The lights of the Serpentine gave her some idea of the peninsula’s size. From this outlook she could see the famous lighthouse beacon at a high point of the peninsula, supposedly the brightest light in the Vales. It rested on a dome built on living rock. It was a famous outline; Radiia the printing-house used it as their sigil on their books. Under better conditions, the Serpentine would be starkly beautiful, set high between blue water and white-capped mountains across the lake. She’d once seen a painting of it hung on the wall of a priest’s house on one of the Captain’s rare social calls.
It was two hundred paces or more before she made out a sort of knob growing off the fortress like a tree root sent down the hill. The path headed down to it. She guessed it to be the location of the door.
Ileth shifted the pinching rope of her blanket-bundle and approached the threshold, telling her sore feet to be patient for just a few more steps.
Whoever designed this fortress didn’t care for visitors or much want to impress them. The doorstep was unsheltered and unmarked, lit by a single blue gas-flame. She looked in vain for a bell. The walls seemed placed to channel the mountain lake-wind across the threshold; the cold and wet passed untroubled through her layers of wool and linen and went straight on through to her bones.
The wooden door, painted with a dull red color made duller by rain and dark, felt like a cheat to Ileth. Though wet right to her sheath and tired, she still had enough perspective left to appreciate the irony of a fastness of famous heroes and infamous dragons closed off by planking more fit for a toolshed.
The flickering blue flame, a little brighter than a candle, hissed in an unfriendly manner as it illuminated the threshold. She reached up and warmed her hands by the flame. She’d heard of such innovations, but this was her first experience with a gas-light. The flame muttered at the mouth of a bent iron tube, crude as a share-farmer’s pipe, indifferent to the wind, the weather, and her presence. But her fingers were grateful for its warmth.
It cast just enough light for her to make out the device on the center of the door, a sort of arrowhead design that she recognized as a dragon scale. A large and thick one, in a dull red that matched the door. It was hinged, and she realized it was a door-knocker.
She paused on the threshold to arrange her blanket-roll and dab the blood from her face. It had finally stopped bleeding. She took a deep breath, preparing to knock, but the chill mountain air drew forth a rattling cough. She prayed it was just her lungs cleaning themselves of the damage inflicted by that last, long run to the gate. This was not the time or place for illness.
The watchman had told her to knock. She explored the rugose surface of the dragon scale for a moment, thrilled again in the connection to the great creatures she’d come so far to live among. She lifted it, saw an orb of what was probably lead that matched a socket on the door, and let it drop. It gave a distinct but hardly impressive tap; a man with steel-shod boots would probably make more noise stamping on the step.
“Stranger at the door,” a watchman called from a corner of the fortress wall above. It bulged out in such a way that it had an excellent view of the threshold below. No doubt he’d seen her long before she knocked but waited for her to trigger Serpentine routine.
A light glimmered and grew on the other side of the door. The door didn’t need a peephole. The gaps in the planking were such that they afforded an adequate view of arrivals. She didn’t know fortifications, but the door didn’t look as if it would hold up long to an experienced axeman, never mind a team of attackers with a battering ram.
She heard a strange, dragging step inside.
“State your business,” a raspy voice said from the other side of the door, somewhat muffled.
“My-My name is Ileth,” she said, letting the words out slowly. “I-I w-wish to-to apply to the Academy as a . . . as a dra-dragoneer.”
“Too late, girl, and I’m sorry for you. All the applicants are inside. We shut the gate at sundown.”
Suddenly overcome by emotion, she stuttered out something about having traveled for days alone. It wasn’t persuasive.
The raspy voice cut her off. “Don’t take it hard, we’ll kick a good quarter of them out again in a few days. You’re lucky, you’ll have a jump on them at the Auxiliary house in town. Vyenn has all sorts of drum-beaters looking for apprentices. If I were you, I’d join the Auxiliaries, if you want dragons. They have a few.”
She had excuses to fill a book, but too much pride to be a beggar at a door rattling off a list of misfortunes.
“By the calendar it’s still Mid-Midsummer’s Eve.” Her stammer always grew worse when she was overwrought.
“Have you a letter of introduction? An acceptance?”
The Serpentine had its routines, it seemed. The same catechism as the gate-watch.
“No,” she managed to say, after a brief struggle to get the word out, knowing what the reply would be. “One of your placards. A dragoneer named Annis . . . met me years ago. She encouraged me to—”
“I am sorry. Annis Heem Strath and Agrath fell in the Galantine War. Just before the armistice. Go get under a roof. This is no night to wait on the steps.”
In a way, the news of the death of the dragon and dragoneer was worse than being denied entry. She’d thought of them constantly these seven years, imagining a reunion: I remember you, Ileth, and all grown up into a young woman, Annis would say, smiling, the dragon above cocking its head, birdlike, for a better look. Oh, that girl from the well, hullo there, he’d say, then she’d tell him she’d made a silly little bracelet out of the cording that had come loose from his wing. She felt sick and tightened her stomach muscles again. The old trick to steady herself worked. She felt more than she heard the presence at the other side of the door start to depart. She pounded again, setting the boards a-clatter.
“Could I j-just get out of this wet? I’m very tired. I’ll sleep in a stable. A pen.”
“Go back to town. There’s a poor lodge if you have no money for the inn. If you were my daughter, I wouldn’t want you to try it, but the boatmen’s dormitory is cheap and clean. I’ve heard they give a bed and a dinner for a song well sung.”
“Please,” she said, reaching up and pulling at the gap in the planking so it squeaked and rattled. She’d gone a bit mad.
A sharp rap on her fingers stopped her from trying to pull the door off its hinges. “Don’t try that again or we’ll empty night soil on you. Understand?”
She nodded. The personage on the other side of the door departed.
She turned a circle and blinked away frustrated tears. At least they wouldn’t show on her wet face. She hated to be caught crying. Dragoneers in the songs and poems didn’t cry—unless their dragon died.
Finally, she sat down on the steps, head in hands, failure sitting next to her on one side and misery on the other pressing close, no doubt winking at each other behind her back.
The cold stone leeched heat from her flesh and she realized she should have put down her bundle and sat on it, but she’d sunk to a place below such cares.
She wasn’t sure what she had expected out of a reunion with Annis, Dragoneer of the Serpentine, but the silver dragon and his rider had occupied so much of her thoughts over better than half her life that the loss felt momentarily unbearable. Tears blended with the drizzle on her cheeks. What had she wanted? Certainly not a substitute mother. Her life had been a series of I’m not your mother, dears from everyone from laundrywomen to shepherds’ wives. Annis had just been one more not-mother, more poetic than the rest with her talk about being of the air spirit. All she knew was that she was counting on a reunion, imagining kind words about how much she’d grown or that she took good care of her teeth or a long welcoming hug and a job polishing boots and saddle.