Ileth had just finished a long after-dinner dance, a mixture of performance and conversation, with a garrulous old red named Falberrwrath. She found him tiresome because she couldn’t just dance, thank him for his attention, and say she looked forward to next time—he kept her up talking when she wanted to sleep. He tended to tell the same story each time, about the four-day battle where he had four riders “shot off from atop me, one after the other—I never even learned the last one’s name but you can look it up, I suppose. It went into the histories.”
Stuck one evening hearing Falberrwrath’s stories again, pinching herself in the arm whenever she nodded into sleep, she had a visitor. The towering scarecrow figure of the dragoneer she’d heard called the Borderlander walked by. He looked in, met her eyes—the color of his were hard to define, blue but so pale they were almost a steel color—and cleared his throat.
“Pardon, Falberrwrath, I’ve come to collect Ileth,” he said.
Falberrwrath ground his teeth in annoyance at his story being interrupted. “Usually she stays until I’m ready to sleep.”
“It’s her night for the bathtub and I won the draw to wash her, for once. Been looking forward to it all day, sir.” He grabbed her by the forearm for emphasis.
“Ah. Yes, yes. Quite. Don’t let me keep you, young man.”
“Thank you, Falberrwrath. You’re the Tyr’s own in my book.”
He walked her out of the room. Once they’d walked a safe distance down the passageway, he released her.
“Thank you, sir,” Ileth said. “I could hardly keep my eyes open.”
“I saw you slumping.” Ileth liked his Montangyan. Its casual approach to grammar and the accents reminded her of the Freesand sailors. “Tell you the truth, I am too. Catherix was in a mood tonight. Took forever to get her wings greased so she thought them acceptable. They can crack in this cold weather if you don’t do that, you oughter know. But it’s not just that.”
“What is it?”
“Come back with me and I’ll show you.”
He took her to Catherix’s shelf in the Upper Ring. The grayish-white dragon—Ileth had never seen her up close, though she’d passed through the Chamber a few times when they were dancing—was chewing on a thick bone that must have come from a large ox or something like a moose or elk. What Ileth could see of her wings gleamed with fresh oil. It occurred to Ileth that she never saw the Borderlander with grooms or wingmen or much of anyone when she passed him. Always alone, unless he was hanging about with Dun Huss or the flamboyant Dath Amrits. He was an odd fellow.
He found a key on a small ring and led her over to a battered trunk. A variety of clothing buttons, some in precious metals and finely designed, were glued atop it, covering perhaps a third of the surface in no particular design. He unlocked the trunk. She was curious enough to angle for a better view inside the trunk and saw just an old belt and boots, a few books, a closed personal portrait case, a thing that looked like a rolled-up carpet, and a big sack tied off with a leather cord. He extracted the sack.
“Here you go, girl,” he said, tossing her the heavy sack. She wished he’d said brace yourself or some such before he tossed it to her. She just managed to catch it—a dancer’s body-sense was good for something—without falling over. It was bulky but not horribly heavy.
“Open ’er up,” he said. She decided his rustic accent would be snickered at even in a backwater like the Freesand. Here, among all the Vors, Duns, and Heems, it was refreshing.
She untied the cording and opened it. A mix of cloth, hide, fur, and finished leather tumbled out onto the floor. It smelled a little musty, but there was no rot or mold to it.
“Huss said you needed a rig. Nicer than what I wore on my first flight. I know what it’s like to go up in nothing but a bit of sheepskin with old bulletin-paper wrapped around your chest to keep out the chill.”
Ileth’s knees buckled. This was fine flying gear, as fine as she’d seen. Not dashing, like Dun Huss’s, or the inspired work of Tyrennan artisans, but better than she’d dreamed of when talking flying coats with Galia.
“I will return it in per—”
He shook his head. “No. It’s yours now. It’s my old gear from Typhlan. Haven’t had the heart to wear it since she died. Bit stale, air it out and get some musk oil on it first thing. Too big for you, mostways, but that can be amended, and cuttin’ it down will give you plenty of extra bits for alterations. Too big’s fixed easier than too small. You ever work leathers?”
“This . . . this is wonderful.”
“I respect what you did for Old Stripes down there. The man who taught me the job, well, his grandfather rode alongside him once. In the war against the Snowspot Blighters, and was rewarded by the king at the time, one of the good ones, I think. Good dragon. I wouldn’t die in a hole if I could claw my way out, either.”
She bobbed out her usual obeisance, happily clutching the bag to her breast.
“None of that, now,” the Borderlander said. “Where I come from, deeds sort folks out, not names. You wear it in health and don’t feel bad about whatever cutting you have to do to make it your own.”
“May I . . . may I ask you a question, sir?”
“Spit it out, girl.”
“Do you . . . know why he had to hide in the Cellars?”
“No. Didn’t have anything to do with the Snowspot Blighters; there’s hardly any left these days. They can still fight, though. Don’t let anyone tell you the blighters are dumb, if you ever have to go up against ’em. They know warfare.”
The trouble she had getting the dragonriding rig to properly fit her was a story in itself, woven in and out of her life in the next few weeks. Dax wouldn’t help; time was pressing and he already had Santeel Dun Troot under his wing. He suggested Vii, whose mother worked in clothing and textiles and had done work for famous names in Sammerdam. Vii grudgingly agreed when Dax pressed her, saying that if she could turn Ileth out properly with a sack of old leather and sheep hides cut to fit for a man in such a way that it could take some of the starch out of Santeel’s collar, it would be worth it. And it was an interesting challenge.
Two other novices, encouraged by Santeel’s joining the dancers, had added to the number and Ottavia breathed a little easier. She grumbled about Santeel and Ileth taking time away for their first flight training sessions—“Be a groom or a feeder if you want to fly off all the time”—but Santeel pointed out that they might get more novices wanting to dance if a female dragoneer came out of the dancers. Ottavia thought it over and quit grumbling.
Ileth worked on her riding rig nightly, with Vii helping when she could, or at least checking her work and offering suggestions.
Dragoneers tended to wear gray, a dark blue known as patrol blue, and once in a while black. A few flamboyant ones dressed completely in their dragon’s color, and there was a famous female dragoneer they’d heard stories of in the Manor who wore whites, but the Borderlander’s old rig was mostly a sort of sulfur color, too dull to be called yellow but not exactly a tan either—it was something in between. Vii called it sulfur so Ileth did as well, feeling like a little girl playing dress-up in the heavy canvas overcoat covered in some kind of waxy material to keep out the wet. The first thing Vii took out were assorted belts and weapons harnesses.
They built from the ground up. The boots she’d arrived in were still the only ones she had—she had no coin to buy another pair, but she’d managed to get them resoled with a little of the money Falth sent her. There was sort of an armored plate in the Borderlander’s kit made of dragon scale that protected the front of the lower legs and kept the wind out of the laces. They wound bandaging material around her legs, a trick she picked up from Galia, who said it kept you warm and helped your circulation, and turned the oversized leather pants into protective leggings that laced up at the sides—Vii labored over those especially, stripping an old pair of men’s lace-up riding boots in the process. They split the long riding coat up the back and shortened it at the arms and arranged it so it went over the shoulder armor the Borderlander had worn (in his case, hardened leather cups reinforced with metal bands). There wasn’t much to be done with the chest plate, so they left it for now.