9
Her days with the Lodger grew until her time in the Cellars could be marked by a calendar. The old dragon took food, sparingly at first, mostly of meat or fish stews, then began to chew up joints and hams. He never did eat with the ravenous enthusiasm Ileth expected—she’d always imagined dragons tore up their food like wolves—but whether it was because he had no great appetite or just had whatever a dragon’s version of table manners were, she wasn’t experienced enough to say.
The retired dragoneer who served as head groom came down for a personal inspection with a team and cleaned him up properly. He apologized to the Lodger for not coming down since the new group of novices joined and promised to make amends. For two days a parade of apprentices and novices worked his skin and scale and a physiker dressed his wounds and rubbed an ointment in, leaving a large pot of the stuff for Ileth or other grooms to use.
Though it wasn’t her duty, Ileth listened as attentively as the other novices as the head groom showed them how to spot a weak scale, dress sores, and work about even a largish dragon like the Lodger safely.
“I’ve never much liked humans crawling over me and tweaking this and that,” the Lodger said to her. He accepted his scale being checked and polished and having cracked and loose scales removed, but he drew the line at filing and shaping. “A dragon should let his scale stand as nature designed. All this making patterns and painting, my own sire and dam would call it decadent.”
He showed an intelligent interest in her dancing, more because it was something he hadn’t seen much of, rather than out of some inner fascination that her smell and movements evoked. That, or he was an accomplished dissembler. She arranged a performance for him, even, bringing down Preen and Zusya with music boxes to each show off their favorite routines. They were going to dance as pairs at the Feast of Follies, and it gave them a chance to rehearse before an audience. Ileth set floorlights all about and helped them with their costumes. The new Cellars apprentices, who were more diligent about the pump that kept the sluice clean, attended as well. After it was done the Lodger rustled his wings and waved the tip of his tail about a little as the limited space would allow. He apologized to them afterward that he had no sacrificial chickens or sheep to give them, which left the pair nonplussed, but they left with copious thanks from Ileth.
“What was all that about chickens?” Zusya whispered to Preen as they went out.
“They do say he’s mazy.”
Duskirk and his novices followed, Duskirk solicitously inquiring of Zusya if she was cold in her costume. He’d feel responsible, you see, if she became chilled in the Cellars and became ill . . . Ileth snuffed out the floorlights and picked them up.
“What was that about sacrifices?” Ileth asked.
“You know, I believe your art is derived from old ceremonial dances in Hypatia. All the emphasis on being up on the balls of your feet, or your toes, as that . . . oh, I’ve forgotten her name, the darker one, as she did: that’s for invocation of air spirits and such that control the weather.”
Ileth couldn’t quite manage the toe-work yet; you needed to wrap your feet well and have special shoes with a hardened leather cup that had to be made to fit her.
“Some of the other movements,” the Lodger continued, “are meant to evoke fauna. The Hypatians had a lot of mythology about the connections between humans and swans, swans being a beautiful soul that would remain on earth for a while with the power to bring peace, I think it went. Or was that doves? Ha-harumm, my memory isn’t what it was. Oh, dragons bringing calamity, and later luck when it became more politic for the Hypatians to rechoreograph them as heroes and guardians, I believe holding the arms up above the head in a manner that is supposed to be wings or horns. Cats were always popular, snakes, oxen—but I didn’t see those females imitating any oxen so maybe those parts have been lost. If I’d known that flourish of their culture would thrive all the way over here, I’d have paid more attention. I remember the male temple dancers being proud of the height of their leaps. The number, too. Audiences would count them off. I recall one dancer who could do sixteen, turning each time in a great circle. He must have had legs like a stag.”
Ileth tried to imagine a great clumsy man dragon dancing but failed. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be really good at it. I can work up a sweat with the best of them. But it’s a good job for-for me. There’s n-no talking when you dance.”
“Talking makes you uncomfortable?”
“Yes. I’d g-give anything to be rid of this . . . this stutter. But I can’t beat it.”
“Yes, you can.”
“Easy for you to say.”
“You can do anything,” the Lodger said. “Standing before me, I see millennia of triumph.”
Ileth made a choking noise. “Ha!”
“Girl. You had a mother and father.”
Ileth fought to keep a grimace off her face. “Yes. Obviously.”
“And so did they, and so on going back each in their turn. Sires and dams, generation after generation.”
“I suppose. Don’t know much about them.” All she knew was that she looked nothing like the Captain or anyone related to him, in person or portraiture, for all the Freesand talk of him being her father.
“You don’t? I do. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. You’ve no idea, no idea at all what your line has overcome. The challenges they lived through, and didn’t just survive, slinking off grateful that breath was still in their bodies; they managed to bring the next generation into the world and keep them alive long enough for them to reproduce in turn. Triumph after triumph after triumph! If there was a failure anywhere along that line reaching into the mists of prehistory, fssssssht! Finished. You wouldn’t be here. One jaguar’s leap not escaped, and you wouldn’t be standing here, believing you can’t overcome a stutter. Your blood got through famines, droughts, earthquakes, plagues, invasions of barbarians. Strength against strength, cunning against cunning, craft against craft and they won, won against other men, beasts, storms, even dragons. They fled the fall of civilizations and built them up again out of sweat and wreckage. They escaped dragon raids and slaves’ shackles and the chariots and spears of—I don’t know what you call them in your tongue, ogres maybe. You, Ileth, are a diamond, the product of millennia of immense pressure. Your line didn’t shatter, it hardened and cleared and sharpened. Don’t tell me a bit of difficulty like a stutter is going to stop you. Ha!”
She could just stand there, a little awestruck by the epochs he described.
The Lodger sighed. “You even conquered me. I’m tired now; I think I shall rest. Isn’t it about time you went upstairs and had a good dinner? All that dancing must have given you an appetite. Join your kind.”
She went to sleep thinking on what he had said and the next morning was the first in place for morning drill, her exercise sheath as clean as her freshly washed face, hands, and feet. She went through the drills losing herself in music and motion, her standing leg a piece of supportive iron, her flying leg reaching new heights and holding with foot perfectly arched.
“Ileth, you’re on your toes this morning,” Ottavia said, smiling as Ileth’s arms fell gracefully back to the resting pose at the end of the second set. “I can’t seem to tire you out.”
“Then try harder, my Charge,” Ileth said, smiling.
As her dance slowly—or rapidly, over the next few mornings—improved, the Lodger also acted as her tutor.
It started on an ordinary morning. They were talking about the different kinds of people who came into the Serpentine. He didn’t ask about her origins, and she was grateful for that, and though the reason for it could have been that he just didn’t care, now that she knew him a little better she decided he considered such questions bad manners. But she said her education only went as far as being able to read, write, and do basic arithmetic, no arts or formal training in other languages (what Galantine she knew, she knew out of the Captain’s use in the Lodge). She told him she was a little envious of some of the girls who had private tutors visiting a few times a week. The Serpentine made allowances for the novices and apprentices to continue whatever studies their families were willing to pay for.