Novice Dragoneer

1

Night, wind, and fog above, puddled road and wet meadow beneath. Trotting between them and well coated with elements of both, a youth, still more girl than woman, puffed as she ran. A riding cloak, heavy with rain, dragged at her. Adding to the mess was blood from a still-seeping cut on her chin.

A fierceness on her gashed, freckled face under a sloppy sailor’s hat suggested she ran as the pursuer, rather than the pursued.

Ileth no longer felt the blood running from the cut, or the pain in the assortment of scrapes and bumps that had accumulated on the run since she realized that those louts at the brewery had sent her up the wrong road, apparently as a joke. If a little blood on her face and clothes was the only price she’d pay to reach her destination in time, she’d gladly let the wound drip.

The fortress she ran toward, a great pile of stone and slate roofs sprawled across a rugged peninsula like a sleepy cat on a branch, comforted her with its lights. The lights gave her hope ever since she first distinguished the impossibly bright beacon of the high lighthouse shining through the drizzle. She could have become lost in this dark, after all, an easy thing in the fogs of the Winderwind Valley girding the Skylake. The riding cloak was wet and heavy and dragged on her like guilt, but if she dropped it she’d never find it again in the dark. She’d slept in it these last two nights and might need it for a third if they denied her entrance. She had no idea of the hour, for the faint bells and chimes of the town beneath the fortress had been ringing in celebration of the Midsummer since sundown. Bonfires burned on the surrounding hillsides.

She splashed through a deep puddle and tripped on a treacherous submerged rock. Her forearm took the worst of the fall this time. She climbed back to her feet; took three deep, restoring breaths; and ran on. The way here was more puddle than road, thanks to the rain that had dogged the last leg of her pauper’s journey to the Serpentine gate, the advertised entry point for admittance of would-be dragoneers desiring a berth at the Academy.

The oilcloth sailor’s hat had kept her hair dry, but she was wet from nose down, muddy from her boots up, and tired every which way. Ileth allowed herself to imagine a hearthside chair and maybe even hot soup waiting for her within the Serpentine. Fourteen years of life in the Captain’s Lodge had taught her over and over again not to waste energy on hope, but sometimes you needed to draw from the well of imagination to keep sore feet in motion.

She willed her body to run on. It wasn’t so much of a run as a lurching series of forestalled collapses, but it got her to the approach.

The road rose, widened, and improved all at once. She made out something ahead through the rain, a wall and a decorative dragon-wing arch framed against the faint light from within the Serpentine proper and its jumble of windows, rooftops, and towers on the other side of the thick walls.

The dragon-wing arch marked the gate. On a night such as this the moist air made the decorative wings slick, and they reflected, in a silhouette of faint traces, the lights from the other side of the wall. The dragon wings just touched wingtips at the top and spread in a fanciful design, shielding those on the wall above the gate. The wings angled out, as though to spread and reach into the world beyond the gate.

Gulping for air and wobbly-legged, she realized she’d arrived. The moment she’d been imagining, preparing for, ever since her wellside encounter with the silver dragon and his dragoneer—resolved into fact: no longer a someday, an if-then, but a now.

Her stomach made a sour growl. She shouldn’t have imagined that waiting bowl of stew in so much potato-filled, meaty detail.

Breath coming easily now, she had no idea what to do, having spent all her mental energy trying to arrive without much considering the arrival itself. The notice she’d seen, and, when she had a chance, stolen, simply said applicants to be dragoneers were to present themselves on Midsummer’s Eve at the Serpentine Academy on the Skylake. What should she do? Announce herself and beg entry? Demand it? Wave the wet, creased, and frayed bit of placard she’d stripped off that notice board?

She stepped under the shelter of those road-spanning wings. She rehearsed her call quietly, under her breath, to warm her tongue. Three more breaths gave her enough wind to shout.

“Hello the—hello the gate!” Blast her stutter. It would betray her just now. It was always worse when she was tired and anxious.

It was northern phrasing. The Serpentine no doubt had formalized military ways to call out to the gate-watch that must exist in such a fortress, but they must expect strangers when they opened to applicants and posted notices.

Only the wind and a racking cough from above answered her. She made out two heads separating from the arch-pillars, wearing narrow fore-and-aft-style caps.

A voice said something that began with stranger, but the wind carried the rest of it away.

One of the figures put a speaking-trumpet to his lips. “The gate’s shut for the night. You missed it.”

“I wish to apply to the . . . to the Academy as a . . . a novice dragoneer.”

“Do you have a letter of introduction or acceptance?”

“I have this,” she said, waving the placard.

“Then I’m sorry for you, girl. As I said, you missed it.”

“I-I-I’m bleeding,” she said. Frustrated tears filled her eyes, but she blinked them back as she wiped blood onto her palm and held it up for the gate-watch to see.

“How old are you, girl?”

“Fourteen years. Fourteen years and one quarter,” she said, the answer coming so automatically she hardly stuttered. The night felt cold for a Midsummer’s Eve, though she was a week’s hard travel south of the Freesand.

“You aren’t. You look younger than that.”

Ileth had no answer for that. She was small for her age, and for all that puberty savaged her innards, her complexion was still that of a child. “My-My birth’s . . . recorded.”

“You are alone?”

“Yes. O-Only—Only the . . . the applicant, your notice says.” She extracted the folded placard and read from it: “N-N-No guardians, s-servants, or tutors ad-admitted.” She hoped she said that as though she’d left anything like that behind her at the Captain’s Lodge.

“Is there anyone who traveled with you to look after you? In town perhaps?” a different voice asked.

“No. Just me.”

The figures bent to each other in conference, mirroring the wing-arch’s peak above for a moment as their caps touched. A third crossed over to them from the other side of the gate.

The speaking-trumpet passed to the new silhouette. “I have the duty,” a reedy voice said, amplified through the trumpet. “The gate doesn’t open at night. Unless”—the voice turned hopeful—“unless you have the password.”

Ileth shook her head. The reedy voice seemed far, far away as it finished, her body weightless. If her head broke free of her body and floated off, she wouldn’t have been much surprised. She had never fainted in her life but once, and she clenched her torso muscles from neck to groin to halt her blood. It occurred to her that such was the dark, they might not be able to see her. “No,” she said, stepping forward in case the light wasn’t sufficient.

So, so far, and with nothing left to get anywhere else. She was half-starved even now, standing at the locked gate. And she couldn’t beg a refuge, not at a fortress.

“Is a dr-dragoneer named . . . named Annis here? She rides a s-silver dragon named Agrath. She told me to ask for her.”

“No. Are you a relation, by chance?” the voice called back.

Oh, if only she had been. Maybe the Captain’s Lodge would have been different. “No.”

They didn’t reply to that.

“I am resolved to be a dragoneer,” she said, taking a few more steps forward. There was still her age and her sex, unprotected in the night, and the Republic’s Dragoneers had their reputation for gallantry. Maybe if they could see the mud, the blood, and her lack of any baggage beyond a blanket-roll, they’d bend the rules. “It is still Midsummer’s Eve. Could you ask . . . your superiors to admit me?”

The speaking-trumpet passed yet again.

“Try the side door, girl. There’s a path to your right. It begins at the base of the wall just where the road comes under the gate. Watch your step, it traces a cliff and the rocks are wet. Have you ever crossed a cliff?”

Before she could reply, the speaking-trumpet passed again.

“You should just go back to town,” the reedy voice said. “Have someone attend that cut. Looks like it needs sewing up.”

“Could you ask whoever is in charge of such things to give me the password? Then I could give it to you and you could open the g-gate.”

The three heads froze in silence for a moment. She thought she caught the word Midsummer as they talked.

“Go back to town,” the reedy voice with the speaking-trumpet said.

“Knock on the side door,” the older voice boomed. “Keep knocking until they let you in.”

“Don’t be stupid,” the first man who’d spoken to her called, though which of the other two options presented was stupid it didn’t say.

The men above could talk as if she had options, but Ileth had made her choice when she deserted (as it had no doubt been called) the Captain’s Lodge. Well, if she was going to fool about with a cliff on a dark, wet night, she would have to prepare.

The flickers of light coming over the wall and through decorative gaps in the gate gave her the ability to take off the too-large riding cloak and wind it about her blanket bag, which she then retied. Thanks to the wet, it made a heavy burden. The bag’s rope would hold, but even doubled as she’d been taught, it dug into her shoulder painfully. She checked her knots. She had quit the Captain’s Lodge with few happy memories but a certain amount of practical skill, and one was some knowledge of lines, loads, and knot work. A poor knot even around a sack of potatoes could tip the Captain into a rage.

She glanced one more time at the three faceless silhouettes. She grudged them the knowledge of her decision. She considered walking up the road and then circling back just so they’d wonder, but let the notion go. There was always the chance that they were more sympathetic to an unchaperoned girl than their orders allowed. Perhaps one would arrange for a better reception at the side door.

The path was there, just as the older man said, matching another one going in the other direction along the base of the wall. It wasn’t much used, just a stretch of muddy gravel. She reached out and touched the fortress wall, its stones beautifully cut, laid, and finished. Nothing in Freesand had anything like these great carved boulders.

The cool, smooth stone settled her, drawing out some of the sting of finally arriving at the Serpentine and being refused entry. The wall—solid, tangible, cool—reassured her. She’d reached her destination. The dragons she’d risked much for and come far to be among lived on the other side of it. The stones made her feel less like a gambler who’d potted her entire purse on a throw only to see the dice come up blanks.

A dissonant chorus of voices who’d advised her against this journey repeated prophesies of failure:

You think those silk-sashes will let you join them?

They’ll smell the gutter on you like gamehounds.

No family of a decent name would have a trip-tongued fool like you as a maid—you think they’ll give you a dragon to ride?

The wall followed the contours of the peninsula, in this case a slight downslope. She sensed the vastness of the bay ahead and could see the lights of Vyenn, the town on the lakeshore, through the fog as a ragged spiderweb of yellow smears.

The wall of the Serpentine bulged out here and the track she walked narrowed to the point where she would hardly dare to herd mountain goats along it. Below, the Skylake produced no surf; it just seemed a vast emptiness beyond the cliff. Keeping her hand on the wall now for physical comfort rather than emotional, she negotiated the fortress corner. Her hand found a rope tied to a series of ring-bolts set into the stone, and she happily made use of the guideline.

Once around the tower the guideline ended and the path widened again but became harder to walk, as the ground sloped away from the wall sharply. The wall here wasn’t quite as high as on the side of the gate but still formidable. The wind blew against this side of the fortress, bringing with it a low susurrance of the big lake lapping against rock below.

The lights of the Serpentine gave her some idea of the peninsula’s size. From this outlook she could see the famous lighthouse beacon at a high point of the peninsula, supposedly the brightest light in the Vales. It rested on a dome built on living rock. It was a famous outline; Radiia the printing-house used it as their sigil on their books. Under better conditions, the Serpentine would be starkly beautiful, set high between blue water and white-capped mountains across the lake. She’d once seen a painting of it hung on the wall of a priest’s house on one of the Captain’s rare social calls.

It was two hundred paces or more before she made out a sort of knob growing off the fortress like a tree root sent down the hill. The path headed down to it. She guessed it to be the location of the door.

Ileth shifted the pinching rope of her blanket-bundle and approached the threshold, telling her sore feet to be patient for just a few more steps.

Whoever designed this fortress didn’t care for visitors or much want to impress them. The doorstep was unsheltered and unmarked, lit by a single blue gas-flame. She looked in vain for a bell. The walls seemed placed to channel the mountain lake-wind across the threshold; the cold and wet passed untroubled through her layers of wool and linen and went straight on through to her bones.

The wooden door, painted with a dull red color made duller by rain and dark, felt like a cheat to Ileth. Though wet right to her sheath and tired, she still had enough perspective left to appreciate the irony of a fastness of famous heroes and infamous dragons closed off by planking more fit for a toolshed.

The flickering blue flame, a little brighter than a candle, hissed in an unfriendly manner as it illuminated the threshold. She reached up and warmed her hands by the flame. She’d heard of such innovations, but this was her first experience with a gas-light. The flame muttered at the mouth of a bent iron tube, crude as a share-farmer’s pipe, indifferent to the wind, the weather, and her presence. But her fingers were grateful for its warmth.

It cast just enough light for her to make out the device on the center of the door, a sort of arrowhead design that she recognized as a dragon scale. A large and thick one, in a dull red that matched the door. It was hinged, and she realized it was a door-knocker.

She paused on the threshold to arrange her blanket-roll and dab the blood from her face. It had finally stopped bleeding. She took a deep breath, preparing to knock, but the chill mountain air drew forth a rattling cough. She prayed it was just her lungs cleaning themselves of the damage inflicted by that last, long run to the gate. This was not the time or place for illness.

The watchman had told her to knock. She explored the rugose surface of the dragon scale for a moment, thrilled again in the connection to the great creatures she’d come so far to live among. She lifted it, saw an orb of what was probably lead that matched a socket on the door, and let it drop. It gave a distinct but hardly impressive tap; a man with steel-shod boots would probably make more noise stamping on the step.

“Stranger at the door,” a watchman called from a corner of the fortress wall above. It bulged out in such a way that it had an excellent view of the threshold below. No doubt he’d seen her long before she knocked but waited for her to trigger Serpentine routine.

A light glimmered and grew on the other side of the door. The door didn’t need a peephole. The gaps in the planking were such that they afforded an adequate view of arrivals. She didn’t know fortifications, but the door didn’t look as if it would hold up long to an experienced axeman, never mind a team of attackers with a battering ram.

She heard a strange, dragging step inside.

“State your business,” a raspy voice said from the other side of the door, somewhat muffled.

“My-My name is Ileth,” she said, letting the words out slowly. “I-I w-wish to-to apply to the Academy as a . . . as a dra-dragoneer.”

“Too late, girl, and I’m sorry for you. All the applicants are inside. We shut the gate at sundown.”

Suddenly overcome by emotion, she stuttered out something about having traveled for days alone. It wasn’t persuasive.

The raspy voice cut her off. “Don’t take it hard, we’ll kick a good quarter of them out again in a few days. You’re lucky, you’ll have a jump on them at the Auxiliary house in town. Vyenn has all sorts of drum-beaters looking for apprentices. If I were you, I’d join the Auxiliaries, if you want dragons. They have a few.”

She had excuses to fill a book, but too much pride to be a beggar at a door rattling off a list of misfortunes.

“By the calendar it’s still Mid-Midsummer’s Eve.” Her stammer always grew worse when she was overwrought.

“Have you a letter of introduction? An acceptance?”

The Serpentine had its routines, it seemed. The same catechism as the gate-watch.

“No,” she managed to say, after a brief struggle to get the word out, knowing what the reply would be. “One of your placards. A dragoneer named Annis . . . met me years ago. She encouraged me to—”

“I am sorry. Annis Heem Strath and Agrath fell in the Galantine War. Just before the armistice. Go get under a roof. This is no night to wait on the steps.”

In a way, the news of the death of the dragon and dragoneer was worse than being denied entry. She’d thought of them constantly these seven years, imagining a reunion: I remember you, Ileth, and all grown up into a young woman, Annis would say, smiling, the dragon above cocking its head, birdlike, for a better look. Oh, that girl from the well, hullo there, he’d say, then she’d tell him she’d made a silly little bracelet out of the cording that had come loose from his wing. She felt sick and tightened her stomach muscles again. The old trick to steady herself worked. She felt more than she heard the presence at the other side of the door start to depart. She pounded again, setting the boards a-clatter.

“Could I j-just get out of this wet? I’m very tired. I’ll sleep in a stable. A pen.”

“Go back to town. There’s a poor lodge if you have no money for the inn. If you were my daughter, I wouldn’t want you to try it, but the boatmen’s dormitory is cheap and clean. I’ve heard they give a bed and a dinner for a song well sung.”

“Please,” she said, reaching up and pulling at the gap in the planking so it squeaked and rattled. She’d gone a bit mad.

A sharp rap on her fingers stopped her from trying to pull the door off its hinges. “Don’t try that again or we’ll empty night soil on you. Understand?”

She nodded. The personage on the other side of the door departed.

She turned a circle and blinked away frustrated tears. At least they wouldn’t show on her wet face. She hated to be caught crying. Dragoneers in the songs and poems didn’t cry—unless their dragon died.

Finally, she sat down on the steps, head in hands, failure sitting next to her on one side and misery on the other pressing close, no doubt winking at each other behind her back.

The cold stone leeched heat from her flesh and she realized she should have put down her bundle and sat on it, but she’d sunk to a place below such cares.

She wasn’t sure what she had expected out of a reunion with Annis, Dragoneer of the Serpentine, but the silver dragon and his rider had occupied so much of her thoughts over better than half her life that the loss felt momentarily unbearable. Tears blended with the drizzle on her cheeks. What had she wanted? Certainly not a substitute mother. Her life had been a series of I’m not your mother, dears from everyone from laundrywomen to shepherds’ wives. Annis had just been one more not-mother, more poetic than the rest with her talk about being of the air spirit. All she knew was that she was counting on a reunion, imagining kind words about how much she’d grown or that she took good care of her teeth or a long welcoming hug and a job polishing boots and saddle.

A few deep breaths and a wiping of her eyes that was more habitual than effective left her able to consider.

Bone tired, with nothing but roadside berries in her since yesterday, she reviewed her options. Her flight from the Captain’s Lodge had been such that she’d left without much other than her small necessities bag. She wanted to confuse matters on her disappearance, leaving behind even the brush and comb the Captain had bestowed on her when she turned twelve. She hadn’t left a note when she slipped ship, as the Captain was probably styling it even now with a disgusted shake of his head. She had nothing to make camp, no barn loft where she might sleep dry, as she’d found the previous night. She could use the gas-pipe for a light, but she had no fuel for a campfire and she doubted there was any to be found on this rocky peninsula.

She coughed again. It came from an ominously deep inner pocket of her chest. The phlegm it brought up was real enough that her fancies about just lying down to die on this doorstep became an awful possibility of illness teaming up with exposure to take her young life. Perhaps she should go down to Vyenn and throw herself on the mercy of the poorhouse, as the doorman suggested.

Maybe the priests were right. You did get punished for your sins in this life as well as the next if you didn’t immediately offer up an atonement. She’d defied the Captain, lied, even stolen from farmers’ fields on her journey. It had all come so easily to her in her zeal to arrive at the Serpentine. Even worse, she’d proved good at it. She hadn’t confessed or offered atonement for any of it yet. Perhaps she was naturally bad, after all. She’d been told often enough that she’d been conceived in sin. That old witch the Captain employed to keep night-watch over his charges had told her that the disgraceful circumstances of her birth were revealed by her stutter. Sure sign that a child’s been conceived with coin for payment clasped tight in the whore’s hand . . . Then there was that gaunt teacher with the badly fitted false teeth who told the children of the Lodge that evil nature could be inherited, like her freckles, and that she would have to pay for her mother’s grievous faults, as her mother had died before setting the balance right. He’d taken the Lodge children to the altar-house, lining them up along a bench on the back wall where they wouldn’t be mistaken for belonging to the respectable town families, and made disagreeable droning noises through his nose whenever the priests talked of faults being passed about like contagion.

She coughed again. This one was worse. It hurt. Then she retreated into herself and fell into a half sleep, a talent she’d learned on nights outdoors with the Lodge’s chickens after they lost one to a fox or on long winter nights when she was punished by keeping the fires up. The great central fireplace towered over her early years even more than the Captain. Sitting before it, she’d developed a knack for dreaming without actually sleeping. The Captain would beat you for sleeping on duty, and he liked to sneak up and terrify you by choking you awake. He’d then tell you a ghastly tale, his breath reeking over his black-traced teeth, of entire crews who’d been gutted and strung up in their rigging by pirates because the watch fell asleep.

Motion at the base of the stairs roused her back to wakefulness as though she’d heard the Captain’s heavy boots. She blinked crud out of her eyes and shielded them so the light from the little gas-flame didn’t spoil her vision.

A short, fat man in a thick sheepskin vest and a muddy overcoat was leading another girl of her age behind him, tied together about the waist like mountaineers. The girl was in a heavy boat cloak and looked as though she’d been caught in a mudslide, making Ileth feel a little better about her own bedraggled appearance. The girl was saying something about the gate but stopped as soon as she caught sight of Ileth. The short, fat man straightened and let out a long, relieved breath.

“Appearances, miss. We’re here,” the man said, wheezing as he untied the line from the girl’s waist before stepping out of his own much wider loop. The Captain would have offered a few blistering words over the condition of the rope and the knots.

The girl tossed the line away in the manner of one used to discarding tools for which she had no more use.

Ileth doubted their last meal was a handful of berries from the roadside. They both looked like hot breakfasts with a choice of honey or fruit mash.

The girl had a face that was mostly chin and cheekbones, with the deadly sort of prettiness of an ornate dagger. Her outer eyebrows were subtly shaped and ended with something like pen art, the way a manuscript illuminator might add an artful flourish to the beginning and end of a letter. Ileth idly wondered what it would be like to spend an hour having art drawn at the edge of each eye.

“Another miracle,” the new girl said in an urbane accent. “Thank you, Falth. Mother chose well when she named you to see this through.”

“You’re very kind, miss. I hope if you write her an account of your trip, you’ll repeat that.”

“I’ll begin it with that, Falth, and mention it again as a postscript.” Ileth marked the girl’s tight-clenched hands. She was human enough to be anxious, then.

“I’m sure—” the servant began.

“I’m sure I want to get under a roof.”

Obviously a Name, that one. Ileth was northern-bred and had seen only one city, and that from a distance, but she’d still lived in the world enough to tell a Sammerdam hothouse tulip from a pasture-wall morningeye.

The servant moved to help his charge up the stairs to the threshold, but she waved him off. “Stairs I can manage.”

The Name gave Ileth just long enough of a stare to categorize her as nothing having to do with the fortress. “I suppose you want to clean my boots and dry my cloak.”

“Boots are—Boots are my specialty, miss,” Ileth said.

The Name offered a tired smirk. “Here’s a suggestion, meant kindly: at least get up off the ground when conversing. You’ll find yourself with more work if you exhibit some manners.”

Ileth didn’t mind the correction. She was relieved not to be asked about her stutter, for once.

With that business concluded, the Name reached up and tapped the dragon-scale knocker. It amplified her genteel rap admirably.

“State your business,” the raspy voice said, so alike to her own attempt at the red door that it might have come from her memory.

“Santeel Dun Troot, arriving,” the servant Falth announced.

“Has she a letter of introduction?”

“It was sent and accepted this spring,” Falth said, displaying a sort of folded letter-and-envelope in one with a wax seal and a bit of ribbon.

The young woman dropped her heavy cowl. The doll-like arrangement of hair and lace collar stole Ileth’s breath. Her skin was a ceramic white. Straight hair powdered white save for two black strands descending either cheek framed her face from precise bangs, as though serving as no purpose other than a frame for the chalky complexion untouched by dirt or weather.

The Name made a little dip of an obeisance to the unseen presence on the other side of the red door.

It occurred to her that perhaps she should have played the part of casual servant better as the bolt slid open. Once within the fortress, she might get a chance to join the other would-be dragoneers.

“You’re welcome to the Serpentine, applicant,” the warden said. Ileth leaned a bit but couldn’t make out more than a shadowy shape thanks to the glare of the gas-light. “No guardians, consorts, companions, tutors, servants, or pets, though. Your man will have to leave you here.”

Though weary, Ileth wondered at that order. Did it reflect how hard it was to part an applicant from their household? And she felt a minor flutter at the use of the word consort. She knew they existed, but she’d never met a professional consort. Just amateurs. How many apprentice-aged youths even had such associations?

“Yes, I am aware of the Academy’s rules.” Santeel Dun Troot turned to her servant. “Falth, thank you.” She walked back down the stairs at a careful, measured pace. “I was hoping they’d at least shelter you until dawn.”

“Oh, no matter, miss.” Ileth wanted to rub herself against his soothing tone like a cat; she couldn’t recall ever hearing such a melodious voice. Falth handed over a beautifully woven tapestry that had been turned into a clasped bag with a leather shoulder strap. “I would hang that cloak to dry first and then beat the mud loose. Who knows what sort of laundry they have here.”

“Never mind the cloak. You get a good room at the inn. Sleep in. Stay tomorrow night too, with plenty to eat and drink in between. Bring in the local doctor if you have stiffness, you might need a liniment. Don’t even think about what Mother would say about the expense. You’ve earned it after all this.”

“I’m sure I will be fine. You’d best be off. He’s waiting for you at the door.” Falth was too well bred to point with anything but his chin, but the gesture toward the door couldn’t be mistaken.

Santeel Dun Troot cleared her throat. “Please, Falth, some of those things I said to you over . . . well, I didn’t mean them. Forgive me.”

“I don’t remember anything to forgive, miss. I was busy coping with that dreadful mud.”

“Still, it was wrong of me to speak that way, whether you say you heard anything or not.”

“Thank you, miss. Eyes ahead, not behind, as your father says. Good luck to you at your examination. I’m sure you’ll do the Name Dun Troot credit.”

Said Name took a deep breath and hurried up the steps, clutching her fine bag with straining fingers. The door shut and a bolt slid home.

So easy, with a Name and letter.

Falth took out a fine handkerchief and wiped his face. He looked at the soil that came off with distaste. “Now why couldn’t all this have been handled at the gate? You must apply at the door. Dragoneers. Fah. I suppose they just fly in. Who needs a proper path for that?” He resettled his own, smaller traveling bag across his back and only then looked down at Ileth.

“Aren’t you cold, out here in the wind?”

Ileth just nodded. It was better than stuttering.

“You’re not pennymonging, obviously. Are you an applicant?”

This time she paused for a moment before nodding. The admission made her miserable.

Falth stepped up to the door and peeked about the edges, showing a lightness of foot and a grace that surprised her in such a stout man.

“You must be about her age. If they do let you in,” Falth said, his voice measured to just overcome the wind, “I’m sure the Dun Troot family would be most grateful for news, especially if she isn’t doing her utmost. It’s important, supremely important, to her mother and father that she at least earn her apprentice sash. They would be intensely interested if anything stands in the way of that, either in her behavior or in the actions of others. Can you write?”

“Yes.”

“Would you be willing to be a friend to the Name Dun Troot inside the Serpentine?”

Ileth tried to clear the fatigue and disappointment from her mind. What was he after? Better yet, what was he offering? She’d be no use to the Name Dun Troot sitting outside the shabby red door.

“Why—Why me?”

Falth smiled a practiced smile. He waved his hand at the doorstep as if to say, Behold! All the choices I have, rank upon rank of them!

“Maybe if we’d arrived with the others when the gate was open I would have made the offer to another. You’re a northern girl by accent. You northern types don’t accept commissions lightly and are generally reliable once your promise is dragged out of you. And forgive me if I tread heavily, but someone of your age and sex who has found her way here on her own and is quietly sitting in the dark and the wet must have a certain amount of wit and will. More than one boy on his way to the Serpentine has found himself waylaid and forcibly joined to a bargeman’s crew or a mine or a lumber camp. As for girls—well, either you are too innocent to understand the risks you’ve run or you’ve lived in the world and anything I might add would just be insulting to the courage that brought you this far.”

She shrugged in reply. Handy gesture: citified enough to show that she wasn’t just out of the sheep pens, yet noncommittal. The Captain found shrugs objectionable—he liked direct answers in a firm voice—and she was still fresh enough out of his Lodge for its use to thrill her.

“I’ve not m-much hope of being admitted, sir.”

Falth extracted a purse and scriptbook from a hidden recess in his cloak.

She held out her hand. “I won’t be paid to spy on someone.”

“I wasn’t going to. The friendship of the Name Dun Troot can’t be counted in coin such that I’d carry. I have three preaddressed, taxed, and carriage-paid packets. You’ll find ample blank space for any message you wish to write; simply fold them back up as you found them and seal with whatever candle is handy. Three in case one goes amiss. I shall reply with other blanks. Write me in charcoal if you can’t get a quill and ink. But do write.”

“Even charcoal pencils cost,” Ileth said. He’d identified her as a northerner; she might as well act the part.

“I can offer you something more valuable than a few figs.[1] I’ve spent some time learning what I can of the dragoneers and their ways. I’ll offer you my intelligence for yours. The better your intelligence, the better my replies will be. I may even be able to help get you on the other side of that shabby little privy door up there, in exchange for your promise.”

She gulped. “You—You—You have my promise. My name is Ileth, of the Freesand on the North Coast. I will post you those three bulletins.”

He handed them over to her with a distinct bow of his head—but his head only. Still, the novelty of having a full-grown man make even a perfunctory obeisance gave her a tingle. She felt oddly heartened. If she did make it into the Serpentine, she’d receive such compliments as a matter of course. From the mannered, that is.

He leaned close, his voice a reassuring caress. “Then here is my intelligence: you never know what the dragoneers will consider as a test or illustration of one’s character. Always act as though you are being examined by a jury.” He gestured at the wall above with his chin, much in the same manner he’d directed his charge.

Ileth glanced up. All she saw was the Guard above, a silhouette with that vaguely fore-and-aft-rigged hat of the dragoneers. The sentry didn’t appear to be making any effort to listen to what they were saying, or even watch the interplay between man and girl.

Falth read the confusion that must have crept over her face and continued: “I’ll give you an example: there was one of your age, an apprentice by the name of Sabian, traveling with a pair of dragoneers and their dragons in the Hierophant’s War. They operated out of some small mountainside cave above the tree line in the Ludium, I suppose, as that’s the only range of that height in that war. As usual, while one dragoneer scouted the area, the other hunted until they had sufficient game for a hearty meal for the dragons—dragons must be well fed to fight properly, I’m sure you know—and they left Sabian to dress the game and hang it properly. Their commission went badly. Both dragoneers were killed, one of the dragons was grounded, and in the following efforts to come to the aid of the injured dragon everyone simply forgot about the cave and Sabian.

“The war dragged on and the dragon who hadn’t been injured remembered Sabian. At the first chance he flew to the cave with his new dragoneer. Sabian was still there, after a fashion. They found him seated just outside the cave, frozen like a winter pumpkin, with his still-cocked crossbow across his lap.”

Falth shuddered in the light of the little gas-flame.

“Sabian could have abandoned the cave and found his way back to people, sheltered in a monastery or whatever you find in those mountains until some sort of accommodation was reached and he could be returned to the Serpentine, but he stayed at his post. The Dragoneers have made sure Sabian will never be forgotten again. They commissioned a statue from Therace Apitmothees himself—do you know the man’s work?”

Ileth indicated she didn’t with a shake of her head.

“Well, he’s been dead longer than you’ve been alive now, but even then, his work commanded immense sums. Sabian’s Vigil it’s called. Based on how they found him. It’s in the Serpentine somewhere, I believe. I should think you’ll hear the story if you ever get inside. The point is, Sabian was given orders, and whatever happened to him—I suppose starvation and the cold are the most likely explanations—happened because he’d been given a commission and died rather than fail in his duty. Thought it might give you heart for whatever the Fates have placed on your road, Ileth.”

“I don’t—I don’t see how this helps me. I’m not even inside yet.”

“The Republic’s Dragoneers make a certain fetish of willpower in carrying out one’s duty. So keep trying to gain admittance. They might be wondering just how much grit is in you. Admittedly, there’s some uncertainty, as you haven’t made it across the threshold yet or taken your oath. They’re still dragoneers and I only know their habits from dinner-table talk and drawing-room entertainments. I’ve never even conversed with one until today.”

She nodded. At the moment, she didn’t see how Falth’s story would get her anointed by anything but the night’s rain. But she could consider it at leisure. It looked like she had a cold, uncomfortable night ahead of her.

“I sincerely hope you make it in. Not just for the sake of the Name of Dun Troot, Ileth. For you to be sitting here in the wet with a cut-open face, either you have left something much worse behind or you have your eyes fixed on your fate-star. Maybe a little of both, eh? Well, I’ve done for you what I can. Make the most of it.”

With that, he turned and stepped onto the path leading back to the cliff’s edge and the road beyond. She envied him his easy life. Coin in his purse for all the food he might care to eat—just imagine, being able to sit down in an inn or tavern and have the owner’s people bring you as much as you like!—and if the coin ran out, or was stolen, fill your purse at a banking house by scribbling your name down on a draft.

Envy comes easy when you’re hungry and cold. Awful of her. She was becoming quite the collector of sins since she left the Lodge. She thought of an illustration in a copybook they’d been given to work from when she’d first learned her letters; there was an engraving of a hunched-over, evil-looking man with sins written on rolls of paper and stuck, bloodily, into his back with pins the size of knitting needles. A PAINFULL TALLY read the bold-lettered legend.

“Make the most of it,” she repeated. “Get up off the ground when conversing.”

Stuff the Dun Troots and their Name.

Tempted to hurl the addressed letter-envelopes off the cliff and into the sea, she sat back down to fight the useless impulse. Naturally someone with a Name would still be admitted. There was probably some kind of contract between the Serpentine and this Santeel Dun Troot’s family, with plenty of connections to make trouble if a daughter of the Dun Troot family didn’t have her chance to become a novice over something as minor as a delayed journey along the road from Asposis or Sammerdam.

Why such a girl would want to leave the undoubtable comforts of her home and station was more of a mystery. Ileth knew her own reasons the way she knew the shape of her hand but wondered why a Name would attach such importance to their daughter being taken in by the Serpentine. A marriageable daughter with both beauty and money would be more of an asset to the family than someone apprenticed to the dragoneers. At least that was how she thought matters stood with such families. Even in the north, when two famous Names were joined through marriage, there was talk about what each gained from the transaction. Maybe this Santeel was difficult, and the family had decided that a term of service collecting dragon manure or whatever they called it would do her some good. Or maybe Santeel Dun Troot had seen a dragon in a grand review, decided she wanted to sit astride such a commanding creature in a parade down the Archway in Sammerdam, and demanded that her family make it come true for her. Ileth, in a mood to think the worst of the girl, settled on that explanation.

The only dragon Ileth had ever seen up close was the one at the well. But one was enough. She wished, hoped, and planned to be among them since that meeting. Work with them. On a commission of importance, not parading down a street wide enough to be a river while cheering people threw flowers. From that meeting on, a new light shone into her life and she kept her face to it, like a sunflower following the sun. Duty, reputation, responsibility for the awesome power of a dragon—that was the dragoneer ideal she’d hugged in her thoughts in her lumpy, wool-sheeted bed at the Lodge.

She settled back down into her chilly half sleep, warmed by the toasty old imaginings. She let the sound of the wind and the faint echoes from the lake below tranquilize her. The philosophers said that babies in the womb probably heard something like it as they floated in their mother waters, waiting for their entrance into a new world.

The remainder of the night passed with only a messenger arriving, less muddy than she or those of the Dun Troot Name. Judging from his attire, he’d ridden. Strange that they made even messengers negotiate the cliff’s edge. It seemed like an unnecessary risk. Suppose the rider was exhausted; both he and his message could end up at the bottom of the cliff. He, too, was admitted, only to emerge within an hour wiping something that was probably deliciously warming from his lips. He smelled of sweat, both his own and his horse’s, and wet leather. He gave her one quizzical glance but otherwise ignored her.

Blearily, he marked the first hint of dawn. The clouds must have broken up a little overnight and the fog departed to wherever fog goes, for she could make out stars and the outline of white-hatted mountains rising steeply on the other side of the vast lake. Three of those mountains were somewhat larger, the White Sisters, she knew they were called, and their silhouettes huddling together reminded her, oddly, of the three watchmen she’d first talked to at the gate.

With that vague thought, she fell back into a deeper doze until the sun struck out from the serrated skyline. She’d missed her first dawn over the Skylake. The water below her was the blue she’d heard described as deep and gemlike and brilliant, and it proved beautifully true. The waters on the North Coast always looked foamy; they rarely stood still. The Skylake was as different from that as a polished stone is to sand.

The sight gave her some satisfaction. Even if her journey came to naught, she’d seen the waters of the Skylake. How many grandmothers up in the Freesand had done as much as that?

Thanks to the growing light she could see the lakeside town beneath the Serpentine. Most of the buildings were white stucco and tarry timber, and there were little flecks of color about that she assumed were planters and flower boxes. Inland, fields and grazing lands were jealously guarded by a rock wall, with a pair of stout, old-fashioned circular towers protecting the road entrance. The towers were overgrown and sprouted wildflowers at the top like close-cropped hair.

The fishing vessels had already put out. Ileth knew a fishing boat at a glance and watched them with some interest. They looked to be round-bottomed, unlike many of the boats on the Freesand, which had to be built with unweatherly flat bottoms to make it over the many bars and snags of her home bay. Bigger vessels, coasters carrying cargo, were tied up to the wharves. Only a few stragglers and small boats on other business remained near the docks and wharves ringing the town in a lopsided horseshoe shape.

Vyenn, it was called. Formerly Vyenn on the Godspring, and before that something else she couldn’t remember that had to do with salt. What education she had mostly came through tales told by the Captain’s visitors and guests, shipmen or boatmen all. Several had been to Vyenn and she’d done her best to draw them out over the years without seeming too interested, asking about the differences between river trade and coastal sailing.

With her spirit rallied by the sun and view, she tried the door again. Three successive knocks, each louder than the last, elicited no response.

She let out one stammering “Hello” up at the wall and gave up. The Guard looking out over the entrance didn’t even pause in his pacing. Perhaps the night watchman had given orders that she was to be ignored. She didn’t have night soil dumped on her head, anyway. The single call had managed to wake her appetite, too, and she was ravenous from her exertions and the cold night. With stiff, reluctant legs she tried the cliffside path again with the help of daylight and saw a treacherous ravine leading down to the lakeside. She managed it without too much difficulty. She noticed that the bottom of the cliff was strewn with broken barrels, rusted iron framing, and other odds and ends you tended to find on a lakeshore near a town, with a stave or reinforcement bar or two projecting out of the water like an accusing finger.

She followed the path back to the gate. This time there were no calls or orders from the watchers, who couldn’t have missed her as she negotiated the hand rope around the south tower. She was in front of the gate in a moment and took it in.

The gate, seen in daylight, was much more impressive than it had been at night. There was a low sort of ditch, a dry moat, before the wall bridged by the road. She’d missed that completely in the dark. The gate itself was more of a grate or a fence, made of thick woven iron sheets laced in an elaborate pattern that must have been fantastically difficult to fashion, with wooden paneling behind, grain beautifully finished and gleaming. The design probably signified something, but she had little knowledge of art and less use for it, at least up to now. She doubted it had ever had to withstand a siege. She knew from tales that there’d once been warfare in this valley, but that was in the murky past before the Republic or even the Dragon-Troth. The bridge over the ravine looked as though it could be pulled up by removing the timbers from their rests.

A bell rang out, three deep, distinct bong! signals sounding within the Serpentine. They were answered, faintly, by another one in town—the bell ringer below probably took his cue from the fortress.

Her empty stomach heard the bells and her hunger rallied and gnawed at her. She could bear hunger; one of the Captain’s favorite disciplines was deprivation of meals for a day or two. She could assuage it easily enough if she just had some water.

She waited another minute to see if the tolling of the bell might bring an opening of the grate-gate. But the entry remained closed and the road to the Serpentine deserted. It would be a warm day, she decided, judging the sun and the clouds scattering before like white dust-balls swept off by a broom. She would have to find some shade; she’d been warned that skin scorched easily up in the mountains.

Standing in the shade of the wings, she traced the meeting of the two halves of the gate with a forefinger, imagining some magic that would open them. Get me inside, fate, and I will prove myself a great dragoneer . . . dutiful and skilled and kind like Annis. All she learned was that the woven steel looked as though it parted at the center, where multiple plates of metal met like interlaced fingers. The gate edge, where it met, was fitted into some kind of channel and each side had a wheel that ran in an arced groove, but she saw no other mechanism for opening it. She liked devices and had once gotten into painful trouble for taking apart an old sun-measuring device of the Captain’s that had a broken handle and a degree-arrow that spun so freely it was useless.

Dragons and clever machinery. She longed to be inside, learning the secrets of the Serpentine. She wondered what the applicants who’d managed to make it inside the gate yesterday were doing. She heard vague sounds of activity within, shouts and calls, but it was far off and faint, like farmers singing out in the distance as they raked and stacked the hay.

A watchman pacing back and forth between the dragon wings ignored her. But another figure could just be seen around the nearer of the two arcing dragon wings. In the light, she could see he had a gleaming badge on the long fore-and-aft-rigged hat of his. Perhaps the hats symbolized dragons, thin at either end and thicker in the middle. No wings, though—unless they were hidden earflaps.

“Gate won’t open until market day,” the one standing still said. He had thick lips and was handsome in a well-fed way. He knew just how loud to make his voice clearly heard without shouting. “Four more days.”

That would be five days without food, and seven without a bed. Unless she took the advice of the man at the red door and retreated to town. No, she’d see her siege through. One fourteen-year-old against the Serpentine.

She filled her lungs. “I’m an applicant to the Academy,” she shouted.

“Then you should have been here yesterday.” His head disappeared, then reappeared. “I’m sorry,” she just caught over the wind.

“Could I take some water?” she asked. “I’m terribly thirsty.”

“There’s a cistern up the road.”

Cruel. Even the lowliest posthouse would pass a bowl of water through the door if you asked. Water wasn’t scarce anywhere in the Vales.

Damp, hungry, and tired, in roughly that order, she considered her options. Something must be happening with the applicants who’d been admitted, and the chances of her joining their ranks fell with each hour that passed. She should have pressed Falth for ideas to gain entry. Her remaining coin wouldn’t buy more than old bread and maybe a cheese rind, or she’d have dined on something other than roadside berries yesterday. If she became desperately hungry there was always the lake.

She glanced up at the green hillsides sloping up from the Serpentine. There were encampments dotting what looked like a pasture, probably family of some of the applicants, waiting for the testing to be finished. They’d have picked over everything nearby. A roadside sculpture of some kind under a wooden sheltering roof was probably the cistern the watchman had mentioned.

She wished she had a belt to tighten. Well, the next best thing to a meal was a drink and a wash, and she could manage that at the cistern. Maybe there was some secret tradition: you weren’t admitted if you couldn’t be bothered to wash your face.

She followed the puddled road—how easy it was to negotiate when you weren’t running in the dark—up to the cistern. It was a simple thing, an all-purpose cement trough fed by a small trickle. There was some slimy growth in the cistern, slick green stuff such as you could find clinging to the lee sides of river rocks. A clever sort of metal screw-plug set into a fitting would allow the trough to fill. Fascinated, she closed the plug and the flow of the water from the trickle increased.

She drank, which brought on another coughing fit; washed her face and hands and drank again; then opened the screw-drain and sure enough, the flow tapered off to the trickling flow from before. As she turned away from the cistern, she spotted a flash of red in the drainage ditch downslope of the road. She investigated and found a cast-off material that she assumed was a scarf, about a third of it soiled with mud. It was a good weave of dyed wool and smelled distinctly like horse. It had probably fallen from some mount or carriage.

Clutching her find with the first sense of satisfaction she’d felt since arriving at the Serpentine, she washed and wrung out the scarf at the cistern and carried it back up the road, swinging it about in the sunlight to dry it and using it to stretch her shoulders behind her. The brightness of the red somehow encouraged her and she wound it about her neck. It itched but it was warm.

Refreshed, she had the confidence to go back along the cliff and bang on the door.

“Just to let you know, I’m st-still here,” she said. The call drew out a racking cough, but she felt equal to even illness in the morning sun.

The red door didn’t care either way, and no voice responded from behind it or on the wall. She felt a little let down. She was in the mood to shout defiance and argue. She did notice that the pipelike gas-light fixture had been turned off. The metal was still a little warm.

She hung up her cloak on it to dry in the wind and sun. It was a good riding cloak, sized for an unknown girl a little taller. She’d had to sell her own coat from the Captain’s. The riding cloak had been given to her by a kindly butcher’s wife who’d pitied her shivering in the mountain air as she sold her some tripe and hoof gelatin. Slimy stuff but it kept one going for next to nothing. The riding cloak was old and frayed here and there and stained and the buttons didn’t match, but it kept you warm, even when wetted.

Nothing to do but sit and wait, coughing occasionally and feeling headachy from hunger. She tried to keep her mind occupied so she wouldn’t think about her stomach. Odd that she hadn’t seen, heard, or smelled a dragon all this time. In her imagination they were always alighting and taking off from the Serpentine like birds about a pool. She set about trying to guess at the cargos of the barges and boats in Vyenn below. Fishing seemed to be the principal industry. She watched a coast-barge creep right past the town without bothering to stop; it just turned and started circumnavigating the Serpentine’s peninsula, its sails skillfully worked by what she took to be two men and a boy, until the boat passed out of sight. The day passed slowly, marked only by the progress of the sun and an occasional sounding of loud signal-whistles from inside the Serpentine. Once she heard a sharp, whip-crack-like sound that startled her from her musings.

The day grew decidedly warm and she dozed, head pillowed on her little bundle bag and the recovered red fabric wrapped about her throat.

Traffic on the steps woke her. A man in gray plainclothes beneath a short vivid red cape, an ivory sash, and a single, beautifully wrought shoulder pauldron more decorative than functional—the uniform of a dragoneer—hurried up the steps, holding his sheathed sword so as not to let the scabbard bang on the steps. He was unshaven and he had a bit of what she guessed was meat sauce on his lips. He ignored her as though she were one of the lichen-covered rocks littering the cliff. The door opened for him without his even having to knock. By the time she was fully awake and on her feet the door had closed again.

She rushed up to it and shot the timbers. “Hello?”

“You’re still here?” the gruff voice from the previous night asked. She could just make out the loom of a figure, not quite as tall as the Captain, on the other side.

“Is it possible for me to have a hear-hearing?”

The figure slowly turned away, then turned back.

“Part of the challenge, girl, is to be here on time,” the gruff voice said, in the harsh tone of a schoolmaster with a miscreant. “I don’t know what kind of education you have or haven’t had, but the phrase too late to make a difference haunts many an old battlefield. Money can be reaccumulated. Losses, even of a dragon, can be replaced. But once an hour is gone, no worldly power can restore it. Understand?”

She nodded.

“Remember that, wherever you fetch up.”

With that, he departed the door again. She wondered if he’d dropped her a hint, to see if she had the wit and determination to make use of it. Wherever certainly included the Serpentine.

She sat on the step again, feeling oddly lonely. She’d been on her own, more on her own than she’d ever been in her life, for the last twelve—no, thirteen—days, but she’d never felt so apart from everything. She was like a shipwrecked mariner with her bare few possessions. The people of the Serpentine and Vyenn were going about their lives. She haunted the edge of their routines like a ghost, able to observe but not interact.

The sun was already falling behind the mountains to the west. It would grow cool soon. She retrieved her coat, now mostly dry, with the remaining damp in the lower third where it would do the least harm. But it wouldn’t remain so for long; the clouds were thickening.

Sitting on the stones drained life and heat from her. If she was to spend another night on the doorstep, she should fashion something to get herself up off the ground. She thought about the shoreline. You could sometimes find odds and ends washed up, if you were willing to get wet and dirty in the search.

Well, if life was a test and time couldn’t be retrieved, she’d best get to it. The light was fading.

She’d marked the ravine leading down to the lakeshore on her previous trips and decided to explore it while the sky was still light. She disturbed some young grasshoppers but had no luck catching one and missed an easy snack. Though she preferred them toasted over a fire and drizzled with a little honey, she was now desperate enough to eat one raw.

She made it to the lakeshore, coughing with the exertion, and explored the spot where she’d seen some birds poking around. The birds meant there might be a consistent current bringing food in. There was some driftwood and darting tiny fish, but nothing she could sit on. Moving a little out onto the peninsula, she recovered a possibility at last, a torn-up basket that might have been used for laundry. It was made from basket-reeds and wouldn’t support her weight if she turned it over and sat on it. Still, it would be insulation of a sort. She smashed it in such a way that it folded, then folded what was left again into a square about the size of a chair cushion. On the way back out of the ravine she seized a big snail off a rock and sucked it out of its shell. Where there was one, there might be more, and Ileth hunted about and found three others, smaller but no less disgusting to extract. They were slimy and revolting and wiggled when they went down her throat.

Five minutes later she felt a little less light-headed from her hunger. Whatever good they did her was probably used up in the climb back to the door.

The broken carrier crackled under her as she sat, with her hooded cloak ready, and waited for the rain. Sure enough, it came, the same heavy drizzle as the previous evening on her last stretch of travel. Probably some working of summer sun, the mountains, and the giant lake. She drew the hood of the cloak close, picked the most substantial trickle off the wall, and refreshed herself with the rainwater. Then she marked how the water ran off the Serpentine and settled herself to be out of the worst of it.

Unlike the previous night, the rain passed after an hour or so, but she heard the ominous sound of thunder and caught a flash of light illuminating the cloud line inland. She hoped the storm was moving away.

She could just see a fringe of light around a mountainous cone of rock that sat astride the peninsula. She imagined it must come from the famous lighthouse.

As she searched the landscape, motion caught her eye. A dragon passed overhead, a high shadow, mostly wings and tail. The familiar thrill she always experienced when seeing one of the great, rare beasts warmed her like a hot drink.

The dragon passed directly over the Serpentine and began a long, sweeping turn, riding the wind with the grace of a petrel despite its size. The darkness obscured its color. It dropped from sight behind the fortress. A whistle trilled from the fortress. Its long blast cut through the stiff wind remarkably well, then two quick shrieking hoots that sounded metallic and mechanical. She wondered what two blasts of a whistle meant when a dragon came in for a landing.

Faint, shouted orders came over the wall. It must have landed. She wished she were on the other side again, not because she’d be fed, or dry, but just so she could watch a dragon come in for a landing and see the people attend to it. She wanted to watch its wings fold, its tail curl as it settled so the rider could dismount, then hear it speak to the staff.

She imagined the activity of the dragon’s landing. Too bad there were no trees on the peninsula, so she could climb one and look over the wall.

“I’m going out, blast you,” and a sudden clatter broke her thoughts.

A youth made mostly of arms and legs threw open the door and exploded into the night next to her. He made it to the bottom of the stairs and continued going down even though the stairs stopped, sinking first to his knees before he went on all fours. He gave a great doglike heave and the contents of his stomach struck the little landing with a splat!

Ileth’s empty stomach gave an upward lurch in sympathy.

The youth rocked back on his haunches and wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his rough work shirt. He wore loose-fitting canvas clothing that wouldn’t have looked out of place on the sailors of her own northern coastline, right down to the loop-and-peg that you could use to close the collar tight. If she’d greeted him at the Captain’s Lodge she would have taken him for a young visiting shipmate. He had a plain white sash wound about his waist and tied tight, which sailors didn’t, and he lacked the various rings and bracers and even tattoos sailors often wore to record their travels and adventures.

“Are you all-all right?” she asked. In her concern for him the words flowed out easily enough.

He didn’t seem to hear her for a moment, then slowly turned his head.

“I ask myself that more and more,” he said.

She was rehearsing words again when a coughing fit struck.

“And you, are you all right?” he said in turn. He stood and, stepping toward her, pulled a handkerchief from his pocket (a sailor wouldn’t have a pocket handkerchief either), glanced at it and thought better of it, and shoved it back into his clothing.

She stood and backed away a step. “Best keep away. Might pass it to you,” she stammered, and half willed up another cough as if to illustrate her illness. Everyone knew coughs could be passed around like gossip. Most homes in the Freesand had a little space in the rafters for the ill, up sick was how it was usually phrased.

“Mine’s not contagious. It’s from the dragon. Me and a mate had to bring his ale-draft. Auguriscious always wants a whole hogshead when he comes in from a flight. Most dragons take a little wine now and then, but he’s the only one I’ve ever met that likes beer. He burped it back right into my face. What a reek. I’ve been here two years and I’m still not used to it.”

Ileth gave him an encouraging nod and smile.

“They rag me about it. Call me Tosser.”

He had an interesting face. The two halves didn’t quite match.

“That bad?” she managed to say, before a cough caught up with her.

“Like fish guts and rotten eggs. They burn this sort of gunk in the Beehive, but that just adds a sweet overlay to the smell.”

“Oliban,” she said, the word popping out easily. She was proud she knew it. “It’s . . . boiled down tree sap.”

“You been around it?”

“No, just heard about it some-somewhere,” she said. “Never sm-smelled it. I just know its origin . . . it comes from certain coasts. Deserts. Something—about fog a lot of the time and dry air the rest.” All the talk brought on another coughing fit.

“Are you all right?”

“I stutter. Or the . . . the w-word won’t . . . come.”

“Oh, of course. My father does that a bit too. Especially when he’s nervous, or when he’s tired.”

She nodded.

The youth smiled. “You are a student of dragons? Is your father a learned man? We get visitors, men of the sciences, here sometimes.”

She shook her head. “Here as an applicant.” She showed him the placard.

“Haven’t they . . . They’re—oh. I see now. Came too late?”

She nodded in reply.

“I heard at dinner there was an applicant girl who came late, all by herself. That’s you, I take it?”

She just smiled and shrugged in reply.

“Long trip?”

“Twelve d-days, about. Got lost m-more than once.”

“What, all on your own?”

She nodded.

“A girl your age? You’re a credit to your father’s name. From the north? You sound northern.”

“The coast, north of Stavanzer. The Freesand.”

“Ah. I’m from the other end. Practically under the Antonine Falls.”

“What do you do here?”

“I’m trying to become a dragoneer, same as you. Applied. Noviced. Made apprentice last year. Who are your people? Uthrons?”

“Never met one. I’m of . . . of no name.”

“Oh. Didn’t mean to offend. Thought you weren’t offering your name since no one introduced us, so I just assumed—I’m Yael Duskirk.” He bowed, looking uncomfortable.

“Ileth,” she said, bobbing in the quick manner she’d been taught from childhood.

“My people aren’t much of a Name either. My father was in the Auxiliaries and had been about dragons a bit there. Until he got a septic wound and they had to take his leg off above the knee. So he was out, but losing that leg more or less got me in here with a letter. Now Mother’s hoping I can distinguish the family in such a way that we’ll be the Heem Duskirks, or even the Dun Duskirks. Though really, titles don’t count for much inside the Serpentine. People think they’re all aristocratic throwbacks, but they’re not. I’ve given orders to men with a Vor in their name. There are exceptions, but they prove the rule.”

“What do you do when you’re not bringing the dragons a drink or sicking up?”

He took the jibe well, tilting his head and scrunching up his face in a way Ileth found appealing, like a dog hearing a new whistle-call for the first time. “I’m apprenticed in the kitchens. The Serpentine—in the yarns it’s all taking off into stormy skies and dueling and burning and triple-sealed message pouches, but it’s not. Not in real life day-to-day. It’s shoveling food at one end of the dragons and still more shoveling at the other end and keeping the middle trimmed and polished. Speaking of which, I should get back to it. I enjoyed talking to you. Ileth. Have I got it right?”

She nodded and started to speak, but her stutter and her cough joined forces and she had to discreetly bring up phlegm. She held up her hand so he wouldn’t leave without her being able to say good-bye.

“Same for me. Busy—out here. Maybe they’ll give me a job as an apprentice doorstop.”

He joined his two fists, knuckles at her, as though holding a line. Or perhaps reins. “That’s the angle, Ileth.”

She’d never seen the gesture, but a smile spread across both halves of his mismatched face.

He turned for the door, giving her a chance to discreetly spit out the mucus she’d been keeping in her mouth. Then she coughed again, leaning on her thighs as she did so. The spasm exhausted her.

On the sixth day after her arrival the main gate opened.

On the positive side, she was rarely hungry now and her cough had faded into a few morning hacks to clear out her lungs. She’d never developed a fever or other signs of serious illness. But the absence of hunger made her wonder if she was starving to death, and though she’d lost that discomfort there were others. She hardly slept, and the lack of sleep meant she could hardly think—though that may have been a blessing, as her thoughts as the days passed were a tumult of anxieties that fought and yowled like a barrel full of cats rolled down a hill.

She felt colder than someone camping outside should be, even in a mountain summer. She kept dreaming that she was back in the Lodge at night, and she whiled away the days trying to catch crayfish and snails.

So when the doorkeeper who’d refused her entry told her they were letting the rejects go and that there were drummers out front looking for workers, even girls, she forced herself to rise and act. She found the energy to even run briefly in her scramble to the corner of the tower, practically swinging on the hand ropes as she rounded the corner.

The selection had been made and announced, it seemed, and the rejects from the Academy filed out. A few had black eyes and bruises; all had nicks and cuts visible on their hands, knees, and elbows. What had passed within the walls? It almost made her glad she was starving next to the red door.

Some of the dismissed looked miserable, some relieved, some blankly unreadable. They all shuffled tiredly across the ditch before the walls, clutching musical instruments, cold-weather gear, tied-up stacks of books, or bundles and travel cases. A gathering of family members, servants, and not a few priests awaited them.

“The Auxiliaries need men and women!” a drummer, standing up in a wheelbarrow, bellowed as a broad-shouldered, older woman next to him rang a handbell for attention. “If you can push me a hundred paces in the road in this uphill”—he struck the metal tub with his booted heel hard so it made a thump like a drum—“you’ll be enrolled as a first-rate and get meat-ration twice a day. No other qualifications required.”

“Chartered Captain Thornstand Heem Trallsoap seeks brave hearts and nimble feet fit for sea duty taking seal and sharkskin. Shares on profit, three seated mealtimes, and supplied ordinary and shore clothes!” a man in a nautical coat balanced on the saddle of his horse called through a speaking-trumpet. “Seventy silver diadems to each boy on his last cruise, one hundred fifty to ordinary seamen.”

Though the sum sounded fantastic, Ileth had heard enough sailor stories to know that such a “cruise” could potentially last years—not so fabulous a sum if it took four years off you.

“Servants needed!” an aged but hale man said, passing out placards. “Yearly or household! Earn your keep, all feast days recognized, and gifts of coin, tools, and clothing!”

“You want to meet dragoneers, girl?” An artfully turned-out woman in a rich overdress with a servant standing behind fell into step with her. “I can arrange it. Consort work. Not whoring. None of my girls ever get called whores. Fatten you up a bit and put you in a nice dress and you’d be called a beauty.”

She ignored the drummers and shrugged off the insult of being paid to rut about with rich men, walking past them to stand in line for a drink at the cistern. It was crowded this morning, with people filling up their bottles and watering their horses before departing. The noise grew as some of the families celebrated.

“You’re young, you’ll be fine,” a woman next to Ileth who was probably one of the waiting mothers said as they stood in line, gripping Ileth’s forearm in a reassuring squeeze. She had only a little girl whose head came up to Ileth’s waist with her, so her other child must have been accepted. “How’d you get that cut on your chin, one of those beasts? I’ve heard of men being crushed to death when one of them rolls over in its sleep while they’re working on the scale. I say you’re better off. Most of those getting in are fools; they work them half to death for a couple years, only to never ride a dragon before they shove them out the gate and no skills fit for any trade except shoveling up after horses. It’s ten to one against my boy getting on with one and becoming a dragoneer. Probably hundred or more to one for the girls. As I was saying, you’re better off.”

Ileth shrugged.

Another woman, sunburned and tired-looking in a dress with a nice collar that suggested some wealth, added: “I know he’s going to neglect his math, after good money spent on tutors and practice books. Raking up droppings when he should be figuring percentages!” Ileth marked her as an indoor type who kept a shop or sewed clothes for those even better off than her. “If you can figure percentages, well, doors will open for you, won’t they? Better places than mucking about with dragons. But he will have his way. How are you on percentages, girl?”

Ileth just smiled vacantly in reply.

The woman seemed about to reprimand her for not replying to an adult’s question, but a place opened at the cistern before she could add anything else to the conversation and Ileth escaped into the press.

By the time she’d drunk and washed, the throng sorted itself out as locals brought their carts and baskets in to deliver orders and exhibit their wares to the new novices. Family members of those remaining within the Serpentine rushed through the gate to congratulate their offspring, passing purses of money and rolls of writing paper. Ileth saw that the marketplace just inside the gate was roped off. Parents and siblings had to reach across a line to embrace the chosen and give their farewells.

One celebratory family was going around with a flower-haired daughter proffering a gathering-bowl of nuts. The father ladled out scoopfuls to anyone who held out a hand. Ileth hurried and just made it to the edge of the group accepting nuts when a hulking lad shouldered his way by her and struck the bowl on the bottom, sending nuts flying up into the faces of those around. A fistfight promptly broke out and she retreated from the fray. She didn’t have the energy for it, and she’d sooner take a curse than be seen eating nuts off the ground like a squirrel.

Ileth considered going through the gate herself, but seeing the embraces between beaming parents and their embarrassed children, some obviously well-to-do, only a few common as wild onions, kept her from stepping forward. She had no money to spend in the market, and there were already smells of food from some of the carts being brought in. Some vendors had set up little charcoal braziers with skewers of meat already smoking. The mouthwatering smell of hot food would be torture.

Also, there were a couple of strong young watchmen in Serpentine uniform with those fore-and-aft-rigged hats flanking the gate watching her intently. They must have been warned against the girl with the cut on her face and the patched, ill-fitting riding cloak.

Somehow it seemed easier to just return to the doorstep. Maybe after she rested she’d have the energy to pick her way down and find more snails or, if she was quick, a few crayfish.

The faint hubbub of the market faded and vanished. She settled down in her usual spot. She noted, humorlessly, that her butt had scraped the lichen away in all her shifts in the long nighttime vigils. This life as a kind of doorstep decoration felt strangely normal now. The only question was how it would end. She wondered how long she’d last, and what they’d do with her body once she died. She wasn’t truly starving yet. In the Lodge she’d heard stories of shipwrecked mariners lasting weeks on nothing but rainwater caught in their shirts and sun-dried seaweed. But those were hardened men. She’d collapse before then. Some said the dragons were allowed to feast on enemy corpses after a battle or pluck drowned sailors out of the water: “Secure your hatch or you’ll be pickled drakemeat!” the Captain used to say. It made her think there was some truth to the tales.

She shuddered.

Falth’s three blank letters could have the addresses covered and be sold, she supposed. It would certainly be enough to get her a good dinner and a loaf of bread for tomorrow. They were fine paper and paid up. Maybe she’d send him one, confessing that she didn’t get in and had to sell the other two.

She stepped to the cliff. She marked where the birds were feeding when the bolt in the door made its familiar scrape. She turned. A man in velvets with a day cape watched her from the doorway. A face mostly hidden by a black party mask with gold linework covering the eyes and cheeks—a bad burn, it looked like—gleamed pale in the sun.

“I told you the applicants were all inside,” he said. She recognized the voice as the first gruff one to turn her away from the door. “Yet here you are. Still.”

A tempting cooking smell came out the door with him. Ileth’s stomach growled in reply. She could hear music, as well as horns and whistles being sounded in celebration.

More to mask the noises in her stomach than to impress the man, she spoke: “I’ve b-been w-waiting seven years to touch a dra-dragon again. If I . . . if I need to wait one more, that’s what I’ll do.”

“I’m beginning to think you would.” She saw he had a rich red sash wrapped around his waist, with a gold tassel dangling where the sword-frog would be on a dragoneer. His fore-and-aft-rigged cap had some nice fringe, and there was a white cockade on the side where the two halves of the hat folded up and buttoned together. He had a strange lean and dragged a foot as he stepped out, reminding her of one of the locals back home who’d suffered a terrible rupture at the docks and cleaned the streets on the Governor’s pension.

He was obviously someone of importance. The splendid uniform dazzled; it had a dash about it, so different from the grim plainclothes of most officials in the Republic. She was trapped between shrugging his question off and bobbing a greeting. Her body decided to try to do both and erupted in a spasm that must have been a curious sight.

He tilted his head and a ghastly smile opened. “You handle your stutter well. I like that you just talk your way across it. I’ve met some who just confine themselves to a word or two. Were you injured?”

“N-Not that I remember. I can . . . I can control it better when I’m . . . when I’m rested. Just tired now.”

He removed his hat and dabbed the sweat at his scalp. A single patch of hair remained at the back, grown long and braided into a tail, but the few surviving growths elsewhere, black and spiky and looking like trees desperately clinging to a patch of soil on a cliff, were cut into stubble. He was clean-shaven on the parts of his visible face still able to grow hair. It was hard to guess his age.

Their gazes met. It wasn’t that sort of look, the kind she had seen so often at the Captain’s. More of a test, a search to see if some lie hid within her. She met it as defiantly as she could but broke and looked down, ashamed for some reason, and then angry because she was ashamed, and then ashamed again because she let a single stare from a scarred man anger her.

“You don’t have to look away. I wear my injuries with pride. Doesn’t hurt the younger generation to know that dragons aren’t all parades and waving at the fishermen and farmers below. Some people get by on fixing on my nose. It was my best feature even before Ramshill.”

She knew Ramshill was a great victory for the Republic, but not much more than that. He was also having trouble with his lower lip—Ramshill came out more like wamshill, but he also ignored it and just spoke as best as he could.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“No, I’m lucky. Ramshill was a disaster for us, though not for war. Two dead dragons and another crippled; fifteen of the Serpentine lost one way or another.” When she didn’t question him further, he continued: “The strange chance was, my portrait was sketched before my little scrape. The artist was just doing the color when I was struck off the flying list. I had him redo it once I’d healed up a little. But I’m vain enough to have kept the half-finished one. Not for display, just memories.”

“I’m still sorry,” she said. “I’d like to see that portrait. From before.”

“You know how to flatter an old man,” he said. “Where are you from, girl?”

“The North Coast,” she said, heart pounding. This strange conversation was allowing her to hope again. “The-The Freesand, near St-Stavanzer.”

“Who are your people?”

That inevitable question.

“I’m not from any kind of name. Grew up in an orphans’ lodge. My name is Ileth, sir.” She bobbed, a little more slowly and deeply this time. She’d settled on that story, even before her escape from the Lodge. She’d grown up there, that was true, and as soon as you say “orphan” she’d noticed people stopped asking questions. So far no one had asked her if she was an orphan, so she hadn’t had to lie yet.

“That’s a Galantine name. You look like you might have Galantine in your line. Perhaps around the eyes.”

“I don’t know, sir. I’m told my mother wasn’t from the Freesand.”

“Your father?”

There it was.

“A . . . a sailor.”

“You ever do any work, Ileth of the Freesand?”

“Domestic, keeping house for the gen-gentleman who owned the Lodge. Some of us helped the shepherds who didn’t have families yet. From seven to eleven I had . . . sheep and goats in summer pasture. I started ou-out with a pair of goats and took care of the sheep when I got old enough.”

“That’s lonely work. What about wolves and such?”

“None around our bit of the coast. There were wild dogs, but I had a sling.”

“A slinger, eh? You northerners are supposed to be good with slings. Ever hit anything?”

“We had . . . had our own d-dogs. I fed them on rabbit.”

“Do you have your sling?”

“No,” she said. She’d not used her sling in two years and had given it away to a shepherd boy, as she didn’t enjoy hunting and dressing rabbits. “If you could l-lend me one, I could show you.”

“Oh, I don’t have time for an exhibition of skill. I’m just curious. If you know how to use a weapon you get to prove it at the trials. Too bad you missed them.”

“I didn’t so much m-miss them as I was . . . was barred from them.”

“Don’t sauce me, girl.”

“I’m sorry, sir.”

He paused and folded his arms and rubbed his elbows. Ileth thought it was a strange gesture. On a man without a burned face it might be off-putting, but on him it could be called endearing.

“Well, I shouldn’t talk your ear off; stars know I miss mine. Come in and I’ll get you a pudding. Maybe we’ll find you a sling and you can take shots at seagulls fouling our rain catchers or drive away those filthy pigeons in the upper dome of the Rotunda.”

He went back to the red door and opened it for her.

“Welcome to the Academy at the Serpentine, novice. My name is Caseen—like you I’m of no name, no name at all—but even so, it would be best for you to refer to me as the Master of Novices.”