Kess’s apprentice, an unfortunate-looking young man with ears that stuck out, put a piece of paper down next to Kess. “I copied that list of titles. It’s Hypatian.”
“This dragon—he liked to write and read,” Kess said, waving off his apprentice. “His collection wasn’t stored in the Cellars. A good thing, as it turned out, or the fire or water—fwoosh. I have some of his books here; the rest of his titles are registered in the old King’s Library in Asposis. This letter listing the titles will get you in if you ever need to retrieve the documents he stored there. The list my apprentice, Gowan, just brought is a copy of the works from his collection preserved there.”
“I see.” Actually she didn’t. She understood only a few of the titles; the rest were in some sort of Hypatian shorthand, as far as she could tell. Her education had many gaps.
“Sorry about the Hypatian,” Gowan said. “Lawyers. They use it to keep the rank and ordinary puzzled.”
“Excuse my apprentice’s impertinence,” Kess said. “He was forced on me. His father is a former dragoneer who wanted him here, but somewhere safe, not floating dead in the river next to the Scab, as his letter put it. Not in the best Serpentine Dragoneer tradition but practical. He’s very well off, if you’re looking for a husband, girl.”
Ileth wasn’t sure if Kess meant the father or the boy. Gowan had a face suited for a long-course voyage, as the Captain used to put it, tolerable enough if you didn’t have to look at him every day.
“My Charge just lost two dancers to marriage. I’m afraid she’d put a curse on the betrothal if I left too,” Ileth said.
“You need to sign where I’ve laid that red ribbon, right below the physiker and the Master in Charge. Put your name or mark right before where it says heir and assignee. All three copies, please.”
Ileth nodded and took up the pen, carefully writing her name in her best script. Kess knew his quills; it wrote magnificently.
“Some of them fake it to get in here. You’d be surprised how many we catch out the first few months. That’s done. Would you like me to store the library letters and such here, or does your family have an archive?”
She thought of the cabinet full of mismatched volumes in four languages at the Captain’s Lodge. “Here would be best, sir.”
“It is safer here. I close for dusting and sorting and travel to distribute and collect for a month every spring and fall. Other than that, I’m here or in the Masters’ Hall.”
“Could you help me with s-something, sir? I need to use a Drakine translation. Vhanesh luss. I . . . I think.”
“Vhanesh luss. That’s not current Drakine, at least as they speak it here. It’s an imperative. Sh is always an imperative ending. Dead Drakine, I expect. Something to do with fire or light. I have no volume that will help you; you would have to go to Hypatia—or places even less accessible.”
Well, that was the end of that, for now.
“Oh, one other thing. A piece of correspondence that they brought here, by mistake I suppose. It is a receipt having to do with a music box, showing the price paid in full by proxy in Sammerdam. It was supposed to be delivered some time ago. I hope it wasn’t destroyed in the fire. Ivory. Expensive stuff. You wouldn’t—why, whatever is the matter, girl?”
The announcement that the first of their group of novices would become apprentices, with all the privileges, duties, and honors encompassed by the title, caused a stir. “Just five,” was the general lament.
Speculation flew around at the news like birds greeting the dawn. Negotiations weren’t going well with the Galantines; they’d soon be fighting over the Scab again and they needed trained dragoneers to feed into a renewed war.
Others figured it to be Names putting pressure on Charge Deklamp. Quith was one of them.
“If it’s five a year I’ll have gray hair before I’m apprenticed,” Quith complained to her at one of her rare meals in the dining hall.
Ileth put a comforting hand on Quith. “I don’t think the rest of us are delayed. They’re just early.”
Ileth thought of telling her that she was heir to a dragon, inheritor of a couple of old grooming and dragonriding tools and some books in an archive in Asposis. She’d been carrying around the old mounting hook after giving it a good cleaning whenever she had to walk about at night, just in case Griff decided to follow Gorgantern’s example and sneak into the Serpentine. Rumor had it he’d departed downriver. Instead she spoke of the wingman with the sideburns Quith was so keen on. She’d seen him in the Beehive in a striking new uniform, talking to Santeel.
“Wouldn’t you know,” Quith said. “Santeel would be first up for apprenticeship. I’m sure letters arrive weekly: We’re counting on our beloved daughter making progress and getting the recognition she deserves. Like the Serpentine is the Queen’s Own Graces and Arts Academy for Dignified Females in Their Second Decade instead of a factory for dragon mlumm.”[4]
In the wake of the posted apprenticeship announcement, the first flight roster made no splash at all. For one, it was posted in the flight cave at the clerk’s desk and not the Great Hall. So the fact that Ileth was tacked on to the list of those due for their first dragonback training escaped notice save for whoever drew up the list and presumably the Master of Apprentices, who signed it, and the clerk in the flight cave, who stamped it—when dragons were found willing to take new fliers up and risk having to have vomit scrubbed off their scales.
Ileth couldn’t resist making excuses to go look at it anyway. More than once, in fact.
10
My Dear Faith,
I hope this letter finds you well. Thank you for your own note and more paid paper. It was kind of you to include that bank draft as well, but in truth I have little chance to enjoy your generosity. Novices are not allowed outside the walls generally, so I have nowhere to spend it, and on market days I always seem to have duties. I did manage to resupply our quills and ink and paper among the girls with a portion of it. If you really wish to do me a favor, I would be grateful to you for a small everyday set of the Liturgies in Ordinary bound in book form. I was told by a learned friend that studying them would improve my natural style in Montangyan and Galantine so I can write without (as I do now) resorting to phrases copied from books of formal correspondence.
I enjoy the fortune of seeing Santeel (she has insisted we be on a familiar-name basis, as we are thrown together in our duties a good deal) almost every morning, noon, and night and can assure you that she is in excellent health and her spirit is good, though not quite as good as it might be on mornings when our washroom requires extra cleaning.
You may make the Name Dun Troot happy in the news that the honorable young Santeel Dun Troot has been made apprentice, in the first group so promoted, five in number out of a novice group that numbers some ninety now, as a few novices have left to seek other opportunities. The rest of those promoted were all boys so she is the only one of her sex so distinguished. She has taken to the distinction like an eagle to the skies and reminds the rest of the female novices of her achievement of evenings in the dining hall when she takes her natural place at the head of our company and sets the social order and conversation to her liking.
4
One word every novice learns their first days in the Serpentine is the Drakine term for excrement.