She stammered that the wound was healthy and closed.
He leaned in close enough to get a good look and she heard him sniff the wound, at least trying to be subtle about it.
Apparently satisfied with her affirmation that the wound was of no further concern, he introduced himself as the new Master of Apprentices. He didn’t have any distinctions to his name, at least that he chose to reveal to her. She liked that about him. Some men bludgeoned you with their titles. “I would offer you a card of introduction, but the titling still claims my late role at the Assembly. I await correct ones.”
“I’m not from the sort of house where people traded cards,” Ileth said. Some of the novices were card collectors; she remembered them passing about cards of young men they favored during her first weeks as a novice. She might even have been jealous. Now she just appreciated the peek into a different world of social rituals. In the Lodge the Captain’s roustabouts didn’t hand out cards, they called you by your most prominent physical feature and slapped you on the buttocks when you brought them drink or a light for their tobacco.
“That injury troubles me, now that I see how extensive it is. Quith thinks someone tried to blind you.”
“Quith likes to . . . likes to . . .” How could she put it? Her mind flipped through the books of letters she’d studied. “She likes to add drama to incident.”
“Still, it’s odd. That’s no fingernail or scrape against a cobblestone. You’ve no idea what made the cut?”
She shrugged.
“I don’t consider that gesture appropriate for this conversation. Answer me.”
Ileth stammered out an apology and something about it all happening very quickly and there being a tangle.
Happily, he didn’t comment on her stutter. Just for that she was inclined to like him. “If you have an enemy who’d draw your blood, it’s my duty to know about it,” Traskeer said. The word duty landed hard. Dragoneers took, and used, the word seriously. She repeated her denial. “It’s in the nature of people to form factions. Especially young people. I’ll have no groups at enmity with each other in the Serpentine. People who feel themselves outcasts are preyed upon by our enemies, as that bad business with the eggs illustrated. I spent a lot of time with my predecessor talking about where we went so wrong with the Duskirk boy.”
Ileth had never felt part of any faction, or excluded from others, but then she wasn’t naturally social and the dancers were isolated from the daily routines of the up end.
“I hope the next six years will be happier and less eventful than your prolonged novitiate and late entry into apprenticeship. You’ll stay with the dancers, I expect.”
He expected wrong, but she didn’t want to directly contradict him. “I—I’m here to be a dragoneer, sir.”
“Of course you are. There are many ways to serve as a dragoneer.”
“I . . . I aspire to wear a sword and pauldron, sir.”
Traskeer’s eyebrows went up. He excused himself for a moment and went to his chamber. He returned in a moment with a sort of case made of wax-stiffened canvas or thick paper, she couldn’t tell, held closed by a string and a button sewn to the case. He extracted what looked like letters and a few notes.
“Forgive me for not having this ready. This is your index file,” he said, scanning it. “Anything of significance relating to the training of the members of our Academy goes in here. Each apprentice has one. Some here complain about all the paperwork but I find it useful; I am one who considers a quick note in ink superior to the most detailed memory.”
He thumbed through the pages within, extracting one. “Charge Ottavia in her letter recommending your apprenticeship says you have the makings of a great dragon-dancer.”
Having assured himself that his memory on the matter was sound, he relaxed. “I’m afraid I have a great deal of catching up to do. I’ve been posted the past four years at the Assembly. I was already there by the time your draft was sworn in. I don’t know half the apprentices here.” His voice broke a little as he spoke. Ileth suspected he was exhausted or sick but hiding his weakness. He did seem pale for a dragoneer in summer, at this altitude.
“I . . . I’ll be happy to help the dancers as much as I can. I had a little flight train . . . flight training, and s-still s-served as a dan-dancer.”
“Dragon dancing is of keen interest at the moment in Sammerdam, Zland, and so on. Between Ottavia’s exhibitions and those paintings by Heem Tyr, experienced dragon-dancers can nest themselves up nicely. You could make a good living as one, or teaching it. Ideally, you would remain here as long as you’re fit to perform. You wouldn’t grow rich, but the life here is rewarding in its own way, as I hope you’ve come to believe.”
She had, but she still wanted to fly. She had a taste for it now.
“My intent is to b—is to be paired with a dragon.”
The corner of his mouth turned down.
“The math doesn’t favor you. You must have some math to get in here, so I’ll set the numbers out ‘even, clear, and accurate’ as the sovereigns in the counting houses put it. With your signature this morning, the Academy has six hundred seventeen apprentices here and carrying out their duties at other posts. Four are away for extended sick leave and their return is questionable; two seem likely to die. Eighteen more have been called home by family request and have their apprenticeships formally suspended. Few of those are likely to return either. So that is five hundred ninety-five apprentices competing for the very few wingman slots that vacate with our thirty active dragons. Typically, each dragon has a dragoneer and one to three wingmen, depending on the inclination of our dragoneers. Some of our dragoneers refuse the bother of training wingmen, like that Borderlander fellow who wrote you perhaps the shortest letter of recommendation in Serpentine Academy history. In peacetime, a wingman slot opens up at most every three months or so, so in your six years as an apprentice, if we remain at peace, that’s twenty-four chances of promotion and you, a girl, and even worse, a girl of no Name, and still worse yet, a girl of no Name without patronage or political influence, are competing against nearly six hundred others. Many of our apprentices come from influential families with representation in our government, who can be made grateful and interested in the Serpentine’s place in the Assembly’s priorities by having their young men promoted. I won’t bore you with the difficulty we have at the Assembly in obtaining the vast sums required to maintain the dragons, though without the Thirty our Republic would stand all the chance against the Alliance of Kings of a fat worm dropped into a carp pond. Your chances of success are so small they’re not much worth considering, you see?”
Ileth fought to remain still. Her body trembled, nevertheless. She’d thought this interview would be her first step toward a dragon saddle.