Novice Dragoneer

6

By dinner, the tale of the duel had reached all the Serpentine.

The wildest rumors passed up and down the creaky stairways of the Manor, like a nursery game of touchback that grew wilder at each contact.

“You didn’t really fight him naked?” Quith asked.

Ileth shook her head, adding an emphatic “No!” once she recovered enough to get the word out.

Quith leaned in close. “SDT just said you were in your sheath, but then later I heard that you were naked and she’d heard it from SDT and I thought maybe SDT didn’t tell me the whole story because the Matron was listening, but then—”

“Not naked,” Ileth said. “Santeel Dun Troot doesn’t even have it right; I had my shirt on.”

“Well, whatever, brilliant tactic. He must have been so distracted. No wonder you beat him.”

Ileth doubted her knobby knees would distract anything but a wading bird. “I didn’t beat him, he . . . he beat me. He struck me after the whistle. That’s why he’s up before the Masters.”

The Matron found extra duties for Ileth around the Manor, saying that as she’d indulged herself all day with the duel nonsense, well, she’d have to make it up at night. The other novices crowded around, saying it was deeply unfair that she could not enjoy a night of glory in the dining hall. Santeel told and retold the story. She’d stuck to the truth as far as Ileth could tell, except for the sheath business. For once, she wasn’t the trip-tongued girl who smelled of fish, but something like a Name.

She didn’t hate it.

In truth, she was relieved to be given extra duties. She wouldn’t have cared if the Matron had ordered her to clean the privy with her only remaining sheath (the one she’d worn to the fight mysteriously disappeared from where it was soaking away the bloodstain in the washtub). She worked with such mind-numbing diligence that she had to return to the Matron and ask for more.

After dinner, Galia returned with news. A jury of Masters heard the evidence against Gorgantern. The physiker and Joai verified that she had been purposefully wounded after the whistle had blown. Galia and two others testified that he struck intending to kill. It was enough to burn Gorgantern’s career as thoroughly as if a dragon had spat fire upon him. Stripped of his tattered sash and put out the gate with rags tied around his feet because no footwear in the beggar’s bin would fit him, he left with a curse against a conspiracy to ruin him. The gate-watch said he took the road down to Vyenn.

That settled her mind.

While the others were bent over their night-work she made herself an infusion of tea and herbs and took it out into the garden. There was a bench against the back wall, well away from the privy, where you could just see the bay over the fortress wall—if it hadn’t been dark and overcast. Still, even without the view it was peaceful. She’d run a terrible risk and had Galia been a trifle slower she could be dead, instead of enjoying a quiet bench and her infusion.

The cup was hot in her hands and the chilly air felt delicious. It was a miracle to be alive. If the Captain himself had stomped up to the Manor door with dirty teeth glinting, she’d have bobbed and smiled and told him she missed running to refill his tankard and get a light for his pipe.

“How is your wound?” a voice called from the darkness.

Rapoto stood on the other side of an apology of a gate, askew on rusty hinges. Ileth was sure the Matron wanted it that way to better sound the alarm against male intruders.

“It’s nothing.”

“What are you doing now?”

“I live here. I should ask y-you, lurking in the-the dark outside a house full of . . . full of girls.”

He didn’t mind her trip-tongued sauce; in fact, he smiled. “Want to come away? I can offer you better than warm milk.”

“Against the rules.”

“Official business with the Master of Novices. Then a victor’s cup of something stimulating.”

“Stimulating?” She’d been amply stimulated for one day, coming within a missed stab of death. But Rapoto had the sort of face that put her in an agreeable mood.

“Oh, yes. Well, I hope. Interested in a pile-in?”

“A . . . a what?”

“A pile-in. Sort of an after-hours party. We apprentices still aren’t allowed out of the Serpentine without a gate pass at night. Since we can’t all get passes to town, we’re celebrating Gorgantern’s fall inside the walls. Complete the night if I could get you to join in to receive a toast.”

Ileth thought it odd that they’d celebrate one of their own being kicked out.

“She’d never let m-me attend.”

Rapoto waggled one of the tails of his knotted sash. “That’s where the official business comes in: I have a signed note calling for you from Caseen.”

Curiosity roused her. It must be important for Caseen to ask for her at night.

She sighed. “I suppose I must go with you.”

He turned up one corner of his mouth. “To the pile-in, as well?”

“I want to hear what he . . . what Master Caseen has to say, first.”

He found that amusing, though she didn’t see the humor. She found she liked it when he looked at her. Some men were easy to read. Venality often was. Rapoto looked at her attentively, like he was listening to a five-string well played. Appreciative, not appraising.

“C’mon. I was a novice for two years, or close to it, the last of my draft but one to make apprentice. Never had any fun at night the whole time.”

“Why ask me now instead of on the way?”

“Maybe you want to dress.”

“You’re looking at my-my-my best overdress. Also my w-worst.” She laughed, a little tiredly, and instantly regretted it. She disliked people who laughed at their own jests.

“No one is going to care. You are going to be talked about anyway. You might as well be there. I don’t think anyone believes me when I try to tell the truth of it. Galia will be there.”

Meeting some of the other apprentices could be advantageous. It couldn’t be that much of a violation if Galia was about; she was a stickler for rules and shifts and how things looked to the Masters. She’d like to hear some stories about what inspired an offer of apprenticeship. She’d learned the value of specific intelligence from Falth.

“I reserve the right to leave if I don’t like it,” she said, after a moment’s thought.

“You’re a strange one. I have to be seeing to the Masters’ Hall door lamps at the midnight bell anyway. Then I have to be back in that filthy hovel under the parapets. My family wouldn’t think it fit for their dogs. Signal me and I’ll make my excuses and walk you back.”

“They’ll . . . gossip,” she predicted.

“I don’t mind. Honestly, it’d feel safer with someone as fierce as you alongside after dark. Keep the gargoyles away.”

Ileth was washing her face when Rapoto showed up at the door.

She returned to the common room to see Santeel Dun Troot introducing Rapoto to the household. She looked pleased to be able to show him off.

There weren’t many visitors to the Manor with a Vor in their name, even among the moneyed and influential scions who were sent off to the Serpentine by their families.

“The Vor Claymasses are from Jotun, I understand,” the Matron said, taking charge of the guest as soon as she heard his full name.

“Most of them, sira,” Rapoto said.

“Do you have orchards?” Quith asked. “We would get barrels of these lovely Jotun apples yearly. Golden, stamped with a beautiful sort of two-tree insignia that formed a shield between.”

Rapoto’s face went blank. “Yes, that would be my family. My grandfather invented that type of apple.”

“How clever!” another novice said. “I didn’t know you could invent an apple. I thought they just grew.”

“It’s just as exciting as it sounds,” Rapoto said evenly. “We grow three different kinds. Each strain does best in different sorts of soil and weather.”

“Imagine that,” the Matron said.

“Which is your favorite?” Santeel asked.

“Depends. The Golden are flavorful and just a little sweet; that’s my favorite for eating. Quite reliable. The Green Crested make a good cider—or you can cook with them. The Huskies, they have a reddish-streaked patina and the quality varies depending on how dry a summer we had. Too wet or too dry and they end up going to the pigs. But if we get a fair summer, well, they’re like apple-flavored cake, then.”

Some of his audience made hungry noises. Oh, how I want to try one! I wonder if they have them in Vyenn? Would you tell us how to get them?

“I’m—ready,” Ileth said, having retrieved her old, reliable boots, suitable for walking in the dark.

“Excuse me, ladies. Thank you for your attention, sira,” he said to the Matron. Then he turned to his audience. “I regret leaving. I could talk apples all night. Apples apples apples.”

The assembly laughed with him.

“But I must get Novice Ileth to the Master.” He bowed and most of the audience bobbed back.

“Your attention to duty does you credit, sir,” Santeel said.

“I hope it’s nothing serious. I don’t know what we’d do without our Ileth,” the Matron said, in a tone that suggested life would go on were she removed.

He stepped ahead and opened the heavy Manor door for Ileth. Not a few rapt looks—and one jealous one—followed them out. The babble began even before the Matron closed the door behind.

“Glad that’s done,” Rapoto said. “I always feel like a bull at auction when people ask about the family holdings.”

For him, it was done. She would have to return. She couldn’t get it right. Either none of the other girls her age paid attention to her and she felt invisible, or too much attention was paid and she felt despised. Quith liked her only because she was someone to pass gossip. But she couldn’t expect Rapoto to understand that.

“It’s been an odd day,” Ileth said, when they were out of earshot of the house and going up to the graveside Masters’ Hall. “If you’d . . . told me this morning that I’d be-be-be hearing a discourse on apples tonight . . . I’d have laughed.”

“Laugh away,” he said. “I can’t stand the things.”

“No?”

“I’ve had to pick them and taste them and judge them and talk about them my whole life. My father is a great believer in getting us out to our trees and hives and working alongside our people. Of course, it’s not just fruit. It’s who we are, how the family rose; well, that and mining. Mining money allowed my great-grandfather to buy a lot of land in Jotun. The apples were just something to do with the land at first. I’m here to get away from them.”

“Let’s not go-go on about apples or our families, th-then,” Ileth said, hoping he wouldn’t notice she’d added to the list of forbidden subjects.

“You talk, then.”

A rarity, that. Someone asking her to talk. “You d-don’t mind my . . . stutter?”

“No. You can’t help it, after all.” He walked in silence for a moment. “When the words come, they’re interesting enough. I don’t mind waiting.”

She quickened her pace. They walked together in silence. Now that someone wanted to listen to her talk, her wits failed her. What did men like Rapoto talk about? Mining profits? Business of the Assembly? Would the negotiators ever make peace with the Galantines?

“You said . . . you said you were two years a n-novice.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “Kept flubbing jobs. Somehow things always go wrong for me. In the bakery I killed all the yeast. Thought it was some bad water in a dirty bowl. In the garden I thought the young carrots were weeds—they’d not put them in nice rows, you see, it was more like a patch. I shot wingman Dun Leckert in the foot with a crossbow. He was cheery enough about it, though, said he was grateful I remembered to notch my bolt with the bow pointed down.”

The few lights in the Masters’ Hall resolved out of the fog.

At the Master’s, in the now-familiar office, her interview was friendlier than the one that morning. Had it been just that morning? It felt like weeks ago. Caseen carefully set down the pencil he was using to make a margin note in a volume he had open on his desk and inquired about her wound. She assured him she’d bled more at the fish-gutting table thanks to her slippery knife.

The subject changed to the expulsion. He reassured her that Gorgantern had left the service of the Serpentine and said he hoped she was a little wiser for the experiences of the morning and potential consequences to threats spoken in anger. He relayed that Gorgantern had been defiant in front of the jury (not that a different attitude would have changed the outcome). He’d used some bitter words about a conspiracy against him but hadn’t threatened anything.

“A grudge is an unpredictable thing. I’ve already warned Galia. We on the jury thanked him for his years and offered our help in obtaining him a fresh start elsewhere. He refused. We will put a wingman or two in Vyenn to keep an eye on him while he remains within an easy walk of the walls and try to discreetly find him a situation on the other side of the Vales, perhaps Jotun. That apprentice Rapoto offered his family’s aid, do you—oh, yes, he brought you here, didn’t he? My, I shouldn’t work so late. As I was saying, the Master of Apprentices is just down the hall writing letters to do just that now. Gorgantern has friends among the fishermen, and they bring their boats right into the Beehive, as you well know. The Serpentine is far from impenetrable, especially to one who has lived within our walls as long as that one. It’s hard to know what a mix of wounded pride and resentment might bring out of a man like Gorgantern. Keep around at least two or three others for the next few days. The Manor will be watched at night. I don’t expect anything to happen; he knows he would be flogged for just setting his oversized foot inside the walls, but I want you alert.”

Ileth gulped. She imagined those massive hands on her throat. She knew the strength in Gorgantern’s fleshy arms. But she wanted to seem worthy of her present company. “Sir, it’s . . . it’s hard to imagine Gorgantern sneaking about.”

“Would you like me to ask for a volunteer from the wingmen to walk with you for a few days? We have a few who’ve been at swordplay since they could walk.”

“May I give you an answer to-tomorrow?”

“Certainly. In happier news, I’m hoping to move you up in the Beehive. You’ve worked the bottom of it, so we’ll switch you to the top. There’s always work for you nimble young things in the lighthouse. Fascinating contraption. It uses dragon-crystals, quite rare and valuable. They need a lot of polishing and turning on sunny days. It’s a good view from up there and you’ll find the air stimulating. You can help the lookout log weather. I used to keep myself fit by climbing up to it every day, but I hardly go nowadays. Introducing you up there would give me an excuse to make the climb again. How does that sound?”

“Fine, sir.”

“Well, get along. Seems Rapoto is anxious to escort you home. I see him hanging about outside the door.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Oh, and Ileth,” Caseen called after her.

“Sir?” she said, turning around to face him.

“No more duels. Get some sleep.”

She bobbed out her obeisance in acknowledgment.

“That took a while,” Rapoto said, when they were safely away.

She laughed. “He warned me against Gor-Gorgantern. Thinks Gorgantern is capable of doing something desperate.” She passed on the warning against dueling too. “I don’t want to be thought combative.”

“Interesting thing for someone who trains to saddle up a dragon to say. Perhaps now they’ll be afraid to tease you about fish.”

“How d-do you know I’m teased?”

“A would-be dragoneer should be skilled at acquiring valuable intelligence.”

She laughed. It was good to laugh.

“In the north they’ll put one of your . . . your eyes out for g-gathering intelligence by peeking through windows.”

“Why are you here, Ileth? I can’t make it out. Not hunting a husband, no family pressure, and as jobs go it doesn’t even pay. Do you have a father to avenge or something?”

She wondered if he was mocking her. It was hard to tell with these Names just how much was pose and how much was purpose. “I’m determined to make a new start here.”

“You’ve only just arrived. How much newer could you be?”

She took a deep breath of the night air. It turned into an exasperated sigh.

“Ileth, you’re not a fire-breather, obviously. Your manners aren’t what most here are used to. I find it difficult to avoid issuing a challenge to you to a duel myself with the way you cut precedence when we go through a door—that’s an insult in my social strata—but you are not a fire-breather, any more than I am.”

“‘Interesting thing for someone who trains to saddle up a dragon to say,’” she repeated.

He smiled at her and she smiled back. Nice to have someone who gives and takes jokes. Perhaps he was lost in similar thoughts, because he grew quiet and thoughtful.

“So family life not for you, children and such.”

“Never . . . never met anyone who made me want to, want to have his babies.”

“I’d like them, someday. Give them an ordinary name. No responsibilities attached. Freedom to pick their own path.”

It was the sort of thing that someone who’d never had to share one pot of oat porridge out among ten said, and it didn’t much impress her. But he meant well. Meaning well went far with her, a lot farther than a pot of oat porridge did at the Lodge.

They crossed the open plaza under the loom of the gate. “Where are we going?”

“The stables.”

“Your pile-in.” Ileth had seen enough carousing in the Captain’s Lodge to last her a lifetime, but perhaps the well-bred apprentices with their triple-bar names were different.

In the pre-dragoneer days of the fortress, there’d been a stable and a hippodrome for exercising the horses in the wet weather. Now there were just a few veteran mounts inured to the constant arrival of dragon smells. She knew in a vague sort of way that there was still a Master of Horse who taught the apprentices to ride—horse riding was good training for being on a dragon, and a horse was still the best way to send messages over a short distance, saving the dragons work. She hadn’t been introduced to him yet.

“The Master of Horse is a good sort of fellow. The harder you work, the harder he lets you play. But I should warn you, it gets a bit charry in there. Most of the girls tie up and cover their hair. The stable’s dusty and people will be smoking.”

“I-I don’t have a—”

“Here, have mine.” He handed her a handkerchief. It was a little hard to tell what color it was in the dark, but at least it was clean.

“I meant, I don’t have any hair to tie up.”

“Oh, yes, well, I thought you might object to what’s left stinking. No, keep it, I have others.”

Secretly, she was a little worried that they’d demand a retelling of the duel. She dreaded the idea of speaking, answering questions, watching her audience exchange looks and fidget. She’d have to admit that if Galia hadn’t intervened, she’d be either dead or dying, run through the stomach or liver or womb. Worse, they could ask about her upbringing, the Lodge, who her parents were and what had happened to them. If they suspected she was attempting to hide something, the hard questions would start. She’d been around the Manor apprentices enough to know that they could sniff out weakness and lies better than a jury.

She decided she’d just decline to talk about it. Nervous exhaustion. She thought she could rely on Rapoto’s name and kindness to spare her any long speeches.

Best start laying the groundwork now.

“Rapoto,” she said, as they cut through the crowd of old buildings about the up end of the Serpentine, “I hope I don’t have to talk about the duel.”

“Why not? If I knocked a bear like Gorgantern out of his cave, you couldn’t get me to shut up about it.”

But he let the subject alone, and soon they were at the stables.

The wide, horse-height main doors of the hippodrome were shut, so Rapoto knocked at the smaller, human-sized one on the side of the stable next to the storeroom. They were admitted by one of the wingmen, acting as both a lookout and a filter to make sure only approved personages would get in.

Ileth saw a few curious, big-eyed horse heads glance at them from the mostly empty stalls as she followed Rapoto.

The pile-in appeared to be much as Rapoto had described it, something just for the apprentices and a couple of the younger and more social wingmen. They’d taken over a low-beamed storeroom with hayloft and workshops and arranged a snug retreat.

The storeroom’s sacks of grain had been removed from the heavy wooden racks that kept the feed up off the floor and turned into floor cushions or approximations of lounges and chairs. You could climb into the hayloft above through a rough ladder nailed onto one of the vertical supports. Two lamps and a few candles were the only illumination, unless you counted a small stove. It sat in one corner of the storeroom that had used to be a blacksmithing workshop, she supposed, as it jutted out from the stable and had a skylight and a masonry floor. A few old tools that were still of use maintaining the place and shoeing the horses hung from the walls. A black soup pot bubbled with something that smelled like licorice on the stove.

“Is that gripe?” Ileth asked. She’d had grog, a mix of tea and molasses-spirits, at the Lodge, and she knew gripe was mountain-style grog, heavy on the licorice. Same tea, different spirits and flavorings, and both an all-purpose remedy for ailments of the nose, throat, and chest. Grog pots reminded her of the Captain. He mostly drank brandied wine, but he used to make a pot for friends and old shipmates. She’d smelled gripe only once or twice before in shepherd campsites.

“I believe so.” He watched one of the apprentice girls who had somehow also escaped the Manor tonight pour a little in a wooden soup bowl with a handle, taste it, make a face, and add some syrup from a glass jar and then what was probably liquor from a big earthenware jug. Ileth recognized it as the sort of vessel that country folk use to make their farmhouse wine out of dandelions or blackberries.

She heard laughter from above. A pair of dainty but callused bare feet dangled, a little silver chain on one ankle. She recognized the bauble; it belonged to Galia. Galia had told her that ankle bracelets were popular in Sammerdam, the city where she grew up. Ileth was relieved. She had one ally here, if matters became truly desperate.

“Way-hey, we have our heroine,” somebody called, as Rapoto took her up to the grog pot. Or gripe pot. The libation.

“Well, do you dare?” Rapoto asked.

“A . . . a little.” She’d had spirits forced on her when she was ill. It might be interesting to try some just for fun.

Rapoto had the girl pour him a cup (everyone was drinking out of a different type of cup, and a few were just using kitchen ladles or small saucepots) and split the measure out into a small soup bowl, after checking to make sure it was clean. He gave her the smaller of the two portions.

The girl at the grog pot did something with her tongue and lips that Ileth suspected was obscene.

“Quit it, Evire,” Rapoto said, scowling at the pot-stirrer. “We’re celebrating. It’s not like that at all.”

“If you say so. She may have other designs,” Evire said.

Rapoto raised his voice: “A toast, to Ileth, banisher of Gorgantern.”

It wasn’t received in the same spirit. After a few curious glances and a smile or two, the membership of the pile-in returned to their former conversations. So much for Rapoto and his belief that she would be the celebrity of the pile-in.

The gripe was sharp but sweet and awfully strong. She suspected they were using the licorice and what tasted like cloves to cover up the amount of spirits inside.

“It’s my own recipe,” Evire said.

She counted heads. A good thirty apprentices were here. She didn’t know how many apprentices worked in the Serpentine entire, but guessed it was in the hundreds.

“Bend an elbow for our savior,” Yael Duskirk, the apprentice feeder she’d met outside the red door and one of her friends from the kitchen, said from the loft next to Galia’s feet, raising a wooden bowl. Galia’s foot rubbed against his suggestively. “Brims up to love and havoc!”

The crowd liked Duskirk’s toast a little better, there was a stir toward her. “To love and havoc!” most repeated, drinking, smiling at her through gripe-washed teeth. Even the wingmen bridged the social gap with the apprentices—and one out-of-her-home-waters novice—in the salute.

She accepted the toast, then tried to look around and acknowledge all the faces. That was what you were supposed to do, anyway, but it was hard in a dimly lit sort of hay barn full of shadows and motion.

“Where are your laudii, Ileth?” joked a young woman who had a waterfall of thick dark hair falling out of her scarf. Ileth had an idea that she was one of the girls who lived in the Beehive practically under the dragons’ snouts. What they did was still a subject of much conjecture and not a few wild stories in the Manor, but they were generally called the dancers. “Well done. Well done, indeed. I did six months gutting and salting under that towering prong. He used to stick fish tails down my back.”

“I’ll drift behind that,” said another young man with the long, thick sideburns Quith had told her were favored by the stylish youths in artist free-cities like Zland and Tyrenna. He extracted a white pipe and began to fill it from a leather pouch that had a name crest embroidered on it. She’d passed the young man on the bridge a few times and knew in a vague sort of way that he was a new-fledged wingman. Sleng, something. Pasfa Sleng. That was it. Quith had a terrible crush on him. She’d described him, in detail, several times and the thing that had stuck in Ileth’s head was his sideburns, so whenever she’d seen him she’d mentally called him that. On closer examination, they were as thick and well-tended as a rich house’s border hedge. She’d keep the way he was nestled up next to the dark-haired dancer from Quith, when she’d inevitably beg for details later.

The pair who’d spoken to her shifted closer to each other and made room on a pile of grain sacks. They shifted about until they formed a rough sort of horseshoe. Ileth sat on the end of the horseshoe, giving Rapoto ample room to sit between her and the others. Galia and Yael were laughing and chatting above.

Stripped to her sheath, as sure as I’ve hay in my hair!

Ileth tried to ignore the half-heard conversation above. The first thing they did was ask to see the whistle. Word had passed around that the dragoneer Amrits had given her his silver whistle as a token of his esteem. Ileth had shortened the lanyard and wore it around her neck beneath her work shirt.

With that out of the way, the party settled in.

Sideburns tamped down the tobacco in his pipe, extracted a thin stick of wood, and stood to set it aflame at the gripe pot. He put the flaming end of his kindling to his tobacco, and his cheeks worked until smoke blossomed from the pipe’s pot. He passed it to the thick-haired girl, who took a few puffs and handed it back.

“How about you, uhh, Ileth, you game?” asked Sideburns.

“Thank you,” she said. She’d tried a pipe several times before; tobacco was almost as popular as tea and potato-crust lamb pies with the people on the North Coast. She took the pipe, made of the white clay favored by society but small and simple in size, and tried to check the mouthpiece without making a show of it. She stuck it in her mouth and took a pull of the smoke. It was sweet and a little spicy, softer in the mouth with a good deal less bite to the tongue than the rough square-cut tobacco cubes she knew from the provinces.

“Thank you, s-sir,” she said, passing it back. She exhaled slowly, letting it out in a thin column.

“Dragon style! Wings out, girl,” Sideburns said. He put his fists together with knuckles toward her.

“Good tobacco there,” Ileth said. She meant to ask him about the fists-together gesture, but he started speaking and her natural reticence left him to his discourse.

“It’s called Blue Mood, from Sammerdam. I’d send you a bag as a mark of my esteem for putting Gorgantern on his vent, but I’ve none to spare. My family seems to think this place supplies everything I need. If I’d known tobacco would be so dear up on the lakeshore, I’d have filled up another couple pouches from my father’s crock. They shave it close here, don’t they? No spare money for anything.”

“Be lucky you get meat twice a day,” Galia called from the loft above. “Dragons eat a lot of coin.”

“Fa! Fish isn’t meat where I come from,” Sideburns said, taking his pipe back. “Fates, I should have gone to the art academy in Zland. Sketched milkmaids instead of picking scale nits. This isn’t an academy, it’s a labor camp with statues. Smells besides.”

Ileth didn’t mind the smell as much as some. It was an oily stink and clung to you, but it wasn’t that unpleasant to her nose.

“The dragons only take coin on holidays and feast days,” the dark-haired girl said. “Mostly they eat ores and scrap metal for their scale.”

“I always heard it was coin,” Ileth said. “Up north they talk about taxes going down a dragon’s hatch.”

“Novices,” Sideburns said. “You’ll learn soon enough. It’s not like the ballads and paintings here.”

The dark-haired girl shrugged. “This whole Academy is a swindle, I’m starting to think. They work a couple hundred boys and girls like slaves, promote six or seven now and then, let the quality ride a dragon a few times just so they can say they done it, and when the poor kids wise up and quit, just bring in a new batch.”

Sideburns took the pipe out of his mouth and passed it to the dark-haired girl. “Apprenticeship’s almost as bad. Six years is a long time when you’re pulling nits out of scale and raking dragon waste checking for worms.”

“Beats the Auxiliary or the Sea Lines Warrants,” Evire said from the pot. “I lost a sister to the Auxiliaries and a brother in a whaler in the North Bay.”

“If the armistice with the Galantines breaks down again, they’ll have us all flying quick enough,” Rapoto said. “Blood and fire all over the Scab.”

Ileth just listened. She knew the Scab was a sort of fortress on the great river that ran the Republic’s border, some point of long contention, and that the Galantine flag now flew above it.

Sideburns shrugged. “My family wants one son a dragoneer.”

“Lucky you ended up here,” Rapoto said. He picked up Sideburns’s pipe and studied it. “I’d rather be on dragonback than clerking at the Assembly.”

“My father always spreads his bets,” Sideburns answered. “We’re wealthy enough, but not a Name. It’s on me now to get a Heem into the family name, or better yet a Dun.”

“I wouldn’t mind walking out with a Name, one way or another,” the dark-haired girl said, and the others laughed.

“That’s the spirit, Peak,” Galia said from above. “Marry for place. As long as it’s first place.”

The talk moved on to smaller doings among the apprentices.

“I’m . . . feeling that drink,” Ileth said quietly to Rapoto. In truth, she was just tired.

“You’re looking it,” Sideburns said. “It’s been quite a day for you. Rapoto, you need to get this girl to bed.”

Rapoto looked up from Sideburns’s pipe. He started to say something but thought better of it, and he looked over at Ileth with that appreciative stare of his. She’d never held a man’s gaze for so long—at least a young man’s gaze. The Old Croakers in the village street would stare at her, but they stared at any woman. Here, now, in this stuffy storeroom that smelled like mold and tobacco and oil lamps, with six other girls her age to look at, he chose her.

She felt both unsteady and thrilled. She didn’t know what to do, how any of this worked with people with great names. Even her knowledge of coquetry among her own class was rumor and quick glimpses stitched together with guesswork. She reclined on her chair of feed sacks and smiled at him, then shifted her gaze to Galia’s feet above. Her toes were curling and straightening; whatever was going on up there, she seemed to be enjoying it. She suspected the dragoneer Dun Huss would not like her to follow Galia’s example in this instance. The rough sacking she sat upon tugged at her overdress and she sensed the sack was tearing. When she rose, she’d have to be careful about it or she’d end up with a mosaic of dried grain stuck to her backside.

Rapoto let out a great hacking cough. She glanced over and saw him struggling with the pipe, holding it as if it were a piece of chalk.

“Keep the smoke in your mouth,” Sideburns suggested. Rapoto nodded dumbly and inhaled again, making a face.

“Never smoked a pipe?” Peak asked.

Rapoto shook his head. “Yellows the teeth.”

Sideburns smiled. “I care about the soothing, contemplative frame of mind it offers. My teeth are subordinate to my brain.”

“I don’t feel soothed. Nauseous, if anything,” Rapoto said, and the youth next to him laughed.

Evire continued tending the grog pot, making a show of stirring it with a long wooden ladle.

“Rapoto, another dip?” she called, plunging the ladle in.

Rapoto ignored her, gave the pipe back to Sideburns (I need to tell Quith about his brand of tobacco, Ileth thought), and turned his attention back to Ileth. Evire took it in with one quick, contemptuous glance and concentrated on filling up the mugs being passed to her.

Several of the couples were kissing or caressing each other. Some of the apprentices were leaving. Peak caught Ileth looking at one of the uniformed wingmen, old enough for a thick mustache, half whispering, half kissing at an apprentice’s ear and neck. She’d loosed her hair and her hand gripped the wingman’s forearm that she was resting upon, hard enough for her knuckles to go white. She and Peak shared a knowing smile.

The pile-in was turning into one of the Captain’s outdoor bonfire nights when his gang brought their “wives.”

“I should go,” Ileth said.

“I need to get back too,” Rapoto said. “Want another toss of gripe before you climb into the saddle?”

She shook her head and stifled a yawn. All the gripe had done was make her sleepy. The pile-in felt stuffy and the exhaustion of the day had finally caught up to her excitement. Night air would do her good, the chillier the better. She stood up and felt dizzy. What in all the locks and falls of the Republic had Evire put in that gripe?

They moved through the reduced crowd. Rapoto took her hand to assist in threading around the remaining apprentices and to keep from being pulled into a congratulation or conversation. Perhaps it was the gripe, but she decided he was as far above the run of the other apprentices as the snowcaps on the Sisters across the lake were above sea level. It was like every nerve in her body had been pulled into her hand and set aquiver.

They left the pile-in and walked out toward the door, passing the scattered horses. Long, thoughtful faces watched them from their stalls with the empty stables open between like knocked-out teeth.

“I have to take my chance,” Rapoto said. He pulled her into one of the dark berths and pressed her against the stable wall, kissing her full and hard on the lips.

The intimacy shocked her, but it was the best kind of shock.

Maybe it was the gripe, but time slowed as his hands traveled around her waist. His touch was a little hesitant, as if he feared what he might find. She liked that. It was like being explored. She was used to being grabbed fast and hard by rough hands that didn’t linger anywhere but their objective. Rapoto had thin fingers and a delicate touch. She pressed herself into him; he was tall and she slight, and her chin just fit against the bottom of his breastbone. He had to bend to kiss her and she had to tilt her close-cropped head far, far back.

She felt him take her overdress in his hands and start to lift it. She stiffened, pressing back against the stable wall to keep it in place. She hadn’t expected Rapoto to go to that so quickly, like a pig pawing up a truffle.

Something white loomed behind Rapoto. For a moment she imagined it was Gorgantern, blade raised to stab—

Ileth squeaked in alarm.

“Rapoto!” Santeel Dun Troot screamed.

Ileth shielded her eyes from the lantern. The light hurt.

“Santeel, what the hounds . . .” Rapoto gasped, struggling to tuck his shirt into his pants. Ileth’s overdress hem fell to its usual place as though it too were acting as if nothing out of the ordinary had been in progress. She felt a flush of embarrassment rush to her face.

“I went out after Ileth. The Matron was worried about her. She is wounded and should be in bed. In a real bed.”

I’m sure you did! thought Ileth.

“I inquired at the Masters’ Hall, then the Guards’ halls, and they said there was a sort of gathering at the stables. You were seen walking toward it. I asked for admittance at the door, not suspecting I’d discover this sort of depravity . . .” Santeel stared at the kerchief tying up Ileth’s cropped hair, at Rapoto, and back again in increasing fury.

Depravity? For all her name and education, Ileth thought, Santeel hadn’t lived much; Ileth’s hem hadn’t even made it halfway up to her thighs.

“I don’t know what you think you saw, Santeel, but it was only a kiss.”

Santeel grew larger in her anger the way sparring birds fluff themselves up. “A kiss, he says. With, with this . . . You forget my Name! And while I’m on the subject of names, you forget yours! Rutting with this northern trash.”

“Don’t speak of her that way,” Rapoto said. “She’s a novice dragoneer, same as you.”

“You called her that yourself,” Santeel said. “Don’t deny it!”

“Trash?” Ileth asked.

Rapoto’s attention bounced from one to the other. “I did not say trash. I absolutely did not say trash, Ileth.”

“Your exact words when I told you where she was from were: ‘A lot of trash washes up on that coast.’ What else could it mean?”

Rapoto put himself between Santeel and Ileth. “Ileth, I did not mean you! Not specifically you!”

Others from the stable were gathering. Ileth, no longer tired but feeling strangely bodiless, saw Galia in the audience. And that feeder, what was his name, the one who’d vomited her first night outside the door—Duskirk, that was it. The dancer Peak was whispering something in Galia’s ear. Galia would be in attendance. She appeared at so many of Ileth’s imbroglios she could pass a hat around and collect coins in exchange for the show. The thought made her giggle. Then she fainted.

Galia and Santeel took her back to the Manor, Galia helping Ileth and Santeel casting about ahead, swinging the lantern like some sort of suspended doom.

“What are you doing, Santeel?” Galia asked.

“Checking the corners. The wingman keeping an eye on the house said they’re worried about Gorgantern coming back.”

Ileth felt as though they were a procession marching a condemned man to the block, and it turned out to be not far from the truth. Upon hearing Santeel and Galia explain things, that Ileth had been discovered up against a stable wall with a man pressing between her legs, the Matron rose to her feet at a speed that would do a scalded cat credit and ordered her to report to the Master of Novices. Even if she had to sit on the doorstep all night. Which was where she should have been left to begin with.

“I haven’t had, don’t have, and will not have slatterns in my rooms! Go, and do not return,” the Matron said, white-lipped with anger.

Quith looked as though she would explode in a burst of gory scandal. Santeel hurried to her bed, too upset to enjoy the drama and talk that immediately broke out among the novices in their nightdress. Galia, looking a little drawn and unfocused—how many drafts of gripe was she concealing?—seemed to be fighting some kind of internal struggle. Ileth wondered what had been going on in the loft above her with Yael Duskirk. She had suspiciously puffy lips.

“I’m not sure much of anything happened,” Galia said thickly. “It was but a moment between her leaving the pile-in and Santeel’s shout.”

“A moment is ample with a boy that age,” the Matron replied. “Remember your place, Galia. You’re still just an apprentice yourself, flight experience or no.”

In the end, Galia took her out. Hurried her out, even. Which was just as well, as they were still in the yard of the Manor when Galia burped loudly.

“I knew I shouldn’t have had gripe after that pepper stew,” she muttered, wiping her mouth. “But I think it’ll stay down. Fates, why does Evire put in so much peated water?”

“I don’t . . . don’t see that I did anything all that wr-wrong. He kissed me is all.”

“Don’t play so innocent; I got a good look at his trousers. Ileth, what are we going to do with you? You should have either run away or tried to accommodate him in another fashion. I suppose you don’t know any of those tricks, though.”

She was too tired and cold to blush. “My wits fled as soon as he kissed me. Happened so fast.”

“He does have a reputation as a bit of a rabbit. His is a name worth pursuing. You might have yelled ‘Rape!’ when Dun Troot charged in. He might have offered betrothal right there and that Dun Troot pinch would’ve dropped dead of shock. Triple laurels for you, if you add in Gorgantern.”

“Are you mad? I don’t see how I’m any worse than-than-than you, beyond getting caught. What were you doing when you heard Santeel scream?”

Galia took her hand and gave her a friendly but intimidatingly strong squeeze. “I’m not a liar either. So I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that question so I don’t have to answer it.”

Rapoto was already in the Masters’ Hall. Caseen, bare-legged in a coat and night scarf that concealed what looked like bedclothes, shook his head wearily as she approached.

It was the first time Ileth had seen the Master of Novices without his mask. His face was a furrowed horror of scar and twitching muscle and tendon. It reminded Ileth of a body she’d seen once, brought down from the hills after being frozen in a mountain shelter for goat-shepherds. Scavengers had been nibbling at the frozen skin.

“Ileth, do you have some love of my rooms that you cannot bear to be away from them for a few hours?” Caseen asked. “I can’t seem to get rid of you.”

“I’m for bed,” Galia said, turning away. She quietly burped once her back was to Caseen.

“Just a moment, apprentice,” Caseen said. “Rapoto here—quiet now, boy—has given me an explanation of the night’s doings. You could help me by telling what you observed.”

Ileth tightened her jaw to keep from speaking. She was in enough trouble.

Galia turned and took a deep breath. “I didn’t see anything. Ileth was at the pile-in with Rapoto. There was a pot of gripe, but I didn’t see her have any. They left, and I’d only just started conversing again when I heard Santeel Dun Troot’s shout. I hopped up and came as fast as I could. Both of them were fully dressed and upright in an empty stable stall. No mystery. Ileth said they’d been kissing and I not only believe her, I can’t see how it could have been anything but a kiss.”

“There were . . . intimacies, sir,” Rapoto said. “As I said. I am entirely responsible for them. But it did not go so far as Santeel or that woman at the Manor believes.” Galia glared at him as if angry with him that he didn’t simply deny anything but a kiss in the dark.

“Thank you, Galia. You may go to bed. Careful with the gripe, you reek of it.” Galia bobbed, much in the same manner Ileth had been taught, and departed. Caseen collapsed into an armchair among the bookshelves with a groan.

“This often happens with a new batch of novices,” Caseen said, looking from one to the other. Ileth feared that when his gaze finally alighted on one of them, it would be her. “Behavior of this sort—it makes for problems. We make an example of the first offense.”

“Will we be—expelled?” Rapoto asked.

“Expelled? People are discharged from the dragoneers, not expelled.” Caseen chuckled. He let that hang there for a moment, then added, “Novices are released from their oath and dismissed, since they’re not subject to the apprentice law or any of the military regulations. However, I’m not Master of Apprentices. I don’t think Master Selgernon is about to discharge a Vor Claymass for a dalliance with a jade.”

Ileth startled at that. “Sir, I’m no jade.”

“Then don’t buck about like one, young woman,” Caseen said. He turned back to Rapoto. “Exhibit the manners worthy of your name, or we’ll send you home, great name or no. I’m afraid I’m behind on my Assembly gossip. I was under the impression there were hopes between the families with our own Santeel Dun Troot.”

“This is the first I’ve heard of it, sir,” Rapoto said, face as shocked as if the Master of Novices had kicked his shin. “I don’t follow politics. I’m here to get away from that.”

“That’s admirable. If your skills matched your attitude you would have been apprenticed quicker. Don’t you have lamps to fill?”

Rapoto glanced uncertainly at Caseen, then Ileth, and started for the door.

“Now, as to your punishment, young woman,” Caseen began.

The boy stopped and turned neatly on the ball of his boot. “Wait, sir, you’re going to punish Ileth?”

“That’s none of your concern,” Caseen said. “It is, on the other hand, my office and commission here.”

“I persuaded her to go off with me. I gave her drink. I lifted her dress. She didn’t seek seduction. If anyone should be walking out of this room with just a stern warning, it’s her.”

“As I said, that’s not your concern. I dismissed you,” Caseen said. “I’d rather someone more appropriate acquainted you with the facts of life, young man. But you must realize that a woman risks much more with this sort of debasement.”

“Debasement? Sir, well—I’ll marry her before sundown tomorrow, if that’s what her reputation here requires.”

Ileth felt his words, a shocking yet warm stab to her gut.

“Rapoto,” Caseen said, “I think you’ve had your quota of impulsive decisions for one day.”

She looked at Rapoto. In her surprise she hardly stuttered. “From my—from my soul itself, th-thank you. I think you’re already regretting making me such an offer. But I can’t accept. Your family wouldn’t accept. I’m not even sixteen yet. We’d have to wait.”

“Hear me out,” Rapoto said. There was such an air of command to his voice that Ileth fell silent; Caseen merely listened with new interest. “A marriage offer from my Name, if accepted, would rearrange the pieces on the table. I would be no longer a scoundrel, just a foolish boy in love. She’s not a slut; she’s my intended. Instead of being vindictive, my family will spend a few frantic weeks making increasingly tempting offers to Ileth that she release me from a bad match. Eventually my family will use its influence to do the Serpentine some great favor at the Assembly in exchange for you pressuring Ileth, and then we will break it off. All concerned breathe a sigh of relief and are happy.”

Ileth, whose mind could at least follow his words, even if it wasn’t up to conceiving of such a plan and its myriad of angles and dangles, was about to say that she’d be willing to go along with a lie to retrieve her place in the Serpentine when the Master of Novices spoke.

“For a young man with no interest in politics, you have a sense of it.” Caseen leaned back, scratching his elbows. “Suppose she’s playing her own game of hazard and demands that you follow through on your pledge.”

Rapoto stiffened. “That’s my concern.”

Caseen smiled. “So you’re not the self-satisfied spawn of a great name I first took you for. We may be able to do something with you after all.” He set to scratching at his elbows in thought.

“A family is an accident of birth, sir,” Rapoto said. “I’m here to be something other than a famous name.”

“Good for you. Make your own name. But don’t do anything drastic. Matters may look very different when you’re on the other side of your early years. It’s late, and I can’t keep up with such dramatics of youth. Let me finish with Ileth. Don’t worry, young man, I’m not sending her out into the cold and dark.”

Ileth straightened her shoulders, lifted her chin, and turned to Rapoto. “Vor Claymass, I’ll face the . . . the rest of this on my own. I appreciate you standing f-for me. Trying to. But please go.”

Rapoto sighed. “I’m sorry, Ileth. Don’t do anything desperate. My family can easily set you up for life.”

“I’m here to set my own life, sir,” she said.

The sir stung, she could see it in Rapoto’s face. Well, he did go fumbling about with her body.

“Half as much consideration an hour ago would have saved you both a good deal of trouble,” Caseen observed, echoing her thoughts. His elbows were soothed and he pointed an index finger at Rapoto. “Now out. Please close the door when you leave.”

Ileth kept her face to the Master, waiting until she heard Rapoto’s boot heels on the stonework and the door shut.

“Well?” she said. “Am I out?” If she was, she might as well throw herself from that cliff the girls sometimes mentioned. To be oathed in, then lose it in the space of a single season. Better to never have a place in the world than to lose the Serpentine.

“You are the victim of an injustice. It’s my sad duty to see that injustice carried out. I’m not happy to do this.”

“Say it, sir, whatever it is. Please.”

Caseen took a deep breath, as though readying himself for some decision. Then scratching at the door interrupted him.

“That infernal cat,” he muttered. Then he blinked several times, rapidly. Ileth wondered what that meant. A slight smile worked its way across the undamaged part of his mouth.

“I believe the first time we talked, I told you the less you saw of me, the better you were probably doing.”

She nodded.

“Things have gone wrong for you here.”

“A b-bad start is still . . . a start.”

The muscles in Caseen’s face that still worked registered surprise. “Where did you get that?”

“I thought it was just a saying. I must have heard it up north.”

“Ah. Still, it’s true. I first read that phrase when I wasn’t much older than you. It’s one of the maxims of an old dragon of history, one of the Tyrs from across the Inland Ocean. He briefly ruled Hypatia, you know.”

Ileth had no idea what he was talking about, but she thought it best to keep quiet and listen.

“Back to the matter at hand. A certain amount of foolishness we can overlook. But if you don’t know, I’ll be explicit. Women with child can’t continue here. There’s a home in town for young women who gain a more permanent legacy from an act like this. Don’t look as though I’m going to chase you off with dogs; we can wait until the winter solstice and have a look at you then.”

“There’s no chance, sir. I understand the mechanics of all that.”

“I hope you understand motherhood better than dueling, then. Ileth, I must show official disapproval in some manner. The people who send their famously named children don’t expect us to allow their sons and daughters to rut about in haylofts.”

“Stable. It was a stable stall.” She could have added that Galia was the one rutting about in a hayloft, but getting someone else in trouble wouldn’t help her predicament.

“It doesn’t matter if it was the king’s old bedchamber in Asposis. We can’t have it.”

She couldn’t look at him, and not just because of the burns. Miserable, she hung her head. In the Lodge, she’d seen so many girls get moonstruck over a boy, and she’d sworn to herself to be different, to follow her star to a dragon’s back and on that to horizons she couldn’t imagine—and yet it happened to her as easily as a strong wind could blow a dry leaf across a yard. Stupid, Ileth! So stupid! Stars in their courses, she’d be sniveling next. She dug her nails into her palm, hard. That stalled it.

“But on to your case. I get the impression I won’t have to write any kind of explanatory letter to your mother and father, no matter what happens a few months from now?”

She shook her head. The chopped hair was too short to hide her face.

“There will be talk; there’s no avoiding it. I will have to put your name down in the Blue Book.” He gestured to a blue-dyed leather ledger book on his desk. “Before I was Master of Novices, when your name went down in this book, you were out the gate and never allowed to return. I believe that even the best of us can make a serious mistake, especially at your age, so I’ve improved on the tradition, I like to think. Now you are given a second chance when your name goes into the book. Another serious problem, and you are thrown out and I draw a line through your name, so that you are never readmitted. Some who go down in the Blue Book choose to leave voluntarily and reapply the next year with the slate wiped clean. Would you like to do that?”

Ileth had no friends, no resource to fall back on to support her for a year. This was her one chance with the dragoneers. “No, sir.”

“I understand. Nothing to go back to.”

She nodded.

“We’ll remove you from the Manor. I must reinforce the Matron’s discipline, and a swift banishment will make an impression on your sisters there.”

Sisters! Yes, well, that’s one way to think about them. If only Santeel hadn’t started shouting her head off!

“We have two apprentice girls living and working in the dragoneer hall, but that’s a distinction, even if you’re just wiping windows and sweeping floors and fetching morning tea. It would be counted as a reward. I can’t send that impression. Since you’ve proved yourself hardy and have shown a certain amount of physical courage in that dueling business, and are, well, worldly, I could put you in with the dancers.”

“Dancers, sir?” There’d been a dancer at the pile-in, that Peak girl.

“Yes. Don’t get the wrong idea, it’s for the dragons. It’s not Sammerdam’s face powder grotto here. Not at all. You don’t know we use them? I forget how new you are. The Catch Basin isn’t exactly in the center of the Beehive. Yes, we have a troupe of dancers. They have a curious history here. At one time they were Auxiliaries, not even part of the dragoneers, more like experts on retainer. Eventually they had to be put under Serpentine discipline. Too much trouble among the dragoneers over them.”

“Why do the dragons need dancers?” Ileth asked.

“Surely you’ve heard stories and legends about dragons and human women.”

She nodded. Almost every girl had heard stories, if not from parents and relatives then from other girls, or books for those with access to them and the ability to read that male dragons found the presence of human women pleasing, pleasing enough to risk the wrath of entire populations by carrying them off. Since Ileth had been quietly collecting dragon apocrypha since meeting Agrath and Annis Heem Strath, she’d heard different versions. They said in folk tales that it had something to do with smell, but no two legends quite agreed on the nature of the smell or ways to increase or decrease its potency. Folk tales of maidens bewitching dragons with songs or dances to distract them, then retrieving some treasure or extracting a promise, were common enough that she’d grown up with childhood rhymes about them and even seen an example in a copybook: a girl hiding behind a fan, revealing half a smile to a serpentlike creature with almost human eyes and stubby legs and wings: CHARM conquers even a DRAGON. The picture had annoyed Ileth, as a real dragon looked nothing like that.

“Ottavia, she’s in charge of the troupe, can tell you more. There’s ancient tradition to it. Goes back a thousand years and more to Ancient Hypatia and the time of that old Tyr you quoted. It’s not dull work. It’ll put you in contact with the dragons in a more important way than trimming and polishing scales while they snooze.”

“I do—I do like a dance, sir.” And it was better than gutting fish.

“That’s the angle. You could even look at it as a promotion. You’ll be around the dragons. If you design to build a life in the Serpentine, that’s always helpful.”

“I have my personals at the Manor. Might I say a few good-byes, too?”

“Not at this hour, I’m afraid. I’ll send a note to the Matron with my judgment and some instructions. She’ll think it just; to her the dancers are a coven of—well, you know her as well as I. Your things will be bundled and delivered to the Dancers’ Quarter.”

“Thank you, sir. I’m sorry . . . sorry for tonight.”

“I understand. And don’t drink any rubbish to flush yourself out, no matter who gives it to you or what they say about it. A girl died that way when I was young.” He looked pained at the thought. He cleared his throat and stood up, using his good leg.

“I won’t,” she said.

“Follow Ottavia’s direction and this night will soon be forgotten. The Serpentine changes with the moon. New excitement every time a dragon lands. If you haven’t figured that out yet, you soon will.”

She nodded.

The smile vanished. He leaned across his map table. The light from the little two-flame oil lamp threw deep shadows into his eye sockets from this angle, and she found herself fascinated in a way by the scarred horror that was his face. “One more thing about the dancers. Some of the dragoneers here fancy themselves rakes—these men will consider your favors easily had in that role, as though you were dancing on a table in the most libertine pipe-den in Tyrenna. Don’t let anyone tell you your job is anything other than working up a good sweat for the dragons. Ottavia is exceptionally deft at handling those sort of situations. Bring it to her and hold nothing back. I hope the lesson you learned tonight sticks. I want everyone to forget it, except you.”

Ileth briefly wished she’d had a man like Caseen as a father, or just visiting now and then as an uncle. Stern but kindly. Interested but neutral. But as Rapoto said, her family was an accident of birth and there was no helping that.

“I’ve lost track of the time,” Caseen said. “Have you heard a bell?”

“The midnight bell rang while I was walking here with Galia,” Ileth said.

“Well, we can’t wake Ottavia up at this hour, at least not for this.”

“I don’t mind sleeping in the hall,” she said. “Discomfort right before a turn in fortune is my style.”

“The chair by the fire is comfortable. It’s stuffed with horsehair. It would only take a few minutes to build the fire back up again. You’d be warm. I sleep in a little room on the other side of the fireplace. Once upon a time this was a clerk’s and manservant’s office and my bedroom the master office, but we live more to a republican ideal now. I much prefer this. I’m a lazy old man. I like a comfortable bed nearby and am reluctant to leave it once warmed, so you’ll be able to sleep later than you are used to at the Manor.”

Ileth asked if she could leave the door to the hallway open. “We don’t want to start another rumor.”

Caseen chuckled at that. “No. I might have to offer to marry you as well and then we might end up with another duel to win your favors. I’m not sure the Serpentine could handle the excitement.”

The Master departed. She heard a groan or two from his inner room as he settled down for what was left of the night. She added a little charcoal to the fire before pulling the chair close and settling in. The chair had a rich, masculine scent to it, some kind of barber oil most likely, and she found it comforting, especially warmed as it was by the fire. Scent can be a powerful signal. She wondered what sort of message her own body sent to the dragons.

At one point in the morning today—no, yesterday—she was sure she’d be dead and cold by nightfall, and here she was, warm and alone and considering her sense of smell and the potential of her own effect on dragons. She’d tempted and dodged two dooms today. And no more hygiene lectures from the Matron! That was almost worth having your name set down in this Blue Book of Doom or whatever it was called. She decided she had much to be grateful for and resolved that it would be a long time before she tempted fate a third time.

Relaxed and with a relieved feeling that could pass for happy, she swiftly slipped into sleep.