We are both dragon dancers now. If you are unfamiliar with the art, acquainting you with it is too much for a letter such as I have time to write here, but it is important though exacting work. I believe Santeel has never had to put such consistent and taxing physical effort into anything, for at first she was quite easily exhausted and constantly requested breaks for physical comfort so she could catch her breath. The efforts we put into our movements and poses! We make and wear canvas slippers that require much toughening of the feet, especially Santeel’s dainty ones, which were the envy of all the rest of us until they became toughened and callused. I understand some dancers use softer slippers of chamois. Perhaps you can acquire her some in the city.
We frequently perform together for the dragons and those human members of the Serpentine who appreciate the art, and of course getting over our natural modesty in moving to music with nothing but light material between our audience and our natural selves. As we are both fairly new to the art, there are sometimes minor collisions, and one routine with a third dancer named Vii, also new, became unintentionally comic when we accidentally struck each other with our arms and matters escalated from there in time to the music. Our musician kept playing, even more enthusiastically to cover our mistake, and we did our best to get through it despite the exchange of palms, elbows, and heels. But a good laugh was had by all afterward, and the bruised eye sockets and bleeding noses soon healed! My own nose was broken in my early years so I’m not much worse off than I was before.
This letter must be brief. I wish I could report that my own health is as good as Santeel’s, but I am coming off a bout of digestive issues caused by, I think, certain spices I have been trying on my food. I have found, like some of my fellow dancers, that I enjoy exotic peppery blends of late to fight the dull winter chill and tasteless cabbage, but they take some getting used to and I find some mornings I am in digestive distress. I am told I will soon grow used to them and their effects won’t be quite so spectacular.
Your servant, sir,
Ileth
The first-flighters would have to wait for good weather after the winter solstice. Ileth was told that after the initial blast of winter storms that came with the solstice, the Skylake valley would often get a few weeks of clear, cold weather. After hunkering down through the storms, there would be a flurry of activity on the flight deck as the backlog of dragons as couriers and such were distributed to the districts of the Republic, and when other dragoneers and their wingmen who’d been waiting on the ground for better weather returned.
It gave Santeel Dun Troot a chance to retrieve and show off her flight ensemble. She did so in the main room of the Dancers’ Quarter, gathering them all one evening for the full effect. Except Preen, who said she was ill and retreated to her bed.
The Serpentine did not insist on strict uniforms when it came to flying gear; the dragoneers each had their own ideas for what to wear on dragonback to fight off the cold or opponents. So Santeel, or perhaps her family, had opened their purse and let fly with the haberdasher.
Santeel Dun Troot’s flying outfit could be called many things, but Ileth would have chosen formidable. It made her look a bit like a dragon herself. It combined the ladylike lines of a riding skirt with the necessary usefulness of trousers—the skirt had what looked like a decorative seam that you could open up when forked in the saddle. It was mostly dark, bluish leather, with a few flashes of red decorative trim and white fur with black tips visible at the collar and cuffs. From what little Ileth knew of the fur trade that came in through the north, she knew it must be fantastically expensive. The top was two layers of jacket that hid horizontal armored fittings sewn in, wind-cutting leather of the supplest lambskin on the outside, and more fur on the inside. The jacket, cut in the equestrian patrol style, reminded her of a dashing horse-lieutenant she’d met on the road, though he’d been wearing a warm bearskin hat instead of a flying cap. Santeel’s flying cap had a long white silk scarf she could wind around her face and a button-closed windshield. The cap itself was topped with a sort of fringe evocative of that of a female dragon, with a fabric cockade of her family colors fitted jauntily on one side. There were riding gauntlets that went high on her arm as well, also trimmed in that thick white fur with black tips on the collar and cuffs.
The new leather made so many squeaks and wheezes as she walked about in her polished riding boots that it sounded like her rig was filled with outraged mice being pinched whenever she turned and tried a different pose.
“I’m not entirely satisfied with the fit,” Santeel said. “I believe my figure has altered a little since joining the troupe. It’s a little loose about the seat and thighs.”
“You’ll be grateful for the room on long flights,” Dax said; he was more excited than the rest of the dancers combined to see her Tyrennan-designed and -fabricated riding outfit finally worn. Dax knew a rich girl who enjoyed having a court when he met one, and they’d become friends.
“How would you know? You’ve never flown,” Shatha said.
“No, but I’ve known plenty of dragoneers. They like a lively tune much as you dancers.”
But Santeel’s flight trunk reveal gave Ileth pause. She had little she could wear against the cold weather outside the Beehive, let alone what she might encounter if the dragon took her up to “test her teeth for high airs,” as the dragonback veterans put it. Yael Duskirk in the kitchens was little help. He was slotted to do more flying as well and hadn’t acquired much more than a long, thick scarf and an old fisherman’s coat. His gloves were in a sorry state as well. The fingers had started to wear away and he’d chopped them off last year.
She put the question to Galia when she had a free hour to track her down. She confessed, wretchedly, that she had nothing and no money that she could spend on attire. Galia sympathized but had no old clothes suitable for riding, was taller and broader than Ileth, and needed her own riding rig, laboriously built up over the better part of a year, for her own frequent rides. Galia hadn’t even been able to afford a proper purple for her wingman’s sash and had to make do with her own mixture of cheaper dyes.
Novices had a clothing issue, but it wasn’t suitable for flying. Even cold-weather coats were almost impossible to obtain. If you couldn’t afford to buy one at the now-rare winter market days, you were out of luck and had to go about in layers of cast-off laborer’s jackets. Anything too worn out went to the rag room; otherwise the girls of the Manor, desperate for anything that could be called “new” to wear, took them off her hands. But Galia promised to take the matter up with her new dragoneer.
Ileth could still lose her concerns in her dance. She was performing more often for the dragons now. She even had a couple of sister females who shared a cave in the Upper Ring who specifically requested her to entertain them on the long winter evenings when there was little else to do but sleep (“the tiny one with the male hair who bucked up Old Stripes” was how one put it to Ottavia).