Zusya, she was learning, was a bit of a chatterbox.
She showed off the taps in the washroom: “We wash often, usually at night to keep the bedding cleaner. Our costumes, well, that’s another story. We earn our keep by sweating, and some of us—I’m one of them—use herbed skin oils too. The dragons are fond of spice. No florals, never florals, they don’t like sweet at all. Best ask if you’re in doubt. You don’t use perfumes, do you?”
Ileth shook her head no. She was already fond of Zusya. You didn’t have to say a word. Ever.
She chattered her way through the laundry procedures, where to get a clean towel or a canvas slipper, and who had the best headache powder.
“Don’t let anyone tell you anything about bathing. Shatha, she’s second oldest after Ottavia, she says a dragon dancer should hardly ever bathe. Nasty thing. Do whatever you like. Hair doesn’t matter much; again, Peak’s advice on long hair is just that, advice. I don’t think the dragons care. Keep your soldier chop if you want. What you do with the hair on your head and body is your own business. Ottavia will tell you. Peak and Vii will play the old wise woman and say that you mustn’t pluck a hair, as it captures and keeps smell. Nonsense! Shatha grew up in the old court city of Asposis. She shaves her head like a boy being deloused. Just wears wigs. She’s quite popular with the dragons, and not a hair on her head. Just don’t wash with turpentine or use flowery oils and you will be fine.”
“Turpentine?”
“That’s a story for another time,” Zusya said. “Peak played a nasty joke on Vii when she first came.”
“How long have you been a dancer?”
“Five years. I started right from novice, just like you. What are you, thirteen, special admittance?”
“Fourteen. Last spring.”
“Oh, you look a bit younger. I was thirteen when I came through the gate. I lied about my age—shhh. Nineteen in the spring.”
“Did you dance before?”
Zusya laughed. “Tears, no! My parents would have locked me in the attic. My dad kept a tavern, but it wasn’t like some. Dairy men soothing their muscles with beer and swapping stories about cheese. A dancer would have been tossed out on her ear, same as a pimp.”
“So how did you end up here?”
“Master Caseen, he knows people. I don’t know what made him decide I would be happy as a dancer. I guess I’m a bit wild; maybe being sat on all the time by my elders and parents in a cow patch made me a bit flash once I found my feet here. But he sent me to the Charge and I’ve loved the life, once I limbered up my feet. Who else is around the dragons so much, and having fun besides? We are the luckiest of the Serpentine, I think.”
Ileth smiled at that.
“By the way, is that boy Rapoto a good kisser? I’d hate to think that face wasted on someone who couldn’t kiss.”
Gossip spread fast in the Serpentine. Probably that Peak. “It happened so fast. I suppose. Yes.”
“Not much to compare it to? I was the same way when I got here. Don’t delve too much into that. Ottavia’s correct, we’re not bed warmers. Though there’s a dragoneer or two whose bed I wouldn’t mind making warm, given time and tide.
“Now. Attire, the Charge said. I’ll pass a bag around tonight. One thing you’ll learn about dancers: we have clothes and odds-and-ends enough for a year-away school. You won’t be getting rags, either. We’ve all been the scour. It’s good for the soul to put something nice in when a scour’s bag gets brought around. Just remember that when your feet are half callus.”
“Ottavia said something about ‘teach her to stand for drill.’”
“Oh, yes, we’re coming to that. I’ll show you where we drill. Have you been to the Rotunda yet?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Then let’s go. You’d remember it if you’d seen. It’s just above the flight cave on the bay side of the Beehive. There’s a passage out in the center of the floor where the dragons can jump down if they need to get at the flight cave fast from the Rotunda. Ever seen a full-sized dragon leap, by the way? They’re just like cats; they fold themselves up into a crouch and then explode. It’s like a house falling down around you. Down there’s a good place to collect scales; sometimes they miss and knock a few loose.”
“I thought we weren’t supposed to do that.”
“Oh, we’re not. We gather them up and turn them in. Though we will often keep a scale of a favorite dragon as a souvenir. Peak made the prettiest hair clip out of one. Souvenir’s one thing. They just don’t want anyone smuggling them out for coin.”
Zusya, walking backward as she talked, led her up through progressively larger passages until they reached companionways large enough for a dragon to pass through. The human-mined tunnels, though, struck Ileth as irregular, almost organic, like a huge tree had sent its roots through the stone and then was later drilled out and removed.
They passed others now. From somewhere Ileth heard a booming dragon voice say, “Ouch! Careful now.”
Ileth felt the Rotunda before they reached it. Her senses were alive to the light and air and space ahead. Now the floor was elaborately tiled and the walls showed mosaics with writhing knotted shapes twining in and out of each other like vines. She tried not to gape.
The walls curved away and they entered the Rotunda.
Everyone was right about it. The space made you go all still and quiet, like a mouse fallen into the middle of a ballroom.
It felt unnatural to have so much space indoors. She felt the weight of time and historic events; it made her want to walk with slow, gentle steps and keep silent. She supposed the dragons would need a great deal of space to meet. If it also overawed intruders, that was all the better.
“It rains in here sometimes, if they have a crowd in here and the weather is just right,” Zusya said. “They say it was built by dwarves. I find it easy to believe the legends about dwarves when I stand here.”
“Are those—perches?” Ileth asked, walking over to one of the spurs jutting out of the wall.
“The dragons lie on those when they have meetings,” Zusya said. “Someone told me it was modeled after another dragon hall.”
Ileth counted eight perches. But the room would probably hold two or three times that in fully grown dragons if some didn’t mind curling up on the floor. Just above the perches, writing in an unknown, slashing script appeared in a regular ring around the walls. At the pinnacle of the Rotunda was a dark, metallic cavern of shadow. “That’s the mouth of the Dragon Horn. Only a dragon has enough lung to work it. The mouthpiece is down by the flight cave; it runs through the floor, and you can see some of the tube there, see how it gets bigger?” Zusya said, pointing to a greenish tube of metal that gradually widened as it moved from floor to ceiling, engraved with more of those slashing icons. “Loud enough to wake the dead. Turns the whole Rotunda into sort of an echo chamber. But they only blow it a couple times a year. Troth Day, during the exchange of cups. Or if there’s an emergency.
“The dragons don’t always have meetings here. They’re fond of discussing things below, too, in the rain room when they bathe, when there’s just two or three of them. The most favorite grooms work them over down there. Hard duty but they’re rich as anything; it’s the one job in the whole Serpentine where you get to keep all the odds and ends you pry off the dragons and sell. Some tradition going back to before the Republic. They earn it; it’s hot as a kitchen in summer. I’ve had to perform there, too, and then you just sit quietly and let the sweat pour off you while they talk. Drink a lot of water and bring a hunk of salt to lick if you have to dance in the rain room.”