Daughter of the Serpentine

by E. E. Knight

  The old woman clearing the table groaned at the weight, and Ileth excused herself to help her.

  The Governor’s wife looked distressed. “You shouldn’t carry so much, Ignata; Severan will attend to the table.”

  “I was idle in the kitchen, thought I should start washing up. Thank you, miss.” She wasn’t northern. She must be the Galantine cook. Ileth wondered if her speech was a Galantine accent long accustomed to Montangyan.

  Ileth, carrying empty wine bottles, followed the cook through a short serving pantry to the kitchen. It was cramped and old-fashioned—even the Lodge had a newer cooking hearth—but there were a great many more copper baking pans and vessels, in good order and arranged along the walls and hung from the ceiling, and someone had installed a small pump and sink.

  “This is nice,” Ileth said.

  “You are Ileth? From the Freesand Lodge?” Ignata asked, looking at Ileth sharply.

  “Y-yes.”

  “Knew it as soon as I looked at your eyes and chin.” She touched Ileth on the cheek, leaned close, and hugged her. “You even smell like your mother.”

  “You knew her?” Ileth asked.

  “Girl, follow me down here. We can talk.”

  She lit a stub of a candle off a twig drawn from the quiescent fire. The stub went into a little carrier and she led Ileth through the kitchens and to a narrow stairway down.

  “We can talk in the root cellar. Wine cellar would be better, and nicer, but I don’t have the key for that.”

  She took Ileth to a narrow portal that was more panel than door and led to a stairway that Ignata had to turn sideways to get down. It was crowded, as the fall store of onions and potatoes and squash was in, along with jarred tomatoes and great stores of dried peas and fruit. “All set for winter. The Governor doesn’t do much entertaining at this house, but his secretary and clerks and counting-book come and stay sometimes when he’s visiting, so we need plenty in store.”

  Ileth didn’t care if the whole of the Iron Company of the Borderlands came for dinner, she needed answers.

  “You . . . did you know my mother?”

  “Know your mother? I cut the cord the night you were born. Not quite under this roof, but you’re Stesside-born. I heard her name you.”

  “How did she—how did you end up here?”

  “Oh, I was your mother’s nurse when she was a girl. When she had to flee the purge I went with her. I was Directist, same as your family; most of the servants were. Horrible business. Your grandfather stayed to help the new owners with the estate after the Strictures; why he thought he had to given the price they got it for, he should have set fire to the place—well, there I go, bringing up the bad old business when I have herself’s daughter here to look at. You’ve a bit of a stutter, I hear, but then so did one of your uncles, and your own grandfather used to take great pauses when he spoke, because when he was a boy—there I go again.”

  Ileth heard the door above open and startled, every nerve on edge.

  “Ileth,” Amrits called. “Our good Governor wants to see you dancing for the dragons.”

  “I’m—I’m helping . . .”

  “Ignata,” the old woman supplied.

  “Leave her, our host is wondering what happened to you.”

  “You better go,” Ignata whispered. “There could be trouble, me talking to you.”

  Ileth hesitated.

  “Go on. I won’t croak on you. We’ll talk another time.”

  Ileth followed Dath Amrits out to the barn, stiff with frustration. It looked like snow; she smelled the possibility in the north air and felt the weight of the clouds. Well, if they were snowed in, so much the better. She could find an hour to escape and talk to Ignata.

  Still no sign of the Borderlander and Catherix. She hoped they weren’t lost in the darkness; Stesside didn’t offer much in the way of light. The dragons wouldn’t all fit in the barn, so they’d arranged themselves where they could look into it, where she’d perform with the barn doors around her as though on a formal stage.

  “Ah, here she is. I wanted to see you dance for the dragons, Ileth.”

  Serena, it appeared, had remained behind with the Governor’s wife.

  Ileth changed in a corner behind bales of fodder. She would be dancing for men. Again. But then the only stranger to her was Governor Raal.

  Skin pimpled in the cold, she set out her music box on a bale of hay, the barn as her backdrop, the area around the door as her stage. Mnasmanus, who might have been signaled by Dun Huss, Ileth couldn’t be sure, gave an appreciative rumble that was somewhere between throat-clearing and go on. Telemiron showed an active interest too. Etiennersea made room for the humans, shielding them from the wind with her bulk and raising a wing to keep the north wind from coursing directly into the barn, and just peeked into the barn around the edge of the door.

  Well, if she was to be a dragoneer, she’d have to get used to doing her best no matter the circumstances. She’d dance in the long men’s work shirt as though she were hot and sweaty in some dragon-warmed corner of the Beehive.

  Dun Huss put his fists together discreetly, knuckles toward her.

  Dath Amrits opened the music box with a flourish. He looked vaguely disappointed that there wasn’t a sculpture of a reclining nude inside. The music started and Governor Raal gave an appreciative “ahhh.”

  It wasn’t her greatest performance. Her muscles were cold for the first routine, she slipped on what she hoped was a mat of straw for the second, and only on the third did she feel like she’d done anything close to what Ottavia would expect (not just in terms of the cascades of sweat running down her back).

  The Governor applauded and the dragons rattled their griff. It sounded like an army of tinkers mending pots, but then Ileth had a feeling that they’d been told to be demonstrative.

  After, Dath Amrits himself brought her a drink of water and a towel from the house while Dun Huss talked to their host.

  Ileth retreated to her hay racks again to put her overdress back on—why she could perform in just her sheath but not either strip down to it or climb into her clothes again in front of an audience, she would have had more difficulty than usual putting into words, but it was so nevertheless—and she heard the Governor speak to the dragons.

  “How was your dinner, now? Enjoy it?”

  Mnasmanus shifted on his feet like a nervous horse. “Get a lot of rabbits up here, do you, sir?”

  “A hundred-sixty-weight* in meat a day is what your dragoneers say you live on.”

  “That’s a minimum average ration, on campaign,” Dun Huss said, puzzled at this declaration. “Our dragons often go a few days on next to nothing, then return to a post and eat hearty. Like most hunters, they are used to not eating, then eating a great deal.”

  Raal bristled at being corrected and drew himself up. Ileth swore his ears stuck out even more, like a dragon’s griff being opened in battle. “And fatted flesh, greased meats, and oily fish if they use their fire, yes, I know.”

  “Do you have some concern?” Amrits asked, suddenly serious.

  “I fear you dragoneers are like the builders who promise a bridge, accept a price, and deliver a ford, as building a bridge is an impossibility at the agreed price. Of course if I produce more money, I will get my bridge.”

  “I thought we’d decided to let the matter rest overnight,” Dun Huss said.

  Serena appeared, as though sensing a fight and coming to a fellow dragoneer’s aid. She marked Ileth’s music box. “I missed more dancing, I see.”

  “I’m sure my wife was glad of female companionship,” Governor Raal said. “Stesside is beautiful, but remote.”

  In the midst of the conversation the dragons all looked up. The humans followed them and a few moments passed before they could see what had produced the sound that had drawn them. A pale white shape descended, ju
st a little unsteadily in the wind.

  At first Ileth feared that Catherix was hurt, but as soon as she came to perhaps a man’s height above the ground, gliding over the paddock and further terrifying the horses, she dropped her burdens with a series of thumps and came in for a landing.

  The Borderlander descended, a little tiredly, with a bony old goat slung over his shoulder.

  “Got a nice deer and two wild hogs. You have a lot of these hogs in your foothills, Governor. Do they give your farmers trouble?”

  “There aren’t many farms in the headwaters of the Stess. The men in the lower country get them, if they venture out of the hills.”

  Ileth and Serena inspected the game. One of the hogs and the deer had been killed by arrows. The other looked like it had had its neck snapped, and there were dragon-tooth marks in its back. Catherix had hunted too.

  “Snapped some of your arrows, Governor,” the Borderlander said.

  “Oh, you made good use of that old bow. That’s worth a few arrows,” Raal said. “I don’t hunt myself.”

  “Venison!” Telemiron said. He didn’t speak much, at least around strangers, so Ileth was surprised at his enthusiasm. “We’re always about cities, so I rarely get game.”

  “Can’t they just breathe fire on the meat?” Governor Raal asked. He was staring at the dragons.

  “If we do, it’ll have a horribly charred taste,” Mnasmanus said. “That doesn’t taste any better to us than it would to you, sir. But I’d be happy to burn a hog if you are curious.”

  Etiennersea expressed herself in Drakine. They felt more than heard the low-register sound. Mnasmanus said something back.

  The Governor was taken aback. It was fun, seeing him on his heels after his high-handedness with Dun Huss. “What in the world was that?”

  “Dragon speech,” Dun Huss said, in his usual friendly way. He was too good a diplomat to mock Governor Raal’s alarm.

  The party broke up once the dragons settled in with their second, superior dinner.

  Ileth slept, or rather didn’t so much sleep as she lay there pretending to sleep and fighting her thoughts, in a hammock. She’d always liked hammocks, and the barn had dozens as they were a good way to store things up off the ground clear of vermin and could serve as emergency beds. She volunteered to remain with the dragons, as at least one member of the Serpentine should, through the night. She slept cocooned in blankets hugging her blanket-covered music box. Its presence comforted her.

  The next morning Dun Huss breakfasted early with Raal and then they took a walk down the lane of the estate together—publicly to admire one of the views of the Stress valley below, but Ileth suspected that a decision was at hand. The other dragoneers breakfasted with Lady Raal. The Borderlander skipped the meeting and helped Ileth feed the dragons and put salve on their wings where the winter wind had chapped. The dragons ate and drank sparingly, as they expected to fly again this morning.

  “But will it be north or south?” the Borderlander mused.

  Ileth guessed that south meant the visit had failed and they’d be returning to the Serpentine to announce that the Governor had not given his approval to the plan. What would north bring? A scouting expedition?

  “I say north,” Ileth said, basing it on an encouraging nod Dun Huss had given her as he stepped out the door with the Governor.

  Ileth was willing to let the day bring its fate. As she poured salve onto a rag and wiped Mnasmanus’s wing joint she looked about the grounds, lost in thought. This morning she viewed Stesside with new eyes, knowing she’d been born here. She wondered where. One of the bedrooms? This barn? In some attic of the distillery downstream?

  She tried to keep her mind off the old woman who’d cut her cord, Governor Raal, and his wife and attend to what the Borderlander was saying about spitting meat next to the fire rather than over it so the fats and juices could be collected into a pan and how that could be achieved at a campsite with even minimal cookware and vessels: “It’s why I never go anywhere without a cast-iron frying pan and plenty of salt.”

  “I shepherded as a girl. That’s all I had in the hills.”

  “You know, girl, I can just tolerate you—” the Borderlander started to say when Dun Huss led his party out of the old great house.

  Ileth stood up. Dun Huss walked fast and hard, with a face like an approaching thunderstorm. Serena and Dath Amrits were having a hard time keeping up.

  “South, I’m guessing, by his face,” the Borderlander said.

  “No, north,” Dun Huss said. “Everyone eaten?”

  The Borderlander reported: “Dragons are fed. We’re just finishing up, Ileth and I.”

  “Let’s get them saddled.”

  “Ileth,” Amrits said. “Be a dear and saddle up my dragon. I want to inspect—”

  “Saddle her yourself,” Dun Huss said. “Ileth, you can fill everyone’s water reservoirs from that spring they make so much of. You can find it by following that path with the white stones.” He pointed out a path leading off the grounds, easily identifiable thanks to the whitewashed stones on either side of it. It went off in the direction of the old fort they’d overflown. Ileth nodded.

  Serena kept her face carefully blank, but then Ileth had learned she didn’t give much away through expression, which was probably why the Charge had her as a wingman flying where he couldn’t.

  Ileth collected their canteens and bottles and distributed the weight—everything dragoneers carried always came with plenty of straps and hinged hooks for securing it—and clomped off to the path, trying to come up with an excuse to visit the house for a last good-bye when she returned.

  The path was longer than she expected; the trip took a good half hour. Part of it branched off toward the ruined castle, but the stone-flanked path turned toward the sound of fast-running water. Dun Huss had probably given her this job so they could talk strategy without her hearing. Or perhaps he needed to put matters to the dragons. Ileth had been in the Serpentine long enough to know that they were consulted on matters great and small.

  The path was a good one and had been improved at the steepest climbs by thick timbers arranged into stairs at the worst bit. When Ileth finally reached the source of the spring, she found a little pool, improved somewhat with stony banks and joined stones ringing it so it made more of a pool than a pond, with a bench against a huge boulder. A brass plaque bolted on the boulder informed the visitor that this source was discovered in 2724 Old Hypatian by two names she didn’t recognize and one “Raal.”

  Ileth filled her bottles from the agitated water, which fell out of the pool and down a waterfall forming the beginnings of the Stess below. The water was chill and after doing a quick survey of the surrounds and the path, she washed up, thinking she’d been washed with these same waters after being born.

  She decided she could drop by the house in order to thank their hosts and see if she could catch Ignata in the kitchen, but all the dragons and their mounted riders were waiting at the bottom of the path. The dragons had trooped all the way across the field for favorable wind, leaving muddy prints. Well, the soil would be the better for it and the worms would be happy, even if Ileth wasn’t. With a last, regretful glance at the great house holding stories from someone who knew her mother, she joined the dragons and dragoneers.

  “I made sure to secure your music box,” Serena said, patting Ileth’s tightly rolled bundle.

  The Borderlander handed Ileth her coat. “I admire what you did with this old thing,” he said. Was this a departure or an escape? Why were they hurrying her so?

  “That dancer, Vii, she helped me with it,” Ileth said.

  “Vii?” Amrits asked, always ready to talk about dragon-dancers. “Oh yes. She came around with an old jug asking for coin to start a swirl fountain. I threw all I had handy in it. Blessings on her soul for it, it’s good to have someone improving the old stones rather t
han looking for ways to save a few figs.”

  Dun Huss himself checked her seat once she was behind Serena—and Serena’s tether and such, as a courtesy. “Girth good, Telemiron?” he asked.

  “I like it a little tighter when I’m carrying two,” the dragon said. “I’ll trade the pinch of the straps for knowing the load won’t shift about.”

  Dun Huss set his boot against the saddle girth and pulled it tighter by a notch. Telemiron flicked a griff. Dun Huss returned to Mnasmanus and climbed into his own saddle and attached his safety tether. “Dragoneers set? Yes? Whenever you are ready.”

  Ileth found it curious that none of the household had come out to say farewell, save for the man who’d brought the food in the big barrow the previous day, who was inspecting the brushy area where the dragons had done their elimination, probably in the hope they’d dropped a few scale. But there were windows they could watch from.

  Ileth had done ground takeoffs before and braced herself. Dragons could cover short distances at tremendous speed—the famous dragon dash that has to be witnessed to be believed—but for anyone atop one it was a ride to remember, even though dragons did their best to hold the base of their neck as still as working muscles would allow.

  Etiennersea checked the wind and the sky once more. A good cold wind blew in from the distant bay. She muttered something to Amrits and opened her wings halfway, holding them high.

  When she rushed off, throwing up mud, and jumped into the air, the rest followed in a ragged line. Ileth hung on to the dragon with her legs and Serena with her arms until she felt the legs quit and the wings take over with steady, air-cutting beats. Ileth glanced back at the field, now thoroughly torn up by the comings and goings of the dragons. Already the wintering birds were flying in to check the divots for exposed worms.

  Ileth regretted leaving Stesside. But if they were going north they’d have to come south again on the return trip. Perhaps they’d return with more messages.