“You don’t need to list them.”
“It should have been thirty-nine,” Ileth said. “I lost one boy . . . It was horrible.”
“Well, Ileth, I’m sure your intentions were good but I’m not sure you understand what you’ve done. They’re on my side of the mountains, you see, so now they’re my problem. I could perhaps find homes for a third that number, given the number we lost in the plague before you joined us. Babies can often be fobbed off on someone. Take a couple here at Chapalaine. But thirty-eight! From the lowest sort of sweepings to the north. Miners never have relatives that can be found; they move around too much. I shall have to establish an orphanage! I shall have to buy land and build, or worse, take an established building where I can credibly house over twenty children. Beg the church, with whom I’m not on the best terms currently, as I keep a dragon, a girl who dances about mostly naked, and what used to be a thriving brewery. I am dismasted in a storm, girl, and a whirlpool yawns beneath.”
“Send one or two to Dandas and Galia. I believe they want to start a family.”
The Baron brightened. “Now that is helpful. Good thinking. The Baroness was saying something along those lines. You Vale girls are familiar with the duties of a wife to a husband, I hope? Ahh, if only you’d flown the lot farther south to get them there, then they’d be Baron Alcester’s problem. I don’t suppose—”
He read Ileth’s face.
“No, no, it’s too much to ask. Get cleaned up and get some sleep, girl.”
The following weeks were madly busy. The Baron decided that since the new orphans were her doing, she should run about finding rooms and shelter for them in the village. Fespanarax, his wings greased with a cow-doctor’s salve used to soothe udders, asked her several times if she’d written her family about his reward. The Baron went so far as to allow her to roam about his lands unescorted on one of the horses his daughters shared, and she became something like a Galantine significant as she trotted about on it, enjoying the fact that her ride didn’t argue with her about the quality of his grain and water. Both farmers and townspeople greeted her by name with none of the elaborate obeisances they gave the Baron, often pressing a bit of preserved berry spread in a crock or honey cakes on her “for those poor children the dragon saved.” All the while, the Tentkeeper’s letter sat, still sealed, on her little meal table.
Ileth worked harder than ever, even if it was just scrubbing Fespanarax’s scale with a bristle brush. Only profound exhaustion let her escape dreams of the eyes of that boy as he fell from the dragon.
It took no little doing and much more flying, but she’d just returned from tracking down the village of Isswith and delivering the Tentkeeper’s letter (with the usual travel permissions and elegant letters of introduction) when the Baron summoned her again to his library. This time he had Azal standing gravely behind him and Taf seated primly at his secretary-desk. He held a gilded envelope to the window light so Ileth could see it.
“We have here a letter from Court under the King’s seal, and strangely, I am ordered not to open it until you are in my presence, Ileth of the Vales. Azal, please witness that Ileth is present and the letter is still sealed. I am posted to the Court Exalted, so I may unseal as instructed. Taf, note the date and approximate time, please, and list those present.”
Taf wrote a note in a little book the Baron kept on his desk.
He passed a silver knife under the waxed seal and carefully removed it, laying the seal on a small tray on his spotless writing desk. He extracted a sheet of thick cotton paper with a golden foil border decorating it and read it quickly. Ileth could only see that it bore several ribbons. The Baron’s eyes bulged. The thick paper made a slight noise in his hands as it began to shake. His lip even trembled a little as he finished it.
A man reading his own death warrant could not look more shocked. His mouth worked, but no words came. It wasn’t some attack; he had the sense to hand it to Taf, who scanned it and began to read:
“Almendaeldess the Third, King of the Galantine Lands, all her Baronies, Possessions, and Colonies on Foreign Coasts; Defender, Champion, and Final Resort and Supreme Enforcer of her Laws and Traditions, does hereby sign and seal this royal release of the girl born to the Freesand of our western neighbor, one Ileth aged sixteen or thereabout, surname and titles unknown or absent, and a dragon named Fespanarax of the same nation currently held by our most favored friend and supporter Hryasmess at Chapalaine in the Green River Country. Our Gracious Sovereign, in considered and public recognition of their bravery in the saving of life, even at the hazard of their own, in the late disaster known as the Eruption of Laterus (‘the Cracked Cauldron’) on this Month of Memory in the Two Thousand Nine Hundred Sixty-Eighth Year of our Hypatian Founding Sacred announces the following: Be it known that she and her dragon are made free in our lands, all paroles and restrictions lifted at once and forevermore, and may pass and return at will. Ileth, as named above, is elevated to the honorary title of Lady of the Order of Hospitals and Refuges, with Distinction by Acts, and proclaimed and posted to the Court Exalted in significance of her bravery. As of the moment of this order being read in her presence, she shall receive any and all respects and courtesies of that title as occasion merits until her death, resignation of honors, or revocation on the decision of the King or his heir.
“It is our hope that this act of clemency and elevation will lead to an increase in friendship and commerce with our western neighbor and banish forever the pestilence of war between the Galantine Baronies and the lands generally called the Vale Republic.
“Signed and sealed with Acclaim of the Court,
Almendaeldess the Third,
King Galantine
(with titles accepted as listed in usual form).”
“Ileth! I am happy for you!” Taf said. “I’m sorry, Lady, I am happy for you.” She made a deep obeisance.
“You may say ‘Lady Ileth’; technically she’s of our household I suppose,” Young Azal said. “But then again she’s foreign and should perhaps be addressed as a visiting dignitary. Lady Freesand? Oh, we can always look it up, I suppose.”
“Ileth, do you have any idea of the significance of this? Any idea at all?” the Baron asked.
“It means Fespanarax and I may leave?”
He showed no sign of having heard her.
“‘Most favored.’ Not only does he name me and list Chapalaine. No! And not ‘faithful friend and supporter,’ as he’d ordinarily write if he were pleased. I would have danced on my roof if he’d just written ‘favored.’ But he wrote ‘most favored’! Most! Oh, Ileth, if I’d know when you and Galia arrived all that would issue of our meeting, I should have purchased a white cloth runner from your dragon to my door and lined it with every villager I could drag into place to cheer you to my threshold with flower petals. ‘Most favored’! The marriage of Galia must have exceeded expectations. Lucky Dandas! Lucky me! I must tell the Baroness. Oh, where is the Baroness? Find your mother, children! This instant!”
His joy was made a little comical by the rat clinging desperately to his wig as he capered and kicked up his heels, but Ileth felt happy for him.
“I am happy for you, sir,” she managed.
Strange, the Baron’s mention of Galia and not her apparently talked-about-at-Court rescue, but she could think about that at her leisure. Another matter eclipsed everything, including her peeling skin. She was free to return to the Serpentine just as soon as she chose. Home.