Within the Sanctuary of Wings, Page 3

  By the time I made it back into the main room, Suhail’s lecture had, as expected, devolved into a public debate. This went on until the organizer ejected us from the premises; then it continued for a time in the street outside, with several opinionated fellows cornering my husband to argue some more. “Thank you,” Suhail said fervently, after I rescued him by worming my way to the center of the crowd and asserting my superior claim to my husband’s person. “I’m fairly certain they would not of their own accord have stopped before dawn tomorrow.”

  “I hope you are not too tired,” I said. “I suspect that we have an interesting evening ahead of us.”

  He listened with growing surprise as I told him about Thu Phim-lat. When I was done, Suhail said, “He is not the first man to claim he has evidence of some undiscovered breed, Draconean or otherwise.”

  “Oh, I am skeptical,” I assured him. “But also curious. If this is some Yelangese plot against me, then whoever crafted it has done their work well. I cannot let Mr. Thu go without at least inquiring further.”

  The delay also gave me time to contact Tom Wilker, so that there were three of us waiting when my visitor came calling a few hours later. Tom spent the time between his own arrival and Mr. Thu’s pestering me with questions. “What did he mean by ‘the body of a dragon’? A skeleton, or a recent carcass? Which mountains? What makes it so different from current breeds?”

  “I spent all of five minutes speaking with the man, and half of that dealing with excessively zealous protectors,” I said with some asperity. “Wait until he gets here; then you may question him to your heart’s content.”

  Judging by Mr. Thu’s wary posture when he arrived, he expected precisely the kind of interrogation he was going to get. I did my best to put him at ease with introductions and an offer of refreshment; he turned down both tea and brandy, and perched on the edge of his chair as if afraid it would sprout manacles around his wrists if he relaxed. I said, “My husband speaks some Yelangese, though not fluently. My hope is that between that and your own knowledge of Scirling, we will be able to piece together a proper explanation. Now. Tell us what you know.”

  It has been my habit in these memoirs to smooth over my own awkard conversations in other tongues, for the sake of not taxing my readers’ patience; I will do the same for Mr. Thu here, bypassing the many halting exchanges in Yelangese which punctuated his Scirling comments, and his sporadic failures of grammar or vocabulary. (Among other things, there are multiple Yelangese languages, and the one Suhail spoke was not Mr. Thu’s mother tongue. But they were both fluent enough in it that we got by, albeit with difficulty.)

  “I found the body of a dragon,” he said. “Or rather, part of one. It was incomplete, but there was enough for me to be certain that I did not recognize its breed.”

  “Are you a natural historian, that you are very familiar with different kinds of dragons?”

  Mr. Thu shook his head. “No, Lady Trent. But I have been in the mountains before; I know the dragons that are found there. This was not of any kind I know.”

  Tom frowned. When questioning someone, it is often effective to have one interrogator behave in a skeptical fashion, while the other is more credulous; but I fear both Tom and I took on the role of skeptic at the start of that evening. He said, “It might not be a mountain breed.”

  “Perhaps. But then what was it doing there?”

  “Where is ‘there’?” I asked. “Which mountains?”

  “The Mrtyahaima.”

  His answer startled me into silence. The Mrtyahaima Mountains are, of course, one of the great geological features of the Dajin continent. Comprising a number of interlocking ranges, they dwarf what we call “mountains” in many other parts of the world. If the measurements of surveyors are accurate, the fifteen tallest peaks in existence are all found in that region, each one more than eight thousand meters high.

  Long famous to the inhabitants of Dajin, they had become more well known in Anthiope since the advent of mountaineering as an athletic activity. Our early climbers were content to test themselves against the lesser peaks of the Vystrani Mountains or the Netsjas in Bulskevo, but as more and more of those were conquered, the ambitious turned their attentions to Dajin and the Mrtyahaima. No one even knew whether it was possible to climb an eight-thousand-meter peak: could human beings survive at such altitude? Nowadays we believe they can, but no one has yet succeeded in reaching a summit that high.

  The Mrtyahaima were of interest to us for other reasons as well. The various ranges grouped under that name, running as they do from near the northern coast well into the interior, almost bisect the continent. To the east lies Vidwatha; to the west, Yelang. And Scirland, of course, had various colonial possessions in Vidwatha—which meant the two nations had spent years glaring at one another across the nearly impassable barrier of the mountains.

  I racked my memory for what I knew of Mrtyahaiman draconic breeds. It was disappointingly little: the region was so remote, what reports we had largely came from non-scholarly sources. They described everything from small, cat-like dragons supposedly kept as pets by the peoples of the high valleys to demonic beasts composed entirely of ice. “Describe to me what you found. It was a fresh kill?”

  Mr. Thu shook his head. “No. I don’t know how long it had been dead, but it must have been at least a year. Or longer.”

  Could bones preserve naturally under the geologic conditions of that range? I had no idea. “With only a skeleton to study, how can you be sure it was a strange breed?”

  “It was not a skeleton,” Mr. Thu said. “No bones at all. Meat and hide.”

  We ground to a halt for a terribly long time on this point, for Tom and I were sure that something must be going awry in the translation. But Suhail, questioning Mr. Thu in Yelangese, suddenly uttered an oath. In Scirling, he said, “Like a bog body!”

  “What?” I asked, even more confused than before.

  He hastened to explain. In Uaine and some parts of Heuvaar, ancient societies made a practice of sacrificing people by strangling them and sinking their bodies into peat bogs. The chemical composition of the water naturally pickles the flesh, preserving the soft tissues that would ordinarily decay—but it dissolves the bones, leaching away the calcium until what remains is, in Suhail’s words, “a slimy, boneless sack.”

  A similar thing had happened to the specimen Thu Phim-lat found, but for entirely different reasons. The bones of the dead creature had long since disintegrated, as is common among draconic species. But the carcass, high in the Mrtyahaima peaks, had frozen after death, which kept the flesh from rotting as it ordinarily would. “They’ve found mammoths in the permafrost of northern Siaure,” Tom pointed out. “This sounds much the same.”

  “Half mammoth, half bog body,” I murmured. The prospect was enchanting. Paleontologists, scientists who study extinct organisms, are accustomed to working from nothing more than skeletons. In my field of research, where we are rarely so lucky as to have skeletons to study, the evolution of draconic species is a near-total mystery. We had some theories, but most of them had fallen to pieces with the discovery of developmental lability. Facts were very thin on the ground, and preserved tissue was nothing short of a miracle.

  But when I asked Mr. Thu where the specimen was now, he shook his head sadly. “I do not have it any longer. I think it froze above the snow line, and was carried by an avalanche down to a warmer elevation. By the time I found it, much of it had decayed, or been eaten by scavengers.”

  “Much of it,” I said. “Surely there must still have been something, though, or you would not be here, assuring me it hailed from an unknown species.”

  “Yes. The head, the neck; a little material below that, badly torn and malformed. Scraps detached from the remainder of the body.” He spread his hands helplessly. “I brought what there was with me to our camp, but we had nothing with which to preserve it. I made sketches, though.”

  “Your camp,” Tom said, before I could spring on that wo
rd “sketches.” He was frowning and tapping one fingertip against his knee. “How many of you were there? Where precisely were you? And what, pray tell, were you doing there?”

  His tone was colder than mine, and with good reason. While thoughts of dragons had carried me away, Tom had remained with his feet firmly grounded in current reality. Yelang’s easternmost territory was Khavtlai, the high plain to the west of the Mrtyahaima. They did not lay claim to any land in the mountains themselves—not yet. So what was a Yelangese party doing there?

  Mr. Thu hesitated. I exchanged a glance with Suhail, and saw that he, too, was troubled. Then Mr. Thu nodded, as if concluding an internal argument. He said, “We were a party of mountaineers, exploring the high ranges.”

  “Looking for a way through,” Tom said.

  My blood chilled. A way through the Mrtyahaima … such things existed already, of course. The mountains are not wholly impassable; only mostly so. The nations of the high ranges, Tser-nga and Khavtlai and Lepthang and Drenj, had conducted trade with one another for centuries. But the major passes are not well known to outsiders, and are closely guarded besides; any attempt to bring an army through them would meet with stiff resistance. Yelang was looking for other routes, ways to slip a force across and gain a foothold on the eastern side, from which to control the whole region.

  It was almost precisely the same tactic the Ikwunde had attempted in Eriga, approaching Bayembe from its theoretically unassailable southern border with Mouleen.

  Controlling my voice took effort. “The only thing that persuades me not to throw you out right now is my perplexity. Why on earth should you admit that you are a scout for the Yelangese army?”

  “Because sooner or later someone would discover it, and then I would look dishonest for not admitting the truth.” Mr. Thu sighed. “And also because I am not a scout for the army. I was one. But no longer.”

  “Why not?”

  “They discovered I was Khiam Siu,” he said.

  My interest might lie primarily with matters scientific, but even I could not escape recognition of that name. Some fifteen years previously, Yelang had begun to suffer internal difficulties, in the form of a revolutionary movement that wished to overthrow the current Taisên Dynasty (which had ruled for nearly three hundred years) and replace the emperor with a new claimant. This movement called itself Khiam, or Renewal, and the Siu were its adherents.

  As Mr. Thu explained to us, he had not been a member of the army per se. He was a mountaineer, hired to work with surveyors so that Yelang might have more accurate maps of the mountains to their east. But it seemed he had made copies of those maps and passed them along to his Khiam Siu brethren, whose leaders had been driven out of Yelang after a tremendous defeat at Diéziò. Someone above him in the imperial hierarchy had discovered this fact, and Mr. Thu barely escaped with his life.

  He delivered this tale in the simple, matter-of-fact tone one might use to relate events read from a news-sheet. To many people this might have seemed like evidence of falsity, but for me, it made the entire affair ring true. I knew that tone well, for I have used it myself when I am deeply upset by a thing, and must detach myself from it so as not to surrender my dignity before strangers. When he finished by saying, “So you see, I am an exile,” I felt a pang of sympathy.

  “I am very sorry to hear that,” I told him, and was quite sincere.

  An awkward silence fell, until Tom took it upon himself to break it. “But why come here?”

  “Because of Lady Trent,” Mr. Thu said, with a little bow toward me. “I wish her help. In exchange, I offer what I know.”

  “What manner of help?” I asked warily.

  He straightened his back, hands placed precisely atop his knees. Now we had come to the heart of it, for which all the rest had been prelude. “Your support. We—the Khiam Siu—have approached your government, seeking an alliance against the Taisên. But many look at us and see only Yelangese, and say we can never be allies. You can speak against them. You can help us gain our alliance.”

  I would have a great deal of difficulty speaking if I did not first retrieve my jaw from the floor. The proposed alliance with the Khiam Siu was a matter of hot debate. The magazines and newspapers generally fell into two camps: those who, as Mr. Thu said, saw only Yelangese, and trusted them no further than the door; and those who understood the Khiam Siu to be the enemies of the Taisên, but saw no reason we should not stand back and let the two chew on one another to their hearts’ content. In less public corners the issue was acknowledged as more complex—but relatively few with the power to do anything were inclined to show favour to the Khiam Siu. Mr. Thu was quite right in thinking they needed support.

  Where I parted company with his reasoning was the point at which he thought my support would get him anywhere. I might have engaged with politics more often than I intended—for we cannot pretend the education of girls and the forging of international bonds for the well-being of dragons are apolitical acts—but that did not make me anything like a force to be reckoned with on the diplomatic front.

  Tom had resumed the role of skeptic, while I attempted to find my tongue. “What assurance do we have that this information of yours is any good? You could feed us a load of rubbish, and we would never know until after Lady Trent staked her reputation on you and your allies.”

  “It is not … rubbish,” Mr. Thu said, employing the new word with quiet dignity. “And I have faith that you and Lady Trent would see through it if it were.”

  I had my own question for Mr. Thu, which was as much a test as it was a genuine query. Looking him directly in the eye, I asked, “What makes you think I will trust you? My history with your countrymen has not been good.”

  He nodded, unsurprised. “You do not like Yelangese. I understand this. But they say you care more about dragons than things such as that. I am hoping this is true.”

  And, of course, it was.

  THREE

  Political suspicions—The deeds of Justin Broadmay—Tea with Lady Astonby—Mr. Thu’s evidence—A second specimen

  We met with predictable disbelief when we presented our situation to members of the Synedrion.

  My brother Paul laughed in my face. I approached him first, for while we were not close, we were at least on cordial terms (my elevation to the peerage having done a good deal to mend my contentious relations with the bulk of my family.) As he still held a seat in the Open House of the Synedrion, I thought I stood a better chance with him than with someone I knew only from public functions. “It’s a trap, Isabella,” he said over dinner at my house. “I thought you clever enough to see that on your own.”

  “A trap to what end?” I asked. My impatience, I fear, was not as well concealed as I might have wished. “To lure me off into the Mrtyahaima Mountains so I may be killed? Dear heaven—if someone wants me dead, there are far less convoluted ways to arrange it.”

  “And what if they want to capture you instead?”

  “Yes,” I said dryly. “It is so much easier to do that by hunting me down in the icy wilderness of the world’s highest peaks than by, say, knocking me over the head on my way to visit a friend. Besides, he is Khiam Siu, not a follower of the Taisên. They want our assistance; foul play would hardly aid them in that goal.” (I forbore to mention that certain members of the Synedrion might applaud them for doing me in.)

  Paul put his fork down with an impatient clack. “What other reason could these Yelangese have for approaching you? If they believe this information is so valuable—a point which I am not at all prepared to concede—then why not have their envoy formally present that offer to the Synedrion?”

  Suhail laughed, as much to defuse the tension as from amusement. “Because they know our dear Lady Trent well enough to understand what good bait this is.” When I gave him an exasperated look, he said, “My heart, you know it is true.”

  “That it is good bait, yes.” I could hardly pretend otherwise, when it had already produced such a marked effect. “But
what benefit do they gain from spearing me on their hook?”

  “Your vote, for one.”

  We were then in that odd period between the passage of the Female Peers Act and the General Representation Act. The former gave me the right to vote in the Closed House of the Synedrion, as befitted my rank as a baroness who held the title in her own right; prior to the passage of that bill, I would have required a male family member to occupy my seat and vote in my stead. (Ordinarily this would have been my husband, but since another law prohibits foreign-born individuals from holding seats in either house of the Synedrion, I would have had to look farther afield.) The latter, of course, extended the right of suffrage to all women—but at the moment, I had the odd privilege of voting on Synedrion bills, but not in the elections which filled the Open House of that body.

  Still my vote did not count for much. “If it comes down to so close a division that a single vote makes the difference, they are depending on a very slender reed.”

  “It would be one vote more than they had before,” Suhail said. “And I would not undervalue yourself. If you speak in favour of this, it will have an effect.”

  I gave him a dry look. “An effect, yes. But a positive one? That remains to be seen.”

  My undertaking thus did not begin well, nor did it improve much in the following days. It seemed that everyone had a theory for what this supposed conspiracy might hope to accomplish. “He’ll feed us false intelligence,” Lord Rossmere said when I met with him a few days later. My readers may recall him as the brigadier who sent Tom and myself to Akhia—and as such, a man who knew how well the prospect of dragons would motivate me to action. “He’ll say things about the mountains to lead our own men astray, so that we won’t find a way through to the western side.”

  “We’re in the mountains, too?” I said, startled.

  “Of course we are. We’ve had surveyors there for the past two years. Ostensibly just to measure the peaks more accurately, but Yelang knows perfectly well what we’re doing. Just as we know what they’re up to.”