“Like the view?” the dragoneer said. “I do too.”
“Would you like to go higher?” the dragon asked. For someone who didn’t like being a pony, he had a kind voice.
“Yes, p-please please please!”
The dragon rose up on his hind legs. Ileth’s stomach lurched and she held on to the saddle with white fingers. But she closed her eyes for only an instant. The dragon gently flapped his wings.
Ileth had no words for how she felt; she just hung on and looked all around until the dragon settled on all fours again.
“Awww,” she said.
“How old are you?” the dragoneer asked.
“Seven.”
“Well, you’re halfway there. Can you read and write?”
She nodded. Well, she could write her name and add the date if someone told her what the date was.
“Math? How are you at figuring?”
“Add and subtract,” Ileth said. “Ten percent of a hundred is ten,” she added, although she still had no idea what percent meant, other than something grown-ups complained about when talking taxes and excises, whatever those were.
“Excellent. Keep at it. When you turn your apprentice age, in seven or eight more years, you come see me. The Serpentine, on the Skylake. Ask for me. My name is Annis.”
Apprentice age was something for boys, but she made an effort to burn it into her mind like engraving on silver.
The dragoneer asked her to climb down herself. For some reason, she made her climb down on the opposite side, but Ileth didn’t ask questions, she just did as told. A weapon hung there. It was a device that she knew was a crossbow. The boys often spoke of them, but she’d never seen one like this. It had extra levers and bracing. She knew, in a vague sort of way, that they were too expensive for any of the hunters or fishermen in the town to have. She scooted under the dragon’s neck as Annis took her place atop Agrath.
“Must be off. It was lovely meeting you, Ileth. I hope we meet again. Remember, apprentice age! Watch your eyes, dear, his wings throw up a lot of dirt. Whenever you’re ready, old scout.”
The dragon rattled out his wings and flapped. How the pebbles did fly! Ileth crouched out of the way but risked a gritty eye to watch him take off. The dragon gathered himself and jumped like a cat. Unlike a cat, he stayed in the air. He went off over the angled, snow-shedding rooftops, wings cracking like whips, heading for the Cloven Cliff. She’d seen birds above sailing with wings unmoving on the air currents. The eagles were circling there now, as a matter of fact, with the sun warming the air.
Sure enough, the dragon, aided by the air at the cliff, rose in a series of corkscrew turns. The eagles scattered. The dragon and rider flew off into the clouds over the snowy mountains to the west. Ileth ran over to the pieces of broken wing thread the dragoneer had yanked out of the beast’s wing. She carefully wound two of the longest ones she could find around her elbow, then pulled her sleeve down so they were hidden. She could braid them together and make a bracelet.
She wondered how tall she would be in seven more years, and if she could get her foot into a stirrup the way Annis had. She’d beg for an extra glass of milk tonight.
Seven years. An unimaginable distance in time. But maybe she could find out where the Serpentine on the Skylake was. The Captain had many maps in that chest with the thin drawers. If she was careful and quiet, she could look at them with no one knowing.
Ileth picked up the bucket. The walk back up to the Captain’s Lodge didn’t seem such a distance, now. And carrying water would make her stronger, strong enough to cling to a dragon in the wind. Her imagination caught fire at the thought.
She’d get a hiding for being poky, sure as sunset, but meeting Agrath and Annis was worth a hiding. Ten hidings, even.
PART ONE
The Red Door
Fate takes wing when character meets chance.
—SAYINGS OF THE SERPENTINE
1
Night, wind, and fog above, puddled road and wet meadow beneath. Trotting between them and well coated with elements of both, a youth, still more girl than woman, puffed as she ran. A riding cloak, heavy with rain, dragged at her. Adding to the mess was blood from a still-seeping cut on her chin.
A fierceness on her gashed, freckled face under a sloppy sailor’s hat suggested she ran as the pursuer, rather than the pursued.
Ileth no longer felt the blood running from the cut, or the pain in the assortment of scrapes and bumps that had accumulated on the run since she realized that those louts at the brewery had sent her up the wrong road, apparently as a joke. If a little blood on her face and clothes was the only price she’d pay to reach her destination in time, she’d gladly let the wound drip.
The fortress she ran toward, a great pile of stone and slate roofs sprawled across a rugged peninsula like a sleepy cat on a branch, comforted her with its lights. The lights gave her hope ever since she first distinguished the impossibly bright beacon of the high lighthouse shining through the drizzle. She could have become lost in this dark, after all, an easy thing in the fogs of the Winderwind Valley girding the Skylake. The riding cloak was wet and heavy and dragged on her like guilt, but if she dropped it she’d never find it again in the dark. She’d slept in it these last two nights and might need it for a third if they denied her entrance. She had no idea of the hour, for the faint bells and chimes of the town beneath the fortress had been ringing in celebration of the Midsummer since sundown. Bonfires burned on the surrounding hillsides.
She splashed through a deep puddle and tripped on a treacherous submerged rock. Her forearm took the worst of the fall this time. She climbed back to her feet; took three deep, restoring breaths; and ran on. The way here was more puddle than road, thanks to the rain that had dogged the last leg of her pauper’s journey to the Serpentine gate, the advertised entry point for admittance of would-be dragoneers desiring a berth at the Academy.
The oilcloth sailor’s hat had kept her hair dry, but she was wet from nose down, muddy from her boots up, and tired every which way. Ileth allowed herself to imagine a hearthside chair and maybe even hot soup waiting for her within the Serpentine. Fourteen years of life in the Captain’s Lodge had taught her over and over again not to waste energy on hope, but sometimes you needed to draw from the well of imagination to keep sore feet in motion.
She willed her body to run on. It wasn’t so much of a run as a lurching series of forestalled collapses, but it got her to the approach.
The road rose, widened, and improved all at once. She made out something ahead through the rain, a wall and a decorative dragon-wing arch framed against the faint light from within the Serpentine proper and its jumble of windows, rooftops, and towers on the other side of the thick walls.