After seeing the body, she avoided the Baron and his family. She simply said she wasn’t feeling well and excused herself from all social activity with the family. Galantine tradition accepted any failing in the health of women as sacrosanct, so she wasn’t questioned, though Taf discreetly hinted that if she needed a draft to help with cramps, there was a reliable remedy from the family physician kept constantly in stock.
Her absence from the family turned out to be fortuitous. The Baroness gave birth at last, and the child, a son, had the house in a flurry. She sensed, through Azal and his deliveries, that though the child was healthy, something was odd about him, but since they allowed her privacy, she didn’t press the matter.
In the morning two days after the long-awaited birth, the Baron himself came to visit as she sat in the garden reading after her morning drill and check on Fespanarax. The rat was out of his wig and riding on his shoulder for a change.
“Ileth, my dear, how are you feeling?” he asked.
“Much better, sir. How is the Baroness?”
“Robust as always. Nursing. She doesn’t believe in wet nurses for the first three months of life, and I rather think she’s right about it, but it exhausts her. She is keeping to the birthing room.”
Ileth was sensitive enough toward Galantine custom to know not to inquire after the newborn, as she wasn’t family.
“I was hoping I could get you to come into the house today. I have a visitor who wishes to speak to you. No, it’s not Galia or any of your countrymen, I’m sorry to say. It’s that Young Ransanse.”
Griff! What could he want?
“I’m—I’m at a . . . at a loss as to why he would wish to speak to me.”
“He said he wished to offer an apology.”
She started to say that Griff could take his apologies, roll them up, enclose them in a map tube, and . . . but it wouldn’t do to use that kind of language in the Baron’s gardens.
“Sir, just send him out here.”
“Ileth, I’ll confess, I don’t much care for this young man. He’s the sort of grasper we have too much of at Court these days, no refinement or sense of duty to the common people, but I’ll allow that I could be wrong about him. If he does offer an insult to you, a girl of your age, in my house, under my roof, well, there are certain nuances to Galantine social life that could ruin him, at least in the eyes of the Baron Ransanse. Just because he is in line to inherit doesn’t mean that matters couldn’t be changed. I intend to have him speak to you in the library. I shall retreat to my study, which is connected by sliding doors. My two biggest servants, the ones my wife charges with moving furniture about and hanging sides of beef, will be outside the door. Either one is capable of launching Young Ransanse over the estate wall by himself; together they could throw him into the next Barony, I imagine. So you need not fear for your physical safety.”
Ileth agreed, mostly because the picture of Griff being sent flying without benefit of dragon appealed. She changed into her more presentable housedress but made no attempt to do anything else with her appearance for the interview. Her hair could remain in its sweated dance-bun.
She followed the Baron into the house and to his library at the far end of the Baron’s family wing. As the Baron had promised, two enormous footmen in work vests and loose, long-sleeve shirts sat on a wooden bench in the hall. They stood up and took position to either side of the double library doors, now closed. Either one looked a match for even so tall a dragoneer as the Borderlander, never mind a not-yet-twenty boy such as Griff. Their thick arms and wide shoulders were reassuring.
The library itself had tall windows of many panes of good glass. You could see right through them and out into the front grounds. There weren’t many books, just one case, glassed off, and a map table with several wide drawers beneath. The few books that were in the case looked to be very expensive. Ileth had been in the house’s sewing room and writing room, and each of those had many more books than the library, though they were cheaper volumes meant for leisurely reading.
Someone had set two nice, round-backed chairs in the center of the room, facing each other.
Griff was still in that light-blue uniform. He had immaculate white breeches this time, tucked into gleaming black boots. Other than that, he was the same old chap-lipped Griff, though his hair looked better cared for and his skin healthier.
“Young Ransanse, here is my Ileth,” the Baron said, before retreating toward his desk in his study at the corner of the house. “Remember your promise, now.”
“Sir,” Griff said, standing at attention. “Ileth,” he added, giving her a short bow.
The Baron personally closed the two sliding doors to the well-lit little nook, and the muscular servants closed the double library doors.
Ileth wasn’t sure of Galantine custom, so she remained standing opposite him. He wasn’t his usual sneering, shifty self. He looked as though he’d taken great care of his appearance for this interview.
“It is customary for ladies to sit,” Griff offered. “I’d like this to be a friendly call.”
Ileth thought it over and sat in one of the two chairs at the center. Once she was comfortably seated, hands in her lap, Griff sat down opposite. He put his hands on his knees and leaned toward her a little.
“How are you getting on without Galia?” he asked, speaking Montangyan.
“Well enough, thank you.”
“Is the dragon giving you difficulty?”
“None,” she said.
“Ileth, we got off to two bad starts, one back in the Uplands, one here. For my part, I’m sorry.”
“F-For my part, I can’t imagine why you came all this way again to tell me so.”
“Because I believe I can make it up to you. I was a foolish boy back in the Serpentine. I’ve grown up since I knew you there.”
“I am happy to hear it.”
“You see, I’m not such a bad sort to get along with, given a chance.”
Ileth, half-revolted, half-interested to see where this was heading, shrugged. It seemed an especially inappropriate gesture for this sunny room full of expensive books, but it kept her from having to talk.
“Ileth, I know certain things. You would do well to follow Galia’s path and associate yourself with the Galantines. The Republic’s doomed. Financial trouble, society’s a mess, just lost a war, and with one wrong step they’ll get into a bigger one they’ll also lose. I don’t mean to be harsh, but you’ve hitched your cart to a sick horse, as they say.”
“We still have the dragons,” Ileth said.
Griff lowered his voice. “The Galantines have dragons too. I’ve seen them. Indeed, I’m playing an increasingly important role with them. You could too, a far more important role than you ever could at the Serpentine. I heard the apprentices and wingmen talk about you. They think you’re entertaining but not destined to do much before you’re tossed out on your ear like most female novices. I know you’ve got your name in blue ink in Caseen’s office.”
“So what if I, if I do?”
“I made a change for the better. Galia did. You could too.”
If the Galantines did want her to come over from the Serpentine and take up a new nationality, they chose a poor agent to make the offer. But then Ileth had been specifically charged to learn what she could here, keep her eyes and ears open. “I’m—I’m listening.”
She concentrated, attempting to remember every word of this conversation. Griff might let something valuable slip. He’d been sloppy before.
“Ileth, you have an advantage over even Galia, beyond anything she can dream about. Some of us young Barons spent some fifteen days at the King’s residence, invited for riding, birding, a formal ball, that sort of thing. I saw the King’s gallery. There’s a private room where ladies aren’t invited. You know he has some studies of dragon dancers? Four paintings by Risso Heem Tyr himself, do you know who he is?”