Ileth grabbed each side of her dress and bobbed an obeisance in return.
“I am glad Santeel has found such a reliable and, well, resourceful friend here,” Santeel’s mother said.
“I should hope if she ever needs someone to stand by her, she will find Santeel and the rest of us equally resolute,” Falth said, exchanging a glance with his mistress.
Ileth gave a deep obeisance, as though just finishing a dance to general acclaim. Though it took no small effort to keep the smile off her face.
PART THREE
The Golden Land
The Galantines are extraordinarily pleasant people, right up to the moment their dagger bites.
13
The Dun Troots toured the Serpentine and met the golden Aussuntheron, their most courtly dragon, and the dragon dancers’ patroness Shrentine. Between them, they did more than even Ottavia to reassure the Dun Troots of the importance to the dragons of the dancers. Several tons of armor-plated manners, eloquently discoursing on the vital role their daughter was playing to oil the machinery of the Serpentine, left even such a personage as Dun Troot overawed. He was quickly reduced to nodding in agreement as he rubbed his hands together like a shopkeeper with a demanding customer.
They were properly impressed by the Beehive’s Rotunda and the dragon alcoves in the Upper Ring, and finished their visit when chairs were brought out so they could sit through a performance that would live on as the most sedate dragon-dance exhibition in Serpentine History.
Some of the less flamboyant dragoneers of the Hael Dun Huss style, rather than the Dath Amrits mode, were invited as well. Rapoto Vor Claymass was given a front-row chair, center, right next to Santeel’s father. Fortunately Ileth was able to have a private moment with him before the performance and whispered a warning that if Santeel’s father hinted at anything or mentioned a painter, he was to act in a reserved manner and say that even young men expected a certain measure of privacy.
Rapoto, who had somehow caught wind of the purpose of the Dun Troot visit, complimented Santeel on her dancing, said it was the highlight of his week, and hoped he would see her and the troupe perform on those rare evenings when his duties spared him. He expressed a desire to meet her family again with leisure to get to know each other. Santeel’s father pointed out that it was possible to go from the Dun Troot home to Jotun entirely by water with all the comforts and conveniences such a trip in a well-appointed barge could afford and extended an open invitation.
The Dun Troots departed for the principal inn down in Vyenn, and those remaining, even the Master in Charge, breathed a sigh of relief.
“Santeel, you never told me your family was so charming,” Dax said, once the last servant had grabbed on to the back of the great carriage. “One usually has to stand by a pond full of ducks to enjoy such lively conversation.”
With Santeel’s crisis past and the brief stay by the Dun Troots in Vyenn over, the winter season settled down into bleak meals of salted and pickled foods and indoor work. There was a minor tragedy when they lost a novice to the icy exterior stair going down to the Catch Basin. It was cold enough for the body to be conveyed home, wrapped up and borne in honor on a dragon. Ileth found the whole thing distressing, and it put a pall over the most enjoyable winter she’d ever spent. The boy lost was the one who’d replaced her at the fish-gutting table.
Illnesses were passed around and overcome, and with the off-and-on beginnings of a thaw the correspondence became more frequent and the first fresh green foods came up by river from the warm Blue Ocean coast. Among the foods was a well-wrapped, waterproofed, and cushioned gilt-edged set of Liturgies in Ordinary, which the Lodger had encouraged her to study to improve her natural style.
Ileth couldn’t help but feel a sense of satisfaction every time she looked at the volumes, arranged next to her little pamphlets on simple Drakine and those few classics the Lodger had around. But now she felt guilty whenever she looked at Santeel. She wondered if she should confess that she’d reported her affairs to the Dun Troots.
She threw herself even more into her dancing. Ottavia was giving her more difficult choreographies, keeping her dancing on the edge of her ability, as her Charge styled it. She and Santeel were called away to flight training sessions, strictly on-the-ground talks about weather and signals and map reading and such, just often enough to keep the dancing from growing stale.
With the fresh food there was talk that the river trade wouldn’t last long, though; the peace would shortly be confirmed with the Galantine Baronies and the river either lost or given trade duties so heavily where it passed through what would end up being the Galantine lands that it amounted to the same thing.
Two more novices were promoted to apprentice when they successfully hunted a fox that had made a home within the walls of the Serpentine and was feasting on the chickens, more as a way to liven up the winter and give the Academy something to talk about than because it was such a coup. Hael Dun Huss was called away on an urgent mission with his most experienced wingman, leaving Galia and his other wingman to get on as best as they could with their training.
Dun Huss was gone for so many days without word that Galia began to fear for him. At last, his wingman returned with news that he was well, and that same night Galia and Ileth were both summoned to the Master in Charge, Heem Deklamp.
He lived and worked in isolation in a low, old tower that dated back to the earliest days of the Serpentine’s peninsula being of strategic importance. At the time it had been built, a king had briefly had a domain encompassing the land between the lake and the mountains of the Cleft. The kingdom didn’t last, but the stones did, and though it wasn’t comfortable, the Master in Charge restored it and made it his own. (The previous Master in Charge had spacious and comfortable rooms in the Masters’ Hall, now a study and meeting room for when all the Masters gathered.)
Both Caseen and Ottavia were called to the conference as well, but Ottavia allowed Caseen to speak for her when it came to Ileth. The dragon that Dun Huss’s wingman had flown on was exhausted, having fought hard winds and weather the entire trip, and Ottavia and a team of physikers were attending to him.
So she, Galia, and Caseen met with the Master in Charge, Galia and Ileth sharing a reading couch, while the Master in Charge examined a long letter by a reading lamp set on his desk. The room was otherwise unlit.
The Master of Apprentices arrived late, making excuses. He looked red-eyed and ill.
“Dark night,” the Charge said, once everyone was greeted and seated. Deklamp kept a heavy shawl about his shoulders in his quarters. His owlish gaze went from one face to the next, nose following his eyes. “Dark nights for dark business, is the general rule. This will be an exception that proves the rule, I very much hope.”
“I’m relieved to hear it,” the Master of Apprentices said.
“More bad news from the Galantine lands, I’m afraid. Fespanarax seems to be on a decline,” the Master in Charge said.
Ileth knew enough now to recognize a dragon name and know that he was probably darkish gray to black in scale.