She took Ileth over to the well-like hole, if hole was the right word for such a drop. It was as big around as a castle tower.
“Down there is where we drill. Used to be the main grooming room, before they built the new one with the skylights, and it’s still used for that, sometimes. There’s an easier route to it, but I thought it would be nice if you had a good look at the Rotunda first. There are big mirrors in there. Wall of Mirrors, it’s called. Dragons like to look at themselves too, and they’re the biggest mirrors in the Vales. Bigger than at the Silver Palace in Asposis, Shatha says. They had to manufacture them right here, I’m told. It’s a miracle they’re intact, the way the dragons whip about with their tails when they’re in a hurry. Maybe they figured that when they worked out the size of the well.”
“Do they jump down on you—us when we’re doing drills?”
“I’ve never had that happen. Not even close. Often there’s a dragon or two watching us drill. They tell us to get out of the way when they climb down. That floor is thick hardwood beams covered with planking, like a ship’s deck. It’s springy, easier on the feet. I forget, you’re from a nautical family or something?”
A flash of movement caught Ileth’s eye. A green dragon scrambled out of an entrance to the Rotunda opposite, hopped down into the well, and disappeared into a wide, sloping passage. A leather case bounced at its position where it was slung at the base of her neck. She was smallish, and skin covered with scale-stubbles showed where her wings had uncased and scar tissue was slowly being covered with scale. Her wing-assisted leap allowed her to land with surprisingly little noise for a creature so large. Ileth noticed that the female kept her claws semiretracted (unlike a cat’s claws, they couldn’t disappear completely, but they did retreat like a turtle’s head pulling back into its shell).
A young man with his long hair tied tightly back emerged from the same entrance and put his hands on his knees, half collapsing from what looked to be an exhausting run keeping up with a four-legged dragon.
When he could finally draw breath he shouted: “Jizara! You forgot your salve!”
Zusya dismissed the scene with a wave. “There’s always excitement around the flight cave. I wouldn’t care to keep track of all the comings and goings.”
“How often do we perform?”
“We’re ready all the time, more so than the Guards, I’d say, in case there’s an emergency. The dragons are polite about it; they’ll ask if it’s convenient to perform. The answer is yes. Always yes. Understand? We sweat for our supper.”
Zusya took her down a carved set of steps going down to the Wall of Mirrors.
The floor in here had an inlaid wood design that made her think of a compass, but the mirrors were the real attraction. Never mind their size, she’d never seen mirrors that could compare to these in their lack of flaws. Each mirror was perhaps three times as tall as she was. Ileth regarded herself in the faultless reflection, tried a few smiles and poses on for size.
Her guide pulled up a little thing that was like a chair without a seat or a miniature small drying rack that could easily be moved in front of a fireplace. It came up to about her bottom rib. On someone as tall as Ottavia, it was probably hip-high.
“This is your support. You’ll need it, and not just at first. Even the most experienced dancer spends a long time at her support.”
With that, Zusya taught her how to stand. They stripped down to their sheaths and overshirts. Zusya had the well-defined leg muscles of a draft ox.
They spent Ileth’s whole first afternoon just working on how to stand before a dance, going up piece by piece on her body and back down it again. Dancing was all in the feet. Except the part that wasn’t all in the feet and was in fact all in your central muscles around your spine, it was all in that. And then there was the part that said dancing was all in how you held your head and the way it kept steady no matter what your body was doing . . .
She accepted this sort of musicless instruction until the dinner bell sounded. When she was sweating and exhausted from learning how to stand, Zusya showed her some stretches on the support: raising her leg, bending her back across it, even sitting beneath it with her arms up in the way she’d once seen a prisoner tied to a boat’s mast when they brought him in.
That night Vii, the previous scour at the bottom of the dancing chain, presented her with what would become her favorite piece of dance attire. Vii was a plain sort of girl not much older than Ileth with a sculptor’s model of a body. She’d fallen in love with dragon dancing and defied her family’s wishes to continue the art. They’d even publicly disowned her (though they supported her privately with a generous allowance). Vii gave her a sheath of a lovely flexible weave and material that made up for the fit, a color like lilacs, with little sewn-in bits of hairlike baleen at the bust to offer extra support that Ileth didn’t yet have the breasts to truly require. Other dancers donated delicate dance skirts that were no thicker than a fog, canvas slippers, and hose, and Ottavia gave her a good set of washcloths and towels. One of the towels was so vast and thick Ileth slept under it on her rope bed.
The drills started the next day. Ottavia led them. There were two distinct activities, drills of dance moves and fatigues—exercises of one kind or another. Ileth found the drills more fatiguing and the fatigues more like drills because they went on and on and on until your muscles quivered and your body turned to porridge. Ottavia paid constant attention to Ileth, often coming over to nudge her this way and that with her walking stick. At a break, gulping water from the nearby cistern that had been installed for grooming the dragons, one of her fellow dancers said she was lucky. More experienced dancers got a rap on the shin or the forearm with it for being inattentive or slacking. She showed a thumb-sized bruise just above her ankle as proof.
After the drills and fatigues they did dance a little, as the others rested while each exhibited the progress they’d made on routines. Ileth didn’t understand why there had to be so many leaps and spins and falls to the floor and rises and arm gestures if the only point was to work up a soothing sweat for the dragons, but then she remembered Heem Deklamp’s visit to the Manor and his speech about her duty being to just learn how things worked in the Serpentine.
The other dancers were deeply respectful and attentive to Ottavia. For the whole group of them to be collectively mad seemed improbable, so Ileth just accepted that it was vitally important for the well-being of the dragons that your toes pointed in unnatural directions and that you kept your shoulders relaxed and open even with your arms reaching above your head.
For music on the exhibitions Ottavia brought out a music box, which played a simple tune they called “The Maiden’s Serenade.” Ottavia taught Ileth a simple dance she could do with it; you only faced one direction, toward the mirrors, and took but three steps from side to side and back again, with some simple arm movements, raising them to shoulder height and then bringing them down again as if cradling a baby. At the end you bowed in four directions. After she practiced it, first placing her weight on one leg and then the other, back and forth, back and forth, always trying to stand correctly as she’d been taught the day before, all the other drillers, starting with Ottavia herself, hugged her.