Leaving such matters for the investigators, she finally had her much-delayed appointment with the Master of Novices. She settled on an evening after she’d finished dancing for Falberrwrath, who was still out of sorts over the poisoning and the eggs, so much so that he didn’t even regale her with old war stories, but shifted about nervously until the music, motion, and, she supposed, the smell of her sweat soothed him.
She was too tired after that to be nervous. She found Master Caseen alone in his office.
Ileth couldn’t think of what she’d done to be called in. It couldn’t be that she was promoted to apprentice; Selgernon would be present for that. Had news of her Galantine title caused her some difficulty? Perhaps she’d violated some patriotic rule. Reintroducing aristocratic titles or something like that.
She certainly hadn’t put on airs—though she’d been tempted to ask Santeel if a Galantine Lady of Hospitals and Refuges, with Acts, had to perform a courtesy to a Dun Troot first, or if it was the reverse. Hael Dun Huss hinted that he understood the meaning on those streamers hung on Fespanarax for her return. She’d confessed it to the jury of inquiry and showed them the Galantine King’s letter. Maybe this was leading to an official reprimand.
“Here you are again, Ileth, in my office. Feels like old times, eh?” Nothing had changed, not even his habit of scratching at his elbows as he filtered memories. He even wore the same decorative mask and tasseled sash. No, there was something different. He had a new lamp. It was on an arm and counterweight that allowed the light to be tilted without spilling the oil, and the light had a shade that reflected and concentrated the illumination. Very clever. It was probably from one of the artisans in Tyrenna. The things they created!
“You have a new lamp.”
“Yes, the flame adjusts better for reading. My eyes are getting old, along with the rest of me.”
She couldn’t say much to that.
“I have an interesting letter here.” He gestured to his desk. For a moment Ileth startled, thinking it was from the Galantine King, as it was roughly the same size, but it didn’t have nearly the same rich décor of ribbons and seals.
“Does it concern me, sir?”
“I took my time figuring that out,” Caseen said. “It’s from no less a personage than Governor Raal of your own North Province. Some weeks after your first flight on Vithleen, he wrote me demanding the return of a runaway to the Freesand Lodge. The runaway’s name was Ileth. Now, for all he knew, I had six novices named after a Galantine Queen who went to her death with a Directist prayer on her lips, so I wrote back asking for more information. It turns out she stutters and had been seen on dragonback carrying the Republic’s mails. That letter I gave to Kess in the archives to ask if anyone of that description had been enrolled, but as chance would have it Kess blundered and misfiled it. It’s rare, but it’s been known to happen. By the time a personal representative of your Governor showed up at our gate, you were a prisoner in the Galantine lands and there was nothing we could do for him.”
Ileth could only say, “Thank you, sir.”
“Governor Raal has never been any sort of friend to the Serpentine, so I wonder at him writing us himself. The man who ran your lodge, did Governor Raal owe him some great favor?”
The Captain, in his cups, always insisted that he knew important names who owed him. But then, when drunk, he also insisted that he’d killed sixteen men single-handed and escaped the Rari pirates, and that the moon was always watching and knew if you were talking mutiny, so Ileth had not taken the claims seriously. “I don’t know anything about such matters,” she said, happy to be entirely truthful.
“I’m glad that’s settled. You wish to exert your right as a sixteen-year-old to choose your own path and dwelling?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Because I have more news for you.”
She braced herself as best as she could and just looked at the mask and his sound eye.
“It is happy news for a change. You are appointed apprentice.”
So it was that! She’d made it in, found a place with all these Names. Despite the stutter. Despite the Lodge. Despite the rumors about her mother, which, when she was a child, the whole world held over her, and now they yellowed and faded into sad garden-wall gossip that deserved only a contemptuous snap of her fingers. Despite, perhaps, the demands of a Vale provincial Governor. “Thank you,” she said, her voice choked with emotion for a change, rather than tripping on her poky and unreliable tongue.
“Why . . . why isn’t the Master of Apprentices here for this?”
“Selgernon’s on leave. He’s been indisposed since this Duskirk business. He may quit the Serpentine and attend to his health.”
“I hope he recovers.”
“He’s a good man. I told him not to blame himself for Duskirk; you can’t know what’s in the hearts of hundreds of youths. But I’m sorry this took so long. We should have done it while you were in the Galantine lands, but the thing with Galia stirred things up here a little. We’d lost a wingman to marriage; suppose an apprentice went with her? I don’t expect you to understand what some of the fine figures at the Assembly say about us sometimes. There’s a faction always looking to get rid of us. The dragons of the Serpentine absorb a good deal of balance sheet ink. We’re also seen as a legacy from the King and a refuge of aristocratic feeling. But we’ve turned the tide in battle too many times for them to get rid of us. The Republic wouldn’t exist without her dragoneers.”
Ileth clearly wasn’t listening. The Master gave her a moment to collect herself.
“You are also the last of your oathed group of novices to move up to apprentice. The rest moved up before you or went by the wayside one way or another. It makes you the tailer of the draft of sixty-six, even if it’s not your fault you were a prisoner. I’m sorry, the title will cling.”
Ileth thought she could show she cared not how she made apprentice, just that she did, by using a Zusya-like phrase like “better the tail than a . . .” But Caseen’s office was no place for adolescent jokes.
“But it’s just a name. Names change and are forgotten. Not like this.” He tapped his mask.
“Sir, if you don’t m-mind me asking, why a party mask?”
“Oh, didn’t I ever tell the story? I thought I did. The night before the battle I was at a masquerade ball. I remember thinking I looked intriguing in it and wishing I had more opportunities to wear it. Little did I know. Just goes to show that you must be careful with your wishes as well as your actions. Sometimes they’ll haunt you. Still, I was lucky. The surgeon said that if I’d lost more skin and had bone exposed in such a fashion that he couldn’t pull some bits together and stitch so it was covered up, I’d have died from a gangrenous rot. Alive and mysterious behind a mask is better than dead and good-looking.”
Ileth nodded slowly. She would miss this man.
“So this is it for us, we with our odd speech and lack of distinguished Name. I’m no longer Master of Ileth. The Blue Book turns its page. I’ve cleared my desk for a new draft. Anything more I can do for you?”
Ileth finally had time to get an answer to a question that had been bothering her off and on. “What does that gesture with the two fists brought together mean?”
“Like this?” Caseen asked, bringing his arms in front of his chest in tight fists joined as one horizontal bar, knuckles out.
“Yes. Please, I’ve seen it a few times. I even saw Aurue do it.”
“Did he? That’s good. I’ve heard he wasn’t entirely sure about being here, at least before the whole egg rescue. Well, ask six dragoneers and you’ll get six different answers. Some say it’s just a reassuring gesture for white-knuckling through difficulty. Another might just say it’s a gesture of approval. More nautical types say it means hold fast.”