Novice Dragoneer

10

My Dear Faith,

I hope this letter finds you well. Thank you for your own note and more paid paper. It was kind of you to include that bank draft as well, but in truth I have little chance to enjoy your generosity. Novices are not allowed outside the walls generally, so I have nowhere to spend it, and on market days I always seem to have duties. I did manage to resupply our quills and ink and paper among the girls with a portion of it. If you really wish to do me a favor, I would be grateful to you for a small everyday set of the Liturgies in Ordinary bound in book form. I was told by a learned friend that studying them would improve my natural style in Montangyan and Galantine so I can write without (as I do now) resorting to phrases copied from books of formal correspondence.

I enjoy the fortune of seeing Santeel (she has insisted we be on a familiar-name basis, as we are thrown together in our duties a good deal) almost every morning, noon, and night and can assure you that she is in excellent health and her spirit is good, though not quite as good as it might be on mornings when our washroom requires extra cleaning.

You may make the Name Dun Troot happy in the news that the honorable young Santeel Dun Troot has been made apprentice, in the first group so promoted, five in number out of a novice group that numbers some ninety now, as a few novices have left to seek other opportunities. The rest of those promoted were all boys so she is the only one of her sex so distinguished. She has taken to the distinction like an eagle to the skies and reminds the rest of the female novices of her achievement of evenings in the dining hall when she takes her natural place at the head of our company and sets the social order and conversation to her liking.

We are both dragon dancers now. If you are unfamiliar with the art, acquainting you with it is too much for a letter such as I have time to write here, but it is important though exacting work. I believe Santeel has never had to put such consistent and taxing physical effort into anything, for at first she was quite easily exhausted and constantly requested breaks for physical comfort so she could catch her breath. The efforts we put into our movements and poses! We make and wear canvas slippers that require much toughening of the feet, especially Santeel’s dainty ones, which were the envy of all the rest of us until they became toughened and callused. I understand some dancers use softer slippers of chamois. Perhaps you can acquire her some in the city.

We frequently perform together for the dragons and those human members of the Serpentine who appreciate the art, and of course getting over our natural modesty in moving to music with nothing but light material between our audience and our natural selves. As we are both fairly new to the art, there are sometimes minor collisions, and one routine with a third dancer named Vii, also new, became unintentionally comic when we accidentally struck each other with our arms and matters escalated from there in time to the music. Our musician kept playing, even more enthusiastically to cover our mistake, and we did our best to get through it despite the exchange of palms, elbows, and heels. But a good laugh was had by all afterward, and the bruised eye sockets and bleeding noses soon healed! My own nose was broken in my early years so I’m not much worse off than I was before.

This letter must be brief. I wish I could report that my own health is as good as Santeel’s, but I am coming off a bout of digestive issues caused by, I think, certain spices I have been trying on my food. I have found, like some of my fellow dancers, that I enjoy exotic peppery blends of late to fight the dull winter chill and tasteless cabbage, but they take some getting used to and I find some mornings I am in digestive distress. I am told I will soon grow used to them and their effects won’t be quite so spectacular.

Your servant, sir,

Ileth

The first-flighters would have to wait for good weather after the winter solstice. Ileth was told that after the initial blast of winter storms that came with the solstice, the Skylake valley would often get a few weeks of clear, cold weather. After hunkering down through the storms, there would be a flurry of activity on the flight deck as the backlog of dragons as couriers and such were distributed to the districts of the Republic, and when other dragoneers and their wingmen who’d been waiting on the ground for better weather returned.

It gave Santeel Dun Troot a chance to retrieve and show off her flight ensemble. She did so in the main room of the Dancers’ Quarter, gathering them all one evening for the full effect. Except Preen, who said she was ill and retreated to her bed.

The Serpentine did not insist on strict uniforms when it came to flying gear; the dragoneers each had their own ideas for what to wear on dragonback to fight off the cold or opponents. So Santeel, or perhaps her family, had opened their purse and let fly with the haberdasher.

Santeel Dun Troot’s flying outfit could be called many things, but Ileth would have chosen formidable. It made her look a bit like a dragon herself. It combined the ladylike lines of a riding skirt with the necessary usefulness of trousers—the skirt had what looked like a decorative seam that you could open up when forked in the saddle. It was mostly dark, bluish leather, with a few flashes of red decorative trim and white fur with black tips visible at the collar and cuffs. From what little Ileth knew of the fur trade that came in through the north, she knew it must be fantastically expensive. The top was two layers of jacket that hid horizontal armored fittings sewn in, wind-cutting leather of the supplest lambskin on the outside, and more fur on the inside. The jacket, cut in the equestrian patrol style, reminded her of a dashing horse-lieutenant she’d met on the road, though he’d been wearing a warm bearskin hat instead of a flying cap. Santeel’s flying cap had a long white silk scarf she could wind around her face and a button-closed windshield. The cap itself was topped with a sort of fringe evocative of that of a female dragon, with a fabric cockade of her family colors fitted jauntily on one side. There were riding gauntlets that went high on her arm as well, also trimmed in that thick white fur with black tips on the collar and cuffs.

The new leather made so many squeaks and wheezes as she walked about in her polished riding boots that it sounded like her rig was filled with outraged mice being pinched whenever she turned and tried a different pose.

“I’m not entirely satisfied with the fit,” Santeel said. “I believe my figure has altered a little since joining the troupe. It’s a little loose about the seat and thighs.”

“You’ll be grateful for the room on long flights,” Dax said; he was more excited than the rest of the dancers combined to see her Tyrennan-designed and -fabricated riding outfit finally worn. Dax knew a rich girl who enjoyed having a court when he met one, and they’d become friends.

“How would you know? You’ve never flown,” Shatha said.

“No, but I’ve known plenty of dragoneers. They like a lively tune much as you dancers.”

But Santeel’s flight trunk reveal gave Ileth pause. She had little she could wear against the cold weather outside the Beehive, let alone what she might encounter if the dragon took her up to “test her teeth for high airs,” as the dragonback veterans put it. Yael Duskirk in the kitchens was little help. He was slotted to do more flying as well and hadn’t acquired much more than a long, thick scarf and an old fisherman’s coat. His gloves were in a sorry state as well. The fingers had started to wear away and he’d chopped them off last year.

She put the question to Galia when she had a free hour to track her down. She confessed, wretchedly, that she had nothing and no money that she could spend on attire. Galia sympathized but had no old clothes suitable for riding, was taller and broader than Ileth, and needed her own riding rig, laboriously built up over the better part of a year, for her own frequent rides. Galia hadn’t even been able to afford a proper purple for her wingman’s sash and had to make do with her own mixture of cheaper dyes.

Novices had a clothing issue, but it wasn’t suitable for flying. Even cold-weather coats were almost impossible to obtain. If you couldn’t afford to buy one at the now-rare winter market days, you were out of luck and had to go about in layers of cast-off laborer’s jackets. Anything too worn out went to the rag room; otherwise the girls of the Manor, desperate for anything that could be called “new” to wear, took them off her hands. But Galia promised to take the matter up with her new dragoneer.

Ileth could still lose her concerns in her dance. She was performing more often for the dragons now. She even had a couple of sister females who shared a cave in the Upper Ring who specifically requested her to entertain them on the long winter evenings when there was little else to do but sleep (“the tiny one with the male hair who bucked up Old Stripes” was how one put it to Ottavia).

Ileth had just finished a long after-dinner dance, a mixture of performance and conversation, with a garrulous old red named Falberrwrath. She found him tiresome because she couldn’t just dance, thank him for his attention, and say she looked forward to next time—he kept her up talking when she wanted to sleep. He tended to tell the same story each time, about the four-day battle where he had four riders “shot off from atop me, one after the other—I never even learned the last one’s name but you can look it up, I suppose. It went into the histories.”

Stuck one evening hearing Falberrwrath’s stories again, pinching herself in the arm whenever she nodded into sleep, she had a visitor. The towering scarecrow figure of the dragoneer she’d heard called the Borderlander walked by. He looked in, met her eyes—the color of his were hard to define, blue but so pale they were almost a steel color—and cleared his throat.

“Pardon, Falberrwrath, I’ve come to collect Ileth,” he said.

Falberrwrath ground his teeth in annoyance at his story being interrupted. “Usually she stays until I’m ready to sleep.”

“It’s her night for the bathtub and I won the draw to wash her, for once. Been looking forward to it all day, sir.” He grabbed her by the forearm for emphasis.

“Ah. Yes, yes. Quite. Don’t let me keep you, young man.”

“Thank you, Falberrwrath. You’re the Tyr’s own in my book.”

He walked her out of the room. Once they’d walked a safe distance down the passageway, he released her.

“Thank you, sir,” Ileth said. “I could hardly keep my eyes open.”

“I saw you slumping.” Ileth liked his Montangyan. Its casual approach to grammar and the accents reminded her of the Freesand sailors. “Tell you the truth, I am too. Catherix was in a mood tonight. Took forever to get her wings greased so she thought them acceptable. They can crack in this cold weather if you don’t do that, you oughter know. But it’s not just that.”

“What is it?”

“Come back with me and I’ll show you.”

He took her to Catherix’s shelf in the Upper Ring. The grayish-white dragon—Ileth had never seen her up close, though she’d passed through the Chamber a few times when they were dancing—was chewing on a thick bone that must have come from a large ox or something like a moose or elk. What Ileth could see of her wings gleamed with fresh oil. It occurred to Ileth that she never saw the Borderlander with grooms or wingmen or much of anyone when she passed him. Always alone, unless he was hanging about with Dun Huss or the flamboyant Dath Amrits. He was an odd fellow.

He found a key on a small ring and led her over to a battered trunk. A variety of clothing buttons, some in precious metals and finely designed, were glued atop it, covering perhaps a third of the surface in no particular design. He unlocked the trunk. She was curious enough to angle for a better view inside the trunk and saw just an old belt and boots, a few books, a closed personal portrait case, a thing that looked like a rolled-up carpet, and a big sack tied off with a leather cord. He extracted the sack.

“Here you go, girl,” he said, tossing her the heavy sack. She wished he’d said brace yourself or some such before he tossed it to her. She just managed to catch it—a dancer’s body-sense was good for something—without falling over. It was bulky but not horribly heavy.

“Open ’er up,” he said. She decided his rustic accent would be snickered at even in a backwater like the Freesand. Here, among all the Vors, Duns, and Heems, it was refreshing.

She untied the cording and opened it. A mix of cloth, hide, fur, and finished leather tumbled out onto the floor. It smelled a little musty, but there was no rot or mold to it.

“Huss said you needed a rig. Nicer than what I wore on my first flight. I know what it’s like to go up in nothing but a bit of sheepskin with old bulletin-paper wrapped around your chest to keep out the chill.”

Ileth’s knees buckled. This was fine flying gear, as fine as she’d seen. Not dashing, like Dun Huss’s, or the inspired work of Tyrennan artisans, but better than she’d dreamed of when talking flying coats with Galia.

“I will return it in per—”

He shook his head. “No. It’s yours now. It’s my old gear from Typhlan. Haven’t had the heart to wear it since she died. Bit stale, air it out and get some musk oil on it first thing. Too big for you, mostways, but that can be amended, and cuttin’ it down will give you plenty of extra bits for alterations. Too big’s fixed easier than too small. You ever work leathers?”

“This . . . this is wonderful.”

“I respect what you did for Old Stripes down there. The man who taught me the job, well, his grandfather rode alongside him once. In the war against the Snowspot Blighters, and was rewarded by the king at the time, one of the good ones, I think. Good dragon. I wouldn’t die in a hole if I could claw my way out, either.”

She bobbed out her usual obeisance, happily clutching the bag to her breast.

“None of that, now,” the Borderlander said. “Where I come from, deeds sort folks out, not names. You wear it in health and don’t feel bad about whatever cutting you have to do to make it your own.”

“May I . . . may I ask you a question, sir?”

“Spit it out, girl.”

“Do you . . . know why he had to hide in the Cellars?”

“No. Didn’t have anything to do with the Snowspot Blighters; there’s hardly any left these days. They can still fight, though. Don’t let anyone tell you the blighters are dumb, if you ever have to go up against ’em. They know warfare.”

The trouble she had getting the dragonriding rig to properly fit her was a story in itself, woven in and out of her life in the next few weeks. Dax wouldn’t help; time was pressing and he already had Santeel Dun Troot under his wing. He suggested Vii, whose mother worked in clothing and textiles and had done work for famous names in Sammerdam. Vii grudgingly agreed when Dax pressed her, saying that if she could turn Ileth out properly with a sack of old leather and sheep hides cut to fit for a man in such a way that it could take some of the starch out of Santeel’s collar, it would be worth it. And it was an interesting challenge.

Two other novices, encouraged by Santeel’s joining the dancers, had added to the number and Ottavia breathed a little easier. She grumbled about Santeel and Ileth taking time away for their first flight training sessions—“Be a groom or a feeder if you want to fly off all the time”—but Santeel pointed out that they might get more novices wanting to dance if a female dragoneer came out of the dancers. Ottavia thought it over and quit grumbling.

Ileth worked on her riding rig nightly, with Vii helping when she could, or at least checking her work and offering suggestions.

Dragoneers tended to wear gray, a dark blue known as patrol blue, and once in a while black. A few flamboyant ones dressed completely in their dragon’s color, and there was a famous female dragoneer they’d heard stories of in the Manor who wore whites, but the Borderlander’s old rig was mostly a sort of sulfur color, too dull to be called yellow but not exactly a tan either—it was something in between. Vii called it sulfur so Ileth did as well, feeling like a little girl playing dress-up in the heavy canvas overcoat covered in some kind of waxy material to keep out the wet. The first thing Vii took out were assorted belts and weapons harnesses.

They built from the ground up. The boots she’d arrived in were still the only ones she had—she had no coin to buy another pair, but she’d managed to get them resoled with a little of the money Falth sent her. There was sort of an armored plate in the Borderlander’s kit made of dragon scale that protected the front of the lower legs and kept the wind out of the laces. They wound bandaging material around her legs, a trick she picked up from Galia, who said it kept you warm and helped your circulation, and turned the oversized leather pants into protective leggings that laced up at the sides—Vii labored over those especially, stripping an old pair of men’s lace-up riding boots in the process. They split the long riding coat up the back and shortened it at the arms and arranged it so it went over the shoulder armor the Borderlander had worn (in his case, hardened leather cups reinforced with metal bands). There wasn’t much to be done with the chest plate, so they left it for now.

“You’re not going into battle,” Vii said. “Just learning to ride.”

The Borderlander had an assortment of scarves and kerchiefs, tattered and worn, and Vii mated them up and turned them into a sort of fitted cushion that went around her neck (another suggestion of Galia’s) that trailed off into a scarf. The big leather gauntlets worked without modification once she put on a pair of thick wool gloves under them, though it made her hands look enormous. The hat was lambskin, tied down over her ears with a chin strap so the fleece warmed her and the leather cut the wind. It had a hint of the fore-and-aft-style decorations, though shorter and smaller than the Guard versions. It was her favorite part of the flying rig; the little details looked fetching and she felt a bit guilty as she admired herself a little too much in it in front of the mirror wall than was proper for a stolid Serpentine dragoneer.

One of the Captain’s old maxims was “To learn, do.” Ileth left the hard work of the leggings to Vii and learned a good deal about working with leather by going up to the tack workshop and making her belts and closures fit.

At last it was more or less done, through hours of effort put in between dancing duties.

“I don’t know how to thank you. I have a little money left from when I bought that paper. Can I give it to you?”

Vii frowned. “Ileth, just giving a friend money for a favor—it’s a bit crass. Especially in these circles. I know you’re northern, and I suppose they do things a bit different up there. If you can’t do a favor in return, get them something they like.”

“I see. What do you like, Vii?”

“A good night’s sleep, which you can’t get in the blasted alley between your wind from all that spicy food and Preen’s mumbling in her sleep.”

Ileth smiled. “I’ve stopped taking peppers. It was getting boring.”

Vii leaned back against the wall of their bedchamber alley and thought.

“I miss swirl. Have you ever had it? It’s a sort of drink, made from ground pod-beans that have been dried in the sun with cinnamon and sometimes salt added. It’s from way south. It’s bitter, but hearty in its way. Very satisfying.”

She’d never heard of it. “Do they sell it on market days?”

“Not here. No. Too expensive or hasn’t caught on, I don’t know. You don’t see it outside Sammerdam. At least I haven’t. Oh, I know what I need, a nice sheath. Something I can wear under my dress when I’m not dancing. I keep ruining my good ones because I forget to change before drill. Something in a startling color.”

The sheath seemed doable. Ileth would keep her eyes and ears open about the swirl. Maybe Amrits or one of the others would know where to get some.