The big wingmen stood aside to reveal a litter, perhaps some noble’s relic from before the Republic. It had been retrofitted with a toileting stool, the sort of thing that would be set up over a sanitary ditch on a campaign. Some comic artisan had found humor in fitting out the litter with its curved golden armrests and a small, but plush, blue velvet backrest for such prosaic use.
“Your noble chariot, lady,” said another wingman, not one of the trio who carried her, as a few of the apprentices hooted. She also knew this one’s name, Rapoto Vor Claymass. He wore a tailored Guard’s uniform and a pair of boots that would be the envy of half the dress uniforms in the Serpentine and was good-looking even dripping wet, as though the distinguished Name and enormous family estates and securities weren’t enticement enough. One might criticize the ill-conceived mustache, a broad smear across his upper lip that turned down into two fanglike triangles at either side of his mouth in the fashion popular with the wingmen of his draft, as he didn’t quite yet have the robust facial hair to carry it off properly, but the rest of him was turned out to an artist’s ideal of a dashing young dragonrider.
He and Ileth had a history. The minor, ridiculous scandal around their kiss and a few fumbling intimacies in a stable stall resulted in her being booted from her lodgings with the other respectable Serpentine Academy girls and sent off to the dancers.
Someone in the crowd suggested that Ileth ride him across the bridge, and a back-and-forth of suggestions for positioning rippled through the group.
The ribald jests died down as she stood there, silent, her hair a wet tangle and her soggy charity-case clothes flattering only the Republic’s ideal of thrift.
The chair looked filthy. She wondered how exactly it was used between tailers. Also, a lot of the mob about her carried bundles and little baskets. She wouldn’t bet her only pair of boots that the bundles and baskets were full of flowers and trunk-sachets. It seemed likely that she was to be pelted by old bread husks, fish tails, apple cores, and walnut shells while aloft in the chair.
“As a young lady, you will be carried in all state and dignity back to the Beehive,” Vor Claymass continued. “Symbolism suffers, as you live there already, but it’s the tradition.”
“It’s the closest any of us are likely to come to a victory parade up the Archway,” Dun Klaff said. He had the air of a youth who was agreeable as long as he got his way.
“No one’s going to be throwing flowers,” one of Dun Klaff’s companions said. This one had a thick gold ring on his finger with a knuckle-spanning flattened design, big enough to make an impression on a wax seal. Ileth had more pressing issues at the moment, but she felt like she could remember who he was if given a moment of quiet to think.
“What do . . . what do the b-b-boys have to do?” she stuttered. She’d had an obstinate tongue since her first word, she’d been told. Half the elders in the orphans’ lodge where she’d been raised insisted it was from an unfortunate topple off a table as a small child, with the other half claiming it was a judgment for her dead mother’s sins.
“They run a gauntlet,” Signet Ring said. “Everyone tries to get one good whack in as you pass.” Ileth had never seen this Serpentine tradition performed. She’d spent much of her novice year abroad in Galantine lands tending to a captured dragon from the late war.
“Ileth’s being difficult again,” Santeel Dun Troot said. Her observation gave other tongues freedom to wag.
We’re never getting rid of this idiot, are we?
She’s struck. First dragon she ever worked on died that very year, and then there’s that dragon that flew to the Galantines.
The Galantines were preferable to having Fishbreath responsible for you.
Never did fit in.
“I’ll . . . I’ll run-run the gauntlet,” Ileth said. She had exactly one set of outdoor clothes, and she didn’t want to have to scrub all day to get whatever was on that chair out of them. She hitched up her skirt, anticipating the need to run.
Santeel Dun Troot gave a scandalized squeak.
“Ileth, just get in the chair,” a round-faced girl named Quith said. They had been roommates when she first came to the Serpentine. Quith had the best memory for gossip and connections Ileth had ever known. “Please!”
A couple of the boys set to hooting again.
“She wants to run?”
“I say yes. Let’s have sport!”
The three wingmen who’d carried her in the blanket put their heads together and had a quick conference. “All right, anything to get out of the wet,” Dun Klaff finally said. “Vor Rapp, form ranks!”
Vor Rapp—that was it, not that it mattered much to a fresh-minted apprentice. The wingman with the big ring surveyed the double line of apprentices. “Remember, you blighters, back only! Strikes to the front are interference and I’ll have the ears of anyone who strikes her head. No tripping, either!”
“Oh, I’m done,” Santeel said. “This is turning into a comedy. I dislike comedies.” She moved off on the bridge toward the Beehive.
Ileth tested the wet footing on the bridge with her bare feet. Just as well they hadn’t given her time to get into her boots. She could run better barefoot. She gathered up the hemming of her overdress and pulled it through her legs where she could hold it at her waist. It would be awkward, but better than stripping off into her shirt and sheath. Her first year at the Serpentine she’d challenged an aging apprentice who’d tormented her to a duel and fought him in her sheath and had been forever after introduced as This is Ileth, the girl who fought Gorgantern in her sheath, remember?
“All you have to do is make it to the other side of the bridge,” said Vor Claymass. “We’ll keep it fair.”
Ileth could still see the dragon watching from the entrance tunnel. All she had to do was run to it. Maybe the ceremony was symbolic, after all. “I-I-I don’t suppose you were your draft’s tailer.”
“It was a near thing, but no.”
At the last moment Santeel, who was alone in her walkout of the performance, rejoined the throng at the far end of the gauntlet. She narrowed the gap at the far end, where most were already leaning far inward to get a better look at the action at the other end.
“One-two-three and UP!” called Dun Klaff.
Ileth jumped off like a flushed fox, running between the arrayed lines of apprentices. The vast majority were boys and young men, of course; the Serpentine Academy was overwhelmingly male.
The excitement of running brought its own exhilaration. She never got a chance to run just for the fun of it, not since she left childhood behind with the onset of puberty. She was in fair condition for it; the prancing and leaps and turns of being a dragon-dancer kept the muscles and nerves in tune.