The Baron stepped onto a metal foot-vault hanging off the side of his cart and jumped to the field. His servants dropped off the back at the same instant and moved around to hold the horse and keep the reins out of the way. He turned to them, looking as though meeting a group of his country’s enemies and their fire-breathing dragons distinguished the happiest moment of his life.
“You have arrived,” he said in Galantine that Ileth, fortunately, had no trouble understanding thanks to his measured and precise manner of speaking. “How very, very good.”
Dun Huss stepped in between the two parties, carefully standing so that he faced neither the Baron nor the visitors but aligned himself in between, and gestured toward their host. “The Baron Hryasmess, Knight of the Ancient Mounted Order, Guarantor of the—”
“Oh, this isn’t the Court Exalted, Dun Huss,” the Baron said. “You can dispense with all that.”
Dun Huss continued in his slow Galantine.
“My aide, Preece, you have met. This is my other aide, Galia of the Serpentine”—it occurred to Ileth that it was interesting that Galia had no surname; before this she just thought she didn’t use it—“and with them rides Ileth, a . . . dragon care apprentice and, please forgive me, contortionist?”
“Maid of the Dance,” Ileth supplied in Galantine. She had looked it up before they left, but the Serpentine volume on the Galantine language in the archives was over a hundred years old. She bobbed to the Baron. He seemed pleased by the gesture.
“I am happy to meet you,” the Baron said, in what sounded like carefully rehearsed Montangyan. “And your magnificent dragons.”
Something moved under the Baron’s wig and Ileth squeaked.
A gray-faced rat blinked at her.
“Oh, do not take alarm. He is of my household, not vermin, young lady,” the Baron said, back to his Galantine.
“I am sorry,” Ileth said. She spoke slowly, trying to keep her tongue under control.
“I’m honored by your skill with our language. I shall provide someone to coach you on your pronunciation, if you would accept the offer in the spirit offered. A Maid of the Dance! I must have you meet my daughter Taf. She is about as grown as Galia here and she so loves a dance. Her master calls her a prodigy, but one never knows if the praise is genuine or something to keep the lessons coming. Perhaps you can tell me if I’m throwing my money away, Ileth.”
Ileth doubted the Baron would let his daughter stretch her leg against a doorjamb wearing nothing but her sheath.
“I’ve never met anyone who kept rats,” Galia said to Dun Huss.
“I’m not understanding?” the Baron said. Ileth did her best to translate.
“Ah, well, they actually make excellent companions. I believe the rat is the smartest of my animals,” Baron Hryasmess said. “It’s also the only one that isn’t afraid of the dragon—dragons, I mean. The dog whimpers and hides behind my legs, and as for the cat—she simply seizes up and I can do nothing with her.”
The dog in this case was under the cart, not that a wooden cart would make any difference to a dragon.
“I am afraid we cannot all fit in my two-wheeler. I use it to get about my estate and always have it ready. When I saw I was happy in the increase of such interesting guests I had to hurry and greet you. If you have no objection, sir,” the Baron said to Dun Huss, “I will walk alongside you, and the young ladies may ride. Or I can send for a cart so you may all ride together. Or do the dragons need tending to?”
Dun Huss and Ileth passed on the invitation, which prompted a short conversation.
“I think they will be content to sleep in the sun,” Preece said after Ileth gave everyone the gist of the Baron’s comment. “We were stuck in a storm last night and spent a cold and wet night. But I will stay with them as I expect they’ll wake up hungry. I know my way about.”
“I will visit Fespanarax,” Ileth said.
“Young Ileth, there are two men there who know something of dragons after all this time. You all look like you need a meal and sleep.”
The Baron helped Ileth and Galia up into his cart, showing them where to put their feet. “So, you both ride dragons. How exciting for you,” the Baron said.
“Our . . . order,” Dun Huss said in his labored Galantine, “was builded of woman significant and we nourish them since.”
“Your skill in our language improves daily!” the Baron said.
Ileth enjoyed the view; you were as high off the ground on this cart as you would be on the back of a smallish dragon, but it was much more comfortable. The seat was a sort of couch with upholstered leather with the tufting held in place by fine buttons.
The Baron led the horse, which seemed a gentle and compliant creature; he barely touched it, with Dun Huss walking beside.
They approached a beautiful sort of fortified house of three stories. It was as long as the Masters’ Hall but decorated with fanciful frills and flourishes you’d never see in the north. The windows and doors were heavily reinforced by decorative wrought iron, and the top had fortifications and statuary that could, in a pinch, Ileth supposed, shelter archers or crossbow men or meteorists. The house itself was set upon a low rise, about waist-high above the leveled grounds about it. There was a substantial stone wall running around its yards and gardens of over man-height, with firing steps behind here and there disguised as benches and lamp-lighting steps, and an inner protective hedge that girdled it with what looked like narrow paths within.
Nothing about the house suggested it had ever seen the kind of battle that required such defenses.
The Baron helped them down while the servants moved around to steady the wheels of the cart.
“This is my home: Chapalaine on the Green River. I am also Mayor of the Green Crossing, our village, and patron of the common-house and chapel. I am honored to have you stay with me for the duration. I can offer you any of the traditional amenities while you remain wards of my estate in the custody of my person. As an enforced guest you have nothing to fear and a good deal to hope for in terms of education and entertainment. Your visit will last until your representatives at the negotiating table acknowledge that you have lost the war and see reason about the new realities.”
“We all wants over negotiations brief,” Dun Huss said. Ileth wondered if his atrocious Galantine was as hard on the Baron’s ear as it was on hers.
“Before we can receive you properly,” the Baron said, bowing briefly to Dun Huss, “you no doubt wish a respite and a chance to wash away the fatigues and weather of your journey. I’ll take you on to your rooms; you are on your own out there, where you won’t be troubled by all the coming and going at the great house. I’ll send one of my sons to call on you and bring you to the house itself for a dinner, if you find that agreeable. I hope you don’t find it too severe a prison.”
Their “prison” was manifestly better than the Lodge. It was cozier than the Manor attic or the alleylike angle in the Dancers’ Quarter of the Beehive. Dun Huss introduced them to a building off the garden that stood alone between the outer tall stone wall and the inner hedge that had once been some sort of storage building, with a loft reachable by a tiny staircase. It had been the residence of the head gardener and his wife, who were removed to the village when the dragon and rider arrived for safekeeping.
In the Freesand, it would be considered a sizable house, the sort of place a prosperous fisherman who owned several boats might install his family. Dry and airy, it had a tiny kitchen that had a nook for a bed and closet for a servant, a tiled water-room for bathing and washing fed by a good hand pump, a sitting room, an extra room known as the warm room because the bricks from the kitchen fireplace jutted into it, and two upstairs bedrooms on either side of the narrow staircase. The only thing against it was that it had only a single door and the windows were small and set high, offering light but little view. And it was chilly, but fortunately the Galantine climate was mild, with summer heat more of a threat than winter snows, according to Dun Huss.