“The Republic’s Dragoneers make a certain fetish of willpower in carrying out one’s duty. So keep trying to gain admittance. They might be wondering just how much grit is in you. Admittedly, there’s some uncertainty, as you haven’t made it across the threshold yet or taken your oath. They’re still dragoneers and I only know their habits from dinner-table talk and drawing-room entertainments. I’ve never even conversed with one until today.”
She nodded. At the moment, she didn’t see how Falth’s story would get her anointed by anything but the night’s rain. But she could consider it at leisure. It looked like she had a cold, uncomfortable night ahead of her.
“I sincerely hope you make it in. Not just for the sake of the Name of Dun Troot, Ileth. For you to be sitting here in the wet with a cut-open face, either you have left something much worse behind or you have your eyes fixed on your fate-star. Maybe a little of both, eh? Well, I’ve done for you what I can. Make the most of it.”
With that, he turned and stepped onto the path leading back to the cliff’s edge and the road beyond. She envied him his easy life. Coin in his purse for all the food he might care to eat—just imagine, being able to sit down in an inn or tavern and have the owner’s people bring you as much as you like!—and if the coin ran out, or was stolen, fill your purse at a banking house by scribbling your name down on a draft.
Envy comes easy when you’re hungry and cold. Awful of her. She was becoming quite the collector of sins since she left the Lodge. She thought of an illustration in a copybook they’d been given to work from when she’d first learned her letters; there was an engraving of a hunched-over, evil-looking man with sins written on rolls of paper and stuck, bloodily, into his back with pins the size of knitting needles. A PAINFULL TALLY read the bold-lettered legend.
“Make the most of it,” she repeated. “Get up off the ground when conversing.”
Stuff the Dun Troots and their Name.
Tempted to hurl the addressed letter-envelopes off the cliff and into the sea, she sat back down to fight the useless impulse. Naturally someone with a Name would still be admitted. There was probably some kind of contract between the Serpentine and this Santeel Dun Troot’s family, with plenty of connections to make trouble if a daughter of the Dun Troot family didn’t have her chance to become a novice over something as minor as a delayed journey along the road from Asposis or Sammerdam.
Why such a girl would want to leave the undoubtable comforts of her home and station was more of a mystery. Ileth knew her own reasons the way she knew the shape of her hand but wondered why a Name would attach such importance to their daughter being taken in by the Serpentine. A marriageable daughter with both beauty and money would be more of an asset to the family than someone apprenticed to the dragoneers. At least that was how she thought matters stood with such families. Even in the north, when two famous Names were joined through marriage, there was talk about what each gained from the transaction. Maybe this Santeel was difficult, and the family had decided that a term of service collecting dragon manure or whatever they called it would do her some good. Or maybe Santeel Dun Troot had seen a dragon in a grand review, decided she wanted to sit astride such a commanding creature in a parade down the Archway in Sammerdam, and demanded that her family make it come true for her. Ileth, in a mood to think the worst of the girl, settled on that explanation.
The only dragon Ileth had ever seen up close was the one at the well. But one was enough. She wished, hoped, and planned to be among them since that meeting. Work with them. On a commission of importance, not parading down a street wide enough to be a river while cheering people threw flowers. From that meeting on, a new light shone into her life and she kept her face to it, like a sunflower following the sun. Duty, reputation, responsibility for the awesome power of a dragon—that was the dragoneer ideal she’d hugged in her thoughts in her lumpy, wool-sheeted bed at the Lodge.
She settled back down into her chilly half sleep, warmed by the toasty old imaginings. She let the sound of the wind and the faint echoes from the lake below tranquilize her. The philosophers said that babies in the womb probably heard something like it as they floated in their mother waters, waiting for their entrance into a new world.
The remainder of the night passed with only a messenger arriving, less muddy than she or those of the Dun Troot Name. Judging from his attire, he’d ridden. Strange that they made even messengers negotiate the cliff’s edge. It seemed like an unnecessary risk. Suppose the rider was exhausted; both he and his message could end up at the bottom of the cliff. He, too, was admitted, only to emerge within an hour wiping something that was probably deliciously warming from his lips. He smelled of sweat, both his own and his horse’s, and wet leather. He gave her one quizzical glance but otherwise ignored her.
Blearily, he marked the first hint of dawn. The clouds must have broken up a little overnight and the fog departed to wherever fog goes, for she could make out stars and the outline of white-hatted mountains rising steeply on the other side of the vast lake. Three of those mountains were somewhat larger, the White Sisters, she knew they were called, and their silhouettes huddling together reminded her, oddly, of the three watchmen she’d first talked to at the gate.
With that vague thought, she fell back into a deeper doze until the sun struck out from the serrated skyline. She’d missed her first dawn over the Skylake. The water below her was the blue she’d heard described as deep and gemlike and brilliant, and it proved beautifully true. The waters on the North Coast always looked foamy; they rarely stood still. The Skylake was as different from that as a polished stone is to sand.
The sight gave her some satisfaction. Even if her journey came to naught, she’d seen the waters of the Skylake. How many grandmothers up in the Freesand had done as much as that?
Thanks to the growing light she could see the lakeside town beneath the Serpentine. Most of the buildings were white stucco and tarry timber, and there were little flecks of color about that she assumed were planters and flower boxes. Inland, fields and grazing lands were jealously guarded by a rock wall, with a pair of stout, old-fashioned circular towers protecting the road entrance. The towers were overgrown and sprouted wildflowers at the top like close-cropped hair.
The fishing vessels had already put out. Ileth knew a fishing boat at a glance and watched them with some interest. They looked to be round-bottomed, unlike many of the boats on the Freesand, which had to be built with unweatherly flat bottoms to make it over the many bars and snags of her home bay. Bigger vessels, coasters carrying cargo, were tied up to the wharves. Only a few stragglers and small boats on other business remained near the docks and wharves ringing the town in a lopsided horseshoe shape.
Vyenn, it was called. Formerly Vyenn on the Godspring, and before that something else she couldn’t remember that had to do with salt. What education she had mostly came through tales told by the Captain’s visitors and guests, shipmen or boatmen all. Several had been to Vyenn and she’d done her best to draw them out over the years without seeming too interested, asking about the differences between river trade and coastal sailing.