Novice Dragoneer

13

The Dun Troots toured the Serpentine and met the golden Aussuntheron, their most courtly dragon, and the dragon dancers’ patroness Shrentine. Between them, they did more than even Ottavia to reassure the Dun Troots of the importance to the dragons of the dancers. Several tons of armor-plated manners, eloquently discoursing on the vital role their daughter was playing to oil the machinery of the Serpentine, left even such a personage as Dun Troot overawed. He was quickly reduced to nodding in agreement as he rubbed his hands together like a shopkeeper with a demanding customer.

They were properly impressed by the Beehive’s Rotunda and the dragon alcoves in the Upper Ring, and finished their visit when chairs were brought out so they could sit through a performance that would live on as the most sedate dragon-dance exhibition in Serpentine History.

Some of the less flamboyant dragoneers of the Hael Dun Huss style, rather than the Dath Amrits mode, were invited as well. Rapoto Vor Claymass was given a front-row chair, center, right next to Santeel’s father. Fortunately Ileth was able to have a private moment with him before the performance and whispered a warning that if Santeel’s father hinted at anything or mentioned a painter, he was to act in a reserved manner and say that even young men expected a certain measure of privacy.

Rapoto, who had somehow caught wind of the purpose of the Dun Troot visit, complimented Santeel on her dancing, said it was the highlight of his week, and hoped he would see her and the troupe perform on those rare evenings when his duties spared him. He expressed a desire to meet her family again with leisure to get to know each other. Santeel’s father pointed out that it was possible to go from the Dun Troot home to Jotun entirely by water with all the comforts and conveniences such a trip in a well-appointed barge could afford and extended an open invitation.

The Dun Troots departed for the principal inn down in Vyenn, and those remaining, even the Master in Charge, breathed a sigh of relief.

“Santeel, you never told me your family was so charming,” Dax said, once the last servant had grabbed on to the back of the great carriage. “One usually has to stand by a pond full of ducks to enjoy such lively conversation.”

With Santeel’s crisis past and the brief stay by the Dun Troots in Vyenn over, the winter season settled down into bleak meals of salted and pickled foods and indoor work. There was a minor tragedy when they lost a novice to the icy exterior stair going down to the Catch Basin. It was cold enough for the body to be conveyed home, wrapped up and borne in honor on a dragon. Ileth found the whole thing distressing, and it put a pall over the most enjoyable winter she’d ever spent. The boy lost was the one who’d replaced her at the fish-gutting table.

Illnesses were passed around and overcome, and with the off-and-on beginnings of a thaw the correspondence became more frequent and the first fresh green foods came up by river from the warm Blue Ocean coast. Among the foods was a well-wrapped, waterproofed, and cushioned gilt-edged set of Liturgies in Ordinary, which the Lodger had encouraged her to study to improve her natural style.

Ileth couldn’t help but feel a sense of satisfaction every time she looked at the volumes, arranged next to her little pamphlets on simple Drakine and those few classics the Lodger had around. But now she felt guilty whenever she looked at Santeel. She wondered if she should confess that she’d reported her affairs to the Dun Troots.

She threw herself even more into her dancing. Ottavia was giving her more difficult choreographies, keeping her dancing on the edge of her ability, as her Charge styled it. She and Santeel were called away to flight training sessions, strictly on-the-ground talks about weather and signals and map reading and such, just often enough to keep the dancing from growing stale.

With the fresh food there was talk that the river trade wouldn’t last long, though; the peace would shortly be confirmed with the Galantine Baronies and the river either lost or given trade duties so heavily where it passed through what would end up being the Galantine lands that it amounted to the same thing.

Two more novices were promoted to apprentice when they successfully hunted a fox that had made a home within the walls of the Serpentine and was feasting on the chickens, more as a way to liven up the winter and give the Academy something to talk about than because it was such a coup. Hael Dun Huss was called away on an urgent mission with his most experienced wingman, leaving Galia and his other wingman to get on as best as they could with their training.

Dun Huss was gone for so many days without word that Galia began to fear for him. At last, his wingman returned with news that he was well, and that same night Galia and Ileth were both summoned to the Master in Charge, Heem Deklamp.

He lived and worked in isolation in a low, old tower that dated back to the earliest days of the Serpentine’s peninsula being of strategic importance. At the time it had been built, a king had briefly had a domain encompassing the land between the lake and the mountains of the Cleft. The kingdom didn’t last, but the stones did, and though it wasn’t comfortable, the Master in Charge restored it and made it his own. (The previous Master in Charge had spacious and comfortable rooms in the Masters’ Hall, now a study and meeting room for when all the Masters gathered.)

Both Caseen and Ottavia were called to the conference as well, but Ottavia allowed Caseen to speak for her when it came to Ileth. The dragon that Dun Huss’s wingman had flown on was exhausted, having fought hard winds and weather the entire trip, and Ottavia and a team of physikers were attending to him.

So she, Galia, and Caseen met with the Master in Charge, Galia and Ileth sharing a reading couch, while the Master in Charge examined a long letter by a reading lamp set on his desk. The room was otherwise unlit.

The Master of Apprentices arrived late, making excuses. He looked red-eyed and ill.

“Dark night,” the Charge said, once everyone was greeted and seated. Deklamp kept a heavy shawl about his shoulders in his quarters. His owlish gaze went from one face to the next, nose following his eyes. “Dark nights for dark business, is the general rule. This will be an exception that proves the rule, I very much hope.”

“I’m relieved to hear it,” the Master of Apprentices said.

“More bad news from the Galantine lands, I’m afraid. Fespanarax seems to be on a decline,” the Master in Charge said.

Ileth knew enough now to recognize a dragon name and know that he was probably darkish gray to black in scale.

“Galia, did you know his rider, Heem Zwollen?”

“No. They were captured just before I came here. Dun Huss spoke highly of him,” Galia said.

“Yes, he was a wingman under him, years ago. Galia and Ileth, Heem Zwollen and Fespanarax commanded anywhere from three to twelve dragons when the Galantine War was, shall we say, more active before the armistice and peace negotiations began. Fespanarax was wounded and he and Zwollen were captured before the armistice. Zwollen could have gone away with Dun Huss but he rightly refused to leave his dragon. I know there are a lot of stories of downed dragons and their riders dying back to back, fighting as it were, or committing suicide, but those sorts of heroics don’t happen that often in practice. Heem Zwollen and Fespanarax surrendered and were taken to an estate that volunteered to support the dragon during their internment. I’d like that to be a lesson to you two, Galia and Ileth, if nobody else has taught it. Your first duty is to keep your dragon alive. Alive.”

Ileth felt a silent thrill that she and Galia were named in the same breath as being responsible for a dragon.

“Now there’s no particular reason you need to know this, but Zwollen’s captivity led to the first peace negotiations. We haven’t come off well in the war. The Galantines are powerful; they scored a coup early on, and our diplomacy failed and we found ourselves without allies, but that’s for the history books to sort out. There are certain problems with the situation now I must address. Zwollen caught an infection last fall. He survived it, but he was so weak this winter that he succumbed to illness and died. Dun Huss went out there to see about getting the body returned and to see if something could be negotiated about Fespanarax, whom the Galantines are understandably loath to release; he’s one of our best dragons even if he is a bit greedy for coin. They have but few dragons, and the ones they do have are, well, second rate and a bit chary of risking their lives, so it’s one of the few areas where we have a decided advantage over them.

“Once the war is officially over, which we expect anytime now, prisoners will be released. Fespanarax will be able to return here. But things with diplomats are never certain. One incident, one fiery speech, and it could be back to the fire, blade, and crossbow for the whole bunch of us.”

Ileth was curious as to where this was leading. What particular reason was there for her to be briefed on prisoners and negotiations?

“In effect, Hael Dun Huss is now a prisoner of the Galantines, as he is reluctant to leave Fespanarax without proper care from the Serpentine. What I am proposing is to send Galia, we’ve already spoken about this, to take Dun Huss’s place and care for Fespanarax. Ileth, I know what you did for our Lodger. I’m hoping that if Fespanarax is in decline, you’ll have similar results with him. Maybe some human women about are all he needs. I understand few Galantine women go anywhere near dragons; they think they’ve been hurled straight up from Inferno.”

“Ileth, I believe you said you speak some Galantine,” Caseen said.

“A little. I r-read it well enough,” Ileth said.

“Oh, it’s better than that, unless you were unusually lucky—even for you—when I tested you,” Caseen said.

“Then you can teach me,” Galia said. “I learned how to demand surrender: Quar-benth!”

“That’s the spirit,” Heem Deklamp said. “But hopefully the situation won’t come up. Peace is in the offing, remember?”

He turned his attention to the young women. “You need not fear the Galantines. They’re stiff enough on the battlefield, but their conduct toward prisoners is irreproachable. If I am ever captured, gods grant it be by the Galantines. They are also famously courteous toward women, so you two will probably have it about as well as Dun Huss and Heem Zwollen did, if not better.”

“It is a commission of great responsibility,” Caseen said, stressing the word commission.

Galia’s hand reached for Ileth’s and they squeezed each other’s palms. A commission. Commissions were for assigns of the Assembly, important dragoneers, and such. Successful completion of an important commission would be reported to the Assembly, perhaps printed in those newssheets in Sammerdam that Ileth had not yet seen.

The Master in Charge gave that a moment to sink in. “You’ve had the honey, here’s the vinegar: there’s no absolute guarantee we’ll see you again before an old-age release as a mercy. We would be turning you over to them as prisoners. The war could start again and go for thirty years, and you’ll already be prisoners without ever having a chance at your glory. I don’t mean to be dismissive, but if that happens, I’ll need every man I have, and I’ll sleep better knowing Galantine custom and manners are making things easier for you because of your feminine birth. You might be there three weeks, three months, three years, or three decades. Therefore this is not something I can order you to do, you understand.”

“I’ll go,” Galia said. “I’ve had enough time to think about it.”

“I’ll go with her,” Ileth said. Galia had volunteered, after all, and hadn’t she been told to imitate her? She instantly regretted it. The Captain had often chuckled to his roustabouts that when the call passes through the cabin for volunteers, one should duck into another cabin before they know you’ve gone. Then she argued with herself again—a trip to Galantine, the sunny Golden Land. Manners, traditions, a place where lordly men rode out for their king . . .

“Thank you,” the Master in Charge said. “You lived up to my expectations for the two of you.”

He swept the others with a look, and then his face followed his eyes to the two holding hands on the couch once again.

“There’s one other matter, again. Obey any and all restrictions the Galantines put on you. For Zwollen, I understand from his letters he was free upon the grounds of their host’s estate—he stated the lands were extensive. He was allowed to go into the village that supported the estate, and the host family invited him along for such village feasts and religious ceremonies that were appropriate. But within those restrictions, learn all you can. You never know what insights might come of an observation. They are a traditional culture, in some ways almost Hypatian. I’m not asking you to be spies; that’s hardly a job for two women in their second decade. But we’re all dragoneers—or we want to be—and one of the first duties of a dragoneer is reconnaissance by observation.”

“How will we get there?” Galia asked.

“I’ve given that some thought. Galia, you will ride Cunescious. He’s young, and he’s never been over the Galantine lands. I’d like him to have the experience. Ileth, you don’t weigh much; you ride behind her on an attached saddle. Bring no more than will fit in one small bag. That’s one of the reasons I’m sending you two; neither of you are trunk-fillers. Makes it easy to shift you about.”

“Poverty keeps no great wardrobe,” Galia said.

“You’ll be guided there by Dun Huss’s wingman, Preece. He will escort Dun Huss back, the sooner the better. Keep your wits about you. I don’t expect the Galantines to try a coup, with you flying under flag of truce and negotiations so close to conclusion and with their advantage on the ground, so to speak, but if they could find some excuse to bag Mnasmanus, perhaps our best fighting dragon these days, and your young dragon along with Fespanarax the Reckless, it would be a stunning move and a hard blow for us. So be on your guard.”

Ileth made light of the trip with the other dancers. They all gave her little voyage-gifts and a light basket to take them in on her stay in a foreign part. Ottavia lamented her loss and expressed hope for a recovery by Fespanarax. “If all else fails, suggest that they give him a few gold coins to eat. Silver might do. The Galantine lands have a great deal of silver, do they not? Fespanarax I remember as something of a coin-hound.”

Santeel thought that the Galantines were devils incarnate who would whip her unless she joined their “incense-fogged idolatry” and seemed ready to give her up for dead, burned as a heretic, and even Vii regretted her going because she had an idea for a bracer for her (used but once!) flying kit laced at the back that would be better than the hip-pinching leather girdles the men wore.

They didn’t have long to prepare. While hurrying to what probably would be her last dinner in the hall for some time, she passed through the darkness under the loom of Mushroom Rock. The wind was blowing from due northeast, an unusual occurrence, and a lamp that hadn’t been hung properly had fallen and smashed out, leaving a long stretch of darkness.

“Hullo, Ileth,” a voice said from the shadows.

It startled her. For one moment there was Gorgantern, mountainous, reaching for her—

Rapoto Vor Claymass gave her a tentative smile. “May I speak with you for a moment?” He lit and hung up a replacement lantern.

She felt more than a little like a frightened cat that needed coaxing down from a tree. “I . . . I suppose.”

Awkwardly, he thanked her for her little ruse with Santeel. “She’s the sort of woman my family would like me to marry as well. Old name. Old lands. Old wealth.”

“It seems you’re-you’re coming to a but.”

“Old customs. Dun Huss won’t marry until he’s retired. He’s my model of a dragoneer. He told me he didn’t think it was fair to a woman to make her a widow. When he’s too old to fly he’ll see about a marriage and a family. I was thinking of following his example.”

Ileth, in her tongue-tripping way, made much worse by her fright, started to say that if this was his way of bringing up his old, panicked offer of marriage—

“Oh, no, just—I don’t want you to think the worst of me if I don’t end up making an offer to Santeel. But that’s not why I wanted to talk to you—I was actually on my way to the Beehive to have a word, but I thought I’d better get this light working again. “

Ileth nodded.

“I’ve heard you are off to the Galantine lands.”

Ileth wasn’t sure if she was supposed to talk about her commission, but since Ottavia had told the dancers, it must be all right to speak with Rapoto. “Yes.”

“You and Galia. Be wary, there.”

“What do you mean?”

“They gave some of us who handle letters and so on a long lecture about Galantine spies. They stressed that the Galantines have a strong group of spies in the Republic, better than ours, I was told. They probably have managed to put a spy or two in the Serpentine. We were warned that they always want to recruit people who work with dragons.”

Ileth hadn’t thought much about spies or traitors, but she could see how it would be so.

Rapoto was satisfied with the light and left off working with it. “They told us the Galantines don’t use many women. They don’t think much of women, believe they can’t keep secrets, rot like that.”

Ha! Ileth thought. She had trouble keeping track of her secrets, she had so many.

“I’m not so sure,” Rapoto continued. “Just—if they come to you with some kind of offer, money or a title or something, just remember that they’re probably lying. We were told of several unfortunates—a couple from the Serpentine, even—who played the Galantine game and their only reward was a quick stab. I’d hate for something like that to happen to you. Turn them down. Or better yet, make them think you’re a fool. I know you have a certain talent for—playacting.”

“Why are you telling me this instead of—instead of Caseen or the Charge?”

“I don’t know enough about you, Ileth, but it seems the Republic hasn’t given you much reason to love it.”

“The Serpentine has,” Ileth said, emotion smoothing her words. “I wouldn’t fail a commission for Galantine gold.”

“Take care of yourself, Ileth.” He leaned in to kiss her on the cheek, but she shifted, her nerves still on edge from the scare.

“Oh,” she said. “I don’t want another misunderstanding.”

“Understood. Then let’s have arms. Ever done the Dragon Grip?”

“No.”

“It’s supposed to be for dragoneers and their wingmen and such, but—” He took her arm, sliding his forearm against hers to nearly the elbow, where he opened his hand wide and gripped her forearm, thumb tight against the pulse point at her elbow. He arranged her fingers so she did the same. They squeezed each other.

“You have some muscle,” he said, surprised. “Bit wiry; reminds me of a rabbit hound.”

“You have some fine mat-material for a shirt,” Ileth said. “When it wears out I’d very much . . . very much like it to make a new sheath.”

“You can have it now,” Rapoto said, taking it off and rebuttoning his quilted winter coat. “Never let it be said a Vor Claymass wouldn’t give you the shirt straight from his back!”

She did find time, at dinner, to say good-bye to her one remaining friend from her Manor days. Quith being Quithier than usual had to run through all the iterations of possible combinations with Ileth and Galia both gone, leaving Rapoto entirely within the webs of Santeel and Yael Duskirk without the female companionship of either Galia or Ileth. Ileth wasn’t convinced Rapoto had an interest in anything of hers that didn’t jiggle or flex when she danced, and as for Duskirk, their talks were entirely innocent and she thought Duskirk’s tilt toward Galia was more from her being the most promising young woman in the Serpentine and a person from whom he could learn something other than the best way to please her so that she might kiss him. But to Quith, unless there were layers of motivation behind every encounter and exchange like a candlestick-high holiday serving of sliced tenderloin in pastry, she had nothing to think about and would fret. So Ileth at least indulged her and admitted that Rapoto had told her to watch herself in the Galantine lands and write if she could.

Speaking of writing, she sent off a quick letter to Falth updating him on Santeel’s flying (Santeel had been up three times since her introductory flight, an unusual number for an apprentice) and the number of times Rapoto had been able to get away from his other duties to watch them dance or to take tea in the Dancers’ Quarter.

The precise day of her departure depended on the fluky late-winter weather. Ileth suggested they consult the innkeeper’s wife, but the sagacity of their own scryer, who combined the talents of an astronomer, astrologer, calendar-keeper, and weather-reader would have to do. He was an old man, and if Serpentine folk tales could be believed, five major dragon-fighting campaigns had gone ahead only once he made a determination of a stretch of fair weather long enough for the operation. But that was the Serpentine, a great machine where sometimes a small cog had to turn before anything else would move.

The cog turned one morning and Galia came to collect her. Galia, dressed in her flying leathers and a heavy riding cloak, helped Ileth get into her rig and the pair met Preece in the flight cave. The whole way Galia was tense, silent. Ileth had a feeling there was something she hadn’t been told. Preece had a round rustic’s face and ears that jutted out like dragon wings. Ileth, had she met Preece in a market, would have taken him for a vegetable farmer who had a half-filled stall because he couldn’t bring himself to send his dogs out after rabbits, so mild was his manner. But he knew his business. They went to Joai’s little house and shared the traditional Serpentine precommission meal of cave-aged beefsteak, eggs, and fried slivers of potatoes cooked in a good deal of butter, with Preece explaining the chain of landmarks they would follow to the border, which they should reach by the afternoon, unless the weather changed.

As she walked across the Long Bridge one last time, gauging the weather, she saw Santeel waiting with a little bundle at the other side. Preece wished her good morning, Galia just nodded and said “Apprentice,” and Ileth was about to say that she’d miss dancing with her when Santeel thrust forward the bundle. It was heavy.

“You forgot your music box. How are you going to dragon dance if you don’t have your music?”

Ileth would have kicked herself. Dax had checked the mechanism to make sure it was sturdy enough to travel, and after he gave it his approval she’d put it in the little alcove by her bed where the monks or whatever had put their religious icons, so she’d be sure to see it and not forget, and she hadn’t seen it and had forgotten.

Gratitude tumbled out of her mouth in its usual stop-start fashion, overlain with emotion. She’d miss Santeel. She was like a mirror or a measuring stick that told the truth about you whether you liked it or not.

“Oh, get in the air, Ileth. Good flying. I’ll miss having to dodge those clothes-tree arms of yours.” Santeel blinked quickly and her smile trembled, but just a little.

The three jointly inspected their dragons, saddles, emergency food and water, and each other’s flying rigs before climbing into the saddle. “The more thorough you are on the ground, the better it goes in the air,” Preece said.

They also took two wheel-cocked crossbows that could be aimed from a support stuck into the saddle. Ileth hadn’t had any weapons training yet, just a single lecture where they learned the names of both small and large weapons, but understood that the missiles fired by the devices flew with enough force to pierce a dragon’s scale if it hit at the proper angle. There was often talk among the dragoneers about crossbow bolts and meteors and how best to thwart them or reduce the chances of a hit.

Galia said a quick farewell to Yael Duskirk in the flight cave as Preece, Ileth, and an experienced apprentice inspected the gear on the dragons. Duskirk had been hanging around at the edge of the cave attempting to look busy, waiting like a faithful hound. Ileth got the impression the farewell was too long for Galia and far too quick for Yael, but neither of them was particularly easy to read. They did exchange an embrace. Yael might have kissed her on the ear; Ileth did not have the best angle on the farewell and was standing by her dragon.

Charge Heem Deklamp popped his head in just long enough to give Ileth and Galia a quick flying salute and sent the embarrassed Duskirk back to his duties.

“Anyone want to burn a feather?” Preece asked once Galia returned. It was an old superstition to bring good flying weather.

Ileth wasn’t particularly superstitious. At the Captain’s Lodge you knew when your luck was going to turn by the rattle of knocked-over bottles and drunken oaths. Galia just said, “I’d rather be off.” She muttered something about the sooner they got to Dun Huss, the better.

Ileth was happy that the copper Cunescious didn’t care for Vithleen’s alarming takeoff method. He spread his wings wide, angling them to catch wind like a sail, and did a quick jump into the air, flapping hard up behind the huge Mnasmanus.

They followed the great river south, past the spectacular Antonine Falls, roaring beneath them like a chorus of dragons, and on into lands new to Ileth. Cunescious bore his riders and their small bag-rolls and bundles attached to cargo fittings along his back to the border without complaint or apparent difficulty, but the dragon did stretch out his wings and limbs a great deal after they landed and asked for some wine to warm his chilled wings.

The border post where they alighted wasn’t much: a watchtower overlooking a road that crossed a creek that was called a river only because it served as the border between the Vales and the Galantine Baronies in this part of the foothills. A few cavalry scouts kept an eye on the creek and road, mostly watching out for smugglers and, according to them, on entirely friendly terms with the Galantines opposite, trading salutes now instead of meteor-shot and crossbow bolts. The only indicators that it might have once been an army camp were some stone foundations, a large empty corral, and a vast supply of firewood, former cavalry obstacles that had been broken down when they started to rot and collapse. There were comfortable huts for them. The dragons stretched out on the woodpile and ignited a bonfire with the plentiful wood. Preece warned them to prepare for a predawn rise the next morning. They would have a long day’s flight to reach Dun Huss on something called Ves Verdus (which Ileth translated as “the Green Crossing” or possibly “Greenbridge”). They all, even the dragons, recited and memorized a new set of landmarks.

The scouts overheard that Ileth was a dancer. They produced an impeller, a fife, and a drum and asked if Ileth would dance. Though she was tired and sore and had no costume, she did her best in a loaned set of Galia’s woolen longhose.

The dance succeeded. The scouts stamped, applauded, and whistled. The dragons, ostensibly the beneficiaries of the performance, complained that they could hardly smell her over the sharp wood smoke.

In return for the dance, the scouts tended their fires, fetched them water, and cooked their meal. The meal was rough camp biscuit—flour, water, and salt cooked in grease—but it filled one up.

“They’ll be talking about you for weeks, young dragoneer,” the scouts’ grizzled chief said.

Ileth glanced over at Galia, wondering if she should correct his promotion of several levels of Serpentine distinction, but she just smiled in return and gave a quick shake of the head. “No need to point out his ignorance,” she said later, in their hut, and they chatted about the scouts and what they might see on the flight tomorrow. Ileth was glad she was her old self again. Maybe the responsibility of her first real commission as a wingman had weighed on her.

Early the next morning they tied white streamers, strips of sailcloth about the size of a bedsheet torn in two, to their dragons’ wings. It was a traditional symbol of peaceful intent or a mercy commission. The dragons grumbled that since it was the humans who were actually fighting each other, it would make more sense for the humans to wear the signals, but a grumble that was hundreds of years old had earned its right to be said through repetition.

As the day before, they ate a light breakfast. Preece discoursed about “concentrated” foods to them. He was interested in meals not as a gourmet looking for new tastes but as a rationalist who had studied physikers who believed you could avoid disease and swiftly heal an injury by eating foods that concentrated vital elements; the more concentrated the food, the better it was for you and the less you had to eat, reducing digestive difficulties. Neither Ileth nor Galia had much opportunity in their lives to pick and choose what to eat, but they listened politely to his talk of the livers of cold-water fish and vegetables drawn fresh from volcanic or otherwise improved soil and fermented milk.

His enthusiasm for the subject carried them along until it was time to depart.

The dragons, with red-painted wingtips to identify their origins from the Republic (Ileth thought it contrasted nicely with the white streamers), warmed their wings and then launched themselves down the hill, brushing the gorse-bushes with their claws before rising again. It would be a long day flying, so they conserved energy on the ascent, following the hills until they found an updraft, and then turned east across arid grasslands toward their first landmark, the ruins of an old castle on a lake that had belonged to both sides over the years. Now it flew the orange-and-blue Galantine flag. Some wooden buildings and shelters made of rubble and tenting among the ruined walls with campfire smoke showed that it was occupied, and they circled the place until a signal sheet was rolled out, a long white carpet of fabric. Preece had told them that if the ground signal was parallel to the border, they needed to stop and explain themselves; if it ran perpendicular, they could fly on. With the truce being of long standing, and perhaps the Galantines’ recognizing Mnasmanus, the signal pointed toward the heart of the Galantine Baronies and they flew on.

They crossed a line of mountains that had a winding road going up to a red-roofed barn and yellow inn, their next landmark. From there they passed through the mountains, a thin chain hardly worth the name range, and came to a greener, warmer land.

Ileth felt the welcome change to the air immediately. They were just in cold air now, rather than frigid with ice from their breath building up on their scarves.

They overflew many herds and planted fields and roads winding this way and that. The Vale folk liked reliable roads, and the Republic had been merciless in their land reforms in the early days so that their roads might run in that manner. The Galantine Baronies let old cow paths become roads and didn’t do much in the way of drainage ditches that Ileth could see, but perhaps their lands did not have to deal with the runoff of the mountainous Vales where clouds piled up against the peaks. Or maybe the Galantines liked staying put and traveled seldom.

The next landmark was a blue-roofed baronial estate with a long rectangular decorative pond surrounded by a white path that conveniently marked where they would turn. They were to follow the direction of the pond toward a thick forest that showed first black in the distance and then bluer as they approached. From the forest you went to a little pile-up of three low mountains, one of which had a lonely observatory atop it that could be seen far off as it was capped with brassy, shining shingles that almost always reflected the sun.

After they made yet another minor turn, towering white clouds ahead indicated trouble.

“Thunderstorm,” Galia said over her shoulder.

Preece put out an arm and rotated it like a wheel. His dragon increased speed.

They’d talked it through when planning their flight. Though they were expected at Ves Verdus, they were still members of the Republic’s military arm, a vital and powerful one at that. They couldn’t just set their dragons down at the nearest inn and order dinner and beds, at least not without a great deal of trouble from the locals. According to Preece, it would be a good way to get a mob up, howling for dragon blood to avenge old injuries. An aristocrat’s house might be a possibility, but the famous Galantine hospitality applied only to invited guests, not members of an enemy camp in wartime, whatever the armistice might say. The safest, but least comfortable, would be to find something remote and make camp under the dragons.

Ileth had asked about religious orders, but they were an even riskier chance than an aristocrat’s house. The official position of the Galantine High Church was that dragons were incarnations of wicked spirits sent to test and torment the faithful. There was an order of monks dating back to Old Hypatian times that took a different view (Preece said they cared for the Galantine King’s few dragons), but there was no way to recognize them unless you met one on a road and studied his vestments.

There were still five more landmarks to go and the clouds piled skyward. At the rate they were passing, they’d be under the storm before two more had been passed. Clouds boiled up all along the storm line as though it were reaching out arms.

They passed over a river, a wide, sandy sort of mess of a stretch of isle-dotted water. There were many islands with trees at the bends of the river and here and there in the straights. Preece gave up and angled toward them. Even if a contingent of peasants took to pike and bow and came after them in a storm, they’d have to swim to be much of a threat, but judging from the rooftops, the nearest village was some distance away and there were no roads along this part of the river.

The air was warmer. Spring was already well on its way in the Baronies.

They set down. Thunder sounded in the distance and the sun disappeared behind the thunderheads.

They chose one of the smaller islands, well away from the banks with only some small farms scattered about, well away from the river. A larger island stood just a little distance upstream, its banks more crowded with trees overhanging the water, sometimes the trunks leaning over it as though to take a look. Ileth thought she saw some raggedy shapes with unkempt hair looking at them from the thick growth, but whoever they were they didn’t care to venture into the open.

The river had a different smell than the mountain flows and coastal washes Ileth was used to, different from the vast lake around the Serpentine. It smelled rich and green and full of life but vaguely rotten, like lichen on a wet old stump.

Lightning can be a bad business for dragons with their metal scale, but Preece was prepared for that. He tied a flexible wire to a special crossbow bolt and carefully shot it into a tall tree, then pegged the wire into the ground with a metal peg. It, and the top of the poor tree, would draw the lightning away from the dragons.

“We’re being watched from that island there, I think,” Galia said, when Preece returned from setting up his lightning trap. Another blast of thunder, louder.

“Really?” Preece said. “I don’t think some curious fishermen or whoever they are will be a threat. Not to dragons, anyway. We might as well eat.”

While she and Galia readied the food and Preece told the dragons to sleep, if they could, and the humans would keep watch, a blast of wind and thunder hit and it began to rain. The dragons settled down, back to front like two horses standing in a field so they could swish flies from each other’s faces, and stretched out their wings facing each other, forming sort of a tent. The dragons put their heads down under their other wings and soon were breathing deeply and regularly. Ileth couldn’t see their griff to know if they were truly asleep or simply resting.

Three figures, all teenage boys, Ileth guessed, emerged from the other island and swam, paddling like dogs, to their sandy stretch of ground. They didn’t have to swim far; they waded unsteadily through the flow and up onto the sandy, tree-lined island. Their clothes were crude, in tatters below the knee, and their shirts weren’t much better, utterly frayed at the collar and sleeves. Their hair was thick with dirt and she could see rib bones through rends in their shirts. Hungry, wary eyes looked from dragon to dragon.

One of them spoke. All three held out their hands, palms up in supplication, bowing and bobbing.

It was Galantine, Ileth thought, but a dialect she couldn’t begin to understand, except for the word we.

“I think they’re hiding from the conscription agents,” Preece said. “One of them said army. Don’t know if he meant theirs or ours.”

“They’re begging food,” Ileth said, picking up the word meal in the requests. “Meal?” she asked in Galantine, holding up her wrapping paper full of bread and nuts and smoked fish.

“Meal, meal,” they all said, nodding. She could see saliva bubbling up on one’s lips, even in the rain.

Ileth wondered how awful service in the Galantine army must be if it was better to be dirty, cold, wet, and half-starved in the middle of a river.

Galia looked them up and down. “That one’s not over twelve. He can’t be hiding from the conscription agents.”

Preece shrugged.

Ileth stood up and divided her meal between the three.

Galia sighed. “Ileth, they’ll just be starving again tomorrow.”

The three boys squatted down in the rain, bolting the food like dogs, watching the dragonriders and their resting dragons. One of them pointed to the wing tenting and said something and the other nodded.

Preece got up. “I can’t sit here and eat with them staring at me like this.” He handed each of them some bread and nuts.

“Turn your back if it bothers you,” Galia said, tearing off another bit of smoked fish and eating it with relish.

“Maybe they’re escaped p-prisoners,” Ileth said.

“No,” Preece said. “Galantine prisoners have ink drawings on their faces. Dug into the skin, like, so it can’t wash out. Stands out. I’ve seen the work gangs on reconnaissance. They fell trees and build roads and whatnot for Galantine army camps.”

“Galia, you’re just going to—going to sit there and eat in front of them?” Ileth asked.

“I didn’t invite them over here. They can strain my crap for walnuts after we leave.”

“Galia, what a thing to say!” Preece said.

“What?” Galia said. “I’ve done it. I grew up in the gutters. My brother and I would hunt rats. We’d eat ’em and collect the bounty on the heads. But they were scarce in winter. Rich folks have crap full of seeds and shells.”

“I don’t believe it!” Preece said. “Your handwriting, it’s an educated hand.”

Galia shrugged. “So I learned to write fair and round. Doesn’t mean I didn’t grow up eating rats.”

Ileth couldn’t reconcile the accomplished, confident Galia with a child starving in the gutters.

The smallest of the boys crept closer to Ileth. He began to talk, slowly, pointing to the dragon.

“Now what?”

Ileth still wasn’t getting much of it, but she thought she got the gist with the help of the boy’s pantomimes. “He wants to come with us. Leave with us. He thinks we’re going back to the Vales. Says he’ll be a servant. Fix shoes. He’s not bottom? No, not heavy. Light, easy to carry, I think he means. On the dragon.”

“Doesn’t know we’re going farther into the ‘Golden Land,’” Preece said.

Ileth shook her head no. The boy looked crestfallen but perked up when she retrieved a sack of dried apple slices.

The thunderstorm passed but the rain continued, light and steady. Galia wondered if the river ever flooded, and Preece assured her that the dragons could fly or swim them to safety. Lightning struck nowhere near them, and the boys repaid them for the food by finding a few sticks of dry firewood. It wasn’t much. They’d picked the sandy island pretty clean on other explorations, it seemed. It was too dark to continue by the time the rain stopped, so they bedded down for the night.

By morning, word had gotten around that there were dragons about, and they had a few curious locals lining the riverbank to watch them take off. Their audience neither cheered nor threw stones as the dragons took off, using the river as a flightway. They just watched. The wretched boys went back into hiding.

The sky spanned bright above them, nearly windless, and they were all sore from the previous day and an uncomfortable night in the wet. They had changed a few items of clothing to keep out the worst of the wet, but it was still uncomfortable for Ileth thanks to her damp stockings beneath her boots. She flexed and pointed to keep circulation in her limbs. But she was learning that flying came with a certain determination to reach your destination, and she faced her soreness and discomfort in the same way an athlete running a long race might—just a price that must be paid in order to finish properly.

They crossed more hills, saw a lake shaped like a bent key that was another landmark, and crossed high, piney hills that some might call mountains. Ileth expected more dry plains on the other side as this seemed to be the Galantine pattern: well-watered farming country full of meandering roads and little villages and dry high plains with herds and sparse forests alternating, but on the other side of the mountains they came to a land that seemed a little of both.

Preece put both arms up with elbows out, the signal for destination in sight.

They passed over a land that reminded Ileth of a bowl. High mountains, ranges that rivaled those in the Vales, ran to the north and curved down the east and smoked a little—those must be volcanoes, which she’d heard of but never seen. The center of the bowl was a deep, green swampy area full of little tufts and stands of timber, and in a ring around that were thick fields of what looked like grain and grass. She guessed it was cattle country. Herds thick enough to color the topography themselves made splotched patterns like spilled paint on the grassland. They overflew cattle of a breed unfamiliar to Ileth. She was used to smaller brown-and-white milk cows. These were mountains of muscle and hide and horn and looked as though they might turn and charge a dragon rather than run. They passed over a town with three plazas—their last landmark before the destination itself—and turned north toward one of the volcanoes.

Ileth saw a winding loop of river coursing around a rich, green spot of land, with lines of trees forming a tremendous X away from a long stone house with a flat roof and several barns and outbuildings discreetly shielded by another line of trees. There was a small pond near the house and she spotted geese and a few swans. She had a good view of a formal garden near the house. It had a fountain, walls, and squared-off walkways, all neat and well tended.

They circled and circled again, then descended toward a vast green field near what looked like an oval arena roofed with canvas tenting. There were barns and grain enclosures near it. She wondered if it was a theater, or perhaps a bear- or bull- or even convict-killing pit such as appeared in stories of Hypatia in its decadence. It wasn’t a large enough arena for even a good-sized town, but it seemed out of place on the grounds of even a manor house such as this.

As they came in to land, Ileth saw the outline of another dragon behind a roofed horse arena. Greater even than Mnasmanus, the dragon must be Fespanarax: the object of their trip.

Hael Dun Huss watched them set down. He appeared relaxed and tan from the sun. He said a few quiet words of Drakine to Mnasmanus, then looked at Preece.

“You made good time, Preece,” Dun Huss said. “Hello, wingman. Cunescious, enjoy your first trip over the Galantine lands? More peaceful than mine. Ileth, you are a pleasant surprise. Did you make apprentice yet?”

“No, sir,” Ileth said.

“Well, we shall have to see about that one of these days, won’t we. Watch, here comes our host.”

A strange sort of riding contraption pulled by a high-stepping horse wearing a woven sunbonnet with holes cut for its ears approached. Its two wheels were huge, the largest Ileth had ever seen unless you counted mill wheels grinding out grain. A man of indeterminate but not elderly years in a bright green coat with black lapels and a shirt with a high collar of snow-pure white that matched his equally white wig drove the thing, and drove it well, albeit at a sedate pace. As it approached, Ileth saw a hunting dog and what looked like some kind of spotted wild cat up on the wide, couchlike seat of the riding cart with the driver. The dog looked happy, the cat bored.

“The Baron is fond of animals,” Dun Huss said quietly. “Indulge him.”

She saw something else behind and wondered what else might be in the cart menagerie but realized it was just the heads of two servants. The cart wheeled up and the driver had the huge horse perform a pretty turn on one wheel. Ileth was fascinated by the double springs connecting the axle and the seat. It looked well balanced and the stays were arranged well to make things easy on the horse. The horse’s tall body was combed and almost gleamed in the sun, without a trace of collar or saddle sores, and the small amount of dirt on the hooves just served to show off how well tended they were.

The Baron stepped onto a metal foot-vault hanging off the side of his cart and jumped to the field. His servants dropped off the back at the same instant and moved around to hold the horse and keep the reins out of the way. He turned to them, looking as though meeting a group of his country’s enemies and their fire-breathing dragons distinguished the happiest moment of his life.

“You have arrived,” he said in Galantine that Ileth, fortunately, had no trouble understanding thanks to his measured and precise manner of speaking. “How very, very good.”

Dun Huss stepped in between the two parties, carefully standing so that he faced neither the Baron nor the visitors but aligned himself in between, and gestured toward their host. “The Baron Hryasmess, Knight of the Ancient Mounted Order, Guarantor of the—”

“Oh, this isn’t the Court Exalted, Dun Huss,” the Baron said. “You can dispense with all that.”

Dun Huss continued in his slow Galantine.

“My aide, Preece, you have met. This is my other aide, Galia of the Serpentine”—it occurred to Ileth that it was interesting that Galia had no surname; before this she just thought she didn’t use it—“and with them rides Ileth, a . . . dragon care apprentice and, please forgive me, contortionist?”

“Maid of the Dance,” Ileth supplied in Galantine. She had looked it up before they left, but the Serpentine volume on the Galantine language in the archives was over a hundred years old. She bobbed to the Baron. He seemed pleased by the gesture.

“I am happy to meet you,” the Baron said, in what sounded like carefully rehearsed Montangyan. “And your magnificent dragons.”

Something moved under the Baron’s wig and Ileth squeaked.

A gray-faced rat blinked at her.

“Oh, do not take alarm. He is of my household, not vermin, young lady,” the Baron said, back to his Galantine.

“I am sorry,” Ileth said. She spoke slowly, trying to keep her tongue under control.

“I’m honored by your skill with our language. I shall provide someone to coach you on your pronunciation, if you would accept the offer in the spirit offered. A Maid of the Dance! I must have you meet my daughter Taf. She is about as grown as Galia here and she so loves a dance. Her master calls her a prodigy, but one never knows if the praise is genuine or something to keep the lessons coming. Perhaps you can tell me if I’m throwing my money away, Ileth.”

Ileth doubted the Baron would let his daughter stretch her leg against a doorjamb wearing nothing but her sheath.

“I’ve never met anyone who kept rats,” Galia said to Dun Huss.

“I’m not understanding?” the Baron said. Ileth did her best to translate.

“Ah, well, they actually make excellent companions. I believe the rat is the smartest of my animals,” Baron Hryasmess said. “It’s also the only one that isn’t afraid of the dragon—dragons, I mean. The dog whimpers and hides behind my legs, and as for the cat—she simply seizes up and I can do nothing with her.”

The dog in this case was under the cart, not that a wooden cart would make any difference to a dragon.

“I am afraid we cannot all fit in my two-wheeler. I use it to get about my estate and always have it ready. When I saw I was happy in the increase of such interesting guests I had to hurry and greet you. If you have no objection, sir,” the Baron said to Dun Huss, “I will walk alongside you, and the young ladies may ride. Or I can send for a cart so you may all ride together. Or do the dragons need tending to?”

Dun Huss and Ileth passed on the invitation, which prompted a short conversation.

“I think they will be content to sleep in the sun,” Preece said after Ileth gave everyone the gist of the Baron’s comment. “We were stuck in a storm last night and spent a cold and wet night. But I will stay with them as I expect they’ll wake up hungry. I know my way about.”

“I will visit Fespanarax,” Ileth said.

“Young Ileth, there are two men there who know something of dragons after all this time. You all look like you need a meal and sleep.”

The Baron helped Ileth and Galia up into his cart, showing them where to put their feet. “So, you both ride dragons. How exciting for you,” the Baron said.

“Our . . . order,” Dun Huss said in his labored Galantine, “was builded of woman significant and we nourish them since.”

“Your skill in our language improves daily!” the Baron said.

Ileth enjoyed the view; you were as high off the ground on this cart as you would be on the back of a smallish dragon, but it was much more comfortable. The seat was a sort of couch with upholstered leather with the tufting held in place by fine buttons.

The Baron led the horse, which seemed a gentle and compliant creature; he barely touched it, with Dun Huss walking beside.

They approached a beautiful sort of fortified house of three stories. It was as long as the Masters’ Hall but decorated with fanciful frills and flourishes you’d never see in the north. The windows and doors were heavily reinforced by decorative wrought iron, and the top had fortifications and statuary that could, in a pinch, Ileth supposed, shelter archers or crossbow men or meteorists. The house itself was set upon a low rise, about waist-high above the leveled grounds about it. There was a substantial stone wall running around its yards and gardens of over man-height, with firing steps behind here and there disguised as benches and lamp-lighting steps, and an inner protective hedge that girdled it with what looked like narrow paths within.

Nothing about the house suggested it had ever seen the kind of battle that required such defenses.

The Baron helped them down while the servants moved around to steady the wheels of the cart.

“This is my home: Chapalaine on the Green River. I am also Mayor of the Green Crossing, our village, and patron of the common-house and chapel. I am honored to have you stay with me for the duration. I can offer you any of the traditional amenities while you remain wards of my estate in the custody of my person. As an enforced guest you have nothing to fear and a good deal to hope for in terms of education and entertainment. Your visit will last until your representatives at the negotiating table acknowledge that you have lost the war and see reason about the new realities.”

“We all wants over negotiations brief,” Dun Huss said. Ileth wondered if his atrocious Galantine was as hard on the Baron’s ear as it was on hers.

“Before we can receive you properly,” the Baron said, bowing briefly to Dun Huss, “you no doubt wish a respite and a chance to wash away the fatigues and weather of your journey. I’ll take you on to your rooms; you are on your own out there, where you won’t be troubled by all the coming and going at the great house. I’ll send one of my sons to call on you and bring you to the house itself for a dinner, if you find that agreeable. I hope you don’t find it too severe a prison.”

Their “prison” was manifestly better than the Lodge. It was cozier than the Manor attic or the alleylike angle in the Dancers’ Quarter of the Beehive. Dun Huss introduced them to a building off the garden that stood alone between the outer tall stone wall and the inner hedge that had once been some sort of storage building, with a loft reachable by a tiny staircase. It had been the residence of the head gardener and his wife, who were removed to the village when the dragon and rider arrived for safekeeping.

In the Freesand, it would be considered a sizable house, the sort of place a prosperous fisherman who owned several boats might install his family. Dry and airy, it had a tiny kitchen that had a nook for a bed and closet for a servant, a tiled water-room for bathing and washing fed by a good hand pump, a sitting room, an extra room known as the warm room because the bricks from the kitchen fireplace jutted into it, and two upstairs bedrooms on either side of the narrow staircase. The only thing against it was that it had only a single door and the windows were small and set high, offering light but little view. And it was chilly, but fortunately the Galantine climate was mild, with summer heat more of a threat than winter snows, according to Dun Huss.

One of the bedrooms had a few personal effects, clothes, and loaned books of the dead dragoneer Heem Zwollen placed in a wicker chest, light but surprisingly stout. Galia lifted a flying cap from within. The leather wasn’t quite black. It had a sort of steely blue color to it that reminded Ileth of a predawn sky just before the sun appears.

“I am sorry for your loss, sir,” Galia said, reverently returning the cap. “I understand he trained you.”

“He was the best dragoneer I’ve ever known,” Dun Huss said, his voice heavy. “I’ve tried to follow his example ever since. Just as I hope you will follow mine. None of us know the number of our days—it’s why we have to do everything we can to see that those following us are ready to take our place in turn and prepare others to do the same. I’m glad you have Ileth on your wing in the same manner you’re on mine.”

“I don’t know how I could go on if you—” Galia said.

Dun Huss smiled. “None of that. I am certain you could, and will. You’ve triumphed over greater losses than one wind-burned old soldier. With Heem Zwollen gone, I suppose I should start thinking of myself as one of the old wings.”

“How long before you return to the Serpentine with Mnasmanus?” Ileth asked, trying to find a happier subject.

“When I am satisfied I can do no more here. Then I shall return.”

“What is there to do?” Galia asked.

“Heem Zwollen was murdered. Careful when you speak, even in our own tongue. Trust no one in this place.”

A young man called for them as the sun touched the western mountains. “My father the Baron Hryasmess of Chapalaine and its lands hopes you will join him for dinner,” he said, with the gravity of a thirteen-year-old charged with escorting prisoners of war. “He understands that formal dress in your circumstances is impossible and will therefore greet you in clothes ordinary.”

They bowed to him, and only then did he return the courtesy in a perfunctory manner.

“Little swine,” Galia muttered.

“Is there some difficulty with the unsexed prisoner?” the youth barked.

“I’ve praised the roast pig the kitchen productions in the commanding of your father,” Dun Huss said after a moment’s thought. “She is entirety an appetite in anticipation. Lead on, bastard.”

The boy’s eyes widened in shock.

Ileth supplied in Galantine to Dun Huss, “Boy in precedence or son of a noble father.”

“Oh, have I erred?” Dun Huss said. “Son of a noble father. I am still the clumsy with your elegance language.”

The Baron Hryasmess had a thriving and innumerable family. Ileth met only a few that night at dinner, which, the Baron said, perforce had to be intimate and limited to sixteen. There was awkwardness at first, with the family eyeing Galia’s and Ileth’s clothing in disbelief. Galia wore an ill-fitting uniform of a wingman that she had purchased used from a man and altered, and it looked every inch the tragic story it was, with clogs of the sort worn by a fisherman’s wife when she was out haggling for vegetables. Ileth’s only clothes were her same old men’s work shirt, rough overdress, cotton hose, and homemade canvas slippers.

But once the visit-by-destitute-relations awkwardness was over, the introductions proceeded, and the dinner party found each other interesting company. The Galantine women had bright bold eyes and great skill at making the best of whatever beauty, great or small, they had, and managed to make the visitors feel their sisterhood, whatever their poor dress, odd accents, and foreign ways of arranging their hair.

The Baron, introducing his wife, noted that she had produced twelve children (as of the date of Ileth’s arrival) and ten of those lived past infancy. He had two younger brothers living alongside him at Chapalaine, along with their wives and their combined children, and some adoptees from a widowed sister who died in childbed. They were attentive and affectionate to the entire population no matter which pair produced them. Ileth never did, in her time there, get an accurate count of the throng or quite straighten out the nieces and nephews. If they’d all been lined up in a field like soldiers, babes in arms to near-adults, she could have done it with the aid of a tally sheet, but they would never be still and there always seemed to be neighboring children over visiting, or members of the combined brood departing for some party. Somehow the mothers and nannies and governesses kept it all straight. It would have been interesting to set Rapoto and his page skills against the task of tracking their presence, comings, and goings, just to see if he could accomplish it without being driven mad.

The house that accommodated this small army consisted of two long wings jutting out from a domed central social area they called the Gallery. The Gallery was open between all three floors, and the dome above was made of frosted glass supported by wrought iron. It admitted a great deal of light. Lamps on chains could be lowered to whatever height the Baron and his (expecting again! Ileth surmised, when the Baroness stood in profile) wife desired. The Baron’s family had one long wing with its own dining room, his brothers and their throng the other, and the chief adults of the family often met in the Gallery to play cards or hear singing at night once the children retired, along with anyone over fifteen who did not have other occupations such as studies or duties around the house.

Unlike the Vales, where one tended to retire indoors once the sun went down, the Galantines enjoyed their evenings outside if at all possible, even if it did bring bugs only partially discouraged by foul-smelling tallow lights placed at the edges of the verandas. On this first night the family and their guests wandered in and out at will.

Later, she came to know the Baron’s grounds as well as she did the Beehive. In the Vales such an estate would have pheasants or possibly deer in the woods for hunting, but the Baron hated such sports, though his few other “significant” neighbors indulged in them (just not on his grounds). The Baron rose early, accomplished his work in time to have a midday meal with one of the local officials who seemed to visit almost daily bearing letters and other matters for his attention, and then he would walk about in his woods and gardens with a pocket full of nuts and seeds that he would distribute to the squirrels, birds, raccoons, and groundhogs that found his garden and lands as congenial as he did. About every third day he would mount his cart and ride about his tenants’ lands or visit the homes of his neighbors of significance.

Ileth learned that the word significant was something of a shining line in Galantine society. You had significant wealth or you did not. You owned significant lands or business concerns, or you did not. You came from a significant family or you did not. There was no contempt for the insignificant; she never heard the word uttered. But the significant only mixed with other significants.

The two significant—at least to Galia and Ileth—members of the Baron’s brood were his senior daughter but one (she hardly spoke to his eldest daughter, as she was eternally involved in the younger children’s care and education), a raven-haired girl named Tafista, or Taf as she preferred to be called. Her rich dark hair reminded Ileth of Peak’s, but Taf’s was straight as a plumb line and almost always hanging free. Ileth wondered if a servant brushed it every time she sat down, for it always looked tended. The hair matched the girl: well-tended, free, and spirited. The other Galantine girls and women only traveled in groups with their own sex, but Taf liked to wander about on her own. The other notable youth was the eldest son but one (the eldest was at a military academy), a shy and soft-spoken young man who had the duty of seeing to the more mundane needs of the “guests” such as fresh breakfast eggs and soap for their linens. He was more errand boy than jailer, and Ileth judged him to be about her age. He had a long and distinctive name full of tongue-tripping consonants she could only get out of her mouth with great difficulty, so he let her call him Young Azal of Chapalaine (by Galantine custom, young women could be on a first-name basis with young men only if they were siblings, cousins, or being formally courted, an impossibility in this case; otherwise the youth’s name had to be accompanied by chaperones of title and geography).

Taf, on the other hand, regarded Ileth and Galia as cousins if not sisters. The Master in Charge had been right about Galantine manners and tradition of hospitality, but he didn’t know that the Galantines hadn’t much experience with female prisoners of war, and often they had to invent custom on the spot. Before they set out, Galia had told Ileth some hair-raising stories of female dragoneers who were captured by ordinary soldiers without any of their better-bred officers about. Ileth suspected most of the details had to be made up because the unfortunate women were always executed at the end of the ordeal. Did one of the brutes write it all down and toss the story into a Vale encampment?

The Galantines had traditions for women in wartime, but the dragoneers fit none of them. Had she and Galia been wives or children taken in a conquered fortress they would be fed, sheltered, and swiftly repatriated under honor guard, but the Galantines had to acknowledge that they and their dragons were legally combatants.

Perhaps the Baron had told Taf to make the young ladies feel a little less cut off from home; he seemed to think women would run mad if they didn’t have news of parties, babies, weddings, betrothals, and illnesses to discuss all day long, so he tended to redirect conversation to such matters in their presence. Taf invited them to spend time with her in the Chapalaine Gallery sewing or enjoying music, or, best of all, dancing.

Back in their house that first night, as soon as they had said good night to Young Azal of Chapalaine and the servants with torches who had lit their path home, Von Huss had them all pull their dining chairs close together.

“You think Heem Zwollen was murdered?” Preece asked.

“I asked Fespanarax what he knew. He told me that it was sudden. He was recovering from his illness—which in itself is strange, I never saw him seriously ill, but this is a more southerly land and they say they suffer more from plagues—and seemed to be in perfect health. The rest is mostly according to what the Baron and that son of his who brings the eggs and milk told me, so believe it or not as you will. They told me one night he complained of a terrible cramp. He took a salt flush, and though it purged him, it did not help at all. He was dead by morning. Our host had two doctors in to look at him, I am told, and both pronounced him dead of a plague that he’d seemed to have recovered from but that suddenly returned stronger than ever. They both wrote letters to that effect, that they’d seen similar deaths. Personally, I think he was poisoned.”

Ileth felt her belly harden. Little pains shot across her stomach. She hoped she imagined them in sympathy. Galia and Preece both looked thoughtful.

“Sadly, I know little of poisons,” Dun Huss continued. “By the time I arrived here, he’d long since been burned as a plague victim. That is what they have to do, you understand, because even the bodies are dangerous for most plagues. Fespanarax burned him himself and told me he saw blue spots on his neck and face, and even more oddly, his gums had gone blue as well.”

“Spots mean blood plague, do they not?” Preece asked.

“Yes. But Fespanarax told me one more thing, quietly and in secret. The spots on his face wiped off if you rubbed them with a little saliva. Which he did right before he burned him, under the pretense of covering his face so he would not have to look at his rider when he spat his flame.”

“Poor Fespanarax,” Galia said.

“Poor indeed. He’s been unlucky with his riders. He was worried they were going to kill him as well, so he pretended to be so grief-stricken he didn’t eat save a few nibbles and the odd rat until I arrived. I believe he overdid his act and that is what put him in a decline.”

“From what I know of the Galantines, they will release someone they think is likely to die as an act of mercy. Could we petition or whatever they do here to get Fespanarax released?”

“The Galantines don’t really think of dragons as fully reasoning beings. To them, even though they know they can talk—as you know, they even employ a few—mentally they put them in the category of circus ponies that can do astonishing tricks. An animal talking—they think of dragons as animals, or worse—no matter how sensible, is just a kind of stunt to their way of thinking.”

Judging that he had warned them sufficiently, Dun Huss, as senior, changed the subject of the conversation to the Baron, his family, and what they should offer and expect in the way of hospitality. He was convinced no harm would come to them. His judgment of the Baron’s character was such that he might just be capable of murder on direct orders of his king, but he’d swallow his own poison before intentionally doing harm to Galia or Ileth.

Ileth spent more than her usual time in front of the palm-sized face-mirror Santeel had given her as a voyage-gift, looking at the color of her gums.

Ileth made it a point to rise early the morning after their introductory dinner—she sometimes thought the dancers were the most disciplined of the Serpentine’s groups, except perhaps for the watchmen—and, taking her music box just in case, visited the dragons. Someone had risen earlier than she, for there was fresh water in portable troughs, and a big platter held aloft contained the head of a cow. She supposed they put the meat up off the ground to keep rats off. Didn’t they know dragons preferred their food cooked?

“We have to scorch it ourselves,” Cunescious said. His Montangyan was as good as, or better than, Ileth’s. “I am resolved not to complain about the Serpentine kitchens ever again.”

“I’m sorry,” Ileth said. “They gave us dinner last night. Everything cooked.”

“If this is what they give Fespanarax, no wonder he’s dull.”

“Have you . . . talked to him?”

“To is the word for it. Not much talk comes back. I don’t think he’s quite as bad as he lets on. He did say something to me about suggesting that they give him some coin. They gave him some silver when he first arrived, I understand, to get on his good side, but they’ve been short with it of late. Perhaps he’s faking a serious decline in the hope of starting the flow of coin again. Well, he’s not the first devious dragon and he won’t be the last. Still, shouldn’t play with your health.”

Cunescious took the cow head and began to chew it. Ileth heard the bones snap in his powerful jaws. “My mother always told me cow brains are good for you. I wanted more liver, but she insisted I eat the brains first.”

Ileth left him to chew and stepped into the big barn.

She wondered if barn was even the right word for it. It was more of an indoor arena, a vast thing, solidly built, and the strong dragon smell hadn’t quite eliminated all the horse. There were mortared walls on either side of the arena entrances at the ends, and someone had installed three rows of seats built on stands such as she’d heard about in theaters and stadiums but never seen, unless you counted the amphitheater in the Serpentine.

Fespanarax lay in the center, on a thick bed of wood chips—well, larger than chips, bark and shards of wood that reminded her of the lumbering camps that harvested, and planted, and harvested again the tall straight pines that grew on the mountains in the frequent rain of the Freesand.

He was quite the largest dragon Ileth had seen to that date, bigger even than the Lodger (she’d always been told older dragons were larger; they kept growing like trees, albeit slowly after the first hundred years or so), but did not seem older than her ancient departed friend. His color was as unique as Mnasmanus’s purple, in this case a steely blue not that different from the spring-steel arms of a crossbow rubbed with an oily substance to protect it from the elements. He had something of an underbite. His chin jutted forth just a little ahead of his snout and the white teeth showed plain there. He had heavy, horny brows and it was hard to make out his eyes in the shadow underneath, but maybe it was just because he was gaunt from not eating as he should. There was something about the way his wings lay, spilling down his sides and partially on the ground, that suggested a dead bird.

“Sir, may I approach you?” Ileth said in her best voice.

The dragon’s jaws worked. She heard teeth grinding.

“Certainly, girl. You’re from the Serpentine. I can tell by your speech.” He didn’t bother to raise his head to speak to her.

Ileth came down from the edge of the seating gallery and started across the hippodrome. “My n-name is—”

“I don’t bother with names. When I address you, you’ll know it.”

“I’m a dragon dancer. The Master in Charge sent me here to attend to you.”

“Good of him. Thinking once in a while of those of us in durance vile. It would seem simpler to arrange a suitable exchange of prisoners, less trouble feeding mouths that aren’t doing much, but I suppose the Republic knows its business.”

“I haven’t done my drills yet this morning. May I?”

The dragon snorted. “Go about your business and I will go about mine.” He curled his head away and tucked it under his wing.

She cast about until she found a chair that she could use as a support for both her body and the music box. She draped her overdress on the chair and went to work warming up.

She kept at it most of the morning. Mnasmanus and the other dragons made room for each other about her, watching as they stripped the bones of their breakfast and noisily crunched them down.

Mnasmanus offered a comment now and then to the others, but in Drakine, and quietly enough Ileth couldn’t quite make it out. “You’re right,” Cunescious said to him in Montangyan, “not quite the same without proper costume. And the open air is taking all her scent.”

Fespanarax took it in but never raised his head, apathetic as a sick dog.

Tired, but the enjoyable sort of tired she experienced after dance, she returned to their “prison” and found Galia and Taf sitting on the floor of the sitting room together with a sea of clothing “talking” through pantomime as they held up items. The apparel had a stuffy, medicinal smell to it.

Taf jumped up. “It’s a rag party. Join us, Ileth. Sorry about the smell, it’s to keep out the moths.”

“A rag party?”

“Yes. I hope you don’t think I’m being rude, but, well, I felt sorry for all of you last night. It’s one thing for the men of your Vales, I don’t believe they care about anything with their appearance as long as they’ve shaved their necks, but I know you two must have felt it very severely, coming into a house like Chapalaine in . . . I’m sure your attire is fine, perhaps necessary for the Vales and your mannish work, but, you know, families of our significance have a certain standard. I consulted Father and he agreed and we did a collection of some clothes from my mother, my aunts, and the older girls. Not fancy attire, plain as you like things in the Vales, which we wear for cooking or tending to the house or sewing or gardening. Father said nothing above your station and not to insult you. Have I insulted you?”

“No,” Ileth said, head swimming from all the Galantine. “It’s . . . appreciated.”

Ileth wondered if the remaining matters in the peace negotiations couldn’t be solved by putting Taf and Zusya in a room and deciding that whoever quit talking first would have to relinquish the claims still at hazard.

“I’m sweated through,” Ileth said to Galia in Montangyan. “I’ll have a wash first.”

Making similar excuses to Taf, she scrubbed herself quickly in the water-room with the flowery Galantine soap, which produced a fine lather but disappeared quickly, then dressed in her clean shirt and put on her overdress, which chose this moment to have a strap-button break again. The truth was, it didn’t fit her that well anymore and her muscles were strong enough from all the dancing to rupture the seams. She should join the rag party. After food.

She ate some good soft bread but wanted eggs, and they seemed to be out. She returned to Taf and Galia. They were back to pantomime—mostly.

“We’re playing Lovely and Hideous,” Taf said. “It’s the only two words in Galantine your friend knows, and I’m very proud of myself for beginning her education with them. We’re having great fun at Lovely and Hideous. Seems like that’s all we’ll need.”

“I am hungry. Are there any eggs left?”

Galia made a face. “Preece finished them off.”

“Is there a problem?” Taf asked.

“Just hunger,” Ileth said.

“There’s farina,” Taf said, jumping up and opening a crock filled with milk-colored grains. “Ever had it? Nothing like Galantine farina.”

“It’s porridge?” Ileth said.

“Yes. It’s the traditional first meal for a good Galantine baby. Once the babe eats its first farina, the mother and baby—if she’s still alive—get their congratulations from the extended family and neighbors and such. But we hold off on an introduction party until they’re four just to be on the safe side. As you know, a great deal can happen between taking solid food and four.”

Taf showed her how to make it, heating some milk on the stove. “It’s best with milk. I love it. When I have babies I’ll eat it with them. We give it to wet nurses, as much as they like, because their bodies are taxed so. I imagine dancing is similar.”

“You want lots of babies?”

“Why shouldn’t I? My own grandmother had eighteen that lived. Then she started young. She was married at fourteen and Father says he doesn’t want to hear the word swain until I’m sixteen and a half. Why the half? Maybe because it will be in summer and there are more parties. Still over a year away. People still get married at fifteen all the time, but Father says you need the extra year for more mature judgment. You only get to enjoy courting society once, so why rush it?”

“We must be near the same age,” Ileth said. Come to think of it, she would be turning fifteen. If someone had told her a year ago she’d be turning fifteen on a Galantine estate like Chapalaine—well, that could be said of a great many things.

“How interesting. How many did your mother have?”

“I grew up in an orphans’ . . . home.”

“Oh. How tragic. But you’ve triumphed despite that. I mean, riding dragons about. I thought only people like your gallant Dun Huss were allowed to do that.”

Ileth wondered if she should tell the dragoneer that he was spoken of as a Galantine gallant. He’d probably find it amusing.

“No, anybody. The dragons do much of . . . much of the work, a-after a-all.”

“But aren’t you supposed to sit atop and shoot—oh, I’m terribly sorry. Father said I was not to speak to you of military matters. I think it violates some terms of your captivity if you’re questioned about those. Oh, he’ll turn white if he finds out. Don’t say anything.”

“We were just talking. You didn’t ask for the keys to the Serpentine.”

It didn’t have keys, but there was no harm in letting the Galantines think it did, if Taf had been asked to find out what she could about the dragoneers. Taf’s friendliness did seem a bit forced at times. Reconnaissance through rag parties? Or perhaps she truly was just silly.

Eventually, Taf left, though her conversation never faltered even if her energy did. “I should have a long nap,” she said on the way out. “I’ll send someone over for the baskets. Keep whatever you like. If you need scissors and needles and such, we have plenty.” She embraced them each and kissed their cheeks as though they were about to depart again.

“Oh, faith,” Galia said when she left. “I am sick of trying on clothes. I hope it’s not all going to be like this.”

“You l-learned lovely and hideous. A bad start is still a start,” Ileth said.

“Ha! That’s one of Caseen’s favorite sayings.”

“The food’s good,” Ileth said. Taf had been right about the farina; it was excellent and filling. Ileth felt renewed. Which was just as well. She’d hoped to try dancing for Fespanarax again that afternoon. “I don’t know when I’ve tasted milk like this. I wonder if it has something to do with the grass?”

“Eh, never much cared for it. You know, they say travel is supposed to broaden your mind. I don’t think that’s true at all. I can’t wait to get back home to the Vales. I hope the diplomats work it out soon. Sewing parties and nannying isn’t my air.”

“Too . . . too bad. You have the . . . have the clothes for—for it now.”

Galia threw a blouse at her.

Her afternoon session with Fespanarax went no better than her morning one. But that evening she did sort out five reasonably good outfits from the prospects. The only problem was they were all a bit bright in color and overruffled for the Serpentine. But they’d do. She wasn’t strictly out of uniform; she did still have her novice’s pin. And her silver whistle.

If the Baron owned his own version of Caseen’s Blue Book, Ileth went into it that first week.

As the awkwardness grew into familiarity with Chapalaine routine, Taf begged Ileth to dance with her “if you are not too fatigued by your travels.” Ileth was later to learn that for women from significant families, a trip around the garden might require a short spell with supported feet on a “respite,” the specially designed chair-sofas distributed about the place for use by the women (especially when pregnant). There were respites everywhere, indoors and out, in Chapalaine.

Ileth agreed. One of the Baron’s sisters-in-law went to a keyboard instrument hidden behind one of the curved stairways and played a sedate parade-dancing air. Ileth took Taf’s hand and followed the fairly easy steps, just marching back and forth across the room and turning properly to return with an obeisance thrown in here and there.

“It quite looks something when there are hundreds of couples lined up doing it,” Taf said. There was some argument over what to play next and they had a livelier tune. Taf danced well and the foot placement and poses were similar to what she’d been taught as a dragon dancer, except the leg movements went no higher than little kicks and extensions and heel-or-toe to ankle movements. They were merry enough, though, and being able to dance raised their spirits.

“My father tells me you are some manner of specialist in dance?” Taf asked.

Ileth did her best to explain, in her taxing and limited Galantine, that the dragons enjoyed watching humans dance for them.

“Like my father watching the dogs run after a thrown fur-sock?” Taf asked, accepting from a servant on Ileth’s behalf a second small glass of the syrupy wine they offered after dinner. “He does so enjoy doing that and the dogs are happy to occupy him all afternoon at it, if he lets them.”

“Something like that. They don’t . . . join—take a part. Just view. Sometimes they . . .” She was tired from travel, rich food, and wine, and trying to form her words into Galantine and keep her mouth limber was exhausting, but for some reason her stutter lessened a little in the foreign tongue. “Sometimes they call for more speed by slapping their tail. Or shaking limbs—wings. Like applause, in . . . in music-time.”

“We should like to see how you dance for them. Do we not, Father? Shall she dance, Father?” Taf asked.

The Baron, engaged in a conversation with his brothers, turned his head. “By all means, enjoy.”

Ileth looked over at Dun Huss, and he nodded.

Well, they’d requested a dragon dance, so she would offer one to them, as a good guest . . .

“A court-dance tempo would be best,” Ileth said to Taf, who ordered a tune from her aunt.

She definitely couldn’t dance in the overdress, so she passed the straps over her arm and let it drop. The men’s work shirt hung low on her in any case.

A startled squawk from one end of the room was followed by the Baron’s wife covering the eyes of the boy who had come to call them to dinner.

Ileth started to dance, legs free in her shirt and sheath, but she’d barely warmed her muscles with some turns on earth leg, low kicks, and jumps when the Baron, seeing her attire, or rather the lack of it, put a stop to the music.

“My dear,” he said, smiling at her and picking up her dress, shielding her from the audience with it and his own body, “your presentation is very—uhh—naturally athletic. But your talents are, your talents are talented, and such talented—such a performance is wasted here, since we have so little experiences against which to judge it. Like performing music for an audience of the deaf. Perhaps we can arrange your exhibition, an exhibition of your dance, that is, in the dragon-shelter, so those creatures can benefit from your skill. My, what they do teach you in the Vales. I knew your Republic cast away certain traditions and institutions, but—well, you perhaps should have warned us,” he finished quietly, his smile as gentle and unmoving as if it had been painted across his face.

Five more days passed, much as the others had. Fespanarax ignored her, but more and more often he ignored her with his nostrils pointed in her direction. He hardly ate. She wondered if a minimal appetite was a worse sign than no appetite at all. Supposedly as part of their training at the Serpentine they’d rotate through the physiker’s, if the Masters judged you smart enough to handle such work, but that was for apprentices. Galia didn’t remember much about appetite issues from her training—“it’s all stitching and feeling for broken bones”—and wasn’t much help.

She did pass on the request for precious metals, through Young Azal of Chapalaine. Both Ottavia and Fespanarax had suggested them.

She received an answer from the Baron himself, with a request to put on a formal exhibition of her dancing. He was doing what he could to get some coin together, and it would help matters to have something novel to show his guests arriving with offerings.

In the end, she agreed. In her later years she didn’t much care to think about that night. For one thing, excepting Galia, the only women to attend were the Baron’s wife and two women of the household staff who’d heard stories and were curious. The rest were men, not just men of the family, but it seemed every significant man and elder son from the Baron’s lands had been invited.

It wasn’t the fault of the music, either. She worked out the music ahead of time with the Baron. When she asked if there was someone who could play an impeller, he chuckled. “Oh, those things. No, they’re not much used among families of significance, just the tavern singers. Young lady, why have one instrument doing three jobs badly when you can have three proper musicians?”

Three proper musicians he did hire, and Dun Huss joined their company with a borrowed drum.

She couldn’t dance on a proper floor. They talked for a bit about taking one of the great winter doors of the barn down, but that seemed like a good deal of work and she suspected she’d just get splinters. So they raked the surface of the hippodrome out as well as they could and put down fine fresh sawdust. If the horses didn’t trip on it, she wouldn’t. She was a bit worried about the floorlights setting the whole place alight and spent some time arranging them on old platters and serving trays, so even if she lost track of where she was and knocked one over it wouldn’t roll into the sawdust.

The Galantine ladies had some simple cosmetics and she used them as Ottavia had taught her, when they spoke of court dancing. Ileth did her best, highlighting her eyes and cheekbones, exaggerating the corners and sockets of her eyes so they showed up more to the audience, but in the little mirror it looked amateurish, nothing like what Santeel or Peak could do with the same tools.

“Be the performer, be the performance,” she said, repeating one of Ottavia’s predance encouragements. The idea was that someone else took your place onstage; it wasn’t you at all, but a different—far more confident—person who handled your body while you were in front of the lights.

The reflection frowned at her. The performer didn’t care for how she looked.

She grabbed a rag, wetted it, and washed the paint off, and instantly regretted it. Her face was pale and nervous, her eyes wide and scared.

“Shows how m-much you know,” she said to the performer in the mirror.

Summoning the most courage she’d needed since the morning of the duel, she marched out to the great barn-arena. She tried to ignore the fancy carriages and chariots parked outside, patient horses munching at nosebags from loosened harnesses.

In the end, she did only three dances, though they planned out music for five. Ileth blamed it on Fespanarax, who took the invasive audience as an opportunity to look even more pathetic than usual, despite an excellent dinner of roast pork. But it wasn’t Fespanarax who put her off so much as all the staring men. She tried to concentrate on the dragon, tell herself that she’d been watched before, but it was so much easier with the whole troupe about her. It felt ugly.

If only Fespanarax had roused himself and shown a little interest. She could have had him as her audience and ignored the Galantines.

She tried not to think about what must have been going through their minds as she went through her evolutions in her dancing sheath. At times, even the musicians seemed to lose track of their instruments, when the music would break down as they watched. Dun Huss pounded away at his drum until they picked up the tune again. She concentrated on Fespanarax. He was the audience, even if he couldn’t be bothered to look at her.

In the end, she gave up. She ran lightly over to the Baron, smiling as brightly as she’d been taught, and explained that the dragon wasn’t responsive after three dances, and her troupe’s tradition was to stop so as to save their feet and not annoy the dragon overmuch.

The audience applauded and the musicians thumped their instruments. Ileth picked out three different men in the audience at three angles, made eye contact, and bobbed a deep obeisance, smiling.

Then she fled, before they could see the tears.

The next day the Baron himself called for them. They received a note with the first sun and the milk that he would visit them early.

“There’s something I’d like you to see. Young Ileth, especially. Don’t be alarmed, it’s a very pleasant surprise for you.”

Their first thought, when he took them toward the barns, was that the negotiations had concluded and there was a courier from the Serpentine bearing a message that they were free to return.

There were no strange dragons, so a message was unlikely, unless a courier had dropped it tied to a rock.

But there was a stout gardener standing there next to a large bucket. They approached it, the Baron giving a little chuckle. Ileth noticed that it reflected the morning sun.

Silver coins filled the bucket right to the brim.

“Well!” said Dun Huss in his slipshod Galantine. “Your generous stench overwhelms us, Baron Hryasmess. I appall and salivate you.”

Galia, whose Galantine was improving by the day in dragon-sized leaps and bounds, did not follow the talk but her jaw dropped open at the amount of coin.

“That’s just . . . the Baron’s relatives and friends?” Galia asked.

The Baron either didn’t understand her or pretended not to. “You are too kind, sir, it’s the least I can do. There’s enough left over to give the other dragons a mouthful in memory of their visit here. As, sadly, I believe it must become a memory all too soon, except for those two of you who make me and my family so happy by remaining. If I keep you from your duties any longer, your diplomats can fairly accuse me of plotting against the Republic by delaying its gallants.”

The Baron produced some bowls from his overcoat and carefully counted out coins into each one. “I imagine it’s the tradition for the dragoneers to give these to the dragons. I don’t want a Galantine Baron accused of trying to bribe your dragons!”

Mnasmanus flapped his wings in eager anticipation, and the others joined him. “Go ahead,” the Baron urged. Dun Huss led the way, with Preece and Galia following, each bearing silver to their dragon.

“Our young Ileth, as your exhibition provided the alchemy that filled this feed bucket with silver instead of corn, I believe you should present this to our resident. Who knows, this may be an omen of your future! No, I can do better. May this be an omen for your future.” He reached into his pocket and produced two heavy gold coins. “One for you, and one for the bucket.” He pressed the coin into Ileth’s hand.

“Very generous, sir,” the gardener said.

“I shall not forget your aid in your wage account this month, Leafway. But perhaps I won’t be as generous as I might have been, as you’re breaking in on my conversation with our young performer here.”

The Baron gestured to his gardener. The gardener’s thick shoulder muscles bulged as he picked up the bucket.

“What, my dear girl, is this the famous republican stolidity? You smiled wide enough last night. Perhaps you are still fatigued?”

Ileth stared at the coin. It weighed more than the little mirror Santeel had given her. “I don’t see how—”

“Didn’t you know? You were dancing at an almsgiving event. Do you know the phrase?”

“The words, yes. I’m . . . I’m not sure of their significance, Baron.”

“Significant families from my and neighboring lands gathered to see an exhibition of your dragon dancing. Word of your—art got around quickly and arous—hmmm, inspired curiosity. A combination of pity for our languishing dragon and interest in seeing you perform opened purses and accounts for a halfday[5] all around.”

They walked into the hippodrome. Fespanarax stirred and rolled his head so he could eye them. Baron Hryasmess, speaking of the Galantine tradition of charity that was as famous as their tradition of hospitality, paid no attention to the giant creature that could blast him out of existence and continued speaking to Ileth as though they were the only two present.

“Your performance was quite a novelty. I hope you don’t think I indulge in self-flattery often, but we did rather well out of it. Charity work is not the least of my delights. I’m sorry we couldn’t have you into the house, but it was elegant dress and the talk would have bored you in any case.”

Their roundabout way of talking certainly made Ileth dizzy. Ileth stopped the procession near the door. “Close enough,” she said. “If he wants it, he can come and get it.”

“Fespanarax,” she called. The gardener set the bucket down and hurried away with a strange walking-jogging gait that made it seem like he had three legs.

“I’ll leave you two alone,” the Baron said.

She lifted a handful of the silver, then let it trickle into the bucket again. She could buy her own squadron of fishing boats in the Freesand with the coin next to her foot. Used, but still . . .

“It’s me again, Ileth. We have a little gift for you.”

“You’re going to be a bother about this, aren’t you?” Fespanarax said, raising his head. He had a groaning sort of a voice, like a heavy door on old hinges. “I don’t find you or your bird chatter charming in the least.”

“Well, I like dragons, even grouchy ones. Good thing for you, since we’re stuck together here for a . . . for a while.”

“Grouchy, eh? You’re a bold one.”

Dragon baiting might be fun, but she didn’t want to push it too far. “I just think it would be good for you to be on your feet.”

Fespanarax sniffed the silver. His mouth began to slime up, an effect Ileth had been told about but hadn’t seen yet. “Just because you’re human and about as old as a summer dandelion, doesn’t mean you can’t be right. I should get up.”

And he did, grinding his teeth the whole time. The slimy saliva dripped, reminding Ileth of clear syrup. He trundled forward, a little stiffly, and extended his enormous tongue and began to take up coins, curling his forked tongue around them almost lovingly. He swallowed them, slowly, as a human might relish olives or some other delicacy.

He took short breaks in his slow, methodical eating, letting the slime in his mouth build up until it dripped.

Ileth backed up a little so he could work the bucket better. He dropped a coin here and there but retrieved each, artfully. Then he ate the bucket itself. They must have a powerful digestion.

“Just one gold coin?” he asked.

She hadn’t even seen him eat it.

“Yes,” Ileth said. “I think it was supposed to be dessert.”

“There’s another coin in your shirt pocket.” Why did they never put pockets on anything for women but aprons? They were so useful.

“Which is a gift from the Baron. I intend to keep it.”

“That gold is worth a lot more to me than your life, girl.”

“Are you threatening to kill me?”

“Hmm. Let me think.” Fespanarax spoke Montangyan with no attempt to sound human. He was more difficult to understand than most. He spoke each word as if he were treading out corn, pounding it out his mouth and not much caring about the shape. “No. Just teaching you an important lesson: don’t flit about strange dragons with the smell of gold on you. You don’t know me.”

“I know you are a dragon of the Serpentine.”

“I was. I hope to be again. What I am now, though, is a prisoner in a conflict I find I care increasingly less about. I’m starting to think the only thing keeping me here is habit.”

“They would miss you at the Serpentine if they never saw you again.” She took out the coin. “Sir, if it means that much to you, I’ll show you the loyalty of—”

“Oh, girl, noble gesture. No, you keep it. I know you danced hard last night. I could see the heat on the men’s faces. I never felt more than an academic interest in such displays, but I did appreciate the break in the monotony, and for that I hope that coin of yours attracts some friends.”

The silver had improved his mood, it seemed. His eyes looked around with new interest. “Huh, Cunescious has grown. You know, it feels good to be on my feet. I might walk around a bit so the coin moves about and settles in my metals gizzard.”

Stepping so slowly that he reminded Ileth of one of the ruptured old sailors on the Freesand fish docks, the dragon went out into the morning air. He walked toward a pond, setting all the geese to alarmed honking.

Dun Huss, usually so measured, hurried in to speak to her after he departed. Had she ever seen him run?

“You know, Ileth, I’d have to check with Ottavia. Two sick old dragons up on their feet. I don’t know which was more remarkable: the ancient Lodger, or the notoriously obstinate Fespanarax. He can be stubborn, and you’ve got him up and strolling about.”

Praise from the dragoneer warmed her more than the satisfaction of seeing the dragon up and about, as she hadn’t yet developed an interest in Fespanarax beyond duty. It even let her brain and mouth cooperate. “I think Fespanarax just went into a decline because he was bored. This morning, he finally became bored with being bored.”

Dun Huss decided that night to depart early the next day, unless the weather turned unusually foul. He and Preece paid a brief call on their host at his house to thank him, leaving Ileth and Galia to their quarters. It gave them a chance to decide how they’d divide the house with the men gone. In the end, they both decided to be upstairs, but to share a bedroom for the companionship and security.

Galia, oddly, seemed to be losing her nerve about the dragoneers leaving. She asked if they could perhaps negotiate for a little more time to be sure of their position with the Galantines.

Dun Huss shook his head. “Our host has dropped more than one hint about the expense of feeding so many dragons. Now that Fespanarax at least seems on the mend I can’t delay. I wish they would let us change Cunescious with Fespanarax, as Galia is being accepted in exchange for me. Cunescious is young and the experience might do him good. I’m not sure I like Fespanarax’s attitude of late. He was never the easiest dragon, and I’m not at all sure that he won’t give you difficulty. Getting a message to the Serpentine through the Galantines could take weeks. I asked the Baron about a swap and he declined, politely, but very definitely.”

“Why not Preece, then? He is senior to me. The Galantines do not seem to think much of women.”

“It’s not that I do not trust Ileth and Preece, but two young people, stuck in a foreign land with little to do.” Dun Huss chuckled. “The Galantines would never allow it. No, it is as the Charge said, we can count on the women to be treated more like company than prisoners. And there is just that odd chance the Galantines will take pity on two women and let you go as a gesture of gallantry, with some sort of solemn promise that Fespanarax will not participate if hostilities resume. They can be quite sentimental, as you see from the Baron and his animals.”

It was a cloudy, windy morning, but they decided to risk leaving in any case. If the weather forced them down, it forced them down. They could return in easy stages, and the Baron had weighed them down with gifts of food for both humans and dragons.

The Baron and his wife rode out, with the cat perched in her lap and the dog running beside the high two-wheeled cart. The rat might have been left home on the chilly morning, or content to remain in the Baron’s wig. Ileth wondered that the household staff, usually so considerate of women in general, let the Baroness up on the cart, considering her condition. She suspected it would overturn easily.

“Whatever the outcome of the negotiations between our two nations, you may always rely on your friends at Chapalaine, my dear Dun Huss,” the Baron said. He’d descended to say his farewells; his wife remained in the cart, smiling at them with the cat in her lap.

“I shall improve it one day,” Dun Huss said.

“Improve what?”

“My Galantine. They say it is hard to learn a new language at my age, and I appear to be proofs.”

“Well, the way these wars go for your Republic, you may all end up learning it eventually.”

“Come and try to teach me some, at your leisure, sir,” Dun Huss said, steel in his eyes. “I am always ready for a lessons, whether given and taken.”

“Well, sir, you show more color than I thought you plain citizens of a republic possessed. I wonder that they give you women to serve under you. Sparks such as that should land on a warlike tinder, not underskirts.”

“Then I am happy I am leaving Galia and Ileth with you, so that you can see for yourself what kind of women our mountains produce. But don’t expect to inspect their underskirts, unless you wish to see some sparks.”

The Baron laughed. “I will not delay you any further, pleasant as this kind of talk is. A speedy and safe journey, sir.”

“If I stayed to thank you for all your kindnesses, sir, we should not leave until dinner. Give my compliments to your beautiful wife and hopes your family increases in size and health.” Dun Huss’s Galantine was much improved at the end, or perhaps he’d rehearsed this with his tutor. Then to Preece, in Montangyan: “Ready, wingman.”

“As ever, sir,” Preece said. “Galia, Ileth, we will return for you soon, I hope.”

Galia’s jaw trembled, but she said nothing. Ileth had to speak for them. “We . . . we look forward to that. Fates make it soon.”

“Write us often,” Dun Huss said as the dragons warmed their wings and turned into the wind. “Even if the news is only that you are weary of farina. The letters will be slow, but they will get to us.”

“Yes, sir,” the pair said in accidental unison.

They exchanged vigorous Serpentine-style salutes and the dragons dashed into the wind for an easy lift, wings flapping madly, like geese taking off. The dragons circled once, with humans waving and Cunescious cracking his tail, and rose into the sky.

“I will leave you to watch them as long as you like,” the Baron said. “But I should get the Baroness back under a roof; it looks like rain. Please come to dinner tonight, if you feel up to it. We will understand if you do not and send out a tray.” He climbed back into his cart and turned it away toward his house.

The two young women stood there, together in the wind, and watched the dragons and their riders until the outlines became dots with wings. Soon there was only wind and clouds the color of the sea.

“I love him, you know,” Galia said.

Ileth couldn’t have been more surprised by a slap. Her face probably looked much the same. “What? Preece?”

“Scale, no. Ileth, it makes me happy to hear that I hid it even from you, here. Hael Dun Huss. I love him. I have for years.”

Ileth could only gape.

Galia tilted her head and touched it to Ileth’s in a friendly fashion.

“Unreturned, but then it could not be anything but, with his standards,” she continued, blinking tears until she gave up and wiped her eyes. “I confessed it to him once. Only once. Let us get inside.”

As they walked back to their congenial prison, Galia continued:

“You know, he’s the one who found me? Rescued me, more like. Found me on the streets of Sammerdam. It was after my brother died. A rat bite, we got them all the time. Thought nothing of them. But this one, his arm grew red and the veins stood out. He spoke of great pain. I got him medicine, expensive medicine—don’t ask me how—to cure it, but it did nothing. He said it tasted like dry starch. It had plenty of opportunity to work; I dosed him and dosed him every hour. The next morning, he was stiff and cold. I was alone. So alone. Scared. I was more scared then, with him lying dead next to me, than I’ve ever been, before or since. I became brave after that. Recklessly brave. You see, the man who sold me the cure swore on his right hand that it would be effective.”

Galia’s jaw clenched and she ceased speaking for a moment, looking at the ground. Then she gained her voice again.

“Hael Dun Huss found me a few years later. I was chalking, then—decorating the steps leading up to the homes of the wealthy when they had parties. It was the rage for a while, and I’d learned to write beautifully. Announcements of babies born to the house. On the occasion of Sedalia’s betrothal and lots of drawings of flowers, stuff like that. Or just decorations for holidays. He came early to a party and saw me finishing up, asked questions about where I learned to create such wonderful blossoms. I told him by watching other artists at their easels, running and getting them cool water and getting a word of advice in return. I never told him I stole my first run of chalk. I remember sometimes that it was me that did all those things. But it was a different me. Like a sailor’s lucky knife that has had two new blades and three new handles.

“Well, I must have interested him because we spoke for a bit. He said with a hand like that I could write letters or be a clerk to some great lady or even be an artist. I had sewage all over my skirts from sleeping in the gutters; I can just see me showing up at some society woman’s door smelling like sock wet with a wee: ‘’Scuse me, sira, you be needin’ a bookkeeper?’ As if.

“He said a talent like mine could be, should be trained. ‘You can be so much more, Galia,’ he said. He actually brought me to the party and asked the host if they could find a bed for me. They did, in the end, and I bet they boiled everything afterward if they didn’t burn it. I think he was going to set me up as an apprentice, but then there was an emergency. I believe he thought he would lose me again in the gutters of Sammerdam—it is a place where it’s easy to become lost, whether you want to or not—so he just brought me with him back to the Serpentine. He looped a line about me so I rode in front of him, cradled in his warmth. His smell. I can still feel his stubble on my forehead when I think of it. First thing I knew I was in the air above the city looking so clean and orderly—oh, how everything looks better from a sounding or two up—and the air was cold and fresh and smelled like rain. It was like being carried off at the end of a story. Beginnings, endings, they’re kind of the same thing, aren’t they? I’d barely eaten my first fried fish in the Serpentine when he was called away on a commission. I ended up making myself useful as long as I was there, and the next summer I oathed in with a group just as you did. He hired tutors for me, improved me in my Montangyan, gave me lessons in history and geography and all that.

“When it seemed the time was right, when I was fully a woman and able to marry without anyone’s permission but my own, I did confess my love to him. In the greatest privacy, to save him embarrassment. If only I’d known how much shame it would cost me! I’m embarrassed to think of what I was wearing and how I acted. Silly. And you know, I think now that if he’d taken it, I’d have quit loving him. Gods, I belong with the madwomen in a locked lodge. He refused, rightly and properly and heartbreakingly. ‘You can be so much more, Galia,’ he told me, just like on that doorstep in Sammerdam. The first time he said that to me I glowed. It stung this time.

“Yet he still looks out for me. Won’t touch me unless it’s through flying gauntlets and then just on the arm or the leg as he checks my saddling. It’s torture for me to see him, but torture I don’t want to stop. Him making me a wingman was just another turn of the rack. And now he’s gone and the rack’s turned again. I think I may snap. So there we are. I love him, impossible though it is. So now you know the heart of the Serpentine’s leading young dragoneerix.”

Ileth couldn’t think of anything else to do but hug her. “I’m so sorry for your . . . for your brother. As f-for the rest, well, endings and . . . endings and beginnings. Who knows which this is.”