“Ah. We need more northern types here. Sooner starve than steal food.” Ileth inwardly winced at that. She’d stolen food more than once. And there was plenty of dishonesty in the Freesand. “Some of this bunch, from the best homes, the best, but they’ll steal scale right off the dragons and sell it out the Catch Basin before you can say dinner’s-in-the-trolley.”
Ileth returned, quietly and thoughtfully, to the Cellars. She passed the digs of Griff and Zante, the little corner they’d made out of barrels where they idled, ate, drank, and diced.
They must be in their beds, asleep.
Bottles and tobacco were tucked away. She examined the bottles. The labels were printed beautifully, with ornate lettering. One even had a wax seal. They weren’t drinking cheap village wine. She found a pipe, wood with a fine finish and hard as a piece of stone, beautifully fitted to its clay mouthpiece. Good tobacco, of the quality Sideburns at the pile-in had been so precious about. Even their dice and playing cards were new. She’d never seen a deck so fresh in her life. Perhaps the others, used to little luxuries and comforts, didn’t notice that this apprentice and novice were living at a standard no Freesand family of her acquaintance could match. Perhaps the apprentice had a generous allowance.
Then again, maybe not. Hadn’t he said something about his family wanting to make a man of him?
The Lodger still slumbered. She set his meal down where he could smell it, careful not to disturb him, and settled down herself just outside his chamber. She should see about getting some kind of rope frame for her mat if she would be many weeks down here.
Tired now on her sleeping mat, she reclined and examined the scales she’d gathered from the Lodger. Using her small scissors that she used for everything from sewing to her toenails, she etched two bars near the tip of the reverse side of each scale, then tucked them under her pillow.
The next morning the Lodger was still sleeping. Disappointed to see that the food hadn’t been touched—at least it wasn’t crawling with bugs; flushing out his drain had helped that—she heard the noise of metal being moved about. Empty barrels were being moved back upstairs by a team of apprentices, with Griff watching his novice help roll the last one to the ramp.
Ileth tugged on Griff’s sleeve. “I know we’re supposed to pick up these when they drop, but I’ve no idea what to do with them.”
The apprentice’s eyes widened at the scales she held. “Well done, novice,” Griff said. “The Serpentine gets a good price for these. It’s important that they be counted and collected. You have four there, looks like?”
Zante trotted up to look at the scales. Ileth ignored him.
“For n-now. There may be more to come.”
Zante cackled, “Good luck for us, Leith’s boat is—”
Griff frowned at him. “Not our concern. I wouldn’t laugh if I were you, Zan. One of your jobs is to check the Lodger daily for loose scale. Here we have a dragon under our care and you’re missing these.”
Zante shrugged. “He’s moving around more now. I’ll just bet these were behind—”
“Don’t bother me with excuses,” Griff said.
Zante looked Ileth up and down. Mostly down. “We know now what makes the old goat wake up.”
Ileth handed over the scale.
“Quite good, dancer. Quite good indeed. I’ll see that you are rewarded.” He wetted his lips again. “We, uhh, sometimes get premiums for turning in scale, you know. Don’t listen to that fool Zan. By the way, down here, we never get to see you girls dance; as long as you’re here—do you think we might—”
His tongue had business to take care of again.
Ileth’s stomach convulsed. “I must run. Late for drill.”
She hurried up to the Dancers’ Quarter off the East Stair. She was lucky; Ottavia was at her desk, eating. It wasn’t nuts for a change. Or perhaps not, she thought as she sniffed, smelling the paste of nuts and honey smeared on fresh bread.
“Charge . . . I—”
“How are matters with the Lodger, Ileth?”
“Improved, sira. Hungry-Hungry at last.”
Ottavia straightened. “That’s good news. I had a feeling a healthy, active girl was all he needed.”
She didn’t know quite how to form the rest, so she fell back on the sort of talk she heard from the Captain and his friends. “I must report that I suspect theft and neglect of duty, or per-perhaps suspicion of it. I’m not . . . not quite sure what to do, or how to phrase it.”
Ottavia put down her knife and bread. “Tell me what’s troubling you. Never mind proper form.”
Ileth told her suspicions in her halting fashion. She believed Griff and Zante had intentionally neglected the Lodger so he’d sicken and drop scale. They’d gather it and sneak it out on fishing boats. She described the meetings she’d witnessed in the Catch Basin.
Ottavia thought for a moment. “So much for my day. We must take this to the Mistress of Chambers. I’m surprised they were stupid enough to speak in front of you. Did they offer you something for scale you brought them?”
Ileth hadn’t met the Mistress of Chambers, though Ottavia had pointed her out once as she passed. A former dragoneer, the Mistress supervised housing, feeding, and sometimes healing the dragons.
“I just suspect them, sira. There’s a way to tell. I marked all the undersides of the scales with a pair of small scratches near the tip. I’d check the fishing boats when they go out again this afternoon. The scales will be on board one of them.”
“Aren’t you the detective! What, you thought that up all on your own?”
People often mistook the stutter for stupidity. Too bad Ottavia was one of them. No, that was harsh.
“It’s quiet d-down there. Plenty of time to think.”
The Mistress of Chambers had her rooms in the tunnel between the Wall of Mirrors and the flight cave. There Ottavia and Ileth were told by her wingman that she was touring with some assigns of the Republic, who had arrived to confer with the dragons on finally ending the war with the Galantines. Ileth wondered at that. What did the dragons have to do with a human war? Did the dragons act as diplomats? But Ottavia kept them to the matter at hand.
“We can’t tear her away from that,” Ottavia said. The two of them cast about the Upper Ring and found Hael Dun Huss supervising a claw-and-tooth polishing on his dragon, Mnasmanus. She’d heard that he was the only purple dragon anyone had ever seen, but she had never seen him in the flesh. He was magnificent and not just because of his unusual coloration; the dragon seemed a perfect specimen physically. From the crown of his head and down his spine, Mnasmanus’s coloring verged more on red, but the red purpled as it descended his body, with the usual grays and creams at the belly. The grooms had propped his jaws open with a wood-and-leather rest, and Mnasmanus was submitting to the scrubbing and scraping of teeth as if bored by the whole thing.
The dragon’s fangs were as big as Ileth’s forearm. She resisted the urge to touch, but it was interesting to watch. A rotten smell wafted toward her whenever they extracted a bit of old dinner from his gums.
Ottavia begged his help. Dun Huss didn’t have to think it over, or he was bored since the grooms were doing all the work and spoiling for something to do. He ordered one of the grooms to carry on. Ottavia led them away from the others so they could speak privately and explained Ileth’s suspicions.
“Getting them out through the Basin, you say,” Dun Huss said, looking at Ileth. “Well, nothing like catching villains in the act. You did right to say something, Ileth. Do they believe you suspect them?”
The dragoneer remembering her name pleased her. A warm thrill ran up her body. “I . . . I can’t say, sir. They took the scale.”