The dragon-wing arch marked the gate. On a night such as this the moist air made the decorative wings slick, and they reflected, in a silhouette of faint traces, the lights from the other side of the wall. The dragon wings just touched wingtips at the top and spread in a fanciful design, shielding those on the wall above the gate. The wings angled out, as though to spread and reach into the world beyond the gate.
Gulping for air and wobbly-legged, she realized she’d arrived. The moment she’d been imagining, preparing for, ever since her wellside encounter with the silver dragon and his dragoneer—resolved into fact: no longer a someday, an if-then, but a now.
Her stomach made a sour growl. She shouldn’t have imagined that waiting bowl of stew in so much potato-filled, meaty detail.
Breath coming easily now, she had no idea what to do, having spent all her mental energy trying to arrive without much considering the arrival itself. The notice she’d seen, and, when she had a chance, stolen, simply said applicants to be dragoneers were to present themselves on Midsummer’s Eve at the Serpentine Academy on the Skylake. What should she do? Announce herself and beg entry? Demand it? Wave the wet, creased, and frayed bit of placard she’d stripped off that notice board?
She stepped under the shelter of those road-spanning wings. She rehearsed her call quietly, under her breath, to warm her tongue. Three more breaths gave her enough wind to shout.
“Hello the—hello the gate!” Blast her stutter. It would betray her just now. It was always worse when she was tired and anxious.
It was northern phrasing. The Serpentine no doubt had formalized military ways to call out to the gate-watch that must exist in such a fortress, but they must expect strangers when they opened to applicants and posted notices.
Only the wind and a racking cough from above answered her. She made out two heads separating from the arch-pillars, wearing narrow fore-and-aft-style caps.
A voice said something that began with stranger, but the wind carried the rest of it away.
One of the figures put a speaking-trumpet to his lips. “The gate’s shut for the night. You missed it.”
“I wish to apply to the . . . to the Academy as a . . . a novice dragoneer.”
“Do you have a letter of introduction or acceptance?”
“I have this,” she said, waving the placard.
“Then I’m sorry for you, girl. As I said, you missed it.”
“I-I-I’m bleeding,” she said. Frustrated tears filled her eyes, but she blinked them back as she wiped blood onto her palm and held it up for the gate-watch to see.
“How old are you, girl?”
“Fourteen years. Fourteen years and one quarter,” she said, the answer coming so automatically she hardly stuttered. The night felt cold for a Midsummer’s Eve, though she was a week’s hard travel south of the Freesand.
“You aren’t. You look younger than that.”
Ileth had no answer for that. She was small for her age, and for all that puberty savaged her innards, her complexion was still that of a child. “My-My birth’s . . . recorded.”
“You are alone?”
“Yes. O-Only—Only the . . . the applicant, your notice says.” She extracted the folded placard and read from it: “N-N-No guardians, s-servants, or tutors ad-admitted.” She hoped she said that as though she’d left anything like that behind her at the Captain’s Lodge.
“Is there anyone who traveled with you to look after you? In town perhaps?” a different voice asked.
“No. Just me.”
The figures bent to each other in conference, mirroring the wing-arch’s peak above for a moment as their caps touched. A third crossed over to them from the other side of the gate.
The speaking-trumpet passed to the new silhouette. “I have the duty,” a reedy voice said, amplified through the trumpet. “The gate doesn’t open at night. Unless”—the voice turned hopeful—“unless you have the password.”
Ileth shook her head. The reedy voice seemed far, far away as it finished, her body weightless. If her head broke free of her body and floated off, she wouldn’t have been much surprised. She had never fainted in her life but once, and she clenched her torso muscles from neck to groin to halt her blood. It occurred to her that such was the dark, they might not be able to see her. “No,” she said, stepping forward in case the light wasn’t sufficient.
So, so far, and with nothing left to get anywhere else. She was half-starved even now, standing at the locked gate. And she couldn’t beg a refuge, not at a fortress.
“Is a dr-dragoneer named . . . named Annis here? She rides a s-silver dragon named Agrath. She told me to ask for her.”
“No. Are you a relation, by chance?” the voice called back.
Oh, if only she had been. Maybe the Captain’s Lodge would have been different. “No.”
They didn’t reply to that.
“I am resolved to be a dragoneer,” she said, taking a few more steps forward. There was still her age and her sex, unprotected in the night, and the Republic’s Dragoneers had their reputation for gallantry. Maybe if they could see the mud, the blood, and her lack of any baggage beyond a blanket-roll, they’d bend the rules. “It is still Midsummer’s Eve. Could you ask . . . your superiors to admit me?”
The speaking-trumpet passed yet again.
“Try the side door, girl. There’s a path to your right. It begins at the base of the wall just where the road comes under the gate. Watch your step, it traces a cliff and the rocks are wet. Have you ever crossed a cliff?”
Before she could reply, the speaking-trumpet passed again.
“You should just go back to town,” the reedy voice said. “Have someone attend that cut. Looks like it needs sewing up.”
“Could you ask whoever is in charge of such things to give me the password? Then I could give it to you and you could open the g-gate.”
The three heads froze in silence for a moment. She thought she caught the word Midsummer as they talked.
“Go back to town,” the reedy voice with the speaking-trumpet said.
“Knock on the side door,” the older voice boomed. “Keep knocking until they let you in.”
“Don’t be stupid,” the first man who’d spoken to her called, though which of the other two options presented was stupid it didn’t say.
The men above could talk as if she had options, but Ileth had made her choice when she deserted (as it had no doubt been called) the Captain’s Lodge. Well, if she was going to fool about with a cliff on a dark, wet night, she would have to prepare.