by E. E. Knight
“Is there anything else I can do for you?”
“Yes. Write one of those letters to Falth. Tell him I’ve had a fall down some tricky stairs but it’s nothing serious. The physiker is attending me and I’m up and about already.”
“You don’t look up and about.”
Santeel smiled. She took a breath and swung her uninjured leg out of the bed and, showing the flexibility of the skilled dragon-dancer she was, touched the floor with her foot and lifted her buttocks off the bed by arching her back a little and straining with her leg.
“Up and out of bed, you see? No lies need be told.”
“I’ll tell Ottavia you’re doing your fatigues even in the physiker’s bed.”
“Circa rain kisses on you, Ileth. Good luck in the north.”
“Anything else?”
Santeel blinked a few tears out of her eyes. She held out her hand and Ileth took it. They exchanged a squeeze.
“We’ve had our times, haven’t we?” Santeel said.
“Stop talking like a sick old woman. Our times have barely started.”
Ileth promised to bring her a cup of tea the next morning and left. In her head, she was already choreographing a dance around the truth for a letter to Falth.
Like a ghost or demon summoned by his name, Ileth found a letter from Falth resting on her rope bed back at the Dancers’ Quarter.
Ileth,
Forgive me for writing you about a subject that perhaps you had wished to keep private. I received an express from Santeel about your predicament. She wrote to claim whatever favor you had built up with the Name Dun Troot to be redeemed to allow you to stay at the Serpentine. Since no message asking for help has as yet arrived from you, I did not know how to react. While our family has a certain amount of influence at the Assembly, among the governors we have very little.
First, let me give you some advice as someone who has come to know you somewhat through our correspondence: to rise from a Lodge to the status of Governor Raal’s daughter is no small thing. When I first met you I thought the brave leap you took into the Serpentine was a perfectly understandable move to better yourself and showed a wisdom beyond your years, for that is the best way to spend the abundant energy of youth. A position in a family like Raal’s is better still, viewed through my social lens, but then I don’t know your heart. Santeel has told me that any other future for you than service as a dragoneer is the Republic’s loss, so I am set on doing what I can in the brief time Santeel gave me.
As to the legal issue of you being his daughter, of course you know that even if it is accepted, you have only to suffer a brief time before you may choose to quit his house and do with your life as you choose, barring a jury finding you in need of guardianship. I believe your future happiness would be best served by enduring the role as dutiful daughter for two more years and then returning to the Serpentine bearing an old and important Name, even if it isn’t distinguished by so much as a Heem—though in these republican times, that may be to your advantage.
I cannot offer you much intelligence about Governor Raal and his wife as they haven’t circulated in Sammerdam and I only have secondhand accounts from northern members of the Assembly, or rather their servants who are most often the most reliable source. The Governor himself is counted as a capable administrator of a province that has fallen on hard times. He keeps a modest but comfortable house in Stavanzer and has a family home at the source of the Stess. He enjoys playing coup, cards, and pin-rolling. He attends the theater. As a younger man he enjoyed lively company. He is in good standing in the Republican Club, though I haven’t heard he’s been to the one in Sammerdam recently. He does attend the less distinguished one in Stavanzer.
The Governor’s wife comes from a wealthy family but is infirm. She is a discerning lady, mostly resides at Stesside, and is frequently visited by her husband. I heard her described as his political brains but that was from someone with no love of the Governor, and I am not sure if that’s meant as a compliment to Lady Raal or not.
I did have an odd reaction in one quarter to my inquiry into matters in the north. A secretary for the Assembly said that I shouldn’t ask too many questions about Raal and the north just now or I might be thought of as engaging in spying! I didn’t know what to say to that, other than that I was only interested in social matters for a young lady connected to the Name I serve. Governor Raal does not seem to be the sort of man to do anything precipitate, but you may find your stay up there more interesting than you think.
I shall understand if I do not hear from you for some time, but I desire to remain
Your friend, etc.
Falth
* * *
—
Time was growing short before she was to depart to Stavanzer. But she was spoiling for a fight, and had a hat to do it in thanks to her inheritance of Dun Klaff’s uniform, sword, and flying rig. She sold the boots, which didn’t fit her anyway, to Rapoto, who gave her a very generous price that allowed her to buy a used trunk in Vyenn and have it brought to the gates of the Serpentine. Rapoto, who’d advised her on the best place to obtain a trunk and what price was fair, said he hoped her absence from the Serpentine would be brief.
Ileth had to keep telling herself that it was less than two years, much less; she’d be seventeen in the spring and then she could count the days until she was eighteen and could return. Such a length of time didn’t feel brief. Sifler and Santeel would probably both be wingmen by then, and she’d be like Dogloss, an aged first-year apprentice.
Such was her despair that she visited her old Master, Caseen, the battle-burned old veteran in charge of the novices. He was much the same. Perhaps he moved a little slower, his bad leg dragging a little more than when she’d first met him at fourteen. “Look at it as another part of your training. It wouldn’t hurt for you to learn a little about how the Vales function, at least from a Governor’s Office perspective. You always were weak on civics.”
She thanked him and kissed his unburned cheek in gratitude. “You chose the right one. I wouldn’t feel anything on the other,” he said, showing that ghastly, twisted smile.
Ottavia had her own brand of encouragement:
“Try not to let your body go too slack,” Ottavia said, echoing the Horse. “You’re still not the dancer you were before you left for Galantine lands.”
Ileth stuttered out promises about attending to her drills and fatigues. Then she started crying. In a way, Ottavia was the closest thing to a mother she’d ever known.
“It’s hard to leave you, sira,” she managed.
“Oh, Ileth, you’re still so young. You’re a tree still young enough to survive being uprooted. Your life still has so many branches to grow.”
“Doesn’t feel that way,” she said. She felt snotty and wretched with emotion.
“It’s a disappointment and delay, not a disaster. I thought, when you first came here, that you would be a fixture at the Quarter. One who’d become one of my older veterans, maybe one day take my place and teach a new generation, bring our art another step forward.”
“And I disappointed you.”
“No. It just wasn’t to be. I’m an entire cemetery of buried dreams, girl. The only way you can disappoint me is by giving up on the dream that brought you here and made you sit outside the door sucking live snails out of their shells. I’ve seen enough young dancers through the Quarter that I know the energies of youth can only be channeled to my liking so much. It’s happened enough times that I accept it now.”
* * *
—
There was one last happy duty: introducing Aurue to his dragoneer. They’d waited a few days for the business with Dun Klaff to settle before making a formal announcement.
She found Aurue on his shelf. Dragons liked to be raised up so they slept on a platform above a human’s height. Aurue’s chamber in the Lower Ring of the
Serpentine was cramped, without good light, and a walk from water, making it one of the most difficult to clean. Fortunately, he was a cleanish dragon.
“I have news. I’ve found you a dragoneer,” Ileth said.
“Good man?”
“How do you know it’s a man?”
“I was told not to take a female. Taresscon, in her talks with your Charge, that short man with the staring eyes, discourages male dragons from being paired with female riders. I’m told it’s a bad idea. Especially if you find her enchanting. Some say it’s why Agrath fell, he was too attached to his dragoneer. It’s why I didn’t ask for you. Well, that and Taresscon said you were too new. Though I enjoy you, Ileth, you are quiet and soothing.”
“I remember when you first came you hardly spoke Montangyan.”
“I’m from the Dragon Isle. Nobody there mixes with men more than it can be helped. I wasn’t sure I’d stay, so I didn’t bother learning much more than the basics to order grooms and feeders about.”
Ileth had heard legends surrounding that island in the north end of the Inland Ocean many times from the Captain’s sailing friends. Humans were shunned there. Unless you were invited by the dragons that lived on the island, you were as good as burned setting foot on it.
“What difference does being from this island make?”
“There are, how to put this . . . there are three ways of thinking about men in the dragon-mind. The oldest is that dragons are superior and must rule. That’s been tried and it led to dragons coming within a scale’s breadth of being extinguished. The second way is no good either, becoming like dogs or horses, fitting into man’s world as his slave. That’s been done too, briefly. I’ve heard it exists still, in a fashion, among the Galantines and the Wurm. Some argue that the Galantines control their dragons in some mysterious way. My grandsire, he believed dragons should be in the world as their own nation, guard their borders, just few trusted interactions through channels. Isolation. Maybe I’m of a philosophical bent like your friend you knew as the Lodger, but that seems like a route to stagnation. Humans are inventive. Who knows what they might come up with if they see us only as a foreign power and possible rival.
“I heard stories from some of my oldest relatives of a place called the Vales, where dragons and humans, well, they didn’t live exactly together, I hadn’t heard of this fortress or it came down in a garbled version, but it seemed to me they’d hit upon the only workable solution. We would be equal with humans. Protected by and answerable to the same law.
“I probably came here before I was ready. I had a falling-out with another dragon of the island. I was scaleless, and even though my grandsire was also a gray dragon, my prospects there were . . . limited. I planned and made an escape, clinging to one of the few ships allowed to visit, a Daphine ship, I later found out. I didn’t even have my wings yet, but sometimes young wingless dragons are compelled to travel and I let the compulsion carry me here. It wasn’t an easy journey. The Daphines spotted me but didn’t make a fuss, pretended not to notice me. I was netted and sold to the Galantines, but at the Galantine border there was an argument because I didn’t have scale; the Galantines thought the Daphines attempted some trick to get a dragon’s bounty on some other creature and in the examination of my skin and body and arguments going on, during it I was able to get a claw on this head-harness muzzle they had me in. With the muzzle loose I proved myself a dragon after all and escaped in the smoke and confusion and burning. They set dogs and riders after me but the pack of dogs was mixed; it was easy to pick off the leaders, and the others thought better of trying to tree me. I made it to water and the horsemen didn’t dare follow me into it. Eventually a Galantine dragon appeared, searching for me, calling out in that odd Drakine accent they have, but after you’ve escaped a muzzle, dogs, and hunters, you think twice before giving yourself up.”
Ileth stifled a laugh. Though he told it lightly, it seemed he’d had a terrifying trip to the Vales.
“I made it to the Serpentine not long before you did. It took me a while to even make up my mind about this place. I still don’t care for the feel of a saddle and harness. Taresscon let me stay on approval, but it is time to choose.”
Aurue dipped his snout. Ileth wasn’t sure what it meant, but she held up her hand, and when he didn’t flinch, she gave him a friendly pat. His skin was dry and pebbly and clean. She didn’t want to insult him by scratching his ears like a dog, though she was tempted. She took her hand back.
“I suppose one human’s much like another. What’s he like?”
“He comes from an important family and a good school,” Ileth said, still feeling the dragon’s skin in her palm. “I know that. The dragoneers have a good opinion of him.”
“Even if it is a poor match, it’s temporary. I’ve been warned not to get attached to humans,” Aurue said.
Ileth went to bed that night thoughtful. It took her a long time to drift off.
* * *
—
The pairing of dragon and dragoneer was a ceremony of great tradition, Ileth understood, from both her secret reading as a child and talk in the Serpentine’s Great Hall. It always took place in the center of the Long Bridge. But this particular pairing, perhaps because of the winter weather and the simple tastes of the two personages involved, felt more like a quick marriage where the bride is expected to retreat to childbed within days of the ceremony.
Charge Deklamp and Dogloss stood in good winter uniforms and best hats for it, representing the human side, along with Ileth, who had her flying rig coat over her overdress as it was a very cold morning. Sifler was also there, his used Guard uniform cleaned and pressed as best as could be done with the aged garment. Ileth wondered why; she hadn’t mentioned anything about it to him. On the dragon side, Taresscon stood to one side of the Long Bridge along with young Cunescious, who was probably impressed into standing around on a cold morning because he was unoccupied, and Jizara, representing the females. They were the three youngest dragons of the Serpentine. Ileth didn’t know if dragons formed close friendships. She imagined they did, but if so they didn’t talk of it with humans.
It was the dragon’s duty to step forward and request the services of the human.
“I ask you be dragoneer. To mine,” Aurue said. His much-improved Montangyan seemed to have deserted him.
Vor Rapp smiled. He held out his hand with the signet ring, polished so that it gleamed, and touched Aurue on the griff. “I accept, sir.”
Ileth had been told there was nothing more to it. No signing, no scarification, no exchange of totems. Dragons were long-lived; perhaps they kept it simple because a dragon could expect to have many dragoneers over his career and become closer to some than others.
“You do not wish a battle dragon?” Aurue asked. Ileth could tell from his tone that he was uncomfortable.
“If this is how I’m to become a winged dragoneer, I’ll take it.” Vor Rapp sounded as though he’d taken one of Traskeer’s “accept any promotion” talks to heart.
“I’ll be on my shelf, then. We will have ample time to . . . to get to know each other mores. More. I’m sure you wish to celebrate. I will leave you to it.”
Vor Rapp thanked him in Drakine that Ileth wasn’t skilled enough to judge and turned away. The Charge and Dogloss congratulated him and departed, leaving him standing there with Sifler.
“You’re calm,” Ileth said to Vor Rapp, after waving good-bye to Aurue, who seemed eager to quit the ceremony as soon as possible. The other two dragons witnessing the ceremony didn’t seem to speak to him after.
“I’ve expected it ever since they made me wingman-at-large. My father’s probably been making the Charge’s life miserable with demands for updates on my career.” He held out his hand and glanced down at the big ring. “That reminds me. Sniffler, old son, how’s the title of wingman sound to you?”
Sifler looked at Vor Rapp as if he wer
e waiting for a practical joke to be revealed. “I wouldn’t say no. But no one’s sizing me up for a sword-belt.”
“I just did. I want you to be my wingman. Why do you think I asked you to join me this morning?”
“What about Heem Beck?”
“Heem Beck is the sort of person I’ve outgrown. Choosing him would be ‘impolitic,’ as the Old Man would say. We used to call him the Brick back at Blacktower, if you recall, because he’s thick as one. I want brains, old son.”
“You shat in my bed.”
“I am sorry.”
“While I slept in it.”
“It struck us as funny at the time. No, I shouldn’t say that, it’s still funny. But I feel bad about it now.”
“You tried to get me to violate a chicken.”
Vor Rapp held up a finger. “That wasn’t all on me. That’s an old Blacktower Shield Hall tradition. That’s not just on me, I had to do it myself. Always admired the backbone of you telling us to release the chicken and go bugger each other, even if we did beat you bloody for it.”
Sifler, after recalling a few more humiliations that made Ileth’s first few weeks in the Manor welcoming by comparison, accepted the position.
Wingman! Ileth’s prediction about Sifler had come true sooner than she thought. He seemed a little undersized for the role. She hoped he wouldn’t trip over his sword the first time that girl from the bookshop saw him wearing it.
And with this final duty closed, it was time for her to go north and become a governor’s daughter.
6
Ileth’s first trip to Stavanzer was exciting, maddening, and above all brief.
All the excitement for her was in the first two days. The Borderlander flew her on Catherix to the Stavanzer mail office, which was on the town square big enough for a dragon’s landing, and dropped her and her new trunk with the same sentimentality displayed when he turned over the mail to the Post Commissioner.