“He just needs to understand what we do,” Ottavia said. “Let me reason with him.”
“Reason? Litus of Hypatia himself couldn’t reason with him. He’s like a scale that will tip only if you put money or Names on it. He doesn’t care six figs’ pocket money for art. Unless it’s reading the prices paid at auction in the Quarterly Record.”
An idea came to life in Ileth’s head. It wasn’t on its feet yet, but it was sitting up in bed and calling for some porridge. She needed to occupy Santeel so she could think in quiet.
“Santeel, go put on your riding rig.” Ileth grabbed her hand and pulled Santeel toward her sleeping nook.
Ileth moved the quarter-trunk to the floor and opened the main trunk. There it was, beautifully cleaned and folded. Not a trace of spew.
“Why should I wear my riding gear?”
“Because you look st-stunning in it.”
“Stunning?” Santeel asked. One corner of her mouth turned up, the other down. “You think so? In truth?”
“Yes. Whoever d-d-designed it and fitted you out is a genius. You look like you could . . . command an army in it, leave off chasing around atop a dragon.”
Santeel was never so happy as when she was dressing, and the ritual took some of the fear out of her eyes. “Powder your hair. It looks fine with the black.” Ileth threw a scarf around her shoulders and handed Santeel her powdering mask.
Even Preen got into the spirit of the thing and worked laces and buckles. “Tight enough?”
The conelike powdering mask nodded from the fog of hair-powder.
“Let’s go,” Ileth said, after throwing on her overdress. Good, it was thoroughly pilled and wrinkled. The contrast would help.
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to lie like a Galantine High Inquisitor has caught me at midnight under a blood moon bearing a black cat on my left shoulder, that’s what I’m going to do. Play along.”
It wasn’t the entire Dun Troot household, but it was the illustrious father in a heavily brocaded coat, in person, with two servants, one at the door holding an overcoat and the other holding a decanter on a silver tray; a clerk standing at a portable writing desk; an elegant powdered woman, with a female servant, who must have been Santeel’s mother (so alike in features that they might be mistaken for the same woman at two different ages); and Falth. Falth, despite standing nowhere near the fire and there being a winter chill in the still-warming Visitor’s House, wiped his forehead and looked as though he’d prefer to be clamped in the public stocks at the end of the sorry tomato harvest.
Various supernumeraries for the trip were still waiting outside the gate. Ileth had seen them standing about a great wagon-carriage with real glassed windows. It had sleigh fittings on the axles that could be swapped out for wheels—at the moment the sleigh tracks were on.
The Visitor’s House was a cottage with a large fireplace, currently lit. Selgernon, the Master of Apprentices, and the Charge of the Serpentine Deklamp himself were entertaining the guest. Quith had managed to free herself of her duties and was peeping in the window with another novice from the Manor.
Falth brought Santeel and Ileth in with the relief of a besieged garrison that’s just had reinforcements cut their way through to the gate. Santeel’s mother smiled at her daughter in dragonriding attire, but other than Falth the men ignored her.
“There’s no argument, sir, that you have the right to take your daughter away,” the Charge was saying. Ileth thought he looked even more owlish thanks to a scarf wrapped about his throat. The senior Dun Troot still looked now and then at the taller and more impressive Selgernon as though he required some convincing that this small, odd man was responsible for the whole of the Serpentine. Dun Troot kept glancing at Charge Deklamp’s plain black uniform and ordinary shoes. Ileth had to admit that he looked like the owner of an accounting house who wanted to give the impression that he wouldn’t overcharge you for his services to support his lifestyle. “It isn’t a question of rights, but it is a question of right, if you understand me. Santeel is a very promising young dragoneer, just elevated to apprentice.”
“The honorable young Dun Troot is the first young lady of her draft to make apprentice. It is an honor, sir,” the Master of Apprentices assured him. “What she does is not material. It’s an honor if she were bristling out the chimneys or pushing fish up from the Basin.” Ileth hadn’t come across the Master of Apprentices often. Like Charge Deklamp, he didn’t look fierce at all but had more elegance to him, like some of the tutors she’d seen giving lessons in the Great Hall.
Dun Troot, stiff as a statue, spoke: “Sir, I would understand my daughter being put to such work, even chimney sweeping, provided she was instructed and supervised so it could be accomplished safely and allowed to wear gloves to save her hands. Common labor is an exercise that benefits several virtues. No, sir, I am strongly in favor of that! Dancing for an audience is not work, sir. It is performance. Dun Troots entertain but they do not perform, sir! And dancing of all things—well, you are men who have been in the world, certainly. I say again, it is not fit, not for a maiden of her Name who hopes to enter into respectable marriage and social life. I could perhaps, perhaps, just see it were she singing to the dragons.”
“That’s just it,” the Charge said. “The dancing is for the dragons. It is in no way public. Nor is it entertainment. If anything, it is a ceremonial ritual of great antiquity, going back to the first days of human and dragon cooperation.”
All the while he spoke, the clerk took notes on the paper at his portable desk and then looked at the Serpentine officials expectantly.
Santeel’s mother moved up next to her husband. “Why can’t we just see them dance for these beasts and then make up our minds?” She spoke with the air of having said it several times before and in little doubt that she would have to say it again.
“Santeel,” the father said, turning to his daughter. “These men tell me you asked to be taken off the duties they’d assigned you and become a dancer?”
Santeel’s lips trembled. “Yes, Father.”
Her mother took a deep breath but said nothing. Falth wiped his forehead again.
“Excuse me, would you introduce me to your friend, and explain her presence in such an intimate family matter?”
“Father, this is Ileth. She is . . . she is my best friend here. She grew up in a lodge. She is also a dragon dancer, and an experienced dragonrider who has been charged with delivering the express to Asposis and Sammerdam. Ileth, I have the honor of introducing you to my father, of the Name Dun Troot.”
“Thank you, Santeel. I am happy to meet you, Ileth.” He didn’t particularly look it but gave her a nod of recognition, then turned to the company as if he expected acclaim.
“Well done, sir,” Falth said. “You display a true egalitarian manner.”
Ileth bobbed an obeisance.
“Santeel,” her mother said, “if you bring a friend in the hope of keeping us from speaking plainly to you in front of her, you are mistaken. Just because dancers exist and you have one as a friend does not make it right for you. I wish to know a great deal more.”