When the “darks” came (as she called such hopeless thoughts), she increased her dancing until exhaustion drove them out of her mind. She lost herself in it almost every night. She danced on her own, she danced with Taf (who sometimes secretly joined her in her drills), and she joined with the Tribals in their practices, though she was barred from their rites. She managed to save a silver nugget here and there (the Baron knew that she gave hers to the dragon and sometimes gave her a nugget that she would then conceal in her work room) and used the biggest one to buy the finest riding boots the Galantine cobbler could make.
Some nights a few members of the Baron’s household would watch her dance for the dragon as he settled down to sleep. The Baroness, once she had her baby and needed an escape from nursing (she passed the babe on to a wet nurse only after he took his first solid food), grew to be a bit of a fan and would show up now and again to just sit and watch. That, or she had found out about her daughter’s interest in the exotic and highly improper practices of both dragon dancers and Tribals and was worried.
Perhaps it was the madness of the heat, perhaps it was the boredom, but she agreed to perform for the Tentkeeper on the Silver Plateau. She refused to call it the cow plateau; it wasn’t shaped like anything on a cow unless you counted its udder. The Tentkeeper became so excited he asked for three extra barrels of beer. She’d been practicing, without thinking about it, to a worker’s song she’d heard a few times at the Green River ford near the Baron’s estate, combining some of the Tribal movement of shoulders and hips with the outstretched arms and dramatic leg extensions of dragon dance. It became stuck in her head, probably because it reminded her a little of the sea chants she’d heard in the Freesand. The melody was similar, with hard beats when the men would pull together and a counterpoint as they regained their footing and grips and got ready for another pull.
The Tentkeeper had expanded his tent for the event. Bits of rug and cushions made out of old rags or little canvas folding chairs were arranged for the audience. Ileth had a small circle in front of her musicians to dance in, marked off by footlights she had brought, spirited out of the stores left in the old theater by the Tribals.
Fortunately, on that trip, she brought up extra goatskins of wine. She begged a mouthful from the Tentkeeper to steady herself. He cautioned her that drinking wine from a bladder was a learned skill if she’d never done it and directed her to open her mouth so he could send a short jet of wine into the back of her throat. She swallowed—the wine was quite tart but warming—asked for one more, and was ready.
All the bodies crammed into the tent made it warm, at least.
The miners knew the tune. Her “musicians” (no less than eight men had received free admission in exchange for playing) rolled pebbles around in pans or shook them in old spirit and wine bottles, or rattled two spoons, but she hardly needed them because so many in the audience hummed, clapped, or sang along.
She should have been embarrassed by the nearly all-male crowd, or frightened. Each of these men was undoubtedly stronger than her. Perhaps she would have been reluctant to dance for just one of them, but for the mass of them, almost undifferentiated in their beards, grime, and shaggy hair (those who’d cleaned up for the event had their faces shining like moons, reflecting the footlights), they transformed into a necessary extension of her dance, a partner, waiting for her next flourish so they could respond. The connection with them felt strange and new and powerful. Dancing for the dragons in the Serpentine, or for Fespanarax, was like dancing for the stars; you had very little back. As for the Baron’s leering friends, she couldn’t wait to get away from them. These miners drank in her movements like she was their ale and they lifted her into the air with their applause and cheers.
The miners gave off a thick, crowded-animal smell. But their appreciation, her love of the tune, and her skill fed her dance. Looking back on it in her later years, she considered it one of her favorite performances.
As she changed behind the privacy screen of drying laundry, she felt oddly like she’d stepped across some kind of threshold, conscious of a strange new power in her body. It was an interesting thing to possess; she could even take pride in it, but she couldn’t see herself using it in this manner often. Whether she would end up taking more satisfaction in having such ancient magic to wield or in letting it remain quiescent remained to be seen.
Several unsettling thoughts competed in her head. Had she been around the Galantines so long that she thought these common folk were half animal, and she could perform as easily before them as she would a field of cows? Or was it that they reminded her, sweating in the tent and wiping their foreheads or noses on their shirtsleeves, of the fishermen and the sailors of the Freesand she’d been born among? Was she looking down on the herd, or was she of it?
Afterward, the Tentkeeper showed Fespanarax the silver collected at the performance.
“This, dragon, is all. I give you the largest nugget for putting the idea into our friend’s head. A quarterweight I give to the dancer. I keep the rest.”
“You mean your wife keeps it,” Ileth said, smiling.
“Yes. We save for a real wooden tavern. Home above, tavern below.”
Fespanarax, who had followed the conversation with some difficulty, swallowed his nugget but grumbled the rest of the night at the unfairness of it.
Winter approached at last and broke the warmest fall Ileth had ever known. The Tribals departed while the weather was still agreeable. They would take a roundabout route back, selling their potions and remedies and charms as they zigzagged back to reunite with their men. It didn’t matter if it rained; their wagons were well designed, ruggedly wheeled, and not heavy.
Winter in Chapalaine passed comfortably, with frequent rain and rare snows that left quickly. The Baron’s family had feasts with such frequency that her stomach only just recovered from one when the next came along. She gave unusually energetic performances for Fespanarax to tamp the food down in her digestive system.
In her imagination she was roaming the Beehive, sitting in the audience as a new class of novices were sworn in. She even felt a little nostalgic for the Catch Basin and the grunts of the fishermen as they carried their tubs and trays to the gutting tables.
The Baron reported to her that negotiations were started fresh with the Vales; new sets of diplomats, in a new location so that their conference could continue despite winter weather, seemed to promise much. It gave Ileth hope that she might be but one year in the Galantine lands.
The only change spring brought was less feasting and heavier rain. Often she would be soaked by the time she made the walk to Fespanarax.
One night, late, as she reread a Galantine novel from the Baron’s library more for the improvement of her Galantine than because it interested her, listening to the rain pour down outside, she heard a tap at one of her high windows. Then it was repeated three times, then once again: tap . . . tap tap tap . . . tap. The windows were too high and narrow for her to see outside without getting a chair. She double-checked the bar at her door and moved a chair over to look out the window.
A snarling brass ogre face rose up at the end of a wooden shaft and tapped again. There was no mistaking the walking stick of Dath Amrits.