Novice Dragoneer

7

As promised, Caseen stayed in his sleeping room long after the rest of the Masters’ Hall was busy with activity. She woke, and with nothing else to do she cleaned out the ash from the small hearth and warmed the fire again. She used a bit of the ash and the corner of her skirt to polish the dragon whistle Dath Amrits had given her. Then she retreated to the chair. Novices and apprentices were passing in the hall, tidying and bringing the day’s business. She heard the cat yowl at some outrage.

One apprentice in a kitchen smock came by with tea and toast and peppered fish and left when he saw that Caseen was not out of his sleeping room yet; another boy entered with coal, removed the ash, and refilled the bin with a nod of recognition, and then one of the novice girls from the Manor swept the hall and exchanged a wary nod with her.

“Not kicked out? Herself said you’d be kicked out.”

“He wrote me up in that . . . in that book. In the book and out of the Manor,” Ileth said. “The Master is finding new duties for me.”

“Hardly a one of us slept last night, what with all the whispering back and forth. You wouldn’t believe what’s—”

“I would. Could you ask Quith to roll up my things for me?”

The girl nodded and moved on down the hall with her broom.

Ileth thought about what a sorry figure she must have cut, being thrown out of the Manor in the middle of the night. No wonder they’d talked. The cat peeped in, sniffed at what must have been the scents coming off the tea and toast, and looked at Ileth expectantly. She just looked back and the cat turned away, as if indifferent to the smell of butter, and set about washing its face with its back toward her.

Caseen rose about the time his letters appeared. He had his mask back on. He wished her a good morning, scribbled a note, and went and found a page to bring note and notable to Ottavia Imperene.

“She’s not spent much time in the Beehive,” Caseen said to the page. “Make sure she can find her way out again.”

“Heard you got blued,” the page said as they walked out the hall door and into the morning. Ileth shrugged.

So back in her traveling boots, Ileth walked down the familiar, curving gravel road toward the Long Bridge. The overcast looked to be breaking up and giving way to some sunshine. She wasn’t superstitious, but the glimpses of the sun that turned the lake from its usual dull gray to gemstone-quality blue, reminding her of her first daylight look at the Serpentine and its surroundings, put her in a hopeful mood.

At the familiar turn to the Manor, she took it. Not by accident.

“Uh, what are you doing?” the page asked.

Ileth ignored him. She approached the Manor. An armed wingman she didn’t know exhibiting a shaped beard and mustache that must have required a great deal of attention in front of a good mirror raised an eyebrow.

The novices and apprentices had long since gone to work.

Ileth rapped on the door, a polite sort of knock.

“Ileth!” insisted the page, though she wasn’t certain what he was insisting on.

The Matron opened it, eyes hostile, mouth set. The page shifted around behind Ileth to avoid the withering stare.

Ileth sensed the novices who helped her keep house behind the Matron, keeping a distance to avoid potential contamination.

“You,” the Matron said, with the tone that suggested you stood for other, despicable words.

“Madam,” Ileth said, slowly to minimize her stuttering. “I was passing and wanted to thank you.”

“Thank me?”

“Yes. Yes, I grew up in a lodge, you see. I know how difficult it is to keep a crowded house clean and fed.”

The Matron didn’t respond for a moment; perhaps she had to parse the words in search of insult or ambush. “Yes. It can be difficult.”

“You have . . . you have been kind to me. I am sorry for last night. I am grateful for your hard work keeping house.”

Perhaps she’d overdone it a bit. The Matron gave a practiced but not friendly smile. “Well, that’s good of you to say, Ileth.”

There. She used her name, and the you no longer contained an accusation. It wasn’t so hard.

“That’s . . . that’s all, madam. Good morning and good-bye,” Ileth said, giving a little bob. She backed away and looked expectantly at the page. He bowed at the Matron, and once off the threshold they turned and moved down the path toward the guardian wingman.

Ileth listened. There was a long moment before the door was shut behind them.

“What in the underworld was that all about?” the page asked once they were on the main road again.

“Honor,” Ileth replied. That shut him up.

Even the bridge was deserted, except for some chatting wingmen passing around a pipe. She heard some talk of updrafts, but the wingmen ignored an insignificant novice and a page bearing a note.

She entered the Beehive proper from the main entrance for the first time that morning.

A geometric pattern in a blue-and-white mosaic decorated the border of the finely finished cavern entrance. Air moved inward with a faint snuffle, as if the Beehive were sniffing its visitors.

As though he were placed there to give the entrance a to-scale perspective, a dragoneer lounged just outside the cave entrance, occupying two simple wooden chairs set so they faced each other, his booted feet up on the seat of one. He smoked long, thin rolled tobacco, a curious indulgence because she thought only wealthy men could afford rolled and sealed tobacco. Even seated, Ileth recognized him. She’d seen him before hanging around with the kindly Hael Dun Huss. He was a tall scarecrow of a man, needed a shave on his plain, long face (many of the dragoneers wore fashionable mustaches), and was a little unkempt about the hair, as though he never bothered much with it. A battered brown planting hat, the epitome of republican simplicity without hatband, cockade, or feathers, sat on his bony knee as though keeping him company.

Her escort page nodded as they passed the dragoneer. The dragoneer watched her the way you’d watch a horse and rider approaching on an empty road, not having anything more interesting to look at. He didn’t turn his head as they went by, but he did take the tobacco out of his mouth and held it away from her so she didn’t have to walk through smoke to enter the Beehive.

“That’s the Borderlander. He’s a northerner. You’re a northerner, right?” the page said.

“The Freesand coast.” She’d never been to the Borderlands, a high, cold plateau between the North Bay and Jotun. She’d only heard that life there was hard, with bandits, gargoyles in the mountains, bear-people, and other kinds of unpleasantness. The Borderlands people had a reputation for feuding and lawbreaking, and some said they belonged to the Republic only because nobody else wanted to bother with them.

The page led her into the Beehive. The walls in the entryway to the Beehive were painted in a subdued green. She heard a banging echoing from far off and sensed that something vast crossed the tunnel far ahead.

The passageway sloped up a little and Ileth got the sense of light ahead, which must have been from the vast round chamber crowning the Beehive where the dragons met, the Rotunda. She knew of it and had seen it in paintings. The page cut short her anticipation of finally seeing it and ducked down a narrow (even for human size) side passage and they descended through a mix of natural, tunneled, and improved alleys, lit by lamps or the cheapest and smelliest of candles. Other small tunnels led off at the lights, some emitting noises and smells. The page rattled off names: some almost poetic, like Granthan’s Bloody End, some strictly utilitarian, like Coal Shaft. They came to another wide dragon passage. The air was oily and smelled of dragons and the oliban braziers.

“This is the Under Ring at last. Ottavia’s troupe is here. You haven’t been in here?”

“Just the Catch Basin and the kitchens.”

“At the top you have the big hall above where the dragons meet, the Rotunda. The Rotunda is where the Dragon Horn is too; you may have heard it when they opened the gate to let you applicants in, if you were there that morning. The Over Ring is beneath that and connected to it. Most of the dragons live in the Over Ring. That’s where we entered. The Under Ring, that’s mostly for the younger dragons. Then there’s the Kitchens; it’s also a ring, but we just call it the Kitchens. At the bottom there’s the Cellars; the tunnels there branch out like a big starfish. There’s a dragon living in the Cellars, I’m told. Dunno if he guards the stores down there or what, but he practically never leaves. If we get a female who wants to lay her eggs, she goes down there a lot too, just because it’s quiet and she can be at ease without noise all the time. We just came down what’s called the West Twist. There’s the East Stair too; there are some rooms off the landings there. The Dancers’ Quarter is off the East Stair.”

“Rotunda, Over Ring, Under Ring . . . Kitchens, Cellars. West Twist . . . East Stairs.” By reciting the words syllable by syllable she hardly stuttered. He’d left out some parts she’d already heard about, like the flight cave, where dragons and dragoneers met and readied themselves for a flight, and the lighthouse, and the Chimney, a sort of air-circulation shaft the dragons used to climb between levels quickly.

“Lots more, but that will get you started,” the page said. “Busy as a beehive here, sure enough. When I was first apprenticed, I helped the physikers, stitching dragon wings and pulling broken scale. We saw a lot of the dancers. People say that the troupe’s just an excuse to give the dragoneers some—well, it’s venting. They do help keep the dragons calm, even if their outfits would be a scandal in Vyenn. The dragoneers leave ’em alone. Mostly. They earn their tuck and kip, by my oath. I wouldn’t want to extract a highpoon point without a dancer or two around to keep the beast’s mind off the pain. Some of the females like the dancers too, but for the art and music of it being soothing, more than sucking in scent.”

He took her to an entrance that wasn’t much more than a shaped crack in the wall. The crack was surrounded by its own decorative painted border in lively reds and whites. The doorway had been painted with cryptic signs by a succession of artists, or perhaps one gifted painter trying to look like several. She recognized an icon or two of religious symbolism, and one was a mark that a hunter would sometimes carve into trees up north to commemorate the spot where he brought down a beast, but the rest were a mystery to her.

A velvet curtain blocked the short passageway at the inside.

“Master’s page, with Novice Ileth and a message for the Charge,” the page said into the curtain.

“Come in and be welcome.”

He opened the curtain. The rings made a good deal of noise as they moved along the bar, clattering like a basket full of dropped finger cymbals. Maybe they were designed that way.

The voice turned out to be Peak, whom Ileth had met at the pile-in last night. She was massaging her feet with something medicinal-smelling, and the hair about her face was matted with sweat.

“Didn’t expect to see you again so soon,” Peak said. The page looked confused but Ileth gave a tentative wave.

“May I land her with you? She needs to speak to the Charge,” the page said. Peak didn’t stop working her feet.

The chamber within wasn’t cavelike at all. It was more like a great tent from a story of an exotic land. It was heated by a little stove with a teakettle on and a pipe to carry away the smoke. Three matching stools sat around the stove. Curtains and rugs and tenting and netting covered it from floor to ceiling. Oil lamps, each of a different design and none native to the Vales, lit the area, either hanging from loops driven into the ceiling or in small alcoves in the wall. There were trunks and cases scattered about, and a folding desk with writing things atop it.

“Ottavia is in Vyenn and not expected back until late.”

“Ileth here has asked to be a dancer.” Which wasn’t exactly how events had unfolded, but perhaps this was some ritual. “I have a note from the Master of Novices.”

“That is news she’ll want to hear. She was hoping for someone from this batch. Does this have anything to do with the pile-in?”

“I’ve been turned out of the Manor,” Ileth said. The news would pass through the Beehive anyway; she might as well own up to it.

“Mmmmm,” Peak said, as though she were the third disgraced girl dropped off that morning.

The page dropped his note on a metal tray by the writing things. “He said the note was important.”

“The Serpentine doesn’t run on fish and dragon wings, but paper,” Peak said. “I’ll see that it’s brought to her attention.”

The page thanked her, said good luck to Ileth, and bowed out. He closed the noisy curtain behind him.

Peak slipped into a quilted robe and put on wood and leather clogs. “I shall dash down and tell Ottavia now. She’s not in Vyenn; she’s arguing with the laundry. I just didn’t want Muggins there to think every time a Master’s page shows up, we jump about like trained monkeys. Now whether Ottavia rearranges her day to sort you out, I can’t know. If not, just wait here. Lie down on the cushions and put your feet up if you like. We all do. You’ll soon learn to be off your feet whenever you get a chance.”

Ileth did not have to wait long. Though she didn’t find the nerve to just lie down on one of the cushions with her feet up, after testing the ointment Peak had been using on her feet by rubbing it between her finger and thumb, she went over to one of the cases that had one of those eye-catching boxes atop it and examined it.

It was at the very least painted with gold, with pearls on the lid and luxuriously heavy. Ileth gulped. She supposed it was safe enough here, in the heart of a fortress filled with dragons, but from the weight of the thing she guessed it would buy a new tin roof and windows entire for the Captain’s Lodge with enough left over to replace every stick of furniture and add a plush carpet or two.

Daring, she opened it. The interior had a small mirror and a perfectly oval seashell with a reclining nude figure painted in it, her long hair artfully maintaining her modesty. It also played a delicate tune. A music box!

She’d seen a few before, though nothing like this one. It sounded as though two sets of different chimes were playing. The tune seemed content to play forever. She closed it again.

She was sniffing at the tea—it was exotically spiced and vaguely smoky—when her new Master (perhaps!) arrived. She swept the curtain aside with a metallic crash that startled Ileth.

Ottavia Imperene, Charge to the Dragon Dancers, was one of those women who combined maiden, mother, and crone all in one person. Her hair was thin and drawn up into a simple bun, with a great deal of gray showing among the brown, which accounted for the crone, and she clasped a light walking stick in one fleshless hand. Lines about her eyes and the firm set of her mouth and a certain air of authority suggested mother. Ileth couldn’t help but be drawn to her eyes, bright with vivacity, and her smooth carriage as she crossed the tented chamber to greet her new novice. Ottavia Imperene was all maiden when in motion.

Peak worked the curtain and retreated behind a wall of fabric to some other, unknown chamber.

They exchanged names. Ileth mentioned the note, but Ottavia ignored it for now.

“Novice, tell me: what brings you to us here?” she asked. Ileth suspected she already knew the story beginning to end—Peak was at the pile-in and she remembered her excited witness of the affair in the stable stall—and just wanted to see what sort of explanation she’d get.

“The Master of Novices suggested I might . . . f-fit in better here, sira. Until . . . until . . . until yesterday I was working down below the kitchens gutting fish.”

“I heard something about a girl who got into a duel with a man. What’s-his-name, the aging apprentice, stuck there like a rotting tooth? You were the duelist?”

“His name was—is Gorgantern.”

She tapped her walking stick, once, hard on the floor. “If I wanted trivia like his name I would have asked you. Answer the question.”

“Yes, sira, I fought the duel—the duel you heard about.”

The Charge to the Dancers walked around her, evaluating her. “You’ve never danced before.”

She wasn’t sure if she should turn and face her when she talked—that would be the polite thing to do—but the Charge seemed engrossed in her calves. “Certainly I’ve danced, sira. Up on—”

“I don’t mean gathering-room parties. I meant as a trained entertainer.”

“No. Not . . . Nothing like that.”

“Your arms are too long.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Proportionally. Were you not fed properly as a child? Big feet, too, but that can be good, if they’re strong. Well, if Caseen will send me no one else, a girl built like a blighter will do. At least you’re pretty. You may grow into a beauty, which makes those arms all the more a shame.”

Ileth thought it best to remain silent, as she hadn’t been asked anything.

“Health good? Apart from the stutter? Are you a fainter? Get out of breath? Are you much used to running?”

“I’ve run all the way up the outer stairs, and back down again.” Maybe she had something to be grateful to Gorgantern for, after all.

“Do you read music?”

“No.”

“You know what we do here?” the Charge asked.

“You dance for the dragons.”

“I said ‘we,’ so you should use it too, if you’re to join us.”

“We dance for the dragons, sira.”

“Why did you come to the Serpentine?”

She’d never heard it put so directly. “To be around dragons.”

Ottavia twitched her nose. “When you did dance, at parties and so on, how did it make you feel?”

“Feel? I . . . loved it. When I’ve had an opportunity.” There weren’t many gatherings in the Freesand to begin with, and even fewer invitations to parties to a girl from the Captain’s Lodge. The Captain didn’t care for music.

“Do you have reservations about joining us? Think you’ve fallen into a den of whores?”

She gasped at that. “No!”

“Then you don’t know much about the world. In Asposis or Sammerdam, court dancers not all that different from our method are often involved with the scions of great names. They like to take them as lovers and show them off, like a hunting falcon or the latest in racing horses.”

The Charge said all that with a matter-of-factness, as if she’d been discussing nothing more controversial than the weather. She went on: “’Tis quite the cockade for the bucks to have a dancer on your arm at certain gatherings. Much better than an actress, I mean, any jade can put on a wig, some face powder, smudge her eyes, and call herself an actress. Being a dancer takes training and work. I can watch someone walk through a crowded room once and I’ll tell you whether they’re a dancer or no. You’re not a trophy here, you’re a skilled dragon-tender. We’re here for the dragons, not the men. At least not under me, or the woman who instructed me, or the woman before her. Even if you wish to be more like the dancers in Asposis. No social climbing on your back.”

“Understood, sira.” Her Charge seemed to demand precision when you answered her. Ileth was more than a little frightened by her demanding manner.

“Relax, girl. I believe most any girl can dragon dance well enough to soothe a dragon if she works hard at it.” Ottavia wasn’t just formidable, she was a mind-reader. “It’s just a matter of practice, sweat, and being able to keep to the music.”

Mentally, Ileth added that at least you didn’t have to speak much when you danced, unless it was far different than she imagined. “I should like to try,” she said.

“Excellent! Don’t worry about never having danced before. It would have gone worse for you if it turned out you were a professional. I won’t have to break any bad habits.”

The Charge summoned a dancer named Zusya. She was curvier than Ottavia or Peak but moved with restrained energy, like a held-back horse eager for a gallop. “Zusya, I’m sorry to steal your day off. Find Ileth here a berth, do a pass-round for some training clothes, teach her to stand for drill, and then feed her. Add her to both drill lists indefinitely. That should be ample for today. You can be excused all of tomorrow, Zusya. There’s nothing on. Go into Vyenn if you like. I’ll manage myself if there’s an emergency.”

Like Ileth, Zusya was dressed in a ratty men’s work shirt that was even more of a bad fit for her than Ileth’s, but she’d tied her apprentice sash at the waist and turned the bottom into a slanted fringe.

“With certainty, sira.” Zusya spoke rapidly and well, but her phrasings didn’t sound quite right and she accented her words as one who’d learned Montangyan as a second tongue. Her eyes had an intriguing shape to them.

“First, your berth . . .”

As in the Manor, the dancers lived in tight quarters, dividing their bed-space with curtains. Ileth and the other dancers, with the exception of their Charge, lived in a dim, triangular tunnel called the Notch. It reminded Ileth of a cramped part of a ship she’d once visited with the Captain (who had once commanded her), a deck where the sailors slept in piggy warmth called the in-between. A man of ordinary height could just stand outside the curtains, and the cavern roof sloped down to anchored woodwork holding rope-net beds with mattresses and bedding. The Notch opened up on a cistern room that had Sammerdam-style taps for drinking and washing, and a wood-walled toilet cabinet and drain in the corner for elimination and disposing of wash water. A nice wooden lattice in the cabinet built around the drain saved your feet from soil.

In the center of the Notch, where it was widest, an iron stove warmed the place and had a few pots hanging over it for cooking. “The big red-painted one is for boiling laundry, so don’t be a clever-clog like Vii and try and win our favor by making a big bowl of Mother’s famous soup in it,” Zusya said. “Don’t go off and leave your monthly dressings in it to boil clean either or you’ll be up at the midnight bell doing drills and fatigues with Peak birch-thrashing you to tempo-count.”

Zusya turned around and continued speaking while walking backward through the sleeping quarters. It made Ileth nervous, but whenever she looked about to plow into something—like the steaming stove—she executed a brisk hop and navigated around it. “This was once quarters for an order of monks. Supposedly they watched the dragons sleep on astrologically important days, and how the dragon slept foretold the future. Something like that. They’re long gone.

“Here’s yours.” She pulled aside a curtain and Ileth examined the lightless corner. A bed with rope supports and a linenless, sweat-stained mattress were all the room held, unless you counted some circles of guttered wax candles atop a little shelf carved into the wall.

“Some put their religious statues or icons in that. I have a spare caduceus you can hang on the wall, if you do your devotions,” Zusya said. “Don’t despair, there are usually linens on market days and you can paint if you want. Has your family money for a good mirror? It would be so nice to get another good mirror in here. I am aware that there is no window. Sunlight is hard to come by in the Beehive, I’m afraid. To make up for this we do our reading and sewing outside in almost any weather. Or study. Do you have tutors come?”

“No.”

“Ah, well, more time for drills or attending the dragons, then.”

“It’s fine. It’s actually roomier than my Manor space.”

“You’re next to Vii. The next spot after Vii’s, the one with the yellow curtain, is Preen’s. She has a wonderful tea-kit with a huge well that she puts guttered candles under. Has tea on it all day. We’ve had as many as nine taking tea with her. Her father is in the tea trade. Or maybe it’s he owns ships that bring the tea. I forget. He sends her the stuff by the tenweight.”

Ileth was used to old leaves livened up with flower petals or a bit of dried fruit. Real, first-steep tea!

“Sorry, you’re newest here so we’ve put you on the end farthest from the stove and next to the washroom. As the newest your job is cleaning the sinks and sluice. But have a cheer, we’ve room for one or two more, so if someone else joins you’ll be senior to them! Vii will be happy you’ve arrived. She won’t have to be the scour anymore. You’ll see her at drills tomorrow morning; she went into Vyenn.

“We eat out of the dragon kitchen. Pure laziness. Such a walk to the dining hall. Occasionally we’ll all go as a troupe, but it’s hard to get everyone together off the music. The fish in the kitchens is all right. It’s almost always fresh, but the other stuff that comes in barrels . . . just watch yourself and trust your nose. Pickled eggs are safe. I eat them instead of meat, and so do the cooks, to get them through the day. The cooks haven’t an idea between them. It’s not worth your life to touch the beef and mutton!”

Zusya, she was learning, was a bit of a chatterbox.

She showed off the taps in the washroom: “We wash often, usually at night to keep the bedding cleaner. Our costumes, well, that’s another story. We earn our keep by sweating, and some of us—I’m one of them—use herbed skin oils too. The dragons are fond of spice. No florals, never florals, they don’t like sweet at all. Best ask if you’re in doubt. You don’t use perfumes, do you?”

Ileth shook her head no. She was already fond of Zusya. You didn’t have to say a word. Ever.

She chattered her way through the laundry procedures, where to get a clean towel or a canvas slipper, and who had the best headache powder.

“Don’t let anyone tell you anything about bathing. Shatha, she’s second oldest after Ottavia, she says a dragon dancer should hardly ever bathe. Nasty thing. Do whatever you like. Hair doesn’t matter much; again, Peak’s advice on long hair is just that, advice. I don’t think the dragons care. Keep your soldier chop if you want. What you do with the hair on your head and body is your own business. Ottavia will tell you. Peak and Vii will play the old wise woman and say that you mustn’t pluck a hair, as it captures and keeps smell. Nonsense! Shatha grew up in the old court city of Asposis. She shaves her head like a boy being deloused. Just wears wigs. She’s quite popular with the dragons, and not a hair on her head. Just don’t wash with turpentine or use flowery oils and you will be fine.”

“Turpentine?”

“That’s a story for another time,” Zusya said. “Peak played a nasty joke on Vii when she first came.”

“How long have you been a dancer?”

“Five years. I started right from novice, just like you. What are you, thirteen, special admittance?”

“Fourteen. Last spring.”

“Oh, you look a bit younger. I was thirteen when I came through the gate. I lied about my age—shhh. Nineteen in the spring.”

“Did you dance before?”

Zusya laughed. “Tears, no! My parents would have locked me in the attic. My dad kept a tavern, but it wasn’t like some. Dairy men soothing their muscles with beer and swapping stories about cheese. A dancer would have been tossed out on her ear, same as a pimp.”

“So how did you end up here?”

“Master Caseen, he knows people. I don’t know what made him decide I would be happy as a dancer. I guess I’m a bit wild; maybe being sat on all the time by my elders and parents in a cow patch made me a bit flash once I found my feet here. But he sent me to the Charge and I’ve loved the life, once I limbered up my feet. Who else is around the dragons so much, and having fun besides? We are the luckiest of the Serpentine, I think.”

Ileth smiled at that.

“By the way, is that boy Rapoto a good kisser? I’d hate to think that face wasted on someone who couldn’t kiss.”

Gossip spread fast in the Serpentine. Probably that Peak. “It happened so fast. I suppose. Yes.”

“Not much to compare it to? I was the same way when I got here. Don’t delve too much into that. Ottavia’s correct, we’re not bed warmers. Though there’s a dragoneer or two whose bed I wouldn’t mind making warm, given time and tide.

“Now. Attire, the Charge said. I’ll pass a bag around tonight. One thing you’ll learn about dancers: we have clothes and odds-and-ends enough for a year-away school. You won’t be getting rags, either. We’ve all been the scour. It’s good for the soul to put something nice in when a scour’s bag gets brought around. Just remember that when your feet are half callus.”

“Ottavia said something about ‘teach her to stand for drill.’”

“Oh, yes, we’re coming to that. I’ll show you where we drill. Have you been to the Rotunda yet?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Then let’s go. You’d remember it if you’d seen. It’s just above the flight cave on the bay side of the Beehive. There’s a passage out in the center of the floor where the dragons can jump down if they need to get at the flight cave fast from the Rotunda. Ever seen a full-sized dragon leap, by the way? They’re just like cats; they fold themselves up into a crouch and then explode. It’s like a house falling down around you. Down there’s a good place to collect scales; sometimes they miss and knock a few loose.”

“I thought we weren’t supposed to do that.”

“Oh, we’re not. We gather them up and turn them in. Though we will often keep a scale of a favorite dragon as a souvenir. Peak made the prettiest hair clip out of one. Souvenir’s one thing. They just don’t want anyone smuggling them out for coin.”

Zusya, walking backward as she talked, led her up through progressively larger passages until they reached companionways large enough for a dragon to pass through. The human-mined tunnels, though, struck Ileth as irregular, almost organic, like a huge tree had sent its roots through the stone and then was later drilled out and removed.

They passed others now. From somewhere Ileth heard a booming dragon voice say, “Ouch! Careful now.”

Ileth felt the Rotunda before they reached it. Her senses were alive to the light and air and space ahead. Now the floor was elaborately tiled and the walls showed mosaics with writhing knotted shapes twining in and out of each other like vines. She tried not to gape.

The walls curved away and they entered the Rotunda.

Everyone was right about it. The space made you go all still and quiet, like a mouse fallen into the middle of a ballroom.

It felt unnatural to have so much space indoors. She felt the weight of time and historic events; it made her want to walk with slow, gentle steps and keep silent. She supposed the dragons would need a great deal of space to meet. If it also overawed intruders, that was all the better.

“It rains in here sometimes, if they have a crowd in here and the weather is just right,” Zusya said. “They say it was built by dwarves. I find it easy to believe the legends about dwarves when I stand here.”

“Are those—perches?” Ileth asked, walking over to one of the spurs jutting out of the wall.

“The dragons lie on those when they have meetings,” Zusya said. “Someone told me it was modeled after another dragon hall.”

Ileth counted eight perches. But the room would probably hold two or three times that in fully grown dragons if some didn’t mind curling up on the floor. Just above the perches, writing in an unknown, slashing script appeared in a regular ring around the walls. At the pinnacle of the Rotunda was a dark, metallic cavern of shadow. “That’s the mouth of the Dragon Horn. Only a dragon has enough lung to work it. The mouthpiece is down by the flight cave; it runs through the floor, and you can see some of the tube there, see how it gets bigger?” Zusya said, pointing to a greenish tube of metal that gradually widened as it moved from floor to ceiling, engraved with more of those slashing icons. “Loud enough to wake the dead. Turns the whole Rotunda into sort of an echo chamber. But they only blow it a couple times a year. Troth Day, during the exchange of cups. Or if there’s an emergency.

“The dragons don’t always have meetings here. They’re fond of discussing things below, too, in the rain room when they bathe, when there’s just two or three of them. The most favorite grooms work them over down there. Hard duty but they’re rich as anything; it’s the one job in the whole Serpentine where you get to keep all the odds and ends you pry off the dragons and sell. Some tradition going back to before the Republic. They earn it; it’s hot as a kitchen in summer. I’ve had to perform there, too, and then you just sit quietly and let the sweat pour off you while they talk. Drink a lot of water and bring a hunk of salt to lick if you have to dance in the rain room.”

She took Ileth over to the well-like hole, if hole was the right word for such a drop. It was as big around as a castle tower.

“Down there is where we drill. Used to be the main grooming room, before they built the new one with the skylights, and it’s still used for that, sometimes. There’s an easier route to it, but I thought it would be nice if you had a good look at the Rotunda first. There are big mirrors in there. Wall of Mirrors, it’s called. Dragons like to look at themselves too, and they’re the biggest mirrors in the Vales. Bigger than at the Silver Palace in Asposis, Shatha says. They had to manufacture them right here, I’m told. It’s a miracle they’re intact, the way the dragons whip about with their tails when they’re in a hurry. Maybe they figured that when they worked out the size of the well.”

“Do they jump down on you—us when we’re doing drills?”

“I’ve never had that happen. Not even close. Often there’s a dragon or two watching us drill. They tell us to get out of the way when they climb down. That floor is thick hardwood beams covered with planking, like a ship’s deck. It’s springy, easier on the feet. I forget, you’re from a nautical family or something?”

A flash of movement caught Ileth’s eye. A green dragon scrambled out of an entrance to the Rotunda opposite, hopped down into the well, and disappeared into a wide, sloping passage. A leather case bounced at its position where it was slung at the base of her neck. She was smallish, and skin covered with scale-stubbles showed where her wings had uncased and scar tissue was slowly being covered with scale. Her wing-assisted leap allowed her to land with surprisingly little noise for a creature so large. Ileth noticed that the female kept her claws semiretracted (unlike a cat’s claws, they couldn’t disappear completely, but they did retreat like a turtle’s head pulling back into its shell).

A young man with his long hair tied tightly back emerged from the same entrance and put his hands on his knees, half collapsing from what looked to be an exhausting run keeping up with a four-legged dragon.

When he could finally draw breath he shouted: “Jizara! You forgot your salve!”

Zusya dismissed the scene with a wave. “There’s always excitement around the flight cave. I wouldn’t care to keep track of all the comings and goings.”

“How often do we perform?”

“We’re ready all the time, more so than the Guards, I’d say, in case there’s an emergency. The dragons are polite about it; they’ll ask if it’s convenient to perform. The answer is yes. Always yes. Understand? We sweat for our supper.”

Zusya took her down a carved set of steps going down to the Wall of Mirrors.

The floor in here had an inlaid wood design that made her think of a compass, but the mirrors were the real attraction. Never mind their size, she’d never seen mirrors that could compare to these in their lack of flaws. Each mirror was perhaps three times as tall as she was. Ileth regarded herself in the faultless reflection, tried a few smiles and poses on for size.

Her guide pulled up a little thing that was like a chair without a seat or a miniature small drying rack that could easily be moved in front of a fireplace. It came up to about her bottom rib. On someone as tall as Ottavia, it was probably hip-high.

“This is your support. You’ll need it, and not just at first. Even the most experienced dancer spends a long time at her support.”

With that, Zusya taught her how to stand. They stripped down to their sheaths and overshirts. Zusya had the well-defined leg muscles of a draft ox.

They spent Ileth’s whole first afternoon just working on how to stand before a dance, going up piece by piece on her body and back down it again. Dancing was all in the feet. Except the part that wasn’t all in the feet and was in fact all in your central muscles around your spine, it was all in that. And then there was the part that said dancing was all in how you held your head and the way it kept steady no matter what your body was doing . . .

She accepted this sort of musicless instruction until the dinner bell sounded. When she was sweating and exhausted from learning how to stand, Zusya showed her some stretches on the support: raising her leg, bending her back across it, even sitting beneath it with her arms up in the way she’d once seen a prisoner tied to a boat’s mast when they brought him in.

That night Vii, the previous scour at the bottom of the dancing chain, presented her with what would become her favorite piece of dance attire. Vii was a plain sort of girl not much older than Ileth with a sculptor’s model of a body. She’d fallen in love with dragon dancing and defied her family’s wishes to continue the art. They’d even publicly disowned her (though they supported her privately with a generous allowance). Vii gave her a sheath of a lovely flexible weave and material that made up for the fit, a color like lilacs, with little sewn-in bits of hairlike baleen at the bust to offer extra support that Ileth didn’t yet have the breasts to truly require. Other dancers donated delicate dance skirts that were no thicker than a fog, canvas slippers, and hose, and Ottavia gave her a good set of washcloths and towels. One of the towels was so vast and thick Ileth slept under it on her rope bed.

The drills started the next day. Ottavia led them. There were two distinct activities, drills of dance moves and fatigues—exercises of one kind or another. Ileth found the drills more fatiguing and the fatigues more like drills because they went on and on and on until your muscles quivered and your body turned to porridge. Ottavia paid constant attention to Ileth, often coming over to nudge her this way and that with her walking stick. At a break, gulping water from the nearby cistern that had been installed for grooming the dragons, one of her fellow dancers said she was lucky. More experienced dancers got a rap on the shin or the forearm with it for being inattentive or slacking. She showed a thumb-sized bruise just above her ankle as proof.

After the drills and fatigues they did dance a little, as the others rested while each exhibited the progress they’d made on routines. Ileth didn’t understand why there had to be so many leaps and spins and falls to the floor and rises and arm gestures if the only point was to work up a soothing sweat for the dragons, but then she remembered Heem Deklamp’s visit to the Manor and his speech about her duty being to just learn how things worked in the Serpentine.

The other dancers were deeply respectful and attentive to Ottavia. For the whole group of them to be collectively mad seemed improbable, so Ileth just accepted that it was vitally important for the well-being of the dragons that your toes pointed in unnatural directions and that you kept your shoulders relaxed and open even with your arms reaching above your head.

For music on the exhibitions Ottavia brought out a music box, which played a simple tune they called “The Maiden’s Serenade.” Ottavia taught Ileth a simple dance she could do with it; you only faced one direction, toward the mirrors, and took but three steps from side to side and back again, with some simple arm movements, raising them to shoulder height and then bringing them down again as if cradling a baby. At the end you bowed in four directions. After she practiced it, first placing her weight on one leg and then the other, back and forth, back and forth, always trying to stand correctly as she’d been taught the day before, all the other drillers, starting with Ottavia herself, hugged her.

“See, you can be a dragon dancer. Welcome to the troupe,” Ottavia said.

Then the real work began.