Novice Dragoneer

8

Zusya was right. The drills made parts of her body ache that she didn’t know existed.

The movements all had names, and the names were a mix of the movement itself and the body part, or direction, involved. But it was all built around the idea of your earth leg, the one you stood on, and your air leg, the one performing its evolution. In an actual dance, they switched constantly, even rapidly in some of the leaps and turns.

The more senior dancers taught Ileth her own anatomy along with leg raises and arm positions. She wondered if the odd poses and demands on the muscles had a reason other than to make you as sore as possible and sweat out your earlobes. Though you could say this for the relentless discipline of dragon dancing: all of her fellow dancers were sleek and bright-eyed, with seemingly boundless energy and an even, graceful carriage that would be the envy of even someone as mirror-polished as Santeel Dun Troot. Ottavia barked out corrections to the other dancers for what seemed like minutiae, and if you failed to attend to the correction she’d tap you on the offending limb with her cane. Well, you got a tap at first. Later, it seemed like something between the gentle prod of a shepherd on a wayward lamb and the corrective whack of a mother on a disobedient child.

Ileth found the drills calculated to be just hard enough to bring out the sweat but not so hard that you collapsed exhausted after your tune. They kept at it through entire mornings sometimes. Ottavia would sort the dancers into little groups; the more senior ones would exhibit some movement, and the rest of them, including Ileth, would do their best to copy it.

But on the other hand, she did get to hear music every day, even if it was just from one of Ottavia’s many music boxes. There’d been very little music in the Lodge, as the Captain couldn’t stand it. Thinking about the various dances they’d worked through at night in her rope bed, she decided she was hearing more music daily than all but the wealthy families who might have their children constantly at practice with instruments and keyboards.

For all the fresh joy of daily music, the art itself could be intensely frustrating. She mixed up her feet, turning to the right when she should go left, continuing with one evolution while the other dancers, in unison, had switched to the next leg lift or bend. On their breaks she often broke down and cried in the little break room. The most she got out of the other dancers was a gentle pat when they saw her with her face in her hands, sobbing.

“Don’t take it so. You’re new. Catch your breath,” Zusya said, putting a warming blanket about her.

“You have to eat more,” Peak advised her one evening when they were all having tea. “Eat all the time, every chance you get, especially at the beginning. Have pickled eggs and drink the juice. You feel like you’re wasting away. You’re not; you’re rebuilding.”

Ileth took the advice about eating to heart and trotted across the Long Bridge to Joai’s little hole-and-corner kitchen, where she’d bathed and eaten on the day she’d been admitted to the Serpentine. Joai said most of the food in the Beehive wasn’t fit for cat meat (true enough, though the dragons chucked it down) and she was too desperate to wait for the dinner bell. Joai, who seemed to sense that a dragon dancer’s life needed an extra plate here and there, shoveled out soup that she called “Odds and Ends” with fat sausages floating in it like geese on a lake.

“You like being a dancer?” Joai asked.

“It’s b-better than the Catch Basin. I hear music all the time. I like that. I didn’t have much as a child.”

“I thought you wanted to ride dragons someday.”

She paused, a spoonful of soup in one hand and a sausage on a fancy three-tine fork in the other.

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“Well, being a dancer is nice, if you like dragons. You’re around them all the time. But I never heard of one going on to become a dragoneer. I’d just like to see you use that whistle someday, is all.”

Joai’s comment took some of the glow off her growing strength as a dancer.

“Your technique is not yet there, but you move well,” Ottavia said, at the conclusion of her first ten days. They sat together at her little writing desk, having tea and nuts. Ottavia seemed to exist on nothing but tea and bags of nuts and a single glass of wine every night. “Your joy in this lets one overlook your mistakes. I even forget those arms of yours now and then.”

Dax, their jack-of-all-trades musician, accompanied her first real performance. He was of Vyenn and not the Serpentine, Sammerdam-bred, and he had a quick way of speaking, as though his throat were on fire and the words keen to escape. He couldn’t always work with the dancers, as he was frequently in demand in Vyenn. Even more curiously, he seemed to be able to come and go from the fortress at will, something only the wingmen and dragoneers were allowed. Zusya told her he’d been brought in to help out with the All-Comers Feast a decade or so back and made himself so useful to the Masters that he stayed on as kind of a specialist, like the engineers sometimes brought in to say whether it was safe to take an old wall down or fix the Beehive’s drains.

That first true dragon dance they taught her to perform on her own was a simple one, called the Invocation. It was a tribute to an old priestly rite going back before the Republic, before the Catastrophes, perhaps even before Old Hypatian civilization where a priest called on the spirits of earth, air, fire, and water. You simply did a skip run forward on the balls of your feet, then did a slide into a bow where you folded yourself over your right outstretched leg, the other leg tucked under you, hands reaching ahead and head down against your knee in supplication. Roll over, rise up on both arms as the feet slide out, launch yourself to your feet, go to another compass point, and repeat. The jump-up became progressively harder as you tired, but Ottavia demanded that each be performed identically. Repeat until the music stopped.

They showed Ileth off late one evening in the hall in front of Shrentine, a female dragon who had encouraged Ottavia’s attempts to perfect the art since her early days at the Serpentine and now was something of a patroness to the dancers. Shrentine had a musical ear and swayed about herself when music was playing. Shrentine had a dream of putting together a musical complement of dozens of musicians playing to accompany a stage full of dancers.

“Is art universal, the music and dance, for no words needed,” she said in her heavily accented, almost unintelligible Montangyan.

Ottavia had Dax play her an appropriate tune on his impeller, his preferred instrument—though he seemed able to play anything, whether it was keyed, plucked, bowed, or blown—a fascinating contraption worked by a hand crank that combined a keyboard that worked the strings and the ability to somehow produce a mournful, vibrating bass note. If you turned your back and had him play you a tune on his impeller, you’d swear before a jury that there were three musicians playing (he slapped the curvy wooden case to make a drumming sound with it as well).

She danced through the evolutions, trying to ignore everything but the music.

When the music ended, she bent with legs and waist in the stance she’d been taught, first to Shrentine, then to Ottavia and the troupe, and finally, lingeringly, to Dax. They all applauded. The dragon opened her wings a little and shivered them, making a sound like someone flapping leather curtains with a whip-crack, and folded them up again.

“Ottavia, this one too many times,” the dragon-dame rumbled. Ileth actually only made out Ottavia’s name and the word one; Zusya had to explain to her what she said. It took some time to get an ear for Shrentine’s pronunciation. But at least she tried. Ileth had heard that some of the dragons talked to humans only in Hypatian, figuring they’d learned one human tongue eight hundred years ago and it was too much bother to learn another.

“Your hands still need work,” Shatha said from beneath an elaborate wig. “Your fingers were all over the place when you stepped. Your costume—”

Peak nudged her aside with something that might have been a pinch.

“Four rounds, all prettily done, before you started to give out,” Peak said. “Vii, you could learn something from her. You’re still thinking too much and getting behind the music. Shows in your face. Ileth gets it wrong, but she moves with the beat.”

Ileth nodded through the criticism, bobbing out thank-yous with body language. That was the lovely thing about dance: you didn’t have to speak.

“Delightful! You live through the music!” Dax said, coming forward. He had a funny way of standing when talking informally with “his girls,” as he called the dancers, with his hips askew and facing a different direction than his shoulders, and his head somewhere in between. Ileth still didn’t know quite what to make of him; she’d been taught from an early age to square off your body so it aligned with the person you were addressing. But he meant no insult; he never addressed her, or anyone, in anything but a kindly tone. He kissed her somewhere in the neighborhood of each ear, swinging the impeller on its strap neatly behind him. His beard smelled of sandalwood oil and he had sweat streaking the powder under his traditional musician’s wig, which he’d donned for the occasion. Wigs, especially on men, were old-fashioned and frowned on by the more opinionated of the Republic’s assigns, but Dax, she was learning, did things his own way.

“Promising,” Ottavia said, bringing up the rear of congratulations.

That night Ileth found her bedding wetted. Someone had dumped a bucket of water onto her sleeping pad. It would take days to properly dry. She didn’t say anything, wondering if it was some welcoming ritual. She rolled up the pad and dragged it down to the kitchens and spent an hour toasting the worst of the wetness out of it while the cooks, cleaning up after sending up the dragons’ dinner, invented obvious jokes about her no longer being a virgin dancer until they became bored and left her alone. Once it was dry enough that hanging would do the rest, she upended her crude wooden bed, hung the mattress on it, and slept on the floor.

Ottavia roused her early the next morning, chopping off the other end of her shortened sleeping time. Only Preen was up, at the little stove boiling a big pot of water for her tea-well, but then she was always the first to rise. She liked to read in the quiet before the day began. Her trunk had a layer of books at the bottom beneath all the sheaths, wraps, scarves, and hose of a dragon dancer.

Ottavia waited to speak until she was fully awake. She had that lamp-oil smell of the dragons on her—she must have been around them either very late or very early. She supposed, living in the Beehive, that they all had a slight airborne dragon-taint, though after a few days your overwhelmed nose simply gave up and you ceased noticing it so much unless you thought about it.

“I have a job for you, Ileth. Kind of an odd one, but it’s within your abilities and I’m caught between frying pan and fire. It will take you away from us for a while—no, not like that, still in the Beehive. You can bring a support down and do your drills and stretches.”

“Yes, sira,” Ileth said, wiping the sleep out of her eyes.

“I’m always short dancers, but it’s worse than usual. I committed to a performance in Zland and Peak is taking a couple with her for that, so my dancers will be overworked keeping up here. Good thing for us some of the males and dragoneers are out for the hunts. But to your case: the job is basically companionship for an old dragon. So old he’ll never leave here again, I expect, until he breathes his last. All you have to do is sit with him between your drills, and sleep down there to keep your smell about. You impressed the Masters sitting on the doorstep, I hear. I should think you could sit next to a dragon for a good long while.”

Ileth had picked up enough of the currents in traveling up and down the Serpentine that she knew that anytime you were assigned a dragon it was a matter of importance. She was wide awake now. “Yes, sira.”

“We call him the Lodger. If he has another name nobody’s told me. He sleeps most of the time, only eats now and then. That’s the problem, I understand. He hasn’t eaten for weeks now. A few days with a dancer might rouse his appetite. It’s worked before. Then again, it might not, so whatever happens, don’t worry—it’s not your fault. As I said, he’s very old. The physiker says he’s older than any tree, even redwoods.”

Ileth nodded.

“You don’t have to do anything fancy except move about at his nose end where he can smell you. He’s down in the Cellars, so it’ll be quiet for you.”

“May I . . . ask a question? Not to do with this Lodger.”

“Feel free.”

“Why is Peak . . . going to Zland? Are there dragons there?”

“Oh, no, this is a bit of a couple things. People like entertainments, and dragon dancers are curiosities. Peak and two others will perform in a music hall. It’s been a nightmare working out the music, and Fates know what she’ll do for scenery. But there’s a great deal of interest. I had a letter saying they’ve added another week of performances and begging my forgiveness. That’s Zland for you. Never know what those people will go mad about.

“Our costumes would be considered obscene in Asposis or the rural districts. Zland is artsy and freer about such things. It’s because this famous painter, Risso Heem Tyr, have you heard of him? No? Well, he lives there now. You could say he’s the center point of the Republic’s art culture; it all revolves around him. About two years back he showed up here to paint a dragon on commission, and as sort of a side project he did a series of studies of the dragon dancers—I was one of his models, I’m not too modest to say. I’d like to see the actual painting of me sometime; all I saw was sketching on canvas. They caught on for some reason, maybe the costumes again. One way and another he’s made enough money to build the finest house in Zland. He’s paying for the trip, with a generous allowance for the dancers besides, going to do his sketches when they practice and so on. I thought Peak would be ideal for him. She has the most beautiful head of hair in the Serpentine, Heem Tyr is famous for the detail he puts into hair, and she knows how to use it when she dances. If any of us should be in a painting, it should be she.”

Ottavia was about to accompany her to the Cellars when Shatha woke up with a leg cramp that made her cry out and Ottavia knelt down to work the muscle loose.

Ileth, curious about this dragon, wanted to be off on her task. And she was fiercely hungry now that she was fully awake.

“I can find my way. I’ll ask in the kitchens and pick up some breakfast while I’m there.”

She gathered up her little basin of hygiene tools, took one of the extra supports kept in the Notch for morning stretches, stuffed a spare drill-sheath into her sleeve, and set off for the Cellars.

Outside the kitchens she ran into the Duskirk youth, pushing a huge sort of wheeled bin filled with smoked fish.

She fell into step beside him. He didn’t object to her company and the fish were beyond caring. After a few stuttering pleasantries, she asked him for directions to this “Lodger.”

Duskirk moved his bin to the side. “I’ll show you. It’s a slow morning, lots of dragons out for the hunts.”

He led her to the lift, in a vertical tunnel. The lift was a kind of platform on wheels, save that the wheels ran on rails going vertically. Four other carts of fish and one fellow apprentice already stood there.

“Picked up a stray dancer,” Duskirk said.

“Aren’t you having a morning, Tosser.”

“Down first, Rael,” Duskirk told the young man at the device that reminded Ileth of a handbrake on a beer wagon. The man at the device put a speaking-trumpet to his lips and shouted an order up.

“This lodger-dragon. I am to keep him company,” Ileth explained.

“Don’t know much about him,” Duskirk said. “He’s not a pensioner. They generally go out to big landholders who can afford the glamor of a dragon about the place. I don’t think he ever flew for us, but I know he had something to do with the foundation of the Vale alliance in the early days. He was here for the Troth, I know that. Way before the Republic. Something about the whole arrangement here was his doing. You’d have to ask one of the Masters.”

“So they have him stay out of gratitude?”

“Oh, nothing to do with the Masters, or even the Charge. It’s the beasts. Dragons are touchy about their elders. They’re imaginative enough to see themselves old and weak and vulnerable. I think if we tried to get rid of him there’d be a . . . well, I don’t know what there’d be, but I wouldn’t care to see it. In fine summer weather, the year after I arrived, a couple of the younger dragons helped him climb out and spend a few days in the sun. He didn’t feel up to it this year, I guess. In decline, seems like.”

The lift started down. She felt the air move and grow colder. They had to be below lake level. She wondered how they’d dug this level so it stayed dry, or was it carved out of solid rock? She didn’t know why such things interested her; engineering wasn’t considered a feminine pursuit, but she liked to know what ship had the highest mast or where the deepest mine was. When she was first learning her letters and asking questions, the Captain used to joke that she should travel around and find out all those things and put it in a “Book of Useless Facts.”

They arrived at the bottom. It was damp and dirty at the bottom of the shaft.

“Cellars,” Duskirk said, pointing to a tunnel. “You can always climb back up. There’s a drilled-in ladder right next to the track on either side of it. There’s also a ramped tunnel off the main junction in the center. It’s the only one that leads up. It’s a bit roundabout, but you’ll get to the kitchens eventually.”

“You can show her the way,” his workmate said. “I’ll get these offloaded. Just don’t spew all over her when you get a whiff of the Lodger. He’s ranker than rank.”

Duskirk wrapped an armful of smoked fish in his apron. “Maybe you’ll give him an appetite.”

“I believe that’s the idea.”

Duskirk led her down the hall. This one was practically lightless. No magic crystals or even smelly candles were wasted on the Cellars. A lamp glowed somewhere ahead and their eyes soon adjusted to the darkness. Their passageway was narrow, not because of the tunnel but because the sides were crowded with crates and mysterious tools and pieces of equipment beneath tarry canvas.

“Repair gear for the lift, I think,” Duskirk said, tapping a metal-rimmed wheel.

They reached the junction of the passages (yes, there were five, like a starfish, if you didn’t count the one leading up toward the kitchen level) where the lamplight was, then passed an apprentice and novice who had no occupation beyond having moved a few barrels so they could kneel and throw dice against the wall. They were using a few coins, bits of broken dragon scale, and buttons as wagers.

Ileth had seen both of them before. They had often come up to the Catch Basin and spoken to the fishermen, and one of them was the novice who’d been oathed in next to her. Quith had solved the mystery of his arrival without her noticing it: he’d been flown in by his father, a dragoneer. They had one or two favorite fishermen and sometimes went into the shelter on their boats. She’d assumed they were drinking or enjoying tobacco.

“Uh, Yael, you’re supposed to warn—” the older of the two said.

“Got a coin for a throw at Boone?” the other asked.

“She’s to stay with the Lodger for a while. Ileth, these two fine young gentlemen are Griff and Zante.”

“Zan to my friends,” Zante, the one who’d invited her to “throw,” said, rubbing his close-cropped head. “You’re the new dancer. Heard about you. Put down in blue, right?”

The one called Griff looked her up and down and licked his lips, quickly, like a lizard. “Leave off, Zan. Griff’s a nickname too. Actually it’s—”

“She’s not impressed by great names,” Duskirk said. “And I think Vor Claymass has his eye on her. Having a Heem in front of your surname’s nothing to that.”

“You need anything, girl, you just tell me,” Griff said. “I’m the man to see down here. How about that, heh? Charge to a whole level of the hive at my age.”

“Starting at the bottom means there’s nowhere to go but up,” Duskirk said. “But don’t credit him overmuch. They just thought he’d do less damage down here. Ileth is here to cheer the Lodger up.”

“Oh, him. He’s in the southeast chamber; it’s the only one with water. Yes, we’ve had no luck feeding him. Just sleeps. I’d say he’s a goner,” Griff said, picking up the dice. Ileth’s growing dislike of the youth crystallized. Imagine speaking of a creature that could be over a thousand years old as though he were a dying mutt.

Duskirk motioned her out of the room and toward a wider, emptier passage, just as dark as the others. She could see faint light at the other end. Ileth imagined Griff licking his lips again as he watched her leave. Her skin tightened and prickled.

She was glad to reach the other end, and gladder for Duskirk’s company. The passage opened up on a cavern. It was about the size of a cozy inn, she decided. You had to step across a gutter to enter the cavern. The gutter was fouled with still water and dragon waste.

A dragon slept within. Most of him was in shadow, but she sensed he was enormous, one of the longer-necked types with a matching tail that never seemed to end.

A portable twin lamp—two oil lights hanging from a cross arm on a stand—was the room’s only light. And one of the lamps was unlit, probably to save oil, because it was full. There was a wall box full of candles, however, so she lit another, set the second lamp alight, and carried her candle in a holder so she could get a better look.

He looked old. Scale faded and not looked after. He had a fleshless, sunken-in look to him everywhere except the eyes, which were half closed but still showed bright golden color. His skin was folded and wrinkled, oddly reminding her of an unmade bed. He had a curious sort of coloring to the scale, dark stripes running vertically all along his body against a rust color. The stripes added to the sunken effect of the skin that had collapsed between his ribs. She wondered if they were some kind of draconic heraldry or tattooing. Dragons of the Serpentine had their deeds dyed onto their wings in decorations she’d heard called laudii. Maybe those stripes were a testament to a more ancient accomplishment. But they looked natural enough.

The Lodger showed no sign of even seeing that she’d come in. He breathed in his sleep with a gentle wheeze. There was a dirty, sour smell about him.

She placed her support, her spare sheath, and the little lidded dish that contained her tooth scrubber, skin scraper, and hairbrush out of the way to one side of the entrance.

Duskirk looked through his meal cart and found the most tempting morsel he could: a flat but tasty specimen Ileth now knew was called a spearfish. Stepping forward, he waved the smoked fish under the dragon’s nose. The dragon’s nostrils twitched, then an eyelid flicked, but the Lodger did nothing more. Duskirk shrugged and turned.

“Leave the fish,” Ileth said. “I haven’t had my breakfast.”

“Please yourself. There’s a big barrel over there with shovels and brushes for . . . uh, his waste and such. Those two woodheads out at the join are supposed to attend to it, but if he goes and you’re stuck here alone at night and can’t stand the smell, you should know about it. If you need help with anything, just send Zante or Griff. I’m pretty sure as a dancer in charge of a dragon you can order them about—same goes for me, for what it’s worth, if the beast needs anything. That’s how it works up there. You dancers outrank everyone but physikers, dragoneers, and wingmen, if nobody’s told you.” He gave her a friendly salute and left.

Too bad she didn’t keep a diary. Received my first subordinate-to-superior salute today, from a feeder who empties out his stomach whenever a dragon belches. Maybe she should ask Falth for a notebook in her next letter, even though her news of Santeel had been reduced to Quith’s gossip when she had the energy to walk to the dining hall for dinner.

Alone (if you didn’t count the dragon!) again, Ileth sat and breakfasted on smoked spearfish and considered that she had the (maybe so, maybe not) ability to order some boys about. As she chewed, she tried to remember some of the Captain’s stories about command. According to his roustabout gang, at one time he’d been considered one of the best masters on the North Coast. She finished, having barely begun on the big fish, and cautiously took a walk around the dragon. He slept close to the wall, on an elevation that made brushing waste into the gutter easier. Suppose he shifted in his sleep? He could easily crush her if she was in the wrong spot between him and the wall with no path to back up. Someone on her trip to the Serpentine had told her that he wouldn’t mix with dragons for love or coin: they could take a man’s head clean off with an accidental flick of a wing. She didn’t know if that was true, but their wings must be strong as thunder to get such a body off the ground. Stories of hollow bones filled with magic gases or bladders in their body that created some kind of buoyancy were probably just that, stories. Even the reduced specimen in front of her looked solid enough.

He wasn’t clean at the back end. Did the groomers not even come down to this level? Perhaps without a dragoneer to check their work, he was rarely tended. She left the cavern again and cast about futilely until she gave up and asked the roustabouts at the barrel for grooming tools.

After a couple of boorish jests about what she could do in exchange for the information, Ileth said she was willing to walk all the way up to Ottavia if need be. They told her to calm down and showed her.

The tools were in a case under the Lodger’s neck, as it turned out, and with their help she rolled his head off it, eliciting a soft snort and a grumble that might have been words. The boys retreated, saying something about it being bad luck to wake a dragon. She found a slime-filled cistern and managed to acquire a bucket with soapy water, another for rinsing, and some rags.

She disturbed a vast array of bugs with her activity. They should inspect the Cellars more often. Ileth considered taking notes and building a case to toss that Griff out on his idle ear. What good was bragging about responsibility if you didn’t carry out the most basic of your duties?

She returned to the Lodger’s chamber and went to work on what she could reach. Well, they wanted her to work up a sweat, and this was as good a way as any.

There wasn’t a functional drain as such down here. The end of the gutter was a hole, but it hardly drained. She poked at it with a hand brush and it began to drain a little faster. She went back for a refill of clean water and to try to work up a lather again with the soap that was apparently indifferent to its effects and found that the Lodger had shifted to expose his other side.

The one facing the wall.

This would be trickier. If he rolled back she’d have to climb atop him sharp as a squirrel with a dog after it or she’d be crushed. She’d never watched the grooms at work and had no idea how they handled such situations. She’d seen stout stepladders and such on the upstairs levels; maybe they used them as braces between a wall and body. She stripped off her overdress so she could climb about more easily. Just in case.

“Hello!” she said loudly.

The dragon’s batlike ear flicked toward her, then drooped again.

“Hello!” she said as loudly as she could without shouting.

One eye opened a little more. The nostrils opened and pulled air hard enough to cause her work shirt to flutter.

“Beg pardon: I need to wash your other side. Could you not squash me, please?”

The dragon gave a tired sigh.

Nothing to do but try. She took her short brush and pole brush and tossed them behind the dragon, then clambered over its neck (weren’t dragons chary about men being about their necks?) with Dath Amrits’s whistle clamped between her teeth and went to work. If he threatened to roll on her she’d blow and climb for all she was worth.

This side was much, much worse. A good deal of scale had fallen out and there were sores of some kind, ugly, with some blood. There didn’t seem to be any pus, she was glad to see, if dragons indeed produced such a thing when they were wounded.

She gently cleaned the sores with the hard soap and water and her newer rags. She struck a nerve or sore spot just behind his rear leg, and the leg kicked out. Luckily the leg lashed out toward the opposite direction of the room from her and she threw herself out of the way as the creature rolled back toward the wall, blowing the whistle for all she was worth.

The dragon’s head came up and shook so that its griff rattled loosely. She was reminded of a dog emerging from a pond.

His eyes blinked a few times and he sniffed.

“Hello . . . hello there,” she said.

“You are not known to me,” the Lodger said, slowly, tiredly, but in decent enough Montangyan.

He explored the air above her, close enough so she could feel the heat (and moisture) of his exhalations.

“You smell like pain. Have they been treating you badly, girl?”

“Not at all. I’m with the d-dancers. I think that might be your blood you are smelling on me.” Strange, how easily words came when she was talking to a dragon. Then again, she’d just had a scare; her heart was pounding.

She sensed a presence behind. The dragon shifted his gaze.

Griff peered around the edge of the chamber, Zante behind him. “We heard . . .”

“The pair of you I know,” the dragon said. “Both of you: be off.” The dragon gave his body an experimental stretch. Again, it reminded her of a dog. A great lanky dog rising from a nap. She’d always thought dragons were like cats in their movements. Maybe they grew more doglike when they aged.

“Right,” Griff said, pulling Zante away.

“She’s not wearing a dress! Those legs, man,” Zante said as they went.

“Useless, those two,” the Lodger said, yawning. “The older one trained as a groom, I think, but they know not the brush or file.”

His forming of human sounds was excellent, and his Montangyan good, but he spoke it in a slow, archaic manner. It reminded her of a very old nursery song about cats and mice, or the hoary phrasings of isolated shepherds she’d run into with her sheep and goats on remote mountainsides high above the Freesand.

“They couldn’t even be bothered to . . . that’s just wicked,” Ileth said.

“Be you my new groom?”

“I’m a dancer.”

“That’s a fine thing, the dancers,” the dragon said. “I think they brought me up on the lift, oh, years back. To see them play. Lots of leaping about and I couldn’t even tell how to keep score. But it does hold one’s attention.”

Ileth gathered up her tools. “They told us it was s-something to do with the . . . smell of our sweat.”

“I know the scent of a human female. I’ve enjoyed it. In moderation. You don’t make it to my state of decrepitude sniffing around human females overmuch. The need grows in you. Greater and always greater. Soon, you are living inside the need. Always leads to trouble. Always.”

“I will only dance as much as you ask,” Ileth said, dumping out her water. The flow was stopped again. Something must be blocking it.

“I never intended to wash up here, you know,” the dragon said.

“You didn’t?” She liked the dragon. He was the first, well, conversationalist who didn’t ask her about her stutter.

“I felt my years growing on me and I decided to visit some places where I thought I’d made a difference, see how things were getting on. I saw Hypatia, or what was left of her. They were a great people. If you ever get a chance, go and see the ruins. There’s still some lovely art that’s endured. Some of the old families are still around. Or is it crawling with gargoyles now? Somebody told me that. Too much dragon blood. I came here as well. I helped design these caverns, after all. I thought a touch of the Sadda-Vale would impress, even if they couldn’t build quite on that scale—and even the Sadda-Vale is a poor imitation of an older palace. I’m particularly proud of the Dragon Horn. Got the idea from a blighter fortress ruin over on the other side of the Inland Ocean. Theirs was circular, winding round a tower like a snake. Took five years to build the one in the Rotunda.” His eyes closed and she thought for a moment that he was going back to sleep. Then he opened them again quickly. “I’m sorry, young human, I’m sure none of this interests you. You have a blockage in your drain.”

“Bugger the drain,” she said. “I like stories.”

“You do? Well, I can supply you for the rest of your life, if I’m granted that many more years. I do believe I’m almost the last living link to those times. I did put some of it down. There might be a volume of mine here. Some humans did write it all down in one of your tongues. I think it was yours. You can read? Only accept humans who could read. That was my urge to the first dragoneers.”

Her spotty education had mostly been through curiosity. The Captain and the wretches who tried to pass themselves off as tutors didn’t think any of the girls needed to do more than read, do enough math to buy flour, and mark a calendar.

“Was this the . . . the end of the . . . tour of places you’d lived?” Ileth asked.

The Lodger winked slowly at her. “You think I’ve lost the trail? As I was saying, I meant to visit here one last time, see how things were getting on. Well, a storm blew up, and instead of going to ground right away, I wanted warmth, a bed, and a hot meal. So I fought my way through the storm. But the wind howled at this height and something in my left shoulder gave way. A hard landing. I made the rest of the trip afoot dragging a wing. I’ll never fly again. I meant to die in the Sadda-Vale, but I’ll have to wait for death to see it again, it seems.”

“Dragons travel after death?”

“We all do. I’ll complete my journey when I’ve shrugged off this wreck of a body, if I’m allowed.”

Ileth wasn’t comfortable with these sorts of conversations. She’d had them once or twice with the Captain’s drunken friends who considered themselves learned. “How is that?”

“In the life beyond life. You know this yourself.”

She’d never much cared for the priests and their depictions of existence outside life. She wanted to hear this dragon’s. “How do I know it?”

“Tell me about your first memory of seeing something beautiful.”

Beauty was in short supply in her childhood, but she did what she could to think back. “I remember . . . I remember there was a teapot. Supposedly it belonged to my mother. My real mother. It was white, and there was sort of a raised depiction of flowers on it. The color was part of the workmanship; it wasn’t paint. There was fluting at the top; you removed the lid to pour the water in on the tea leaves. But we hardly ever had tea in the house. I just remember thinking it was beautiful.”

“You were a child then, yes?”

“Yes. I’m not sure how old I was. Not seven. Before seven. It’s when they started making fun of me for my stutter.”

“Your human languages are challenging to imitate. My tongue gives me difficulty. But back to this teapot—when you thought it was beautiful, what made it beautiful?”

“Maybe—maybe how the white was so pure. The brightness of the colored flowers against the white. The delicate fluting on the lid: I remember wondering how they made it so exact.”

“Those certainly sound beautiful. But you were a child. You’d had no training in what made a good teapot or a bad one. You knew nothing of art.”

“No, how could I?” Ileth said.

“Yet you knew.”

“I suppose I did.”

“So how did that knowledge that it was beautiful come to you?”

“Maybe . . . maybe s-someone told me? Or because it was on a shelf where I couldn’t reach it.”

“That might be because it was valuable. Beautiful and valuable don’t always go together.”

“True.”

“You are starting to understand. Valuable is not a fixed constant. Valuable to a dragon, a human, and a dog might be the same, might be different. Certainly in the case of a dog. Beautiful, on the other hand, humans and dragons usually find common ground, which suggests it is a value external to experience. I know these days elves and dwarves have fallen into legend, but they did exist, maybe still do, and they had similar ideas on the subject. So ‘beautiful’ is value we probably have when we come out of the egg, or when you emerge from your mother in that messy mammalian fashion. I’d suggest that a millennium in the past or a millennium in the future that teapot you remembered would probably still be considered beautiful.”

“How does that mean there’s an afterlife?”

“Nothing comes from nothing. Ever heard that expression? A terse dwarf might be the one who first said it, but others have translated and quoted him. There are constants that we, those with the right facilities, humans and dragons and dwarves and so on, know from our earliest years. That means either we learned them in previous lives or certain kinds of knowledge exist outside our organic life and are able to move back and forth between a plane of ideas and truths and into our existence.”

This was a bit thick for Ileth. She had a mental picture of ideas fluttering into the world like birds returning to shore. She wondered if the Lodger was typical of dragons and they all talked this way. Perhaps having such long lives made them philosophers.

“Never underestimate your native powers to reason a matter out,” he continued. “I know humans use writing and tutors and so on to gather and pass on knowledge. That’s useful. I am fond of books myself. Yet learning doesn’t stick until you’ve tried to work things out according to your own lights.”

Ileth had to follow some of this speech from context; the Lodger was using words she wasn’t accustomed to. She wished she had something to write with so she could find out more about the words at another time. “You’re a philosopher, sir,” Ileth said.

The Lodger gave sort of a rumble that struck her like thunder trying to purr like a cat. “When you get to my age, the choice to become a philosopher is made for you. Nothing’s left but your mind and the memories it holds. Places. This rock. I helped design it, you know. Searched all these mountains for the right sort of elements.” He fell silent and she decided not to speak until spoken to. He seemed to be breathing deeply and regularly. She decided to turn back to the drain. She poked about in the hole with the brush handle and didn’t accomplish much except make the handle filthy.

“It needs pumping out,” the Lodger said.

More investigating was required about what pumping out meant. The Lodger did his best to explain, fighting sleep. It turned out there was a two-man mechanism that “cleared the sump” (whatever that meant) and got rid of wastewater or rainwater that somehow made it down to the Cellars. She and Griff searched until they found the mechanism the Lodger described. Because Griff and his novice didn’t want anything more to do with wash water than they did the Matron’s chastity lectures, they rarely had need of the pump. After some bickering back and forth, they agreed to take turns, two pumping and the third resting. It proved to be hard work, pulling down on a chain handle that was attached to something projecting out of the lift tunnel out on the kitchen level. They were at it for hours, but the sluice cleared with a blast of odor that was worse than all the horrible smells she’d experienced in her life combined. Exhausted, she dozed on a sleeping mat Griff offered her—the Cellars boys seemed to have napping nooks everywhere—as near to the Lodger’s nose as she dared.

She was awoken by Zusya. Ottavia had a request that she visit Ileth and have her report if possible. The Charge wanted an update on how she was getting on with the Lodger, as it had already been a day. It was hard to tell time in the Cellars, unlike the rest of the Serpentine. There did not seem to be any kind of routine; Griff and Zante obeyed their own schedule, it seemed; and every now and then apprentices came down to check and refill the oil lamps and the Guards who strolled through it now and then, seemingly as an excuse to join in a game of Boone with Griff and Zante.

The Lodger was still asleep. She drank from the dragon’s trickle and warmed herself by doing the morning stretches and exercises Ottavia demanded of her dancers. Zusya corrected her form and chirped like a bird about Peak’s departure for the performance and painting studies. She was expected back in time for the Feast of Follies, though if winter came early, she might have to take a series of boats home the long way by river and lake. They went up to drill, filching some pickled eggs out of the dragon kitchen.

Ottavia asked her if the dragon had spoken or eaten. She was pleased that he’d spoken, thrilled that he had questioned Ileth, but disappointed that he still hadn’t eaten. Ileth promised Ottavia that she’d do what she could. Ottavia suggested she get him talking about food and find out his favorite dish.

Someone said the sun was out, so after drill she sat in the air and sun for the time it took to drink a growler of water. She took her old route by outer stair down, unwilling to give up fall sunshine so quickly, and halfway down remembered she hadn’t peeked around corners for Gorgantern. She threaded her way back through the Catch Basin and the kitchens to the Cellars. The Lodger was still asleep when she returned.

She took a candle and went around to check the sores on his other side. They didn’t look any better. Four scales had fallen off. She took them away and examined them closely. They were sort of an orange-red and had a lot of deep fissures. They felt like the bottom of an old cast-iron frying pan. She could scratch them deeply with her fingernail. She doubted that was a sign of good scale health. Maybe she should take them to the physiker.

It occurred to her that with so many scales dropping off, you’d think there would be more about. He hadn’t moved about that much.

She decided to stretch and think about it. Maybe she could beg her Charge for the use of one of those music boxes—a less valuable one—to help when she practiced. It wasn’t nearly as much fun without music, just dull exercise.

Her leg raises were coming along; it was surprisingly fun to tax her tendons and joints in this way. She could hear Ottavia with her endless lengthen and open . . . lengthen and open as she went through the evolutions. She was trying to get her forehead against her knee when she heard the Lodger’s familiar rumble:

“You still. What is your name, human?”

“Ileth.”

The Lodger tried saying her name a few times. It improved each time.

“What are you doing here?” the Lodger asked.

“They told me to keep you company for a few days—”

“No, I understand that you’re here to evoke me or however they phrase it in the Dragonsforge these days.”

She guessed he meant the Serpentine. Was that an old name for it?

She lowered her left leg and turned around. “I came here . . . to the Serpentine . . . to fly.”

“Fly? I understand. I’ve always felt bad that humans don’t know flight. Some try. The devices they come up with! Someday one of you will get it right, that is my firm belief. But you don’t need a dragon to fly. The rocs, oh, perhaps none are over on this side of the Inland Ocean. I forget where I am.”

She shrugged. The biggest bird she’d ever seen wouldn’t support a human. “Not just fly—make a name for myself. Be respected. For doing something admirable.”

The dragon looked her up and down. “A hero?”

“The fables about orphans growing up to be heroes, sir—it doesn’t seem to work in real life. I was told the most I could hope for was being a maid somewhere, or marrying a fisherman with more than one boat. I’ll settle for some flying. Visiting lands where they don’t know anything about me or care about how many names I have.”

The dragon went away for a while, staring off at something only he could see. Ileth wondered how many hundreds of years back the journey took him. Then he came back.

“Have you flown yet, Ileth?”

She shook her head, then, realizing that the dragon might not understand human gestures, said, “No. It’s not for novices. Or dancers, I’m told. Anyway, flight training doesn’t start until you’re an apprentice.”

“Nov—novice? I’m not familiar with the term. It doesn’t matter. You’re small; any dragon would rather carry you than one of those blighters.”

“Fates allow,” Ileth agreed.

“Keep your eye on that young female, Jizara. I know her line. They’ll surprise you. In the best kind of way. With your sort I’d watch the males. Don’t jump at the first offer, unless you have worked with them. They might just want to live as a pet. I’ve seen it many times. Not much of a life.”

“I’ve seen Jizara. Always in a hurry.”

“That sounds like her line.”

“Would you answer a question?”

“I’m an old dragon who’s good for little else, provided I know the answer.”

“Why are you dragons helping us? You used to prey on humans. Or whatever you call it.”

“Why do men join the Dra—your Serpentine? Is everyone here following a dream to fly?”

“Oh, I understand. The reason depends on the person. So it’s the same with dragons?”

“Yes.”

“I wouldn’t think it mattered to dragons if the Republic fell or not.”

“Dragons—I will let you in on a secret. Most of them might be called lazy.”

“Lazy?”

“Easier to have a tasty meal well prepared by others than to hunt. The food here is ample, some of it good. When I have an appetite, I enjoy it. A lone dragon could never hope to eat like this. There are many dangers for a lone dragon, especially one that is tempted by the livestock of hominids.”

“Would you like some food now?”

“No, perhaps later. My appetite isn’t much these days. There are other advantages to living here. I’m fond of reading. I can get books here. Histories, geographies, even stories. Do you read Drakine?”

“Not at all. Oh, gknuss, I know that: stop! Could I read one of your histories? I’d like to know more about dragons.”

“Dragon histories aren’t that different from human histories. Maybe they see more of it. Like humans, they’re resourceful in a pinch, but that’s nothing to how adept we are at making ourselves comfortable. Having humans care for our more mundane needs is a habit in place since before your grandsires’ time. You’re familiar with the idea of a habit?”

“I know you can pick up bad ones more easily than good.” Secretly, she felt crushed. The Lodger wasn’t at all what she expected, and she’d enjoyed this time (when he was awake, anyway) more than anything she’d done since coming here. But he had to bring up habits. The Captain was a great exemplar and expounder on habits. He demanded good ones from his charges and ignored all the bad ones he’d picked up himself.

The Lodger yawned. “I enjoy this sort of talk. But it tires me these days. I think I will sleep for a while.”

He settled down with his head between his forelegs, again reminding her of a lanky old hound.

Ileth saw a scale nit making for the dragon and smashed it with her foot.

“My appetite has come back a little thanks to your conversation. Maybe you can order me a light meal. Nothing that’ll pry another tooth loose, perhaps some warm broth and cow liver, sliced thin.”

She couldn’t suppress a spin. The dragon had asked to eat! Interestingly, she cared for the dragon’s sake, not that she’d carried out her first commission on her own successfully.

The dragon set his head down and took a few deep breaths. She sat cross-legged opposite his nostrils, watching. She rose as she’d been taught in the dance classes, using just the muscles in her legs and trying to keep her spine upright, and faked a loud cough. The Lodger didn’t stir. She stepped forward and touched him on the bridge of his nose between his nostrils. The skin felt like river-smoothed stones, but warm and slightly yielding like the tissue of her own nose.

One golden eye popped open and she startled.

“You have to be careful with older dragons, human, especially in the transitions between sleeping and wakefulness. We have violent dreams. That may persist into waking.”

“I’m sorry.”

“If you want to touch, just ask first. I take it as a compliment. Other dragons don’t.”

“They warned us about that. I thought you were asleep.”

“Everything takes a long time with my years riding one’s back. Even going properly to sleep.”

Ileth nodded.

“I’ll give you a tip: a dragon’s griff relax ever so slightly in sleep.”

“The griff, they are—?”

“These,” he said, extending two projections like armor-plated fans from behind his jaw. He rattled them against his neck scales. “They protect the upper neck in battle. Well, that’s the original purpose, I suppose. You can read a dragon’s mood by studying his griff. But when I am asleep, you should go stretch your legs and get something to drink and eat.”

He closed his eye again and wiggled his shoulders down. When his griff dropped again, Ileth sidled out and hurried up to the kitchens.

She’d lost track of time underground again. The kitchens were nearly deserted. She smelled baking bread and her own appetite roused. Interesting that they were making bread. Perhaps there was to be a feast with humans and dragons. She didn’t think the dragons ever requested bread.

The kitchen worker was an older man. He had a curious artificial leg. It looked like it was made out of the same sort of clay as the pipe she’d smoked at the party.

The Lodger’s words came back to her. Why a leg made out of, or coated with, pipe clay? She could reason it out, right? Something to do with impact? No, she didn’t see how clay would be better than wood. Of course! He was a baker. He’d be standing by hot stoves all the time. Wood would dry out and rot unless it was constantly cared for, and metal would heat up and conduct to his stump. Pipe clay was built to handle heat and remain comfortable. She supposed it would show dirt and be easy to clean as well, both important matters for a baker. One hoped.

The baker had shaggy eyebrows and raised one as she changed her walking lantern for a larger one that threw more light.

“You hungry, dear? I have a warm loaf and I’ll share a bit of cheese with you. I remember how hungry I got when I was your age, and I wasn’t even leaping about all day. A swallow of brine wouldn’t go amiss either. Eases the sweat cramps.”

“I’m looking for some . . . for some liver for the Lodger. He says he has an appetite and there’s nobody about. Thin sliced, the liver.”

“Back on his feed, is he? Good. Terrible when a dragon gets old and starts to go.”

Since the Lodger was the first dragon she’d ever known, she didn’t know whether to agree, so she just gave what she hoped was a sympathetic nod and moved to the cool storage. She hoped she could find a liver. Did they throw all the organ meats together for sausages or something?

She heard a dripping sound and followed it to the cool room. A pipe ran up the wall of a carved access shaft and branched out like a three-limbed tree here, part of the feed system that used a tank somewhere high in the delvings to keep ready water at the cisterns and the mouths where the cleaners stuck canvas hoses for washing out the gutters and flushing out the lavatories.

She wondered at the intricacy of it all. Light. Air. Water. Dragons. People. Food. Sewage. All following their paths.

A cat, disturbed in its prowling, shot into the dark mass of hanging meat and sausages. After a few attempts, she found a brine barrel with livers, right next to one with brains. No kidneys. Perhaps they were turned into pies or sausage right away.

She wrapped the liver in a leather apron and carried it like a swaddled baby back up through the bakery. The night baker resumed his discourse as if she’d been standing there the whole time:

“When I was an apprentice we lost one—he just went to sleep. And kept sleeping. The filth piled up and it took a lot of doing to shift him and clean him. Being fulsome of energy at that age and strong besides, I was on that detail. I keep my fingernails cleaner now.” He held up his hands with palms held so she could see his nails.

He covered a series of trays filled with long loaves of ration-bread with flour-dusted cloth and placed them into a slotted cabinet as he spoke.

“Went on sleeping and breathing for a year or more. Nothing could rouse him. We dribbled water and honey and broth on his tongue, calf’s blood even, kept him going as we could, and one day—I was there—his last breath came out like a wind. Better they go outside, you know? There’s a village on the lake-belt road where one died not far from here. Arzenine. He was holed in a battle, a highpoon head got stuck deep where they couldn’t get at it, and Arzenine didn’t want to die in a cave. No reason for the village but for it growing up around his little shrine from the pyre. Nowadays them mendicants hanging about the spot sell pine ash with a bit of rust scraped into it claiming it’s from the dragon. You passed it on your way here, probably.”

“I came up from the south.”

“Truly? You got that barky accent of a northern girl, though. If you’re from south of the Pass I’ll eat my apron.”

“It was a roundabout trip.”

“Ah. We need more northern types here. Sooner starve than steal food.” Ileth inwardly winced at that. She’d stolen food more than once. And there was plenty of dishonesty in the Freesand. “Some of this bunch, from the best homes, the best, but they’ll steal scale right off the dragons and sell it out the Catch Basin before you can say dinner’s-in-the-trolley.”

Ileth returned, quietly and thoughtfully, to the Cellars. She passed the digs of Griff and Zante, the little corner they’d made out of barrels where they idled, ate, drank, and diced.

They must be in their beds, asleep.

Bottles and tobacco were tucked away. She examined the bottles. The labels were printed beautifully, with ornate lettering. One even had a wax seal. They weren’t drinking cheap village wine. She found a pipe, wood with a fine finish and hard as a piece of stone, beautifully fitted to its clay mouthpiece. Good tobacco, of the quality Sideburns at the pile-in had been so precious about. Even their dice and playing cards were new. She’d never seen a deck so fresh in her life. Perhaps the others, used to little luxuries and comforts, didn’t notice that this apprentice and novice were living at a standard no Freesand family of her acquaintance could match. Perhaps the apprentice had a generous allowance.

Then again, maybe not. Hadn’t he said something about his family wanting to make a man of him?

The Lodger still slumbered. She set his meal down where he could smell it, careful not to disturb him, and settled down herself just outside his chamber. She should see about getting some kind of rope frame for her mat if she would be many weeks down here.

Tired now on her sleeping mat, she reclined and examined the scales she’d gathered from the Lodger. Using her small scissors that she used for everything from sewing to her toenails, she etched two bars near the tip of the reverse side of each scale, then tucked them under her pillow.

The next morning the Lodger was still sleeping. Disappointed to see that the food hadn’t been touched—at least it wasn’t crawling with bugs; flushing out his drain had helped that—she heard the noise of metal being moved about. Empty barrels were being moved back upstairs by a team of apprentices, with Griff watching his novice help roll the last one to the ramp.

Ileth tugged on Griff’s sleeve. “I know we’re supposed to pick up these when they drop, but I’ve no idea what to do with them.”

The apprentice’s eyes widened at the scales she held. “Well done, novice,” Griff said. “The Serpentine gets a good price for these. It’s important that they be counted and collected. You have four there, looks like?”

Zante trotted up to look at the scales. Ileth ignored him.

“For n-now. There may be more to come.”

Zante cackled, “Good luck for us, Leith’s boat is—”

Griff frowned at him. “Not our concern. I wouldn’t laugh if I were you, Zan. One of your jobs is to check the Lodger daily for loose scale. Here we have a dragon under our care and you’re missing these.”

Zante shrugged. “He’s moving around more now. I’ll just bet these were behind—”

“Don’t bother me with excuses,” Griff said.

Zante looked Ileth up and down. Mostly down. “We know now what makes the old goat wake up.”

Ileth handed over the scale.

“Quite good, dancer. Quite good indeed. I’ll see that you are rewarded.” He wetted his lips again. “We, uhh, sometimes get premiums for turning in scale, you know. Don’t listen to that fool Zan. By the way, down here, we never get to see you girls dance; as long as you’re here—do you think we might—”

His tongue had business to take care of again.

Ileth’s stomach convulsed. “I must run. Late for drill.”

She hurried up to the Dancers’ Quarter off the East Stair. She was lucky; Ottavia was at her desk, eating. It wasn’t nuts for a change. Or perhaps not, she thought as she sniffed, smelling the paste of nuts and honey smeared on fresh bread.

“Charge . . . I—”

“How are matters with the Lodger, Ileth?”

“Improved, sira. Hungry-Hungry at last.”

Ottavia straightened. “That’s good news. I had a feeling a healthy, active girl was all he needed.”

She didn’t know quite how to form the rest, so she fell back on the sort of talk she heard from the Captain and his friends. “I must report that I suspect theft and neglect of duty, or per-perhaps suspicion of it. I’m not . . . not quite sure what to do, or how to phrase it.”

Ottavia put down her knife and bread. “Tell me what’s troubling you. Never mind proper form.”

Ileth told her suspicions in her halting fashion. She believed Griff and Zante had intentionally neglected the Lodger so he’d sicken and drop scale. They’d gather it and sneak it out on fishing boats. She described the meetings she’d witnessed in the Catch Basin.

Ottavia thought for a moment. “So much for my day. We must take this to the Mistress of Chambers. I’m surprised they were stupid enough to speak in front of you. Did they offer you something for scale you brought them?”

Ileth hadn’t met the Mistress of Chambers, though Ottavia had pointed her out once as she passed. A former dragoneer, the Mistress supervised housing, feeding, and sometimes healing the dragons.

“I just suspect them, sira. There’s a way to tell. I marked all the undersides of the scales with a pair of small scratches near the tip. I’d check the fishing boats when they go out again this afternoon. The scales will be on board one of them.”

“Aren’t you the detective! What, you thought that up all on your own?”

People often mistook the stutter for stupidity. Too bad Ottavia was one of them. No, that was harsh.

“It’s quiet d-down there. Plenty of time to think.”

The Mistress of Chambers had her rooms in the tunnel between the Wall of Mirrors and the flight cave. There Ottavia and Ileth were told by her wingman that she was touring with some assigns of the Republic, who had arrived to confer with the dragons on finally ending the war with the Galantines. Ileth wondered at that. What did the dragons have to do with a human war? Did the dragons act as diplomats? But Ottavia kept them to the matter at hand.

“We can’t tear her away from that,” Ottavia said. The two of them cast about the Upper Ring and found Hael Dun Huss supervising a claw-and-tooth polishing on his dragon, Mnasmanus. She’d heard that he was the only purple dragon anyone had ever seen, but she had never seen him in the flesh. He was magnificent and not just because of his unusual coloration; the dragon seemed a perfect specimen physically. From the crown of his head and down his spine, Mnasmanus’s coloring verged more on red, but the red purpled as it descended his body, with the usual grays and creams at the belly. The grooms had propped his jaws open with a wood-and-leather rest, and Mnasmanus was submitting to the scrubbing and scraping of teeth as if bored by the whole thing.

The dragon’s fangs were as big as Ileth’s forearm. She resisted the urge to touch, but it was interesting to watch. A rotten smell wafted toward her whenever they extracted a bit of old dinner from his gums.

Ottavia begged his help. Dun Huss didn’t have to think it over, or he was bored since the grooms were doing all the work and spoiling for something to do. He ordered one of the grooms to carry on. Ottavia led them away from the others so they could speak privately and explained Ileth’s suspicions.

“Getting them out through the Basin, you say,” Dun Huss said, looking at Ileth. “Well, nothing like catching villains in the act. You did right to say something, Ileth. Do they believe you suspect them?”

The dragoneer remembering her name pleased her. A warm thrill ran up her body. “I . . . I can’t say, sir. They took the scale.”

“More than that,” Ottavia said. “Ileth marked them before turning them in to—” Here she whispered names in Dun Huss’s ear.

“So much for oaths and sacred trusts. The Zante boy, he’s from this year’s batch, if I remember? I can’t say that I know him, but I’ve heard he’s of good family. Stupid of him to get involved in this. Griff’s people have a distinguished name but a bad reputation.”

As they traveled down the West Twist to the kitchens, Dun Huss gathered together anyone he saw who wasn’t involved in more pressing business, so they had quite a procession of feeders, grooms, and a couple of wingmen who were only too eager to close their map-reading workbooks and put away the navigation tools. Ileth felt lost in the procession of tall men and stuck close to Ottavia.

In the kitchen Dun Huss paused the party, told the cooks that no one was to leave, and selected one of the older wingmen. He told him to go down and find a fisherman named Leith and inquire about purchasing big whiskerfish. When the rest of the group entered the Catch Basin, he didn’t want the fisherman to throw anything overboard: he was to be wrestled to the deck of his boat if necessary. Another wingman and a couple of muscular grooms were tasked with forming a ring around Griff and his novice to prevent them from hiding, dropping, or disposing of evidence.

He gave his wingman a few moments to go on board and distract the fisherman, then brought the rest of his party into the Catch Basin and wharf with a rush. They caught Griff and Zante on board, sharing something out of a rag-wrapped bottle with the fisherman Leith and his crew. Dun Huss had the apprentice and novice hustled off to the other end of the Catch Basin, under guard of his preorganized team. The Catch Basin workers stood by, knives in hand, ready for anything.

One of the surprised young fish-gutters nodded in recognition of Ileth.

Ileth watched the rest from a collection of onlookers. The ship was searched, and a box with some scale wrapped up in old sacking to stop it from rattling was found. The fisherman denied knowing what the scale was doing in his chart box. He went on to deny ever opening his chart box at all, denied knowing what dragon scale was or that it was valuable, and probably would have gotten around to denying any knowledge that dragons even lived in the Serpentine if Hael Dun Huss had let him go on long enough. Dun Huss told him to be quiet and examined the recovered scale closely, then lifted his head and looked at Ottavia and nodded.

All Ileth could think about, watching her old workmates at the gutting table, was how relieved she’d be to be able to put down her knife and be distracted by the drama of the raid.

As they walked away with the scale, Dun Huss leaned close to Ottavia. “We got lucky there. Leith there’s committed no crime, but I don’t think he knows it. He could have said those were his scale, made up whatever lie he liked. He’s not breaking the law by owning scale.”

“I thought he seemed nervous,” Ottavia said.

“I might have said something about our having capsizing and boat-burning training later, and that sometimes our new riders get confused and set the dragon on the wrong target.”

“That would account for the nervousness.” Ottavia smiled.

“Indeed.”

With that, they moved on to Griff and Zante. They’d been sat on the floor and both looked miserable. Zante was wiping his nose and blinking back tears. Ileth was tempted to tell him to straighten up, as he’d suggested to her after the oathing, but kept quiet.

Dun Huss stood there for a minute, tapping a pair of recovered scale together with a metallic click. He walked around them, click click click click, a circling vulture waiting for one of them to crack.

“Are we in trouble?” Zante asked. “He told me everyone does it.”

“Shut up,” Griff said. His gaze fell on Ileth in the group confronting him, and he did the lip-licking thing again. It must have been subconscious.

“The game’s up, you two. You’re through here,” Dun Huss said. “Zante, your esteemed father will be disappointed. I would think he’d have cautioned you. Do we have to go to the trouble of assembling a jury of Masters, or will you spare us the trouble and just quit in front of witnesses?”

Griff tried denial. “We didn’t sell him scale. Must have been someone else. One of the fish-gutters or—”

“Denial is useless. These scales are as distinctive as Mnasmanus’s. They’re from the Lodger. What’s more, they were marked,” Dun Huss said. “Two little parallel marks on the ones Ileth gathered off the Lodger.”

“You can’t mean it, sir. My family won’t allow it. Sponsorship from the Heem Grifforn to the Serpentine goes back to before the Repub—” Griff started to stand up, but a groom shoved him back down.

Dun Huss’s wingman laughed. “I wouldn’t brag up that family of yours. Half of them left for their Galantine properties when the Republic was declared. They fought with the Alliance of Kings against us.”

Griff flushed. “Yes, and my grandfather fought for the Republic, just as my father did. Did yours?”

Dun Huss held up his hand. “Enough! We will have to decide what to tell your family about your leaving. What do you wish them to hear, that you were caught stealing or that you decided it wasn’t for you and resigned?”

He let that sink in and then continued: “If you were doping him with gambane to make him sleepy so you could pull scale, I’ll see you locked up and starved to death as a poisoner. I know what a dragon’s eyes look like with a gullet full of gambane.”

Griff’s false bravado evaporated like water spilled on a hot griddle. “No, sir. He truly is mazy. I’d never poison a dragon! We tried to feed him, we did, and he wouldn’t have it. We helped the girl as we could, pumped until our backs broke, got him up again and properly clean. Give me another chance—I’ll sleep next to him with a sponge in my hand!”

Dun Huss stepped intimidatingly close to Griff. “Your family is going to be embarrassed by a scandal if they make anything out of this. The more quietly you leave, the sooner it will all be forgotten. If even a whisper of the Lodger being mistreated gets out to the Rotunda upstairs, they’ll want vengeance. Dragons don’t leave the punishment of those who’ve offended them to others. They’ll see justice done with their own eyes and taste some blood. Shall I assemble a jury of dragons?”

“Dragons?” Griff said. “They can’t form a jury. Can they?”

“If you knew your country’s history as you ought,” an apprentice groom said, “you’d know that dragons can serve on juries. Just like any other citizen. Just doesn’t come up is all, courts being built for humans.”

Ottavia gave an evil-sounding chuckle. “It’s not unknown. They do. When that young drake—forget his name—was attacked in Vyenn in sixty-two, the dragons formed a jury and questioned witnesses and came to a verdict.”

The boy slumped. “All right, I’ll leave. Let Zan stay, though. He’s just a kid. His old man’ll hang him upside down until his eyes pop.”

Zante found his voice. “Griff already had the scheme all set up when he took me on! All I did was collect dropped scale. He didn’t give me a penny; just said he’d make sure I made apprentice. I’ll make it right somehow.”

“‘Price is irrelevant when it comes to a dragoneer’s honor,’” Dun Huss quoted. Or at least Ileth thought she’d heard the phrase in some maxim or other. “But, Zante, if you are truly remorseful, you may reenter next summer. We’ve seen that before and it’s worked out surprisingly well for all concerned, provided the novice in question has truly improved himself in the meantime. Your father can tell you Preece was discharged and reapplied. He’s one of the best young dragoneers here, and my wingman. You could do worse.”

The novice wiped his nose on his sleeve, looking hopeful.

“By the way, how much were you paid for these?” Dun Huss asked.

“Eight silver each,” Griff said. He was blinking back tears now as well.

“Even there you funked it. While the quality isn’t the best, being off a sick old dragon, the coloring is quite unique. Polished up and readied for the jeweler, you’d see fifty or more easily. Leith there was making a four- or five-hundred-percent profit off you for a little grease polishing these.”

“The wretch!” Griff said. “He told me black were the valuable ones.”

“Anyone other than you a part of this? If there’s someone else getting you scale to smuggle out, I’ll make it easier for you two. I have friends outside the Serpentine who will assist you getting back up.”

“No, just us,” Griff said. “But if you think I’m the only one sneaking scale out, you’re a fool.”

“All the more reason to make an example of you,” Dun Huss said. “Zante, make this a lesson for you. The only people who can promote you to apprentice are the Masters. If anyone’s going to make apprentice now, it’ll be Ileth.”

“Maybe that’s the idea,” Griff said. “She could have set us up! How hard would it be to mark some scale, sell it to the fishermen, and then blame us?”

Ileth stiffened at that but triple-sealed her mouth. The last thing she needed was another duel.

“For what purpose?” Ottavia asked, putting a restraining hand on Ileth.

“This is useless. You already confessed,” Dun Huss said.

“Make her look good to you. She’s looking to redeem herself after being caught selling her favors at the pile-in in the stables.”

“Selling!” Ileth gasped. “Is th-th-that the story now? I was selling—”

Dun Huss cut her off. “Leave the insult before it turns into another injury. You two, follow me,” Dun Huss said.

Ileth once again followed the procession back to the fishing boat. She fought the urge to shove Griff off the cave wharf. Imagining the startled scream and the splash would have to do.

Dun Huss marched the two exiles up to the boat captain. “You’ve broken no law, so we can’t punish you. I suppose we could ban you from the Catch Basin, but I assume you and your men have families to feed. We’ll still buy your catch, but we’ll buy from other boats first, and if we still have need, then we’ll take yours.”

So Dun Huss also used we when speaking to those outside the Serpentine. She suspected if she were to start throwing wes around in Vyenn, she’d get in trouble. It reminded her a little of Ottavia’s emphasis that she think of the dance troupe in we terms as well.

There was no small satisfaction in the thought that she was part of the we.

“One more condition,” Dun Huss continued, breaking in on her fantasies. “When you leave this afternoon, take these two with you.”

“What am I supposed to do with them?” Leith asked.

“Dump them in the bay for all I care. I suspect you made enough off them to put them up for a while until they sort things out with their families, but that depends on how much of a sense of honor you have when it comes to people who’ve risked—and, as it turns out, lost—a great deal to fill your purse.”

“Well, boys, you heard the dragoneer,” Ottavia said. “Get on board, or we’ll toss you through the catch hatch.”

“I’ll help toss,” Ileth said.

“What about my—” Griff started to say.

“It’ll be donated to the poor lodge,” Dun Huss said. “Next market day. Dig around then.”

Griff looked Ileth levelly in the eye, then called her a vile name. Then he marched on board and sat down in the cabin with his back to the audience. Zante stood on the gangway, looking at them as if in expectation of a Hey, it was all a put-on to frighten you into better behavior; return to the bosom of the Serpentine!, but nothing like that was forthcoming. Finally he crossed over the ship’s side, sat on a pile of netting, and wept.

Ileth now felt more than a little sorry for him. Small against the boat’s side, suddenly he seemed too young for such a hard lesson. She’d seen, hundreds of times in the Lodge, how a younger person modeled on an older one, for good or ill. Oddly, she felt an impulse to go get him some of Joai’s stew and put an arm around his shoulder while he ate it. Or tell him to straighten up.

The party broke up. Dun Huss sent the wingman named Preece to report on the event to Heem Deklamp and dismissed the rest to their duties, except for the two biggest grooms, whom he told to make sure that when the fishing boat left, Griff and Zante remained on it.

Dun Huss pulled her aside, and the wingman with him halted exactly one pace behind. “You’re observant, aren’t you, girl? You notice and remember. That stutter of yours may be a blessing; you use your eyes and ears more than your mouth. I suspect several people saw what you did, but while seeing they weren’t able to forget about the rest and just notice the vital detail.”

“Thank you, sir. Griff had it right about one matter.”

“What’s that?”

“I was out to get him. I think I was. For neglecting the Lodger.”

“Hmmm. Be careful with taking a dislike to someone. People live up or down to your expectations more often than not. We don’t much care for feuds among the company. Human nature being what it is, factions can’t be helped, but—well, there I go again. You’ve done well, and I’m lecturing you when I should be saying thanks.”

Ileth bobbed.

“One more thing: if you ever set out to get me, do me the honor of letting me know. I’ll retire and go off somewhere remote. Seems like it would save us both trouble.”

Ileth laughed at that, and Dun Huss’s eyes twinkled. With that he gestured to his wingman and strode up to the kitchen.

She almost skipped down to the Lodger’s cave, where she found him nosing about in the meal she’d set out.

“These livers could be fresher,” the Lodger grumbled.

“All they had,” Ileth said. “Should I ask the cooks to get m-more?”

“Don’t attend my grousing,” the Lodger said, chewing slowly. “I should be grateful I still have a sense of smell and taste. All fades as you get older. You are bright. What passed?”

“They’re putting new grooms in down here. Griff and Zante are gone.”

“There’s an old piece of lore that says you’re often better sticking with a familiar bad than hazarding an unfamiliar worse, but I’m not sure how much worse we could do than those two.”

Ileth, sensitive to the use of the word we today, swallowed. Then she did a brief stretch on her support and began to dance.

The Lodger blinked. “What are you doing?” he said.

“Dancing.”

“Without music?”

“It’s in my head.”

“Well, it’s not in mine. If you’re going to hop about like that, you should at least have some music.”

“Hopping about for-for-for you is my job. I must do it to the best of my ability. Whatever the challenge.” She tried one of those movements she was so jealous of that Shatha could do where she touched her toe behind her knee with her standing leg while her flying leg pointed directly out from her hip at what seemed an impossible open angle, matching with her opposite arm.

It did not go well. But then she was discovering that it never went well, at first. The challenge was to keep at it until it did go well, and then keep at it ten thousand more times until it was impossible for it to turn out any other way.