There were a few excited gasps. Questions for her to elaborate flew from everyone but Ileth, who was still trying to work out the tradition.
“Oh, Vii, you can’t leave it at that,” Peak said. Ileth wondered if Vii was playing a spoiler and stealing some of her betrothal glamor. “As the betrothed I demand to know more!”
“I’m betrothed too,” Tassa said. “I don’t give an old sock who Vii’s mooning about.”
“More, Vii,” Peak insisted.
Vii sat back. “No, said all I’m going to say. Ileth’s turn.”
Ileth cast about, wondering what sort of secrets she had. The Lodge was a poor place for secrets, and she’d been too busy since coming to the Serpentine. She could admit that she stole food on her journey there, but that didn’t seem right for the occasion. No, it should be something about life, probably. Marriage . . . children.
Ileth looked at her hands. “I . . . I met a dragonrider when I was young. Annis Heem St-Strath. She st-stopped for water in our t-town. I gr-grew up . . . grew up in a lodge. Made up . . . made up this story in-in-in my head where Annis was actually my m-mother. Secretly. She’d-She’d had to give me up to be a dragonrider. Wanted to grow up like . . . like her. I’d imagine myself asking her things . . . just silly things like what she thought of a bracelet I braided out of twine, stuff like that. I . . . wanted to tell her that when I, when I came h-here, but I learned she’d died against the Gal-Galantines. I say that because if you have little girls and they show you a bracelet they m-made out of some old twine, make a big deal about it.”
Ileth lifted up her gaze. The last time she’d seen so many vacant eyes staring at her was the gutting table.
“Oh, Ileth . . .” Peak said. She looked sad.
“That’s not how this works, Ileth,” Vii said.
“Oh, be quiet, Vii,” Shatha said. “She’s never done this before.”
They moved on to Fyth, who put things back on track by saying she much preferred wearing men’s clothes when going to Vyenn. Not because she thought she looked good in them, more because she could go about her business in peace and if she accidentally muddied herself in the streets no one thought twice about it. And she could have a nice big porter in one of the alehouses without anyone raising an eyebrow that a woman ordered herself a worker’s tankard of beer. She encouraged the others to try it and everyone started describing what sort of man they’d dress as.
By the end Ileth was laughing with the rest of the troupe.
Talk shifted to the Feast of Follies and costumes, and the party broke up. Ileth waited her turn to congratulate the future brides. After she embraced Peak, she tried a question she’d been mentally rehearsing. “I’ve wanted to ask about your name. Now I’m worried I won’t get another chance.”
Peak smiled. “Oh. I thought everyone knew. My family is from the Medi Islands. There’s more history than I like telling, but we had to flee, and the Vales had my grandfather’s most remote trade-hold. Girls are traditionally named for landmarks—White Blossoms on the Stairway to Urun Temple is my mother’s full name. I’m Peak of the Golden Road, which is where my father happened to be when I was born. So . . . Peak. In Montangyan.”
“You ever see your mountain?”
“No. Thought I might, being with the dragons, but it looks like I never will now, unless my husband takes it in mind to paint it.”
“What is your future husband like?”
“Not like what you’d think. I imagined he’d be quiet and artistic, but he’s big and loud and messy. Droll sense of humor. Shouts a lot. Slightest thing sets him off.”
“You don’t m-mind being shouted at?”
“Oh, the house is so big; I shan’t be able to hear him often. I will get him to heat his studio better, though, even if I must do a bit of shouting myself. Zland isn’t that high up, but it still gets cold this time of year. He works in a long coat to keep the paint off, so he doesn’t notice. It’s a miracle I didn’t catch the most dreadful cold. Chilly work, being a muse.”
Ileth decided to go to the feast dressed as greed. Greed was easy; you just needed coins, or things that looked like coins. They had a lot of scarves with little imitation coins that tinkled away and complemented certain dances, thanks to Peak’s trip where they were popular with tavern dancers, so it was just a matter of strategically wrapping herself up in a few of those. In the Serpentine, among the dancers, there was a certain relaxed sense of propriety. Her costume would never pass the Matron’s inspection, but the Matron could ride off on a bristle brush.
She didn’t think she was greedy in the traditional sense, but now she found herself constantly jealous of her fellow novices and apprentices, few of whom had ever wondered how they were to “clear the housekeeping,” as the Lodge’s cook used to put it when she counted out the coin the Captain had given her to feed them that month.
Ileth also wondered if she wasn’t greedy for things other than coins. Status. A place in the world. Praise. She’d had plenty of examples lately of life going wrong when you became greedy, for coins or for . . . other tokens that indicated that she mattered. But it wouldn’t hurt to publicly be done with greed.
There was to be a performance at the feast and she found herself anxious about it. They would be dancing for an audience of humans, not dragons. She couldn’t help but feel nervous: a gut full of darters, as they put it in the Freesand. But it was a good kind of nervous. Mostly. Dancing. She wouldn’t have to say a word. Flick out onstage, smile, make obeisance to the audience, smile, dance, smile, keep time, smile, make another obeisance to the audience, give one last smile, flick back offstage. Easy as cold roast breakfast.
She was to dance with Preen and Vii, and also do the initiate’s solo they taught her, only three times through to keep the audience from being bored. Ottavia suggested a little flourish with her arms and head that she could add on the third run-through of the compass points, since she was comfortable with the rest of the routine. Her performance backing up Preen with Vii was even more simple, more of an exhibition of basic support and floor drills than anything taxing. Ottavia would stand off to the side and give a short introduction (Ottavia was dancing herself in both the first and last performances).
Their stage was a little platform flanking the main tunnel into the Beehive. Once upon a time, she’d been told while out with the troupe, a dragon had always sat guard there, day and night, but the tradition had been abandoned because the dragon never had anything to do and they tended to just get bored and go to sleep, and a snoring dragon on the doorstep made the fortress look undisciplined. Anyway, it made a perfect stage. When she wasn’t onstage she’d be in the mouth of the tunnel, behind a temporary curtain helping with costumes and such.
The feast was already in progress when the dancers emerged from their quarters, all wearing long plain overcapes to hide their costumes until they were onstage. They danced in a short procession back and forth across the Long Bridge to the Pillar Rocks to help draw a crowd. The weather had held; the air was soft and warm, so the innkeeper’s wife could buy another bracelet or whatever she did to mark her score at seventeen perfect predictions.
They passed the food tables under Mushroom Rock. Caseen was pouring out cold party soup and making a mess of himself and his table. But he smiled, splattered with soup as he was. For once his mask did not look out of place; instead of ominous it could pass for festive. The tempting smells made her mouth run. She and the other performers wouldn’t be able to eat until after they danced.
There were town folk mixed in as well, faces of all ages. Ileth saw several groups of Vyenn girls, in fine gowns with just a mysterious hint of a folly they wanted to give up, under the eye of an elderly chaperone.