Daughter of the Serpentine

by E. E. Knight

  Ileth liked the house. The ceiling beams and riblike staves made her think of childhood stories of boatmen inside a whale. The small windows, set high to admit a little light rather than a view, reminded her of belowdecks on a ship. She overheard the eldest of the family speaking to the Borderlander about its double-walled construction. Sand filled the space between the layers of heavily tarred timbers. It wouldn’t burn or batter easily.

  There was a single iron chandelier, and oil lamps hung about with plenty of little shelves and sconces to set more candles at need. It looked like the family was accustomed to spending their time together in the hall, in little groups or alone as whatever their duties and habits needed. Musical instruments were hung up or sat behind glass in cases.

  The widows were together on a sofa sewing, ignoring the talk between the dragoneers, Comity, and the men. From what Ileth could see, Comity was the axle that spun the rest of the household. When some men came in to ask about the meat in the smokehouse, Comity told them where to put the finished joints. When Gandy said she was interested in seeing the dragon saddles and fittings for equipment more closely, she went through Comity, who asked Dun Huss. He told Ileth to show her Telemiron’s that evening. Eventually Dun Huss, Amrits, Serena, Comity, and the two other men disappeared into the study, supposedly to look at a new survey map of the Headlands that they had, more recent than anything at the Serpentine.

  The Borderlander had pulled the patriarch’s chair close to the fire and stood next to it, listening to his discourse. Every now and then he would bring a plate or a drink for the man, carefully setting it on a little stool that served as a table next to his comfortable armchair, as tender as Governor Raal had been with his wife. Ileth smiled at this side of the Borderlander; usually he spoke short when he didn’t just ignore you. Ileth wondered if the senior Aftorn was an old acquaintance.

  Ileth gathered a plate full of the leavings of lunch and sat down to eat at a long table. There was tart cider to go with the tea, or water. Ileth chose the cider.

  Amrits exited the study within a few minutes and was soundly thumped by the younger Aftorn, hurrying down the stairs by the study in the main foyer. They exchanged a few rounds of after-yous and entered the great hall, and Amrits went to fill another plate.

  Astler approached Ileth and shifted his feet, which were now in shoes on the proper feet. He had sandy hair that was more or less a thatch of cowlicks that looked like they resisted attempts to shape it.

  “Excuse me, uhh . . .” he began.

  “Ileth,” she supplied.

  “Yes, Ileth. I have to apologize to you. I was told we had four dragons and their dragoneers coming, and to set up rooms for you. The house already has guests, you see, and while it’s big, there are only so many bedrooms. I didn’t anticipate a fifth dragoneer.”

  “I’m just . . . just an apprentice,” Ileth said. “I can sleep in a chair.”

  “No. No, you are our guest. Please sleep in my room.” He smiled as he said it, as though nothing could make him happier than being turned out of his own bed.

  “Tremendous idea, Ileth,” Amrits said, passing close with perhaps his third helping of sausages and beans. “I wonder if one of the ladies has space for me?”

  “No, I don’t mean that, of course,” Astler said. “I can drop anywhere. I want you to have a proper bed after your exertions.”

  Amrits looked as though he might bait the boy further, but she shot him a pleading look. It was a kind gesture, and she didn’t want to see him tormented. Beyond that, it was enjoyable to have the attention of a boy near her age who wasn’t a potential rival for a wingman posting. “Thank you,” she said, relieved that her stutter let her get out that formality despite her nerves.

  “Great sausages in this house,” Amrits told the boy as he walked back toward the study with another helping.

  “Thin for a man who eats like that,” Astler said, watching him go.

  Ileth didn’t know much about Amrits’s habits. She’d rarely seen him with a plate in the dining hall. “He’s an-an acquired taste. Jokes a good deal, but isn’t false. He really likes those sausages.”

  “Oh, you needn’t be nervous around me, Ileth. Aftorn name or no. I’m everyone’s dogsbody. Let me get you some more cider.”

  “I’m n-not nervous. Just a stutter.”

  Astler looked horrified that he’d embarrassed her. Ileth smiled warmly and excused herself.

  Ileth went over to the fire, where Astler’s great-grandfather was in animated conversation with the Borderlander.

  “Piracy was a small problem in those days,” the ancient said. “A ship, two, a year. Sometimes the crews and ships were bought back, sometimes not. The dragon in the post by the old lighthouse, the Channel Cave, would go across and if they found the ship . . . reprisal! For a while, all was well again; the pirates did not dare send wooden ships against dragons. We lost fewer ships to dragons than we did to storm. But the people here, they grumbled at the expense, at the special taxes. Because you dragoneers solved the problem.

  “Then one day emissaries arrived, offering a treaty. The Wurm king, who they were liege to, would curb the pirates for a price in order to ‘command the waters,’ a price much less than dragons. At first they said no, but then there was a falling-out between the shipowners and the Governor, some feud, and they went back to the Wurm king and said yes. That was the fatal mistake.”

  Ileth knew nothing about the Wurm, other than that they were beyond the Borderlands, and that people in the Freesand spat when they said the name. Not a tiny phttt!, either, more of a retch. And then only rarely, probably because of the effort required to keep custom.

  “But once the dragons left the Old Post, then the tricks began.” The senior Aftorn looked into the fire. “The false lights to fool ships into steering into the rocks—wrecks belonged to the Rari and their Wurm lieges, you see. They would wait for a storm and take a ship, saying that it was wrecked by the winds, and then the demands came for an increase in the channel fees.

  “It grew worse. The knaves were doing so well, others came to get in on the bounty. Weaponsmiths, shipwrights, some were from Daphia or faraway lands, but a few—yes, even people of the Vales crossed the water. Some in those crews chose a life helping sail the ships of those who took them hostage. Soon the piracy was quite open; they stopped even pretending that they didn’t have a channel warrant or some other bit of paperwork and the ship had been seized until the matter could be resolved.”

  The old man had a fair amount of wind when angered. Ileth gave him that. He still had a good mind; Ileth knew bits and pieces of this story but she’d never heard it collected this well.

  “Always came the ambassadors from the Rari or the Wurm asking for this or that bit of money to redeem prisoners or get a ship back. The sums were not outrageous, for if they made them outrageous, the shipowners might fight. There were efforts made to arm the ships, travel in convoy, but the Rari always had more men to put in boats and more fast ships crammed with men looking for plunder. Now no ships get through unless special ambassadors and pilots are on board, and so great is the cost that the ship might as well fly the Rari flag, for there is little enough left over after their fees to even pay off the crew.”

  “Terrible,” the Borderlander said.

  “So that is where we are. Hardly a ship passes through these days. This family used to sail fourteen under the family flag. Fourteen! Now they’re laid up or sold for scrap.”

  * * *

  —

  Dinner came, with the conversation devoted to innocuous matters. Serena and the Taskmaster and the big man in the bearskin missed it, cooped up over their maps and work. One of the widows brought out a framed painting of the Serpentine, Beehive, and lighthouse above and passed it around, asked the dragoneers if it was accurate and what this or that building or feature on the Beehive signified. The elder Aftorn had seemed to forget that
they were dragoneers and was startled at the news that the dragons might be returning. “Yes! That’s just what we need,” he said, as if just hearing the news. “If only that Raal were a man of fortitude and hazard, like Lake. Now he was a governor.”

  “Grandfather! No politics during dinner,” Comity said.

  After the dinner broke up, the dragoneers asked the youngest generation of Aftorns if they wished to meet the dragons. They took a walk together toward the cliffs to let their dinner settle. Amrits gave Etiennersea a massage by walking carefully up and down her back barefoot, pushing with his heel at the heavy musculature or even rocking about on one leg for the biggest, toughest muscles. Gandy found this fascinating and perched on a barrel, watching the comparatively small man atop the reclining green mountain, with Etiennersea giving encouraging little noises as he worked. The Borderlander cleaned out Catherix’s teeth, nostrils, and ears, then worked the leading edge of her wing over with kitchen grease, oiling the skin against the cold weather.

  As he did so, he gave Ileth pointers about what to look for on the dragon’s tongue, nostrils, eyes, and ears. Young Astler observed, asking permission whenever he approached the dragon.

  The Borderlander lectured in his short, gruff manner. Coatings on the tongue, mucus in the nostrils healthy and unhealthy, discolorations of the eye, where parasites liked to hide in the ears, and the best kitchen implements to remove waxy buildup if proper grooming tools—the best ear-reamers were made of flexible whalebone—weren’t available.

  “First and last, do the teeth,” the Borderlander said as he worked on his dragon’s mouth. “Don’t be afraid to have them hold their mouth open, rest with their head on its side or even upside down—you have to be careful with that, though; some dragons get very sensitive in that position and will accidentally snap, so don’t be afraid to jam a piece of thick line right in on that pink bulge there. That’s the hinge. Ask them to hold their mouth open by holding on to the rope—but clean those teeth out, especially around the gumline. A nail or a fishhook will do fine to dig out bits of food and bone if you’ve nothing else. If you can only do one thing for your dragon, clean the teeth.”

  Ileth nodded. He passed her a sort of a curved probe that was a cross between a filleting knife and a sickle, though the edge wasn’t honed like a knife’s, and let her scrape away at the gumline on Catherix. Astler hung over her shoulder showing a deep interest, but Gandy kept covering her nose and scurrying out to the cavern mouth for air.

  Ileth had polished dragon-teeth before with a little ash and a rag; it was sort of like cleaning silver, but the Borderlander took his dragon’s dental care to an extent she hadn’t seen before. It was smelly—she was extracting bits of the dragon’s preflight breakfast from two days ago as well as yesterday’s game at the Governor’s—but interesting.

  “An infected tooth will take a dragon out of action as effectively as a wound. Even be lethal, if the sepsis spreads. Keep your own clean while you’re at it.”

  The Borderlander did have a set of excellent teeth; they were the only part of him that didn’t look worn and weathered.

  Gandy helped Amrits put his boots back on. He’d been assigned night duty with the dragons at the Old Post and would remain while the rest retired to the house for bed. “Your attire’s not what I expected at all. More like for cold-weather travel than war. I always imagined your carrying dragon-fang daggers and dragon-scale armor and helmets with their horns.”

  “Be a bit rude, wouldn’t it?” Amrits said. “How would you like it if our dragons landed in your yard with necklaces of human skulls and human scalps used as earmuffs and nose-shields?”

  “Oh. Of course. I—I suppose I still think of them as sort of big, dangerous horses.” Astler seemed about to say something, but Gandy cut him off with a look.

  “Takes a while to get over their size, and of course you must take great care not to be squashed by accident. Ileth can tell you about a friend of hers who was bowled over and torn up a bit by scale. Most seem miles above us. That’s just because they sail through the centuries after we’re dust. They’ve seen it all before so they all come off like a conclave of philosophers. I’ve learned not to bring my little heartbreaks around to Tinny; she’ll just sigh and tell me I’ll be dead in no time, so don’t bother her about it.”

  Ileth couldn’t imagine Amrits heartbroken about anything, but then it was hard to get through the fence of jokes. She didn’t really know him.

  The dragons settled in to sleep. None required dancing to soothe them; they were all too tired from flying in a snowstorm.

  Gandy walked Ileth back to Sag House. Astler stayed to make sure Amrits was comfortable. She told Ileth that she’d show her to her cousin’s room. “You’re lucky, he’s clean for a boy. Aunt Comity is exacting.”

  This led to a chat about what sort of young men she’d met at the Serpentine. Gandy’d been reading novels and imagined constant romances, rivalries, and elopements on dragonback. Ileth disappointed her with a few terse words giving her the truth of the matter.

  Sag House was quiet by the time they returned. Lights were still burning in the smaller room where the men and Serena had been meeting.

  Ileth took a lit candle in a holder and followed Gandy up the stairs.

  Astler’s bedchamber didn’t quite deserve the word room—it was more of a berth or a cabin, tucked away at the end of the hall, right down to a single circular window. It did have the innovation of a closet behind a sliding panel to save space, and it was a high bed with a desk built beneath. The big open wall opposite the bed-desk had hooks for hanging outerwear and hats and so on. There was a little cabinet with a stonework top that had a pitcher and basin on it. There was water inside. The cabinet contained a clean chamber pot with aromatic wood chips and charcoal inside, probably as a gesture to the guest, as it struck her as expensive to fill fresh each night.

  But rather than cloaks and so on hanging from the walls there were drawings, sketch after sketch, mostly nature studies in pencil. Some were quite rough, some deep, detailed studies that looked to have been the work of days. Ileth had barely set down her little bundle with her music box when she started examining them. He appeared to like birds best, but there were a lot of plants as well, grains and grasses rather than flowers. The sea oats he did reminded her of being a little girl on the Freesand’s bars. She paused over one bird’s portrait. It was a woodpecker’s head that was particularly detailed; she wondered how he’d gotten close enough to get the detailing on the eye and beak and feathers so precise. It was lifelike enough that she kept expecting the eye to turn.

  A few books stood on the desk on a clever sliding bookend. They seemed to be well cared for and were educational reference books. The most distinctive was a plant reference for horticulturalists; the binding had reinforcing ridges and the gilt-edged pages were extra thick with plentiful artwork. She flipped through the illustrations and it seemed Astler copied the style of the reference studies.

  It struck her that if she took her inspection any further it might seem that she’d searched his desk. She didn’t want to be thought a snoop. She put the horticulture volume back, not trying to place it exactly as it had been. Then she reprimanded herself for letting what a boy might think channel her actions. She decided to turn in. A few moments of curiosity examining an interesting-looking book and then sleep. Just what a busy dragoneer would do.

  Still full from dinner and tired, she filled the washbasin with water and washed for the night, combed out her hair, and took an extra few minutes with her teeth with the Borderlander’s lecture still fresh in her ears.

  At first the bed defeated her; there was no obvious way to get into it. She tried from the back and had no luck, and then nearer the door she discovered a projection on the support perfectly sized for a foot. She climbed into the bed.

  The linens were fresh but smelled like moth sachets. A featherbed, soft and cozy, enveloped he
r. The head pillow was sagging but serviceable.

  She turned her nose into Astler’s pillow. There was a faint smell to it, not lavender or anything like it, a fresher and sharper aroma. He didn’t seem the type to use scent. Maybe his shaving soap? Whatever it was, it was nice, even relaxing. She was used to the soaps and smells of women in the Quarter, that or dragons, and it was something different and warmly comforting in its way. She drifted off wondering about the tantalizing aroma.

  She was asleep for a time, she couldn’t say for how long, when she startled awake. It took her a moment to place herself, and what disturbed her. Someone was beneath her, at the desk.

  “Yes, sir?” she said, half awake and old reactions from the Lodge putting words in her mouth. The Captain would want his boots taken off after a night’s drinking.

  “Sorry,” came a half whisper. “Getting my pencil box. Remembered my notebook but forgot my pencils.” It was Astler. “Your breathing made me think you were asleep. Sorry to intrude.”

  “It’s your room.” Ileth was awake now, waiting for her heart to quit pounding in alarm.

  “Not tonight, it isn’t. Here it is, sorry to trouble you.” Something rattled in his hand.

  “Forgive me if it’s . . . if it’s too personal, but what is that smell, like oranges or something, on your pillow?”

  He stepped close; she could just make out his outline in the dim light coming in under the door. He thought for a moment. “Probably my father’s toilet soap. I’ve sort of adopted it since I started using a razor. It’s from Zland, lemons and oranges, I think. It’s all I remember of him. Smell stays with you for some reason.”