“Mail?” Ileth asked.
“I got it. You must be new. The Cleft doesn’t look like much, but ‘if there’s mail you’re in civilization,’” the man quoted to her.
Ileth climbed off with difficulty, but she did remember to use the off side. She looked around.
“It’s behind that wooden wall there,” said her helper, detaching a heavy hooked pouch from a flare behind the saddle. She hadn’t seen them when she mounted and wasn’t able to see them once on the dragon without leaning far enough out for the wind to catch her badly. She promptly followed his directions.
She returned from the rude privy, stiff-legged and with no small amount of soreness in her lower back. Her flight mask was off.
“Why, you’re nothing but a girl,” the man who had taken the mail bags said. He was attaching another one to the off side of the saddle. “Vithleen, you have a new wingman?”
“Apprentice this time, I was told. A promising one,” Vithleen said. “He took ill; I think this girl’s his replacement.”
“What’s your name, girl?” The man had the gray uniform of the Auxiliaries.
“Ileth,” she managed to say, working the knots out of her legs. She resisted the urge to massage her buttocks in front of this man.
“Ileth. Ileth.” He thought for a moment. “Ileth!”
The last repetition of her name sounded ominous.
“Where are you from, Ileth?”
“The-The-The dragoneers of the Serpentine, sir. M-May I have a hot drink?”
“We have dinner in the small house for you,” a man with the felt boots and the flat gray hat of the Auxiliaries said. “I’ll tend to Vithleen here. You might want to give her order to the inn up there first. Building with the big orange door and the moon hanging over it.” He rubbed a salve into the junction of wing and skin at her shoulder.
“A thin gravy with plenty of shredded meat,” Vithleen said, as the man applied the salve to her snout. “Don’t skimp on the salt. Phew, I need it. A honey roll would be welcome, too. They usually have some. Two if they’re small. Oh, Stanthoff, you’re a blessing, whatever are you doing in the Auxiliaries? Why aren’t you at the Serpentine?”
“Oh, you know their lordships there. Got to be able to construe Old Hypatian so you can mix with the quality. I sign my name with my inked thumb, old girl.”
Ileth found the inn, gave the order with some difficulty (“On account, I expect,” the innkeeper said; she nodded dumbly, since there was no other way for her to pay, unless the saddle had some coin secreted in it along with the mail bags), and returned to the barn. Vithleen was stretched out in the center of it on a flood of straw. Ileth found the small house previously mentioned and sat by the fire and ate a stew and bread. They gave her a choice of wine or hot tea. She told them to pour the wine in the hot tea. It was dreadful, she’d never ask for that again, but she needed both. Then she slept. Before she knew it she was being shaken awake.
“Time to be up and in the air, dragoneer,” the one Vithleen had called Stanthoff said.
There was still sunlight in the western sky, but the sun had disappeared behind the mountains.
“Again?” she asked. “Well, I asked for it.”
“What’s that, dragoneer?” Stanthoff asked, following her.
“Just t-t-talking to myself.”
“You know,” he said, “we had one of the North District Governor’s assigns up here last summer, asking about a girl named Ileth. Young, small for her age, a stutterer.”
“Hmmmm,” Ileth said.
“Just making conversation. It’s a name you don’t hear much. Ileth. None of my business, I’m just an Auxiliary man.”
Ileth thought it strange that one of the Governor’s officials would be looking for her. The Captain never mentioned the Governor but to curse his taxes. She didn’t believe any favors were owed between the two.
She didn’t have time to think it through.
Vithleen was out of the barn and pawing about anxiously again, eager to be off. She lowered first her forequarters, then her hindquarters, raising the other end. She stretched her tail out like a great tree trunk and let out a titanic belch that Ileth felt in her boot soles. “Now you can tighten the girth, Stanthoff,” she said to the Auxiliary.
“We’re going up again?” Ileth asked Vithleen.
“We’d better, or we’ll both have to answer for it.”
Ileth let out a little moan. But she got on.
“Express is in the white tube,” Vithleen said. “Front of your saddle, where you can see it. They attached it while you were resting.”
“Express . . . white tube,” she repeated. There was a leather cylinder like a map case on her saddle now. She found the fastening latch and opened it. There was a white cylinder within, big enough for a rolled-up painting.
“Winds help us,” the man who’d handled the bags said, shaking his head.
She relatched the tube. It was in front of her knee where she could see it. At other times, a weapon might go on the fitting.
She mounted with some difficulty and numbly latched herself in.
“Ready?” Vithleen asked, sounding fresh as new snow. Which was blowing up the Pass now, actually.
“Yes, thank you,” Ileth said.
“I have a terrible time with your accent. Don’t understand a word you say. Ready?”
“Yes!” Ileth shouted.
The dragon glanced around to make sure her wings were clear. “Up and off!”
This leg was hard, painful from the start. Ileth clung to the dragon’s back, low, and fell into kind of a trance, where there was nothing but wind and growing darkness.
She was convinced now that this wasn’t a trick, or a joke. She’d gotten on the wrong dragon. Been directed to the wrong dragon, more precisely. They didn’t mess about with the courier pouches. Were it a joke, someone would be not just kicked out of the Serpentine but probably handed over to an assign for a jury. She had no business being involved with the Republic’s correspondence. You could be hung outside a posthouse for robbing or otherwise interfering with the Republic’s mail. She wasn’t robbing the mails. She’d do her level best to help Vithleen get them through, but she dearly, fervently hoped she wouldn’t have to explain that to a jury.
Best not to even think about whether a mix-up like this would mean getting a line drawn through her name in that blue leather ledger of Caseen’s.
The stars were still out and the weather seemed to be holding north of the mountains. They proceeded southwest now. She knew her maps; the most sensible destination from the Cleft in this direction would be Sammerdam. She’d always wanted to go there. She lost herself in the rhythmic wingbeats, finding that if you relaxed into them, your muscles felt better. Almost as good as a massage, if you just let the dragon’s contractions flow through you. She even drowsed.
“Still with me, girl?” came a voice from what felt like a pillow.
She roused herself. Her eyes were full of gunk, and she had trouble blinking. Directly ahead of Vithleen’s nose were spiderwebs of street lighting. Only one city in the Republic had this much public lighting: Sammerdam.
The city of Sammerdam sprawled across a river delta. The only topography provided was that of rooftops and parks. It stood on a horizon inland from the open western ocean, behind a series of sandbars and confused inlets. She knew it was a vast engineering project started by Gant the Third, the Last King-Victor of the Vales, but not completed until decades after his death. It had only grown since then.
Jealous neighbors like the Galantines called it the world’s largest open sewer. But it was, at the moment, the beating commercial heart of the western continent; the Vales sat astride it like a tiny rider atop a vast horse.