A few deep breaths and a wiping of her eyes that was more habitual than effective left her able to consider.
Bone tired, with nothing but roadside berries in her since yesterday, she reviewed her options. Her flight from the Captain’s Lodge had been such that she’d left without much other than her small necessities bag. She wanted to confuse matters on her disappearance, leaving behind even the brush and comb the Captain had bestowed on her when she turned twelve. She hadn’t left a note when she slipped ship, as the Captain was probably styling it even now with a disgusted shake of his head. She had nothing to make camp, no barn loft where she might sleep dry, as she’d found the previous night. She could use the gas-pipe for a light, but she had no fuel for a campfire and she doubted there was any to be found on this rocky peninsula.
She coughed again. It came from an ominously deep inner pocket of her chest. The phlegm it brought up was real enough that her fancies about just lying down to die on this doorstep became an awful possibility of illness teaming up with exposure to take her young life. Perhaps she should go down to Vyenn and throw herself on the mercy of the poorhouse, as the doorman suggested.
Maybe the priests were right. You did get punished for your sins in this life as well as the next if you didn’t immediately offer up an atonement. She’d defied the Captain, lied, even stolen from farmers’ fields on her journey. It had all come so easily to her in her zeal to arrive at the Serpentine. Even worse, she’d proved good at it. She hadn’t confessed or offered atonement for any of it yet. Perhaps she was naturally bad, after all. She’d been told often enough that she’d been conceived in sin. That old witch the Captain employed to keep night-watch over his charges had told her that the disgraceful circumstances of her birth were revealed by her stutter. Sure sign that a child’s been conceived with coin for payment clasped tight in the whore’s hand . . . Then there was that gaunt teacher with the badly fitted false teeth who told the children of the Lodge that evil nature could be inherited, like her freckles, and that she would have to pay for her mother’s grievous faults, as her mother had died before setting the balance right. He’d taken the Lodge children to the altar-house, lining them up along a bench on the back wall where they wouldn’t be mistaken for belonging to the respectable town families, and made disagreeable droning noises through his nose whenever the priests talked of faults being passed about like contagion.
She coughed again. This one was worse. It hurt. Then she retreated into herself and fell into a half sleep, a talent she’d learned on nights outdoors with the Lodge’s chickens after they lost one to a fox or on long winter nights when she was punished by keeping the fires up. The great central fireplace towered over her early years even more than the Captain. Sitting before it, she’d developed a knack for dreaming without actually sleeping. The Captain would beat you for sleeping on duty, and he liked to sneak up and terrify you by choking you awake. He’d then tell you a ghastly tale, his breath reeking over his black-traced teeth, of entire crews who’d been gutted and strung up in their rigging by pirates because the watch fell asleep.
Motion at the base of the stairs roused her back to wakefulness as though she’d heard the Captain’s heavy boots. She blinked crud out of her eyes and shielded them so the light from the little gas-flame didn’t spoil her vision.
A short, fat man in a thick sheepskin vest and a muddy overcoat was leading another girl of her age behind him, tied together about the waist like mountaineers. The girl was in a heavy boat cloak and looked as though she’d been caught in a mudslide, making Ileth feel a little better about her own bedraggled appearance. The girl was saying something about the gate but stopped as soon as she caught sight of Ileth. The short, fat man straightened and let out a long, relieved breath.
“Appearances, miss. We’re here,” the man said, wheezing as he untied the line from the girl’s waist before stepping out of his own much wider loop. The Captain would have offered a few blistering words over the condition of the rope and the knots.
The girl tossed the line away in the manner of one used to discarding tools for which she had no more use.
Ileth doubted their last meal was a handful of berries from the roadside. They both looked like hot breakfasts with a choice of honey or fruit mash.
The girl had a face that was mostly chin and cheekbones, with the deadly sort of prettiness of an ornate dagger. Her outer eyebrows were subtly shaped and ended with something like pen art, the way a manuscript illuminator might add an artful flourish to the beginning and end of a letter. Ileth idly wondered what it would be like to spend an hour having art drawn at the edge of each eye.
“Another miracle,” the new girl said in an urbane accent. “Thank you, Falth. Mother chose well when she named you to see this through.”
“You’re very kind, miss. I hope if you write her an account of your trip, you’ll repeat that.”
“I’ll begin it with that, Falth, and mention it again as a postscript.” Ileth marked the girl’s tight-clenched hands. She was human enough to be anxious, then.
“I’m sure—” the servant began.
“I’m sure I want to get under a roof.”
Obviously a Name, that one. Ileth was northern-bred and had seen only one city, and that from a distance, but she’d still lived in the world enough to tell a Sammerdam hothouse tulip from a pasture-wall morningeye.
The servant moved to help his charge up the stairs to the threshold, but she waved him off. “Stairs I can manage.”
The Name gave Ileth just long enough of a stare to categorize her as nothing having to do with the fortress. “I suppose you want to clean my boots and dry my cloak.”
“Boots are—Boots are my specialty, miss,” Ileth said.
The Name offered a tired smirk. “Here’s a suggestion, meant kindly: at least get up off the ground when conversing. You’ll find yourself with more work if you exhibit some manners.”
Ileth didn’t mind the correction. She was relieved not to be asked about her stutter, for once.
With that business concluded, the Name reached up and tapped the dragon-scale knocker. It amplified her genteel rap admirably.
“State your business,” the raspy voice said, so alike to her own attempt at the red door that it might have come from her memory.
“Santeel Dun Troot, arriving,” the servant Falth announced.
“Has she a letter of introduction?”
“It was sent and accepted this spring,” Falth said, displaying a sort of folded letter-and-envelope in one with a wax seal and a bit of ribbon.
The young woman dropped her heavy cowl. The doll-like arrangement of hair and lace collar stole Ileth’s breath. Her skin was a ceramic white. Straight hair powdered white save for two black strands descending either cheek framed her face from precise bangs, as though serving as no purpose other than a frame for the chalky complexion untouched by dirt or weather.
The Name made a little dip of an obeisance to the unseen presence on the other side of the red door.
It occurred to her that perhaps she should have played the part of casual servant better as the bolt slid open. Once within the fortress, she might get a chance to join the other would-be dragoneers.
“You’re welcome to the Serpentine, applicant,” the warden said. Ileth leaned a bit but couldn’t make out more than a shadowy shape thanks to the glare of the gas-light. “No guardians, consorts, companions, tutors, servants, or pets, though. Your man will have to leave you here.”