The Defenders' Apprentice

Chapter 1-2

Even without Anara spreading her wings over the gilded towers, the temple was beautiful. It was as big as the governor’s palace and far outshone the columned shrine that the Cereans were building to their philosopher gods at the far end of the harbor, facing away from their brothel, of course. The dragonlets seemed to shun the temple despite its beauty, as if Anara didn’t trust it any more than Eppie did.

She joined the pack of ragged scrapplings outside the back gate. There were young ones from the near provinces and a few others she’d seen the year before or the year before that, newly returned to the city, trying their luck with the guilds again.

“Hey, Eppie,” one of them called. “What are you still doing here? Not an apprentice yet?”

“Shut up, lapper,” Eppie said. “I bet you’re going home to your mama again this year, too.” She hadn’t, not once, even though it was only two days’ walk to her home village. Sure, she’d been tempted that first winter, but she wanted to stay in Anamat, not get stuck back home, herding goats, with no chance of anything more.

The priestess at the gate let the scrapplings in one at a time, counting them, measuring them. She turned away three of the older ones. Eppie willed herself to look smaller. She wore boys’ clothes, and so far, the priestesses hadn’t seemed to notice that she was a girl underneath. She was starting to wonder how long that could last, but her tunic was shapeless enough to cover her for now. She slipped through the gate with the rest, some two or three dozen of them, and shouldered her way to the front of the crowd.

A red-robed priestess sat beside the old one who tended the oven. She looked sadly at the scrapplings. “It seems to me,” she said to the elder priestess beside her, “that when I was on the streets, there was enough for everyone.”

“Now, now,” the elder said. “You’re not as old as all that. When I was young, the guilds even begged for apprentices, none of this nonsense about fees you had.”

Eppie stared despite herself. Imagine, the guilds begging for apprentices!

“It’s true, my son,” the elder said to Eppie. Then she winked. “But you’re here for the bread, and maybe the ambassadress’s blessing.”

Eppie’s face fell. “Oh. Is that today?”

“Of course it is,” said the younger priestess, who was rather beautiful, if a bit weary-looking. “We seek our novices, but you—” She looked into Eppie’s eyes. “You’re not a boy, are you?”

“Not gonna be a priestess, either,” Eppie said.

“We’ll see about that.” With that, the younger priestess sashayed away, winking back over her shoulder in a way that Eppie didn’t like at all.

§

After early training at the sword hall, Thorat found that he couldn’t fall back asleep, even though he knew that he should rest. It was the morning before Midsummer Eve, and Iola would be blessing the scrapplings. Hoping for one more glimpse of her, he took a walk back down to the temple. Ragged youngsters crowded the street. The land was drying up, and the people were getting poorer, especially the scrapplings.

“Why go now?” the gate priestess was saying to one scrappling. “She is almost here for the blessing. You could find an apprenticeship.”

The scrappling shrugged. “I don’t need her blessing. Anyway, the guilds all say they don’t have room for our kind.”

Thorat wondered how true that was. He had to spend a great deal of time away from Anamat, but it had been hard to place their last apprentice in the swordsmiths’ guild, despite the Defenders’ long clandestine association with them.

There was a stir in the courtyard as the ambassadress emerged. Iola stood on a small stage, veiled in silk and incense. Through it, even from outside the temple, he could still see that she glowed with what they had shared together, the heat of the earth, the glory of the dragons. A gong sounded. Thorat bowed his head and began to pray.

“O great ones, who rule the bounty,” they began together.

Out of the corner of Thorat’s eye, he noticed a small movement. The scrappling had slipped the key away from the priestess on guard and was opening the gate, just wide enough to squeeze through. Thorat turned his attention back to the ceremony. Even the scrapplings who had been left on the street outside paused in their scuffles. They listened, even if they didn’t know the words well enough to speak the prayer themselves.

“For Anara’s wings bring sun and storms,

Her tail sows marvels in its wake,

Across the seas and in the –”

Thorat’s sword hand moved reflexively to stop the fingers reaching for his pocket. He twisted the wrist before he even looked to see who the pickpocket was.

“Ow!” the scrappling said.

It was the same one who had just left the temple against the priestess’s orders.

“Stay,” Thorat commanded. The scrappling tugged, but he had a firm grip on the wrist. The prayer droned on and he mumbled along, tightening his grasp now and then to keep the pickpocket near.

As the prayer drew to a close, the novices surrounding Iola rang a chorus of bells. Thorat looked up into her eyes. Every time he saw her felt like the first time they had met on that mountain path, the first time he had come to save her. His heart yearned to do it again, to save her forever.

The thief slipped out of his grasp. Iola wasn’t supposed to be looking at him, anyway, wasn’t even supposed to know him. Thorat grabbed at the twice-escaping miscreant.

The scrappling would have gotten away, but just then, a dragonlet scurried along a wall, and he – or she – stopped to watch. So did Thorat. The dragonlet’s crossing gave him just enough time to reach the pickpocket and grab an arm. Thorat watched the dragonlet go. A look of confusion crossed the scrappling’s face.

“What are you looking at?” the scrappling demanded.

Thorat studied the face, dirty and thin. The scrappling had short, ragged hair, and was a little too tall to have no whisper of hair on the upper lip, if this were a boy, but too sharp and awkward to be a girl. But then, some girls were sharp and awkward.

“I believe I was looking at the same thing you were,” he said.

“I wasn’t looking at nothing!”

“I think you were,” Thorat said.

“You can’t arrest me,” the scrappling said. “You’re not even the watch. You’re just a palace guard. Governor’s toady.”

Thorat sighed. He hated even looking like the governor’s toady even when it was only for a day or two at Midsummer, and he hadn’t officially been hired. It stopped people from asking questions—stopped most people, anyway. The youngster squirmed.

“No, I can’t arrest you,” he said. “You should be more careful whose pockets you pick, though. I’m just a poor guardsman. Besides, I used to be the best pickpocket in the East Market.”

The scrappling snorted. The gate was open now, and the ones who had gotten their share of festival bread were hurrying out to take cover in their own corners of the city.

The dragonlet reappeared, dancing along the roofline of the building opposite, one of the weavers’ warehouses. It glinted red and gold, dancing on the red-brown tiles of the roof, then disappeared. When Thorat looked down, the scrappling was still following some motion there with her—or his—eyes.

“Is it still there?” he asked.

“What?” the scrappling said. “Let me go!”

For a moment, their eyes met. He knew, they both knew, what they had just seen. “I believe that only a very few of the priestesses would have seen that,” he said quietly.

“I won’t be a priestess,” the scrappling said.

“Can’t be, or won’t?”

“What’s it to you?” she said.

“Nothing much,” Thorat said. “But if you don’t want to be one, you’d better find something else to do, and soon.”

One of the red-robed priestesses was talking to the one at the gate, pointing at the scrappling girl whose wrist was locked in his grip.

“I’ve got to go,” the girl said, pulling away.

“I have work for you,” Thorat said. “Meet me at the top of the first bridge over the east canal at sundown.” A worried look crossed the girl’s face for a moment, quickly replaced by affected nonchalance. She nodded, and he released her. She ran full tilt toward the east canal, her festival bread held tight against her chest.

“I have an aunt who needs help with her housekeeping,” Thorat shouted after her, not that she would believe him.

§

Eppie didn’t even feel like detouring to the east gate to pick pockets. She’d been caught. No one ever caught her. If she was getting that clumsy, maybe she should let the governor’s guardsman turn her over to the watch. She couldn’t believe it. It was common wisdom that you couldn’t pull off every heist, that they’d get you sooner or later and send you back to the provinces or lock you up in jail, but for three years, she’d dodged them all. Three whole years and a few moon-rounds, and she’d dodged them all, until now.

A stupid palace guardsman had caught her. But he wasn’t just any guardsman. He saw dragonlets. He’d even seen her seeing a dragonlet. It made no sense. No one saw dragonlets, and if anyone were going to see them, it would be a priestess, or a soothsayer, or someone like that. Maybe a valley farmer, at festivals. Certainly not the governor’s thug. Worse, he’d wanted to meet her there, on the very roof of her home shelter. It was as if he’d known, as if he could read her mind.

Eppie scaled down the rocks and hid in the shadows to eat. The others had all woken while she was away and had gone off to do their begging or thievery for the day. Even the dragonlet was nowhere to be seen. Dragonlets didn’t like midday; they preferred twilight and rain. Eppie found the water jug in a cranny in the stones and took a swig. It was a bit stale but not too bad. The festival bread more than made up for it. Eppie bit into the soft dough, tasting an apricot, spices, and honey. If only she had some tea, it would be perfect.

As she ate, her heartbeat calmed. The water shimmered dully in the heat, and a few scraps of kitchen garbage drifted down toward the harbor. Under the surface, a fish swam. Above, the road across the bridge was quiet. Flies buzzed. Everything was just as usual, but that man, that stupid guardsman, had seen her in a way that no one else had seen her, and he was coming to get her. She felt that she ought to get away – he’d caught her trying to pickpocket him – but where would she go? She knew well enough that she couldn’t go on the foreigners’ ships, even without Squid telling her so. She wouldn’t go back to Lemirun, that was for sure, and of course the guilds wouldn’t have her. Whatever the guardsman was offering, it had to be better than the silence of the temple, the suffocating silence of it, the absence of the dragonlets.

Now that she was a little calmer, a little safer, now that she was alone, she could think. The man was quick and he could see dragonlets. He was handsome, too, with shining brown hair and clear eyes, crinkled at the corners as if always ready to laugh. He was the kind of man that girls gazed at wistfully, especially girls who weren’t pretending to be boys so they wouldn’t get pulled in to the temples or worse. At least the priestesses had their dignity and the power of the dragons to strengthen them. A man didn’t go to a priestess to feel his own might; he came to honor hers, or at least that was how it was supposed to be. But because men didn’t see dragons, didn’t know what they were coming to honor, they mostly just leered and spilled their seed anyway. No, she did not want to be a priestess. She’d rather fetch water and sweep floors for that guardsman’s aunt, or whatever it was he wanted her for. She could do worse.

§