Caseen rose about the time his letters appeared. He had his mask back on. He wished her a good morning, scribbled a note, and went and found a page to bring note and notable to Ottavia Imperene.
“She’s not spent much time in the Beehive,” Caseen said to the page. “Make sure she can find her way out again.”
“Heard you got blued,” the page said as they walked out the hall door and into the morning. Ileth shrugged.
So back in her traveling boots, Ileth walked down the familiar, curving gravel road toward the Long Bridge. The overcast looked to be breaking up and giving way to some sunshine. She wasn’t superstitious, but the glimpses of the sun that turned the lake from its usual dull gray to gemstone-quality blue, reminding her of her first daylight look at the Serpentine and its surroundings, put her in a hopeful mood.
At the familiar turn to the Manor, she took it. Not by accident.
“Uh, what are you doing?” the page asked.
Ileth ignored him. She approached the Manor. An armed wingman she didn’t know exhibiting a shaped beard and mustache that must have required a great deal of attention in front of a good mirror raised an eyebrow.
The novices and apprentices had long since gone to work.
Ileth rapped on the door, a polite sort of knock.
“Ileth!” insisted the page, though she wasn’t certain what he was insisting on.
The Matron opened it, eyes hostile, mouth set. The page shifted around behind Ileth to avoid the withering stare.
Ileth sensed the novices who helped her keep house behind the Matron, keeping a distance to avoid potential contamination.
“You,” the Matron said, with the tone that suggested you stood for other, despicable words.
“Madam,” Ileth said, slowly to minimize her stuttering. “I was passing and wanted to thank you.”
“Thank me?”
“Yes. Yes, I grew up in a lodge, you see. I know how difficult it is to keep a crowded house clean and fed.”
The Matron didn’t respond for a moment; perhaps she had to parse the words in search of insult or ambush. “Yes. It can be difficult.”
“You have . . . you have been kind to me. I am sorry for last night. I am grateful for your hard work keeping house.”
Perhaps she’d overdone it a bit. The Matron gave a practiced but not friendly smile. “Well, that’s good of you to say, Ileth.”
There. She used her name, and the you no longer contained an accusation. It wasn’t so hard.
“That’s . . . that’s all, madam. Good morning and good-bye,” Ileth said, giving a little bob. She backed away and looked expectantly at the page. He bowed at the Matron, and once off the threshold they turned and moved down the path toward the guardian wingman.
Ileth listened. There was a long moment before the door was shut behind them.
“What in the underworld was that all about?” the page asked once they were on the main road again.
“Honor,” Ileth replied. That shut him up.
Even the bridge was deserted, except for some chatting wingmen passing around a pipe. She heard some talk of updrafts, but the wingmen ignored an insignificant novice and a page bearing a note.
She entered the Beehive proper from the main entrance for the first time that morning.
A geometric pattern in a blue-and-white mosaic decorated the border of the finely finished cavern entrance. Air moved inward with a faint snuffle, as if the Beehive were sniffing its visitors.
As though he were placed there to give the entrance a to-scale perspective, a dragoneer lounged just outside the cave entrance, occupying two simple wooden chairs set so they faced each other, his booted feet up on the seat of one. He smoked long, thin rolled tobacco, a curious indulgence because she thought only wealthy men could afford rolled and sealed tobacco. Even seated, Ileth recognized him. She’d seen him before hanging around with the kindly Hael Dun Huss. He was a tall scarecrow of a man, needed a shave on his plain, long face (many of the dragoneers wore fashionable mustaches), and was a little unkempt about the hair, as though he never bothered much with it. A battered brown planting hat, the epitome of republican simplicity without hatband, cockade, or feathers, sat on his bony knee as though keeping him company.
Her escort page nodded as they passed the dragoneer. The dragoneer watched her the way you’d watch a horse and rider approaching on an empty road, not having anything more interesting to look at. He didn’t turn his head as they went by, but he did take the tobacco out of his mouth and held it away from her so she didn’t have to walk through smoke to enter the Beehive.
“That’s the Borderlander. He’s a northerner. You’re a northerner, right?” the page said.
“The Freesand coast.” She’d never been to the Borderlands, a high, cold plateau between the North Bay and Jotun. She’d only heard that life there was hard, with bandits, gargoyles in the mountains, bear-people, and other kinds of unpleasantness. The Borderlands people had a reputation for feuding and lawbreaking, and some said they belonged to the Republic only because nobody else wanted to bother with them.
The page led her into the Beehive. The walls in the entryway to the Beehive were painted in a subdued green. She heard a banging echoing from far off and sensed that something vast crossed the tunnel far ahead.
The passageway sloped up a little and Ileth got the sense of light ahead, which must have been from the vast round chamber crowning the Beehive where the dragons met, the Rotunda. She knew of it and had seen it in paintings. The page cut short her anticipation of finally seeing it and ducked down a narrow (even for human size) side passage and they descended through a mix of natural, tunneled, and improved alleys, lit by lamps or the cheapest and smelliest of candles. Other small tunnels led off at the lights, some emitting noises and smells. The page rattled off names: some almost poetic, like Granthan’s Bloody End, some strictly utilitarian, like Coal Shaft. They came to another wide dragon passage. The air was oily and smelled of dragons and the oliban braziers.
“This is the Under Ring at last. Ottavia’s troupe is here. You haven’t been in here?”
“Just the Catch Basin and the kitchens.”
“At the top you have the big hall above where the dragons meet, the Rotunda. The Rotunda is where the Dragon Horn is too; you may have heard it when they opened the gate to let you applicants in, if you were there that morning. The Over Ring is beneath that and connected to it. Most of the dragons live in the Over Ring. That’s where we entered. The Under Ring, that’s mostly for the younger dragons. Then there’s the Kitchens; it’s also a ring, but we just call it the Kitchens. At the bottom there’s the Cellars; the tunnels there branch out like a big starfish. There’s a dragon living in the Cellars, I’m told. Dunno if he guards the stores down there or what, but he practically never leaves. If we get a female who wants to lay her eggs, she goes down there a lot too, just because it’s quiet and she can be at ease without noise all the time. We just came down what’s called the West Twist. There’s the East Stair too; there are some rooms off the landings there. The Dancers’ Quarter is off the East Stair.”
“Rotunda, Over Ring, Under Ring . . . Kitchens, Cellars. West Twist . . . East Stairs.” By reciting the words syllable by syllable she hardly stuttered. He’d left out some parts she’d already heard about, like the flight cave, where dragons and dragoneers met and readied themselves for a flight, and the lighthouse, and the Chimney, a sort of air-circulation shaft the dragons used to climb between levels quickly.