by E. E. Knight
“This is good-bye. More mail to deliver, and I’m glad for it. Cities make me itch,” he said. “Too much to keep track of.”
The Borderlander made his farewell to Ileth by putting his arm stiffly out and grasping her left shoulder hard enough that she later checked for a bruise. He looked her in the eye and said, “Don’t change a bit for him.”
Ileth thanked Catherix for carrying her and her baggage.
“You should,” she said, flicking a griff. “Tying trunk dragon. Audacity!”
“Don’t take it so hard,” the Borderlander said when Ileth shrank away from the reprimand. “You’ve given her something to grumble about until the week-over.”
“Keep off!” he yelled at the city children, already gathering from every point in the compass to get a look at the dragon. Catherix escaped the children by using the public platform in the square—luckily free of gallows, festival poles, or bonfire barrels—to make a quick leap into the air. Ileth admired her strength and the Borderlander’s ability to keep his seat in such a dramatic takeoff.
With that he flew off to the north, just another mail carrier.
Except ordinary mail carriers didn’t have a great case on their saddle with map tubes and sketching paper and a device shaped like a tiny crutch that she knew was used to determine distance. She’d peeked as Catherix was being watered in the Notch pass.
She had coin to hire a porter for the trunk and set off for the Governor’s Residence. She was coming up in the world. There had been a time when all her worldly possessions would fit in a flour bag.
The porter knew her destination and she followed him. The great city house struck Ileth as uncomfortably like a prison. There were bars on all the lower windows.
She’d been preceded by letters so the butler admitted her and made arrangements for her trunk to be brought to her room.
Inside the Governor’s Residence, she learned that her alleged father liked landscapes of farming and commerce in the north and plain furniture, which didn’t make a very good match for the spacious rooms with elegantly carved wood moldings and parquetry floors.
Her room was on the third floor, but it was sunny and warm and had a view of the traffic in the square where before the house five streets joined.
The maddening part of her Stavanzer trip began that first night. Raal arrived late. He spoke to his bookkeeper, the butler, the housekeeper, and the cook in turn, and only then greeted Ileth.
He looked much the same to Ileth. “So good to have you here at last, Ileth. Business can wait. I will dine with Ileth at the Republican Club. It’s chilly, do you object to the carriage?”
She didn’t. She enjoyed her first trip in a carriage, though she was awkward in the polite business of being handed into it by her “father.”
The Republican Club was one of those crowded city buildings, a little smaller than the two next to it, like the youngest sibling squashed on a small couch between two big brothers. It was a cheery-looking place, though, with two lights on either side of the red entrance door with white panelwork and every window open-curtained and blazing brightly into the frosty night.
They were expecting the Governor. Two doormen took him and Ileth in and up to the second floor, where they had some odd-looking plants Ileth couldn’t identify that seemed to be thriving indoors, tables with tablecloths of various sizes, and alcoves with more tables still.
Ileth realized she was in a restaurant.
They were seated in a room discreetly curtained off from the rest. Raal helped her understand how the menu worked, how you picked one thing from each list, and asked if she would like wine.
“Tea will be fine, uhh.”
“You can keep calling me ‘sir’ if you wish, Ileth. ‘Father’ sounds equally strange to me. It will take time.”
The dishes had names that struck Ileth as, well, equal parts fanciful and stupid, like “White Fish with Capers Liberty” and “Roast Chicken Assembly,” and told you nothing about the contents of a “Man in the Mountain Pie.” She accepted the Governor’s recommendation of Winter Sprouts in Bacon, Market Stew, and Brandy-glazed Figs.
It was all delicious, arriving on the biggest carrying-tray Ileth had ever seen, with a dramatic opening of the curtain.
They drank tea after dinner. He asked her if she wanted a kneeler and quarter-table with candle for Directist prayer. Ileth thanked him and said she could make do with the edge of her bed and whatever light came in through the window.
“How do you like your room?”
“It’s . . . very nice.” It was clean, comfortable, and probably quiet, as long as you didn’t mind the climb.
“I’m glad of that. Your mother stayed in it when she first came to the Vales. Sanctuary refugee.”
At last, something other than polite chatter. “What was she like?”
“Young. Headstrong. Spoke five words of Montangyan but somehow always got her way about things. She was beautiful and st . . . unique.”
“Tell-tell me m-more, please.”
“You’ll hear the story in full. Tonight should be happy. You begin a new life.”
“I had n-no wi-wish to change the old one.”
Raal frowned. “You should consider yourself fortunate. Dancers don’t rise, socially. You’re still of an age that it can be dismissed as youthful larking.”
“Heem T-Tyr can’t paint pictures of our youthful larking fast enough to satisfy his patrons.”
“That is Zland. You’re back in the north now.”
They retreated to their cups of tea. Ileth reverted to her Galantine manners and made a few comments about the food and the quality of the tableware at the Republican Club.
Raal didn’t accept the armistice: “That stutter of yours, I had no idea it was so bad. Has a specialist examined you? Is there any hope of improvement?”
“It’s not such a problem when I’m relaxed. It’s worse when I’m in difficulty. When I feel out of place.”
“Then I hope you’ll be comfortable with us.”
“Us?”
“Lady Raal and me. I expect you’ll soon become bored at the Residence. I am only there to sleep. You seem a vigorous, open-air sort of girl. I think you would be happiest at Stesside. You’ll have the full attention of Lady Raal and when I visit we can be at ease with each other, I won’t be pressed by duty.”
As she digested that addition to the dinner, he confessed he should “make the rounds” of the Republican Club and packed her off back to the city residence with a club employee who showed considerable expertise in quickly, politely, and discreetly packing young ladies into a carriage behind the club and then driving them home. Ileth turned in and lay in the bed her mother had once used, wondering.
The Vales were famously accepting of those looking for an escape from one sort of trouble or another. There were special lodges for them that eased the friction while they acclimated, sometimes to the point of an entirely new name and a skill. A sure mark of a recent immigrant was a new surname in Montangyan. Yet Ileth’s mother, fleeing a religious purge in the Galantine Baronies, had been put up at the Governor’s own residence.
He had her pack for Stesside the very next day.
Ileth couldn’t understand this treatment of her. The weather even turned snowy overnight and he still insisted she make the journey to the country.
Snow meant she had to take a sleigh to Stesside, and that was the most fun she had since landing in Stavanzer. Even the Governor, who rode along to see her settled, grew more animated and named landmarks and other points of interest on their journey up the Stess and into the foothills. But the day’s pleasure was ended abruptly when she arrived and, offering to help with dinner, found out Ignata was no longer part of the household.
Raal looked mournful. “She was too old to work this hard. She’s in Stavanzer now, in a lodge. A very nice one, pensioned postmasters an
d customs officials, that sort of thing. Good people.”
The new cook was a Galantine whose family had fled some sort of blight on their crops. There was some talk of Ileth learning from her in the kitchen and helping the manservant keep the family home tidy. Ileth recognized the irony; at fourteen she’d fled from a Lodge that promised no more of a future than domestic work, and after travel on dragonback across the Vales and to the Baronies and back, with a Galantine title no less, life had still arranged for her to care for a kitchen and bedlinens.
The Governor departed after week-over. He made an early start back, enjoying a leisurely private breakfast with Lady Raal while Ileth took the Horse’s advice, found an axe, and attempted to reduce some quarters to kindling without maiming herself. The sound of it brought out Severan, the principal servant, who snatched the axe out of her hands and told her some men from the village downstream took care of their firewood needs. If she needed to occupy herself, there was ample dusting to do.
Within her first week, Ileth ran out of things to say to Lady Raal. Their conversation was limited to what sort of housekeeping she would do that day, improving Ileth’s wardrobe, and how best to arrange her hair once it grew out to a proper length. Over dinner and for perhaps an hour after, Lady Raal turned into an expert conversationalist, gently probing Ileth about her life, the Serpentine, and what little travel she had done. Then Lady Raal would finish her wine and say “I must see to my letters,” and Severan would help her to her bedchamber.
Ileth explored the grounds, climbed around in the ruin of the castle as much as she dared, and took a chill winter plunge in the improved source of the Stess just to give her body and spirit a challenge. She lasted long enough for the sun to completely traverse a winter branch.
With endless time to think, Ileth found herself comparing being a governor’s daughter (who was never introduced to anyone or spoken of as his daughter) to her time in Galantine lands as an enforced guest of the Baron, and Stesside did not win out. Every time she turned it over in her mind, it became stranger. Why would the Governor, a busy man, exert himself pestering the Serpentine to bring her to him, only to banish her to what he must know was a dull routine?
The Governor had a small study at the house. She found a coup board and pieces as well as a book on the game nearby and set about learning. The Lodger had taught her that even a confinement could be turned to a chance at improvement. It had been proved in the Baronies, where she’d learned to care for a dragon, and a moody, cantankerous one at that, become fluent in Galantine, and improved her manners in elevated society.
If she applied herself, she might be able to do something similar with her time in Stesside. It was better than fretting and funking.
She asked Lady Raal about the coup set, whether she could bring it out into the front room with the good light to study it.
“Of course, dear. I will be happy to teach you what little I know. I learned it as it is one of my husband’s passions, and while I don’t share it, he might like to play you on one of his visits.”
It turned out Lady Raal knew more about the game than that. She elaborated on the pieces in such a way that Ileth wondered if she was an expert on the game, or just naturally blessed with an excellent memory. She was a better reference than the book.
Ileth found herself admiring the woman, a fine mind that didn’t let being trapped in a difficult body sour her spirit. Ileth practiced playing, switching from seat to seat and mimicking famous arrays and moves from the book. At last she convinced Severan to play, but he fidgeted and intentionally lost by bringing forth his captains unprotected.
Winter storms prevented the Governor from traveling to Stesside on the next week-over. There was little to do but read, keep up the fire, and bring tea to Lady Raal.
“It’s so nice not to have to winter in the city,” Lady Raal said, looking out the front windows at the blowing snow.
“Is it?” Ileth asked, putting down a book of plays that included one that Rapoto and Sifler had both quoted.
“Well, the prices of everything, the smoke, mud, and wet. Everything always drying and the smell of wet socks. People to entertain. I’m poorly suited to be a governor’s wife.”
“How does he manage?”
“Oh, he has plenty of invitations if he feels the need to get out. Any hostess is happy to tell a female guest that her dinner partner is the Governor. He doesn’t favor any one table. There’s his club if he wishes to sit comfortably over cards and lifewater or enjoy a game of coup.”
“If you . . . if you wish to go to town, I could help you,” Ileth said. One of the dresses Lady Raal had provided for her didn’t fit, and Ileth had botched the alterations. Now it needed a skilled seamstress.
“No. I’ve tried that. I’m never happy there, and he’s too distracted caring for me to properly attend his duties. Of course I wish he were here more. Selfish of me, I know. He enjoys lively society. I’m a sick, childless woman. He’s still full of manhood, even with some gray showing.”
She turned the subject to music. She could always talk about music. Ileth didn’t know enough about it. Lady Raal thought that strange for a dancer and tried to give her an education in the subject, but it was difficult without skilled players.
Ileth worried that her skills as a dragon-dancer were falling away. She kept herself exercised fetching and carrying, drawing water, and taking walks outside whenever the weather permitted. She found where Severan had hidden the axe he’d yanked out of her hand and took it into the mountainside where she could exercise with it in peace. Chopping could be heard a long way off.
Winter wore on, but Ileth, having her years of experience, sensed there would be one more fierce blast before spring. Then she would be seventeen and counting the days until she would be free to return to the Serpentine. The thought saw her through Lady Raal’s routines of correspondence and craft.
She finally had a chance for a real game of coup when Governor Raal visited. Even Ileth, new to the game, figured out he was a mediocre player. Over the game she asked if her mother had enjoyed the game and from then on he was distracted. He didn’t keep his artillery, the most powerful yet most vulnerable piece, behind a line of infantry, and he sent in his cavalry first before her formation had any holes in it at all and would expose them in unprofitable frontal assaults. Ileth decided that whoever his opponents were in his club in town must let him win for politics’ sake.
She took his two captains and soon his fortress fell. He thanked Ileth but had no wish for a second game, and spent the rest of the week-over moody and avoiding her.
Lady Raal, who had previously professed no love for the game, suddenly took an interest and offered to “indulge my dear friend” and sat across the game table from her. She was a patient and frustrating opponent and Ileth never did succeed in beating her in the few games they had. She hardly moved from her opening formation until Ileth, out of boredom, would make an error in attacking and then she crept forward in a series of tiny moves, constantly shifting to meet whatever threat Ileth tried to develop. It was like playing a finger-duel with a snapping turtle. Then, when what was left of Ileth’s array was huddled out of range of the remorseless pounding of Lady Raal’s artillery, the dragon came, leading the cavalry, and that was the end.
“I’m quite worn out,” she’d say, smiling at Ileth after receiving the congratulations and an offer to get her tea. “I think I must lie down for a while. Is that the time? Oh dear, I should see how Cook is managing with dinner. Coup does absorb the better part of an afternoon, doesn’t it?”
Lady Raal was an internal person, lost in her own thoughts, letters, books, and needlework. For all that she worked on her tapestries, there were only a handful hung around the house at Stesside in the upper rooms. Lady Raal explained that her husband was always asking for them; his social circle absorbed the few she produced every winter at charity auctions.
While searchin
g, again, for the axe (she and Severan were in an increasingly creative duel over hiding it), she discovered a practice dueling sword of the Governor’s from when he was a child, but other than a few experimental swings and lunges, she didn’t know what to do with it. The bow and arrow the Borderlander had borrowed was a much better find. The bow was good quality, beautifully recurved and with a well-carved handle that was a good fit for her hand. But it was strung for a man. Severan reluctantly took it into town and some handyman there restrung it so it pulled easier for her so she could practice shooting arrows into hay bales.
Improving herself with the bow and arrow was enjoyable, sending arrows smacking into the side of the barn and startling the fat horses even more fun, but the arrows were equally old and her quiver of ten quickly turned to six and then two and then none as the fletching or heads broke off or the shafts splintered. Severan promised to get her more on his next trip to town but made it clear that he wouldn’t make a special trip but would wait until they needed something.
“While you are looking, the barn could really use its own axe,” Ileth told him. “I can never find the one in the gardening shed.”
“The gardener frequently needs it in winter,” Severan said, frowning. “I’m sure Lady Raal would not want the expense of an unnecessary purchase.”
A letter arrived on horseback, giving Severan an excuse to escape her. Ileth didn’t even bother to see who it was from; the Governor frequently wrote his wife by express, postage being the only lavish expense in their lives. So she was surprised when Severan found her after delivering the letter, saying Lady Raal wanted her at once.
“My dear, you have a letter by express. I trust it is not ill news,” Lady Raal said, handing her an envelope. Ileth recognized Santeel Dun Troot’s hand.
She retreated across the front room to good light and read the letter, leaving Lady Raal to her needle and colored threads.
Ileth,
The Serpentine is in winter slumber and things are cold and dreary. First I shall tell you of the dragons, as I know how you miss them. The new hatchlings thrive, and attack Falberrwrath when he attends them. He returns to his shelf injured but in excellent humor, and as I often have to bandage him he tells me he misses you and hopes it will not be too many decades (!!) until you return.