PART FOUR
The Three Eggs
If only the future came with signposts.
17
Her journey back was simplicity itself, compared to her first trip to the Serpentine. She flew west on Fespanarax, laden with little good-bye gifts from Chapalaine, the clothes and footwear she’d acquired one way and another, and her little supply of silver nuggets and bag of good Galantine tea. Fespanarax flew streamers that were both white, and white with red shields (with a gold stripe running diagonally across the red shield that indicated a Knight or Lady of the Order of Hospitals and Refuges, with Acts—the Baron and Azal had to look it up in a book but once they had the style, Taf and the Baroness had produced them in an afternoon).
Taf had been the only one to look truly upset at their departure, as without a dragon there would be no need next summer for the Tribals to stay longer than it took to scour Fespanarax’s bedding for traces and collect the loose scale Ileth had left for them, entrusted to Taf. Taf said she’d miss the dancing. The Baron was relieved to be free of the expense of feeding the dragon and devoting so many servants to his care. The Baroness was suspected to be with child again and looking as green as the riverbanks. All the children could not wait for the ceremony to be over (Ileth was still kicking herself for not counting them, as they’d been all lined up in family battalions for once), and the Baron’s head gardener and family were probably looking forward to getting that little house back.
The Baron had adopted into his family one of the orphaned children she had rescued. She was in the lineup with his other children, clean and well dressed, but standing a little apart from the others separated by a nurse. She presented Ileth with a black stick, probably from a birch. It had three red-and-white ribbons tied around it.
“What’s your name?” she asked the girl.
“We can’t get her to talk hardly, my lady,” the nurse said. “She says please when she wants something and thank you. Sometimes she’ll whisper what she needs to one of the other children her size. We don’t know her name either, none of us do. We’ve been calling her Arenis.”
“She knows her parents are dead, Lady,” a governess next to the nurse said. “Yet still she asks, especially in the mornings. We have to tell her they are dead all over again. Poor thing.”
“Arenis is a nice name,” Ileth said. “Thank you for the stick.”
“It’s from a bedtime story,” one of the Baron’s younger daughters volunteered.
“Say ‘Lady’ when you address someone of her order,” the governess said.
“Sorry, Lady Ileth, Arenis is a little girl from a story who floats down from a cloud. She thinks a herd of goats are her family for a while, until a kind King adopts her, Lady Ileth.” The child looked to the governess and received an approving smile and nod.
“The stick is something the village children do,” Taf explained. “It’s a wish stick. You wave it at festivals and weddings and such, or when an unusually significant person passes. When a wish comes true, you untie a ribbon. I suggested she do them in the colors of the Vales when I saw her looking for ribbons.”
Ileth caressed the little girl and hugged her. She picked her up and let her say good-bye to Fespanarax. “He’s the one you should be thanking, Arenis,” Ileth said. The girl touched the dragon’s ear.
“If I get bloodbug in my ear from the little rodent, I will become unpleasant about it,” Fespanarax said. But he said it in Drakine.
Ileth thanked the Baron and Baroness for their kindness once more from the saddle. The Baron bowed. “Lady,” he said.
They took off and Fespanarax made a slow climb to good flying air.
She was challenged once, quite early in their journey west. A dragon about half the size of Fespanarax rose from the ground as she approached the first low mountain chain west of the Baron’s lands. It had two riders in a tandem saddle designed to take advantage of the hump of muscle near the dragon’s wings: a man at the reins and another behind seated just a little above him with a crossbow. They waved her down.
Fespanarax was not keen to land after all the effort of getting to altitude, but he did. They found a mountain meadow and Ileth showed them the King’s letter. They were both familiar with Fespanarax; word just had not reached them that he’d been freed. They bowed to her and pledged to do whatever they could for a Lady of Hospitals and Refuges, with Acts, acclaimed by both King and Acclaim of the Court. Ileth asked if they would fly with her to the border so they didn’t have further trouble, and they announced that they’d be honored. They were as good as their word, though it meant a long and tiring flight.
The weather was good and Fespanarax was magnificent in his speed for such a large dragon. Perhaps his vast size and huge wings helped him along, much as the fastest swimmers were usually tall with a good reach. The Galantine escort fell farther and farther behind. They reached the border by afternoon and set down on the Republic side for a meal with the border guards. Luckily one of them was the same as on her outbound flight, and another veteran recognized Fespanarax. They had a meal with them and as Fespanarax was feeling well (but hungry; there wasn’t nearly enough meat for a dragon, as the guards ate mostly beans and pea-potato mash), he seemed willing to try for the Serpentine, even though they might not reach it before night.
When she hit the Tonne, unmistakable in its width, she turned north. The weather grew colder and colder as they moved north into growing darkness. The mountains to the west looked achingly familiar.
“If it’s clear, you can see the lighthouse a long way off,” Fespanarax said. “I see sort of a haze that may be it.”
“Will you be glad to—glad to return?”
“Eating ore and doing odd jobs for humans,” Fespanarax said. “I was tired of it before. But perhaps the activity will engage me more than I think. I look forward to being able to dine on the reward from your family for some time.”
“About—about that.”
“I tease you, Ileth. I know you are poor. Getting me out of the dull routine of Galantine country will have to be enough.”
As he spoke, Ileth felt a stiffness coming down from his neck. She wondered if he’d been rehearsing that little speech in his head. It didn’t sound at all like Fespanarax.
For a while they had flocks of migratory birds on their spring flight north along the wide Tonne keeping them company, and eagles. It was a sight to remember, the birds in their thousands, hundreds of little wedge formations. They summered somewhere in the flat lake country north of the bay she’d grown up on. Most of them would, anyway. The flocks dropped well below the dragon and avoided the eagles. Some of the eagles came up, curious, drifted for some moments in the dragon’s wake, and then went back to their fishing.
They passed the falls, vague but loud in the dark, and the air grew colder still. She was hungry, but hunger was an old friend. You were sharper when you were hungry.
Fespanarax was right. They did see the lighthouse a long way off. They passed the cliff she’d once idly considered jumping from. Who was that girl? That Ileth should have confided in more friends and learned the virtues of patience. If her time at the Baron’s had taught her anything, it was patience.