by E. E. Knight
Dogloss consulted the letter. “It’s not just a claim about fatherhood. The Governor has set a demand that we return you to him. He thinks we’ve acted in a high-handed manner on a trifling matter about the return of a runaway lodge-girl. He says if there is to be a fresh start between the dragoneers and the north, we have to pay off old accounts, so to speak.”
It still seemed like madness to Ileth. “Why should he care? He never set eyes on me until we landed at Stesside.”
Deklamp sighed. “I believe he wishes to assert his power over us in some form. You just happen to be it. Ileth, take heart. You are contracted as an apprentice here. You’ve done well. I’ve no reason to break that contract.”
At this Traskeer shifted in his seat and began to speak, but Charge Deklamp shot a look at him and he closed his mouth.
Deklamp referred to something on his desk. Ileth wondered if it was a report in Serena’s hand. “It is not as hopeless as it looks. You’ve met Governor Raal. He’s a reasonable man. His position isn’t quite as strong as he thinks.”
“How can a man just state that he’s my father and have people accept it?” Ileth asked.
“Lower your voice, girl. You’re speaking to the Charge,” Traskeer said.
Deklamp ignored him and the emotion in her words. “Dogloss, you’re our legal expert. Perhaps you can give us the benefit of your opinion.”
Dogloss took a breath as he gathered his thoughts and consulted a piece of paper with some notes and dates on it. “As far as we’ve been able to tell—and we’re checking further—there is no claim of your paternity beyond this one. We do know that his name appears nowhere on your birth registry, just that of your mother. It was looked up and verified as a matter of routine shortly after you were sworn in as a novice. We’re trying to ascertain if he’s ever directly supported you—sent his own money to the Lodge you grew up in. If he hasn’t done that, if nothing but local funds supported the Lodge along with the usual charities, he simply has no case at all and we can fight it out in front of a jury. He can’t present gossip as evidence. He might have a letter or some evidence from your mother, and if that’s the case it becomes more difficult, but he hasn’t mentioned any kind of proof in his letters to us.
“And speaking of gossip,” Dogloss continued, shifting from foot to foot uncomfortably, “he and his wife never managed to produce children. Nor have they adopted. Perhaps as they are older now, they are feeling it.”
“His wife . . . seemed lonely,” Ileth said.
“She should get a cat,” Traskeer said, and for the first time in the meeting Ileth felt that he might be on her side, just a little. Or it was his dislike of women showing itself again.
The Charge brought matters back to business. “Ileth, here is what we have decided. You will take a leave of absence, remaining under contract as an apprentice but with your apprenticeship suspended, and return to the north. You’ve proved a resourceful young woman. Perhaps the Governor can come to appreciate you and see that you belong with the Republic’s dragons.”
“Can’t I just refuse to go?”
“You can, but the Governor is very close to the law of the land in his province. He can assemble a jury and make things much more difficult for us. Beyond that, we want this campaign against the Rari to move forward, for the Republic’s sake. Giving way on this is the key that will unlock his cooperation.”
They were always testing you. They hadn’t invented this test, but now that she’d absorbed the blow of the news, she’d do her best to pass it. Sitting on a stump and crying about it wouldn’t do. She summoned a brisk, upbeat tone: “If that’s my duty as you see it, playing daughter and keeping Lady Raal company, I’ll do my best, sir.”
The Charge nodded. “That’s the spirit, apprentice. You will go north again with my word that you will not be forgotten. There will be some excitement up there as the campaign gets under way, assuming the Assembly takes the final step and figures out a way to finance this last throw of the dice. Perhaps, as the Governor’s daughter, you’ll see a little of it. When it is over, we’ll contest the Governor’s claim on you in court if we must. You are what, sixteen now?”
“Yes, sir. Seventeen in the spring.”
“The Governor, even were he named as your father on your birth registry, will not be able to keep you anywhere you don’t wish to be past eighteen, as you know. Are you paying taxes on—”
“She’s quite poor,” Traskeer said.
“Of course. I thought I saw something about an inheritance connected to her name. Or was that the girl with the lenses?”
Deklamp rose, came around his desk, and took her hand gently in his. “My advice to you, Ileth, is to make the most of this opportunity. He’s offering his Name; take it. Going from Lodge-girl to the Governor’s daughter . . . How many girls sharing a bench in a lodge dream of that sort of elevation? He probably keeps a carriage in the city. If he’s anything like Governor Vor Gleiss he has more than one. Dresses made by seamstresses. Wigs, if your taste is to fanciful hair. You could look at it as a reward for years of patient poverty.”
She smiled at him. It was easy to love this odd little man, even though a man whose family owned vineyards would hardly know that poverty had to be accepted with patience. You couldn’t afford any other choice. “If these are your orders, I’ll be the daughter the Fates didn’t let them have. Perhaps we all may come out of this happy.”
Ileth’s dreams of elevation had mostly been vistas like she’d seen on her flight back to the Serpentine on Catherix. Being a governor’s daughter was something for a person like Quith and her love of social connections.
“You’ve had a shock. It’s a lot to absorb. Would you like a note that you be excused from duties for a day or two?”
“No, I should like to dance, I think, if they have need of me.”
Traskeer cleared his throat. “That’s the angle. If anything . . . distressing happens to you with the Governor, should his motives prove other than fatherly, get a message to me and do not omit details out of embarrassment. I dislike even mentioning the possibility, but we shall act as though his intentions are entirely honorable even as we prepare for infamy. I will provide you with envelopes with Assembly postage. It’s a hanging offense to interfere with those. The Governor may just find I have powerful friends, too. Dogloss, supply her with a few, would you? And draw some funds for her, just in case. Enough for a comfortable trip both ways. Out of my account, of course.”
Dogloss nodded and Ileth thanked him. Perhaps he wasn’t as heartless as one of his coup pieces after all.
Traskeer offered to walk her back to the Beehive. After taking the envelopes and her traveling purse, they started down the Serpentine’s principal path toward the Pillar Rocks and the Long Bridge. Ileth marked five dragons flying practically wingtip-to-wingtip over the Skylake. That was an unusual sight. They tipped their wings and dived in a line, the second dragon’s nose hardly separated from the tailtip of the first, with the others following in similar fashion. At the lake level, where Ileth thought she saw a cask floating with a little signal flag on it—it was hard to make out at this distance—the formation came back into the line abreast.
Five dragons training hard. That had to mean something. The Serpentine was preparing for war. Would the dragons be able to open the straits, or would this be the last gasp of a strangled nation? Her only part in it would be sipping tea with Lady Raal at Stesside. What a poor joke.
* * *
—
Even though she didn’t much feel like dancing, Ileth forced her feet to proceed through the Upper Ring to Falberrwrath’s shelf. She peeked into the spacious, prominently placed alcove where Falberrwrath slept (formerly it had been Fespanarax’s) with its own almost musical trickle, but the big red dragon was gone. Perhaps he was in the Cellars looking over his hatchlings. Why had he called for a dancer, then?
She watched a novice,
his fourteen-year-old shoulder muscles straining as he pushed a full feeding cart under the supervision of an apprentice. She was fairly sure she’d been oathed in with the apprentice but she didn’t know him beyond that. He nodded at her, face respectfully neutral. She envied him. Check the quality of the food—feed the dragons according to their taste. Rotate through different duties for the next four or so years.
She waited for Falberrwrath to return. A passing wingman told her he’d been called out to survey the opposite shore of the Skylake. She returned to the Quarter. The dancers were at afternoon drills, or tending to the dragons. She sank into her bed and wept. It was a game, like Traskeer’s coup, and she was a very small piece. She’d been fed to Governor Raal to get him to make a move.
“Ileth, whatever’s the matter?”
Santeel Dun Troot stood there. Her hair was a sweaty mess and she looked tired.
“Too much t-to tell.”
Santeel squatted next to her bed and gave her a tentative pat. Physical gestures didn’t come easy to a Dun Troot, Ileth had learned. “I thought you were in the north? You had to be happy to see the old streets of your home.”
“That’s the problem. This is my home. I’m losing it.”
To her credit, Santeel looked grieved. “You’re not being dismissed or discharged or whatever they call it?”
“Not exactly,” Ileth sniffled. She did her best to explain. First it came as a trickle, then a torrent, like the bottom of a rusty bucket giving way.
Santeel took it all in and made no attempt to make her feel better. She just listened. For some reason, that struck Ileth more as an act of friendship than a there, there, it’s not so bad.
“Can I get you anything?”
Ileth sighed. “What I want is brandy.”
“I have something better. Have you taken Elletian snuff?”
“I’ve never taken ordinary snuff.”
She disappeared into her sleeping nook, still talking: “I could use a little myself. I’ve been dancing for Shrentine. I think she just likes to while away the time listening to musicians and as long as she has music on there might as well be a dancer to occupy her eye. I’m exhausted.”
Ileth heard her move books about and then a distinct scratch-click. She returned with a polished lacquer snuffbox of Hypatian design. She opened it and took out a pinch of dusty tobacco.
“I like a sort of sweet flavor to it, reminds me of cake,” Santeel said. She offered the box to Ileth. “Just a little, you’re not used to it.”
Santeel stuck her fingers up against her nostril and snorted. Ileth imitated her. Overlaying the familiar tobacco was a sweet scent, reminded her of some kind of pie, but the sweetness wasn’t from any berry she knew. “You’ll feel a new woman in a moment.”
“The tobacco is scented with . . . with . . .”
“You ever had bananas?”
“No.”
“It reminds me of bananas. Kind of sweet and soft and warm.”
Ileth sat up, like a quick plunge into cold water without the cold water. She felt deliciously alive and aware.
“What kind of tobacco is this?”
“I’m not sure. It’s expensive, I know that. It’ll keep you dancing.”
Santeel took a little more.
“I need air and light,” she said. “Let’s get out of here. The lighthouse. Air and light both.”
Ileth had never actually been up by the lighthouse. Santeel took her by the hand and pulled her up to the Rotunda gallery.
From there it was not an easy climb. Santeel lit a walking candle from a supply by a burning brazier, and they had to climb through rock again in a winding stairway that you had to bend to negotiate. You often had to lean to the right and support yourself with an arm.
They seemed to climb forever. “Do these stairs come to an end?” Ileth asked.
“It opens up on the mourning gallery. Bodies of our honored dead dragoneers are placed there, I’m told. Halfway between earth and sky.”
“I wouldn’t care to drag a bier up these stairs,” Ileth said.
“Preen says dragons fly them up. Some call it ‘the Last Ride,’” she said.
Finally, and happily, for even Ileth’s trained legs were sore, they came to a cramped storage room full of rags and brushes and other items for cleaning, with wide, perfectly normal stairs leading up to a brightly lit room. They took the stairs up to a chamber about the size of a small cottage that, in a way, mirrored the architecture of the Rotunda below. An oval altar dominated the room, on its own raised dais in an inversion of the well off the Rotunda below.
Recessed crystals in the ceiling, some as small as a fingernail, others as big as a melon, sent shafts of dazzling sunlight directed to the altar. More light came in through a passage leading out to what looked like a balcony. They were near or at the very top of the Beehive, it seemed.
Columns set into the stone ringed the room, dividing time-faded frescoes of men in rather old-fashioned warrior attire or robes who looked solemnly at the ground.
“Wonder what those old beggars would think if they knew they were looking at a couple of girls who danced about half-naked,” Santeel said.
Ileth stifled a laugh. “That’s . . . that’s disrespectful.”
“It’s just frescoes. It’s not like there’s a body being mourned.”
Ileth wondered if Annis Heem Strath had been placed here. Or if, someday, she or Santeel might be bloodless and cold on the slab beneath the painted stone.
“You’ve gone gloomy,” Santeel said. “Light and air.”
Ileth stood and followed her out onto a flat. She wondered if it could be called a balcony or just a platform built into the side of the Beehive.
Whatever it was, it was an advantageous irregularity in the Beehive just big enough for a dragon to set down. Above, Ileth could see the pillars and glass pyramid top of the lighthouse, one of the most famous landmarks in the Republic. This was as close as she’d ever been to it, even when flying. There was a Guard posted here, of course, keeping watch but mostly shooing birds away with a long pole with some rags tied on the end so they wouldn’t foul the glass.
The platform she stood upon, at this dizzying height, had no rail or guard of any sort. She wouldn’t care to stand on it on a stormy day, for even in the mild summer weather there was wind. Your life wouldn’t be worth much in a winter snowstorm. The narrow steps—they could not be dignified with the name of stairs—leading up to the lighthouse did have a rope set in the side of the Beehive. She had the urge to sit down for some reason and stayed well away from the edge.
Santeel showed off by going right to the edge and gripping with her strong dancer’s toes.
“Quite a view.”
“Stop-stop that, you’re ma-making me nervous,” Ileth said. On the other hand, you could take in the Serpentine entire and probably a goodly chunk of the Vales from here. Only the southern end of the long Skylake was invisible; you could just see the tree-covered hills of the north shore from here.
She noticed a dark building with a flat roof among the growth atop Mushroom Rock. She didn’t know there was anything up there.
“What’s that?” she asked, pointing. It took Santeel a moment to figure out what she was talking about.
“On Mushroom Rock, you mean? That’s the Wizard’s Nest.”
“We have—we have a wizard?”
“No, I think wizards are just in stories. The tinkers. You know, they specialize in equipment for the dragoneers, and the dragons. Like the armored eye-slits and neck guards, you ever see a dragon with one of those on? They came up with them.”
“Oh, yes, the tinkers,” Ileth said. “Do you know any? I don’t think I’ve ever talked to one.”
“They’re not mixers. I don’t even know how many there are. Surely not more than a handful. They’re secretive, even the door up to th
eir quarter is hidden. Still, they’re part of the Serpentine. You can get apprenticed in with them. I think they choose you, not the other way around.”
The cold winter air combined with the icy clarity of the sun cleared Ileth’s mind. Whatever lay ahead—war, governor’s retreat, dismal bed in a lodge, dragoneer’s saddle—she felt capable of meeting it. She began to feel the chill.
“I see why you take snuff. I do feel much better,” Ileth said. “But I’m getting cold.”
“You get used to it, and it’s not so intense. I’m a bit envious.”
Ileth twitched her nose. She wanted to pick the tobacco flakes out of it; they were making her nostril itch. “It’s making my nose run.” She turned away and gave a discreet blow off the balcony.
“Well, was the view worth the climb?”
Ileth took in the Skylake. There were five dragons in the air again, exercising. “Worth a chill, too.”
“You’re luckier than I, Ileth.”
“How’s that?” Luckier! What had this snuff done to Santeel’s reason?
“You came here. Same night as me. Same exact night. I often think of that coincidence. You had nowhere to go but up, really.”
“No. Even at fourteen, I had opportunities to go down,” Ileth said.
Santeel ignored the sad attempt at a joke. “You’re from the gutter, but you’re not of the gutter. Do you know what I mean? I never felt people who started out there were naturally bad. Couldn’t improve their station. Even before I met you. The Republic’s right about that, even with all my father’s talk about people being either horses or donkeys or mules. I’ve met a few donkeys with fancy names. Still donkeys under the daycoats and fine dresses.
“Me, if I do well here, I hurt my family.” Santeel waved vaguely at the buildings at the up end of the Serpentine. “I’m expected to be exactly like my mother and raise a daughter or two to be exactly like me. Like a workshop producing teacups for matched sets, and the sets better match or you’ll be out on your backside. This was to be Santeel’s little fling, like a tour of the Hypatian coast looking at statues and ruined temples, maybe a few weeks of experimental rutting with a similar well-bred boy from the Elletian coast and a great draught of Mother’s Red Purge at the end of it if need be, then back home and duty to the family right to the grave.”