Novice Dragoneer

14

The days passed slowly. Ileth would rise early, warm up by running over to the dragon (the first time one of the Baron’s household saw her running, they rang the fire bell but they soon accustomed themselves to her strange brand of femininity), and do her drills and fatigues. Fespanarax slept, or pretended to, through them. After asking Fespanarax whether he desired food or cleaning that day she would run back with hot muscles, wash up in cold water (in the Freesand, few had the time and money to set up hot baths), and breakfast with Galia. Then it was back to the dragon for the two of them to see to his feeding and appearance, where they spent most mornings with Fespanarax attending to his teeth and scale.

Ileth used the time to improve her knowledge of dragon care and grooming. Galia, while not exactly happy to teach her as she felt not nearly enough of an expert herself, instructed her in the art. In return Ileth improved Galia’s Galantine (Ileth’s own was being improved simply because it was in use constantly, as the servants and family relayed messages to both of them through her), and often Taf or Young Azal helped her by speaking simple commands and giving her old scrawled-up copybooks the smaller children used. Galia found the latter quite interesting, as each page was about one third filled by a woodcut illustration full of intricacy, intended to teach as many moral lessons as the artist could cram into it.

The tools involved in dragon care were closer to those needed for a smithy than, say, horse care, other than some stiff bristle brushes for scouring the dragon off and cleaning his teeth. There were files for taking burrs off a piece of scale that might irritate the dragon and a big gripping sort of thing such as was used by farriers to pull horseshoe nails that they used to pull scale. The Baron was allowed to keep any scale removed from the dragon and do with it as he liked according to the captivity agreements. Dragons regarded a scale being pulled as a minor pain, perhaps comparable to having a hair plucked, judging from the mild wince it evoked. Ileth always made sure to get the dragon’s permission and show the scale that needed pulling before doing so. They had a little sewing table with some probes and tools for removing parasites, and needles and strands of gut for rends in the wings (which he didn’t get because he could fly only under special circumstances). The only tool the Baron lacked was a reamer for the ears and nose, but they made do with a brush handle that had some soft pads such as Galantine women use as their monthly dressings stapled to it and soaked in white vinegar.

Fespanarax bore it with his usual humor, which is to say little.

Sometimes they helped out in the gardens later in the day after the sun passed its meridian. Spring seemed in a rush and there was a tremendous amount of work to do in the flower beds and herb garden, the traditional areas of the soil allotted to Galantine ladies of significance. The rest of the family played lawn games if the sun was not too fierce, and most of them wore broad hats and gloves when outdoors. The babies had sun tents. Galantine children could get sunburned only between the ages of five and puberty.

More often than not they ate with the family, and they dined in a far more extravagant fashion than they would have in the Serpentine, unless they cooked for themselves or quietly ate bread and cheese during the mysterious Galantine fast days, which came every ten days or so.

Galantine dinners for the immense family were generally served by setting up the dishes at one long side table, filling the plates from the platters and tureens, and then sitting down at another table to eat in shifts. The Baron served his wife or they had their plates brought by servants, the husbands served their wives, the older children served the younger, the governesses and nannies and nurses served the still younger children, and winds only knew who served the servants, perhaps the cats and dogs prowling about the place who would then be served by the mice, Ileth fancied. In any case, the remaining food would be brought out to Galia and Ileth most nights (the rest was carted off to the pigs, dogs, and chickens), sometimes with a decanter with a little wine left. Ileth was always careful to wash and return whatever was brought out to them by the time their cold breakfast (if there were suitable leftovers) was finished the next morning and the routine began again.

The ample, quality food seemed to start something in her body. Everything was growing out and up, from her hair to her toenails. She felt it first in her house slippers; she had to ask for more canvas to make new ones. Her reliable old traveling boots, which had been pinching in the Serpentine, finally became impossible to get into.

Most nights she would walk out to the dragon and dance. These events were more often than not attended by the servants, who leered less and applauded more when she leaped and spun. Many of them, men and women, could play little hand organs or cheap pipes and drums of one kind or another, and they knew so much lively music that she would only hardly hear the same tune twice from fast day to fast day.

Galia watched a performance now and again and tried some drills out of boredom. Sometimes Ileth could convince Fespanarax to take a walk and they would circumnavigate the great field where the dragons first landed. But Galia seemed to be suffering the boredom of captivity more than she did (Galia had never been cooped up in anything like the Captain’s Lodge) and fretted by starting and abandoning sewing projects, Galantine novels thought suitable for young ladies, and letter writing. She would avoid the wine for three days straight and then, in one night, ask Ileth for her share and make an unsteady walk to the great house and claim that they’d spilled theirs and could they have a little more.

Ileth didn’t know what to do to offer relief from the boredom. Growing up, Ileth had often heard that boredom would lead to trouble, one way or another.

It was on one of the Galantine fast days that the Baron sent them a note shortly after dawn that he wanted to show Galia and Ileth the village and some of his tenant lands, and introduce them to not one but two visitors who would hopefully stay through the fine weather of the summer.

Galia put on her Serpentine wingman uniform for the occasion and even broke out her fore-and-aft-rigged hat. Taf had been fascinated by both and improved the fit by suggestion and even considered it her duty to put a new lining in the hat, as the old one was badly stained by men’s hair oil designed to hide gray.

“And they say women are vain!” Taf had laughed, sniffing at the inside of the hat. “I’m glad to see that men are much the same all over. My father wears wigs more and more as his hair thins and changes color. Don’t tell him I said so.”

Ileth suppressed a giggle when the Baron pulled up in his two-wheel cart wearing a new and much thicker wig. The horse seemed happy in his work and gave Galia a friendly nicker as she approached.

“Hop up on my high-wheeler. Galia, would you rather squeeze on and one of you hold my traveling-cat Raffleth, or ride in the back? I do have a way to attach a seat back there.”

“Sir,” Galia said in her improving Galantine. “I have a, have a digestive difficulty. A ride often improves it, I find. I can ride a horse. But if my condition worsens, would I be allowed to return to Chapalaine on my own?”

Galantine women had, or pretended to have, delicate digestions and could get out of almost any activity by suggesting their food wasn’t sitting quite right.

“I am sorry to hear that. I shall have a tonic brought to your larder at once,” the Baron said. “I will give you my gentlest horse. My son is accompanying us so he can see you home.” The Baron turned to Ileth.

“You are quite safe up here, and there’s room. The dog can run, lands know he needs the exercise, and Raffleth here will sit between us. Raffleth, this is Ileth, our companion today.”

Ileth dutifully climbed onto the high cart, the cat was shifted, the dog was deposed and forced to jog alongside, and the Baron took the cart. Only a single servant rode behind, leaving room for Galia to be borne for the two minutes it took to reach the stables. There they met Young Azal of Chapalaine, already mounted and in a handsome riding helmet, and a horse was introduced, saddled, and handed over to Galia in a trice. They also tied a spare horse with a saddle to the cart.

“Our first stop is the village inn,” the Baron said. “We have distinguished visitors from Court who arrived late last night and did not wish to awaken the household. We go to retrieve them.”

They rode around the front, down through the yards of Chapalaine, past an orchard, and through the encircling wall. A gardener tending the road took off his hat as they passed.

He paused in the road to let Azal and Galia move ahead so he could drive behind them. “Interesting name, Ileth. I suppose you know it is of Galantine origin. Not much used now. The name has fallen into, well, disfavor.”

“I had . . . a relative who came from here. It’s how I know a little . . . of your language. He had some books of letters.”

“Well, I’m sure you’ll forgive my patriotic prejudice, but I am pleased that you are kin of sorts and kept the language in some small way. There is no better tongue or more useful tongue west of the Inland Ocean, whether your bent is toward the arts or diplomacy. The Wurm, well, less said about them the better, though their royals are fair people. They speak Galantine as well as I do. I will not opine on your own plain good people of the Vales, though they do seem to be trustworthy and reliable in issue of money and commerce, which makes up for a certain lack of polish. I like to think the best parts of the Hypatian Ideal live on in Galantine culture, though the Elletians would dispute me. You know, I went across the Inland Ocean in my youth. There are some good people scattered about here and there, but between what’s left of their great cities, well, the pilgrimage had to travel with guards.”

Azal and Galia broke their horses into a canter. Galia had to clap a hand over her cap to keep it from flying off as she rode. The Baron urged the horse on to keep up. The dog left off his occasional sniffs at the verge and ran alongside, tail whipping in excitement. As the road came to a turn, they slowed and saw the beginnings of the village.

“I should have liked to show you my village before now, but I had to wait for the mud to dry up. Our roads are generally very good, save for a short span in spring and fall.”

In the Vales it would probably be called a town as it had more than one street. But most of the houses and establishments were low and humble and much the same sort of thing as in villages everywhere. There was a silversmith. In the Vales you had to go to a very large town to encounter a silversmith.

The Baron’s arrival in the village set all the boys in the streets in an uproar. Some left, others arrived, and nobody did anything at less speed than a run, though it seemed to be more from excitement than employment. The road widened toward the center of the village, where it turned to cobblestones surrounding a magnificent decorative fountain before a thin and solemn temple, washed white in the Galantine fashion. Women stood up from their washing to wave and nod at the Baron.

The Baron called out names and made inquiries about the health of children and livestock. All the news being agreeable, the Baron passed on his well-wishes to fathers and husbands.

The inn was the most substantial building save for the temple opposite. It had benches in front of it. Ileth thought it strange that there were no older men about; in every inn in the Vales that put out benches about the center of town you’d see men too old for work hanging about the inn, happy to give strangers direction and tips for the best table and beer.

The two riders let their horses breathe, reins idle.

A fleshy man made of smiles and anxiety, whom she presumed to be the innkeeper, came out, along with a well-dressed man with a monocle. Unlike most of the Galantine men she’d seen, the monocle-man wore neither wig nor hair tie. Instead his hair hung loose about his shoulders as in the style of the Vales. Ileth was interested in the monocle, but something else seemed off about the man and she realized he had only one ear. There was also a scar on his chin on that side, so she guessed he’d had a close call in a battle—or duel. She believed the Galantines also dueled.

“Cousin!” the Baron called.

“Cousin!” the visitor called back, raising a walking stick.

The Baron descended to greet his guest, as did his son, who did not seem overeager to address his cousin. Ileth was not told what to do, so she remained seated.

“You must tell me all that’s happened at Court first chance you get,” the Baron said.

The visitor clapped him on the shoulder. “I can do that now. A great deal always happens at Court. But it’s always exactly the same great deal whenever you go, so just imagine that and you will be up-to-date. It’s good to be away from it.” Ileth found him easy to understand, but he pitched his voice high and loud, as if he was used to talking over crowds.

“Hi, Ransanse, leave the servant to her duty and come out and meet my cousin,” the monocle-man called into the inn. The innkeeper glanced through the door and frowned.

Griff emerged onto the threshold. Elegantly dressed, fashionably wigged, bright buckles on his shoes, but unquestionably the same Griff she’d last seen being taken away in a fishing boat over his scale-stealing scheme. Ileth let out a small squeak.

“You!” Griff said. “In-In Chapalaine?”

Griff wore a light blue uniform coat with a great deal of piping that hung down to below his knees and riding boots. Underneath the coat she could see a single red crossbelt, but she didn’t know enough about Galantine uniforms to place him with a particular order.

“What’s this, Ransanse?” the man with the monocle asked.

“This is Ileth, a girl from the Serpentine,” Griff said, in better Galantine than Ileth’s. He licked his lips. “I quit the Serpentine shortly after she came in. How exactly she was admitted into the Serpentine is a mystery, but I do know that after they ascertained her character, she was put in with the dancers. Does the Baron know he’s sitting next to a public dancer in that flier? I have heard her called a jade.”

“That’s enough, young man,” the Baron said. “King’s uniform or no.”

“He was called Griff in the Republic,” Ileth said in her best Galantine. Griff startled. “He’s a thief, and this last speech proves him a liar as well, what-whatever he calls himself now.”

The monocle-man scowled. “Cousin, I hope your daughters don’t—”

Griff stepped up. “I’m entitled to the name Ransanse—I stand to inherit the estate, in time. It’s Galantine custom that you may use the property name.”

Galia jumped off her horse before the innkeeper could reach her to help her down. “What on earth is Griff doing here, Ileth?” she asked in Montangyan.

“Faith, is this another Vale girl?” the monocle-man asked. “Savage manners.”

The Baron rapped his walking stick hard on the boardwalk he stood upon. “I must assert myself to restore order. I won’t have arguments in the street in my village. Galia, Ileth, quiet now.”

Everyone froze. It was easy for Ileth, and probably Griff, they were each so shocked at meeting the other again. Ileth had heard some talk about Griff having family in the Baronies; evidently he’d gone over to them. Gone over in many ways, as he was now in some sort of uniform. Ileth wished she had something sharp and discreet to stick in him.

The Baron made introductions. The visitor with the monocle had a long surname that began with Dandas, so to Ileth he would always be Dandas in her head and the Baronet Dandas when she addressed him. The Baron contrived to introduce them in such a way that Dandas knew they were here to take care of the “interned” dragon, intimating yet avoiding the label prisoners when it came to the women. Galia, the senior of the two, was still progressing with her Galantine, and her underling Ileth was an excellent dancer though not in the tradition that one usually saw at parties. Griff was introduced as Young Ransanse of the Air Squadron who had come to see the dragon on the Baron’s estate and make “an estimate of the situation.”

“Yes, I heard you were feeding a dragon,” Dandas said. “Aren’t you afraid it’ll go mad and burn Chapalaine down? They often do, you know.”

“No, no, no,” the Baron replied. “You speak from an unfortunate ignorance. They’re not like that at all, not if you feed them well and let them sleep. Given those two conditions, they behave in a way that could be called reasonable.

“Which reminds me,” the Baron said. “How are things with the armistice?”

“Completely collapsed,” Dandas said. “Not the armistice, that’s still in place. It’s the garrison question on the Terraslat[6] all over again. We gave on the matter of a flag, but that wasn’t good enough for them; they want the island occupied only by a religious order, not even a small honor guard for the cemetery. You’d think the Grassway had never been fought by their attitude. Well, what could we do?”

Ileth suddenly felt a little ill. Imagine years here. Or a lifetime. She wondered how much of the conversation Galia had understood, but she appeared to be studying Griff’s uniform.

“Oh,” the Baron said, casting an apologetic look at Galia and Ileth. “Well, I am fortunate in their continued stay, then. I hope your visit will not be cut short, Dandas.”

“I am entirely at liberty, cousin. Unless we get called up to the banners again, but I don’t see that happening.” He made a gesture at the nearby religious edifice.

Ileth translated for Galia. Galia took it well, her face a mask. “Baron, may I return? My sour stomach.”

“I am sorry to hear that. Azal can take you back.”

“Please, let me assist you,” Dandas said. “I expect there’s somewhere we can get you some rising soda to settle your stomach, or a tonic, here in town.”

Galia said, “I’m sorry,” and turned her horse back up the road. Azal hurried to follow her.

“Well, devils, that’s a bad start to the visit,” Dandas said. “A sick woman. Perhaps I’ll call on the priest and offer up for her.”

The Baron looked grieved and wiped his forehead with a pocket handkerchief. “It’s my fault, cousin. We should not have spoken of politics in front of ladies. I am sorry, young Ileth.”

As Dandas spoke, Galia mounted and urged her horse into a canter, despite being still in town. She was a skilled rider, thanks to dragon-hardened muscles. She veered the horse around a parked wagon with skill; Azal struggled to keep his seat as he tried to catch up.

Dandas squinted through his monocle. “Well, I’m riding after her, my fault or no. I shall see you at Chapalaine.” He tightened the girth, then mounted the spare horse the Baron indicated and was off in a clatter of hooves on cobblestones.

“Just follow Azal to the house,” the Baron shouted. “Don’t risk your neck, man!”

“How am I to get to Chapalaine?” Griff asked.

“It is a pleasant walk, especially for a soldier, Young Ransanse,” the Baron said, climbing into the cart. “Or I can send for a horse, but I don’t expect to return for some time, as I have another errand.”

“I’m to walk while this enemy jade rides?”

Ileth started to stammer out a response but quieted herself. The Baron had asked her to be silent, and silent she would remain. Besides, she was getting the feeling that the Baron didn’t much like Griff, and that sort of language with no response from her would only increase his disgust.

The Baron resettled his wig with a hand that trembled, just a little. “Sir: she is a guest of my family. She dines with the Baroness. Just one more insult to anyone under my roof and you will find the gates of Chapalaine closed to you.”

The Baron turned the cart and rode off without any sort of farewell, just a wave at the innkeeper, who bowed his head in return.

“This morning is off to a poor start,” the Baron muttered. “I’d hoped for lively company but I grossly overshot. Forgive me, Ileth.”

Ileth decided that a young Galantine lady probably would not want to speak of the recent unpleasantness and shifted to a happier subject.

“Your cousin . . . your cousin Dandas seems a g-good rider,” Ileth said.

“Second cousin, actually,” the Baron said. “He’s excellent company, though I understand he gambles. That is a most dangerous habit, but he won’t be able to indulge it here unless he’s content to play for pins and buttons. I thought he’d cheer you ladies with all the news and stories of Court. He wrote me that he was bringing some sort of dragon expert. I didn’t know he’d have bad news the instant he stepped out of the blasted inn. Forgive my language. Galia took it hard. Are you quite all right, Ileth dear?”

The Galantine thing would be to say that she was happy she’d spend more time at Chapalaine in the company of the Baron’s excellent family and surroundings, but she didn’t feel she owed him a speech. “I am well. The news about the negotiations upset me. But it is a matter I have no ability to change. So I sh-shall try not to dwell on it. Does that make sense?”

“You’re a philosopher, Ileth. Yes, it does make sense. It’s the right way to take news like that, I think. Perhaps you can give my daughters lessons. Have you ever tutored?”

“Thank you, sir. Only little children with the usual reading and such.”

“Well, let’s try to follow your philosophy and make the best of this day. Shall we, Raffleth?” he said, scratching the cat between them.

“Our first stop is the village cobbler. I am going to buy you a new pair of shoes. My daughter won’t give me a moment’s peace until you have something presentable. She wanted to gather up unused shoes from the family, but giving away some old clothes is one thing; shoes—it’s just too dismal, don’t you think? I don’t know a lot about you uplanders, but I know you’re not fond of taking charity.”

“Good sir, I can buy my own shoes. I have that gold coin. Surely that’s enough to pay for a pair of shoes.”

“In a village like this, dozens.” The Baron laughed.

He pulled up to a shoe-mender’s that looked as though it catered more to the townspeople than the Baron’s daughters. The place was mostly house, sharing walls with other houses, with a small selection of shoes and a workbench in the front. The Baron helped her down, but almost immediately a man accosted the Baron with a tale of a bull that had gone astray. The Baron begged her forgiveness and sent her into the store.

The cobbler had seen the cart pull up and left his workbench and took off his cap to give her his complete attention. She bought two pairs of shoes, some laced walking ones that just covered the ankles for going about the estate in the manner of a Galantine woman and some social slippers with a hook closure she could wear in the great house that would also be good for dancing. Though she asked to see them, just to look, he didn’t have women’s riding boots at the moment, but he could create a pair in a few days, and the Baron’s daughters had them if she wished to evaluate his skill. Ileth temporized on the riding boots; it seemed she’d probably be stuck in the Galantine lands for the foreseeable future. Upon seeing the gold coin he tried to sell her a little silver clasp for the slippers, but she declined. He had to venture upstairs to get enough coin to balance the account. She glanced out the window as she counted her change; she didn’t quite understand the coins she’d been given. The Baron seemed to have some business with men outside.

She relented on the matter of a polishing cloth she could use to wrap up her shoes and even made him happy by buying some shoe-keepers filled with pine chips to tuck in the walking ones if they should become wet. Then she went out, her purchases carefully wrapped in plain sacking, and found the Baron speaking to a group of men. A burly, booted fellow who had the arms of a blacksmith held an unshaven man with disheveled hair forward so the Baron could examine him. A few townspeople, both men and women, were watching from a respectful distance. But not so respectful they couldn’t hear what was being said.

“Ah, but what is the evidence?” the Baron asked the pair as Ileth approached.

“He was drunk last week after the collections and was heard to say he’d poison the dogs if he could find some gravesleaf anywhere around here,” the burly fellow said. “It grows out on the river sandbars, you know, sir.”

The Baron repositioned the cat on his lap, looking into its eyes briefly. “Hmmm. Anything other than words? A bloody knife, blood on shoes or clothes, cleaning rags, handprint on the door?”

“Nothing like that. His fire had quite a lot of ashes in it.”

“Hollows, I’m not going to have a man executed and hung up next to the notice-wall because he hasn’t cleaned out his fireplace. The dogs had their throats cut, they weren’t poisoned. Peppertree should buy fiercer dogs, or more alert ones. Vimes, you are free to go. I hope you’ll learn to stop issuing threats, Vimes, and spend your nights more productively from now on. Don’t give in to the temptations of wine and beer. Go to bed and get up with the sun and show a good set of Galantine manners; that’ll keep you out of nine troubles out of ten, I always say.”

“Yes, Baron, thank you, Baron, you’re—” Ileth wasn’t exactly sure what the man said; his Galantine was thick, but it seemed to be a flood of praise and gratitude.

“You should thank Raffleth. He always liked the look of you. Don’t you, old beast?” the Baron said to the cat. “Ah, Ileth, and with our cobbler happier in the sale of some shoes today, I hope.”

Ileth nodded, looking at the men warily.

“Hollows, we’ll talk about this later,” the Baron said as the crowd broke up. Ileth wondered if the trials were carried out so quickly and informally, what the punishments were like. She wasn’t eager to find out.

The Baron’s servant handed her up as the Baron calmed his cat.

“Well, now you have some idea of the heavy cart I pull around here. My tax collector had his dogs murdered two, no, three nights ago now.”

He started to drive and continued.

“My tax collector is the problem, I believe, but it’s hard to find a reliable man for the position. The dogs are supposed to be for his protection, but he likes to frighten people with them. They’ve bitten a child and have killed household animals. Nobody likes a tax collector, but I believe Peppertree goes out of his way to be as unpleasant as possible. The ordinary think just because I’m charged with collecting the money, I get to keep a great whopping share of it. They think it all should be spent on public feast days and the poorhouse and whatnot. I get next to two feathers over nothing for the duty; it goes to the King of course, and out of the two feathers I have to pay Peppertree. And buy him some new dogs now, I suppose. My man who collects my rents is much nicer. He cut off a few fingers when he first took over the job but didn’t add insult to painful injury, and now everyone is prompt and accurate.”

Ileth, glad she was living at the estate rent-free, studied the cat.

“I think Raffleth decided the matter correctly. He felt Vimes is guilty of nothing more than having a bad head for ale. You think I’m mad, I suppose. I’m not, I’m quite sane, I just trust my furred companions more than I do people. Now, if I’d referred the matter to the dog, then you could have called me mad. He’s quite a silly creature and it would be the height of irresponsibility for a man of my significance to ask him about any matter of import.”

With his mind cleared he inquired about her shoes. He commended her for sensible purchases. “I too often buy one or two little extras, even if my wife could produce far superior sachets to keep the shoes fresh. Why not let a hardworking, honest man like our good cobbler be happier with some small increase in his sales. You know, speaking of shoes, in the Aventis they have lovely shoes for dancing with satin ribbons. Have you ever seen satin? It’s too bad I don’t have an excuse to go, haven’t gone anywhere since I took on that dragon for the King. He has freed me of tax for the duration, but given the expense of feeding him and all the scrap iron I have to scrounge up I’m wondering now if our good—my own good King is getting the better deal of it.”

Ileth said she’d seen satin bows on fancy dress, on his own daughters. It was hard to make small talk. This talk of poison had put her in mind of Dun Huss’s warning. But why? The Baron seemed exceptionally correct in his behavior, even solicitous to the point where milk curdled. She couldn’t see him poisoning someone he’d been charged by his King with feeding. And she doubted anyone on his estate would take the step without his explicit approval.

“Oh, you are a bright young thing, aren’t you? I did enjoy your dancing even if it wasn’t to the taste of people of our station. It must make one extraordinarily healthy and vigorous. You could probably have twenty children before your age catches up with you. If only there were a way for you to be courted by a man without having to speak. If you had a rich father, it would be nothing; it could all be done by correspondence. But as soon as you talk, it sets a man thinking that he’ll have to listen to that every morning and night. What I should do, if I were you, is show him your dancing first, then move on to conversation and restrain yourself to polite phrases. He will think you modest, and that may even compensate for the, uh, hmmm, vigor of your dancing. You know, less than two hundred years ago they’d probably have drowned you as an agent of the infernal regions for that stutter. I am glad we live in enlightened times.”

They turned off on a little track that led to some hills in the east. In the distance, she saw the line of mountains, the two volcanoes there steaming. Ileth couldn’t help but wonder what Griff’s presence meant. Maybe it was nothing; he’d gone over to his Galantine relations and the Galantine King was making use of his experience around dragons. He seemed unknown to the Baron. If she’d learned that he visited around the time of the dragoneer’s death she would suspect him. Griff, so far, was the only person she’d met in the Baronies who struck her as a potential murderer.

“Where are we off to next?” Ileth asked, speaking slowly so as not to awaken her stutter and risk a drowning in the nearby Green River.

“Oh, we have some more visitors to the Barony. Not as distinguished as my cousin, and definitely not accepted at Court, but I’m sure you will find them interesting. I’m looking forward to this.”

They seemed quite far from Chapalaine. From a rise she could just see the dark of its forest. She was wondering about a midday meal, then remembered the Baron was fasting today.

Certainly, Fespanarax was valuable to the Republic. The Galantines would not want to restore him to their enemies. Griff was low and clever in his own way. Just the sort of person you’d send to discreetly kill a dragon. She wondered if she could manage to keep him away. The Baron was halfway to throwing Griff off his grounds as it was.

“Sir, I’ve been . . . I’ve been thinking. I hope I don’t have to see that Ransanse person again.”

“Oh, my dear,” the Baron said. “Have you been worrying about that this entire drive? In such nice weather? Set your mind at ease. I will give you plenty of warning of his visits. I have already decided he won’t sleep under my roof. We have some canvas shepherd’s camps that will do, if he won’t stay in the inn. I will have one set up outside the gate for him. The wet ground may teach him to control his tongue. I will tell the Baroness that you will withdraw whenever he is present. I wonder just how much I should tell her of his accusations.”

“You know best, sir. It is nothing to me if you give her the details in full. Lies don’t trouble me.”

“To think he said those things while wearing his King’s uniform. Raffleth, what should we do about that?” The cat didn’t answer, as it was sleeping. “Should Baron Ransanse be—no, no, I would not care for someone else intruding on my family arrangements.”

Ahead, Ileth saw a rough pasture with a collection of perhaps fifteen wagons in a circle. They were curious sorts of wagons, round like giant logs or barrels on wheels. This was some manner of encampment.

The Baron took his cart off the road and had to concentrate on his driving.

“You’re about to meet some people who share your enthusiasm for dragons. Not that I don’t like them; they’re fascinating, but they are expensive, aren’t they? Don’t misunderstand me. I am relieved that the dragon rallied and regained his health. Losing one prisoner is bad luck. Losing two, well, that brings with it a whiff of carelessness, do you not agree? But it was a terrible plague that took our dear Heem Zwollen. I’m not sure three infants survived in the village altogether and the old people, well, they fell in windrows. In the end I had to order that anyone suspected of illness be driven away, so they didn’t even have the sacramental niceties. They died in the woods in little hovels or just by the side of the road. They were burned just as they were found. Horrible business.”

The people they approached were dressed in black, with splashes of red and white here and there, unlike the Galantines, who seemed to enjoy bright orange, lemon, and grape colors.

“They’re not even Galantine, but they do enjoy our protection. We call them the Tribals. There are some Baronies where Tribals are most unwelcome, but mine is not one of them. They are an odd sort of society. The men and women spend most of the year apart. The vast majority of the men go into the mountains with their horses and goats; the women roam about the flatlands selling their balms and trinkets. They only spend the winter together. Sometimes a baby is a full seven months old before it is presented to the father.”

The dog seemed tired, so the Baron halted and had his servant hand him up. The dog lay down between the Baron and Ileth, and the cat, shifted to the Baron’s lap, glared at the dog.

While that was happening, a procession came out to greet them. It was almost exclusively female, as the Baron had described. Ileth saw only one boy with them, and two men moving about the improvised corral their circle of wagons had made.

“Oh, Ranya, good to see you again,” the Baron said to the assembly of black-clad women. A tall woman in a red wrap inclined her head. It was difficult to tell on them what was dress, what was skirt, what might be blouse or vest and so on, for the garments were all dark and seemed intertwined and buttoned or hooked together. “Well, people, the dragon, I am happy to say, is much better, but I invite you to tend him as long as you like this summer. You may stay in this field as you did last year, but you may find it inconvenient to be this far from town. I invite you to stay on my lands. You may inhabit my theater if you wish an increase in your comfort, and beneath the seats it is cool and pleasant on even the hottest days.

“But please, no games of chance. Not even if my locals ask for it. I know they did last year and there was trouble. I simply won’t have gambling. The priest doesn’t like it and I don’t either. As long as we understand each other on that, you may sell your potions and such as you like.”

“Agreed, sir,” the tall woman he’d called Ranya said.

“I would like for you to meet a sister of sorts to you. You know, I always thought you all were unique, but it turns out she dances for dragons as well. You may find you enjoy each other’s company. This is Ileth of the Serpentine in the Vale Republic.”

Ranya looked puzzled. “Ileth. I hope to know you better. Perhaps you can teach your countrymen hospitality. Baron, will you take tea with us?”

The Baron looked uncomfortable, and then he brightened. “Ah. Not just now, Ranya. I am keeping fast, you see. I am sorry, I have other calls to make.”

He said a few more farewells and offered compliments on the condition of their wagons and turned his cart about.

“They are a curious lot, but my people seem to enjoy their entertainments. Don’t show them a coin you wish to keep,” he added quietly as he sat down again.

That night Chapalaine held a dinner party to welcome Cousin Dandas. The Vale ladies in the converted storeroom were “especially invited.” The Baron added a private note that Young Ransanse would be in attendance but had been warned by both the Baron and Dandas that he was not to approach or speak to Ileth or Galia, and he hoped the Baron’s own guarantee would be enough for them to feel safe attending.

Ileth, special invitation or no, considered begging off with a malady, since she had any number of real ones to choose from: mental exhaustion from hours of overpleasant chat with the Baron, sore muscles from being bounced around in his tippy cart with a dog panting on her, a headache from the sun—whatever the excuse the Baron would be certain to understand, as Griff, or Ransanse as he was now named, would be in attendance.

“You’re going,” Galia said. “Because if you stay behind, saying you are ill, they’ll wonder why I attended anyway when my friend is sick and needs nursing. They’ll think I must want to be there for some special reason.”

“They’re Galantines. If there’s nothing to speculate upon at their table, they’ll just talk about the neighbors, or the village, or their p-precious Court,” Ileth said. But she went. She had new shoes to wear, to go with her Galantine hand-me-downs.

It turned out to be an unexpectedly large dinner party, as everyone was eager to be introduced to this Dandas. Ileth wondered if he wasn’t a more important person at Court than had been let on. They’d brought in several additional tables and set them up in the Gallery, allowing the guests more room to mingle. Even more astonishingly, there was soup on each table instead of the usual Galantine buffet, covered and kept warm by tiny candles. One small meal table held a selection of breads and rolls. Ileth thought it strange, but the Baron’s wife explained that it was traditional to dine lightly at the end of a fast day with thin soup.

They made a small table for six, featuring Dandas, Azal and Taf, one of the Baron’s nephews to balance things, and then Galia and Ileth. The Baron called it the “young guests” table, and if there was an “old guests” table, she didn’t know the faces of the Baron’s friends well enough to recognize it.

Griff was seated on the opposite side of the room, in a seat arranged so he was blocked from view by a trio of musicians, and from the very little Ileth could see of him, he didn’t seem happy about it. The musicians were good.

Dandas was in great demand and effortlessly bathed in the interest, hardly sitting at the young guests’ table. He reminded Ileth of a bee going from flower to flower to flower, collecting and dropping introductions.

Ileth was tired and raw from the long day and bad news. Hungry too, and the soup wouldn’t be consumed until a certain hour had been struck. Adding to her discomfort, with all the great ladies about, her hair couldn’t get up to much. It was at an awkward length, neither long enough to do anything much with nor short enough so it could be just swept back or to the side and ignored.

Dandas had spread the news that the negotiations had broken down.

“Oh, more fighting won’t be necessary,” the Baron said to his brothers and most significant neighbors. “It’s a Republic. Their finances are a mess. Republics always fall. Always. No financial stability. No social stability. It’s as I’ve always said, the egalitarian rearranging of natural order that brings the whole lot down. You can take a whole pail of cream and throw in a cup full of sewage and mix it up—you’ll end up with something that tastes much more like sewage than cream.”

At last the hour of the end of the fast arrived. The soup could be uncovered.

Dandas took his place at the table and shifted the conversation to dragons. Both Galia and Ileth stayed quiet. Galantine manners for this sort of introductory affair seemed to be that you focused your attention on the new guest. Ileth assumed he was trying to be polite and include the prisoners in something that would interest them.

He inquired about the number of dragons they typically had to feed at the Serpentine and received nothing more than “it changes” from Ileth and a stony stare from Galia.

“Naturally, I’m no expert. Only dragon I’ve seen up close is a dead one,” Dandas said.

“Truly?” the Baron’s nephew asked. “In the war?”

“Yes, years ago when I was first with the Fencibles. We’d got the rider on a low pass, knocked right out of her saddle—we didn’t know it was a she until later. We were aiming for the dragon, which shows you how rattled we were, everything went high. Well, the dragon, a great silver beast, it landed to try to recover her body. Can you believe it? A beast like that. Didn’t fly off in terror at all, set down and picked her body up as gently as if she were sleeping.”

Ileth felt the room lurch.

“Perhaps she had coin for it with her,” Dandas continued. “We put thirty or so bolts into its chest as it lifted her, and it dropped stone dead atop her.”

“His ch-chest,” Ileth said. “Silver dragons are m-m-male.”

In a flash she was seven years old again, sitting atop a silver dragon with Annis beside her, having been told her stutter was because she had too much spirit in her.

Dandas said something that Ileth hardly noticed. “What?” she asked.

“His, then,” Dandas said, exasperatedly. “His head is sitting with our banner in the trophy hall.”

Ileth saw red. She’d heard the expression before. Perhaps she’d read it in an adventurous romance. But it had never happened to her despite her temper, not even in her duel with Gorgantern or the fight in the kitchen or when she was grabbed in the Cellars. She didn’t think; her body moved so quickly that later, looking back on it, she was astonished that so much action could take place so suddenly apparently without the brain willing it . . .

In the time it takes to drop a spoon from your hand to the floor she was on her feet. They told her she screamed but she didn’t hear it. She pushed out her hands, connecting with the soup tureen, upending it with purpose so a wave of soup splashed out, flooding across the table toward Dandas. The hot tide struck his glass, utensils, and own soup bowl in a steaming surf of creamy vegetables. The wash drenched him from shirt front to thighs, though a few ambitious droplets managed to reach his eyebrows and hair, including one bit of broccoli that hung on his nose like a desperate mountain climber.

“You mad—” Dandas sputtered, jumping up with soup running off him, teaching Ileth her first truly vile word in Galantine.

Fortunately for Ileth, Galia, and most especially Dandas, they did not break their fasts with a serving of roast beef and carving knife and fork.

She might have climbed straight over the table to get at him, except Galia flew to her. “Ileth, what on earth—”

Talk broke out as she and Galia fled. Ileth realized she was sobbing. She heard the words seizure and attack.

Ileth wasn’t completely rational until they were safe in their little house with the door bolted.

“Oh, Ileth, you always have to be the center of attention.” Galia fell back in her chair with her forearm over her eyes for dramatic effect. “I’m Ileth, I dance around half naked. I’m Ileth, I’ll get into a stupid duel with a stupider man. I’m Ileth, I’m just a frail little nothing pressed up against a stable wall, and tonight it’s Ileth, who just can’t bear to hear of any precious dragons killed in a war we’ve pumping lost!”

Galia drew a few breaths and looked at her coldly. “Caseen told me he thought you were lucky. I think your act just works on him better than most.”

Ileth slumped. Galia thought all the events of the past months were an—act?

“Suppose they decide we’ve violated the terms of our surrender or whatever and they chuck us somewhere else? We can’t fight the Galantines, not just the two of us.”

“Two of us and a . . . and a dragon. We could escape.”

“Oh, I think he’s had the spirit knocked out of him by all this. All he wants is a mouthful of coin now and then between his regular meals. He’s not Fespanarax the Reckless anymore; he’s just a creaky old dragon. I can’t believe I ever suggested bringing you on this. I thought it would be jolly and a spell in Galantine country would mean you’d be made apprentice for sure. Serves me right.”

Ileth, overwrought and on edge, felt the tears coming. But if she let them go, Galia would just accuse her of being overdramatic again. She looked at the floor, as she used to when getting a dressing-down from the Captain.

“I lost my temper,” Ileth said. “I met that dragon. And his dragoneer. Once. When I was a little girl.”

“I’m sorry, then,” Galia said. Her temper ebbed and she rose and put her arm out, clasping Ileth’s shoulder. “We’ve been cooped up together too long. We’ve never lived together, not close. Bound to get on each other’s nerves.”

“I suppose I should . . . apologize.”

“We’ll see how it looks in the morning. Look at it this way, they’ll be talking about that party all summer.”

Dandas and Young Azal arrived shortly after they had breakfasted the next morning. Well, Galia had breakfast; Ileth was still too upset to eat. She just nibbled at a crust of bread and drank water (one of the Baron’s several cats had gotten in and spilled the previous day’s milk and for some reason none had been delivered that morning). Dandas bore a small wooden box.

“You missed a good deal of apologizing last night,” Dandas said from the smoothed area of gravel that served as their doorstep. Azal nodded behind him. “I have one more to do, to the party I’ve most aggrieved,” he said, as they stood aside to let the men enter.

They refused to sit.

Dandas had long since removed the soup from his eyebrows. “I won’t delay any more. It was unforgivable of me to bring up what I saw on the battlefield. My mind was on what I’d heard at Court and how it contrasted with what I’d seen with the Fencibles. All I can offer by way of explanation is that you two are so charming I completely forgot your origins and acted as though you were just Galantine ladies interested in an anecdote about dragons.”

“I am sorry as well, sir,” Ileth said. Galia squeezed her hand.

“The only apology you should be offering is that you didn’t dump the soup where it should have gone, atop my thoughtless head. My stomach committed no offense I know of beyond growling in hunger.”

Galia laughed at that. Ileth just smiled.

“By way of apology: I understand you mountain-breds love tea. I have a small chest here of fine tea that was intended for my hostess, the Baroness Hryasmess. I am willing to temporarily injure her—until I can find an appropriate replacement—in order to make it up to you. What do you say, dragoneers? War, an armistice, or a peace treaty?”

He bowed, perhaps a trifle too expertly, as he presented it to her. Looking back on it later, she wondered if the whole performance wasn’t mechanical, much in the vein of Ottavia’s music boxes.

“A peace treaty,” Ileth said, taking the box and bobbing an obeisance. “Thank you, sir.”

“Justice!” Azal said. “Best of the three.”

“They should send you to the negotiating table, sir,” Galia said in her improved Galantine. “If you can soothe my dear Ileth, you can persuade anybody.”

They broke into small talk over the weather and the cat’s accident with the milk.

Galia expressed an interest in taking in the morning air, and Dandas offered to walk with her. Ileth said she’d remain behind and enjoy her tea, though she’d have to make it camp-style in a boiling pan as they had no kettle. Azal looked as though he’d like to remain behind and have some tea as well, but being alone with Ileth in the house would be inappropriate, so he walked with Dandas and Galia.

Ileth was glad to have them gone. She felt oddly like a passenger on a boat going with the river current, rudderless. She needed to rest and think.

But she had duties to do. She dressed and saw to Fespanarax. Griff had beaten her there and appeared to be in a conversation with Fespanarax, albeit in the dragon’s usual style of discourse, which was to ignore you until you gave up and wandered away. She smelled hot grease. Someone had brought breakfast. Ileth pretended to turn away, but she circled around to the other side of the arena and did her best to listen.

Fespanarax’s tail twitched. He was irritated, but whatever they were saying to each other was blocked by the dragon’s bulk as effectively as if the conversation were taking place on the other side of a fishing boat.

With little to do but think, Ileth went over in her head last night’s events. No, she doubted she’d been deliberately provoked. She was pretty sure that you weren’t supposed to build a plan around the reaction of your enemy. But given the circumstances, Dandas could have told Griff that he would keep the foreign “guests” occupied with his apology, giving Griff a chance at a private conversation—

“Enough,” Fespanarax said in Montangyan. “Rotten breakfast and worse company. Mount up on your promises and ride them away, see how far they take you.”

Ileth changed her position so she was just behind Fespanarax and watched Griff stalk away, head bowed, hands clasped behind him.

Fespanarax settled his hindquarters. “Girl! Don’t go poking around a dragon’s flanks. You’re liable to get your back broken by a tail that way.”

“Sorry,” Ileth said.

“Can you believe what that fool brought me for breakfast? Come look.”

Ileth ventured out around the dragon. A barrow filled with the remains of last night’s dinner rested there, mostly untouched.

“Slops! Last night’s leavings, as if I were a pig to be fattened cheaply.”

“Shall I get—”

“I’m in too bad a mood to be hungry.” He dropped his head between his forearms and snorted. “I want nothing more to do with humans today.”

“If I may ask, sir, what business did he have with you?”

“Nothing I cared to hear. You’re not usually this slow, outside your speech. Go off. Dance for the birds. I want none of it. Keep your plans and your wars, or better yet, keep at them until you kill each other off and we dragons can enjoy some peace again.”

That afternoon the entire Tribal encampment was at the grounds of Chapalaine. They did use the old theater, parking their wagons around it and driving the horses into its sandy expanse at night. During the day the horses grazed the fields within smelling distance of the dragon, which surprised Ileth.

The Baron was right. They half worshiped the dragon. They tended Fespanarax from nostril to tail tip, doing many of the jobs the staff at the Serpentine performed, and did them even better, if a good deal more slowly. They collected filings from his scales when they smoothed them and inspected his droppings for bits of bone that had passed through. Anything that fell from the dragon, including saliva, was collected.

They also would dance for him. It seemed a religious rite to them. The moon had to be in its proper phase: visible and increasing. Dancing for a dragon in decreasing moonlight brought all manner of ill fortune, one old Tribal who could no longer dance whispered to Ileth in an accented Galantine so strange she could hardly be sure what she said.

They certainly improved Fespanarax’s mood. Maybe that was what was missing, an army of people attending to him. He became positively conversational. Even Galia, who visited the dragon for only a few moments each day, noticed.

One morning, after Ileth finished dancing for him (he still only occasionally glanced her way, though he did take a deep breath of the air about her now and then), he talked to her about their dances.

“So are they different from the Serpentine dancers?” Ileth asked.

“Yes. Their dances aren’t as exacting. I know they don’t sweat as much, unless it is warm. They’ll work in shifts, as you do, usually in groups of three.

“I’m lucky they don’t ask to bleed me, not with you around, anyway. Last year they asked several times for blood, whenever Zwollen and the Galantines weren’t about. I refused. There was too much of that in the past, and it didn’t end well for the dragons or the people who drank of it. Though I haven’t heard of Tribals drinking it themselves; I think they use it in potions and whatnot.”

“You’re familiar with these people?”

“Oh, yes, they’ve been here for ages. They’re the descendants of Hypatians who served dragons as slaves. We used to call them”—and here he used the Drakine term for thralls. “The tribe is older than I am. They don’t visit the Vales. I think the people are unfriendly to them.”

As he’d been obliging in conversation, Ileth pressed her luck. “May I ask you s-something else, nothing to do with the Tribals?”

“I’d welcome a change of subject.”

“Why don’t you ever watch me dance?”

Fespanarax chuckled. “I am an old-fashioned dragon, in some ways. There is an old adage against giving attention to your kind. I was taught to beware of humans of your age and sex. The way some humans won’t touch a snake, poisonous or no. You can cast bewitchments on dragons and send them to their doom.”

The idea that a dragon might ever be afraid of her would take some getting used to. Or perhaps he was just teasing. “Doom? Never.”

“You do not need intend any wrong—it is, well, the idea is difficult to express in human terms. You attract the fate just with your presence, the way a flower draws the bee.”

Ileth explained, haltingly, that she hadn’t heard of any other dragons of the Serpentine fearing the dancers.

“Ahh, but no dragon monopolizes any one dancer, do they? That is what brings the fate down. And that is why you dancers never become dragoneers.”

If she was getting closer to Fespanarax, things moved in the other direction with Galia. Galia stayed friendly toward her, but they rarely spent time in activities just the two of them, save for eating and sleeping. With the Tribals taking care of the dragon they didn’t groom or feed him together, and all their plans for Galia to tutor Ileth further in being a dragoneer seemed forgotten.

Galia spent more time with the Baron, and especially with his cousin Dandas. She was often in the village with the Baron and Dandas, or riding horses with Azal and Dandas, or at a game with some of the younger children with Dandas watching and teaching her how to play.

Their Galantine continually improved, Galia’s through practice and Ileth’s through a great deal of reading, both aloud and to herself. Taf especially took it upon herself to tutor her and improve her manners, and slyly, in moments when she was positive her father was far away, she had Ileth show her some elements of dragon dancing, which apparently had kindled something in Taf’s imagination the way meeting Annis Heem Strath and Agrath had sparked Ileth.

Taf would go silent when questioned about her cousin and Galia, as though ordered not to reveal anything.

She finally got something out of Young Azal of Chapalaine, though. Usually reticent, she saw him limping back one afternoon from riding, carrying a muddy helmet and looking as though he’d been dragged through a hedge. Or six.

“Are you injured?” she called as she hurried out from Fespanarax’s arena.

He waved, and she fell into step with him. His horse didn’t like it much; she must carry some of the dragon’s odor with her.

“I’m fine. Just a fall. I was brushed by a branch trying to catch up to them. Your friend Galia and Dandas left me chewing on the clods flying from their horses’ hooves.”

“So your cousin is with Galia, alone?” Ileth sensed they were doing something improper, unless Dandas was formally courting her. That couldn’t be happening, could it?

“He’s not my cousin,” Azal said.

“Well, your father’s.”

“Girl, everyone with the title Baron in this land is related in some manner or other. They’re all cousins. The first time I saw him was in the village with you. All the girls in my family are mad over him. I’m done talking about the fellow. He’s as transparent as that monocle of his.”

“Lucky you,” Ileth said slowly. “I have a feeling I’m not.”

Her prediction turned out to be entirely correct. Ileth spent most of that night discussing Dandas with Galia over some of the gift tea (Ileth was carefully rationing it out). Or rather, Galia spoke of him and Ileth just put in a word here and there. Those were her favorite kinds of conversations to have, unless the subject was Riefense Dandas. Even more frighteningly, Galia had several of his titles memorized.

“Chapalaine isn’t at all impressive compared to his estates. There are several,” Galia said.

“How do you know?”

“He told me. It wasn’t brag. I asked him whether the Baron was typical of his peers or not. He said he was on the lower end of the scale, where property is concerned, and this was one of the smaller Baronies. Then he described his estates. Well—his family’s.”

“He’s Galantine.”

“Yes, I’ve noticed,” Galia said, scowling.

Ileth sipped her tea. Whatever else he might be, Dandas knew his tea. Invigorating yet soothing, with just enough bite to make you notice the flavor.

“I’m not falling in love with him, if that’s what you think,” Galia said. “He’s likable, courteous, and knowledgeable. Yes, he fought against us, but I fought against him, even though the last time arrows were flying I was a novice.”

Ileth wondered if Galia was arguing with her or herself.

“Does he ask you about . . . ask you about our dragons, or the Serpentine?”

“Never. Remember that time he asked how many dragons we fed? I gave him an earful, and he said he’d watch his conversation in the future and not probe on matters military, even by accident. The closest he came since was when he asked me what it was like to fly. I introduced him to Fespanarax. He touched his scale, ran a finger across the trailing edge of his wing, and said nothing. No, he did say he’s large. Or maybe mighty. Not sure of the word he used. Fespanarax tried to get coins out of him through me. Odd that out of all of us, the dragon is the only one that hasn’t learned any Galantine. He’s been here years.”

Ileth tried to picture Galia, who hated Santeel Dun Troot and everything her family stood for, falling in love with a Galantine aristocrat. “Wh-What do you talk about?”

“Oh, life. Views on art. Status. You know, in some ways, the Galantines are more equal than us. People like us, we’re always scrabbling, trying to make a name for ourselves. If I were a Galantine girl, the fact that I’d grown up eating rats wouldn’t matter a bit if a man like Dandas married me. I’d instantly be elevated to his status, and he wouldn’t be reduced at all by mine. Not like the Vales.”

Ileth felt like there was a flaw in that, but she wasn’t clever enough to pry it open. She tried to think of what a better intellect, say the Lodger’s, would say to show her she was wrong. Well, the Lodger liked to hold a mirror up to an argument sometimes.

“What if you were a wealthy Galantine girl and-and-and he the rat-eater?”

“I don’t think it ever goes that way,” Galia said. “How would they court? The family wouldn’t let him in the door.”

“You might want to consider the reasons for that.”

“You’re in a nasty mood,” Galia said. “Just because you’re having an awful time here doesn’t mean I must.”

Ileth finally saw the Dance of the Tribals, and it was far from an awful time. It turned out to be one of the highlights of her stay at Chapalaine.

Their routines were intricate and geometric. They danced close to each other and whirled as though they were interlocking gears. One turn out of place and they’d lock arms and go down like the Baron’s cart with a tree stuck in its spokes.

Fespanarax accepted the performance with his usual relaxed disinterest. His ears did flick about in time to the music here and there.

The music played was mostly percussive. Sometimes they danced with cymbals on their fingers, so they made their own music or accompanied the instruments. With time to study it, Ileth figured out that the lead dancer in each group was passing off cues for what series of moves to do next; one gesture might mean four different turns and a change of dancing positions, another a series of arm movements up and down above their heads. Brilliant dancing, all in the spur of the moment.

Their dress was heavier than that of the Serpentine’s dragon dancers, but in some ways more provocative. They bared their midriffs, which Ileth found surprising in the relatively staid Galantine lands. She later learned it was something to do with their umbilical attachment to their mother and the moon. Or the moon was their mother. They were cryptic about it and both were speaking in tongues foreign to them.

She, in turn, exhibited Serpentine-style dragon dancing and they delighted in it, applauding some of her extensions with an enthusiasm only another dancer would have. She found the Tribal music enjoyable to dance to; it was wild, improvised, varied. The musicians watched the dancer and threw out little challenges that she, as the dancer, either accepted or refused. She felt that the music was seducing her into pushing herself to leap higher, spin more, express herself with hands or face or torso.

Later, looking back on it, she decided she went a little mad, especially when she tore open her dancing sheath to reveal her belly button. But the music was seductive, and what’s the fun of being seduced without a memorable climax to the affair?

After that the Tribe accepted her as a sister in dance if not a member of their clan. They let her practice with them, which took some of the sting out of her increasing distance with Galia. Which led to a bigger surprise.

Taf secretly danced with the Tribals.

Ileth wondered how she engineered it to trick Chapalaine, where everyone seemed to know everyone else’s business. But there she was, barefoot and bare-bellied, with cymbals on her fingers dancing as if she were a member of the Tribe herself. She even wore black clothing altered so she could be mistaken for one of them from a distance, had her hair wrapped back in a kerchief, and wore a thin veil under her eyes with little brass rings sewn into it.

“Ileth, you’ll say nothing to my father!” Taf said, when Ileth recognized her. Maybe it would have been better if she’d pretended she didn’t recognize her.

“I certainly won’t raise the subject with him,” Ileth said. The Galantine language was conducive to equivocation, she’d give it that. “In return, I’d like to ask a favor of you.”

“Well, anything, Ileth dear!”

“What is our good Dandas up to with Galia?”

“Ileth! Really, just because she’s the prettier—”

“That has nothing to do with it,” Ileth said, in her halting, careful fashion when speaking Galantine. “It seems . . . strange to me that he’d lavish so much attention on, well, a prisoner.”

“All he’s said about it—not to me, this is something that I’ve overheard—is that he finds her intriguing and a different, oh, what’s the word he used . . . challenge, I think it was. He says he can’t get the way she speaks to him out of his head. He doesn’t care whether she’s talking about dragons or dandelions, as long as she’s talking. I wish someone would say that about me.”

Did he keep her talking so he had to talk less himself? Was he afraid of giving something away? Ileth was sure she wasn’t the only one who knew that trick. “I’m happy to listen to you, Taf.”

“I mean a man, silly. Why, if some swain with Dandas’s property spoke that way about me, well, they’d have to revive me with oiled salts.”

“So he does have property.”

“His family does, much more than our family. I’m sure if he asked for my hand Father would be beside himself.”

“Has he asked about marrying Galia?”

“Not in so many words, no. Well, not in any words. But his interest is pronounced, and he certainly needs a wife. It’s not like men are about to start having babies without us.”

“If they can f-f-figure it out, they’re welcome to it, for my share,” Ileth said.

“You are a strange one, dear. Don’t tell me you don’t want babies.”

“Never met anyone whose babies I’d like to have. I want a place in the world. Or above it.”

“Do you Vale folk always make the simple so difficult? If you marry well, you do have a significant place in the world. Even if you just marry, well, it’s still a place. You’ve clearly just not been around decent people enough. Oh, I don’t want to argue. The music is starting again, and I rarely get a chance to let myself go. Come, let’s dance.”

The Tribals were early risers, even the morning after the dancing under the moon. They’d spent all night roasting a pig they’d purchased in the village, and Fespanarax ate it with gusto. The one dragon need they couldn’t fill, however, was precious metal. They had some bits of scrap iron they gave him, but Fespanarax hated it. “It’s eating to live,” he said. “I’d rather live to eat.”

Galia, in one of her now-rare sessions teaching Ileth the ins and outs of dragon care, showed that his scale was showing some signs of long-term metal deficit. A white chalky substance had formed at the outer edges of the scale. Galia used a thumbnail to scrape some off and showed it to Ileth.

“Scale rot,” she said. “It’s not bad. He’s getting enough to get by. He could use a few months in the Serpentine eating ore. Or another charity gala where you swing your leg up and give all the significants a glimpse.”

Ileth thought of throwing back a mildly obscene answer in the style of Zusya, who could match any of the Captain’s roustabouts for ribald talk, but Galia was teaching her something for once. Best not to provoke her.

She took the matter up with the Baron. Summer was coming on more strongly than she’d ever experienced in the Vales, and the Baron was out with his daughters, helping set up netting that would shield the more delicate berry bushes from the worst of the sun so the berries would remain plump and sweet.

The Baron listened carefully to her suggestion. He didn’t think another party to raise money would work, so soon after the last one.

“If you desire silver in quantities that would satisfy a dragon, there is a mine to the north. Two mines, one abandoned, and a much poorer one on a plateau that is difficult to get to. The Cowshead we call it, not sure why because I’ve never seen a resemblance.”

“I should mine for it?”

“Oh, heavens no. I would think you commercial republicans would jump at a solution right away. There are hundreds of strong backs there digging away. But as I said, the plateau is high up, nearly a desert. They bring up corn and salted pork and such, but the miners have plenty of silver to trade for other things. I understand beer is very popular. Kegs are awkward to carry up a difficult trail. Bearers are often falling trying to get loads up to them. The trail can’t even be walked by a donkey; there are too many places you take your load off and climb, then pull your burden up behind with ropes. If you could convince that dragon to carry some up, you could sell it for silver ore at a handsome profit. With summer they will want beer up there.”

The Baron offered to set up the arrangement with the brewery on the Green River and pay the starting expenses, if Ileth could convince Fespanarax.

She decided to take it up with him after the Tribals had made a great to-do over him the night before, as it had been a full moon. Ileth and Taf had both discreetly danced as part of the party too.

Ileth was still nervous about approaching Fespanarax. He was so mercurial. Sometimes she could address him and he’d pretend she wasn’t there. She missed the Lodger’s easy, friendly manner. Imagine what she could have learned from him, with months to spend on a pleasant estate and little to do but talk.

She waited for an afternoon when he decided to cool himself with a dip in the duck pond. He emerged, dripping and covered with water plants that he mostly shook off, and accepted her offer to pull the rest where it was trapped in scale and horn. He remarked that the dip had done him some good; he felt so fresh he’d like to fly, but the Baron forbade it.

“I have an idea on how we can get you in the air and earn some silver for you to eat at the same time.”

Fespanarax yawned. “I like the eating silver part. A flight would be a welcome relief from the boredom. We and earn, however, I’m not so keen about.”

“You’d have to work, yes. I think the exercise would do us both good. You especially. You’ve been stuck on this estate for years.”

“Five summer solstices and six winters, I think. I need to establish a calendar for myself. All over a human affair.”

“It’s not far. There’d be some flying in the mountains.”

“Where, exactly?”

“By that volcano to the north. There are silver mines there.” She explained the rest of the scheme to bring them kegs of beer.

“Hmmm. Fairly easy. The prevailing winds will be on my rear quarter, which will help a great deal if I’m flying with a load. Well, if you can arrange so nobody gets the wrong idea and starts shooting crossbows at me, we can try it. Let’s hazard it and not think about the catgut.”

The mental activity of the plans ended up doing Ileth and the dragon good. The Baron had to send letters to his “cousin” in the north who had the lands around the silver mines, which led to further complications involving that Baron, who had another one of those complicated Galantine titles that Ileth reduced to Blue Heron because that animal was named in one of the orders he belonged to and she found it easy to remember. Anyway, the Baron of the Blue Heron something-or-other thought if the dragon was bringing beer for the miners, he could also bring some spirits from a distillery on his own lands, with the dragon getting the same percentage of the sale that he received from Baron Hryasmess. Baron Blue Heron could send an agent to the plateau who would receive the shipments and pay out the dragon’s share of silver. Baron Hryasmess, in turn, wanted to send his own agent to make sure everything was correctly recorded and fairly done, which led to an argument over letters with the Baron Blue Heron threatening to go to Court and get a royal warrant to have a King’s commissioner sent to the plateau, until Ileth offered to copy all the tally sheets and verify them and let Baron Hryasmess inspect them himself. The Barons found that acceptable.

“It’s not me, so much, it’s the brewers,” the Baron said. “They have to order smaller barrels than they are used to using, and the cooper is complaining to me that he needs a new guide for bending wood. At least Taf is being sweet about the streamers.”

The streamers were in Chapalaine’s own colors, turquoise and green, with a long white tail. They’d identify Fespanarax as being on the Baron’s business, on the off chance they ran into one of the Galantine King’s dragons.

In the midst of this activity Griff returned, still in his uniform, and did some riding about with Dandas but apparently had no other aim beyond enjoying summer weather and the Baron’s cuisine. There were new icons on his collar and shoulder, and his coat seemed to be cut of a thicker material. Ileth wondered what he’d done to earn a promotion, or if the Galantine half of his family’s money was buying him promotions. Galia had been making much about the fact that after his first commission, Dandas had never had to purchase higher rank in the Fencibles; he’d been promoted “on distinction,” as they phrased it.

She spent extra time with Fespanarax, but like a spurned suitor, Griff either had lost interest or was good at pretending that he had.

In the midst of the beer-delivery negotiations, with the Baron riding his couriers hard, she and Galia received a packet of letters from the Serpentine. They’d been carefully opened and resealed by Galantine agents, she knew, as was their right for the correspondence of prisoners, and they contained nothing of importance beyond names of those at the Serpentine. Caseen joked that things were quiet without Ileth about and that he would soon be busy with a new batch of novices. Some books the Lodger had requested for Ileth had arrived and were waiting in the Serpentine’s archives. Santeel wrote that her father was complaining about the bills for her flying leathers and dance costumes (he’d been under the impression that with his daughter installed at the Serpentine there would be a reduction in expenditures on her keep and had been proven wrong). Rapoto was now a wingman for Dath Amrits. Rapoto wrote a short, colorless letter saying that he thought of Ileth often, missed her dancing, and hoped she would be allowed to return soon, as it didn’t seem fair that one Serpentine person in the form of Heem Zwollen had been replaced by two captives. Galia received a whole packet of letters from Yael Duskirk.

“Same old Serpentine,” Galia said, having read the letters, leaving the Duskirk bundle unopened—at least while Ileth was with her. All but Duskirk’s were addressed to both of them, after all. “A big crab pot with everyone scrabbling for position. The weather here is much nicer, don’t you think?”

Ileth shrugged. “The sun gives me a head-headache when I’m out in it too much.”

“I sit patiently through your stuttering, and when it’s done it’s usually a complaint,” Galia said.

“Sorry,” Ileth said. The letters would need answering and she’d have to beg the Baron for paper and ink.

At last, the day for the test run arrived. There was so much excitement that Fespanarax was going to fly, even Galia took an interest and made sure the dead dragoneer’s saddle was still safe to use. It was.

The only landmark Ileth and Fespanarax needed to remember was a small plateau about halfway up to the main one, on a little saddle that joined the volcanic mountain to its eastern neighbor, which was this Cowshead plateau with the silver miners. She could just see the outline of it from the Baron’s estate. There was a good road up to the saddle, built in the days of the thriving mine, and only a precarious trail up to the plateau after that. The saddle had a posthouse, red roofed and otherwise painted white as so many Galantine establishments were, a place where they’d once changed teams of horses bearing loads. It was the only spot near the mine where there was any sort of meadow, built up gradually over the years from horse droppings. An agent of Baron Blue Heron would meet them there with his cases of spirits, and up they’d go.

With Galia’s assistance they’d managed to fix Fespanarax’s saddle so it held two full kegs of beer under his chest, using netting reinforced by a pair of chains. Fespanarax, testing the weight, thought he could carry perhaps two more, but for the test run they limited it. Ileth would carry the spirits on the saddle behind her (with the proviso that Fespanarax had the last say on his flying burden). They hung a couple of goatskins of wine from the saddle as well. Apparently with a certain class of Galantine, wine fermented in the scraped-out-and-sealed skin of a goat was a traditional drink at celebrations.

Galia and Dandas wished her luck, jointly. Their couple-ish manner of speaking troubled her, but she was too busy to think much on it. Galia lent her an additional cloak, big enough for her to wrap herself up in if she had to spend the night atop the plateau. They were warned that it was chilly up there. The Tribe gave her a little good-luck charm, some semiprecious stones and an old silver coin with a hole punched in it and a small feather from a bird she didn’t know threaded onto a loop that went around her ear. It felt odd at first, but she wore it. She’d learned the value of a little luck.

“Here I go,” Fespanarax said to Ileth, as he put himself in what he judged the best spot for his takeoff. Fespanarax wasn’t the kind of dragon to say we. “You do all the talking, I do all the flying, and the silver is mine. Right?”

“Right,” Ileth said. “Minus expenses. I receive only the pleasure of it.” The dragon eventually understood that they’d have to give most of the silver to the Barons and the brewer, but he could look at all the expenses written down on paper.

Fespanarax, who had been doing circuits over Chapalaine to reawaken his flying muscles so often that the village kids no longer ran all the way to the gates of Chapalaine to see him, did a running takeoff into the wind, then turned for the saddle between the volcano and the plateau.

He was fast. Nearly as fast as Vithleen, it seemed to Ileth, though she didn’t have much experience at flying dragons, even with his load. Maybe they all flew at about the same speed, though the dragoneers didn’t talk that way in their chats about speed against thickness of scale or strength climbing or ability to carry an awkward load.

The volcano drew her interest and occupied her mind as they approached. It steamed, but the prevailing winds carried the vapors off to the northeast, over Baron Blue Heron’s lands. There didn’t seem to be much in the way of planted fields near the volcano, and she soon saw why—there were ash clouds falling. The volcano gave off a steady series of belches and tossed about rocks now and then—she could see one now, rolling down an ashy slope, sending smaller rocks on its journey with it.

“Tricky things,” Fespanarax said. “Don’t believe the legends about dragons being born from them. I’d just as soon stay well away.”

He added a name in Drakine that she knew to be a place. Ileth had never heard any of those legends, of volcanoes giving birth to dragons or this other unknown word that gave birth to it. Which gave her a thought.

Their first stop was an old posthouse.

The posthouse was in disrepair—part of the roof had fallen in and there were cracks everywhere in the masonry. It looked like there had once been constant repairs to it, but now they left well enough alone.

The Baron Blue Heron’s man met them. He had two cases of ceramic jugs with stoppers and wax seals. Ileth helped him tie the ardent spirits behind her saddle. There did seem to be some kind of diggings at the volcano.

“They look for ore with silver that others have missed,” the agent told her when she asked. “It is not as futile as you think. There are often quakes. Sometimes silver nuggets even turn up. There are silver veins all through these mountains, but mining is hard because of the earthquakes.”

Ileth asked him about the miners on the plateau. He said they found silver at a slow but steady rate. Few got rich quickly.

“But once or twice a month, there is a big silver find. A few times a year, someone becomes rich and returns home to buy land or a business or found a mine elsewhere—that hope keeps them up on that hell-in-the-sky.”

While she made to remount, Fespanarax was lively and talkative in anticipation of some delicious silver, so she decided to ask him.

“Now that . . . now that I’m thinking of it, Fespanarax, what does vhanesh luss mean?”

She had to repeat it twice more, her pronunciation of Old Drakine was so bad.

“If I’m hearing you correctly, which I’m not sure of, it means more sun. More light might be the closer meaning in Montangyan. Where did you pick up Old Drakine?”

“Can’t remember, quite,” Ileth said. “In the Serpentine, anyway.”

“Well, I hardly expected you to hear it in whatever kennel bred you.”

“Ah. Well, let’s go seek some more light. The kind that shines off silver.” Fespanarax was so pleased with that he let out a prrrum like a gigantic cat. Then it was up to the plateau.

Ileth didn’t know what she expected to find, but the mining colony reminded her more of a giant colony of scattered gopher or rabbit holes, with bits of canvas stretched to shelter those who set up housekeeping just outside their holes. Not much would grow, as it was cold and dry. Her improved-by-reading vocabulary settled on desolate.

There were perhaps two hundred miners, she guessed, and an indeterminate number of women and children, dwelling among their holes and rain-catchers. According to the agent at the old posthouse, the women allowed life to exist on the plateau. They would make the daylong trek to a market some distance below (on the Baron’s side of the mountains, as it was considered more safe from the volcano), spend the night there, and bear a week’s worth of supplies back up, plus a little charcoal and whatever else might be most needed. They worked out schedules and rotations and somehow scraped out an existence. It seemed bleak to Ileth, but the children played happily enough among the piles of tailings and she heard laughter and songs from the women.

The dragon made a stir. Children who’d been digging with broken bits of tool jumped up, left their works, and came to see Fespanarax land.

It was unusual to see so many bearded Galantines in a land where the men were generally clean-shaven or wore artfully trimmed mustaches. Then the wind hit her face as she came around the dragon’s side.

They had been right. It was cold up here. Ileth wondered how the Galantines stood it. None of them were dressed in anything like her riding rig, mostly rough vests and cylindrical wool hats with flaps that came down over the ears.

They met a big man in an apron who also wore a Galantine-style collar under his fleshy jowls. She’d been told he was the Tentkeeper and would take the beer delivery and give the agreed-upon silver, if the count was correct. He and a pair of associates carefully removed the kegs, spirits, and sloshing goatskins and placed them where Fespanarax could keep an eye on them.

The Tentkeeper tapped the beer barrels suspiciously and inspected the seals on the bottles. He stuck a reed through the main stitched closure on one of the goatskins and sucked out some wine. He smiled as if at an old memory and tied off the opening he’d just made. Only then did he hand over two rags tied with a broken old bootlace. One was much heavier than the other.

“Big for you. Small is cut for the Baron’s Tightneck waiting down below,” the Tentkeeper said. “Understand?”

Ileth nodded. She let Fespanarax sniff at the silver. When he was satisfied and his mouth was running with thick, clear liquid, she stepped to the saddle.

“Ready to return?” Ileth asked the dragon, back in the saddle with her safety lanyard on.

“What, and leave this garden-spot of the Baronies?”

The dragon trundled over to the edge of the cliff. A dragon’s steady gait ate up a fair amount of distance in a few moments. No wonder the Auxiliaries would gladly use a grounded dragon. Fespanarax didn’t even bother to ask her if she was ready when he jumped off the cliff.

Just to add to her thrill, he only opened his wings when they were three quarters of the way to an end upon the rocks at the base of the cliff. He whipped around and, still using the momentum of the dive, rode cliffside air currents toward the old posthouse.

“Feels good to be rid of those barrels!” the dragon called back to her. He came in for a neat landing in the field. The agent stood up from where he had been reclining on an old bench and hurried over.

“That was quick. That journey would take a strong man much of the day, up and down, with a tenth part of the load.”

Ileth handed over the smaller of the two pouches, as instructed. The agent tossed it in his hand speculatively, then concealed it in his undercoat.

Airborne again, and homeward bound with their silver.

“How much of that is mine?” Fespanarax asked in Montangyan.

“Our sh-share,” Ileth replied, “is about—about a third. To your health, Fespanarax.”

“That’s hardly a mouthful.”

“Well, you had some exercise, managed to leave the confines of Chapalaine, sharpened your wits on me, and have some silver. I’d say you came out well ahead on the b-bargain.”

A dizzying distance below, the Baron’s Green River began its journey to his lands. No wonder growth along its banks was so rich; it carried rich volcanic soil downstream.

They were back at Chapalaine in time for Ileth to interrupt a tea. Galia and Dandas, with Taf there as a chaperone, were all enjoying some of her small store.

“Just help yourselves,” Ileth said. “Taf, is your father at home? I have something I must give him.”

“Oh, he’s about,” Taf said. “I know he walked out twice to see if he could see your return. I think he suddenly grew afraid you’d just fly off.”

“Ileth only embarrasses her friends; she doesn’t desert them,” Galia said.

“That is unkind!” Dandas said, shooting Galia an accusing look. “We have poached your tea, Ileth of the Serpentine, but I’ve ordered a quarter-chest of the stuff for my cousin here and I shall restore the portion.”

“It’s . . . just tea, sir,” Ileth said.

“I’ve heard you republicans were . . . ahem . . . reluctant and judicious in your hospitality. I don’t want you to think I’m trying to steal anything away from you.”

The Galantine summer, all sun, stillness, and heat, came on in full. Whenever she and Galia said anything about the heat, the Baron’s family said that their guests didn’t know heat—the true heat was on the coast to the south, or in the islands. That was their response to most conversations about the weather—it was always worse somewhere else. To hear them talk, the Vales were a frozen wasteland of snowy mountain passes and avalanches.

Ileth continued flying beer to the plateau. As the summer baked on, they developed a system where they went once every six days. The one change to the system that had been developed by the Baron and his cousin in the north was that Fespanarax never had to fly empty kegs back. Wood was so scarce up there, it was used for shoring in the mining tunnels or turned into cooking charcoal. The Tentkeeper paid them for the barrels instead, and the Baron allocated the precisely weighted silver nuggets and dust to the cooper and the brewer in the village, who were enormously satisfied with the increased business.

The Tribe stayed in residence, grooming Fespanarax, with extra attentions on his flight days. Now and then one or two of them disappeared into town or left with a cart on one of their mysterious journeys, selling the potions and medications cast off by the dragon. Ileth thought it was profiting off superstition, but Fespanarax said there could be something to it, as in his father’s time dragon blood was still being drunk by people—with appalling results to humans or animals who made it a long practice. Fespanarax, more conversational now that he was eating silver every week, told her what he’d seen with his own eyes: jungle jaguars transformed into terrible striped creatures twice their usual size with a great round face gone white. They were set up in the Realm of a Thousand Princes (wherever that was) as holy temple guardians. Some escaped, and they appeared to be thriving.

From just about any other dragon she would have assumed she was being teased, but Fespanarax cared so little for what she or any other human thought of him, she decided it must be true.

“What happens to humans who drink dragon blood?”

“The first time, very little, except excellent health and vigor. That’s all, if you have it only once every few years. How long do humans live again? The ones I know all die young. Sixty or seventy years? Then say six or seven times over the course of your life. Insofar as I know in the Serpentine, they would have you drink it when you became a dragoneer, but I’m unsure if that tradition continues. I haven’t asked lately. If you drink it more than that—you don’t want to know.”

Even as Fespanarax grew more social, Ileth began to have doubts about the deliveries. The miners and their families lived in holes, their children went barefoot on a chilly plateau, everyone’s ribs were showing, and she was flying in not plump chickens or sides of pork but beer and spirits.

“If they would pay for pork pies for what they pay for drink, I would have you fly in pork pies,” the Tentkeeper said, who was now looking like someone was, in fact, flying in pork pies. Although she knew a great deal of beer could also fatten you, pigs in the Freesand were fed on the tailings from brewers and thrived on it. “It makes no difference to me. Beer and spirits are what they are willing to give over their silver for, so that is what I sell them.”

Ileth still felt a little guilty. Perhaps she could bring in some sugar candy for the children.

The Tentkeeper must have caught her smiling at the thought. “While I am on the subject of what they will pay money for, I have an offer for you.”

Ileth went suddenly wary. “Oh?” she said.

“I know you are a dancer. A good one, who performs for audiences. Audiences who pay.”

“Who told you that?”

“Your dragon.”

“I’ve never seen you talk to him!”

“It was two runs ago. You had to—the necessity.”

“Ah, yes.” There were filthy holes scattered about for such purposes. Perhaps, in time, the collective waste of the miners would build up the soil enough on the plateau for a few crops to grow.

“How does this concern him?”

“Oh, we were talking as men do. I swear he is not—you know what I mean to say. What do men ever talk about? Women! There aren’t enough up here. So he told me of your dancing and the bucket full of silver vits you earned.”

“I only dance for audiences of dragons.”

“Well, your dragon said otherwise. Take it up with him. When he told me you do it nearly naked, and with your youth and figure, I knew that you could make some extra silver. Not a great deal, but you never know. If it doesn’t work out, forget it ever happened. But if it does, you may buy yourself a new, modest dress to impress the Tightnecks. You need not be afraid. The dragon said he would be there.”

“Did he?” Ileth wondered if a dragon would feel a slap.

Ileth was in a foul mood the entire return trip. The dragon was already eating all the silver. She was flying for the exercise and the joy of it, so she didn’t mind, but for him to want to increase his haul by—well, it was a good thing he was a dragon with a thick hide.

Her mood, only somewhat mellowed by the free air and sunshine of the flight back, did not improve when she returned. The Baron waited for her.

As usual he ignored the purse for the moment. He had to take care of the courtesies before matters as distasteful as counting out coins could be addressed.

“I have some news for you, Ileth. I’m not sure if you will take it as good or bad.”

“More problems with the . . with the negotiations?”

“No, they are to return to the table this autumn. I expect the matter will be swiftly concluded now. This has to do with our arrangements. I want you to hear it from me rather than at the inn so you understand: I had to send the brewer’s son off to the islands, convicted and sentenced.”

“You were right. I’m . . . I’m not sure I understand,” Ileth said.

“You know, the brewer has been cheating me this whole time. I only found out because I was talking to the cooper about making barrels more cylindrical along the lines Fespanarax suggested. He showed me what it would cost, and I happened to see what he was charging the brewer for each cask. Something looked wrong about his figures. Well, the brewer has been doubling that in his accounts to me!”

“What—the brewer’s son was taking the difference?”

“No, the brewer. But I couldn’t send him to the islands, could I? Have the village inn, and our little concern, lose its source of ale? No, under Galantine law I am allowed to scapegoat—are you familiar with that concept?—a close family member for bloodless crimes. Hard for the son, but it’s not my fault I was being cheated. I’m glad you wouldn’t do anything like that, would you, Ileth? You’re not protected by our excellent Galantine law, just military custom and my own sense of hospitality. Though I do feel your Vales have cheated me a bit; I had the distinguished Heem Zwollen, and after he died they replaced him with someone who’s just a Dun, then I got these two girls for him, and now it’s just you. Not your fault, but you Vale folk deal sharp, if you’ll forgive me for saying so. I shouldn’t wonder wars start all the time.”

“What d-do you mean, now it’s just . . . it’s just me?”

“Galia has departed. She left you this note and asked me to give it to you. I hope you don’t find it too upsetting. Please let me know if there is any way I might soften this distressing turn of events for you. Perhaps some brandy before you read it?”

Ileth fled from him, sought refuge in what had been “their” house, now quiet, so quiet, lit a candle, and tore open the fine cotton-paper envelope. The seal spun off into the darkness.

Oddly, it was in Galantine, though in Galia’s own beautiful hand. Ileth wondered if Galia had consulted with Dandas on the message it contained. She had to hold it close to the light to read.

Ileth,

I must leave you with a note. A good-bye would be painful and today is no day for pain. Dandas has asked me to be his wife and I have said yes. We will depart Chapalaine at once.

I know I’m leaving you and our people behind in doing this, for we must build a life here. Do not fear for me. He is an excellent man and there is nothing to hold me in the Vales but the Serpentine. You may think that I’m deserting you to live a life of luxury, but it won’t be like that at all. Dandas goes to an important new command, and it shall be a camp life for a while until we can find somewhere a person of his significance can take as a house for me. It will be a great adventure, but what better time to go on a great adventure than when you are in your bloom and with a man you love?

Oh, my friend, I have treated you badly since Dandas arrived and I realized I have feelings for him. I’m no philosopher, but I believe I struggled with myself and treated you as the part of me that wanted to be at the Serpentine and fly and believe all the egalitarian nonsense that’s wrecking our land and causing us to lose wars. I do not know yet what fate will decide for me, but I think it has matched me with a man who will take me there with the wit and wisdom and manner I’ve come to appreciate this last beautiful summer of my youth and girlish silliness. As the Galantine High Church says, there is a time for everything, the seasons of life begin and end, and we must accept that. This part of my life is at an end.

If someday, when you return to the Serpentine, as I hope you will soon, take with you my hopes for you to pair with an excellent dragon and rise to be a dragoneer as great as your Annis. Should Hael Dun Huss ask after me, tell him I finally decided to be something more—a Baroness.

I sign my name, for the last time,

Galia of the Serpentine

Young Azal and Taf knocked quietly, Azal looking discreetly away as if he expected to find Ileth in rent garments wet with tears. Taf set down a tray with her dinner and a small decanter of the syrupy Galantine brandy considered fit for ladies. Taf offered to keep her company, but Ileth dismissed her.

She opened the door again to thank them but closed it again halfway through the Galantine courtesies, rereading the letter.

Alone. She thought back on all the times in the Captain’s Lodge that she’d longed to have a warm little house, all to herself, only her own dishes and washing to do.

She opened the brandy, sniffed it. “To love and havoc,” she said, raising the decanter and putting it to her mouth. She made it through only a third before bringing it back up.