“What d-do you mean, now it’s just . . . it’s just me?”
“Galia has departed. She left you this note and asked me to give it to you. I hope you don’t find it too upsetting. Please let me know if there is any way I might soften this distressing turn of events for you. Perhaps some brandy before you read it?”
Ileth fled from him, sought refuge in what had been “their” house, now quiet, so quiet, lit a candle, and tore open the fine cotton-paper envelope. The seal spun off into the darkness.
Oddly, it was in Galantine, though in Galia’s own beautiful hand. Ileth wondered if Galia had consulted with Dandas on the message it contained. She had to hold it close to the light to read.
Ileth,
I must leave you with a note. A good-bye would be painful and today is no day for pain. Dandas has asked me to be his wife and I have said yes. We will depart Chapalaine at once.
I know I’m leaving you and our people behind in doing this, for we must build a life here. Do not fear for me. He is an excellent man and there is nothing to hold me in the Vales but the Serpentine. You may think that I’m deserting you to live a life of luxury, but it won’t be like that at all. Dandas goes to an important new command, and it shall be a camp life for a while until we can find somewhere a person of his significance can take as a house for me. It will be a great adventure, but what better time to go on a great adventure than when you are in your bloom and with a man you love?
Oh, my friend, I have treated you badly since Dandas arrived and I realized I have feelings for him. I’m no philosopher, but I believe I struggled with myself and treated you as the part of me that wanted to be at the Serpentine and fly and believe all the egalitarian nonsense that’s wrecking our land and causing us to lose wars. I do not know yet what fate will decide for me, but I think it has matched me with a man who will take me there with the wit and wisdom and manner I’ve come to appreciate this last beautiful summer of my youth and girlish silliness. As the Galantine High Church says, there is a time for everything, the seasons of life begin and end, and we must accept that. This part of my life is at an end.
If someday, when you return to the Serpentine, as I hope you will soon, take with you my hopes for you to pair with an excellent dragon and rise to be a dragoneer as great as your Annis. Should Hael Dun Huss ask after me, tell him I finally decided to be something more—a Baroness.
I sign my name, for the last time,
Galia of the Serpentine
Young Azal and Taf knocked quietly, Azal looking discreetly away as if he expected to find Ileth in rent garments wet with tears. Taf set down a tray with her dinner and a small decanter of the syrupy Galantine brandy considered fit for ladies. Taf offered to keep her company, but Ileth dismissed her.
She opened the door again to thank them but closed it again halfway through the Galantine courtesies, rereading the letter.
Alone. She thought back on all the times in the Captain’s Lodge that she’d longed to have a warm little house, all to herself, only her own dishes and washing to do.
She opened the brandy, sniffed it. “To love and havoc,” she said, raising the decanter and putting it to her mouth. She made it through only a third before bringing it back up.
15
The wedding would take place in the late fall. Ileth, perforce, could not attend, as she had neither the freedom nor the money to travel. And in any case, she hadn’t been invited. She doubted it was a deliberate snub, especially after rereading the letter. Galia knew her restrictions (Galia’s own were lifted with her betrothal and assumption of Galantine citizenship and entry into the Galantine King’s church).
She missed Galia’s presence, keenly, and would have had her back, even the moments when they frayed each other’s nerves down to the last thread, if it had been within her power. She left a lonely ache that was hard to fill.
She did try to fill it. Galantine literature; volunteering to do little tasks for the Baroness, whose increase at the waist meant a decrease in how much she could do for her family; even working on her flying rig. The runs with Fespanarax gave her hours of experience in the air learning the shortcomings of her flying attire. Taf showed a surprising interest in and flair for helping her solve the issues.
Taf being Taf, she couldn’t stop talking about the wedding. Her father would take her and her brother Azal to the Court Exalted at Dymarids. Galia would wear Chapalaine’s colors at the ceremony. She and Azal would be presented to the King! Unless he was indisposed that day, in which case she would bow to his royal representative. One day they were in the little, now roomy and quiet, house, and working in the warm room, which Ileth had turned into a flight suit workshop, when Taf quit talking about the upcoming wedding and asked about how the Serpentine taught one to fly.
Ileth told her the truth that she hadn’t had that much formal training yet, just a good deal of informal experience.
“I wonder if I could fly on a dragon. I think I could. You seem to do all right even though you’re a woman and haven’t gone through all that training.”
Ileth asked how so.
“It would be easy, like my trick with the Tribals when I dance with them. Put on your clothing—our builds aren’t that different now that you’re getting good Galantine food instead of sheep tripe and sturgeon—wind a scarf around my face, and get on the dragon. He does all the work, yes?”
“All I do is hang on,” Ileth admitted.
It remained just idle talk, however. But Ileth’s flying rig improved in fit, if not in style (Ileth did not take any of Taf’s suggestions for adding a bit of Galantine “dash” to the ensemble).
The summer heat waxed and waned but mostly waxed. The Baron and his neighbors ceased all pretense of work and spent the hottest part of the year hiding from the heat during the day (if there was not a picnic or a barbecue on the schedule) and going around to outdoor dinners at night. Even the Tribals briefly joined the community when they invited the Baron’s coterie to a performance in the little outdoor theater. Both Ileth and Taf danced with them, Taf incognito, Ileth in a patchwork blend of her own dancing sheath and a Tribal dancing skirt.
But just when Ileth was feeling well disposed to Galantine society, they would do something she found appalling. They had a custom of calling a “horn hunt” where a single rider would pick a spot in the countryside and blow a horn from somewhere secretive until he could hear the sound of hoofbeats. Then he would ride off to a different spot and blow the horn again. Ileth saw the damage wrought from the back of Fespanarax. Crops about to be harvested were flattened, overdry grazing round was torn up by hooves, vegetable gardens were trampled, and even laundry drying on the line was knocked off and trod upon if the course of the chase took them through a gap between the dwellings of the nonsignificants.
On another one of her visits, she saw a criminal’s body hung up on display at the edge of town. The Baron explained that he was a vagrant who broke into a house and stole food. “Long ago the body would be coated in pitch and left to rot,” the Baron told her on their way to the brewery to try a new summer ale he was testing. “Now we just leave it up three days. I think anything longer than that is unhealthy, don’t you? I mean, there are children in the village.”