The blows, such as they were, were halfhearted and most didn’t even make more than a show of trying to hit her. A few pummeled her with whatever they had in their sacking, and she was right in her guess, it didn’t feel any heavier than stale bread or fish tails.
Dun Klaff and one of his companions padded just behind, playfully urging her on with snaps from the damp blanket that had been over her head. Only the noise of it reached her. Signet Ring ran on the outside of the gauntlet, keeping ahead and watching for misplaced blows or tripping.
No one aimed for her head, though a few mistimed their swings with their bundles and struck her front. A few tried to swat at her buttocks. The near misses and halfhearted strikes only served to urge her on.
Off-balance thanks to the burden of her wrapped overdress, she dodged and bobbed as best as she could in the spirit of the tradition. She’d made the right decision, better this than that filthy litter. And it would be over in a few more seconds . . .
The crowd at the end had closed off the gauntlet in their eagerness to watch. She marked Santeel Dun Troot and decided to fling herself between her and the boy next to her. If Santeel was bowled over that was just too bad.
Something caught her below the knee. She tripped.
The rest was a blur. She managed to right herself somewhat and get off one more stride and plowed into the press, one arm held up as a guard in front of her face. Bodies crashed into and around her with an assortment of grunts, ooofs! and squawks. Elbows and knees battered her from head to calf and she felt her shoulder strike Santeel hard.
Finding herself on the ground tangled up in two boys and Santeel, Ileth rolled to her feet. She stood at the Beehive end of the Long Bridge. She’d done it, made it through, now a full apprentice (albeit the tailer) in the eyes of the Serpentine.
She came up smiling and smoothed her skirt as the others who’d fallen with her sorted themselves out and picked her up.
“Stars, Ileth, you’re bleeding,” Santeel said, alarm widening those doeish eyes in her delicate, doll-like face.
Ileth put a hand to her cheek.
“Just above your eye,” Santeel supplied. “Right eye.”
Ileth’s hand went up and came down bloody. Very bloody.
The scrum broke up quickly. Nobody wanted to be bled on.
“Terlich, it’s those damned bracers of yours,” the other wingman said, running up behind. “Don’t you ever take them off?”
A thick-shouldered apprentice in a uniform that looked like he’d sewn it himself held up his leather-wrapped forearms. Bands of metal closed them, there were attractive lines of stitching, and a green dragon scale had been set in each. The scale had been chosen for its high ridge.
Terlich examined his bracers. “Wasn’t me! Not a drop of blood on it. I was down by her legs.”
“We’d better wake Joai up and get that attended,” said Dun Klaff, who’d been just behind. He still had her blanket that he’d been using to thrash her; she’d have to ask for it back.
Santeel pressed a handkerchief to Ileth’s eyebrow and guided Ileth’s hand to it. Trust a Dun Troot to go to a ragging party on a rainy morning with a clean handkerchief concealed on her person. It still didn’t hurt much; she felt the assorted bashes from the end of the gauntlet and scrape from the fall more.
“Thank you,” Ileth said.
“I’m so sorry,” Santeel said.
Ileth looked about for the broken glass or whatever she’d fallen on, but there was nothing obvious about. None of the women about her had rings or bracelets that might have cut her. Odd.
Ileth tore away from the group and tottered to the far end of the bridge under one of the lamps. A little blood dripped on her worn, patched, and pilled shirt. She’d have to soak it, along with Santeel’s delicate mouth-wiper. The pain arrived, fierce and hot. She cursed.
“Now you can put on your sash, apprentice,” Dun Klaff said, leaning over the rail next to her. He was still cheerful, and she found it oddly likable that her bleeding all over everything hadn’t dampened his spirits.
“Thank you, sir—”
“Call me Vareen, Ileth. I’m so sorry you were hurt.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Santeel is to blame for this. Shouldn’t have happened.”
Ileth looked over at Santeel. The third forelocked wingman, the biggest of the three, was talking to her, and Ileth could see from her face that she wasn’t enjoying his conversation. “What’s Santeel to do with it?”
“She did lean way out and block you at the end there. You would have made it clean elsewise. I could hardly keep up with you, and I won foot-races as a Blacktower boy.”
Was he trying to get her to dislike Santeel? They were fellow dancers, fellow apprentices now, and while they weren’t natural allies, they’d always been shoulder-to-shoulder when one of them was threatened by anything outside their circle. But then he was in the Guards, and there was something of a rivalry between all the cadets in the Guards and the dancers.
“I decided to r-run the g-gauntlet.”
He had the sense to change the subject. “Where is your sash, by the way? Does Santeel have it? We should end this by putting it on you.”
Ileth felt her heart fall and some of her triumph dribbled out onto the stones of the bridge along with the blood from her eyebrow. She’d known since coming the long, hungry way to the Serpentine that apprentices in the Dragoneer Academy—which wasn’t much of an academy, but you did learn about dragons one way or through constant labor—she’d known that apprentices wore a white sash. Most had two, in fact, an everyday one and a more formal one for dress occasions.
“I . . . I don’t-don’t have one . . . yet,” Ileth said.
“Can she borrow mine?” Quith asked. She and Santeel approached, having recomposed themselves from the exertion of the gauntlet.
Vor Rapp pointed at her waist with signet ring finger. “Put it on her.”
“Oh, Ileth,” Santeel said. “I suppose you’ve no money for one.”
“I only have the one, so I need it back,” Quith said. “Please don’t get blood on it.”
Quith’s sash was made of what looked like cotton, doubled and stitched into rugged channels. It wasn’t a quality white, like Santeel’s, more of an ivory. Quith started to show her how to knot it, but Ileth’s fingers knew their business.
Santeel held the handkerchief to the wound while Ileth tightened the sash about her waist.
“I’m supposed to put that on you the first time,” a gangly boy put in. His eyes were wide, staring at Ileth’s bloody brow. “I was the tailer of the draft before yours.”