Turkey Run” and “Hanging Court” and “Ragged Alley” and “the Slide,” but had only the vaguest of ideas of who lived in which or the Serpentine business that was conducted therein.