Novice Dragoneer

5

My Dear Falth,

Forgive me for not writing you sooner. In truth, there was little to report these past weeks. There is still little to report, but I did not wish you to think your trust in me misplaced.

You will be pleased to know that your late charge Santeel of the Name Dun Troot is doing well in the Serpentine. Her health is excellent and she eats with appetite. I was practically next to her when she swore her oath. I’m sure you understand that she did much better than I at that ritual, and you can tell your family that the white pin she now wears flatters both her complexion and her family name. They do not let her powder her hair here save for when we dress for dinner on the duty day of the week-over, and that bothered her (and the rest of us who were asked to commiserate at the deprivation) at first. Though her collection of friends does not, perhaps, reflect the number she deserves, she gives direction as one of the leading novices in our residence. We can always rely on her to become involved in our labors, and she freely draws on her wealth of knowledge to offer suggestions for improvements.

At first, she was put to work in the smithy, but the work didn’t suit her talents, so she moved on to the chicken runs. The Serpentine has several substantial sets of chicken coops to supply us with eggs and meat. Chickens, as you know, are not the cleanest of birds, and she does a good deal of scrubbing after her work there and must sometimes bandage small wounds received in the daily retrieval of eggs. I hope she’s not giving off some kind of odor that makes the chickens think her hands are their fish-meal! Perhaps you can send her some strongly scented soap. Address it to me if you wish to avoid giving her embarrassment by implying that she needs a vigorous application of pine or lavender. I will pass it to her discreetly.

But she is far from discouraged! I often return later than she does as I have a long walk that is half climb, but I believe she is continuing her studies in her free time before the dinner hour. The study volumes she had in her baggage are all in a neat row, dust-free, and so well taken care of they appear new from the press. She did have a mishap with her correspondence, though, when she confused her ink-jar with her teacup. At least I think that is what happened. The stains in her teeth eventually came out.

As for me, I am grateful for your advice and showing as much patience as I can. I did look at that statue whose story you relayed. It is near the Long Bridge out to the dragon delvings and is small, that is to life, but extremely fine work.

I do not have Santeel’s advantages in enjoying society. Other than a dead rat that ended up in my bedding the other night, I’ve hardly touched hands with a friend. My appearance is altered so that you might not recognize me; my hair was cut radically short one night when I returned to the Manor late (I often miss dinner, as the apprentice who supervises me gives me extra cleaning duties at the end of the day) and so tired that I spent the evening in a half-awake daze. I must have been sick of caring for it and cropped it off, because I was shocked the next morning to find it almost entirely gone. The boyish cut does have advantages. It is easy to clean, at least.

The paper runs out. If anything goes seriously amiss with the honorable young Dun Troot, I will make haste to acquaint you with the facts. I am certain they will make an apprentice of her in time.

Faithfully yours in this commission,

Ileth

There were rules to living at the Serpentine, strictly enforced on all the novices by the many layers superior to them. You had to keep yourself and your berth tidy. Everyone had their principal job, their common work, and a few “furthers,” as they were called—the Serpentine expected its novices to be educated enough to converse and trade with anyone in the Republic, and ideally be able to supply their dragon outside it. Random fighting would be punished, but formal duels were allowed under the usual rules for those in the Republic’s service. You always had to show respect to the Masters of the Serpentine, dragoneers, and those who supervised you. Outside the Serpentine, you were expected to be an exemplary citizen.

But Ileth never had a chance to get outside the Serpentine. She had no money for the few marketing trips and wasn’t of an illustrious enough name that she’d be invited to dine in town.

The punishment system was expedience itself. You would be removed from the Serpentine for any crimes that could have you bound over to trial. Repeated rule breaking, such as not cleaning and maintaining your footwear and dress, eating when you were supposed to be on duty, or trading and dealing outside of market days or trips into town, would also get you put outside the walls in whatever rags were handy. One of the previous draft’s novices who hadn’t yet made apprentice was discharged for buying smuggled wine and tobacco “over the wall,” as they styled it.

There was next to nothing in the way of instruction, as Caseen had explained her first day, and if such a thing as a lecture hall existed anywhere in the fortress, she’d not yet seen it. She attended one lecture about crossbows almost by accident; the Duskirk boy ran into her and Galia on the Long Bridge on an afternoon off and they joined him for the session, held in the amphitheater. Ileth found it more interesting than she thought; her mind was so starved for a break in the routine that the lecture enthralled her. The military expert told them about the tactics the Galantines had used with mixed success to take down dragons (dragon scale would often deflect a bolt fired from head on; crossbow men on the ground had to have the nerve to wait until they could get a side shot or, even better, a rear shot at a dragon) and showed them the latest in notched sights.

The Santeel Dun Troots of the world had tutors admitted to give them lessons in the Great Hall or the Visitor’s House near the gate. Ileth had no tutors, or lesson books, or allowance to spend. All she had was her old travel boots, her issue of clothing, the knife with an improvised handle, and some socks that kept slouching.

She was also the last of the year’s novices to speak to a dragon, and that by accident, as she’d been sitting on the doorstep when the full tour of the Beehive was given to the others and they were introduced to a few of the friendlier dragons who spoke Montangyan well.

Her first meeting came by chance, in the kitchens above the Catch Basin. The kitchens, as might be expected, joined the rest of the Beehive from several directions. Sort of a sub-warren all their own, the kitchens contained storage areas for fresh and preserved food, washing and laundry space, and two big portals up to the dragon levels, all branching off from the cooking galley itself where the fish and other provisions met fire and water. Once the workers in the Catch Basin had loaded a cartload full of fish for the dragons, it was pulled by an ox up the winding path to the galley. From there it would be emptied onto a cast-iron grating that could be maneuvered on a sort of ceiling rail into the central cooking fire. Ordinary cooking utensils, even for masses of humans such as ate at the dining hall, were inadequate for the dragons, so they’d created ways to char or roast entire cartloads of meat.

The cavern kitchens were painted in a durable red, lit by the charcoal fires, and smelled of dragons, a greasy-metallic smell that reminded her of scorched oil. She always returned from the kitchen smelling of it. But after fish guts, she welcomed a strange scent, even if the heat of the cooking fire was intense enough to singe her nostril hair.

The cooks were kindly men. Some were former dragoneers, injured in such a way that they no longer could fly, or no longer wanted to. They told fascinating stories she rarely had time to hear in their entirety, like the time Jeroth’s dragon couldn’t be roused to wakefulness after a long flight and big meal. Ileth got through Jeroth shouting in its ear, pulling at its lip, and pouring water on its head, and he was just about to lift its head using a shovel as a lever when Gorgantern shouted for her from the Catch Basin to bring “primed water.” They often had a crock of cider or water with berries and mint leaves to cool it and shared it with her.

Because the cooks were looking so she couldn’t spit in the tankard she filled for him, she idled for another moment watching them work.

She caught a reflection of an eye in the darkness of the passage up to the dragon caves. An angular, horned head appeared. The head was smaller, she thought, than Agrath’s had been when she met him in her youth, even allowing for her change in size. It had a long snout like a horse but was feline in the set of its eyes and mouth. It was a unique color—gray as ash, though the skin sometimes rippled with color changes. Its nostrils opened as it sniffed at the worktable. A forked tongue flicked out and gently explored the brown-crackled skin of a turkey fresh from the roasting oven, sitting in a row with five others of varying size.

Something struck Ileth as odd about the dragon and it took her a moment to realize it. It had no scale.

“Wait, it’s almost ready,” the cook nearest the turkey said.

Ileth knew it must be a youngish dragon to be able to make it through the human passageways to the kitchens. She also knew he was male; female dragons were green-scaled, or rarely, white, and didn’t have horns growing out from the bony ridge behind the eyes.

She could smell it, too. The oily odor, strong and fresh off the dragon, hit her nostrils hard enough for her to squeak in shock. Though it was a tiny sound, and she would have sworn no one who was not next to her could hear it, the dragon turned its head and gave her a look. The cook used the distraction to push the turkey out of reach of even the dragon’s long neck.

The dragon’s gaze reminded her of the evaluative glance a shepherd might give to a stray dog who’d wandered into his flock’s pasture. She’d never been looked at this way by an animal before. The dumbly friendly stares of sheep and goats, the eager-to-please or wary looks from dogs, even the contempt of a cat didn’t quite match it. Childhood fables of people being mesmerized by a dragon’s stare turned from vague legends to certainties—she could see how the power of the creatures overwhelmed you into an instinctive stillness.

“This is Aurue, girl,” the cook by the turkey said. “Wings uncased, but hasn’t decided on a rider yet.”

“Nor do I need to,” the dragon said, in heavily accented Montangyan. His color went briefly darker as he watched the cook work.

“You’re just lazy, drake,” the cook said, letting the dragon sniff the spoon he’d been using to drip juices over the roast bird. “Only like to work when it suits you.”

“Dragon,” Aurue said. “I’ve breathed my fire. I have my wings. I’ve flown. I am a dragon.”

“Oh, of course, of course,” the offending cook said. “No harm meant. I’ve just always known you as a drake since I’ve been here. It falls off the tongue, like.”

“No harm done,” Aurue said. He moved and his skin took on the color of the kitchen’s red walls, or the black of a great stove near it.

“Your s-skin is . . . beautiful,” Ileth said.

The dragon stared at her and sniffed the air about her again. “No, it’s a curse. Born without scale. No good in battle.”

“Ahh,” the senior cook said, “don’t talk like that, Aurue. You’re quick as thinking in the air, being light. Faster even than Vithleen. Speed’s got a power all its own.”

“Still not faster than a crossbow bolt,” the dragon said. “They’ll never give me anything important. I was warned off coming here and mixing with humans. Said I’d end up dead or bored. So far I’m just bored.”

Ileth felt a flash of sympathy. So dragons had their own doubters too.

“Then why’d you bother?” the cook who’d called him a drake asked.

“I like being around humans,” Aurue said. “There’s always something underfoot. And I don’t care for hunting up my own food.” He flicked his tongue out to taste the turkey again.

Ileth, keenly attentive to any and all dragonly matters since the age of seven, spent the rest of her day and some time before bed wondering at that. The dragon hadn’t been born here but had come before uncasing his wings. Where had he been bred, and why a long, inconvenient, and potentially dangerous journey before his wings emerged?

The next night Ileth met someone even more important than the dragon Aurue. The Manor accepted, with gratitude and respect, a visit and address from Roguss Heem Deklamp, Charge of the Serpentine, First Master and Dragoneer Laudii. He was a man who would have no doubt had other titles in one of the aristocratic lands, but those were ample for the Republic.

He didn’t look anything like a dragoneer from romantic fancies, except perhaps in uniform, which was simple and immaculate. A small gold pauldron, hardly more than a curved nameplate, hung from the shoulder of his gray tunic, which had a high black-and-gold collar and matching belt.

As a man he was short and potbellied, with droopy, staring eyes. While a few of the other novices seemed disappointed that he wasn’t much larger than a teenage girl, Ileth’s heart warmed to him immediately. Perhaps size and reach and fencing ability and your aim with a crossbow wasn’t all there was to being a dragoneer.

There was, however, something vaguely alien about him. His gaze roved across his audience as the Matron introduced him, sad eyes watery and staring, and then when he fixed on something his face would turn quick on his neck like an owl’s and stare for a moment, before the eyes began their survey again. There were stories of dragoneers drinking dragon blood and being changed by the drafts, and after watching him hunt about his audience and room in that raptor fashion, she was willing to believe it.

After the Matron (all bobbing and giggling in a coquettish manner that was even more unsettling than the Charge’s stare) finished emphasizing how fortunate they were in his visit, he stepped to the center of the little hall and spoke in a deep, ringing voice that seemed to come directly from that potbelly.

“Thank you for having me, novices and apprentices of the Manor. It always lifts my spirits, whatever news comes in from outside the walls, good or bad, to see our latest novices. It restores my belief in the durability of our Republic when I see such healthy, spirited young people. I like to come and speak to our newcomers after they’ve had a chance to settle in and the new jobs are no longer quite so new, and you are used to the routine. You’re probably grappling with your first disappointments and difficulties here. Well, that’s the ideal time to meet you, in the hope that now that you’ve found your feet, your heads will be ready to absorb what I was told when I came into the Serpentine . . .”

He did not speak long, or perhaps he did, but it didn’t seem like it. Afterward, Ileth could remember only a specific line or two, one being “your job is not your duty.” He went on some time about duty. To him, your job was just your task, a way to earn your bread and fish. Duty was something you owed both to the past and to the future. In his tradition, the most important duty the novices had was to learn all they could about dragons and how the different parts of the Serpentine kept them healthy, happy, and ready to support and defend the Republic and its citizens. How the Serpentine’s dragoneers and dragons worked as a team, or even better than a team, as a single organism capable of achieving feats neither humans nor dragons alone could accomplish. If they absorbed some idea of what it took to keep the dragons and dragoneers aloft, and took pride in their being part of the Serpentine, however humble, and agreed, one day, to pass on what they learned to a generation not yet born, well, he would know that he’d done his duty to the dragons and dragoneers of the past and the Republic’s future.

Ileth found her eyes full of happy tears. She’d never been so proud to be in a room. She glanced around. Santeel, bright and shining as always, took in every word with a trembling lip as well. Quith looked like she was studying the collar of his uniform.

By the end of his talk, if he’d asked his novices to charge a Galantine pike-and-crossbow line with nothing but fireplace pokers and rotten apples, they would have gone in shrieking the Republic’s barking battle cry. Ileth didn’t know what to make of it. In a less enlightened time, she supposed she would have thought him some kind of sorcerer who put girls under his spell. But she was full of resolve to learn all she could about the Serpentine, up and down, Bayside to Harborside, until every face and stair step and task was known to her.

After his speech, the Charge asked for music. Galia and a few of the other apprentices, less overawed than the others but equally proud to be in his company, started things off with a song and a tune played on a smallhorn and bow-loom.

The Charge delighted in it from his seat in the front row, lightly tapping his palms against his thighs in time to the music and smiling. The apprentices’ example gave the others courage to step forward, and they heard songs from all over the Vales. From time to time he’d lean over and speak to the Matron, asking a question or making a comment. The Matron usually spoke back. Ileth caught a few names and hometowns or districts in the Matron’s answers. It seemed music was a way for their Charge to get a peek at the personality behind the face.

The songs Ileth knew, sung by the Captain and his gang in the Lodge, would not have been well received by the audience at the Manor, at least under the Matron’s eye. Ileth and Quith did find the heart to get up and dance in couple when an informal band struck up, along with some other paired girls. Even the Matron briefly joined in for a reel. In the end, the Charge gave another brief speech, thanking them all for a delightful evening before bowing his way out, his swivel-mounted head turning this way and that.

“That is what I call a man,” Quith said to her after the door shut, panting from the dancing and the heat that had built up in the hall. “I wonder if he’s married?”

Ileth thought it strange that her status-and-connection collector friend didn’t have a complete biography of their Charge.

“Good luck with that, Quith,” Galia said, chuckling as she passed. “He had an unfortunate landing with a wounded dragon years ago. Very unfortunate.”

The novices went to bed that night without a single argument over a rinsing bowl or arrangement of socks and washcloths on the drying line. Perhaps Charge Heem Deklamp was a sorcerer after all.

Newly inspired by Charge Deklamp’s speech, Ileth tried, tried her best, to see Gorgantern with some amount of sympathy and learn from him. See the good side, perhaps hidden because he kept others from getting too close, because they might rise to full dragoneer while he remained in the Catch Basin. He’d hardly been on dragonback at all, and rumor had it the dragons didn’t much like him, perhaps because of his size. He’d failed a key test called a “survival,” whatever that was, so an apprentice he remained and would be until they found some excuse to be rid of him. He was an excellent worker, always taking on extra duties and tasks, helping with the barge and fishing boat lines, keeping up the pace at unloading, and made sure that the barge-men didn’t wander off into the caverns in search of scales. He volunteered for dirty jobs Bragg didn’t care for and was educated enough to keep and help with the tally sheets while Bragg did work more to his liking, like dickering with the barge captains over the price of their fish and celebrating a particularly rich catch by passing around a bottle.

He also frequently stayed late at the Catch Basin. Certain fishermen seemed to like him, and he liked to go on their boats and help with minor repairs or just swap stories. Ileth suspected he might have a souvenir or two from the dragons concealed in his clothing—she’d heard whispers from the girls at night that there was good coin in even a few dragon scales or better yet a claw—but Gorgantern was clever enough to do that sort of thing, if it was happening, out of sight of anyone else.

She also worked late, thinking the harder she worked in the Catch Basin the sooner she’d get away from gutting fish with her wretched old knife with its improvised twine handle. She missed dinner often enough that she sometimes snuck upstairs and begged a little dragon feed from the cooks. It wasn’t cooked fancy at all—most of the dragons wanted nothing but salt on their meat or fish—but it was plentiful if you didn’t mind it frequently being underdone. The dragons liked their meals juicy. When she finally returned and started up the long outer stair, Gorgantern sometimes walked her up and “steadied” her on the trickier steps in a pawing manner that reminded her of the Captain’s drunken friends. She always said, “Thanks, I’ll manage,” and hurried away up the long flights until she was gasping for air and he was far behind.

Gorgantern held his own lessons at night after dinner. He’d picked up a good deal of seamanship and taught his novices about knots, lines, how to splice together a break, and the best way to store ropes and work a block and tackle to advantage. He could light a fire in a blizzard.

Ileth put up with him as best as she could and begged off his seamanship tutorials. She knew her knots from working with both small watercraft and livestock. She would rather hear dragon stories from the cooks or hurry up to the human side of the bridge where there were geography and mapmaking lessons for the students who’d shown aptitude for it as furthers. She crept in and joined one of those circles to better acquaint herself with those subjects and the use of the tools for drawing maps to proper scale. Most of the novices were from moneyed families who had been educated with something better than a shelf of old reference books in Galantine, books of humorous letters that the Captain found amusing on the rare occasions he read, and Hypatian philosophies that had, at one time or another, held up an uneven table.

Gorgantern used her absence to complain to Master Caseen that she wasn’t attending to her studies. They called her and Gorgantern into the dining hall as the clearers were washing down tables, and, bathed in stained light from his windows and surrounded by trophies collected from battlefields and bits of dragoneer equipment, Caseen heard them both out. She demonstrated her knowledge of knots and quoted the weight of dry and wet line of the two most common types the Serpentine used. She explained instead that she’d been learning geography, map reading, and the art of sketching landscapes, which Galia was teaching as she was so good at it and allowed the odiferous novice to sit in, provided she kept out of her air. Caseen was satisfied and suggested that perhaps she should take over Gorgantern’s tutorship, before he released her of any further need to study lines and splicing. Gorgantern’s expression remained calm on the outside, but his inner boil erupted on his face with a choleric red. She heard him huffing out his anger behind her as they passed out of the dining hall.

“Girls! Always finding a reason to beg off,” Gorgantern said.

Ileth had to bite her tongue to keep from replying with an insult she’d picked up from one of the Captain’s friends.

From that day on Gorgantern “rode her” as Joai had predicted, with an aim of getting her kicked out of the Serpentine. He ordered her to remove the wrist bracer she wore (a gift from the cooks above—they wore them to help shift the huge dragon-meal-sized frying pans they worked with) for long hours of knife work because it was not part of a novice’s uniform for Catch Basin work. He made her ask his permission to attend to her bodily needs (generally you just slipped away; it was obvious to everyone that you were headed to the little outhouse built out over the lake, and he liked to recite as loudly as he could for all to hear the number of trips to the privy she’d made that day), and if she did not keep her gutting-board spotlessly clean he made her run all the way up the outer stairs and back down again with a fish eyeball in her mouth. The sooner she came back, the sooner she could spit it out.

One thing he couldn’t do was beat her. He could (and did) beat the male novices, provided those in the Catch Basin gathered to hear the offense and witness the punishment. The Matron could discipline her charges physically—she struck one novice across the palm with a dried reed for sneaking out after the door was locked—but ignored the note Gorgantern had scrawled demanding that she be beaten for disrespect (he’d said that with her close-cropped hair she could be mistaken for a boy, and she replied that with his fleshy breasts and belly he could be mistaken for a mother in expectation of her third child). She relayed the entire story to the Matron. One of the Matron’s oddities was that what her girls did or said to her within the Manor and its grounds was suspect and assumed to be an evasion even if it wasn’t an outright lie—if you told her you’d cleaned the windows in the second-floor bedrooms, she’d check each one—but whatever happened outside the Manor door, her “young charges” (as she styled them) became unimpeachable in word and stainless in deed. The Matron didn’t even give Ileth her usual sharp look when she recounted the conversation; she just folded up Gorgantern’s note, said, “We can’t have disrespect shown to an apprentice,” and made her walk back and forth across the dining room with a platter balanced on her head (along the shorter wall of the rectangular room beneath where LET YOUR PRESENCE IMPROVE ANY ROOM was painted in neat block letters) three times.

On the Matron’s discipline scale, this was the equivalent of most girls her age getting a sharp look from their mother. The Matron made you scrub out the privy by hand if you left a sock on the floor.

The Matron had her return the note with Ileth was punished according to her fault written on the back. When Gorgantern demanded to see the marks left by the beating he’d demanded, Ileth told him she’d plunge her arm into a hornet’s nest before she’d let him see her backside.

Things came to a head during the next week-over pass day at the Serpentine. The summer lingered on into fall, waves of heat alternating with storms, making their rooms stuffy even in the mountains next to the chilly lake. Food went bad quickly, and all the Serpentine sweated, chafed, and quarreled.

On pass day no real work was done, save for a switch where the kitchen staff had a day off from preparing meals and other groups took their place at the stoves and ovens in rotation. All but the novices and a few members left to supervise them were allowed to leave the Serpentine if they wished, to go down to the lakeshore to bathe and refresh themselves, walk in the cool of the nearby wood (called the Scalewood because every year they held a dragon-scale hunt for the children of Vyenn at the conclusion of a lesson year), or visit the town.

Gorgantern, showing his usual enthusiasm, had volunteered his team for kitchen work that pass day. They worked in the Great Hall, the newest and finest building in the Serpentine. The hall was partially circular in a style Santeel Dun Troot described as an “auditorium.” It was built around one of the great natural rocks of the landscape, which had been shaped and used as a kind of great tent pole for the dragon-scale roof (outside the Serpentine, a dragon-scale roof would be an expense only the richest of the great Names could afford). Captured flags and banners decorated the columns and the rafters above. All around the walls stood trophy weapons and armor, and glass cases containing tattered old pieces of uniform, art, and equipment, colorful relics of the Serpentine’s history.

The diners ate either seated at long tables or at the counters at the walls if they wished solitude at their meal. A pulpit was carved into the central rock so that someone might observe or address, if necessary, most of the room, but the Great Hall had never been filled to capacity in Ileth’s time there (though she missed most of her dinner meals because of extra tasks in the Catch Basin and the long trip to the up end of the Serpentine). Everyone was served across a broad, waist-high counter in a wall that divided kitchen from dining hall, one gap for food, a second for pitchers of water—or beer and wine, on feast days and celebrations. The wall also held a wide double door leading into the kitchens that stood open at mealtimes, allowing plenty of room for wheeled pushcarts that could bring out clean crockery and utensils and return them for the washing-up staff.

To Ileth, it was a marvel of efficiency, a well-ventilated kitchen as up-to-date as it could possibly be. Even the charcoal stoves were easy to rake out. You could feed hundreds with not much more effort than it took to feed twenty at the Captain’s Lodge.

It being Gorgantern’s team’s job that pass day to prepare food, Ileth was working in the kitchens at the soup, an easy enough dish she’d made, following instructions to fill a vessel that could only be described as a cauldron. Someone else had started it; all she had to do was keep the broth up and the fire coaled and stir now and then when she wasn’t serving the soup. She ladled it out into wooden bowls passed to her by Gorgantern, who shuttled them to the food counter as the diners asked for it.

Gorgantern’s work did not engage him, so he livened up the steaming kitchen with what passed for jokes. “Another s-s-s-soup,” he called, mimicking her stammer. “A-A-Another s-s-soup.”

She’d been stirring the cauldron with a wooden stirrer the size of a small oar. The steam tingled on her face and arms, and she kept changing hands so the arm with the ladle would not be cooked along with the soup.

Santeel Dun Troot stood a few steps away at the water pump and drink station. Ileth thought it strange that she’d volunteered to work the kitchens on such a hot day. The Master of Stores had purchased barrels of cider from the northwest as the fall apple crop had come in and been pressed. Santeel had nothing to do but fill pitcher after pitcher of the cool cider and hand it to an apprentice named Rapoto who was shuttling drinks to the tables. He was exceptionally handsome. He took good care of his hair and brushed it out in the style of a Name, but she’d never spoken a word to him, just overheard the Dun Troot girl brag him up as a favorite of hers to her coterie.

“Have you tested the cider, Rapoto?” Santeel asked, for the third time since they’d started serving. This time she added: “You’re from Jotun—I expect an expert opinion.”

Rapoto just gave her a sour smile and took another pitcher through the window.

Ah, he was from Jotun. It was to the west of the Freesand, on the other side of the mountains from her chilly bay. And it was famous for its apple orchards and honey. Pigs, too. Fat as a Jotun pig was an expression. Though it was considered an insult to say it of anyone but babies and livestock.

Santeel watched Rapoto through the window, then sniffed another pitcher of cider as though suspicious. She glanced over at Ileth, who just shrugged. Maybe he didn’t like cider.

“C’mon, you titted calamity, your arm’s as slow as your tongue today,” Gorgantern said.

She left the stir-stick sitting in the cauldron and retrieved the ladle. She filled it brimfull and slopped it into the bowl with such force that it cascaded back out of the bowl to land hot on Gorgantern’s forearm.

“Stones!” he bellowed, dropping the bowl. It struck the tiled floor and spun on its rim like a dancer in a hooped skirt. “You northern sow! I’m burned!”

What came next happened so fast she had to mentally sort it out later; it was just a series of shocks as it happened. Before she knew it he’d slapped her, cuffing her hard enough on the ear to bring a sharp bolt of stabbing pain and fill her ear with a ringing sound. The pain, some of the worst she’d ever experienced in her life up to then, left her insensible, but later she worked out that the force of the slap knocked her off her feet and against the cauldron. She remembered that the sweat on her arm—she’d rolled up the sleeves on her too-large man’s shirt so that they wouldn’t dip in the soup—hissed on contact and the smell of burning hair filled her nostrils.

She bounced off the cauldron in a move that was half ricochet and half fall. She was on the floor when she could think again, feeling weirdly embarrassed for some reason. She rose to her feet, off balance and mazy with pain.

Ileth, who’d been aiming to have most of the soup remain in the bowl and just splatter him, tried to form words but her tongue found itself more reluctant than ever. She held up her arm to guard her face, using the long wooden spoon like a swordsman parrying a swing.

He shouted something that might have been “Oh, will you” and grabbed the spoon and wrenched her sideways. Arms that felt like heavy chains bent her over the steaming soup.

“Say you’re sorry!” Gorgantern shouted into her ringing ears. “I’ll dunk you, by the gods I will!”

The steam rising out of the soup burned. She felt the heat of the cauldron through her apron and smock. The heat on her face turned to agony. Words weren’t coming and wouldn’t have been an apology if they had. She shut her eyes tight, anticipating a burning plunge into the soup.

He forced her head lower. Her forehead and nose touched the hot liquid and she yelped.

“Off her, oaf!” Santeel Dun Troot shouted from a faraway place. She heard a curse.

The pressure released.

Ileth reeled away from the steam, blinked her eyes open, and saw the comic-opera vision of Santeel striking Gorgantern about the back with a long wooden candle lighter and extinguisher. And by strike, the effort Santeel put into it would have done a Stavanzer lumber-cutter proud. She struck him, then whirled the long wooden stick in a great circle, putting her back and waist muscles into it like a man splitting cordwood, briging it down on Gorgantern’s fleshy torso.

Gorgantern managed to get his arms on her and threw her like a bag of oats against the wall. She bounced hard and fell, but for a rich girl she was made of some quality steel. Santeel rolled, her usually pallid complexion flushed as she looked up at him, and her lips were pulled back, baring her teeth like a wolf.

Ileth, her mind throwing off sparks like lightning, each thought bright and clear in the heat of the confrontation, thought that while she had never wished to call much of anyone sister, at that moment, with her face burning from the heat of the cauldron, she’d have been happy to have Santeel as hers.

Shouts from some of the other novices working the kitchen registered in Ileth’s ringing head. Footsteps and a sudden presence of others around turned the struggle into a brawl. She found herself free, away from the heat, able to breathe, picking up the dropped candle-snuffer and holding it like a spear aimed at Gorgantern’s stomach.

A swirl of novices had formed around them; she saw two other boys, each holding one of Gorgantern’s arms. Someone else wiped at her face with a rag. She saw blood dabbed from her ear.

“Witches, the both of you,” Gorgantern said. “I get burned and you use me being hurt to gang up on me! Conspirators! You combined against me!”

“You-You-You swipe!” Ileth managed to say. “I’d have . . . apologized if you had-hadn-hadn’t hit m-me.”

“Why don’t you just call it even,” Rapoto said, a hand soft on Gorgantern’s arm, not that he could have restrained the lumbering apprentice any more than a lace kerchief. He must have come into the kitchens during the ruckus.

Gorgantern ignored him. “Worthless slut,” he said, looking at Ileth. “Who did you spread it for to get in here? A dragoneer let you in on your back?” Ileth threw herself in his direction, screaming every profanity she’d ever learned on the fishing docks in the Freesand. For once she didn’t stutter. Santeel helped another novice hold her back.

“If you’re going to give us entertainments with our meal, you should perform where we can see you,” someone said through the food window. All those not physically in the kitchen already seemed to be crowding between the serving counters and the kitchen wall.

“What? A fight? Is this going to turn into a duel?” another voice said from the crowd at the drinks window.

Ileth’s brain latched onto the word. “I’ll have y-you . . . outside,” she said. But it fell flat; the challenge must not have been in use in that part of the Vales.

“Have me,” Gorgantern chuckled. “You can’t have a conversation.”

“You’ve stru-struck m-m-me and insulted m-me,” Ileth said, slowly and carefully, perhaps overloudly because she needed to speak above her own pounding heart. She kept her hands clasped so Gorgantern wouldn’t see them shaking. “I have the right to ask for a fair duel in return.”

The word duel spread through the dining room like dragonfire.

“No. That’s not how it works at all, girl,” Rapoto said. “You don’t fight. I heard the insult. I’ll stand against him for you.”

“What? You don’t even know her!” Santeel said.

“He fought with you too, Santeel. I’ll stand up for both of you.”

“I don’t—I don’t need anyone to s-s-stand up for me,” Ileth said. “I’ll fight—I’ll duel him myself.”

“She is unbalanced,” Santeel said. “She received a blow to the head. She’s not in her senses. Rapoto—stand up for me—us, I mean! Fishbr—Ileth and me, that is.”

Ileth shook her head at Rapoto. Her face still burned from the heat of the soup. “I know wh-what I’m-I’m—doing. I’m quite c-c-clear of mind.”

Gorgantern nodded. “Huh. She’s clever. Thinks she can humiliate me by making me apologize because I won’t duel a girl. Your little plan has no bottom, and it’ll sink you. Suppose I accept.”

“Pl-Please do,” Ileth said.

“Women don’t fight duels,” Santeel said, stepping between her and Gorgantern and unleashing a glare hot enough to melt snow into Ileth’s face. She jerked her delicate chin at Rapoto.

“Oh, they do,” a new person put in. It was Galia, the apprentice who helped oversee the female novices. She stepped forward, the heels of her tall riding boots making distinctive clicks on the floor as she walked. The buckles on her riding-coat added their own chimelike notes. She must have been spending the day among the dragons. She glanced from Ileth to Gorgantern and back again. “Even against men. Garella did—years ago. She told me the story.”

“I’d still rather you let me stand up against him,” Rapoto said.

Galia cocked her head. “You, Rapoto? I didn’t know you could fight.”

“Don’t know the first thing about it, Galia. But if I’m going to have one, I’d like it to be against someone who knocks down a girl half his age and a third his size.”

“I’ll fight fancy-boy and the girl both,” Gorgantern laughed.

“Stop . . . s-stop swanning into this,” Ileth said. “It’s my challenge, it’s my fight.”

Gorgantern sensed the crowd’s feeling. “You want an apology, mushmouth? So be it. I’m sorry you are such a useless whelk that you spilled soup on me and burned my hand.”

“Everyone dislikes you, you know,” Santeel said to him, though as far as Ileth knew today was the first time they’d spoken. “You could do the right thing and beg her forgiveness. I do mean beg.”

“He made her bleed from the ear,” Rapoto said. “In the law that could be maiming. An apology isn’t enough. We should bring this to a jury.”

The crowd, excited by the prospect of a duel, loosed a few groans at the idea of the drama sputtering out into questions and answers in front of a jury.

“I’ve a mind to give her that duel,” Gorgantern said.

“I d-d-doubt that,” Ileth said.

Gorgantern scowled. “You d-d-d-don’t think I could be master of the Catch Basin if I didn’t have brains? That takes hard work and a mind both. You have your duel. Since you demanded it, I’ll set conditions. Uh—dueling swords.”

“Dueling swords?” Galia growled.

“Dull. Rounds on tip,” Gorgantern temporized, as though he was beginning to have doubts.

“I’m n-not afraid of a . . . of a—of a point,” Ileth said, slowly and carefully. “Let’s have-have points. The sight of blood doesn’t bother me.”

“Enough,” Rapoto said. “You shouldn’t set conditions with blood still wet. If they’re going to do this, it needs to be carried out properly so there’s no question of law. Let’s give it until tomorrow, to let tempers cool. Who will be intermediary for, uhh . . . ?”

“Ileth,” Ileth said.

“I will,” Santeel volunteered.

Rapoto put his finger on his chin. “As you were part of—”

“All the more reason to speak for her,” Santeel said.

“You’ll have to take her place at the Catch Basin until the duel, you know,” Galia said.

Santeel grimaced. “If I must.”

“And for Gorgantern of the Catch Basin?” Galia said. Gorgantern crossed his meaty arms and frowned at the women. “Nobody? Very well, I’ll be intermediary for you, old lad.”

The watchers at the windows had a job of it passing the news about sides back and forth to the crowd behind.

“Too many women involved in this,” Gorgantern said. “Seems unfair to me. You’re ganging up.”

“Oh, for wind’s sake,” Rapoto said. “This is turning farce. Let’s finish our meal. Ileth, you should go see if Joai is about and have a dressing for your ear. Gorgantern, you ladle the soup for me. Watch that you don’t douse me, or you’ll be fighting a second duel if you’re still alive after this one.”

By tradition of the Serpentine the parties were not bound by Rapoto’s need to meet again, in daylight, after one full day had passed in order to try to reconcile. The duel would go forward as challenged and accepted, with the only questions left those of time, place, and weapons.

Also by tradition of the Serpentine, the place had to be outside its walls and out of view of the gate.

The long-established rules, which Galia explained to Ileth the evening of the brawl in the kitchen, revolved around ending the contest. The duel would last until one party accepted defeat or shed enough blood to become unsteady of arms, legs, hands, or balance; a physiker intervened in the name of humanity; a duelist’s weapon was dropped, lost, or thrown away; the seconds both agreed that one combatant had suffered a defeat; or the insensibility or death of one party. The Serpentine had a further tradition outside formal dueling: both parties could, at any time after the first exchange of blows or shots (in the case of pistoled crossbows), agree to shake hands and call the matter settled. In any case the aggrieved party would have honor restored and the challenged party would consider the matter settled.

The final twist the Serpentine put on dueling was that seconds were not to become involved in the combat in any way. If, for whatever reason, the aggrieved or challenged party could not participate in the duel, it defaulted to the credit of the duelist who did enter the dueling ground. Seconds attended only to see to their party’s interests and could intervene only in the case of foul play.

Back at the Manor, Ileth bore up under pitying stares of the sort she would have had if she were in her eighth or ninth month of carrying a socially unrecognized child. Santeel Dun Troot’s alternating bouts of contempt and indifference had curdled into something like hostility, but she still displayed the same partisanship as the Matron when it came to affairs outside the Manor. They might be contemptuous of each other within, but in the rest of the Serpentine they stood as sisters.

Gorgantern and Ileth agreed, through their respective intermediaries, to duel on the beach Bayside. Ileth’s demand that they use pointed dueling swords—which she was entirely a stranger to; she’d never even held one—was settled. When she was a child still able to run around in summer shirtless she’d played with an old curved naval falchion the Captain had hung up on the wall of the Lodge and held mock-scabbard duels with some of the weathered sailor-folk calling for dinner, but the only fighting advice she’d ever had from the Captain with swordplay was Yell so’s they hear you in hell and swing short. He also told her that getting wounded wasn’t so bad in the moment. You were too excited from the fight to feel pain; you just felt the impact, more like getting unexpectedly shoved.

Which might be useful advice now, if she’d asked him what swing short meant.

“Why do you want a real edge?” Galia asked when they met in the garden behind the Manor where Ileth had been put to work gathering summer herbs for drying to keep her out of the Catch Basin. “You could die on those points. This isn’t mock and muck, you know,” she said, using slang for the Serpentine’s weapons drills.

“I have a . . . chance of drawing blood with a p-point,” Ileth said. She went on to explain that with blunt weapons it was a contest of strength. She doubted she could either wear him down or do him more than enough damage to enrage him with a blunt weapon, whereas more likely than not he’d just hammer her into the ground. With a point she might score a lucky hit and satisfy the conditions of the duel.

They chatted for a bit about the interest in the duel across the Serpentine.

“How is my opponent handling it all?” Ileth asked.

“He hardly spoke in the Catch Basin. Santeel is, well, you know Santeel. She can make anyone feel small, even that mountain of a man. Some of the fishermen jibed him for fighting with a girl half his age. I get the sense that the jokes were much cruder before I walked in. Gorgantern blushed. I reminded him that even a dueling sword could be deadly and told him how quickly he’d bleed to death if one of the big vessels in his leg was pierced. Dead before a dropped piece of paper would waft to the ground, I put it. That put a thoughtful look on his face, for a change.”

“Can I ask you another question?”

“Certainly,” Galia said. Her self-assurance was like a balm.

“What does swing short mean?”

“In swordplay? Hmmm. I don’t think I’ve heard that exact expression. I believe it means keep the blade in front of you. You don’t want to hack away with all your might, or you wind up off balance, gives your opponent an opportunity to strike. Do you want a quick practice? We could use rug-beaters; they’re about the right size.”

“Please,” Ileth said.

Galia went to find two appropriate instruments and they were soon knocking them against each other. Neither laughed when a blow was struck or one of them tripped.

The morning of the duel, the Master of Novices called her in for an interview. She’d pretended to sleep until the Serpentine’s cocks were crowing at each other but fell asleep just at dawn. She had to be shaken awake as it was her morning to help in the Manor kitchen for breakfast. The Manor would keep its routines, duel or no.

“Today’s the day,” the apprentice charged with supervising the breakfasts said. As if she’d forgotten, blinking out the few minutes of sleep she’d managed. What a morning to wake up exhausted. “The, uhh, fall of Gorgantern. We hope.”

Caseen’s note summoning her arrived in time to save her from the washing-up. It did specify at once in the summons.

The Serpentine lay under a blanket of fog and there was a fall chill in the air. The hot summer weather had vanished quickly, as though fall wanted to crowd in and see the duel. It suited her mood as she walked. She might be dead and cold tonight. What would they do with her body? She hadn’t seen a funeral at the Serpentine.

The Masters’ Hall was one of the newer constructions on the Serpentine. It had been built next to an old family graveyard, shaded by some now-impressive oaks growing in filled soil. An old archway was all that was left of a wall that had surrounded the burying-ground. The archway now projected out of the front wall over the threshold of the Masters’ Hall. It was built in the new Republic style, gray stone from top to bottom, a colonnade of deep arches on the first floor, triple windows above that, and then double windows on the top floor capped by a fan design. It suggested order, hierarchy, simplicity, and a good deal of labor for whoever had to keep all those windows clean.

She entered, gave her name to the page, and went up the squared-off stairs that branched out after the first grand landing to the first floor.

The place smelled like lamps and oil soap. The hallway was wide, with a black-and-white checkerboard pattern tipped so you walked down rows of diamonds.

Master Caseen’s door was open. He was sorting papers on a side table beneath a shelf of books. She entered, and he invited her to sit. He did not sit but put down his papers and paced back and forth a few times, scratching his elbows in thought. She suspected that meant trouble.

He finally settled down into the red leather button-back chair at his desk.

“I don’t care for dueling,” he said, frowning at her as best as he could manage with the scarring. A wandering calico cat entered, glanced at the two of them, thought better of it, and returned to the hall. “Duels set the whole Serpentine at the bubble until the matter is decided. The whole Academy’s talking instead of attending to their duties.”

She felt there was more, so she waited to reply.

“It’s a throwback to the Counties and the Law of Kings and affairs of state being tangled up in affairs of blood and all the petty brutalities that people fled to the Vales to escape, even if it’s dressed up in romantic stage costume.”

“Order me to m-m-miss the duel, then.”

“Remember that line in your oath where you are expected to risk all but your honor in carrying out orders? It’s just as well that line is in the oath; it keeps a tyrant from using the dragoneers for his own ends rather than the Republic’s. It also makes me powerless in an affair of honor.”

“Then why am I here?”

“You are a—young woman. No one expects you to fight a duel. Even more, no one expects you to fight a duel against a man, and even more than that, no one would think the worse of you for refusing to fight a man the size of Gorgantern. He’s twice your age and more still in physical power. You had a blow to your head. You were disoriented, spoke in pain and anger.”

She remained silent.

“I’ll compliment you by being completely frank. You’re obviously not from a part of society where blood spilled requires more blood to be spilled in return.”

“Where’s that republican ideal, sir? Law of Kings when it suits you?”

“There’s ideals and there’s not wanting to lose a promising young woman. Gorgantern has a mean streak. I was still a dragoneer when he was oathed in. I saw him in Vyenn as a youth. I don’t think he’s had much success with women. You’re old enough to at least know in an academic manner some cruel facts. Natural desires that can’t flow through the channels dug for them by society will build up. Dreadful things can happen when the blockage gives way. He won’t be thrusting his sword at you, I fear, as he’ll be hacking at his own private torments and failures with women. He has had some training with a sword and I know he has been the victor in fistfights.”

“How do you know I’ve none?”

“Not many fourteen-year-old ladies have dueling experience. But if swordplay was part of your upbringing in your lodge, I’ll wait out this day in hope that you do know what you’re doing,” Caseen said, pushing back some errant hair on his irregular scalp. “Should you embarrass him, it could solve a problem or two. I know the Master of Apprentices would like to see him gone. Most who approach anywhere near his age leave to pursue another line, once they realize they’re not destined for anything much here. The Master of Apprentices is something of a believer in destiny, as you’ll one day learn, I hope. But Gorgantern is like a limpet down in the Catch Basin. He clings and there’s not much we can do about it. He’s a good worker and obeys the rules. Still, I hope you teach him a lesson.”

Ha! Well, if she was going to go down, she’d go down defiant. “We’ll know in a few hours, won’t we?”

Caseen stood and walked around behind her, leaning in to breathe in her ear: “If you’re trying to make your name dueling, there are better places than here. Nobody wants a duelist on their staff issuing a challenge at the first slight. And every duel is a chance. Even the best of them slip up.” He paused. She remained immobile, hands clasped in her lap to keep them from giving away her utter lack of nerve. “So be it. I’ve tried to reason with you. We’re bound to lose at least one of you, and the Serpentine will be worse off for the whole mess stirring things up and setting us against each other. I don’t like factions within these walls. If you’re nothing but pride and brag, most likely you’ll be cold and dead tonight. Apparently you aren’t as smart as I gave you credit for, Ileth.”

That stung deep, intended or no.

He turned away, pushing an errant book in his library back into alignment. “Think about that, Ileth. You can back out. Even at the last moment. It’s just not worth the risk, and it will be to your credit with me if you show that kind of sense.”

The rest of the morning rushed by, as quickly as the night had dragged. They were to fight at noon.

She’d been wondering about funerals at the Serpentine and she had an answer, of sorts. The parade down to the beach felt funereal. Santeel walked just ahead of her, wearing an outfit more appropriate for horse riding, with her hair bound up tight under a reinforced hat that could do as a helmet in a pinch. Did she expect a brawl to break out? Perhaps she didn’t know seconds were never expected to fight by Serpentine tradition.

Five of the dragoneers walked behind them, including the one, Hael Dun Huss, who had spoken kindly to her after the oath. They were probably curious to attend the event that had generated so much chatter. He walked with two other dragoneers near his age that she’d glimpsed him speaking to here and there, perhaps friends from his younger days as an apprentice. Joai and some other officials from the Serpentine brought up the rear of the column.

Down on the beach the fog thinned, though it obscured the Serpentine, to the disappointment of those who’d planned to pass around telescopes so they could watch from the wall. On the shore of the bay, sheltered by rocky arms, there was little wind. The fog muffled sounds. When Gorgantern arrived, shuffling and looking about as if expecting an ambush, he had only Galia with him. Out in the open he didn’t look quite as vast as he did in the confines of the Catch Basin.

Not long now. But she still worried she’d vomit up her breakfast. She’d forced herself to eat as if it were just another morning with nothing more ahead of it but a day of salting and hanging and smoking fish.

Ileth ignored the others working out the ground for the duel. Out in the bay there were river otters running up and down stones sticking out of the water like tiny islands. One of them was bashing a shelled creature against an edge.

Joai set down a basket with wound-vinegar and dressings. She sidled up to Ileth. “I have some brandy. You want a sip to steady your nerves?”

She shook her head. She might be dead in five minutes, and those otters would still be playing. The one with the mussel, or whatever it was, managed to get it open and had its meal. She’d be one of millions of deaths that day.

The Serpentine’s physiker-in-charge, an older man with what was left of his white hair swept back and cut at exactly shoulder length, supervised Joai. He must put something in his hair to keep it so neatly arrayed, Ileth decided, wondering at the strange things her brain was forcing her to attend to. The physiker stood by, close to the demarked zone (they used two old, holed, and overturned boats as the north-south borders, the shoreline as the east, and the seconds standing as two points on an imaginary line to the west, making something that approximated the traditional dueling alley. The physiker’s own apprentice carried the dueling swords, and together they checked and cleaned the blades before handing them to the seconds. It was terribly close now.

“Please let me stand for you,” Rapoto said, appearing next to her out of nowhere and startling her with his words. She hadn’t even noticed him in the procession. He was dressed to fight. Loose trousers, tight leather shoes, no coat, just a loose shirt allowing plenty of freedom of movement. Perhaps he’d nipped out early and waited by himself at the dueling ground. She wondered how he had worked it, as the Masters had piled extra duties on everyone, from the new novices to the wingmen, to forestall the entire Serpentine decamping to view the duel.

“No,” she said.

And now Santeel stood before her, holding the sword point down. “You have to step to your side, now,” she told Ileth, casting an apologetic look at Rapoto.

The dragoneers performed some sort of ritual among themselves involving putting their hands inside their clothing between bracing vests and outer coat, then opening their coats in a flash to reveal some kind of countersign. One, a sandy fellow with staring eyes that seemed to protrude so the whites showed, accepted the approval of his fellows and stepped to the edge of the dueling ground. He wore a greenish-gold short cape with a rich Hypatian-curtain-style fringe, and instead of a sword on his belt, he carried a brass-headed walking stick with a snarling, ogrelike face engraved on it.

“Gorgantern, you great toad, you got me, lucky fellow,” he said, planting his walking stick and leaning on it insouciantly. He turned to Ileth. “Have we met? I ride Etiennersea. When she lets me. I don’t think we’ve been introduced.”

“Dath Amrits,” Galia said from her position next to Gorgantern, “this is Ileth of the Freesand.”

Amrits gave a short bow. “Now that the introductions are out of the way—ahem! I’ve been selected to supervise the duel, with our good physiker Threadneedle.”

The physiker sighed. “Amrits, this is no occasion—”

“—for you to open your mouth until the blood starts flying,” Amrits finished. “As if we dragoneers need a physiker around to tell us someone’s dead. Have cheer, now. It’ll be over for one of you soon. But don’t take it too hard; the other will have a big bill to pay, so the dead one will have escaped that bother. What, you think anyone will want to use a sword that’s shed one of our company’s blood? And dueling swords go in pairs. You’ll have to buy both. Last chance to back out. No? Not a brain or scruple between you, then. My kind of reprobates. Choose up your weapons and retreat to opposite ends of the ground, my honorables. Go on! I’ll have you know I have a whole basket of undergarments still to pick up at the laundry and sort through today, so I want one of you stretched out for burial double-quick. Show some leg!”

Ileth suddenly couldn’t remember who was supposed to take a blade first. Gorgantern didn’t move, so she took the one nearest her. Galia was right, they were about the length of a rug-beater, only heavier. The blades were one-edged, straight as a plumb line, and had a heavy shield hilt, ornately engraved. It would cost the victor a good deal to pay for it. More money than she’d ever seen in her life.

She “retreated” to the northern end of the dueling ground. She swung the sword experimentally, trying to look as though she knew what she was doing.

On the other side, Gorgantern removed his coat and stood there in his shirtsleeves. He had a pained, faraway look on his face.

She realized she was still in her overdress. It was hard to move in it, and almost impossible to run or jump about without pulling material up, an impossibility while holding a sword. She stuck her sword in the sand, worked the buttons at the back, and shrugged it off.

Santeel gasped. “What are you doing?”

“Getting . . . ready to fight,” she said, kicking the overdress up onto the boat behind her and retrieving the sword.

“You’re in your shirt!”

“You think I should ta-take that off too? I have a sheath beneath it.”

“Don’t joke. Have you no shame?” Santeel asked.

“Grew up poor. Couldn’t afford it!” She felt clairvoyant. Mad as a day owl, Santeel Dun Troot was clearly thinking. She felt alive, focused, like she could count grains of sand on the beach just by looking at them. Gorgantern’s face was the color of a frog’s belly and the hair on his forehead stuck there.

Santeel picked up the cast-away dress and folded it, then folded it again and draped it over her arm. “At least you don’t have to tie up your hair. Which reminds me. I need to tell you something. I want to tell you . . . no, need to tell you . . . this is hard. I need to tell you”—she gulped—“good luck. Slice off something embarrassing. From him, I mean to say.”

Over at the edge of the dueling ground Dath Amrits was speaking low enough that she couldn’t make out a word and probably wouldn’t have noticed his moving lips save for her current heightened sensitivity. He faced stolidly forward, ignoring both duelists, gazing levelly out into the lake. The physiker leaned closer to hear what he was saying.

Amrits waved the physiker off and paced to the center of the dueling ground. “Will the opposing parties please step forward?”

They paced toward each other. Gorgantern kept glancing at her pale, fleshy thighs. The air tingled cool against her skin and she felt scandalous. At the very least she’d make for a titillating story. Might as well be remembered as the girl who fought in just a shirt rather than the starving stutterer who botched her oath. Maybe they’d tell it in the men’s smoke-and-liquor dens in Vyenn. She’d never been inside a tap-house but she’d looked through smeared windows. Paintings of underdressed females, even nudes, were popular in those sorts of places, depicting bawdy jokes or old stories. Maybe she’d be decorating a tavern wall, in time. The Vales were mad for paintings, and anyone who could afford it filled their walls with art. She could just picture the painting: the sea in back; the otters; her bare legs; her sweaty, pale opponent. It was right funny up until she was stretched out cold . . .

Why wasn’t she imagining any ending that didn’t involve her dead?

“I have here,” Amrits said, pulling a silver cylinder about the size of his thumb from a pocket in his bracing vest, “a dragon whistle. When it blows, the duel is over.” He tested it softly to let them hear the tone and it gave a tweee! loud enough to make Gorgantern jump. It would be louder than any shout or cry. “Now don’t go claiming you didn’t hear it. When I blow this, they’ll turn around on the far wall of the Serpentine. The instant you hear it, lower your weapons and take three steps back. Not another blow struck.”

Gorgantern looked like a mountain this close. He smiled at her like a cat contemplating a bird with a broken wing.

Galia, behind Gorgantern and marking the edge of the dueling ground, gave Ileth an encouraging nod and did that knuckle-wall gesture toward her. Ileth realized she could die not knowing its significance. She supposed it was meant to steady her. She didn’t feel steady right now.

Amrits backed away from them, raising his voice to say: “Ready your weapons.”

They held up their blades, pointing at each other, the deadly tips one long step apart.

“Steady your feet!” Amrits said, more loudly still.

Gorgantern shifted on his feet so his forward leg held his weight and dragged the other one back behind his body.

Ileth had no idea what to do with her own feet, so she just brought the front heel up near her rear toes, toes pointed out, the way she’d been taught at the commencement of a social dance with a partner. She liked to dance. And it did allow you to shift quickly, forward or back, right or left, or bob.

“Begin!”

Gorgantern lowered his blade so that it pointed to the ground just in front of him to his right. He forced out a bleak smile.

He’s surrendering, she thought wildly, before he brought up his free hand and beckoned her forward. He was offering her a chance to strike. The contempt in the gesture made her angry.

The smile turned into a sneer. It made her angrier still.

“Who’s the dumb one now?” Gorgantern said. “You’re not even holding your sword right.”

That made it easier.

She lunged at him, clumsily. His sword came up in a flash. It must have felt light as a reed at the end of that huge, fleshy arm, she thought, before it rang against her own blade, knocking its point away to her right.

She danced back—literally; her change of feet was that of a dance partner, not a duelist—expecting another strike. She’d mostly worked on parrying with Galia.

Galia had stressed that when parrying, you should take the blow as close to the hilt of your own sword and near to your body as possible; you were stronger there and then your muscles were bunched for a fast and powerful counterstrike. Gorgantern raised his blade again, giving away the coming blow—the Captain had never taught him to keep his blade in between himself and his opponent’s blade—and brought it down with all the power in his huge body. It gave her a chance to try the one attack they’d rehearsed over and over and over and over again until she could hardly cross rug-beaters without using it.

Ileth danced in close, well inside his reach, sword at her side and held back so that the point only projected a few hand widths in front of her. At this point he was a wall of flesh; it would be impossible to miss with her stab—

But her move came just a lightning flash too late.

Though he missed her with the blade as she was inside his reach, his arm still struck her between head and shoulder. Her vision went white. She only knew she’d fallen when she struck the beach on her side. She wondered if she’d been cleaved in twain by the sword blade—

Her sword hand was empty.

Tweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! The whistle blew so loudly Ileth felt like her body had, just for a moment, been magically transformed into sound. She felt like an extension of the whistle.

Now that she could see again, Gorgantern loomed over her big as the Beehive.

Gorgantern ignored the signal. He raised the sword again, this time holding it in both hands with the straight blade pointed directly down at her belly. She shut her eyes as she tried to twist out of the way—

Youdon’tfeelthepainyoudon’tfeelthepainyoudon’tfeelthepain . . .

A footstep thumped by her head and she sensed motion above.

Galia, a fair-haired blur, struck the giant in a flying tackle. She hit him low, she hit him fast, she hit him hard, and he hadn’t braced for it and folded around her as though his massive body would swallow hers. He was off his feet and on his backside with Galia atop him.

His sword had struck after all, plunging into the sand not quite harmlessly, for the point cut Ileth on the buttock as it went down. She felt the cold steel against her muscle, then the warmth of blood.

Gorgantern screamed painfully and Ileth saw her savior with teeth dug into his ear, biting into him and clenching on like a fighting dog. Blood dribbled on her face and Gorgantern’s shirt.

The whistle blew again, even louder. So loud it hurt. She sat up, covering her ears.

Galia rolled off him and came to her feet with an athletic ease, her face smeared with blood, bright-eyed and ready for more. Ileth got up with more difficulty. Her leg muscles had turned to bags of water hardly able to straighten her knees.

“I stood up for you, you pile,” Galia said, getting her hair out of her eyes. The blood on her mouth made her look savage, like a stable cat who’d finished off a rat.

“Worst mistake I ever made,” Gorgantern said, still seated and inspecting the blood at his torn ear. “You betrayed me from the start. Can’t stand that I won?”

Ileth picked up Gorgantern’s dueling sword and stepped over to stand next to Galia. Ileth pointed the sword about a hand’s breadth from his throat. Gorgantern’s eyes widened in fear and he jerked back.

“Ileth!” Galia said. “It’s over!”

The blade wavered a little. Ileth found herself shaking uncontrollably as her nerves started to release in the realization that she was still alive. Gorgantern leaned away from the point as though it were a poisonous snake.

“It’s over,” Gorgantern said. “The whistle blew.”

Ileth added a second hand to the sword’s handle and it steadied somewhat. “Not much fun, is it?”

“None of that!” Amrits shouted, hurrying forward with Rapoto just behind. “You kill him now, it’s murder!” She noticed he’d shifted the grip on his walking stick. The ogre-faced end was held down, but toward her.

“He’d have done the same to me,” Ileth said.

“He’s disarmed now,” Amrits said. “Put it down.”

Rapoto retrieved the weapon from her hand and Santeel hurried to pick up its mate and bring it to him. “You’re bleeding,” he said, leaning to glance at her wounded flank.

Santeel moved to stand between her and the watching men. “Cover up, Ileth.”

The physiker—was his name really Threadneedle?—joined the party around the former duelists. “The bandages and vinegar, if you please, Joai. Our novice here needs stitching up.”

“Get them off the dueling ground before you stanch the blood,” Joai called. “Bad luck if you don’t. An ill taint will enter the wounds and they’ll go septic.”

The dueling party turned and moved toward the spectators.

Galia passed her her overdress. “Can’t have you walking back through the gate in nothing but your shirt.”

With the duel over, the insults and blows and challenges exchanged in the kitchen would all be treated as if they’d never happened, but Ileth suspected life in the Catch Basin would be even more unpleasant. She wondered what new tortures Gorgantern would invent now, with injury piled on insult.

The physiker pronounced Ileth’s wound a “mere scratch” that a plain dressing would be sufficient to seal and set Joai to work cleaning it out with the vinegar before she pressed a dressing to it and bound it in bandage. He sat Gorgantern on one of the overturned boats and cleaned the bite with something from a brown bottle that made the aged apprentice howl, then put his assistant to work with needle and thread while he observed and gave advice.

Galia knelt and washed away Gorgantern’s blood in the lake.

Dath Amrits took Gorgantern’s mind off the stitching by standing before him. “Well, old sponge, you’ve landed in the camp soup this time.”

“Huh?” Gorgantern said, turning his uninjured ear to Amrits.

“I blew the whistle and you struck another blow. Not the mortal one you intended, fellow-me-lad, but it drew blood that a jury can see. You made it so easy for us. Me, two other dragoneer witnesses, old Threadneedle there who’s a strict Formist and wouldn’t lie if you hung him over coals. I’m calling a jury of Masters this afternoon and you’ll be out the gate in whatever clothing from the pauper’s bin will fit you at the stroke of midnight. Good luck to you. If you bear me any ill will, remember, you have only yourself to blame. I’m the owner of the loudest whistle in the Serpentine.”

“But-But I run the Catch Basin.”

“No fear,” Amrits said. “I’ll break the news to the fish gently. Head up, now. You can always try explaining to the jury how a disarmed wisp of a girl flat on her back in the mud presented a mortal threat that required you to stab her through the stomach. I wouldn’t advise it, though; they might refer you to the magistrate in Vyenn. I wouldn’t mind telling my story again to a jury with the power to have your head and your body buried separately. That’d be worth funking my laundry day entirely.”

I’ll never have to see Gorgantern again. She felt a dull relief wash over her, and her body seemed to be trembling. She willed it to stop, but her nerves ignored her. She wondered if Joai would give her brandy to steady her nerves even though the duel was over.

Amrits walked over to Ileth, whom Joai had put well clear of the dueling ground before setting to work on her cut.

“I told you to show a leg, but there’s such a thing as overstepping your orders,” Amrits said, holding her overdress so she might step into it, careful to keep the hem out of the dirt.

“She doesn’t need your patter now, sir,” Joai said.

“Sir, did I win or lose?” Ileth said.

“On the dueling ground you lost, quickly and decisively. Yes, you definitely botched it. A tactical loss, though, can turn into a strategic win, so let’s see how time and tide treat it. Bravely done, anyway. Here. Just in case the fact that you’re still breathing our salubrious mountain air isn’t enough of a reward.”

He extracted the dragon whistle from his bracing vest and, passing the cord lanyard over his head, handed it to her with a little bow. “With my compliments for standing against the Beast Gorgantern, Terror of the Catch Basin. Let’s hope you find a use for it someday.”

“Sir, I—can’t—I . . .”

“Don’t act like I’m trying to foist polished nickel off on you. It’s solid silver. Take it to the jeweler in town, he’ll tell you. Girls these days. Spoiled rotten. Good day to you, Joai. Why don’t you seal that wound up with some of your biscuit dough? It’s impervious to gravy—I doubt blood would do any better.”

With that, he turned on his heel so that the golden fringe on his cape flayed the air and walked back to the other dragoneers. Hael Dun Huss met her gaze and gave her a friendly nod before he turned for the path up to the shrouded Serpentine.

“That Amrits,” Joai said, watching the dragoneers depart. “I bet they pulled him out of his mother wearing a clown hat. Still, the Serpentine’s well rid of Gorgantern. No good having a wrinkled apprentice hanging about like an old hide. Some other novice can move up. Want that mouthful of brandy now?”

Ileth held the silver whistle in both hands, as though she were afraid birds would come and snatch it away. She wanted it, but some clear chunk at the back of her brain reminded her that the Masters were watching, one way or another, and she didn’t want to be thought the kind of person who needs a drink to get them through a crisis. “No, I-I’m . . . calm enough.”

“Rig yourself.” Joai sampled a swig. Her cheeks grew a little redder and she offered Ileth a conspiratorial wink. “I need calming down after all that.”

Ileth took a deep cleansing breath, looked out at the otters (who’d been frightened by the whistle blasts and were nothing but eyes and curious noses sticking out of the water), and shrugged. “I could be a lot calmer, if you understand m-my m-meaning.”