“Aren’t you curious?”
“Just tell me and get it over with, girl.”
“He said you were—you were leaving the Serpentine and going over to the Galantines.”
“Then by your account he insulted us both, because he told me the same thing this very morning. As though that would convince me to fly for these peacocks.”
“Then you —”
“Girl, I’m ready to quit your bunch and your filthy little wars entirely. I’m finding I care less and less about them as they wheeze up and sputter off over and over again. That fellow was just playing the old game, telling each party to an agreement that the other had already gone along with it.”
“So you refused him?” She took a certain satisfaction in knowing that she and Fespanarax the Reckless had acted alike.
“The Galantines are poor managers of dragons. They think we’re big armored horses. I talked to one of their dragons once. Stupid fellow.”
“I’m glad to hear it, sir. I’ll let you finish your bones.” She started to withdraw, but the dragon spoke again.
“One more thing, girl, in the interest of you enjoying a future. Suppose I had gone over to the Galantines and you found me out. Rushing right off to tell me about your discovery is not the wisest move. I might decide to burn the evidence of my guilt.”
“Burn me, you mean,” Ileth said.
“I don’t see anything much stopping me.”
“If your honor isn’t eno-enough, then I would think such a scoundrel would be worried about the questions that would come. Your dragoneer is dead, Galia has gone over to the Galantines, and your fifteen-year-old dancer burned. One might call that a pattern.”
The dragon glanced sharply at her.
“Well, such a scoundrel, as you put it, would be playing a deep game indeed. I’m sure he could explain away another death easily enough.”
For some reason this speech frightened Ileth more than talk of setting her alight.
“Calm yourself, girl. I can’t say I’m fond of you, but I’m now enough used to you that having you replaced would be more annoyance than it’s worth. Same with going over to the Galantines. For a start, I’d have to learn another yapping little human tongue. I don’t want to bother with more than a few words of any more human languages if it can be helped.”
Galia’s wedding took place in due order, once the heat broke and people felt like moving about again, but before the fall rains became more than a nuisance.
Upon Taf and Azal’s return from the wedding, Taf did most of the talking. She invited Ileth to join the other older daughters and nieces to hear the events of the day.
It took some telling. Significant Galantines have not one but three weddings: a religious one so that the High Church can sanctify the couple; a Court wedding where they are presented to the King or his chosen representative (in Galia and Dandas’s case, it was a representative), who asks them if they wish to be married and then gives his permission; and finally a family function where representatives of both sides come together and arrange matters of presents, residence, presentation of first servants, and so on. The exact order for the three could vary.
“I was only at the family one, though I did wait outside for the Court one; only Father was allowed into Court,” Taf said. “The family one was a little strange. Father and Azal and I served as her family. The Dandas side did not send many either—I don’t know if they disapprove of Dandas marrying outside the King’s lands, perhaps? As for the Court, they had to wait behind three other couples, and ahead of only one, the last being an old man who was marrying the daughter of his steward so the steward could assume his assets. He must have been a decent man. Right afterward he took poison and just fell asleep, they tell me. Very decent man. Went with a smile on his face—his teeth were blue but he couldn’t help that, could he? As for the church one, it took a great deal of time because Galia had to enter the church and go through volitions and all that. It was the longest of the three, so naturally it was closed to the public. But I did see a great deal of interesting sights outside Court while Azal and I waited.”
This led to a long discussion of the latest styles of dress and carriage. Ileth had her mind on poisons and only half listened, even when Azal spoke up with an experience of his own, until she heard that a young as-yet-unwinged dragon drew their wedding carriage after the church service, which was left to last because they were unsure as to how long it would take. She assumed it was one of the few Galantine dragons. Nice tribute to Galia, if that was what it was, but she wondered at a dragon being tasked to pull a carriage. She couldn’t imagine any of the Serpentine’s dragons doing it, unless perhaps as a special and spectacular favor for a beloved dragoneer.
After the three weddings there was a party at the Dandas family residence at the Eternal Court’s home city of Dymarids.
“It wasn’t well attended. I was more than a little disappointed. You’d think with our dear Dandas, a man of great significance at Court, more would have been there. Do you think it’s because Galia is from the Vales? Maybe it’s because they expect another war.”
“Another war?” Ileth asked. Azal turned from the water table—he’d been complaining of a headache from the journey and seemed to be undergoing some kind of spasm.
“Yes, I heard Dandas’s father—or was it his uncle?—saying that they just needed a provocation and the Court would rally and convince the King.” Azal’s glass shattered on the floor, but Taf didn’t seem to notice; children were always breaking things at the Baron’s.
Taf continued, “The King, apparently, said he’s sick of throwing men into the mountains and never having them come back, all over something that happened before he was born. Baroness Sefeth herself told me that. I shouldn’t worry, Ileth, you’ll be quite safe here. I asked Father and he—”
Taf looked at her brother and her face went blank. Azal had his face in both his hands.
Ileth pretended she wasn’t the least disturbed. “What did your father say?”
Taf’s mouth worked like that of a landed fish: “That. That—”
“That there probably won’t be a war, so why worry,” Azal supplied.
There wasn’t a war. Nor did peace come. The Baron’s prediction of a quick consummation of negotiations proved to be wishful thinking, or a white lie to get Ileth through the difficult period of Galia’s loss.
It seemed too much like captivity with Galia gone.
She could still escape into the air on Fespanarax, on the beer flights that made everyone but Ileth so much richer (well, the brewer wasn’t quite so much richer and was down one son banished to some kind of labor on an island). The dreary conditions of the miners and especially the children continued to depress Ileth. She asked the Baron Blue Heron’s agent why the landlord didn’t improve things for his miners.
“On a map, yes, it’s his land, but they pay him no rents. As this station shows, once upon a time, before the Cracked Cauldron woke up, his father kept the roads and mine in perfect order and drew handsome rents off it. But the Baron has declared the lands around the Bald out of his jurisdiction. If there is a murder up there, the miners must handle it themselves. Even if they did, he could do little because of the difficulty of getting anything up there. The trail is a terrible, precarious thing, and the constant quakes sometimes close it until the miners can clear it again. They lose people on it all the time, a dozen a year or more.”
It would be easy to be lost on that cliff, much higher than Heartbreak Cliff near the Serpentine. Ileth had thoughts, sometimes, that if the war resumed she would jump and end it all and let her bones remain a prisoner of the Galantines. But then she remembered the Lodger’s training to not let events that are out of your control trouble you, and think only upon that which is within your power, and one’s attitude was always within one’s power, was it not? came his voice from the dead.