“Will there be dragons, as we’re dancing?”
“They come out and watch, many of them. I believe they enjoy the color and noise. They perch up on the rocks or coil around the bridge supports. One year Mnasmanus managed to get his horns tangled in the lantern wire. Dun Huss was so embarrassed. Then he’s easily embarrassed. I gave him my last veil once during a removal dance and he blushed about it for half a year.”
Perhaps those imaginings of hers about Ottavia and Dun Huss had some foundation. She and Ottavia talked over sources for costuming.
Ileth returned to the Cellars deep in thought. There were plenty of venalities she’d like to be rid of, but she didn’t see how wearing a costume would help. Or how to depict it. Still, it sounded like fun.
She’d just served the Lodger his dinner and started warming up to dance for him—a little ritual they enjoyed before they settled down to the lessons on Drakine imperatives—when Zusya burst in.
“Oh, hurry, by your guiding star!” she gasped. For Zusya to be too winded to talk there must be a crisis shaking the foundations of the Serpentine! “Peak is back. The trunks. The trunks, Ileth, you should see them! She says they’re full of costume. It’s like a caravan out of the Great Green Book! Hurry!”
The Lodger rumbled in what Ileth now knew was a draconic chuckle. She looked up at him. “By all means, go attend your bazaar. I would welcome an early night. Imperatives won’t disappear from Drakine in your lifetime.”
They hurried up to the dancers’ rooms. Though she’d been named, several times, and was treated in every instance as a member of the troupe, for some reason this wild upstairs dash racing Zusya—who, despite being winded from her run down to the Cellars, was still nimble as a two-year-old deer—made her feel at last that she belonged to Ottavia’s dancers. It seemed there would be no more “oh, and Ileth” when it came to rosters or rotations during the drills.
So they joined the throng. Peak was just opening the last two trunks. The outer chamber behind the curtain looked like a seamstress shop had sicked up through the curtain. There were shoes, sheaths, hose, headdresses, scarves, leg ties, hairnets, skirts, and other performance accoutrements spread across the floor, chairs, tables, and cushions as though they’d been sacked by raiding gargoyles. At the center of the floor a light rug had been put down and jewelry and stage paint was spread out before kneeling dancers, examining items. “I know you don’t much go in for stage paint, Ottavia, but it’s practically required in Zland,” Peak said.
“It can be expensive,” Ottavia said. “Far too much for day-in, day-out use. But it’s timely. You can teach the rest of us how they apply it in the fashion of a Zland performer.”
“Which gives me an opening for my real news,” Peak said. “I’m moving to Zland. I’m to be married!”
Everyone except Ottavia and Ileth squeaked some variety of “What?” Ottavia looked stricken and Ileth curbed her expostulations.
“It’s true,” Peak said. “I am to be wife to Risso Heem Tyr. Can you believe it? It still seems impossible to me.”
“It should be impossible,” Ottavia said. “Isn’t he on his third wife?”
“I’ll be fourth! You can’t blame him for the second: she died in childbed. He was only sixteen when he married the first. I was going to tell you all at the Feast of Follies. But I just can’t keep it in.”
“I have the opposite problem, once I get my hand around one,” Zusya said.
“The Feast of Follies would have been an ideal time for this announcement,” Ottavia said. “What about wife number three?”
“Dreadful woman. She wears bracing so her breasts shelf out. She’s a schemer just after his money.”
“His money,” Preen said. Ileth had heard that Preen and Peak had joined the dance troupe together. “Which you don’t care a raisin about, I’m sure.”
“Spirits, no. It’s art. I shall be art, evermore and forever! I’m his muse!”
“How amusing,” Preen said.
“I thought we were going to announce together?” one of the older dancers, Tassa, said.
“What’s this now?” Ottavia said, her hand going to her throat as though a thief were reaching for her necklace.
“I’m betrothed too. He’s Heem Tyr’s painting dealer; he sets the price and so on. He handles other artists too. It’s the place to buy art, Zland. I didn’t know so many paintings existed! He came backstage with a great mass of flowers after our debut performance. He was to deliver them to Peak, but he saw me and was overwhelmed. They went to me instead.”
“He couldn’t help but notice you,” Fyth, the other dancer from the trip, said. “You were twirling around backstage stripped to your earrings and gushing about how many bows you took.”
Ottavia collapsed onto a costume-covered cushion.
“Ottavia, are you well?” Zusya asked.
Ottavia groaned. “I feel like Mnasmanus himself has sat on me. You’re my two best dancers! Fyth, Fyth, please tell me you’re not leaving as well.”
“Fear not, my Charge,” Fyth said, posing with hands on heart and chin nobly raised. “I kept my sheath on, and my legs only went in the air when I danced, so no offers at all.”
Peak shot Fyth a dirty look. “Oh, Ottavia, I’d be heartbroken if you are unhappy about this. Press-gang a few novices, or beg one of the apprentices to join, appeal to the need of the Serpentine. You’ve done it before. The dragons don’t care about extension, they just want sweaty women.”
The Charge rolled forward and put her head in her hands, like a drunk suddenly doubtful about the last round.
“I care about the discipline. I’m trying to make something here, you know. Not just me, some of the motions and balances you all invent. You realize we’re creating a new art form. It’s universal. We could tell a story, just like actors, but it would have nothing to do with language. All the emotion comes through movement and music.”
Ileth looked around. She liked Peak, but the only constant in life is change, as Caseen had told her.
“Oh, we forgot to reveal secrets!” Vii said.
“It’s not a betrothal ceremony,” Fyth said. Some argument back and forth broke out about the definition of a betrothal.
Peak scowled. “It’s as close as I’ll get to one. Why not? Ileth, won’t it be fun? You have good secrets, I’m thinking.”
“I’m—I’m n-not sure what . . . what you mean,” Ileth said.
“Never been to a betrothal?” Shatha asked. “I went to my first when I was a little girl.”
“Oh, it’s simple,” Zusya said. “The bride’s friends take her aside and her guests each reveal a secret to her. Sometimes after you reveal the secret, you get to ask the bride a question. Well, that was the tradition around us.”
“We just did secrets in Asposis,” Shatha said.
Ottavia stood up. “I will let you girls share secrets. At my age, you don’t have many secrets, but if you reveal them you’ll end up facing a jury. I’m going to see what Joai has in the way of rotgut brandy. Perhaps I’ll be lucky and die of poisoning.”
None of the troupe let Ottavia’s acidity spoil the party atmosphere.
“Let’s start,” Peak said. “Who’s the youngest?”
“Ileth, I think,” Vii said.
“Oh, but Ileth’s never done secrets, Vii. You go first.”
Vii took a breath. “I’m in love with a wingman. I just say that, Peak and Tassa, because I hope you love your future husbands as much as I love him.”