by E. E. Knight
The Masters’ Hall is one of the newer buildings; she’d been told that only the Great Hall where dinner was served each night—to those who could get away from their duties in time to dress—with its astonishing cast-iron stoves and the latest in brick ovens was more recent. What had been the Serpentine’s graveyard had been partially relocated to new consecrated ground so a proper hall with proper grounds could be built and matters that had long been neglected—conference rooms, a library, and a map room—could be established.
She heard a distant cry as she approached it and turned to look back toward the down end of the Serpentine where the dragons lived.
In the sky above the lighthouse that stands at the rounded peak of the Beehive, a pair of dragons—whether they had riders was difficult to tell at this distance—swooped and turned around and around each other in a sort of paired sky dance. After watching them for a moment, Ileth judged that they probably had saddles and riders, as the dragons took care not to turn too tightly or invert themselves in their dives. Ileth had just enough aerial experience to appreciate the thrills and fun in the evolutions above.
She stifled a sigh as she turned to the Masters’ Hall.
The “old” graveyard stands next to the Masters’ Hall, where some of the first Dragoneers of the Serpentine lie buried under monuments. She wondered if any of the Masters were bothered by the daily reminder of death crowding about their doorstep as she passed. It sent home Kess’s talk of sacrifice.
She reported her presence to the day-page, who in turn reported her presence to a clerk, who appeared and reminded her that she’d forgotten her sash, and after Ileth issued another apology for not being in uniform, he gestured for her to follow with a warning that Traskeer would rake her for the omission. He took her past the meeting room and map room—Ileth liked maps but it was kept locked and she’d never had a reason to be taken in—and upstairs. Two boys wearing white dragon-scale novice pins with recently bloodied noses glared at each other from opposite ends of a bench outside the Master of Novices’ door. By pure muscle habit she turned toward Caseen’s office before checking herself. She heard the voice of Caseen, the Master of Novices, from the other side of his door. “If you’d like to remain here . . .”
Ileth wished they’d promoted Caseen to Master of Apprentices. She’d always felt comfortable with him, even when he was displeased with her, which was most of the time.
With a few quick steps she caught up to the clerk, who ignored the bloody-nosed boys and took her down the black-and-white diamond-tiled hallway to another door and another bench. She eyed his apprentice sash hungrily and tried to work up the nerve to ask him for the loan of it.
“Master Traskeer is momentarily out,” the clerk said. He jerked his chin in the direction of the privy she knew stood by the wall and departed before she could form her request.
So much for asking him about the sash.
She sat on the bench and looked through the very good glass of the window facing the plaza. An apprentice she only recognized by his shaggy hair was sweeping it with a tiny hand-broom. A punishment, obviously. He had good weather for the duty.
She didn’t have to wait long. A figure appeared from a door at the other end of the hallway. His long trip down the corridor past Master Caseen’s office allowed her a look at him out of the corner of her eye. She didn’t want to do anything as rude as stare as he approached.
Traskeer was an unremarkable-looking man, perhaps a little on the short side—but then in her time in the Serpentine she’d learned that very large dragoneers were the exception—with sparse hair cut into a ring of bristle about his ears and the back of his head. He had a slightly sad face and indoor skin. He wore the traditional simple black plainclothes of a Republic commissioner and a metallic-colored sash that might be called coppery or bronze depending on the light. His sash didn’t have tassels on it like the other Masters, but then he was new to the position; maybe one was still being made for him.
He hadn’t bothered to take his skullcap for his visit to the privy.
She rose to her feet when he came within the distance where if they both extended their arms they could touch.
“You must be Ileth,” he said. He was the sort of man who was hard to read. He didn’t look either pleased or displeased to meet her, just a little fatigued. “I’d heard you were injured in the tailer—ahem—ceremony. Signed into the rolls and officially one of the Academy’s apprentices, I take it?”
She bobbed an acknowledgment.
He invited her inside his office. The layout was very much like Caseen’s: door to his private chamber; a small fireplace—unlit at this time of year; a leather-topped desk with a locking drawer and cubbyholes beneath for books and scrolls and maps. The chairs all looked borrowed from other rooms. A bare candle-holder rested on his desk, unlit. Unlike Caseen’s office, he had a little gable window set into the sloping ceiling admitting some light. The shelves above the hearth and the case for books were both empty and smelled faintly of polishing oil. The only personal items in view were a gaming board with a design of interlocking hexagons in a beehive grid and delicate, elaborately carved pieces, most about the size of her thumb, save for a pair of very large ones on either side representing dragons. The dragons were true works of both craft and art, carefully sculpted so they would fit on their base without tipping. The gaming board was built into a case that probably held the pieces when moved. It aroused her curiosity and she was about to ask about it when he spoke.
He gestured to one of the mismatched chairs and she sat. “No sign of a malevolent turn to the wound, I hope?”
He had a faint accent, like those she’d heard on the Galantine border. But then most everyone in the Vales sounded odd when you came from the opposite side of the Republic, and the Vales were famous for sheltering outcasts and oddities—even criminals, sometimes—from other lands.
She stammered that the wound was healthy and closed.
He leaned in close enough to get a good look and she heard him sniff the wound, at least trying to be subtle about it.
Apparently satisfied with her affirmation that the wound was of no further concern, he introduced himself as the new Master of Apprentices. He didn’t have any distinctions to his name, at least that he chose to reveal to her. She liked that about him. Some men bludgeoned you with their titles. “I would offer you a card of introduction, but the titling still claims my late role at the Assembly. I await correct ones.”
“I’m not from the sort of house where people traded cards,” Ileth said. Some of the novices were card collectors; she remembered them passing about cards of young men they favored during her first weeks as a novice. She might even have been jealous. Now she just appreciated the peek into a different world of social rituals. In the Lodge the Captain’s roustabouts didn’t hand out cards, they called you by your most prominent physical feature and slapped you on the buttocks when you brought them drink or a light for their tobacco.
“That injury troubles me, now that I see how extensive it is. Quith thinks someone tried to blind you.”
“Quith likes to . . . likes to . . .” How could she put it? Her mind flipped through the books of letters she’d studied. “She likes to add drama to incident.”
“Still, it’s odd. That’s no fingernail or scrape against a cobblestone. You’ve no idea what made the cut?”
She shrugged.
“I don’t consider that gesture appropriate for this conversation. Answer me.”
Ileth stammered out an apology and something about it all happening very quickly and there being a tangle.
Happily, he didn’t comment on her stutter. Just for that she was inclined to like him. “If you have an enemy who’d draw your blood, it’s my duty to know about it,” Traskeer said. The word duty landed hard. Dragoneers took, and used, the word seriously. She repeated her denial. “It’s in the nature of people to form factions. Especiall
y young people. I’ll have no groups at enmity with each other in the Serpentine. People who feel themselves outcasts are preyed upon by our enemies, as that bad business with the eggs illustrated. I spent a lot of time with my predecessor talking about where we went so wrong with the Duskirk boy.”
Ileth had never felt part of any faction, or excluded from others, but then she wasn’t naturally social and the dancers were isolated from the daily routines of the up end.
“I hope the next six years will be happier and less eventful than your prolonged novitiate and late entry into apprenticeship. You’ll stay with the dancers, I expect.”
He expected wrong, but she didn’t want to directly contradict him. “I—I’m here to be a dragoneer, sir.”
“Of course you are. There are many ways to serve as a dragoneer.”
“I . . . I aspire to wear a sword and pauldron, sir.”
Traskeer’s eyebrows went up. He excused himself for a moment and went to his chamber. He returned in a moment with a sort of case made of wax-stiffened canvas or thick paper, she couldn’t tell, held closed by a string and a button sewn to the case. He extracted what looked like letters and a few notes.
“Forgive me for not having this ready. This is your index file,” he said, scanning it. “Anything of significance relating to the training of the members of our Academy goes in here. Each apprentice has one. Some here complain about all the paperwork but I find it useful; I am one who considers a quick note in ink superior to the most detailed memory.”
He thumbed through the pages within, extracting one. “Charge Ottavia in her letter recommending your apprenticeship says you have the makings of a great dragon-dancer.”
Having assured himself that his memory on the matter was sound, he relaxed. “I’m afraid I have a great deal of catching up to do. I’ve been posted the past four years at the Assembly. I was already there by the time your draft was sworn in. I don’t know half the apprentices here.” His voice broke a little as he spoke. Ileth suspected he was exhausted or sick but hiding his weakness. He did seem pale for a dragoneer in summer, at this altitude.
“I . . . I’ll be happy to help the dancers as much as I can. I had a little flight train . . . flight training, and s-still s-served as a dan-dancer.”
“Dragon dancing is of keen interest at the moment in Sammerdam, Zland, and so on. Between Ottavia’s exhibitions and those paintings by Heem Tyr, experienced dragon-dancers can nest themselves up nicely. You could make a good living as one, or teaching it. Ideally, you would remain here as long as you’re fit to perform. You wouldn’t grow rich, but the life here is rewarding in its own way, as I hope you’ve come to believe.”
She had, but she still wanted to fly. She had a taste for it now.
“My intent is to b—is to be paired with a dragon.”
The corner of his mouth turned down.
“The math doesn’t favor you. You must have some math to get in here, so I’ll set the numbers out ‘even, clear, and accurate’ as the sovereigns in the counting houses put it. With your signature this morning, the Academy has six hundred seventeen apprentices here and carrying out their duties at other posts. Four are away for extended sick leave and their return is questionable; two seem likely to die. Eighteen more have been called home by family request and have their apprenticeships formally suspended. Few of those are likely to return either. So that is five hundred ninety-five apprentices competing for the very few wingman slots that vacate with our thirty active dragons. Typically, each dragon has a dragoneer and one to three wingmen, depending on the inclination of our dragoneers. Some of our dragoneers refuse the bother of training wingmen, like that Borderlander fellow who wrote you perhaps the shortest letter of recommendation in Serpentine Academy history. In peacetime, a wingman slot opens up at most every three months or so, so in your six years as an apprentice, if we remain at peace, that’s twenty-four chances of promotion and you, a girl, and even worse, a girl of no Name, and still worse yet, a girl of no Name without patronage or political influence, are competing against nearly six hundred others. Many of our apprentices come from influential families with representation in our government, who can be made grateful and interested in the Serpentine’s place in the Assembly’s priorities by having their young men promoted. I won’t bore you with the difficulty we have at the Assembly in obtaining the vast sums required to maintain the dragons, though without the Thirty our Republic would stand all the chance against the Alliance of Kings of a fat worm dropped into a carp pond. Your chances of success are so small they’re not much worth considering, you see?”
Ileth fought to remain still. Her body trembled, nevertheless. She’d thought this interview would be her first step toward a dragon saddle.
He kept his hands comfortably folded in his lap as he talked, shoulders relaxed, face indifferent. It didn’t come across as the mask of a card player hiding the strength or weakness of his hand. Perhaps he was simply a man without anything that could be called feeling.
“Galia—did it.”
The rather sad eyes lifted from the file folder on his desk. “Galia. Who was she, again?”
“Wingman under . . . under Hael Dun Hu-Huss.”
“Oh, yes. She married some Galantine while you were there on that Fespanarax difficulty, yes?”
Ileth nodded.
“I remember now. Marked as discharged with prejudice. I think Dun Huss had an interest in her. A particular interest. A lot of it came out in the jury’s inquiry. Found her in the gutter in Sammerdam or something, do I have it right? I understand she was exceptional in every respect: athletics, navigation, so on. Superb artist, too, she had a very successful apprenticeship with the aerial surveyors, I believe. Yes, that was it, survey drawings. Well, I suppose you could try to follow her example, but I still think the numbers are hard against you.”
“Are the numbers that d-d-different fr-from when you did it?” Ileth burned under her tongue’s betrayal of the fact that she was upset.
“I came in right after the Second Alliance war. If you know your country’s history, that was a desperate one. There were openings. A great many, sadly.”
“Openings didn’t mean you’d become a Master. There are even fewer of those than there are dragoneers. There’s a story there, I’m sure.”
She had hoped she could draw him out. Most men his age were only too happy to talk about their lives. At length. “True,” he said, not taking the bait.
“Did you let the chances against you bother you?”
“I was young. Men can take a chance and survive a catastrophe. Worse for someone like you.”
Ileth set her shoulders. “I want my chance. My-my chance to become a dragoneer like Annis Heem Strath.” Ileth had met her and sat on the silver dragon Agrath, when she was a child.
“I, in turn, am obligated to give it to you. I warn you, you’ll be disappointing more than me. Ottavia is every bit your superior in this as well, and her letter makes clear how much she and the dancers need you. You’ll be a servant with two masters. That makes for one very tired servant and two frustrated masters.”
“That’s m-my problem, sir.”
“I expect you’ll satisfy neither of us.” Even this was delivered with a flat tone, as if he were dictating and expecting scribes to copy him accurately. Traskeer was the least animated man she’d ever met.
As it was a statement rather than a question demanding a response, Ileth just did her best to meet his gaze. As usual, she failed and looked away.
“Why do you dislike me so?” she asked, and felt like kicking herself as soon as the words escaped. Stupid, girlish sentiment. She was sixteen!
“Dislike? Like and dislike have nothing to do with it. If you must know, I believe I like you. It has nothing to do with taste, either. I’ve just found, in my years, that there are two basic sorts of men. Or women. But I find it fairer to judge the female apprentices by
male standards. With you it’s easier to forget your sex, as you carry yourself like a man.
“There are two basic sorts of people. Those who try to change their situation for the better, and those who look around and seek out villains to explain life’s many, many disappointments and spend the rest of their life crying on the proverbial stump assigning blame.* I believe very strongly you are the first type, rare in your sex and rarer still at your age. The running away to join the Serpentine proves it, but there are other instances. Your attempts in the Baronies to acquire silver for that Fespanarax. However, I must set aside any feeling about you to coolly and contemplatively judge your chances here.”
Almost the first lesson Ileth had learned arriving at the Serpentine was that they chose odd ways of testing a person. Nor did you know you were being tested. Maybe this was another test—tell her she would fail to see if she would try all the harder to succeed.
“I understand, sir,” she said. “I still believe I can do both. I know the rhythms of the Serpentine now. The apprentices mostly work in the day; the dancers are most active at night. We have dancers like Santeel Dun Troot who are doing both.”
It was like talking to a salmon laid out on ice at a fishmonger’s. Finally he spoke: “Very well. The method at the Academy is simple. Over your six years we will rotate you through different roles you must have in order to properly care for dragons in peace or war. Through this, we learn that some of our apprentices turn out to be so skilled in one area or another that we let them remain under the instruction of a Master for the rest of their time here. Others move on, once they’ve demonstrated an understanding of the required techniques. On the one hand, generalists tend to make better dragoneers, but on the other, great talents in a field that can only be done on dragonback, like your friend Galia’s reconnaissance sketches, require that they serve in the air. There are always some who don’t seem to fit anywhere, and we do our best to give them something useful to do for the remainder of their apprenticeship that will allow them to earn their keep once on the other side of the gate.”