Duskirk moved his bin to the side. “I’ll show you. It’s a slow morning, lots of dragons out for the hunts.”
He led her to the lift, in a vertical tunnel. The lift was a kind of platform on wheels, save that the wheels ran on rails going vertically. Four other carts of fish and one fellow apprentice already stood there.
“Picked up a stray dancer,” Duskirk said.
“Aren’t you having a morning, Tosser.”
“Down first, Rael,” Duskirk told the young man at the device that reminded Ileth of a handbrake on a beer wagon. The man at the device put a speaking-trumpet to his lips and shouted an order up.
“This lodger-dragon. I am to keep him company,” Ileth explained.
“Don’t know much about him,” Duskirk said. “He’s not a pensioner. They generally go out to big landholders who can afford the glamor of a dragon about the place. I don’t think he ever flew for us, but I know he had something to do with the foundation of the Vale alliance in the early days. He was here for the Troth, I know that. Way before the Republic. Something about the whole arrangement here was his doing. You’d have to ask one of the Masters.”
“So they have him stay out of gratitude?”
“Oh, nothing to do with the Masters, or even the Charge. It’s the beasts. Dragons are touchy about their elders. They’re imaginative enough to see themselves old and weak and vulnerable. I think if we tried to get rid of him there’d be a . . . well, I don’t know what there’d be, but I wouldn’t care to see it. In fine summer weather, the year after I arrived, a couple of the younger dragons helped him climb out and spend a few days in the sun. He didn’t feel up to it this year, I guess. In decline, seems like.”
The lift started down. She felt the air move and grow colder. They had to be below lake level. She wondered how they’d dug this level so it stayed dry, or was it carved out of solid rock? She didn’t know why such things interested her; engineering wasn’t considered a feminine pursuit, but she liked to know what ship had the highest mast or where the deepest mine was. When she was first learning her letters and asking questions, the Captain used to joke that she should travel around and find out all those things and put it in a “Book of Useless Facts.”
They arrived at the bottom. It was damp and dirty at the bottom of the shaft.
“Cellars,” Duskirk said, pointing to a tunnel. “You can always climb back up. There’s a drilled-in ladder right next to the track on either side of it. There’s also a ramped tunnel off the main junction in the center. It’s the only one that leads up. It’s a bit roundabout, but you’ll get to the kitchens eventually.”
“You can show her the way,” his workmate said. “I’ll get these offloaded. Just don’t spew all over her when you get a whiff of the Lodger. He’s ranker than rank.”
Duskirk wrapped an armful of smoked fish in his apron. “Maybe you’ll give him an appetite.”
“I believe that’s the idea.”
Duskirk led her down the hall. This one was practically lightless. No magic crystals or even smelly candles were wasted on the Cellars. A lamp glowed somewhere ahead and their eyes soon adjusted to the darkness. Their passageway was narrow, not because of the tunnel but because the sides were crowded with crates and mysterious tools and pieces of equipment beneath tarry canvas.
“Repair gear for the lift, I think,” Duskirk said, tapping a metal-rimmed wheel.
They reached the junction of the passages (yes, there were five, like a starfish, if you didn’t count the one leading up toward the kitchen level) where the lamplight was, then passed an apprentice and novice who had no occupation beyond having moved a few barrels so they could kneel and throw dice against the wall. They were using a few coins, bits of broken dragon scale, and buttons as wagers.
Ileth had seen both of them before. They had often come up to the Catch Basin and spoken to the fishermen, and one of them was the novice who’d been oathed in next to her. Quith had solved the mystery of his arrival without her noticing it: he’d been flown in by his father, a dragoneer. They had one or two favorite fishermen and sometimes went into the shelter on their boats. She’d assumed they were drinking or enjoying tobacco.
“Uh, Yael, you’re supposed to warn—” the older of the two said.
“Got a coin for a throw at Boone?” the other asked.
“She’s to stay with the Lodger for a while. Ileth, these two fine young gentlemen are Griff and Zante.”
“Zan to my friends,” Zante, the one who’d invited her to “throw,” said, rubbing his close-cropped head. “You’re the new dancer. Heard about you. Put down in blue, right?”
The one called Griff looked her up and down and licked his lips, quickly, like a lizard. “Leave off, Zan. Griff’s a nickname too. Actually it’s—”
“She’s not impressed by great names,” Duskirk said. “And I think Vor Claymass has his eye on her. Having a Heem in front of your surname’s nothing to that.”
“You need anything, girl, you just tell me,” Griff said. “I’m the man to see down here. How about that, heh? Charge to a whole level of the hive at my age.”
“Starting at the bottom means there’s nowhere to go but up,” Duskirk said. “But don’t credit him overmuch. They just thought he’d do less damage down here. Ileth is here to cheer the Lodger up.”
“Oh, him. He’s in the southeast chamber; it’s the only one with water. Yes, we’ve had no luck feeding him. Just sleeps. I’d say he’s a goner,” Griff said, picking up the dice. Ileth’s growing dislike of the youth crystallized. Imagine speaking of a creature that could be over a thousand years old as though he were a dying mutt.
Duskirk motioned her out of the room and toward a wider, emptier passage, just as dark as the others. She could see faint light at the other end. Ileth imagined Griff licking his lips again as he watched her leave. Her skin tightened and prickled.
She was glad to reach the other end, and gladder for Duskirk’s company. The passage opened up on a cavern. It was about the size of a cozy inn, she decided. You had to step across a gutter to enter the cavern. The gutter was fouled with still water and dragon waste.
A dragon slept within. Most of him was in shadow, but she sensed he was enormous, one of the longer-necked types with a matching tail that never seemed to end.
A portable twin lamp—two oil lights hanging from a cross arm on a stand—was the room’s only light. And one of the lamps was unlit, probably to save oil, because it was full. There was a wall box full of candles, however, so she lit another, set the second lamp alight, and carried her candle in a holder so she could get a better look.
He looked old. Scale faded and not looked after. He had a fleshless, sunken-in look to him everywhere except the eyes, which were half closed but still showed bright golden color. His skin was folded and wrinkled, oddly reminding her of an unmade bed. He had a curious sort of coloring to the scale, dark stripes running vertically all along his body against a rust color. The stripes added to the sunken effect of the skin that had collapsed between his ribs. She wondered if they were some kind of draconic heraldry or tattooing. Dragons of the Serpentine had their deeds dyed onto their wings in decorations she’d heard called laudii. Maybe those stripes were a testament to a more ancient accomplishment. But they looked natural enough.
The Lodger showed no sign of even seeing that she’d come in. He breathed in his sleep with a gentle wheeze. There was a dirty, sour smell about him.
She placed her support, her spare sheath, and the little lidded dish that contained her tooth scrubber, skin scraper, and hairbrush out of the way to one side of the entrance.