“Whatever the outcome of the negotiations between our two nations, you may always rely on your friends at Chapalaine, my dear Dun Huss,” the Baron said. He’d descended to say his farewells; his wife remained in the cart, smiling at them with the cat in her lap.
“I shall improve it one day,” Dun Huss said.
“Improve what?”
“My Galantine. They say it is hard to learn a new language at my age, and I appear to be proofs.”
“Well, the way these wars go for your Republic, you may all end up learning it eventually.”
“Come and try to teach me some, at your leisure, sir,” Dun Huss said, steel in his eyes. “I am always ready for a lessons, whether given and taken.”
“Well, sir, you show more color than I thought you plain citizens of a republic possessed. I wonder that they give you women to serve under you. Sparks such as that should land on a warlike tinder, not underskirts.”
“Then I am happy I am leaving Galia and Ileth with you, so that you can see for yourself what kind of women our mountains produce. But don’t expect to inspect their underskirts, unless you wish to see some sparks.”
The Baron laughed. “I will not delay you any further, pleasant as this kind of talk is. A speedy and safe journey, sir.”
“If I stayed to thank you for all your kindnesses, sir, we should not leave until dinner. Give my compliments to your beautiful wife and hopes your family increases in size and health.” Dun Huss’s Galantine was much improved at the end, or perhaps he’d rehearsed this with his tutor. Then to Preece, in Montangyan: “Ready, wingman.”
“As ever, sir,” Preece said. “Galia, Ileth, we will return for you soon, I hope.”
Galia’s jaw trembled, but she said nothing. Ileth had to speak for them. “We . . . we look forward to that. Fates make it soon.”
“Write us often,” Dun Huss said as the dragons warmed their wings and turned into the wind. “Even if the news is only that you are weary of farina. The letters will be slow, but they will get to us.”
“Yes, sir,” the pair said in accidental unison.
They exchanged vigorous Serpentine-style salutes and the dragons dashed into the wind for an easy lift, wings flapping madly, like geese taking off. The dragons circled once, with humans waving and Cunescious cracking his tail, and rose into the sky.
“I will leave you to watch them as long as you like,” the Baron said. “But I should get the Baroness back under a roof; it looks like rain. Please come to dinner tonight, if you feel up to it. We will understand if you do not and send out a tray.” He climbed back into his cart and turned it away toward his house.
The two young women stood there, together in the wind, and watched the dragons and their riders until the outlines became dots with wings. Soon there was only wind and clouds the color of the sea.
“I love him, you know,” Galia said.
Ileth couldn’t have been more surprised by a slap. Her face probably looked much the same. “What? Preece?”
“Scale, no. Ileth, it makes me happy to hear that I hid it even from you, here. Hael Dun Huss. I love him. I have for years.”
Ileth could only gape.
Galia tilted her head and touched it to Ileth’s in a friendly fashion.
“Unreturned, but then it could not be anything but, with his standards,” she continued, blinking tears until she gave up and wiped her eyes. “I confessed it to him once. Only once. Let us get inside.”
As they walked back to their congenial prison, Galia continued:
“You know, he’s the one who found me? Rescued me, more like. Found me on the streets of Sammerdam. It was after my brother died. A rat bite, we got them all the time. Thought nothing of them. But this one, his arm grew red and the veins stood out. He spoke of great pain. I got him medicine, expensive medicine—don’t ask me how—to cure it, but it did nothing. He said it tasted like dry starch. It had plenty of opportunity to work; I dosed him and dosed him every hour. The next morning, he was stiff and cold. I was alone. So alone. Scared. I was more scared then, with him lying dead next to me, than I’ve ever been, before or since. I became brave after that. Recklessly brave. You see, the man who sold me the cure swore on his right hand that it would be effective.”
Galia’s jaw clenched and she ceased speaking for a moment, looking at the ground. Then she gained her voice again.
“Hael Dun Huss found me a few years later. I was chalking, then—decorating the steps leading up to the homes of the wealthy when they had parties. It was the rage for a while, and I’d learned to write beautifully. Announcements of babies born to the house. On the occasion of Sedalia’s betrothal and lots of drawings of flowers, stuff like that. Or just decorations for holidays. He came early to a party and saw me finishing up, asked questions about where I learned to create such wonderful blossoms. I told him by watching other artists at their easels, running and getting them cool water and getting a word of advice in return. I never told him I stole my first run of chalk. I remember sometimes that it was me that did all those things. But it was a different me. Like a sailor’s lucky knife that has had two new blades and three new handles.
“Well, I must have interested him because we spoke for a bit. He said with a hand like that I could write letters or be a clerk to some great lady or even be an artist. I had sewage all over my skirts from sleeping in the gutters; I can just see me showing up at some society woman’s door smelling like sock wet with a wee: ‘’Scuse me, sira, you be needin’ a bookkeeper?’ As if.
“He said a talent like mine could be, should be trained. ‘You can be so much more, Galia,’ he said. He actually brought me to the party and asked the host if they could find a bed for me. They did, in the end, and I bet they boiled everything afterward if they didn’t burn it. I think he was going to set me up as an apprentice, but then there was an emergency. I believe he thought he would lose me again in the gutters of Sammerdam—it is a place where it’s easy to become lost, whether you want to or not—so he just brought me with him back to the Serpentine. He looped a line about me so I rode in front of him, cradled in his warmth. His smell. I can still feel his stubble on my forehead when I think of it. First thing I knew I was in the air above the city looking so clean and orderly—oh, how everything looks better from a sounding or two up—and the air was cold and fresh and smelled like rain. It was like being carried off at the end of a story. Beginnings, endings, they’re kind of the same thing, aren’t they? I’d barely eaten my first fried fish in the Serpentine when he was called away on a commission. I ended up making myself useful as long as I was there, and the next summer I oathed in with a group just as you did. He hired tutors for me, improved me in my Montangyan, gave me lessons in history and geography and all that.
“When it seemed the time was right, when I was fully a woman and able to marry without anyone’s permission but my own, I did confess my love to him. In the greatest privacy, to save him embarrassment. If only I’d known how much shame it would cost me! I’m embarrassed to think of what I was wearing and how I acted. Silly. And you know, I think now that if he’d taken it, I’d have quit loving him. Gods, I belong with the madwomen in a locked lodge. He refused, rightly and properly and heartbreakingly. ‘You can be so much more, Galia,’ he told me, just like on that doorstep in Sammerdam. The first time he said that to me I glowed. It stung this time.
“Yet he still looks out for me. Won’t touch me unless it’s through flying gauntlets and then just on the arm or the leg as he checks my saddling. It’s torture for me to see him, but torture I don’t want to stop. Him making me a wingman was just another turn of the rack. And now he’s gone and the rack’s turned again. I think I may snap. So there we are. I love him, impossible though it is. So now you know the heart of the Serpentine’s leading young dragoneerix.”