She’d come to love it, just as the Captain loved his ships. Even if she played only a small part, dancing—sweating would perhaps be more accurate—to keep a dragon diverted and content until it nodded off to sleep.
Feeling a new sense of ownership and responsibility—odd how words on paper had that effect—she went to the Masters’ Hall to meet Traskeer and report in as an apprentice.
The Masters’ Hall is at the “up” end of the Serpentine in a collection of buildings that greet visitors passing through the front gate. The Serpentine’s buildings are a jumble of styles built up over the course of some three hundred years. Or more, depending on which scholar you ask. Parts of it jam up against the wall and run against each other like someone who has put on a great deal of weight but not purchased new clothing that fits. One edge of it meets the great cobblestoned plaza where the Serpentine holds market days (which Ileth never had coin to enjoy), revues, and festivals in good weather. Much of the up end was still a mystery to Ileth; she knew the names of the little features, “Turkey Run” and “Hanging Court” and “Ragged Alley” and “the Slide,” but had only the vaguest of ideas of who lived in which or the Serpentine business that was conducted therein.
The Masters’ Hall is one of the newer buildings; she’d been told that only the Great Hall where dinner was served each night—to those who could get away from their duties in time to dress—with its astonishing cast-iron stoves and the latest in brick ovens was more recent. What had been the Serpentine’s graveyard had been partially relocated to new consecrated ground so a proper hall with proper grounds could be built and matters that had long been neglected—conference rooms, a library, and a map room—could be established.
She heard a distant cry as she approached it and turned to look back toward the down end of the Serpentine where the dragons lived.
In the sky above the lighthouse that stands at the rounded peak of the Beehive, a pair of dragons—whether they had riders was difficult to tell at this distance—swooped and turned around and around each other in a sort of paired sky dance. After watching them for a moment, Ileth judged that they probably had saddles and riders, as the dragons took care not to turn too tightly or invert themselves in their dives. Ileth had just enough aerial experience to appreciate the thrills and fun in the evolutions above.
She stifled a sigh as she turned to the Masters’ Hall.
The “old” graveyard stands next to the Masters’ Hall, where some of the first Dragoneers of the Serpentine lie buried under monuments. She wondered if any of the Masters were bothered by the daily reminder of death crowding about their doorstep as she passed. It sent home Kess’s talk of sacrifice.
She reported her presence to the day-page, who in turn reported her presence to a clerk, who appeared and reminded her that she’d forgotten her sash, and after Ileth issued another apology for not being in uniform, he gestured for her to follow with a warning that Traskeer would rake her for the omission. He took her past the meeting room and map room—Ileth liked maps but it was kept locked and she’d never had a reason to be taken in—and upstairs. Two boys wearing white dragon-scale novice pins with recently bloodied noses glared at each other from opposite ends of a bench outside the Master of Novices’ door. By pure muscle habit she turned toward Caseen’s office before checking herself. She heard the voice of Caseen, the Master of Novices, from the other side of his door. “If you’d like to remain here . . .”
Ileth wished they’d promoted Caseen to Master of Apprentices. She’d always felt comfortable with him, even when he was displeased with her, which was most of the time.
With a few quick steps she caught up to the clerk, who ignored the bloody-nosed boys and took her down the black-and-white diamond-tiled hallway to another door and another bench. She eyed his apprentice sash hungrily and tried to work up the nerve to ask him for the loan of it.
“Master Traskeer is momentarily out,” the clerk said. He jerked his chin in the direction of the privy she knew stood by the wall and departed before she could form her request.
So much for asking him about the sash.
She sat on the bench and looked through the very good glass of the window facing the plaza. An apprentice she only recognized by his shaggy hair was sweeping it with a tiny hand-broom. A punishment, obviously. He had good weather for the duty.
She didn’t have to wait long. A figure appeared from a door at the other end of the hallway. His long trip down the corridor past Master Caseen’s office allowed her a look at him out of the corner of her eye. She didn’t want to do anything as rude as stare as he approached.
Traskeer was an unremarkable-looking man, perhaps a little on the short side—but then in her time in the Serpentine she’d learned that very large dragoneers were the exception—with sparse hair cut into a ring of bristle about his ears and the back of his head. He had a slightly sad face and indoor skin. He wore the traditional simple black plainclothes of a Republic commissioner and a metallic-colored sash that might be called coppery or bronze depending on the light. His sash didn’t have tassels on it like the other Masters, but then he was new to the position; maybe one was still being made for him.
He hadn’t bothered to take his skullcap for his visit to the privy.
She rose to her feet when he came within the distance where if they both extended their arms they could touch.
“You must be Ileth,” he said. He was the sort of man who was hard to read. He didn’t look either pleased or displeased to meet her, just a little fatigued. “I’d heard you were injured in the tailer—ahem—ceremony. Signed into the rolls and officially one of the Academy’s apprentices, I take it?”
She bobbed an acknowledgment.
He invited her inside his office. The layout was very much like Caseen’s: door to his private chamber; a small fireplace—unlit at this time of year; a leather-topped desk with a locking drawer and cubbyholes beneath for books and scrolls and maps. The chairs all looked borrowed from other rooms. A bare candle-holder rested on his desk, unlit. Unlike Caseen’s office, he had a little gable window set into the sloping ceiling admitting some light. The shelves above the hearth and the case for books were both empty and smelled faintly of polishing oil. The only personal items in view were a gaming board with a design of interlocking hexagons in a beehive grid and delicate, elaborately carved pieces, most about the size of her thumb, save for a pair of very large ones on either side representing dragons. The dragons were true works of both craft and art, carefully sculpted so they would fit on their base without tipping. The gaming board was built into a case that probably held the pieces when moved. It aroused her curiosity and she was about to ask about it when he spoke.
He gestured to one of the mismatched chairs and she sat. “No sign of a malevolent turn to the wound, I hope?”
He had a faint accent, like those she’d heard on the Galantine border. But then most everyone in the Vales sounded odd when you came from the opposite side of the Republic, and the Vales were famous for sheltering outcasts and oddities—even criminals, sometimes—from other lands.