“At Chapalaine there wasn’t much talk of politics,” Ileth said. “At least in conversations with women. They only spoke of food, entertainments, courtships, babies. Always babies.”
“Lucky you. Well, they say there’s a monster of a crayfish in the kitchens; maybe your dragon would like that. I’ll see to it, Ileth.”
He moved away, and Ileth let the phrase your dragon roll around in her mind. Fespanarax wasn’t the sort of dragon she would pick, and he seemed to have bad luck with dragoneers, but it was still an extraordinarily pleasant phrase to hear. It knocked around in her head the rest of the day, trying itself out.
The next day, the Dancers’ Quarter had some excitement. A letter from Peak had arrived, and it contained little but the news of prices for paintings and the fatigues of being a muse. Peak made her think of Galia, and Galia made her think of Yael Duskirk. She realized she should have said something to him about Galia. She hoped that he hadn’t been too set down by news of Galia’s marriage.
She reprimanded herself for not giving him the full story, as a friend to him who saw Galia and the way she changed up close.
At meal break after drills and fatigues—and was Ileth ever fatigued; she hadn’t been drilling as much as she should have in the Golden Land—she went to the kitchen for pickled eggs and found him.
It turned out he was there, supervising some new apprentices and novices and teaching them which dragons preferred fish and which wanted fowl. She inquired about his schedule, and they arranged to have a bite in the kitchens that evening.
That night, neither of them had a sudden call. With the weather turning warm, many of the dragoneers were gone on commissions, and the Serpentine had but a handful of dragons left.
The cooks were just going off duty, arguing about the overuse of paprika. Ileth saw Yael Duskirk scrubbing his mobile feed trough. Judging from the vigor he put into scraping out the trough and the scowl on his face, he was having a bad day.
Ileth asked him if something was the matter.
“I’ve just been with your friend Fespanarax,” he said. “He’s the moody type, isn’t he?”
“You c-c-can’t begin to know.”
“He’s already forgotten your name, or pretends to. He calls you ‘the stuttering girl.’ Galia was ‘the tall one.’”
“About . . . about Galia.”
“I’ve been trying to forget her. Should never have put my hopes into her. I was fine for her until a wealthy man came along.”
“You’ve heard of her marriage?”
“Yes. It was—I’m not sure scandal is the word for it, but it’s what I want to say. Shocking. We were shocked.”
“Yes. So was I.”
Duskirk shook his head. “I can’t stop thinking about her. Another failure.”
“I think she had too many hard knocks. She married to put some cushioning beneath her. And what do you mean, failure? Aren’t you a wingman?”
“I’m not specifically working with anyone. I should have had Vithleen, but now she’s with her eggs in the Cellars. The chance of a real commission is slim. They won’t give me a younger dragon because I’m too inexperienced, and the older dragons have their own lists of humans they like to work with. Everything seems to go wrong for me, in the air and on the ground. If I were wingman to the Borderlander, perhaps. Could you ask him for me? He seems fond of you.”
“I don’t—I don’t think he takes wingmen. I will ask. What about Fespanarax? I could speak to him about you.”
He started to scrub out his wheeled food trough. “Falberrwrath will complain if his trough isn’t spotless. He’s always complaining about his digestion. As for Fespanarax, I don’t know. He’s a famous dragon. Seems awful high above what I should expect. That and all his riders seem to die.”
“I flew him lots and-and-and I’m still standing here. Unless I’m . . . what’s the ex-expression you use?”
“The exception that proves the rule.”
Ileth nodded.
“Perhaps Vithleen will give me another chance, once her clutch hatches and years out. Vithleen is kind. Never complains if it’s fish three meals in a row.”
“Of the dragons I know, she’s my favorite.” Ileth’s legs ached at the memory of their round trip. The long trip on Fespanarax was comparatively easy, come to think of it. Maybe she should try to get courier runs if she ever made it that far. Ask to do the difficult and all that.
“Yes, I should have had that commission. Confusion in the flight cave, and things go wrong for me again. Ah well. Pass me the warm water there, the wash-bucket next to the stove. You know, I’ve never seen eggs hatching, should be interesting, if they let us anywhere near, that is. Have to split them up right away, I understand. I’ve heard if there’s more than one male, they’ll fight to death to establish dominance of the nest. Then the remaining hatchlings eat the loser. How’s that for a start in life? ’Course, maybe we humans aren’t much better; we just drag it out over twenty or thirty years.”
It was difficult for Ileth to lift. The tub itself was heavy even without water in it, and she made the mistake of picking it up on the side that had the pour-spout in the rim. She sloshed a great deal of water on herself as she brought it to Duskirk.
“Don’t worry, you can dry it by the stove. The fires there can fix it in no time.”
Ileth saw the way he looked at her. She didn’t want more of that trouble.
“I can dry it in the Dancers’ Quarter.”
He stepped toward her anyway. “Here, let me help you.”
“Please. I can handle it.”
He took one end, ignoring her wet work shirt.
She did like him, quite a bit, even if her interest in him was more about the head and heart than the landmarks south of there. Maybe somewhere other than the Serpentine she would have seen him in a different light, but she’d already been written into that Blue Book of Caseen’s and she’d do nothing to risk it being opened again.
“I wonder what Galia saw in that Galantine. A title?”
“I think she saw the estate, not the man. I think she liked him well enough, but she didn’t love him. She loved—”
Gods, she was worse than Quith.
“She loved?”
Ileth looked down. She couldn’t name Dun Huss. Dun Huss had done nothing to encourage Galia, behaved correctly to her, even in Galia’s telling. Stories always got twisted, the way everyone thought she’d fought Gorgantern in the raw. “Someone back here. But it was impossible.”
“Impossible because he wasn’t rich, didn’t have a title?”
“I—I didn’t know enough about it. She didn’t confide in me. Her betrothal took me by surprise.”
He bent to scrub out the feeding cart with renewed energy, a snarl on his lips, and tipped it. A wave of filthy wash water struck him right in the face.
Ileth stifled a giggle.
“Fates!” he said, wiping his face. “I want to be rich enough so I never have to scrub fish scales out of a bin again.”
“I’m sure you will be.”
“Not rutting likely. Even you think I’m a bit of mlumm that won’t wash off.”
“No. Yael, you’re—you were the first person here to speak . . . to speak nicely to me. I like you.”
“I like you too. You’re of my sort of people, no great expectations. We could go. Cut loose the entanglements here, build a life somewhere else.”
She’d been told men went mad around women sometimes, but this was a little too much. She calmed dragons down by being close to them and made men try to rake the moon. “Yael. Be sensible. Neither of us . . . neither needs to go anywhere. Look at what you have. Flying, even. I’m not even an apprentice yet.”