She was still in her housedress. She jumped into her shoes, picked up a waxed canvas rain cloak, unbarred the door, and, after first checking the grounds to make sure no one was about on this rainy night, swiftly walked around to the side of her domestic prison facing away from the great house.
It wasn’t Dath Amrits holding the walking stick after all, and she startled, until she recognized the man as the Borderlander. He put his finger to his lips and gestured for her to follow. Ileth almost asked if the negotiations had been finally successful, but that hardly seemed likely or he would have flown in the sunlight to retrieve her covered in streamers acquired at the border.
She followed him along the garden hedge and to the wall. He moved well in the rain and the dark, passing here and there to survey the grounds, and when he paused, pressed against a tree trunk or a gap in the hedge, he became next to invisible in the shadows. For such a gangly great man, he was as stealthy as a cat. Finally, they came to an old gate in the wall. The lock had been worked open, it seemed. Dath Amrits and Hael Dun Huss stood there on the other side. The Borderlander handed the walking stick back to Amrits.
“Ileth, you’ve grown!” Dun Huss said. “No one would mistake you for a child at the gate anymore.” Ileth smiled, though she wondered how Dun Huss knew about her first application to the gate. Paired dragoneers didn’t stand guard duty unless they were being disciplined for some reason.
“I’m happy to see you all,” Ileth said. “I may cry!” She had a difficult time suppressing the urge to hug them.
“A dark night for dark business,” Dun Huss said, weirdly echoing the Charge in that meeting in his quarters so long ago. “We’re taking you out of here, Ileth.”
Ileth, so shocked that her stutter hardly allowed her to talk, said that she’d given her word to the Galantines. No leaving Chapalaine except under the specific direction of the Baron. “It’s a question of honor,” she finished.
To their credit, none of the men cut her off during her stumbling speech.
“No, there’s no honor involved,” Dun Huss said. “We’ve consulted, and they weren’t to use the dragon for any military, courier, or exhibition purposes, including parades, circuses, and displays in menagerie. Well, it’s not military correspondence, but bringing beer up some mountain so his jailer can make money off it is the act of a courier, whether it’s a bag of letters or beer.”
She’d mentioned her flights with Fespanarax in her letters back to the Serpentine. She’d wanted to reassure them that he was restored to health. “But it was my idea, to occupy him with . . . with something other than sleep. Get precious metals in his diet.”
“Still, they plain broke the terms,” the Borderlander said.
“Most girls my age dream of a handsome dragoneer carrying them off. I know I should thank you to the day I die that all three of you showed up, but I fear you’ve wasted your time.”
Amrits rolled his prominent eyes. “Tripe! The Serpentine’s a dull place without you. Nothing’s burned down or boiled up in months. We must have you back.”
Dun Huss ignored him: “We needed a small enough group to go in quietly, but a large enough flight to handle anything the Galantines could put in the air against us. You may not know it, Ileth, but the Galantines have two of their dragons posted with a view of your valley, just in case Fespanarax gets out of hand.”
He went on to say their dragons were concealed on the riverbank. They could submerge and hide everything but their nostrils and be invisible in the dark if anyone walked along the banks, as unlikely as that was on a wet, chill night.
“These are the orders of the Serpentine?”
Amrits nodded. “We took it to the Master in Charge. He agrees that the terms of your confinement have been violated.”
“Not even your parole. You’re here on a dead man’s promise,” the Borderlander said.
“Be honest, Amrits. He didn’t tell us we could do this,” Dun Huss said.
“Don’t be a stick, Hael. He didn’t tell us not to, either, when we presented him with the plan, eh?” Dath Amrits said. “We were able to leave with our mounts and supplies without interference. Did they think we were going camping, with winter coming on?”
“Are we going to talk, or are we going to fly?” the Borderlander asked.
“I must refuse. If we go back, it could restart the war,” Ileth said. “I think they’re looking for an excuse.”
“If they want an excuse, let’s give it to them,” Dun Huss said. “If we escape, it’s done and we can confront them at the negotiating table with your account of Fespanarax being used for profit.”
“Pure venting,” Amrits said. “Ileth, I’ve been six years a full dragoneer and I’ve never, not once, rescued a maiden. To be honest, they’re beginning to talk down at the Cock and Stack.” Ileth had heard that the dragoneers frequented the High Rooster, a beer garden in Vyenn with a sign of a rooster atop a haystack.
Dun Huss looked at the Borderlander, who shrugged. “If they break negotiations and invade, our people will rally. The Vales don’t like making war, but receiving it is another matter.”
“We’re at full strength again,” Amrits said. “If we can get Fespanarax back, we might even be better off. But starting the war again. That’s not my line at all.”
“How do you know they’re looking for an excuse?” Dun Huss asked.
“The Baron. His daughter can’t tell the difference between gossip and Court affairs. She let slip something she heard. It’s a long trip back. Suppose something goes wrong and you have to fight.” She continued on to say that if they hurried back now and were spotted, they could plausibly explain that they’d become lost in bad weather, apologize profusely, and return to the Serpentine. But dragoneers carrying away a prisoner who had been paroled to a pleasant estate and a powerful dragon . . .
“Blast it, I think the girl’s right,” Amrits said. “But I feel a fool having come all this way just to leave her here.”
“They’ll still take your coin at the High Rooster, Amrits,” the Borderlander said.
“Sirs, you’ve done more than you realize,” Ileth said, tears welling up. Luckily the rain hid them.
“How’s that?” the Borderlander asked.
“Seeing you three. You are all important dragoneers, yet you came just to bring me out. I am happy, very happy to know I am missed, even if it’s just by you three. It couldn’t have come at a better time, either.”
“What,” Amrits said. “The rain this time of year gets worse than this?”
“I am sixteen! I’m not sure of the exact day, but the season’s right. From now on my birthday shall be this date, each and every year, and not one will go by where your gesture won’t be remembered. I will never forget this party.”
“Good heavens, maybe we should get her away,” Amrits said. “Even if we have to tie her across Fespanarax. Birthday parties! She’s going Galantine on us.”
Ileth spent a few moments relating the details of Griff’s defection and Galia possibly being of help to the Galantines. Also that she’d heard of an old man taking poison that left his teeth blue and that Fespanarax seemed ready to quit human affairs altogether. They listened attentively, seriously, and asked a few questions about young men being pressed into the King’s service or purchases of horseflesh for cavalry. She’d heard talk of neither.
They decided to go and find a more remote spot to rest their dragons. The Borderlander shook her hand, Amrits gave her a quick kiss on the forehead and joked that if she grew much more he’d be guilty of dallying with the apprentices, and Dun Huss, perhaps best of all, accepted and returned a formal salute, taking care to do it with the same precision he’d use on Charge Roguss Heem Deklamp.