Novice Dragoneer

15

The wedding would take place in the late fall. Ileth, perforce, could not attend, as she had neither the freedom nor the money to travel. And in any case, she hadn’t been invited. She doubted it was a deliberate snub, especially after rereading the letter. Galia knew her restrictions (Galia’s own were lifted with her betrothal and assumption of Galantine citizenship and entry into the Galantine King’s church).

She missed Galia’s presence, keenly, and would have had her back, even the moments when they frayed each other’s nerves down to the last thread, if it had been within her power. She left a lonely ache that was hard to fill.

She did try to fill it. Galantine literature; volunteering to do little tasks for the Baroness, whose increase at the waist meant a decrease in how much she could do for her family; even working on her flying rig. The runs with Fespanarax gave her hours of experience in the air learning the shortcomings of her flying attire. Taf showed a surprising interest in and flair for helping her solve the issues.

Taf being Taf, she couldn’t stop talking about the wedding. Her father would take her and her brother Azal to the Court Exalted at Dymarids. Galia would wear Chapalaine’s colors at the ceremony. She and Azal would be presented to the King! Unless he was indisposed that day, in which case she would bow to his royal representative. One day they were in the little, now roomy and quiet, house, and working in the warm room, which Ileth had turned into a flight suit workshop, when Taf quit talking about the upcoming wedding and asked about how the Serpentine taught one to fly.

Ileth told her the truth that she hadn’t had that much formal training yet, just a good deal of informal experience.

“I wonder if I could fly on a dragon. I think I could. You seem to do all right even though you’re a woman and haven’t gone through all that training.”

Ileth asked how so.

“It would be easy, like my trick with the Tribals when I dance with them. Put on your clothing—our builds aren’t that different now that you’re getting good Galantine food instead of sheep tripe and sturgeon—wind a scarf around my face, and get on the dragon. He does all the work, yes?”

“All I do is hang on,” Ileth admitted.

It remained just idle talk, however. But Ileth’s flying rig improved in fit, if not in style (Ileth did not take any of Taf’s suggestions for adding a bit of Galantine “dash” to the ensemble).

The summer heat waxed and waned but mostly waxed. The Baron and his neighbors ceased all pretense of work and spent the hottest part of the year hiding from the heat during the day (if there was not a picnic or a barbecue on the schedule) and going around to outdoor dinners at night. Even the Tribals briefly joined the community when they invited the Baron’s coterie to a performance in the little outdoor theater. Both Ileth and Taf danced with them, Taf incognito, Ileth in a patchwork blend of her own dancing sheath and a Tribal dancing skirt.

But just when Ileth was feeling well disposed to Galantine society, they would do something she found appalling. They had a custom of calling a “horn hunt” where a single rider would pick a spot in the countryside and blow a horn from somewhere secretive until he could hear the sound of hoofbeats. Then he would ride off to a different spot and blow the horn again. Ileth saw the damage wrought from the back of Fespanarax. Crops about to be harvested were flattened, overdry grazing round was torn up by hooves, vegetable gardens were trampled, and even laundry drying on the line was knocked off and trod upon if the course of the chase took them through a gap between the dwellings of the nonsignificants.

On another one of her visits, she saw a criminal’s body hung up on display at the edge of town. The Baron explained that he was a vagrant who broke into a house and stole food. “Long ago the body would be coated in pitch and left to rot,” the Baron told her on their way to the brewery to try a new summer ale he was testing. “Now we just leave it up three days. I think anything longer than that is unhealthy, don’t you? I mean, there are children in the village.”

After seeing the body, she avoided the Baron and his family. She simply said she wasn’t feeling well and excused herself from all social activity with the family. Galantine tradition accepted any failing in the health of women as sacrosanct, so she wasn’t questioned, though Taf discreetly hinted that if she needed a draft to help with cramps, there was a reliable remedy from the family physician kept constantly in stock.

Her absence from the family turned out to be fortuitous. The Baroness gave birth at last, and the child, a son, had the house in a flurry. She sensed, through Azal and his deliveries, that though the child was healthy, something was odd about him, but since they allowed her privacy, she didn’t press the matter.

In the morning two days after the long-awaited birth, the Baron himself came to visit as she sat in the garden reading after her morning drill and check on Fespanarax. The rat was out of his wig and riding on his shoulder for a change.

“Ileth, my dear, how are you feeling?” he asked.

“Much better, sir. How is the Baroness?”

“Robust as always. Nursing. She doesn’t believe in wet nurses for the first three months of life, and I rather think she’s right about it, but it exhausts her. She is keeping to the birthing room.”

Ileth was sensitive enough toward Galantine custom to know not to inquire after the newborn, as she wasn’t family.

“I was hoping I could get you to come into the house today. I have a visitor who wishes to speak to you. No, it’s not Galia or any of your countrymen, I’m sorry to say. It’s that Young Ransanse.”

Griff! What could he want?

“I’m—I’m at a . . . at a loss as to why he would wish to speak to me.”

“He said he wished to offer an apology.”

She started to say that Griff could take his apologies, roll them up, enclose them in a map tube, and . . . but it wouldn’t do to use that kind of language in the Baron’s gardens.

“Sir, just send him out here.”

“Ileth, I’ll confess, I don’t much care for this young man. He’s the sort of grasper we have too much of at Court these days, no refinement or sense of duty to the common people, but I’ll allow that I could be wrong about him. If he does offer an insult to you, a girl of your age, in my house, under my roof, well, there are certain nuances to Galantine social life that could ruin him, at least in the eyes of the Baron Ransanse. Just because he is in line to inherit doesn’t mean that matters couldn’t be changed. I intend to have him speak to you in the library. I shall retreat to my study, which is connected by sliding doors. My two biggest servants, the ones my wife charges with moving furniture about and hanging sides of beef, will be outside the door. Either one is capable of launching Young Ransanse over the estate wall by himself; together they could throw him into the next Barony, I imagine. So you need not fear for your physical safety.”

Ileth agreed, mostly because the picture of Griff being sent flying without benefit of dragon appealed. She changed into her more presentable housedress but made no attempt to do anything else with her appearance for the interview. Her hair could remain in its sweated dance-bun.

She followed the Baron into the house and to his library at the far end of the Baron’s family wing. As the Baron had promised, two enormous footmen in work vests and loose, long-sleeve shirts sat on a wooden bench in the hall. They stood up and took position to either side of the double library doors, now closed. Either one looked a match for even so tall a dragoneer as the Borderlander, never mind a not-yet-twenty boy such as Griff. Their thick arms and wide shoulders were reassuring.

The library itself had tall windows of many panes of good glass. You could see right through them and out into the front grounds. There weren’t many books, just one case, glassed off, and a map table with several wide drawers beneath. The few books that were in the case looked to be very expensive. Ileth had been in the house’s sewing room and writing room, and each of those had many more books than the library, though they were cheaper volumes meant for leisurely reading.

Someone had set two nice, round-backed chairs in the center of the room, facing each other.

Griff was still in that light-blue uniform. He had immaculate white breeches this time, tucked into gleaming black boots. Other than that, he was the same old chap-lipped Griff, though his hair looked better cared for and his skin healthier.

“Young Ransanse, here is my Ileth,” the Baron said, before retreating toward his desk in his study at the corner of the house. “Remember your promise, now.”

“Sir,” Griff said, standing at attention. “Ileth,” he added, giving her a short bow.

The Baron personally closed the two sliding doors to the well-lit little nook, and the muscular servants closed the double library doors.

Ileth wasn’t sure of Galantine custom, so she remained standing opposite him. He wasn’t his usual sneering, shifty self. He looked as though he’d taken great care of his appearance for this interview.

“It is customary for ladies to sit,” Griff offered. “I’d like this to be a friendly call.”

Ileth thought it over and sat in one of the two chairs at the center. Once she was comfortably seated, hands in her lap, Griff sat down opposite. He put his hands on his knees and leaned toward her a little.

“How are you getting on without Galia?” he asked, speaking Montangyan.

“Well enough, thank you.”

“Is the dragon giving you difficulty?”

“None,” she said.

“Ileth, we got off to two bad starts, one back in the Uplands, one here. For my part, I’m sorry.”

“F-For my part, I can’t imagine why you came all this way again to tell me so.”

“Because I believe I can make it up to you. I was a foolish boy back in the Serpentine. I’ve grown up since I knew you there.”

“I am happy to hear it.”

“You see, I’m not such a bad sort to get along with, given a chance.”

Ileth, half-revolted, half-interested to see where this was heading, shrugged. It seemed an especially inappropriate gesture for this sunny room full of expensive books, but it kept her from having to talk.

“Ileth, I know certain things. You would do well to follow Galia’s path and associate yourself with the Galantines. The Republic’s doomed. Financial trouble, society’s a mess, just lost a war, and with one wrong step they’ll get into a bigger one they’ll also lose. I don’t mean to be harsh, but you’ve hitched your cart to a sick horse, as they say.”

“We still have the dragons,” Ileth said.

Griff lowered his voice. “The Galantines have dragons too. I’ve seen them. Indeed, I’m playing an increasingly important role with them. You could too, a far more important role than you ever could at the Serpentine. I heard the apprentices and wingmen talk about you. They think you’re entertaining but not destined to do much before you’re tossed out on your ear like most female novices. I know you’ve got your name in blue ink in Caseen’s office.”

“So what if I, if I do?”

“I made a change for the better. Galia did. You could too.”

If the Galantines did want her to come over from the Serpentine and take up a new nationality, they chose a poor agent to make the offer. But then Ileth had been specifically charged to learn what she could here, keep her eyes and ears open. “I’m—I’m listening.”

She concentrated, attempting to remember every word of this conversation. Griff might let something valuable slip. He’d been sloppy before.

“Ileth, you have an advantage over even Galia, beyond anything she can dream about. Some of us young Barons spent some fifteen days at the King’s residence, invited for riding, birding, a formal ball, that sort of thing. I saw the King’s gallery. There’s a private room where ladies aren’t invited. You know he has some studies of dragon dancers? Four paintings by Risso Heem Tyr himself, do you know who he is?”

Ileth nodded.

“You would be a sensation at Court. I could get you an audience with the King. You’d barely have to speak. Galantine women say ‘yes, thank you’ and ‘thank you, but no,’ and list the number and gender of their children. You could get posted to the dragons, not in uniform, but in a similar role to Ottavia. Form your own troupe. They’ve tried bringing Galantine women around the dragons and they about die of fright. They’re no good at all because of the way they’ve been raised. Those Tribals, we don’t trust them; they’re not even Galantines. You speak it, look it; sometimes I wonder”—he lowered his voice even further—“well, I don’t know enough about the Directist purges but we may have to be careful if they ask about your family background. Your name’s a bit of an obstacle, but it’s out of living memory now about.”

Griff slid to the edge of his chair. “If you would join my fliers I can guarantee you a title as lady. A property—not a big one, but it would be all yours. You would see Galia again.”

“I would like . . . that, but I’ve . . . but I’ve reconciled myself to never seeing her again.”

“You can do better, much better, with me. That man of hers, he’s with the Squadron, in a way. He’s a good man, doing his duty to his king, but”—Griff spread his hands—“no ambition. I shall rise.”

“It’s . . . it’s good to have—to have ambition. How high does yours go?”

“I have learned something since coming here. Every time I think I have gone too far, I find I can go further.”

He reached across the space between them, then took her hands in his.

“We could go further still together.”

“The two of us?”

“Three. With Fespanarax. I’ve spoken to him, and he’s agreed to come over to our side. It would be a brilliant coup for us.”

There it was again. Our. Us. Did he mean the Galantine nation, or Griff and Ileth?

His hands felt strong. But not so strong she couldn’t grab them and fall to the floor, pulling him on top of her, and yell for all she was worth. The Baron might have been hinting to her that she should do that exact thing. Griff would fall just as quickly as he’d risen in the Galantine lands.

No. Even if Griff was an enemy of the Serpentine now, even if she disliked him, even if he’d called her a jade or worse, she wouldn’t resort to that.

“Fespanarax will leave the Serpentine?”

Griff stared at her hands in his. “You know him.”

She withdrew from his touch. “I do. I am . . . I am surprised he’s throwing over his friends for . . . for Galantine silver.”

“You know dragons. One bunch of humans is much like another to a dragon. The Galantines can give him gold and silver instead of waste ores, beef and pigs instead of fish.”

“For me?”

“Gowns instead of sacking overdresses. Shoes instead of slippers. Servants instead of duties. Featherbeds instead of mats. A great house instead of a shaft.”

“As your wife, I suppose.”

Griff raised his eyebrows. “So you do think of such things.”

Ileth shrugged. “I just believe that before coming to an agreement, you see . . . you see all the terms laid out plain.”

“Marriage. Not right at first. All I propose is an alliance between us. I will introduce you at Court. Get you a role with the Squadrons at the Trifall.”

Trifall. Trifall. Trifall. She’d never heard of the place. Three falls?

“That sounds pretty. Three waterfalls?”

“It’s lovely. Two of the waterfalls are beautiful. The third fall isn’t much, but there is a pool beneath it that is excellent for swimming in the summers.”

“I should like that. The summer heat gets to me.”

“The Court Exalted is on a low plateau. It’s even more pleasant in the summer. Chapalaine here is in the wallows. But I didn’t come here to talk geography, I came here to get you out of that grotty little hole and put you on my arm at the most glittering court in the world. What do you say?”

She thought of Ottavia’s talk about how young noblemen liked to have a dancer on their arm as a sort of ornament.

“It is too much to think about now. I have certain commitments to the Baron.”

“Your silly beer barrels? I will not repeat this offer again after this interview. Rise with me or fall with your Republic.”

She was tired of probing him. He wasn’t giving anything else away, not without much more from her—and she was in no mood to give him anything but spittle.

“It’s your Republic too, Griff. You have family there.”

“They will be taken care of. It’s why the family divided to begin with. The Republic would prosper, and the family with it, or fall, and the rest of the family would be there to pick up the pieces. My family plans for eventualities.”

“What is your eventuality for me refusing you?”

He stood at her question.

“I appreciate your offering to put the past behind. I took an oath that gave the Serpentine everything but my honor. Both my honor and my oath make agreeing to your offer of an alliance impossible. Last year I took you for a villain, when you were just a boy who—”

“You’ve been in the Galantine lands long enough to know that a young lady doesn’t lecture her superiors.”

He let that sink in, then continued, ice in his words. “I thought that despite your tongue you were clever, quite clever. That scheme I had with the scale, you sniffed it out, turned me in, and attracted the notice of the Masters. Brilliantly played. There are women at Court with twice your years who couldn’t anticipate and adjust all the angles you did. I thought, once I placed what I have in mind before you, you’d be smart enough to agree at once. I am sorry to be mistaken.”

Apparently he’d finished.

“Aren’t you going to . . . threaten me or something?”

“Would it change your mind? Ease your conscience? Then I’d be happy to. We’re not on some stage acting out a drama for shopkeepers. I made you an offer. You declined. We are finished. I hope you will accept that I alone, out of all those you’ve met since you came to the Serpentine, am the only one who discerned your talents. I wanted to give you the opportunity to make the fullest use of them. When the wheel of fortune begins to turn and crush, as it inevitably will if you return to the Republic, and you find yourself dirty and hungry again, I hope you do not lose yourself in regret. When it all comes down, mention my name and I’ll see that you at least have bread in your stomach, Ileth. You still have my esteem, even if we shan’t have an alliance.”

With that, he left the interview. Ileth sat in the chair, listening to footsteps, and didn’t rise until she saw him leaving the house and mounting his horse.

The Baron appeared and asked if she was all right, whether she needed some tea or perhaps even a little brandy to recover from the encounter, but Ileth made her excuses. She hurried to Fespanarax. She found him idly gnawing on a steer’s head.

“Sir,” Ileth said. “I just had an interview with Gr—Young Ransanse, of the Dragon Squadron or whatever they call it. It astonished me.”

“I should think if I were astonished I’d sit down a bit until the sensation passed, rather than go bother a dragon enjoying his digestive bones.”

“He insulted you, sir.”

“The birds insult me every morning with their chatter. At least that grasper had the courtesy to do it out of my hearing.”

“Aren’t you curious?”

“Just tell me and get it over with, girl.”

“He said you were—you were leaving the Serpentine and going over to the Galantines.”

“Then by your account he insulted us both, because he told me the same thing this very morning. As though that would convince me to fly for these peacocks.”

“Then you —”

“Girl, I’m ready to quit your bunch and your filthy little wars entirely. I’m finding I care less and less about them as they wheeze up and sputter off over and over again. That fellow was just playing the old game, telling each party to an agreement that the other had already gone along with it.”

“So you refused him?” She took a certain satisfaction in knowing that she and Fespanarax the Reckless had acted alike.

“The Galantines are poor managers of dragons. They think we’re big armored horses. I talked to one of their dragons once. Stupid fellow.”

“I’m glad to hear it, sir. I’ll let you finish your bones.” She started to withdraw, but the dragon spoke again.

“One more thing, girl, in the interest of you enjoying a future. Suppose I had gone over to the Galantines and you found me out. Rushing right off to tell me about your discovery is not the wisest move. I might decide to burn the evidence of my guilt.”

“Burn me, you mean,” Ileth said.

“I don’t see anything much stopping me.”

“If your honor isn’t eno-enough, then I would think such a scoundrel would be worried about the questions that would come. Your dragoneer is dead, Galia has gone over to the Galantines, and your fifteen-year-old dancer burned. One might call that a pattern.”

The dragon glanced sharply at her.

“Well, such a scoundrel, as you put it, would be playing a deep game indeed. I’m sure he could explain away another death easily enough.”

For some reason this speech frightened Ileth more than talk of setting her alight.

“Calm yourself, girl. I can’t say I’m fond of you, but I’m now enough used to you that having you replaced would be more annoyance than it’s worth. Same with going over to the Galantines. For a start, I’d have to learn another yapping little human tongue. I don’t want to bother with more than a few words of any more human languages if it can be helped.”

Galia’s wedding took place in due order, once the heat broke and people felt like moving about again, but before the fall rains became more than a nuisance.

Upon Taf and Azal’s return from the wedding, Taf did most of the talking. She invited Ileth to join the other older daughters and nieces to hear the events of the day.

It took some telling. Significant Galantines have not one but three weddings: a religious one so that the High Church can sanctify the couple; a Court wedding where they are presented to the King or his chosen representative (in Galia and Dandas’s case, it was a representative), who asks them if they wish to be married and then gives his permission; and finally a family function where representatives of both sides come together and arrange matters of presents, residence, presentation of first servants, and so on. The exact order for the three could vary.

“I was only at the family one, though I did wait outside for the Court one; only Father was allowed into Court,” Taf said. “The family one was a little strange. Father and Azal and I served as her family. The Dandas side did not send many either—I don’t know if they disapprove of Dandas marrying outside the King’s lands, perhaps? As for the Court, they had to wait behind three other couples, and ahead of only one, the last being an old man who was marrying the daughter of his steward so the steward could assume his assets. He must have been a decent man. Right afterward he took poison and just fell asleep, they tell me. Very decent man. Went with a smile on his face—his teeth were blue but he couldn’t help that, could he? As for the church one, it took a great deal of time because Galia had to enter the church and go through volitions and all that. It was the longest of the three, so naturally it was closed to the public. But I did see a great deal of interesting sights outside Court while Azal and I waited.”

This led to a long discussion of the latest styles of dress and carriage. Ileth had her mind on poisons and only half listened, even when Azal spoke up with an experience of his own, until she heard that a young as-yet-unwinged dragon drew their wedding carriage after the church service, which was left to last because they were unsure as to how long it would take. She assumed it was one of the few Galantine dragons. Nice tribute to Galia, if that was what it was, but she wondered at a dragon being tasked to pull a carriage. She couldn’t imagine any of the Serpentine’s dragons doing it, unless perhaps as a special and spectacular favor for a beloved dragoneer.

After the three weddings there was a party at the Dandas family residence at the Eternal Court’s home city of Dymarids.

“It wasn’t well attended. I was more than a little disappointed. You’d think with our dear Dandas, a man of great significance at Court, more would have been there. Do you think it’s because Galia is from the Vales? Maybe it’s because they expect another war.”

“Another war?” Ileth asked. Azal turned from the water table—he’d been complaining of a headache from the journey and seemed to be undergoing some kind of spasm.

“Yes, I heard Dandas’s father—or was it his uncle?—saying that they just needed a provocation and the Court would rally and convince the King.” Azal’s glass shattered on the floor, but Taf didn’t seem to notice; children were always breaking things at the Baron’s.

Taf continued, “The King, apparently, said he’s sick of throwing men into the mountains and never having them come back, all over something that happened before he was born. Baroness Sefeth herself told me that. I shouldn’t worry, Ileth, you’ll be quite safe here. I asked Father and he—”

Taf looked at her brother and her face went blank. Azal had his face in both his hands.

Ileth pretended she wasn’t the least disturbed. “What did your father say?”

Taf’s mouth worked like that of a landed fish: “That. That—”

“That there probably won’t be a war, so why worry,” Azal supplied.

There wasn’t a war. Nor did peace come. The Baron’s prediction of a quick consummation of negotiations proved to be wishful thinking, or a white lie to get Ileth through the difficult period of Galia’s loss.

It seemed too much like captivity with Galia gone.

She could still escape into the air on Fespanarax, on the beer flights that made everyone but Ileth so much richer (well, the brewer wasn’t quite so much richer and was down one son banished to some kind of labor on an island). The dreary conditions of the miners and especially the children continued to depress Ileth. She asked the Baron Blue Heron’s agent why the landlord didn’t improve things for his miners.

“On a map, yes, it’s his land, but they pay him no rents. As this station shows, once upon a time, before the Cracked Cauldron woke up, his father kept the roads and mine in perfect order and drew handsome rents off it. But the Baron has declared the lands around the Bald out of his jurisdiction. If there is a murder up there, the miners must handle it themselves. Even if they did, he could do little because of the difficulty of getting anything up there. The trail is a terrible, precarious thing, and the constant quakes sometimes close it until the miners can clear it again. They lose people on it all the time, a dozen a year or more.”

It would be easy to be lost on that cliff, much higher than Heartbreak Cliff near the Serpentine. Ileth had thoughts, sometimes, that if the war resumed she would jump and end it all and let her bones remain a prisoner of the Galantines. But then she remembered the Lodger’s training to not let events that are out of your control trouble you, and think only upon that which is within your power, and one’s attitude was always within one’s power, was it not? came his voice from the dead.

When the “darks” came (as she called such hopeless thoughts), she increased her dancing until exhaustion drove them out of her mind. She lost herself in it almost every night. She danced on her own, she danced with Taf (who sometimes secretly joined her in her drills), and she joined with the Tribals in their practices, though she was barred from their rites. She managed to save a silver nugget here and there (the Baron knew that she gave hers to the dragon and sometimes gave her a nugget that she would then conceal in her work room) and used the biggest one to buy the finest riding boots the Galantine cobbler could make.

Some nights a few members of the Baron’s household would watch her dance for the dragon as he settled down to sleep. The Baroness, once she had her baby and needed an escape from nursing (she passed the babe on to a wet nurse only after he took his first solid food), grew to be a bit of a fan and would show up now and again to just sit and watch. That, or she had found out about her daughter’s interest in the exotic and highly improper practices of both dragon dancers and Tribals and was worried.

Perhaps it was the madness of the heat, perhaps it was the boredom, but she agreed to perform for the Tentkeeper on the Silver Plateau. She refused to call it the cow plateau; it wasn’t shaped like anything on a cow unless you counted its udder. The Tentkeeper became so excited he asked for three extra barrels of beer. She’d been practicing, without thinking about it, to a worker’s song she’d heard a few times at the Green River ford near the Baron’s estate, combining some of the Tribal movement of shoulders and hips with the outstretched arms and dramatic leg extensions of dragon dance. It became stuck in her head, probably because it reminded her a little of the sea chants she’d heard in the Freesand. The melody was similar, with hard beats when the men would pull together and a counterpoint as they regained their footing and grips and got ready for another pull.

The Tentkeeper had expanded his tent for the event. Bits of rug and cushions made out of old rags or little canvas folding chairs were arranged for the audience. Ileth had a small circle in front of her musicians to dance in, marked off by footlights she had brought, spirited out of the stores left in the old theater by the Tribals.

Fortunately, on that trip, she brought up extra goatskins of wine. She begged a mouthful from the Tentkeeper to steady herself. He cautioned her that drinking wine from a bladder was a learned skill if she’d never done it and directed her to open her mouth so he could send a short jet of wine into the back of her throat. She swallowed—the wine was quite tart but warming—asked for one more, and was ready.

All the bodies crammed into the tent made it warm, at least.

The miners knew the tune. Her “musicians” (no less than eight men had received free admission in exchange for playing) rolled pebbles around in pans or shook them in old spirit and wine bottles, or rattled two spoons, but she hardly needed them because so many in the audience hummed, clapped, or sang along.

She should have been embarrassed by the nearly all-male crowd, or frightened. Each of these men was undoubtedly stronger than her. Perhaps she would have been reluctant to dance for just one of them, but for the mass of them, almost undifferentiated in their beards, grime, and shaggy hair (those who’d cleaned up for the event had their faces shining like moons, reflecting the footlights), they transformed into a necessary extension of her dance, a partner, waiting for her next flourish so they could respond. The connection with them felt strange and new and powerful. Dancing for the dragons in the Serpentine, or for Fespanarax, was like dancing for the stars; you had very little back. As for the Baron’s leering friends, she couldn’t wait to get away from them. These miners drank in her movements like she was their ale and they lifted her into the air with their applause and cheers.

The miners gave off a thick, crowded-animal smell. But their appreciation, her love of the tune, and her skill fed her dance. Looking back on it in her later years, she considered it one of her favorite performances.

As she changed behind the privacy screen of drying laundry, she felt oddly like she’d stepped across some kind of threshold, conscious of a strange new power in her body. It was an interesting thing to possess; she could even take pride in it, but she couldn’t see herself using it in this manner often. Whether she would end up taking more satisfaction in having such ancient magic to wield or in letting it remain quiescent remained to be seen.

Several unsettling thoughts competed in her head. Had she been around the Galantines so long that she thought these common folk were half animal, and she could perform as easily before them as she would a field of cows? Or was it that they reminded her, sweating in the tent and wiping their foreheads or noses on their shirtsleeves, of the fishermen and the sailors of the Freesand she’d been born among? Was she looking down on the herd, or was she of it?

Afterward, the Tentkeeper showed Fespanarax the silver collected at the performance.

“This, dragon, is all. I give you the largest nugget for putting the idea into our friend’s head. A quarterweight I give to the dancer. I keep the rest.”

“You mean your wife keeps it,” Ileth said, smiling.

“Yes. We save for a real wooden tavern. Home above, tavern below.”

Fespanarax, who had followed the conversation with some difficulty, swallowed his nugget but grumbled the rest of the night at the unfairness of it.

Winter approached at last and broke the warmest fall Ileth had ever known. The Tribals departed while the weather was still agreeable. They would take a roundabout route back, selling their potions and remedies and charms as they zigzagged back to reunite with their men. It didn’t matter if it rained; their wagons were well designed, ruggedly wheeled, and not heavy.

Winter in Chapalaine passed comfortably, with frequent rain and rare snows that left quickly. The Baron’s family had feasts with such frequency that her stomach only just recovered from one when the next came along. She gave unusually energetic performances for Fespanarax to tamp the food down in her digestive system.

In her imagination she was roaming the Beehive, sitting in the audience as a new class of novices were sworn in. She even felt a little nostalgic for the Catch Basin and the grunts of the fishermen as they carried their tubs and trays to the gutting tables.

The Baron reported to her that negotiations were started fresh with the Vales; new sets of diplomats, in a new location so that their conference could continue despite winter weather, seemed to promise much. It gave Ileth hope that she might be but one year in the Galantine lands.

The only change spring brought was less feasting and heavier rain. Often she would be soaked by the time she made the walk to Fespanarax.

One night, late, as she reread a Galantine novel from the Baron’s library more for the improvement of her Galantine than because it interested her, listening to the rain pour down outside, she heard a tap at one of her high windows. Then it was repeated three times, then once again: tap . . . tap tap tap . . . tap. The windows were too high and narrow for her to see outside without getting a chair. She double-checked the bar at her door and moved a chair over to look out the window.

A snarling brass ogre face rose up at the end of a wooden shaft and tapped again. There was no mistaking the walking stick of Dath Amrits.

She was still in her housedress. She jumped into her shoes, picked up a waxed canvas rain cloak, unbarred the door, and, after first checking the grounds to make sure no one was about on this rainy night, swiftly walked around to the side of her domestic prison facing away from the great house.

It wasn’t Dath Amrits holding the walking stick after all, and she startled, until she recognized the man as the Borderlander. He put his finger to his lips and gestured for her to follow. Ileth almost asked if the negotiations had been finally successful, but that hardly seemed likely or he would have flown in the sunlight to retrieve her covered in streamers acquired at the border.

She followed him along the garden hedge and to the wall. He moved well in the rain and the dark, passing here and there to survey the grounds, and when he paused, pressed against a tree trunk or a gap in the hedge, he became next to invisible in the shadows. For such a gangly great man, he was as stealthy as a cat. Finally, they came to an old gate in the wall. The lock had been worked open, it seemed. Dath Amrits and Hael Dun Huss stood there on the other side. The Borderlander handed the walking stick back to Amrits.

“Ileth, you’ve grown!” Dun Huss said. “No one would mistake you for a child at the gate anymore.” Ileth smiled, though she wondered how Dun Huss knew about her first application to the gate. Paired dragoneers didn’t stand guard duty unless they were being disciplined for some reason.

“I’m happy to see you all,” Ileth said. “I may cry!” She had a difficult time suppressing the urge to hug them.

“A dark night for dark business,” Dun Huss said, weirdly echoing the Charge in that meeting in his quarters so long ago. “We’re taking you out of here, Ileth.”

Ileth, so shocked that her stutter hardly allowed her to talk, said that she’d given her word to the Galantines. No leaving Chapalaine except under the specific direction of the Baron. “It’s a question of honor,” she finished.

To their credit, none of the men cut her off during her stumbling speech.

“No, there’s no honor involved,” Dun Huss said. “We’ve consulted, and they weren’t to use the dragon for any military, courier, or exhibition purposes, including parades, circuses, and displays in menagerie. Well, it’s not military correspondence, but bringing beer up some mountain so his jailer can make money off it is the act of a courier, whether it’s a bag of letters or beer.”

She’d mentioned her flights with Fespanarax in her letters back to the Serpentine. She’d wanted to reassure them that he was restored to health. “But it was my idea, to occupy him with . . . with something other than sleep. Get precious metals in his diet.”

“Still, they plain broke the terms,” the Borderlander said.

“Most girls my age dream of a handsome dragoneer carrying them off. I know I should thank you to the day I die that all three of you showed up, but I fear you’ve wasted your time.”

Amrits rolled his prominent eyes. “Tripe! The Serpentine’s a dull place without you. Nothing’s burned down or boiled up in months. We must have you back.”

Dun Huss ignored him: “We needed a small enough group to go in quietly, but a large enough flight to handle anything the Galantines could put in the air against us. You may not know it, Ileth, but the Galantines have two of their dragons posted with a view of your valley, just in case Fespanarax gets out of hand.”

He went on to say their dragons were concealed on the riverbank. They could submerge and hide everything but their nostrils and be invisible in the dark if anyone walked along the banks, as unlikely as that was on a wet, chill night.

“These are the orders of the Serpentine?”

Amrits nodded. “We took it to the Master in Charge. He agrees that the terms of your confinement have been violated.”

“Not even your parole. You’re here on a dead man’s promise,” the Borderlander said.

“Be honest, Amrits. He didn’t tell us we could do this,” Dun Huss said.

“Don’t be a stick, Hael. He didn’t tell us not to, either, when we presented him with the plan, eh?” Dath Amrits said. “We were able to leave with our mounts and supplies without interference. Did they think we were going camping, with winter coming on?”

“Are we going to talk, or are we going to fly?” the Borderlander asked.

“I must refuse. If we go back, it could restart the war,” Ileth said. “I think they’re looking for an excuse.”

“If they want an excuse, let’s give it to them,” Dun Huss said. “If we escape, it’s done and we can confront them at the negotiating table with your account of Fespanarax being used for profit.”

“Pure venting,” Amrits said. “Ileth, I’ve been six years a full dragoneer and I’ve never, not once, rescued a maiden. To be honest, they’re beginning to talk down at the Cock and Stack.” Ileth had heard that the dragoneers frequented the High Rooster, a beer garden in Vyenn with a sign of a rooster atop a haystack.

Dun Huss looked at the Borderlander, who shrugged. “If they break negotiations and invade, our people will rally. The Vales don’t like making war, but receiving it is another matter.”

“We’re at full strength again,” Amrits said. “If we can get Fespanarax back, we might even be better off. But starting the war again. That’s not my line at all.”

“How do you know they’re looking for an excuse?” Dun Huss asked.

“The Baron. His daughter can’t tell the difference between gossip and Court affairs. She let slip something she heard. It’s a long trip back. Suppose something goes wrong and you have to fight.” She continued on to say that if they hurried back now and were spotted, they could plausibly explain that they’d become lost in bad weather, apologize profusely, and return to the Serpentine. But dragoneers carrying away a prisoner who had been paroled to a pleasant estate and a powerful dragon . . .

“Blast it, I think the girl’s right,” Amrits said. “But I feel a fool having come all this way just to leave her here.”

“They’ll still take your coin at the High Rooster, Amrits,” the Borderlander said.

“Sirs, you’ve done more than you realize,” Ileth said, tears welling up. Luckily the rain hid them.

“How’s that?” the Borderlander asked.

“Seeing you three. You are all important dragoneers, yet you came just to bring me out. I am happy, very happy to know I am missed, even if it’s just by you three. It couldn’t have come at a better time, either.”

“What,” Amrits said. “The rain this time of year gets worse than this?”

“I am sixteen! I’m not sure of the exact day, but the season’s right. From now on my birthday shall be this date, each and every year, and not one will go by where your gesture won’t be remembered. I will never forget this party.”

“Good heavens, maybe we should get her away,” Amrits said. “Even if we have to tie her across Fespanarax. Birthday parties! She’s going Galantine on us.”

Ileth spent a few moments relating the details of Griff’s defection and Galia possibly being of help to the Galantines. Also that she’d heard of an old man taking poison that left his teeth blue and that Fespanarax seemed ready to quit human affairs altogether. They listened attentively, seriously, and asked a few questions about young men being pressed into the King’s service or purchases of horseflesh for cavalry. She’d heard talk of neither.

They decided to go and find a more remote spot to rest their dragons. The Borderlander shook her hand, Amrits gave her a quick kiss on the forehead and joked that if she grew much more he’d be guilty of dallying with the apprentices, and Dun Huss, perhaps best of all, accepted and returned a formal salute, taking care to do it with the same precision he’d use on Charge Roguss Heem Deklamp.

She hugged the thought of the respect on his face. It drove away the fear that she’d never see the three of them again.