“What’s your answer, sir?”
“I’d say it means keep the troth.”
“I like that one b-best.”
They smiled at each other.
Oh, there was one other thing she was curious about. “When we f-first met, that first day you opened the door to me, you mentioned a portrait. Before your . . . before your burns. I should very much like to see it. As I suppose I won’t be called into this office anymore, I confess I’ve always wondered. It seems this is my last chance.”
“I remember telling you you knew how to flatter an old man. Anything for the newest apprentice of the Serpentine,” Caseen said, smiling. He stood up, stretched a little stiffly, and started rummaging around in a map case. He opened a drawer fully and drew out a portrait.
“You have to remember, Ileth, that portrait painters find they get much better commissions if they flatter up the subject a bit. Many a young man, and woman, I suppose, has been tricked into forming an attachment over a portrait that didn’t tell the entire truth.”
Even allowing for a certain amount of artistic flourish, the portrait showed a sharp, eagle-faced young man in the most dashing style of dress dragoneer uniform. The young, unburned Caseen left Rapoto Vor Claymass well below and far behind.
“Sir, I had no idea,” Ileth said. “You really should hang it, but it might be too distracting for us girls.” She wanted to sit and drink wine and take in the picture. She quietly chuckled. For the first time in her life, she wanted to have someone’s babies!
That night she couldn’t sleep so she walked the walls, enjoying the summer wind until almost dawn, losing herself in the light of the beacon atop the Beehive, looking for the sun coming up over the mountains on the other side of the Skylake and down at the doorstep of the red door where she’d sat and waited and starved almost two years ago. She’d had enough bad moments in life to know that a good one should be lingered over, savored, memorialized. Apprenticed! Even containing her happiness was impossible; she kept alternately crying and laughing. Two Guards pacing the south wall must have thought her mad.
In theory, her place among the dragoneers of the Serpentine was now secure for the coming years of her apprenticeship, six by tradition, and much longer if you were a specialist. Shatha, after all, was believed to be above forty and therefore ancient. Ileth could almost count on rising by default, and, barring an accident or illness, would someday fly on commissions, just as Annis had atop Agrath. If she had money, she’d hire an artist to paint her likeness so that she might always have the moment a childhood wish came true.
Which gave her a thought.
In a bit of a daze from lack of sleep, she begged a bit of early breakfast from Joai, who was already up and at work in her kitchen, having just fed a few Guards coming off their night rounds. When did the woman sleep?
“You’re the prettiest tailer the Serpentine’s ever seen, anyway,” she said, kissing Ileth on the forehead at the news. “I knew this day would come. Provided you lived. Some people are prone to adventures, but not all of them live to write their memoirs.”
Ileth thanked her and hurried to the Dancers’ Quarter. She needed to retrieve her dancing sheath.
Most were at breakfast. Santeel was washing up a few odds and ends from their improvised pre-drill breakfast. “What are you so happy about?”
“Caseen has seen the last of the draft of sixty-six. The Blue Book is closed, at least on our class.”
“Why are you—wait, you’ve made apprentice?”
“The tailer,” Ileth said.
Preen and Zusya entered the washroom with their drill clothes. Preen gave her hair a playful pull; Zusya hugged her. The news would spread through the Serpentine quickly enough now.
“Saw your letter to Falth,” Santeel said, casually. “I wasn’t aware your friendship extended to my family’s servants.”
“About that,” Ileth began, before she fell into stammering.
“Oh, I know my family. Don’t even worry about it, there’s nothing to forgive.” She leaned in to hug Ileth and pulled her close, pressing her hand into the wash basin and holding it under. “If you ever write a word to them against me, I’ll drown you myself as a betrayer,” she whispered. Then she was released. “Congratulations on your promotion, apprentice!” Santeel laughed. “I’m so happy for you!”
Ileth fled the Notch and begged off morning drill to Ottavia.
She was an apprentice now. She could leave the Serpentine, as long as it was daylight—and she returned in daylight. She had that privilege. And it was daylight, just. Though she should be at drills, there was something more important to do.
She dug around beneath her bed and retrieved one item, a souvenir of the Galantine lands, and rushed out to the Long Bridge.
They barely noticed the mad girl in the bad-fitting overdress; those few who were up and about were yawning and heading for breakfast.
Ileth made it to the gate. That monkeylike boy with the long name who’d walked in on her changing was in an ill-fitting Guard uniform and serving as gatekeeper that morning. He called for the Dragon Gate to be opened for her. He watched her pass through with the same bemused, curious expression as he’d had looking at her in Joai’s kitchen, eyes peering out from under an ill-fitting fore-and-aft-rigged hat that nearly came down to his eyes. She ran down to the bayside and those old overturned boats. Panting, she made it just as the sun left the mountains on the other side of the lake.
“I’ve done it, Father. I passed their tests. I’ve made apprentice.
“Apprenticed!” she shouted, scattering the birds poking about at the edge of the lake. Farther out, she heard a splash. She’d probably startled an otter.
It was time to show him that aerial pirouette he’d once asked about.
As she bowed, centered herself, and began to dance, showing a kindly memory of a dragon who believed love and beauty and knowledge transcended the curtain between life and death, a walking flock of muddy geese appeared on the hill above, moving down toward the far end of the bay.
Two old farmers, grandfathers now who probably had sons and grandsons doing the heavy work and had been left to easier tasks, were moving their geese down to feed at a little creek that fed into the bay. With spring well on, the creek would be thick with bugs and small frogs for the geese and, when they ran out of frogs, young tender grass shoots.
One of the men saw Ileth and switched his long goose-driving pole to his other hand so he could nudge his friend.
“What do we have here, you think?” Ileth leaped and spun, leaped and spun again, one leg forward in the air, another tucked behind, her arms up and out, smiling. Perhaps crying, but then she needed some water to go with the earth on her feet and the fire in her limbs as she spun through the air.
“Don’t you know? One of those girls as dances for them dragons up there. Charms them, like, so them that ride the beasts can handle them.”
“Tricky stuff, goin’ about all raised up on your toes like that. How’s she not fall down, I want to know.”
“Thinking you’d let your young Annis twirl around like that?”
“Heh, I can just see it.”
“Eh, isn’t that the spot where they said that old dragon washed up and died?”
“I believe it is, Ewesh, I believe it is.”
They passed on with their geese. Meanwhile, the slight young woman pirouetted around an odd black stick. It stood there in the center of her circle of footprints, two red-and-white streamers left to flutter in the breeze. She threw a long shadow in the morning sun. But not so long a shadow that you couldn’t see it dancing with her.