Novice Dragoneer

18

The days passed, the first in which Ileth truly felt returned to her life at the Serpentine. She rose, took a quick cup of tea with Preen and the others, joined in for drills, and then took her aching body back to breakfast. (It was Zusya’s turn to gather it and serve, so she was briefed on Vii’s latest stratagems in the campaign against, or perhaps with, Pasfa Sleng. Duties before suitors, Ottavia said, cutting off the talk and giving everyone their assignments for the day. Ileth’s were still light.) Santeel Dun Troot was in exceptionally good humor—she’d left Ileth well behind during drills and fatigues and now showed the superior leg extension of the two. Santeel’s ability to spot in her turns made Ileth wish she’d practiced more in the Galantine lands. Even Vii had left her behind. Ileth would have a job of it to equal them anytime soon. Once Santeel got her teeth into something, she was difficult to challenge.

Ileth had little to do until the dragons who were having their dinners wanted entertainment as they digested and settled down to sleep. Ileth hoped she’d be spared until she was back in form. She’d thought she’d kept her body in condition in the Galantine lands, constantly drilling on her own and dancing for Fespanarax. She’d been wrong.

She’d been back over a week when one overcast night Ottavia held Ileth back and sat her down on a floor cushion. Ottavia stretched out beside her, bent legs flat on the floor with the flats of her feet together in her usual relaxed fashion that on anyone but a dragon dancer would be an impossibly painful repose. “Ileth, I have news. There’s a jury of inquiry forming—you’re not in trouble, not in even the most minor way. Some of the Masters and dragoneers and Republic assigns wish to interview you about your experiences among the Galantines. I am told they are waiting for the arrival of a representative from the Assembly. I’m afraid you’ll have no choice in the matter; you must speak to them. Would you feel better if I accompanied you? I know I would be nervous, standing before all those men answering questions. I know public speaking is far from your favorite occupation.”

Whatever it was, it would be easier than a mob of Galantine nobles leering at her while she danced for Fespanarax.

“Won’t be necessary, Charge,” Ileth said. “I’ve nothing to hide.”

“Caseen will tell you more tomorrow. He asks that you call on him just after breakfast.”

With little to do until the evening, Ileth decided to go down to her old haunt in the Cellars and see the dragon eggs. She could congratulate Vithleen.

She looked in on the kitchens and realized that she was anxious about running into Yael, but she learned he was at a flight lecture and wouldn’t be pushing his food cart again until after the humans ate and the more active dragons began demanding their dinners.

Taking a pickled egg for herself and a bowl of fresh crayfish, just in case Vithleen was in the mood for something crunchy, she traced the familiar path to the Cellars. All traces of the fire damage from the Lodger’s last fight—it still hurt to think of him lurching down the tunnel, holding his forelimb to his chest—had been removed and the tunnel walls repainted.

The crayfish made the trip for nothing. Vithleen was asleep. Rapoto was there, however, with a few other apprentices she knew from the dining hall. He had a wingman’s uniform now, a Guard officer’s straight sword, and his fore-and-aft-rigged hat under his arm. Rapoto had grown more handsome as the indolent, wealthy-boy baby fat finally left his face under the hard Guard training. She’d heard that their swordplay fatigues were nearly as hard as anything Ottavia threw at them.

It was hard not to form the sort of fantasies about a figure like that. It was hard to even breathe around him.

“You flatter that uniform,” she said.

He smiled. “I was hoping to congratulate you on your release. Yes, while you were gone they rotated me around a bit. I did a spell assisting in the flight cave. Amrits isn’t much of a taskmaster. I pull watches on the walls, and once in a while I have charge of the gate if Captain Tellence has something better to do.”

“Stopped any m-muddy fourteen-year-old girls from entering?”

“Haven’t had that honor yet, no.”

Ileth rounded the corner and peeped in on Vithleen. She looked shrunken, compared to the robust, muscular specimen Ileth had ridden by mistake on her wild circuit of the Vales. But her scale was still healthy. No trace of chalky streaks or patches falling out.

“Is she all right?”

“I’m told she’s doing well,” Rapoto said. “The physikers say it’s natural she doesn’t eat much these days. You can see one of the eggs, just where her neck is lying across her tail.”

The eggs looked to be lying in a little nest of bones. It was hard to tell what might be egg from bits of old bone; they were similar color. After some more guidance from Rapoto, she believed she saw it.

“No danger of the eggs being crushed?” Ileth asked.

“They’re not nearly as fragile as hen’s eggs. Not that I want to start experimenting,” an apprentice with a physiker’s apron said.

With little to see beyond a sleepy green dragon and a pile of bones with some eggs concealed inside, the apprentices turned away.

“Do you know Vithleen?” Ileth asked.

“A little,” Rapoto said. “I know she did a good deal of courier duty. She has a reputation of being friendly, a good learning dragon. I should like to ride her regularly. My ideal is a fast dragon. Fast will get you out of trouble. But Vithleen is not the sort to seek glory in war. I’m sure she’d defend the Serpentine to the last like the rest of us, but she declined to go up in the Galantine War. Left it to the males.”

Ileth thought about mentioning that Fespanarax was fast, very fast, but decided to remain quiet.

“Will you wait for one of her children, then?”

“Oh, I’d have gray in my beard—if I grow a beard then—by the time they have their wings uncased and are thinking about taking on a dragoneer. But they say sometimes, after having hatchlings, the females grow quite fierce and territorial. So maybe she will end up flying to glory after all.”

Ileth, having heard Dandas’s description of a glorious ending courtesy of Galantine crossbows, shuddered. Her imagination was eager to supply a picture of Rapoto lying dead under Vithleen. I wonder what color the males will be? Ileth decided to ask, and was rehearsing the question before speaking it when Rapoto looked at her.

“I have been forced to learn the virtue of patience when it comes to females,” Rapoto said, showing no sign of having heard her. He was staring at her.

It made her so uncomfortable that she forgot herself, bobbed an obeisance, and left.

Ileth had just begun, in the quiet of the Dancers’ Quarter, a letter to Falth at Ottavia’s writing table when she heard a call on the other side of the curtain, then the sound of running booted feet on the East Stair.

“Stop him!” a voice shouted.

She was just in one of her Galantine night-dresses; they were comfortable, even if they weren’t fit for public wear, so she threw the nearest shawl of Ottavia’s she could find on top of it and stepped barefoot into the passage leading up from the kitchens.

Preece was trying to get up the stairs; a kitchen apprentice and two dragon feeders were restraining him.

“Murder! Murder!” the kitchen apprentice said.

“We caught him trying to escape!” a feeder grunted, wrestling with Preece.

“P-P-Preece?” Ileth said, sensing that something had gone drastically wrong. “What’s going on? Help! Dragoneers!” she called, hoping that Dath Amrits was nursing his headachy dragon or that one of the more sensible ones was on the Under Ring.

“He’s a Galantine agent, dance-girl,” one of the men wrestling with Preece said.

“He’s no such thing,” Ileth said.

Other dancers emerged from the Quarter. It felt good to have a few more at her side. If only Ottavia were around! Oh, there was Preen, what rank was she again?

“He’s no . . . he’s no—” Curse her tongue!

“Don’t listen to her, she’s a friend to the traitor Galia,” someone in the mob said.

Preece finally gave up his struggles.

“Who was murdered?” Preen asked.

“Vithleen! And her eggs have been stolen!” the kitchen assistant said.

“One human managed to kill a dragon guarding her eggs?” Santeel Dun Troot said. She had a sleep mask on her forehead. “How?”

“Poison, we think. Her teeth are all blue; the physiker is there now and he showed us.”

Ileth felt her stomach go cold. Dun Huss had been asking about a poison that turned the teeth blue. But what kind of poisoner advertises his intent by asking every learned ear for information about the poison?

“Preece, what’s this about?” Dath Amrits said, cutting through the crowd. He looked haggard and his eyes were badly bloodshot. “You can tell me. Hael is out on Mnasmanus.”

“My dragoneer has ordered me to be silent until he gives me leave to speak, and silent I will remain, even if it costs me my life,” Preece said. “Let me get to the lighthouse. Everything depends on it! The murderer will get away with the eggs if I can’t signal. Oh, if only we’d guessed!”

“I tell you, he’s a poisoner,” the cook repeated. “Everyone knows he and his dragoneer have been trying to acquire the stuff.”

“It makes no sense,” Amrits said. “What sort of poisoner asks every herb grower and physiker in the Serpentine what they know about a substance that turns the victim’s teeth blue, then uses exactly that poison?”

“Exactly!” Ileth said. “If he needs to go to the lighthouse, let him.”

“It may be a signal to his co-conspirators,” Preen said.

“Oh, gutterwash,” Amrits said. “This must be the act of a madman. How’s anyone going to escape with three dragon eggs? It would be like running a race while carrying watermelons.”

A deep note passed through the air above and the rock beneath. The assembled humans felt it in their bones. Ileth had never heard the like; it was like the moan of the earth itself giving birth.

“That’s the Dragon Horn! It’s ‘dragons up,’” Amrits said. Whistles sounded, three long blasts, and Amrits pulled his own replacement (this one was brass) and blew a trio of blasts as well.

The argument dissolved.

Dragons up! Ileth had learned of that signal; everyone in the Serpentine had. It put the dragons and their riders on a war footing. Every dragon who could take to the air and fight would be up, and armed humans would post themselves at the entrances. The Beehive buzzed now, as though killer hornets were attacking.

“Look, I’ll take charge of Preece,” Amrits said. “Dragons up. Fire stations. To arms, now!”

Ileth, when questioned about it afterward, couldn’t say exactly what compelled her to hurry and seek out Fespanarax, leaving the drama on the stairway behind. She learned from one of the grooms passing out pikes that he’d hurried down to be at his niece’s side. Around her, dragons were moving, and dragoneers, wingmen, and apprentices were hurrying to and fro in increasing numbers, gathering equipment and buckling into flying gear.

“It’s dragons up, Ileth,” one of the grooms who liked to watch the dancers said.

Ileth decided, on her own, to try for the Cellars. Some sense beyond reason told her she had to be there. Perhaps it was memories of the Lodger’s final need. The lift was under guard; it would not move, she heard a Guard say, unless under orders of the Charge of the Beehive herself, until the eggs were retrieved.

There was an argument going on in the kitchen. The cooks did not do battle drill often, and an apprentice was arguing that she was useless with a pike but much better with a crossbow.

“You’re on the pike team,” the Guard in charge of the little group insisted. “Here’s the roster!”

“Stuff the roster! I’m the best in my class at marksmanship,” she insisted.

Oh, she needed to think! Ileth used the confusion, and her own trained nimbleness, to duck down the passage to the Cellars. She met only one person hurrying up, a physiker’s apprentice calling for water and a hose. He paid her no attention.

She rounded the familiar intersection. A splash in a corner reeked. She investigated and saw a great puddle of vomit. The track of a wheel passed through it. A food cart?

Odd that no one was barring her way to the dragon’s chamber. But what further crimes could be committed down here? She started down the corridor to the chamber, wondering why Fespanarax’s bulk wasn’t filling the passage ahead and blocking the light. Why wasn’t he guarding his niece?

“Ileth,” the Borderlander said, stepping from the shadows. Eerily, he was in much the same spot Gorgantern had used. It was the best spot for lurking, being the darkest stretch of tunnel.

“I’m looking for Fespanarax,” she said. “Have you seen him, sir?”

“The whole Serpentine is running with hair aflame. We’ll have ten or more dragons in the air soon. Including Fespanarax, I imagine. A rabbit wouldn’t be able to get away, night or no. How far is someone going to get with three dragon eggs? Stupid, even if they have a horse or something. I think the eggs are still concealed here. It’s the only thing that makes sense. While we’re rushing around searching Vyenn and so on, they’ll stay hidden. I’m just betting whoever did it, their mind is working and working and wondering if they made some mistake that gives the hiding place away or if they left a clue about their identity. I’m also making sure they don’t come back and finish the job on the poor mother.”

“Finish the job?”

“Vithleen is still breathing. Barely. But she’s unconscious or she could tell us more. Good thing Dun Huss laid in a supply of the antidote to gravesleaf, or she’d be gone already. Preece gave it to her and those fools in the kitchens hauled him off.”

Ileth gulped. “I’m down here. Do you . . . do you think I did it?”

“No.”

“Why don’t you suspect me?”

“I trust my gut. My gut likes you.” Northerners and their guts. “Also, if you were about to make a getaway with the eggs, it wouldn’t be barefoot and dressed like a whorehouse tart escaping a fire.”

Ileth wondered what Taf would think of one of her night-dresses being described like that.

“I think—” At the last second she changed her phrasing from I think you’re wrong to something more indirect. Once in a while a stutter could save you. “I think the eggs are gone. They went out in a food cart. Yael Duskirk did it.”

She grabbed his hand and pulled him down the hallway. Their relative sizes made her feel like an insistent child hauling a parent to a sweet-cart.

“You’re sure?”

“There’s vomit at the intersection.”

They came up to the puddle. He squatted to examine it. “Human. It smells like . . . wine.”

“I’ve cleaned up enough sick to know the smell and look. The s-smell of dragon stomach makes Duskirk vomit. I bet she made a terrible mess in her throes.”

“How’s he getting away, then?”

“A boat? There’s fog on the lake. Or . . . or maybe—”

“Maybe what?”

“Fespanarax. Did he come to see Vithleen?”

“No. Never even heard his step.”

“Zwollen in Galantine, and now one here, with the s-same results. Blue teeth. I think Fespanarax brought some poison back with him in that sealed box. Something that turns your teeth blue.”

“Yes. Called gravesleaf. Hael told me that tale. He’s been buried in herbs and lore on the stuff. Killed a couple pigs with his experiments. It makes sense. Fespanarax was there, and here, and now he and three priceless dragon eggs are gone. And that Duskirk kid’s been about him a lot. Seen ’em together.”

“What’s to be done?”

“We need to fly, and fast. Fespanarax has a head start. You’ll have to jump if you’ve a chance to catch him.”

Ileth was forming a reply when the Borderlander grabbed her hand and pulled her along. Now he was the parent pulling a poky child up the passage toward the kitchens. She struggled to keep up with his long, fast strides.

They moved through the chaos, one more loose leaf in a swirling river of activity.

“This isn’t the way to—” Ileth said.

“I know. Catherix ain’t even in the caves. She’s way above.”

“Without you?”

“She has brains, more’n me. She’s keeping watch, high above, where only she’s strong enough to get to—just in case there are some other dragons coming from, say, the Galantine lands to help get these eggs. Catherix likes a height advantage. It’s her favorite move. When she comes down, well, it’s like getting hit by an avalanche on fire.”

“Then where are we going?”

“The flight cave.” The Borderlander told her to save her breath for running.

They found Aurue on watch in the cave, guarding the entrance.

“We need you up and after Fespanarax now, Aurue,” the Borderlander said. “You’re our only hope of catching Fespanarax.”

Aurue twitched in thought.

“Me? Fly against Fespanarax?” Aurue asked. His Montangyan had improved while she was in the Galantine lands. “First: why? Second: he’s many times my size! Many. Third: you must be mad. Fourth: I’m already at my post.”

The Borderlander threw a wool blanket on Aurue’s back. “First, keep quiet. Second’s also ‘keep quiet’ and that goes for the rest of the listed items as well.” The Borderlander took off his cloak and handed it to Ileth. “This’ll have to do.”

“He has n-no scale,” Ileth as she accepted his overlong coat.

“I am aware of that,” Aurue said.

“You should fly on him,” Ileth said. “You’re the d-dragoneer.”

“Well, you have extra brains to make up for that mouth full of sling-stones. He’s not full-grown yet, and you’re light as a feather. Aurue with you is the best chance we have. Having no scale means he’s quick as hot oil and he can change color so’s a cat wouldn’t see him at night if they were sharing the same tree. Just the thing for following Fespanarax wherever he takes the eggs. My guess is he’ll make for somewhere familiar, and that means the Galantine Baronies. You know the Galantine lands, speak the tongue. If anyone can track him there, it’s you.”

“I don’t know the Galantine lands as well as all that. I can find my way to exactly one estate.”

“Figure it out as you go along. That’s what I do.”

The Borderlander found a cable about the thickness of his thumb and tied it neatly around Aurue, expertly putting three loops in it, one for each foot and a third atop the dragon’s spine; fortunately he was young and his spikes were still small. He also dug up a cargo net from the flying supplies and tied it around Aurue’s neck expertly.

“You’re doing it emergency-fashion, Ileth. You’ve been working your legs two years now. Time to test ’em. The net’s just in case you get a chance at those eggs.”

“I’m not threaded for reins!” Aurue said.

“Good, she won’t be hauling on your ears when you should be listening with them,” the Borderlander said. “Catherix isn’t threaded for reins. We do all right.”

Ileth climbed on and wrapped her dance-slippered toes around the stirrup lines. She didn’t feel at all ready to go after perhaps the biggest dragon in the Serpentine, and the most expert fighter.

“What is going on here?” an apprentice with an etching board said, running forward. Dragon departures were scrawled all over it. “Who is she?”

“Ileth flying Aurue, and if you knew your job you’d recognize them.” The Borderlander grabbed him by the shoulders, spun him, and launched him clear of the dragon and rider by the expedient of pressing his boot against the apprentice’s backside and kicking hard. “Going after the stolen eggs.”

The Borderlander returned, checked Ileth’s seat, and slapped the gray dragon at the base of the throat. “I’ve seen you fly. You got speed, Aurue. Time to use it. He’ll probably follow the river south, low, next to the hills while the moon’s low, keeping in the moon’s shadow.”

Aurue blinked. He took a deep breath and warmed his wings.

“Warm them up there,” the Borderlander said. “Fly like you’re escaping hell, you two.” The Borderlander brought his fists up and together in that gesture Ileth had seen. But not to her. He did it to Aurue. Aurue reared up and Ileth clung on, white-knuckled, for dear life. But she still saw the dragon mirror the man with his own front claws, making the tightest fist a dragon could with them.

With that he moved to the opening.

Fly they did. Aurue jumped out of the cave, almost leaving Ileth behind as she tightened her grip on the rope and about his neck, made the turn, and stayed low.

Ileth couldn’t help but think it was a fool’s errand. They’d delayed too much. Unless Fespanarax had also delayed, he was well ahead of them. Fespanarax was too clever to count on confusion lasting until morning.

Dragons with dragoneers on their back circled over the gate, hunting the approaches to the Serpentine. One swooped low, executing a neat trick as she (at least Ileth thought she was green, it was hard to tell at night) shot through the pillars of the Long Bridge, looking for boats rowing away. Aurue followed her. Ileth closed her eyes as he went through the bridge, briefly closing his wings and turning himself into an arrow.

Aurue was fast, frighteningly so. It was like Vithleen riding a greased fish-chute. The lake slipped by beneath them at a horizon-eating pace.

Then, near the great Heartbreak Cliff south of Vyenn, they both saw a shower of fire. Dragonfire, it had to be, and in its light she saw the flash of a white dragon belly.

Ileth saw her first aerial dragon duel that night and learned two important lessons: first, that they were often over quickly, and second, that you could lose one before you knew you were in it if you were taken by surprise. In later years, those early lessons would save her life more than once. But on this night she was mostly an observer.

Two dragons fought, wings out but not keeping them aloft, as they were clawing at each other. They spun and fell, grappling, heedless of the fall. Just before they hit the water they seemed to realize their danger and broke the embrace of combat. Once separated, she could make out Fespanarax, and another dragon almost as large whom she couldn’t be sure of in the darkness but might be Mnasmanus.

Fespanarax turned his fall into a dive. He closed his wings and splashed into the water like a shot arrow. Mnasmanus, who it seemed had the worst of the encounter, tried to bank above the lake but suddenly tipped and went in, throwing up a great wave in the moonlight.

“The one under the water!” Ileth shouted. “It’s Fe—”

“I know,” Aurue said, so excited that he spoke Drakine.

Aurue was fast, even faster on the descent. Ileth clung on with both arms and legs as best as she could, the Borderlander’s big coat flapping in the wind. It was Mnasmanus, she recognized his wings, swimming with Dun Huss clinging to his saddle.

Ileth spotted another swimmer in the water, clinging to a barrel.

“Who is that?” Ileth shouted. “Get me closer!”

It was Yael Duskirk, as she’d suspected, sputtering in the water.

Fespanarax shot out of the water like a leaping dolphin. Hanging in the air at the top of the jump, he opened his wings and began to gain altitude. His saddle hung on his back, askew and empty.

Aurue veered away in shock and turned over. If Ileth hadn’t been clinging so tight thanks to not being on a saddle at all, she’d have fallen off and been hanging from her tether. As it was, it took her a moment before she regained her orientation and Aurue was climbing again.

The shriek of a dragoneer’s whistle cut the night. Ileth looked back; Hael Dun Huss was clinging to his saddle as he pointed. He shouted something—perhaps it was “eggs.”

“Get that barrel,” Ileth yelled.

Aurue went for the barrel, grabbed it with his rear limbs, and flapped hard—it began to come out of the water, the wet swimmer holding on for dear life.

Fespanarax turned. Ileth saw him coming, jaws agape and claws out.

They didn’t stand a chance. But Aurue refused to release the barrel.

A white female flashed down like a thunderbolt. She seemed intent on flying right through Fespanarax. At the last instant he sensed her and closed his wings to protect them. She raked him across the back and Ileth saw droplets of blood and entire sheets of scale fly as Fespanarax spun from the impact.

But he was a tough, canny old dragon. Fespanarax opened his wings again and beat hard, gaining the advantage of altitude and turning east for the Galantine lands.

The white dragon turned and also climbed, kept turning, guarding Aurue with the barrel by circling. Aurue pulled it into the air, and water poured out—it must not have been closed and sealed, for it had flooded quickly. Good thing they’d gone for it when they did.

Yael still clung to the barrel, somehow. Flapping hard, Aurue made for the western shore of the Skylake.

They made it to the lakeshore under the loom of Heartbreak Cliff. The lights of Vyenn and the Serpentine glimmered in the distance. Aurue set the barrel (and Yael Duskirk) very carefully down as the white dragon, whom Ileth presumed to be the Borderlander’s Catherix, circled above.

Ileth dismounted, ignored the sputtering and shivering Yael, and opened the barrel—one end was closed by waxed canvas tied around it, so no wonder it had flooded. Canvas could keep out rain, but not a dunking in a lake.

Behind her, the hurt Mnasmanus emerged from the lake, dripping water and dragging a torn wing. Dun Huss was still in his saddle, soaked to the skin.

The eggs were intact, as far as she could tell, packed in with salted fish. She supposed there were worse cushioning materials.

“I’ll get help,” Aurue said to the other dragons, in Drakine. “I am the fastest.”

“Tell them it’s Fespanarax, flying hard for the Galantine lands. He’s hurt, they might catch him,” Mnasmanus told him. Aurue flew off.

“Duskirk, sit right down there. Don’t compound your mistake,” Dun Huss warned. He ignored Ileth and bent to check the condition of the eggs and rearrange them in their drenched container.

Fespanarax was a vanishing dot, just visible in the moonlight. He wasn’t coming back. Catherix splashed gently at the edge of the lakeshore and walked up to the humans.

“I will not leave the eggs,” Catherix said. She spoke Montangyan with a thick accent, even for a dragon. “Not until they are hatched or returned to their mother, if Vithleen lives.”

“I don’t know what would h-have happened if you hadn’t been alert,” Ileth said to the dragon.

Catherix just blinked at her. She was like her rider, a little hard to read.

Dun Huss finished resecuring the eggs.

“How did you know the eggs were stolen?” Ileth asked.

Dun Huss finally seemed to notice her. “I didn’t. I guessed when I heard the ‘dragons up’ signal. Unhatched dragon eggs are worth their weight in jewels. Saw Fespanarax with a barrel under his saddle; handy that he just happened to have those fittings. I decided it had to be the eggs in there and went at him.”

“Can we catch him?” Ileth asked.

“He’s fast, big, and smart. Now that he’s been found out he’ll be extra careful. In daylight we might have a chance. Not now.”

Dun Huss questioned Yael Duskirk. He confessed, and things were much as Ileth suspected. He’d poisoned Vithleen using a tasteless substance he put in her food, but Fespanarax said it was just a sleeping draft. Duskirk believed him; Fespanarax was a relative of Vithleen, after all. Fespanarax had promised him a Barony and all the wealth he could spend in the Galantine lands if they managed to bring the eggs over. “He worked on me—gave me expectations. He said Galia had mentioned me, said I wasn’t wealthy enough to tempt her. It sounded believable when he said it.”

Ileth regretted all the small talk she’d engaged in with Fespanarax. She thought she’d been cheering him up with news of the Serpentine. He’d been gathering intelligence.

Yael continued his story: when they splashed into the lake, the dragon shrugged him off. Duskirk had kept his wits and clung to the barrel, cutting it loose while Fespanarax turned. It had enough buoyancy to float for a moment, and Fespanarax didn’t know it was missing.

Duskirk, having made his confession, seemed lightened by it. “What’s going to happen to me?”

“Do you have the knife you cut this line with?” Dun Huss asked.

“I lost it in the lake,” he said, pointing out to the deep water.

Dun Huss examined what was left of the line that had fixed the barrel to Fespanarax’s back. “I’d say the line parted on its own.” Dun Huss took out his own knife, cut the rope, and cast the frayed end into the lake. “There. Now it looks cut. You clung on to the eggs, anyway. That’s something in your favor. Hopefully it will go to your credit in front of a jury. The question now is, will Vithleen live?”

For days Yael Duskirk’s life stood in jeopardy. Vithleen was in a deep, senseless sleep and could not be roused. The jury, including the Master of Apprentices, a professional assignee from Vyenn with knowledge of the law, and—incredibly to Ileth, who didn’t know dragons could serve on juries—the dragon Jizara, pronounced him guilty (no great matter of decision, he had confessed). They suspended sentencing for thirty days to see if Vithleen would recover. If she died, he would die a poisoner’s death.

Apparently, it wasn’t an easy death. Every time someone tried to give her the details, Ileth clapped her hands over her ears and begged to be spared the particulars.

The Serpentine held its breath, certainly none more so than Yael Duskirk.

Ileth had so many what-ifs tormenting her about the whole affair. What if there hadn’t been a mix-up and Duskirk had done the courier run with Vithleen? Could he still have poisoned the dragon who flew him on his first commission? The Lodger had taught her not to think about that which she had no control over and instead concentrate on those matters in her control, but in each case, she could have altered the flow of events.

Perhaps she still could. She started rehearsing a speech. If Vithleen died, it wouldn’t matter, but if she lived . . .

She danced away the doubts and gloomy thoughts. She realized she was developing a style all her own, in the quiet hours when no one was watching, except a dragon or two lounging after dinner and looking to be lulled to sleep. You were, after all, what you did, and that different version of Ileth who danced didn’t spend much time on the what-ifs. There was music to follow.

Exhausted from dance, she mechanically ate and mechanically slept and made it through the terrible days of question and doubt. Santeel caught her rehearsing her speech and cautioned her against speaking in favor of a friendless apprentice who poisoned a dragon atop her eggs. Even Dun Huss was only speaking out of tradition; even the most wretched convict in the Republic traditionally had one person assigned to speak for him.

Ileth stuttered out that Yael Duskirk had been the first person in the entire Serpentine to speak to her as a friend. If need be, she’d be the last friend to stand by him.

Vithleen awoke after six days. Falberrwrath was beside her when she did so. Vithleen knew who she was and was glad to see her eggs with the little dragons dreaming quietly within but was otherwise confused; she’d been dreaming that she was flying above thick clouds, and every time she dropped down she couldn’t find a familiar landmark, so up she went again; the only odd thing about her dream was that she grew stronger each time she fought her way above the clouds rather than weaker.

It did take her some time to fully recover and remember the names of the humans attending her.

Ileth asked Hael Dun Huss to be allowed to address the jury before the sentencing. It was no great difficulty for him to get her on the roster of people addressing the jury, as nobody but Dun Huss himself was willing to speak for the boy. Selgernon, the Master of Apprentices, was ill; the shock of one of his apprentices committing such an act had shattered his already frail health, so Dun Huss took it upon himself to speak up for the boy.

The jury room was at the up end of the Serpentine, in a very old hall with ornate arching woodwork that got dusty, illuminated by candles that left the jurors looking forbidding and shadowed in their special double gallery with dark stained glass behind. You had to look up at them. The dragon sat below the gallery, her body in a basement chamber and her head looking out from a wide gap beneath the jury balcony.

Ileth’s speech was longer than her oath. She stuttered her way through it, just like her oath, but this time it didn’t make her feel miserable. Her words and the truth behind them were important, not how she said them, and a foolish man’s life stood in the balance. She described herself as a dancer, and talked of how dancers supposedly could bewitch dragons. She believed it could work the other way too; it was hard, when you stood before so immense and powerful a creature, not to be swayed by the words of an ancient creature who could breathe you out of existence. She spoke of how the Lodger had restored her confidence in herself with a few kindly words here and there and given her the desire to bring justice to a thief like Griff. Then she described Fespanarax, a powerful dragon good at getting what he wanted out of humans. She told them of her precious silver dragon whistle, the first token of esteem anyone had given her in her entire life, and how at a few words from him she gave it up to be eaten so quickly he hardly could have tasted it. Fespanarax in his greed was skilled at weaving lies and truth around each other; who knows how he had worked on Yael, used his disappointments against him. She finished saying she couldn’t claim to know anyone’s heart, but that while Yael Duskirk had failed the Serpentine, he had recovered the eggs.

“After first stealing them,” the dragon on the jury said. But the human jurors had exchanged looks as Ileth spoke.

Dun Huss spoke briefly, emphasizing that as a feeder Duskirk was used to issuing herbs and potions that would help dragons sleep, and that, in the end, he’d come to his senses and tried to atone for his crimes by saving the eggs. He’d confessed fully and made no attempt to offer a defense of his actions.

So Yael Duskirk was spared his poisoner’s death, but even an attempt at murder was a forfeit of his existence. He was sentenced to labor in the mines at the Widowsend.

“It is not the end for him,” Hael Dun Huss said, discussing it with Ileth and Preece later over late-night tea in the dining hall. “If he can avoid an accident, after a few years the fact that his crimes came before full legal citizenship, his confession and attempt to make amends by—ahem—saving the eggs by cutting them off Fespanarax, plus influence from a few dragoneers, might get him removed from there and put into the Auxiliaries.”

Dun Huss was willing to write a letter in his favor, in a year or two when his crimes weren’t so new. He would look up the boy’s birth date and plead for some kind of suspension of sentence in exchange for enrollment in the Auxiliaries when he turned eighteen.

The dragoneer poured Ileth a little more tea, carefully turning his body so any accidental splashes wouldn’t hit his purple sash. “We all make mistakes when we’re young. Provided they’re not irrevocable, you can start anew. A bad start is still a start, after all.” He smiled at Ileth. “I think you’re fond of that expression.”

“True, sir,” Ileth said. “As I’ve a-always tried to say.”