Novice Dragoneer

2

Could it be true? she thought, gathering up her cloak and blanket-roll. The sad little pile of crushed reed basket and a patch of lichen-free doorstep was all that marked her long, hungry vigil.

“You’re letting me in?” she asked, slowly and carefully.

“Asking you to join the Serpentine Academy,” the Master of Novices corrected. “Provisionally. As a novice, like the others we just admitted. There’ll be a few formalities, like your oath. But you impressed us.”

She silently thanked Falth. As far as she was concerned, the Name Dun Troot had already rewarded her for keeping them informed about their daughter. She hadn’t been intentionally reenacting the story of Sabian, but maybe her sitting out there day after day had struck a familiar chord with those inside.

She fought the temptation to bolt inside, forced herself to savor the feeling as it sank in. They were asking her. Ileth, the stuttering girl from the Captain’s Lodge who caused housewives to whisper to each other when she walked past them, was being asked to join the Republic’s Dragoneers. Provisionally. As a novice.

He let her take it all in. She warmed to him; he hurried her in neither speech nor action.

“Just a mo-moment,” she said. She picked up the crushed basket. The dry old reeds crackled wearily. It had done her good service, and she couldn’t just leave garbage lying about the doorstep.

Besides, something needed to mark the occasion of leaving behind the Captain, the pitying looks, everyone’s talk of her “prospects,” the Lodge and its cabbage smells, no one thinking she was or ever could be much of anything. She held up the broken reeds to the burning gas-pipe, let them catch well on fire, and went to the cliff and cast them out to the immense lake. They spun burning into the water.

Caseen watched her, his face neutral, but his good eye was alight with interest. “Whenever you are ready, young woman.”

She straightened up her attire and, best as she could, arranged the stray hairs across her face and walked up to the door. She took a deep, bracing breath and stepped inside.

You’ve done it.

She was no longer one of the Captain’s lodge-girls who had to press up against a wall or dodge into the street to make way for the quality. Who had to keep her eyes downcast when speaking to any official in black plainclothes. Who had to suffer the pitying or, worse, appraising looks from men who knew what the Captain was and what he allowed under his roof. She looked around, wanting to remember the moment, have the details ready to recall should her frost years ever come.

The flimsy door led out into a little landing below the rest of this part of the Serpentine. Some benches were set against the thick outer wall and a long, ill-lit tunnel went off on her right. It took her a moment to realize it was both wall and hall; a corridor ran the entire interior of the fortification, with windows and portals facing the inside of the Serpentine. She could see steps leading down to it and heavy beams lining the ceiling. Rain gear for the watchmen hung like giant bats near the opening to the Serpentine grounds. There was a little charcoal stove squatting on splayed legs over a mortared floor and a pot of what smelled like day-broth bubbled there. Some utensils, bowls, and cups hung by a rain-fed water cistern.

“Take our water, if you like,” Caseen said. “We hardly ever have to draw from the well, there is so much rain. Good thing too, the dragon privies take a lot of flushing out.”

She wasn’t particularly thirsty, but she refreshed herself, not wanting to insult the Master of Novices himself by refusing the first water of the Serpentine offered to her.

The Master himself ladled her a little broth into a cup. There was no bread, but he found a tub of some mashed fruit that he scooped onto a tin plate. The fruit might have had a bit of brandy in it as a preservative, she decided from the taste.

He let her eat and watched her wipe her mouth and then collected the dishes himself and put them in a wooden tray with a carrying strap. They did things so differently here! She’d never seen the Captain or any of his gang so much as hand over a mug when there were girls around to do the work.

The tiny amount of food left her wonderfully restored. She felt like singing.

“Now, girl, you’re inside. We’ll give you a better meal in a little bit, but I didn’t want you to go to the trouble of eating only to have it all come up again. You have to be careful about breaking such a long fast. Are you feeling all right?”

Ileth nodded. “P-Perfectly w-well, sir.”

“I need to ask you a few questions. Usually this process is more formal, but I haven’t the time to interview you properly in my chamber. You’ve made the first cut, so you’ve no reason to tip things one way or another or try to impress me. One of the reasons I have these tassels on my sash is I’m not much impressed by anything from outside the walls of the Serpentine. It won’t hurt you in the slightest to be honest. It will be bad if I find out you’ve lied.”

She wondered if he meant hurt as in “getting kicked out” or hurt as in the way the Captain ran his Lodge. In any case, she nodded.

“How old are you?”

“Fourteen. Spring born . . . almost at the equinox.”

To his credit, he didn’t look dubious when she announced her age.

“What sort of education have you had?”

“We had teachers at our lodge. Sometimes. St-Starting at nine I helped teach the smaller ones.”

“The lodge, civic or private?”

“Private, sir. Does it matter?”

“The civic ones give a certain amount of education. I find the private ones are either very good or very bad.”

Ileth certainly agreed with that, but she didn’t say so. “I can tally, read, and write. I know my times tables. I can figure percentages.”

“Any geometry?”

“I know the difference between a triangle, rectangle, square, and circle.”

“No navigation, then?”

“I can . . . can r-read the stars to determine latitude. I played with an old plumb-gauge as a girl. The sun’s harder, but . . . but I’ve done it.”

“That’s better than most. How are you with maps?”

“I love them. I c-couldn’t have found my way here without studying them. I can read naval charts as well,” she continued, anticipating the follow-up question. “We had lots hanging on the walls of the Lodge. Orphans from sea work, you see.”

“Languages?”

“Hypatian, a little, just some of the high scripture. Prayers, mostly. Galantine—I can read it much better than I can speak it. What books we had were mostly in Galantine. I can say hello, good-bye, and thank you in Daphine and Poss.”

“That’s a fair list for a fourteen-year-old girl. Va luse tendi dran?”

“Apt. Nasis apt, lal relisan. But I . . . but I told you I c-could read it better than I c-could speak it.”

“I’ve had novices with Galantine tutors who allegedly also gave them lessons along with manners, dance, and deportment, who bowed flat-footed and couldn’t get beyond Va vere? when I questioned them. But then it’s considered bad form in society to take after the Galantines these days, with the war—well, with the war and then the armistice. Some even find it suspicious.”

“My—the patron of the Lodge, he was in shipping. Galantine family, but he was born under the Republic. They were Directist, though, so his family fled to the Vales to escape the p-p-purges. He had friends from both coasts and the Inland Ocean, so that’s where I picked up Poss. He had a friend who liked music. I know a few Daphine songs. I’m not much of a singer.”

“Did they raise the children in your lodge Directist?”

“Commonist. Our patron wanted everyone placed out of his lodge to mix easily in society. We had a Directist shrine in the Lodge and he taught us to use it. He wasn’t strict about his faith.”

“How would you describe the civic organization of the Vales?”

Ileth thought that was an odd question, but she did her best to answer it. She struggled more with the words than the ideas, explaining that they lived in a classical republic: juries at the local level, then the district or provincial governor, whose duty it is to obey the national laws of the Assembly and decisions of the Grand Appeal. She skipped the differences between a district and a province. The real strength of the system was the juries. Wrongdoers weren’t hauled off to some faraway court and left to rot until the judges got around to hearing their case, a jury was assembled, and a decision made. The Governor could only lessen the severity of the sentence or issue a pardon; he could not overturn an innocent verdict.

“That’s a good enough schoolroom answer,” he said, with his jagged smile. “Do you feel up to a little walk now?” Caseen asked.

She nodded.

“Then follow me. We’ll walk around the Serpentine. You haven’t been here these six days, so it will help if everyone sees you with me. Saves questions. You’re a young woman, so they’ll notice you. I hope you’re comfortable mixing with boys and men; you’ll find yourself in a minority here.”

He beckoned her into the sunlight. She nodded and followed.

“I take it you left no one behind? We had a girl a year older than you come through the gate to escape a bad marriage, once.”

“No, nothing like that, ma-ma—”

“Sir is an ample honorific for the Serpentine, just like outside the walls. Use it on anyone in uniform or with a colored sash—that should be good enough to begin. There are a few special circumstances, like facing a jury, where you’ll be expected to use Your Honor, but we don’t hold many exams or inquiries here. If you do your job well, we’ll know about it and give you a better job when there’s a need. The dragons expect to be called by name. If you get a chance to learn any Drakine, take it. But as a novice you won’t see overmuch of the dragons, so until you learn their names you can say sir to them as well.

“Remember,” he continued, “in the Republic dragons have the same rights as a man. That’s what the Troth was all about, long before the Republic. If you need one to accommodate you in some manner, say, shift so you can get by in a passage, beg favor is expected, even if it’s a bit old-fashioned for these modern times. Some of these dragons were alive when the Hypatian Empire was all over this side of the Inland Ocean.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You are a little sheath of a thing, but that may be to your advantage. Even a new-fledged dragon could carry you. You’d be surprised how often a dragon passes over a great, broad-shouldered sculptor’s model of a man and picks the scrawniest teen. Dragons get tired bearing a load, same as any man or animal.”

They walked out into the sun, along a gravel path that led up to a wide road running the spine of the peninsula. Ileth felt lighter in her worn old boots, as though she were floating next to this scarred old specimen of dragoneer. Gods and Fates bless Falth for giving her hope when she had none. She would be a silent watcher of that Dun Troot girl.

“Don’t take the ‘Academy’ part of the Serpentine too seriously. You won’t sit on a stool memorizing Hypatian declensions. The name’s for the gloves-and-laces set. We run on an apprenticeship system here. The Names wouldn’t like it—their heirs being trained the same as a bricklayer. During your novice year, we’ll find out what sort of person you are; then you’ll move on to one or more apprenticeships under contract to the Academy. It’s a distinction for the law and clerks of accounts you needn’t worry about.

“Now the geography of the Serpentine,” he began, taking her out onto the great field enclosed by the walls. Off by the gate she heard music, faintly. Caseen ignored it, pointing out landmarks.

She knew the names of some of the features from tales and ballads of the dragoneers. She counted them off under the brassy mountain sun. The Master of Novices added his own bits and bobs of apocrypha to her knowledge from tales:

The Serpentine, on its long, rocky neck, had three sections. Up by the main gate the jumble of principal buildings could be found. From there the peninsula fell away into more uneven land in the middle section, often compared to a dish like a long platter, complete with a lip of the walls to keep the juices from running off onto the table. At the center of the platter was a garden, both functional and decorative, built around the fortress’s reservoir—not that much of one was needed in the rainy mountains. On the other side of the gardens it became rocky. An amphitheater, with columns in the center for tenting, filled a hillside where the ground started to rise again toward the rock piles about the Pillar Rocks. A road—the Bridge Lane—ran the whole length of the Serpentine in three great bends, which gave the peninsula fortress its name and threaded through the Pillar Rocks, over the long bridge, and to the third and greatest portion of the fortress: the Beehive with its famous lighthouse. The dragons lived within the Beehive.

The Beehive, from a distance, looked like an unusually symmetrical mountain of uniform rock, but it was actually a blend of natural stone and man-made masonry, plated in places with gray granite façades of the muted papery color of an ordinary beehive.

Ileth burned everything Caseen said into her brain. She felt lost in her personal exaltation (perhaps brought on by her first real food in eight days), an exaltation so profound she wobbled at the knees as she walked alongside him with a head threatening to give up into a swoon. The geography of the peninsula, the little huddles of buildings, the quarrylike amphitheater in the distance, and the unimaginable size of the caverns under its lighthouse with its dragons and legends and secrets beneath were more than a view.

It made her head swim. Her thoughts kept circling back to the realization that she wouldn’t have to beg for work as a housemaid or work in a wharfside tavern, or chafe in some laundry with the lye eating away at her like age. Or worse, return defeated to the Captain to beg forgiveness.

A pair of spotty-cheeked youths trotted along a gravel path running at the base of the wall, panting with effort, their faces red with more than just blemishes. They gave her, or rather the Master, a wide berth. “Only two more times, boys,” he said. One managed a bleak smile, and both stepped up their pace.

Ileth was forming and discarding questions when the Master of Novices began pointing. “Oh, and if you ask directions, it’s important to know the Serpentine’s informal compass. That’s Bayside,” he said, gesturing north toward a wide bay with a few farms on the slope leading up from it and old boats in the grass above the waterline. “You were waiting at the door Harborside, above the town of Vyenn. No harm comes to Vyenn, we see to that, and it’s done well out of its association with the Serpentine. Here, at the gate and the halls, is up. Down is at the other end with the Beehive and the lighthouse. There are some older ruins farther out on the point, including the old lighthouse, but they’re half flooded and full of rusty grates. Keep out of them. Understand?”

“Bayside, Harborside, up, down,” she said, pointing out the directions with a minimum of tongue-trip.

“Now you’re ready for that meal. We’re heading for Joai’s house. Everyone here needs to know Joai. She’s solved more crises than the dragoneers and dragons combined.”

He spoke a little bit about the peninsula generations ago as they walked. “There’s an entirely different geography you’ll have to learn within the Beehive. For now, it’s enough to know there’s a cave with a wharf at the bottom that leads into the lower sections. We call it the Catch Basin because it’s mostly fish that get unloaded. The Skylake is rich in fish. Most places feed scrap food to pigs and dogs; all our waste goes to the fishermen and trap-keepers. I trust you’ve no objection to fish.”

“My l-lodge was in a fishing town,” Ileth said.

“We would have an impossible task feeding all these dragons without the Skylake and its river traffic down to the Gulf.”

He talked about how the foundations of the Serpentine were laid by an old conqueror who fancied that he’d set up a kingdom on the Skylake. The whole peninsula had been his estate. A few of the old buildings were still in use. But that was long ago, before the Vales were even mapped out or the western coastline properly settled, long before the founding of the Republic.

“Kess in the Archive could correct me, I suppose, and argue that some old cottage or fire pit or who knows what used by trappers or miners is the oldest human structure. There are a few even older points of interest in the Beehive that are supposed to be the work of dwarves, who’d begun turning the place into a warehouse or something, if you’re interested in where ancient history and myth start being knitted together.”

They passed under the loom of Mushroom Rock—from up close it appeared to spread out at the top and lean over the viewer—to a wooden building about the size of a Freesand house. It stood on stilts with chickens running about underneath, leaning tiredly on both the rock and the end of the Bayside wall where it joined the Mushroom. While they walked toward the little house, activity caught her eye. On the other side of the bridge she could see a sort of cobbled plaza bordered by white-painted, rounded stones where a small green dragon was attended by a throng of humans. They appeared to be working it over with brushes and what she supposed was soapy water.

Her guide noticed her interest. “Scale nits, I’m guessing. We never quite manage to eradicate them. They’re most active in summer. Get some sun on them, they don’t care for sun, and they can be washed off easily enough.” A gust of wind banked off the rock as they approached the little house, and she smelled food cooking.

“Joai always has a little soup on for those doing heavy labor, and takes care of any cuts and bruises that happen in the course of the workday here at the Academy. We have a physiker for more serious injuries, but he’s often calling in Vyenn or asked for at some of the outlying farms and such, so most of the time the bandaging falls to Joai.”

He led her up some weather- and weight-warped stairs to a door. The chickens objected to the disturbance. Caseen opened and held the door for her with a brief sort of turn of palm and wrist that reminded her of Falth. The Master of Novices had courtly manners.

She stammered out thanks as she stepped inside, following the smell of cooking. Drool threatened to wash out her mouth, and she wiped at it with the back of her hand. She suddenly felt a terrible yokel. She found the discarded red scarf and wiped her hand and the corner of her mouth.

The building was warm, with a low, sloping ceiling made lower by various foodstuffs held in nets up away from whatever vermin troubled the Serpentine. A woman shaped like a prize turnip was peeling potatoes by a vast hearth that looked more like it belonged to a smithy than a kitchen. Half of the room was taken up by the cooking hearth and implements for food; the other half held chairs, benches, and an assortment of medical devices, bandages, and crutches. Ileth stepped over to get a look at the wound dressings and smelled strong vinegar.

“Joai,” Caseen called across the room, “this is the girl who’s been hanging about the door taking in the view of Vyenn’s lakefront. Since she has no other commission, she agreed to give life as a novice a try. If I left her out any longer I think she’d perish, and a corpse on the doorstep is terrible luck when we’re about to oath in the draft of sixty-six. Give her a pudding, would you?”

“We must do better than that,” Joai said, looking her over like a farmer being offered a pricey three-legged horse. “Her skin is as loose as a boiled chicken’s.”

Everything in the room smelled so good! Rich broth, a roasting-potato smell, pig fats on the grill, toasted herbs . . .

“I’ll send someone over to the Manor to have them find her a room and such,” Caseen said.

“She’ll be washed and fed,” Joai said. She sniffed. “We’ll want to boil those clothes before giving her a bed to lie down in. Where’s that lice comb now?”

“Must jump, Joai. I enjoyed speaking to you, Ileth,” the Master Caseen said, working what was left of his face into a smile. “I hope you’ll sprout wings someday.” He turned to Joai. “How’s that boy, oh, what’s his name. The one with the injured foot?”

She lifted a tub half-full of water with an ease that bespoke great strength and set it down by Ileth. “Gralm. Broken toes, poor dear. I bound them up. He’ll be fine. Just don’t run him up and down the walls, sir.”

“Joai!” he said, mocking a hurt tone. He moved to the door, brought his fists together, knuckles toward her in the same gesture she’d seen the Duskirk boy use, and left.

Joai turned to her and ground her teeth in thought.

“‘A pudding,’ His Honor says. No, you need a good chowder, flower,” the woman said, wiping her hands and tightening the wrap around her hair. “With a sausage roll. But first, out of that stuff. Strip right down to your goose pimples. Throw everything but those shoes into that metal tub there. If you’re shy, the sooner you get over it the better. Have a wash up while I cook.” She indicated a poor man’s bath next to the stove.

Joai advised her on how to mix hot and room water for the tub. Ileth wasn’t at all used to hot baths; the Captain sent his charges down to a secluded cove not so much to bathe but to immerse themselves in the chilly waters of the bay to improve their health. Strengthens the mind, body, and soul. The attitude was generally shared in the Freesand, where a hot bath was considered a decadent indulgence.

But she was in the mood for a little decadence.

Ileth shed her filthy clothes, sheath as well, and climbed into the warm water of the bath. When she finished removing the last dirt of her journey from her scalp, Joai handed her a bundle. It consisted of a long men’s work shirt, an overdress that buttoned inconveniently behind the shoulders, and a belt and thick wool socks. She sorted through a trunk and extracted a couple of worn but clean sheaths.

The new attire had seen better days. The shirt was more patches and stitch than shirt, and the belt looked as though every hole had been used at one time or another, but they were clean and the leather on the belt had been oiled. The overdress had been dyed to cover stains at least once but was of some good channeled material, thick like moleskin. The socks looked tired but willing to do whatever might be required of them. They had a cleverly concealed lace at the top where she could cinch them above her skinny calves. She suspected even with the laces they’d fall down; Ileth didn’t have much in the way of either muscle or shape to her legs to hold them up.

The door banged open. A boy-man who was much more boy than man and mostly made of eyes and ears shuffled in. “Madam Joai—” he began, but the round eyes in a conking great head widened when he saw Ileth.

Ileth found the boy’s wide-eyed astonishment a little funny, but then she’d grown up in a crowded lodge. He looked as though he wasn’t entirely sure of what he was looking at, but he knew he liked it for some reason. Boys like this didn’t bother her the way the Captain’s leers and shambolic jests burned on exposed skin.

She held up the overdress like a curtain to ease the boy’s discomfort.

“What have you been doing, skint?” Joai asked, looking at the thick layer of dirt on the boy.

“They put me on gravel-making, madam,” he said, trying to look as though he were addressing Joai while still stealing glances at Ileth. “I’m flagging near to perishing, madam. I’m to have something to eat to put muscle on, sir says.”

Joai wiped her hands again—Ileth wondered how many times she wiped her hands—and extracted a few eggs from a tinted jar. They glistened. “Pickled eggs and some good bread is what you need, boy.” She tore a loaf in half, scooped out a handful of bread, and placed the eggs in the hollow of the half loaf so the boy could carry it like a basket. “Ask for milk tonight and don’t mind the comments, nothing wrong with a working man drinking milk, especially if he’s been busting stone. What’s your name again?”

“Apenite Sifler Heem Streeth,” the boy said.

“That mouthful will never do,” Joai objected. “Sifler is better.”

“If you say so, madam.”

“We use sira here, Sifler,” Joai said.

“Yes, sira,” the boy said, and moved toward a stool by the fire. Ileth rotated to keep the housecoat between herself and the boy.

“Be off with you. We’re busy,” Joai said.

“Sorry to walk in on your dressing, sira, should have knocked,” the boy said to Ileth, backing out the door, leaving chalky dust and footprints behind.

And that was the first time in her life Ileth, from the Captain’s Lodge in the Freesand, was called sira.

While she dressed again Joai turned a tap that ran out of the stove. Steaming hot water ran into the washing tub, and she added lye and flaked soap to the hot water.

“You won’t see this stuff again unless you go to the rag room, so if any of it has sentimental value, get it and hang it now,” Joai advised. “You’ll keep your boots. Is that how they do the lacing up north? All around the calf top? I have musk oil if you want to give them a cleaning.”

“Are you a . . . a dra—”

“Oh, skies, no. Tried it, flower. Tried. Made it through novice, initiate—they don’t use that term much anymore, it was dying out when I did it and we just use apprentice now—became a sojourner—that’s what they used to call a wingman. I was good at most everything back in my day. The dragons seemed to like me around them. Got a few compliments on my cooking. But every time I took one up, well, it turns out I’m fearful when it comes to heights. Paralyzed, my flower. Paralyzed with terror.” She stiffened and the whites of her eyes showed as she remembered. “I covered my face with my scarf until the dragon landed again every try; so much for that. They said I’d get over it, but I never did. But I was a good worker, so I kept on here. I like working with you young people, and there’s often excitement, as you’ll see. We get news first here, good and bad.”

“Did you know a dragoneer named Annis?”

“Why yes, Annis, terrible, died just before the armistice. The armistice might have even been signed when she died; they just didn’t hear about it in time. She came in as a novice, oh, I’d given up flying then but I was still working in the flight cave. Liked her right off. Are you two related? I don’t remember her as northern.”

“No. I-I met her and her . . . dragon once, when I was little. She put me in her own saddle. Wanted to come here ever since.”

“Sounds like her. She was like me, wanted to see the girls like you get a chance, and the fancy ones here to snag a husband and get their curls singed. I’m no leveler, mind, but just because you popped out of a chute with a fancy name attached, you don’t get to lord it over the rest of us. That’s my angle on the Republic and why I shouted for it when I was your size.”

Joai set her on a chair by the fire. It had little cushioned horsehide pads on the arms and an upholstered back. Ileth took a moment to think about what a wonderful thing chairs were as her feet basked in the warmth.

Faster than she would have thought possible, Joai appeared with a tray. Even so, Ileth was sliding into sleep.

“Do you take wine?” Joai asked.

She nodded. Wine was scarce on the North Coast, save for a few locals who did their own from berries or dandelions, but they left her with a thundering headache. Ales made her gassy. She’d had real grape wine a few times, though, out of the dregs of glasses from the Captain’s parties, and enjoyed its flavor and warmth, even if it was in tiny doses. The Captain himself drank brandied wine but never left a full swallow in the glass even when in his cups.

The wine appeared in a little sort of shell-design bowl with two handles. “Not an everyday practice, mind, but after what you’ve been through it’ll do you good.”

Joai continued talking and working as her charge ate.

“Remember, my flower: it’s sand and broken shell for girls here. They’ll ride you from the time you wake, hard, and ride you right out the gate, if they can, before they let you near a dragon saddle. Testing you, like. Watch that you don’t favor any single boy. It makes for trouble, though it seems to me that’s more the fault of them than the girls. Not that half of them are worth keeping, unless money’s all you’re after. Here hunting husbands? No? For the honor and glory of it, then? Some of these toppy nameseys, they saw a dragon in a parade with someone like your Annis on top of her in formal velvets and wanted to be her, covered in flower chains and laurel.”

“I never saw a parade. Dragoneers don’t come to the North Coast much. Wish they did. We wouldn’t lose so many sailors to the Rar-Rari.”

“Rari? Those pirate fellows?”

Ileth nodded. “They take our fishermen and sailors. Make slaves of them. Not many get away.”

“Well, what’s your governor about? Can’t afford the sheep it takes to garrison a couple dragons? Scared the riders will deflower his daughters?”

“I wouldn’t know. I w-wish I did.”

“Well then, maybe someday you can sort them out.”

Her belly was full now, or as full as her shrunken stomach could handle. The wine, warmth, and food teamed up with her exhaustion. She watched the fire and drowsed.

Joai took her shawl off the hook by the door and draped it over the snoozing girl. “Well, if you can sit out night after night with nothing to eat but rain, you should last at least through the first year. The rest is up to your wits—and the dragons.”

When she awoke, her first business was the introduction to her lodging. Joai walked her over after fortifying her with more soup, as she had slept right through the dinner bell.

Most of the female novices and apprentices of the Serpentine lived together in what could charitably be called a great house. They called it the Manor, at least to the girls’ faces, but Ileth soon found out it had other, coarser names. The Manor was a long rectangular building with narrow windows and a steeply pointed roofline and a decorative bell tower with no bell. It was old, dating to the aristocratic families who’d once claimed the peninsula. It had a high-ceilinged ground floor, a cramped second floor that was a warren of hallways and subdivided rooms, and an even more cramped attic arranged as a dormitory. Most of the new novices slept in the dormitory. A few sheets had been hung up to improvise dividers for dressing and toiletry. They were all under the watchful eye of a sort of human whiskbroom called the Matron. No one called her madam, or sira; she was the Matron and you’d better say it clearly and in a respectful tone that implied the capitalization.

The Matron sniffed out that she was of a lower quality compared to the other novice girls and set her up in a hammock with two other no-names right at the top where the stairs met the attic. There was noise anytime someone entered or left. The others had beds, but when she saw the lumpy state of some of the sleeping mats and her fellow novices itching their tender flesh because of bedbugs, she was grateful for the easy-to-wash hammock.

“Always crowded after a call-up,” the Matron said, pointing Ileth to some hooks where she could tie up her hammock. “It’ll thin out by midwinter.”

The attic was fireless, warmed only by the heat rising from below and the four chimneys of the house. It was stuffy but warm enough in the summer weather. Ileth wondered what the winters were like, and if cold had anything to do with novices giving up. She had an advantage on the others there; she was inured to cold thanks to her years at the Lodge. The roof was sound; if a fault appeared they’d know about it, as their noses were practically pressed up against its beams.

Below on the second floor the female apprentices and a few of the well-bred novices like Santeel Dun Troot slept anywhere from two to six to a room. Santeel was in a crowded room and often appeared at the morning meal sleepy with tufts of rag stuck in her ears. One of her roommates snored. Ileth found herself admiring Santeel despite herself; she seemed to know a great deal and did everything well, whether it was washing spoons or reading aloud. But there wasn’t much to report to Falth yet, except that Santeel had lost or someone had stolen a tiny pair of scissors Santeel used to trim her toenails. Santeel believed it the latter. She complained to the Matron, who refused to turn the entire Manor upside down to find scissors.

A part of her wanted to dislike Santeel, a girl her age given seconds and dessert when they handed out beauty and voice and everything else not just on a platter, but on individual doilies resting on the platter, each item polished, arranged, and engraved with her renowned initials. But the circumstances of Santeel’s birth were no more under her control than Ileth’s, and Ileth was thoroughly sick about hearing how her mother’s conduct brought her no shining platter, but a stutter that made everyone think she was slow. Ileth resolved that she’d like or dislike Santeel Dun Troot only if her words and actions merited it.

Santeel didn’t seem to mind Ileth hanging about her. She liked, and expected, to be the center of attention.

There was only one female of wingman rank living in the Manor, and she had a room to herself, even more spacious than the Matron’s. She was hardly ever in the Manor, though. Every time she had more than a few hours of rest she’d go down to rooms she rented in Vyenn where there were servants to cook for her. All Ileth knew about her in those early days was that she was small and flew many errands for the Charge of the Serpentine.

The Matron slept on the first floor just off the kitchen, where her bedroom also served as the pantry. Much of the first floor was taken up by a dining temple. Everyone ate their breakfast on narrow benches, all facing the same way, from a small shelf that folded down from the bench in front, forming a ready-made audience for one of the Matron’s lectures or an inspirational reading. Those seated in the front row ate with their plates in their laps. The women and girls were expected to prepare and eat breakfast together, then join the men and boys in the dining hall for the evening meal.

Everyone wore basically the same attire, a men’s work shirt and a knee-length overdress of that durable, channeled weave Ileth admired when it was first handed to her. The overdress brushed clean easily. You weren’t to decorate or enhance either garment in any way, though if it became hopelessly stained you were allowed to dye it.

Novices wore a small brooch of white dragon scale. Her group didn’t have theirs yet; it would be issued once they were oathed in, and their oathing ceremony had been delayed for some days because of a lack of a sufficient number of dragoneers present to attend the oath.

Apprentices wore a plain white sash tied about the waist but out of practicality took it off for work. You had to buy or make your own sash, and the sammarind[2] fabric preferred as fitting for future dragoneers was as dear as it was delicate. Two of last year’s novices had only just recently been promoted and had bought the last ones at a ruinous price for a used length of white silk.

The Matron’s discourse rarely wandered from her obsessions: the cleanliness of Academy linens and furniture, and that the Academy’s novices and apprentices must eat moderately so that a healthy bowel could be maintained. She treated their outsides with bristle brushes and hard, gritty soap that scoured their skin and had them fill up on practically raw oats, bran mashes, and summer vegetables that did the same to their insides. Such was the Matron’s belief in the power of substantial and regular evacuations that she grew nonplussed at the continuance of Ileth’s stutter after a week on the goat’s feed. Ileth wondered if she’d cured a stutter with the feed or her victims were too busy chewing and squatting to talk. In any case, the subjects of hygiene, mealtime denial, and a purpose-filled bowel mentally combined, like three cow paths joining together to become a road, when it came to their chastity. They could look at boys, talk about them in a respectable manner, but you could no more think of kissing one than you would a barnyard animal. Her standards of purity were such that had she found out about the boy who had barged in while Ileth stood undressed in Joai’s kitchen, Ileth would be considered tainted.

The hour before bed was devoted to sewing and polishing. Groups of novices and apprentices worked while a few others took turns reading from the short list of works the Matron considered appropriate for young female ears. They had regular servings of the Old Rite’s Temple Maxims, or On Virtue by Tonerone, or short “plays” that were just catechisms of manners on the perils of dancing with the wrong sort of suitor.

Ileth often amused herself by imagining the Matron presenting her series of moral and uplifting entertainments at the Lodge to the Captain’s friends.

As the evening hour wound down, the Matron would post everyone’s assignments by their room number on the first stair landing where you couldn’t help but see it as you went to bed. Old engraved and painted wooden signs were hung up on little hooks next to each of the thirty lettered or numbered rooms—Ileth’s stairway hammock-eyrie with the other two was D and they had a private joke that it stood for the desperate, or the despaired of, or (in whispers) the damned.

Behind all the discipline was a threat to the novices, rarely spoken, that if they indulged their youthful follies their names would be put down in the Blue Book in the chamber of the Master of Novices. You went into the book and shortly afterward, you went out the gate and into the gutter.

But the routine of chores, roughage, lectures, and duty finally had a most welcome break when the newest novices were invited to join their male counterparts and finally take their oath the next day.

The news caused an excited rush to the washtubs and basins and there was great borrowing and sharing of brushes, pins, and ribbons and oh, I know I shall break down reciting.

Ileth went to bed nervous and had difficulty sleeping.