She felt both unsteady and thrilled. She didn’t know what to do, how any of this worked with people with great names. Even her knowledge of coquetry among her own class was rumor and quick glimpses stitched together with guesswork. She reclined on her chair of feed sacks and smiled at him, then shifted her gaze to Galia’s feet above. Her toes were curling and straightening; whatever was going on up there, she seemed to be enjoying it. She suspected the dragoneer Dun Huss would not like her to follow Galia’s example in this instance. The rough sacking she sat upon tugged at her overdress and she sensed the sack was tearing. When she rose, she’d have to be careful about it or she’d end up with a mosaic of dried grain stuck to her backside.
Rapoto let out a great hacking cough. She glanced over and saw him struggling with the pipe, holding it as if it were a piece of chalk.
“Keep the smoke in your mouth,” Sideburns suggested. Rapoto nodded dumbly and inhaled again, making a face.
“Never smoked a pipe?” Peak asked.
Rapoto shook his head. “Yellows the teeth.”
Sideburns smiled. “I care about the soothing, contemplative frame of mind it offers. My teeth are subordinate to my brain.”
“I don’t feel soothed. Nauseous, if anything,” Rapoto said, and the youth next to him laughed.
Evire continued tending the grog pot, making a show of stirring it with a long wooden ladle.
“Rapoto, another dip?” she called, plunging the ladle in.
Rapoto ignored her, gave the pipe back to Sideburns (I need to tell Quith about his brand of tobacco, Ileth thought), and turned his attention back to Ileth. Evire took it in with one quick, contemptuous glance and concentrated on filling up the mugs being passed to her.
Several of the couples were kissing or caressing each other. Some of the apprentices were leaving. Peak caught Ileth looking at one of the uniformed wingmen, old enough for a thick mustache, half whispering, half kissing at an apprentice’s ear and neck. She’d loosed her hair and her hand gripped the wingman’s forearm that she was resting upon, hard enough for her knuckles to go white. She and Peak shared a knowing smile.
The pile-in was turning into one of the Captain’s outdoor bonfire nights when his gang brought their “wives.”
“I should go,” Ileth said.
“I need to get back too,” Rapoto said. “Want another toss of gripe before you climb into the saddle?”
She shook her head and stifled a yawn. All the gripe had done was make her sleepy. The pile-in felt stuffy and the exhaustion of the day had finally caught up to her excitement. Night air would do her good, the chillier the better. She stood up and felt dizzy. What in all the locks and falls of the Republic had Evire put in that gripe?
They moved through the reduced crowd. Rapoto took her hand to assist in threading around the remaining apprentices and to keep from being pulled into a congratulation or conversation. Perhaps it was the gripe, but she decided he was as far above the run of the other apprentices as the snowcaps on the Sisters across the lake were above sea level. It was like every nerve in her body had been pulled into her hand and set aquiver.
They left the pile-in and walked out toward the door, passing the scattered horses. Long, thoughtful faces watched them from their stalls with the empty stables open between like knocked-out teeth.
“I have to take my chance,” Rapoto said. He pulled her into one of the dark berths and pressed her against the stable wall, kissing her full and hard on the lips.
The intimacy shocked her, but it was the best kind of shock.
Maybe it was the gripe, but time slowed as his hands traveled around her waist. His touch was a little hesitant, as if he feared what he might find. She liked that. It was like being explored. She was used to being grabbed fast and hard by rough hands that didn’t linger anywhere but their objective. Rapoto had thin fingers and a delicate touch. She pressed herself into him; he was tall and she slight, and her chin just fit against the bottom of his breastbone. He had to bend to kiss her and she had to tilt her close-cropped head far, far back.
She felt him take her overdress in his hands and start to lift it. She stiffened, pressing back against the stable wall to keep it in place. She hadn’t expected Rapoto to go to that so quickly, like a pig pawing up a truffle.
Something white loomed behind Rapoto. For a moment she imagined it was Gorgantern, blade raised to stab—
Ileth squeaked in alarm.
“Rapoto!” Santeel Dun Troot screamed.
Ileth shielded her eyes from the lantern. The light hurt.
“Santeel, what the hounds . . .” Rapoto gasped, struggling to tuck his shirt into his pants. Ileth’s overdress hem fell to its usual place as though it too were acting as if nothing out of the ordinary had been in progress. She felt a flush of embarrassment rush to her face.
“I went out after Ileth. The Matron was worried about her. She is wounded and should be in bed. In a real bed.”
I’m sure you did! thought Ileth.
“I inquired at the Masters’ Hall, then the Guards’ halls, and they said there was a sort of gathering at the stables. You were seen walking toward it. I asked for admittance at the door, not suspecting I’d discover this sort of depravity . . .” Santeel stared at the kerchief tying up Ileth’s cropped hair, at Rapoto, and back again in increasing fury.
Depravity? For all her name and education, Ileth thought, Santeel hadn’t lived much; Ileth’s hem hadn’t even made it halfway up to her thighs.
“I don’t know what you think you saw, Santeel, but it was only a kiss.”
Santeel grew larger in her anger the way sparring birds fluff themselves up. “A kiss, he says. With, with this . . . You forget my Name! And while I’m on the subject of names, you forget yours! Rutting with this northern trash.”
“Don’t speak of her that way,” Rapoto said. “She’s a novice dragoneer, same as you.”
“You called her that yourself,” Santeel said. “Don’t deny it!”
“Trash?” Ileth asked.
Rapoto’s attention bounced from one to the other. “I did not say trash. I absolutely did not say trash, Ileth.”
“Your exact words when I told you where she was from were: ‘A lot of trash washes up on that coast.’ What else could it mean?”
Rapoto put himself between Santeel and Ileth. “Ileth, I did not mean you! Not specifically you!”
Others from the stable were gathering. Ileth, no longer tired but feeling strangely bodiless, saw Galia in the audience. And that feeder, what was his name, the one who’d vomited her first night outside the door—Duskirk, that was it. The dancer Peak was whispering something in Galia’s ear. Galia would be in attendance. She appeared at so many of Ileth’s imbroglios she could pass a hat around and collect coins in exchange for the show. The thought made her giggle. Then she fainted.
Galia and Santeel took her back to the Manor, Galia helping Ileth and Santeel casting about ahead, swinging the lantern like some sort of suspended doom.
“What are you doing, Santeel?” Galia asked.
“Checking the corners. The wingman keeping an eye on the house said they’re worried about Gorgantern coming back.”
Ileth felt as though they were a procession marching a condemned man to the block, and it turned out to be not far from the truth. Upon hearing Santeel and Galia explain things, that Ileth had been discovered up against a stable wall with a man pressing between her legs, the Matron rose to her feet at a speed that would do a scalded cat credit and ordered her to report to the Master of Novices. Even if she had to sit on the doorstep all night. Which was where she should have been left to begin with.