In the Labyrinth of Drakes

THIRTEEN

The journey back to Qurrat was blessedly uneventful. Shimon and Aviva welcomed me back without much fanfare—or perhaps it would be more accurate to say they accepted me back. I was not living with a family; the contrast with our circumstances in the desert made that clear. I was essentially staying in a very small hotel, where both my virtue and my religious integrity could be suitably chaperoned. As this oversight placed no real constraints on me, and my hosts had no objections I could discern, it worked out well for all.

A message was waiting for me at their house, encouraging me to take a day or two of rest before returning to Dar al-Tannaneen. Tom, arriving at the Men’s House in the Segulist Quarter, received a message saying Pensyth wanted to see him the following morning. “Concern for my delicate constitution, which has no doubt been wearied by my trials,” I said. “Very touching, but I think I can find it in me to rub along.”

“I wish I could take your holiday,” Andrew said with a melodramatic sigh. “But that is army life for you.”

He and Tom collected me first thing the next morning, and together we all went to the House of Dragons. Pensyth made no comment upon seeing me there, but was very solicitous of my comfort, to the point of holding my chair for me—a thing he had never done before. I soon gathered that he thought me still in need of recovery from the ordeal of my kidnapping. I sat on the urge to ask whether he had forgotten that Tom, too, had been subjected to that indignity, or whether he merely did not care about Tom’s condition. (Neither, of course, would have been the case; but I wanted to needle him by asking. I was not twenty-four hours back in Qurrat, and already my prickliness was reasserting itself.)

“Did you receive our report about the Banu Safr?” Tom asked. “The guns, and the other signs of wealth? Not to mention where they got the drug that knocked us out. I don’t think that was any herbal tincture.”

“Our surgeon thinks it was ether,” Pensyth said. “Based on the symptoms you described. And no, they wouldn’t be making that in the desert—not unless they have a lot of chemical apparatus you didn’t see. Damned if I—my apologies, Dame Isabella. I have no idea where they got it from. There isn’t much hope of finding out, either.”

Tom frowned. “No one even has a guess?”

“Oh, they have guesses. Too many of them. It could be any tribe that doesn’t like the Aritat, or the caliph. More than enough of those to go around.” The colonel shrugged, leaning back in his chair with an air of resignation. “I know the Akhians are looking into it, and I know they aren’t bl—aren’t likely to tell us what they find out.”

This was frustrating, but hardly surprising. They would have no desire to tell us about their internal conflicts; those would only open up gaps my own nation might exploit. I said, “Without information, though, we can’t do much to stop them in the future.”

By the scowl on Pensyth’s face, he did not need me reminding him. “If it were up to me, I’d march a company into the desert and teach the Banu Safr a lesson they won’t soon forget. It wouldn’t get at whoever is behind this, but it would rob them of one tool, at least. Unfortunately, there’s no chance of the caliph allowing that.”

I imagined not. Doing so would be tantamount to announcing he couldn’t keep order in his own country. Tom said, “The Aritat did what they could on that front. It kept us safe enough, after the initial trouble.”

“Well, you’re back here now, and well away from the Banu Safr.” Pensyth linked his hands and leaned forward, adopting the posture of a man getting down to business. “I hope you have something useful to show for all the time you spent out there.”

“I could share our notebooks with you, if you like,” I said.

It must have come out too sweetly, because Tom shot me a quelling look. He said, “We have a good deal of data, where before we had only guesswork. It will show its value, I’m sure. The current breeding season has passed, but that gives us time to prepare for next winter’s effort. Isabella and I have some thoughts for how to change the drakes’ environment so they’ll be more inclined toward their natural habits.”

He was better at saying that with a sober face than I was. Our thoughts ranged from a kind of overhead sprinkler that might induce them to believe it was the rainy season in midsummer, to a set of harnesses into which we might strap the drakes and then swing them about to simulate flying. The only one that was even faintly practical was a special breeding enclosure, with a pedestal for the female and space enough for all our captive males to gather around her. Without a flight to follow, though, we were not at all certain how much good it would do.

The only way to find out was to test it, and as Tom said, we could not do that right now. The prospect of delay, however unavoidable it might be, clearly irritated Pensyth. “In the meanwhile,” I said before he could complain, “we’ve made arrangements for a more systematic approach to the eggs. Once we have a chance to study the data from the honeyseekers, we’ll be able to make alterations that will, I believe, greatly improve our success rate there.”

It only mollified Pensyth a little: after all, our purpose here was to breed dragons, not merely to hatch them. I wondered what he had expected, when he heard we would be taking up Lord Tavenor’s duties. Was our reputation so tremendous that he believed we could achieve instant success? Or was he simply so impatient for results that any failure to produce them was unacceptable?

The latter, it seemed. “The world didn’t stop turning while you were off in the desert. The Yelangese have unveiled an entire fleet of caeligers in Va Hing—thirty of them. And our observers say the design is different, more refined. How many caeligers do we have? Five. It isn’t enough.”

When I last heard of it, our own fleet had numbered four: one largely reconstructed from components fished out of the Broken Sea, and three built from material acquired since. I surmised that Prima’s bones had been put to quick use. “Have the Yelangese done anything with their caeligers yet? Aside from unveiling them.”

Pensyth gave me an unpleasant stare. “Would you prefer we wait for actual war to begin, Dame Isabella? The threat is enough.”

I had not forgotten the Battle of Keonga, where the raking fire of a single caeliger had wreaked havoc on the defenders below. Such tactics would be of limited use against an enemy that had artillery with which to respond; but Andrew had already speculated in my hearing about other applications. A caeliger might drop bombs on ships or fortified positions—or even if it were not used to fight, it could scout the movements of the enemy, giving generals much more accurate knowledge for their own maneuvers.

It was not always reassuring, having a brother in the army.

“We are doing our best, sir,” Tom said.

Pensyth sighed wearily, nodding. “Yes, of course. I should not keep you from it.”

Five minutes more or less would make no difference to our success—but I was glad to escape his office and return to the (in my eyes) more comfortable world of dragons and their needs. Lieutenant Marton had managed things effectively in our absence; Sniffer had died, but he had been in poor health when we departed, and I was not surprised to see him go. “I tried to get ice to keep him in, so you could examine the carcass,” Marton said apologetically, “but it didn’t work out.”

Tom thanked him, and we began our rounds. Lumpy was still alive, I was pleased to see, as was Ascelin, the eldest of the juveniles, the fierce one for whom I had a liking. Saeva, the adult brought to us in Nebulis, had developed an infection in her tail, but the men had managed to restrain her enough to wash and bandage the wound on a regular basis, and it had healed well.

Once we had inspected the place and found all in order, Tom set about instituting the changes he and I had planned—changes based on our desert observations—while I turned my attention to the records of the honeyseeker eggs.

Not enough time had passed, of course, for me to have anything like definitive results. Even honeyseekers do not breed so quickly as to supply me with the hundreds of eggs I would need to test their tolerances in full; and of course I would ideally repeat the process later, or have someone else do so, to see if the second set of data matched the first. (As some of my more scientific friends are fond of proclaiming, twice is once, and once is nothing.) Marton had done as I asked, though, with diligent care, and so I had the beginnings of a pattern, which I was very keen to study.

I had decided to introduce new variables one at a time, beginning with the one I believed to be the most influential: temperature. What extreme of heat could the eggs tolerate without losing viability, and what extreme of cold? Nowadays we can control this to a very nice degree, quite literally speaking. Back then, though, the best we could do was to place the eggs in different locations, ranging from the cellars of Dar al-Tannaneen to its rooftop. At regular intervals Marton measured the temperature there, with one of the sergeants taking over the task at night. Some of the eggs were carried from the cellar to a warmer spot during the day, to simulate the fluctuation they would experience in nature; others were left in the coolness all the time, while a few lived quite cozily by a fireplace. Altogether, it made for a substantial set of data—and it was only the beginning.

An unused room in the House of Dragons became the repository of this information. I spent a day drafting a very precise graph that would show me what I knew at a glance: the horizontal axis measured days since laying, while the vertical measured temperature. On this I drew curves delineating the environment of each egg, in different colours of ink.

“It’s very pretty,” Andrew said when I tacked it on the wall, “but what does it mean?”

I stood, tapping my tack-hammer against my thigh, studying the graph. “It means I can see what is going on.” Exchanging the hammer for a pencil, I went to the graph and began drawing hashes through some of the lines. “These are the eggs that produced unhealthy specimens. And these—” I drew more hashes, crossing them to make Xs. “These are the ones that did not hatch at all. You can see, they are much less tolerant of cold than of heat. Which makes sense, of course, given their native environment. One wonders whether it would be the opposite with, say, rock-wyrms.”

“Yes, of course one wonders that.”

I ignored his flippant tone. “But it also appears that the rise and fall is important: the greater the heat, the more necessary it is that a cooling period be allowed. Without that, you are more likely to get runts and such. If the same is true for drake eggs, then it may be that our conveyance methods need revising. They bury their eggs a certain depth in the sand, you see, and the baskets used to transport them here are not nearly so large. That may mean they are subjected to too great a heat in the daytime, and too much coolness at night—or not enough, if the Aritat have been keeping the baskets by the fire. Or by their camels, even. We shall inquire. And that does not even touch upon humidity. Testing that will be my next step.”

Andrew laughed. “What are you going to do, put them in steam baths?”

“Of course not. I need to see how humidity interacts with temperature; steam baths would require far too much heat. But closed boxes, with an atomizer to mist the air, might suffice.”

He thought I was joking. He was disabused of this notion, though, when I sent him to the perfumers of Qurrat to see whether anyone sold atomizers. (They did not. That method of applying scent is more common in northern Anthiope; I ended up having to send to Chiavora for equipment. And you may be sure Pensyth gave me a very peculiar look when I submitted that request.)

I also had to examine the honeyseekers that had survived. These were all in one of the unused buildings at Dar al-Tannaneen, being fed on nectar extracted from the sheikh’s garden, but it was already obvious that we would need a better solution. Even if I subjected the next rounds of eggs to far less hospitable conditions, we would rapidly be up to our kneecaps in juvenile honeyseekers, and the sheikh’s eucalyptus trees could not sustain them all. I had inquiries out for other gardens that might suffice, and in the meantime we had even more draconic mouths to feed.

Something else happened during this time, too—but I will not tell it now, for it seemed minor at the time, and its true significance did not occur to me until much later. I note it here only so that those of my readers who care about the process of scientific discovery may accurately reconstruct the steps by which I arrived at my eventual conclusions. Laypeople often believe that understanding comes by epiphany: something important occurs, and on the instant the scientist declares, I have it! But the truth is that we may be blind to the import of events around us, not realizing the truth until well after the fact.

While I did all of this, Tom worked to improve the living conditions of our drakes. We began delivering charred meat to their enclosures; they will eat it in any state, from running away to very thoroughly carrion, but we hoped the scent might stimulate their appetites and encourage better health. He also began agitating for the construction of a second compound, well removed from the first. After all, if a female drake will not willingly nest within ten kilometers of a male, what effects came of having them a mere twenty meters apart?

“We aren’t likely to find a suitable place here,” he said over lunch one day. We had developed the habit of eating alone together in the office, where we might not offend local custom too much. (Andrew had given up on joining us, saying our conversations were impenetrable to anyone who did not have dragon blood in his veins.) “I keep wondering about that territory we went around on the way to the Aritat. I know it belongs to another tribe—but it’s a sight closer to the drakes, and not too far from river transport. If the caliph gave the order, we could relocate this entire enterprise there, and I think we’d do a good deal better.”

“Can he not order it?” I asked.

Tom grimaced, shredding a bit of flatbread between his fingers. “This isn’t like medieval Scirland. The land doesn’t all belong to the king, for him to hand out as he sees fit to barons and so forth. It’s theirs, and he can’t easily commandeer it. Or so I’m told.”

“Can we approach them?” I dismissed this with a shake of my head almost before the words were out of my mouth. “Foreigners, trying to stake a claim on property in his country. Or the local sheikh’s country—whichever. I can imagine how that would be received.”

We faced a number of challenges, and our progress against them was hampered by the change of seasons. I have said before that I am a heat-loving creature, and it is true; but even the early days of an Akhian summer took their toll on me. I felt increasingly weak and light-headed, and soon found myself lying down for a little while after lunch each day, waiting out the worst of the heat, though I could not truly rest. I tried to compensate for this by working later into the night, but even then I felt exhausted, unable to focus. My digestion became poor, and even basic tasks began to feel like a burden.

Tom felt it too, but less acutely—or, I suspected, he simply shrugged it off with the stoicism expected of a man. He became concerned for my health, though, and when I attempted to shrug it off as he had, gave me a steady look. “I don’t want to repeat Mouleen,” he said after I rose from my couch one afternoon.

In the Green Hell I had tried to forge ahead through what turned out to be yellow fever. “I am not that ill,” I promised him. “Only tired from the heat.”

“Then rest,” he said. “You will acclimate soon enough.”

I wanted to say that I had not required any acclimation in Eriga—not like this. Another of our drake hatchlings had died, and we were going to conduct a necropsy to see if we could determine the cause. I wanted to be present for that. But Tom was better than I with matters medical, and I would not impress anyone if I tipped head-first into a bucket of viscera. “I will go visit Mahira,” I suggested. “I have been meaning to do that for some time now, but I have been so busy. The gardens there are pleasant and cool, and I can inspect the honeyseekers.”

Tom grinned. “Of course you can’t rest without finding a way to be useful at the same time. But it’s a good idea regardless. Go—and if you need to stay home tomorrow, we can manage without you.”

I did not want them to manage without me. If they could do it for one day, they could do it for more than one; I did not want anyone thinking I was superfluous. But I knew what Tom would say if I expressed such thoughts to him—and he would be well justified—so I kept my self-pity behind my teeth and went.

FOURTEEN

You may guess that I had been avoiding the sheikh’s house for more reasons than a mere crowded schedule. You would be correct in that guess.

Suhail had visited Dar al-Tannaneen twice since our return, but on both occasions he had come only briefly, and left before I knew he was there. Given my resolution in the desert, I should have been more energetic in seeking him out, if only so I could apologize for my coldness before. But it was one thing to form such a resolution; it was another thing entirely to carry it out.

I could not even be positive he was still at the house. By now the nomadic Aritat had moved to their summer quarters; Suhail might be with them, or with the men who would venture into the desert at regular intervals to collect eggs on our behalf. And even if he was present… what would I say? Everything I could think of seemed too forward, especially when we would certainly have an audience again. As much as I liked Mahira, I did not feel comfortable telling Suhail how much I valued his friendship with her sitting ten feet away. I could ask him how the translation was proceeding; surely that would be neutral enough? Being less than skilled at languages, I had very little sense of how long it would take him to decipher the Ngaru half of the text. Since I was fairly certain he did not know the language already, I imagined it would take a while.

That, I decided, was safe. It would show friendly warmth—an encouraging interest in a topic I knew he loved—without overstepping any boundaries. If Suhail happened upon us again in the garden, I would ask him about the Cataract Stone.

Mahira greeted me warmly when I arrived. She called for refreshments, and we spent some time chatting about my experiences in the desert. News of the kidnapping had reached her ears; she startled me with some rather fierce comments about the fate that should be visited upon those sons of dogs, the Banu Safr. “Is a prayer-leader allowed to say such things?” I asked, half scandalized.

She laughed. “In the older days, the tribes used to load an unmarried girl into a special howdah and carry her into battle as their standard. There is a long tradition in Akhia of women urging their menfolk to valour against the enemy.”

It reminded me of old tales from Niddey and Uaine—though in those, of course, there is no howdah. “I hope the battles are concluded,” I said. “Your brother’s men did an excellent job keeping order, at least in our immediate vicinity, after that outrage.”

I meant to use that comment to prepare the ground, so that asking after her other brother would not seem out of place. The words stuck in my throat, though, because I could not find a way to make them sound innocuous—not when she had almost certainly heard the poem about Suhail’s own valour. Instead I gave her the gossip about Umm Azali and the rest of the Aritat, as well as I could. Mahira might live in a city, but the urge to ask for the news from elsewhere in the desert is alive and well in every part of Akhian society.

When that was done we went out to the garden, so that I might examine the honeyseekers. Amamis and Hicara were drowsing in the heat when I entered their net-draped enclosure, which meant that capturing them was the work of mere moments.

I spread Hicara’s wings wide, ignoring her indignant chirps, and examined her from every angle. Then I repeated the process with Amamis. They both appeared to be in excellent health: their scales were glossy, Amamis’ crest a bright sapphire blue, and neither showed the slightest lethargy in scrambling away from me once I released them. “You have done very well by them—I thank you,” I said to Mahira.

“They have been an ornament to our garden,” she replied. “I hope you have learned a great deal from their eggs.”

The honeyseekers had fled into the trees. I peered after them, watching as they twined about the branches in search of something to nose at. “It will take time. To truly know the tolerances of their eggs, we must test all the way to the limits, and that will require more rounds than we have had so far. So long as you do not mind continuing this work, I would be delighted to leave them here—though I must find a way to repay you for your effort.”

I turned toward Mahira, intending to ask whether she would like a pair of honeyseekers as a permanent installation in her garden. The offspring of my two could not mate, of course, without risk of inbreeding—but I could request another set from Lutjarro, as a gesture of gratitude. When I turned, however, the world turned with me. I swayed to one side, catching myself against a tree, and then sat down very hard on the ground.

Mahira was there in an instant, robes billowing as she sank down next to me. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, quite,” I said—in that inane way one does when one is not well at all. “Only I was dizzy for a moment.”

She helped me to my feet and then settled me on the bench, staying at my side lest I tip over. I could not bring myself to argue against her caution. “I have been feeling a bit indisposed for several days,” I admitted. “I thought it was just the heat—I have been trying to drink plenty of water—but this is rather worse than before. I fear I may be ill, after all.”

This last I said with annoyance. Disease is the near-inevitable companion of every traveller, and I had made its acquaintance far too often for my liking. Illness would take me away from my work, making me look weak in the eyes of the men I was trying to impress.

But I had also seen what happened when I attempted to work through illness. I did not want to drive myself to collapse.

Mahira said, “Would you like me to call my own physician to attend you?”

“Oh, no,” I said hastily. “That won’t be necessary.”

“I assure you, it is no trouble. And she is very knowledgeable.”

The pronoun pulled me up short. “She? Your physician is a woman?”

Mahira looked scandalized. “Do you think I would allow a man to examine my body?”

When she put it that way, I could hardly say that I took it for granted. As some of my readers may know, the first university in Akhia was founded by a woman—the mother of one of the caliphs—and apparently she had been in favour of training women physicians, so as to uphold propriety while also caring for the patient’s health. It took another two hundred years for that vision to become a reality, and even now women physicians are not so common; but the wealthy and the pious often call upon their services.

I had to admit the notion held some appeal. Over the years I have been poked and prodded in a variety of embarrassing ways by male doctors; it might be a relief to consult a woman instead. “I would be grateful for her assistance,” I said.

Little did I know what I was unleashing with those words. When at last the whirlwind settled, I had somehow been transported from the honeyseeker enclosure to the women’s quarters of the house, where I was laid upon a sopha and plied with cooling drinks. A serving girl fanned me, and I was not permitted to rise until the physician arrived—which she did with great alacrity, likely because of Mahira’s status as the sheikh’s sister.

She introduced herself as Nour bint Ahmad, and asked after my symptoms. “I have been very tired of late,” I admitted, “and sometimes dizzy; I have also had frequent headaches. It may only be heat exhaustion.”

But this was not enough for her exacting standards. She began to question me in detail, asking when I felt the symptoms most acutely, in what precise way they affected me, how long they lasted, and more. She took my pulse, examined my eyes and my tongue, and various other matters I will omit for the sake of propriety. (I do not mind being frank when it serves a purpose; but in this case it would not.)

As this interrogation wore on, I found myself feeling ashamed. I was startled by Nour’s apparent acumen—and then, following that thought back to its source, I realized I had assumed that she, being a woman physician, would not be as knowledgeable or skilled as a man. It was, in short, precisely the kind of patronizing attitude I had suffered throughout my own career; and here I was, inflicting it in turn on a woman who knew more about the human body and its workings than I could ever aspire to. For heaven’s sake: she had a university degree in the subject, which was far more than I could say for myself in my own field. Undoubtedly there are incompetent women physicians out there; but so, too, are there men who do not know a broken bone from a fever in the head. Despite Mahira’s recommendation, I had judged Nour unfairly.

I wanted to apologize to her, but she did not know what I had been thinking; and if I had shown it in my behaviour, I could make up for it best by placing my confidence in her now. “At least it cannot be yellow fever,” I said when her questioning was done. “I have had that already.” Also dengue in the Melatan region and malaria after I left Phetayong, but those can be contracted more than once. Although Pensyth had supplied us with gin and tonic water as a preventative for malaria, it is far from foolproof.

Nour frowned, fingers gently clasping the front edge of her scarf in what looked like a habitual pose, assumed when she was deep in thought. “Where have you been living?” she asked.

“In the Segulist Quarter, with a Bayitist family,” I said.

“And where have you been taking your meals?”

“Largely at the House of Dragons—it is an estate not far outside the city walls. I eat a little something when I wake, but lunch is always out there, and often supper as well.”

She considered this for a moment, then gave a little nod, as if an interior conversation had concluded. Turning, she called out to Mahira, who had been sitting on the far side of the room to give us some privacy. When Mahira joined us, Nour asked, “Would it be possible to keep Umm Yaqub here for a day or two?”

“What?” I exclaimed, sitting up on the sopha. “I am not that ill!”

Nour regarded me soberly. “I do not think you are ill,” she said. “I think you have been poisoned.”

I could not have been more shocked had someone thrown a bucket of ice water over me. “That—is not possible.”

“How do you obtain your food?”

“From the market,” I said slowly. “They send a man to fetch something in. Maazir, I think his name is.”

Nour looked grim. “I would not like to accuse this man without proof. But if you stay here, and your condition improves…”

Despite the warm, close room, I was cold to the bone. “Tom eats the same meals I do. He has not felt unwell—or only a little so.” But Tom had the constitution of an ox. He had been bitten by a wyvern in Bulskevo and shrugged it off. “God in heaven.”

“He must not eat the food, either,” Nour said.

If it were true—if someone was indeed poisoning our meals, with Maazir’s knowledge or without—then they had gone to some lengths to be subtle about it. There were any number of things they could have put into it that would have seen us both dead within the hour, however resilient Tom might be. Instead they preferred to weaken us, in a fashion that could be mistaken for illness. In time we would die; or perhaps it would be enough simply to disrupt our work. Either way, we had an opportunity to catch the culprit… but only if we did not scare him off.

“I will warn Tom,” I said. “If I take food to him, secretly, he can eat that in place of what Maazir brings from the market. What time is it?”

The room’s piercework shutters made it difficult for me to gauge the hour. And although the call to prayer sounded throughout Qurrat at regular intervals, I had not incorporated that into my mental clock, as the Amaneen do. “The sunset prayer will begin soon,” Mahira said.

“Then I must hurry.” Tom would want to finish the necropsy before the light went, which meant he would not have taken supper yet. His hardiness might allow him to go another day without serious ill effects—but I could not knowingly allow him to eat poison, not if there was any risk that Nour was correct.

The physician put her hands on my shoulders when I tried to rise. “You will go nowhere. Someone else can take the message, and the food.”

“I felt well enough to come here,” I said, pushing against this restraint. It did not take so very much pressure for her to keep me in my seat, though, and I knew she could tell that as well as I.

Nour said, “What if someone overhears the warning, and decides to take more direct action?”

“All the more reason for me to be there with Tom. Or do you suggest I should abandon him, when he is in peril?”

Mahira intervened before our argument could grow any more heated. “Umm Yaqub, I will have our cook prepare a basket for him. If it is a gift from the sheikh’s household, no one will think it odd that he declines supper from the market. He can be warned once he is safely away.”

The mulish part of me wanted to insist on my original plan… but I had to admit that Mahira’s suggestion was more sensible. “I should prefer to sleep in my own bed, though,” I said.

Nour required me to stay on the sopha a while longer, so she could be sure my condition was not worsening. When I departed at last, shortly after sunset, I had both an escort and a basket of my own, with food enough for not only my supper but also my breakfast and lunch the next day, and strict orders to stay home from Dar al-Tannaneen.

The difficult part would be finding a reason for both Tom and myself to be absent. (Well, one of the difficult parts. I was not very good at sitting still when trouble reared its head.) Pondering this over my supper, which I was taking alone in my room, I found myself laughing wryly. “I suppose,” I said to my ground chick peas, “that I might just say we are ill. Then the poisoner will think he is succeeding in his aim.” Always supposing he did not take that as his cue to bring the drama to a sudden and unpleasant close.

Aviva knocked at my door before I had finished. Putting her head into the room, she said, “Your brother is downstairs.”

“Oh dear,” I said involuntarily, getting to my feet. “Yes, he would be. I’ll come.”

Andrew was pacing restlessly, and wheeled about when I entered the courtyard. “Are you all right?” he asked. Then, before I had a chance to answer: “No, of course you aren’t. I heard you collapsed at the sheikh’s house. For God’s sake, sit down.”

“‘Collapse’ rather overstates the matter,” I said. “I got dizzy, is all. I am perfectly capable of standing, and walking, too.”

“Well, sit down for my peace of mind, won’t you?” This I obliged him in, if only so we could converse about something other than my stability or lack thereof. “It isn’t malaria, is it?”

He had suffered from that disease in Coyahuac, and knew its signs well. “No, it isn’t. In fact—” I hesitated. Would it be better or worse to tell Andrew about Nour’s suspicion? He would certainly find it even more alarming than rumours of my collapse. On the other hand, if it was poison, then we needed to inform Pensyth as soon as possible, so the culprit might be apprehended. Could Maazir be behind this? Or was he working for someone else? Was he a knowing accomplice, or an unwitting tool?

These thoughts had paralyzed my brain all through supper, and I was no closer to finding answers now. I wished Tom had arrived before Andrew, so I could put them to him before involving my brother. My silence, however, had alarmed Andrew. He crouched at my feet, peering up at my face. “What is it? Something worse than malaria?”

“In a manner of speaking.” I scrubbed my hands over my face, which did little to clear my thoughts. “Nour—the physician—she thinks, ah. That my illness may not be… an accident. That someone may be arranging it deliberately.”

He worked through the implications of this one blink at a time. “You mean—” He sat back on his heels, staring. “That’s absurd. Who did you say suggested this? The physician who saw you is a woman?”

“Don’t say it,” I warned him. “She knows her business very well. I intend to test her theory, by abstaining from the food brought to the House of Dragons—the timing of my bad spells makes her think the problem is there. If she is wrong, then very well: I will seek a second opinion.”

“But who would poison you?” Andrew said. “No Scirling man would do that. And we’re allied with the Akhians. Why would they sabotage you?”

“Politics?” I suggested, my tone heavy with irony. “Someone paid the Banu Safr to kidnap us; it is hardly a stretch to think they might try other methods. Or it could be a single madman who believes we’re subverting the natural order with our efforts. There’s no way of knowing—not yet. But first we need to know if it is poison. Until then, everything else is speculation.”

Perhaps my condition had dulled my wits; perhaps I was too preoccupied with the task of persuading Andrew. I had not heard the sounds behind me, and did not realize someone else had joined us until Tom said, “Poison? Are we talking about wyverns?”

“No,” Andrew said, rising. “We’re talking about somebody poisoning Isabella.”

“And you,” I said hastily—which, in retrospect, was not the best way to soften Andrew’s declaration. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Tom listened, appalled, as I outlined Nour’s theory. “So that’s why I got a special supper,” he muttered when I was done. “I thought that was unusually generous of the sheikh.”

Andrew said, “If Maazir is poisoning you, the sheikh will be disgraced. I don’t think he’s Aritat himself—but the Aritat hired him.”

“One worry at a time,” I said. “I have felt no particular improvement in my condition yet—but I expect it will take more than one round of safe dining before change can occur. Can we come up with a reason not to go back there tomorrow?”

“Or just take food with you,” Andrew suggested. “The two of you closet yourselves away often enough; you can hide what Maazir brought in a basket or something, then feed it to the dragons when no one is looking.”

I stared at my brother in horror. “I most certainly shall not! We have no idea what such fare would do to a dragon—poisoned or not.” The thought of putting Lumpy at such risk, or any of the adult drakes, was appalling. If I were to experiment with their diets, I would do so in a controlled fashion, with full knowledge of the ingredients.

Tom was pacing, hands linked behind his back. “How long will it take before we know whether the food is at fault? Will a day be enough?”

“Nour said two days, to be certain.”

His mouth compressed. “By all means, let us be certain. But then what? Tell Pensyth?”

Andrew looked up, startled, from the task of retying his boot. “You’re going to wait? I was going to tell Pensyth tonight.”

Tom and I exchanged a swift look, confirming that we were in accord. “Don’t,” I said.

“Why ever not?”

Tom snorted. “Because Pensyth isn’t a subtle man.”

“He won’t wait two days,” I said. “He’ll clap Maazir in irons and start a row with the sheikh. And Maazir may be innocent; perhaps the problem is with the man selling him the food. Or it might be nothing! Perhaps I am only suffering from exhaustion in the heat. I want proof, before we start Pensyth baying like a hound.”

“But—” Andrew clamped his jaw in the way that said he wanted to argue, but couldn’t think of any useful points he might bring to bear. It made him look nine years old, which I had good enough sense not to say.

“We will take food with us,” I said. “And see what happens. I will take no further action without data.”

FIFTEEN

Other people, however, were not so restrained.

When Maazir departed the next day on his usual trip to the market, I happened to be at a window overlooking the front gate. (Very well: it was not coincidence.) I do not know what I thought I might see—a pouch of poison swinging from one jaunty hand?—but I felt obliged to watch.

What I saw was one of the common labourers slipping out after him. There were any number of these around the compound on any given day; we had a great many menial jobs that needed to be done, such as tending to the livestock that fed the dragons and mucking out the enclosures, and the men who performed these tasks came and went. Some of them were city-dwellers, while others were nomads, earning a small bit of coin to purchase something before returning to their people in the desert.

The fellow I observed was of the second type, and not a particularly fine specimen of the breed, either. His clothes were patched and frayed, the scarf and veil on his head filthy with dust. He had been shuffling about as if one leg were less than hale—but as soon as Maazir was gone, his gait changed entirely. He crossed the courtyard with swift strides and was out of the compound almost before I could blink.

I stopped breathing as a suspicion formed in my heart.

It is not easy to fling oneself down stairs in a skirt; there is always the risk that you will tangle your legs and go headlong. But I made it to the courtyard and cracked the gate, peering out through the opening.

In the distance I saw Maazir. Between him and myself, the labourer, following.

Either Maazir was innocent, or he had been doing this for long enough that he no longer feared detection. (Or he was skilled enough that he knew not to look behind himself until he could make the action look casual. At the time, I did not know to consider that possibility.) As for the labourer, he was intent on his own quarry; he did not look behind, either, and so he did not see me following him.

Dar al-Tannaneen was not far from the gates of Qurrat. I nearly lost the labourer in the crowds there, and had to draw much closer than I felt comfortable with. Had he glanced over his shoulder, he would have seen me, for a Scirling woman is quite noticeable in that district, even when her dress is made of sedate khaki. I was glad to be following the labourer, rather than Maazir: the latter would not recognize the former, and I was far enough back to escape his eye.

And so we went, a daisy-chain of suspicion, wending our way through town. But not through the crowded market: Maazir turned off into an alley just before he reached that plaza. The labourer hurried to keep up, and I knew why. In the winding back ways of Qurrat, it would be easy to lose one’s quarry entirely. Now my steps slowed, for avoiding detection there would be exceedingly difficult—even impossible. I had come out here without thinking, but continuing onward in the same manner was not advisable.

But the two men had not gone far. I peered around the corner in time to see the labourer lunge through a doorway. From within came the sound of shouts. Then Maazir hurled himself back out into the alley and came charging straight toward me.

I stepped into his path, my head empty of anything resembling a plan. I was no brawler, to tackle him to the ground. How did I propose to stop him? I was still standing there, indecisive, when he reached the mouth of the alley. He slammed into me—I do not think he even recognized me, despite my garb—and knocked me into a wall in his haste to reach the main street.

In that instant, I did the only thing I could think of. I raised my arm, pointed at the fleeing man, and shouted in the clearest Akhian I could muster, “That man just assaulted me!”

Let no one slander the gentlemen of Qurrat. Several looked up in startlement; one, understanding, took up the cry. Maazir did not make it twenty meters before someone had him by the collar and began dragging him back toward me.

I stood in the mouth of the alley, torn. Having accused Maazir, now I had to deal with him—but I suspected the true business was taking place behind me, in the building Maazir had fled.

“Bring him this way, please,” I said, when captor and captive arrived. “My escort is just down here.” I am not a pious woman, but I prayed with all the devotion I could muster that my suspicion would not prove incorrect.

Maazir twisted and squirmed, shouting for the other fellow to let him go, as we went down the alley. Half the market followed, it seemed; the commotion had drawn a great deal of curious attention. I stepped through the open doorway, and all the breath went out of me in relief.

Suhail was kneeling atop another man’s back at the far side of the room. He had removed the dusty scarf from his head, and was using it to bind the fellow’s wrists, cursing as his prisoner fought him. When I entered, it distracted him; the man got one arm free. A knife lay on the ground nearby, and the captive scrabbled for it, but it was just out of his reach. He tried to throw Suhail off, his body heaving. Suhail slammed the palm of his hand into his opponent’s shoulder, flattening him to the ground, and got him tied up at last.

In that moment of struggle, I glimpsed his face. For all that the man wore the caftan and turban of a local, his features were Yelangese.

The room was rapidly filling up behind me. It did not take many people to crowd the place; the chamber was less than four meters on a side, and Maazir was still flailing about. I heard the men from the market speculating amongst themselves: this dirty labourer was my escort? Why was the other fellow tied up on the floor? Suhail got up long enough to drag the scarf from Maazir’s head and use it to tie the feet of the Yelangese man, ensuring he could not escape. Then he looked at me and demanded in Scirling, “What are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same,” I said, a little breathless. “Why were you following Maazir?” Then common sense, rendered tardy by the excitement, caught up. “Mahira told you what happened.”

Suhail dragged one hand through his curls, made unruly by his struggle with the Yelangese. He was out of breath himself, and a bit wild in the eyes. “You’re being fed poison, Isabella.”

That had not been proven—but it had become a good deal more likely, with the probable culprit lying at Suhail’s feet. A culprit he had gone after, on his own, without warning me. “You could have been killed.”

“So saith the woman who followed me here.” His hands twitched at his sides, and I cannot blame the heat for the sensation that came over me then. I recognized that motion: he wanted to reach out, grip me by the arms and make certain I was unharmed. I recognized it because I wanted to do the same, and my inability to do so made me light-headed. I had lost my husband to a single thrust of a knife, not much different from the one lying at Suhail’s feet. But we had an audience; I could only curl my hands until my nails cut into my palms.

Suhail collected his wits and addressed the crowd in Akhian too rapid for me to follow well. Someone bound Maazir’s hands; when that was done, our erstwhile employee sagged in defeat, and dropped to a crouch in the corner as soon as he was permitted. Some of the men departed, and I caught enough of the conversation to know they had been sent to fetch a magistrate.

I occupied myself searching the room. It was a bare place, with only two small chests and some battered cushions on the floor. Wherever the Yelangese fellow was living, it was not here. The chests contained nothing of interest, just a few bundles of cloth and some cracked dishes.

I am not a legal expert in my own nation, let alone Akhia, but I knew that if we wanted to convict our two captives of anything, we would need something more than the suspicions of one (female) physician. Suhail’s word might be enough, depending on how much deference was given to the brother of a sheikh—but I did not want to test it.

The Yelangese man was squirming on the floor. My first instinct was that he was trying to get away… but he stood no chance of squirming past Suhail and the three men still with us in the room, and he was not making any forward progress, besides. I almost bent to grab him, then remembered my manners. “Suhail,” I said sharply, and he turned around.

The man thrashed as Suhail rolled him onto his back and delved into his caftan. The thrashing did him no good: Suhail’s hand emerged holding a small bag of powder, which had come open and was spilling its contents over his fingers. My heart sped up. “Here,” I said, holding out one of the dishes. Suhail dropped the bag into it and dusted his hands off—then stood there, eyeing his own fingers warily. “What now?”

Without knowing what the powder was, I could only guess. It had not killed me or Tom… but what quantity had been going into our food? I took the corner of my headscarf in my hands and stared at it as if I had never seen fabric before, then blinked and shook sense back into my head. The knife was still on the floor. I picked it up and cut a square from the scarf, and Suhail used it to wipe his hands off. “Good thing Mother broke me of the habit of biting my nails,” he murmured, trying to smile.

The magistrate arrived not long after that. I delivered the dish and its contents to him, while Suhail explained that the Yelangese man had been trying to disperse the evidence. Our prisoners were bundled off to the local gaol, but dealing with them would be delayed; Suhail insisted he needed to accompany me back to Dar al-Tannaneen, after a brief detour to scrub his hands clean under a street pump.

I almost told him the escort was not necessary—that I had, after all, come here on my own, and could very well go back the same way. But I remembered my conversation with Andrew in the desert, and bit my tongue. I was glad of Suhail’s company, and the gossip-mongers be damned.

We walked in silence for a few minutes. Then, abruptly, Suhail said, “Did you think you could take on those men by yourself?”

My mouth had become very dry; I wished profoundly for a glass of lemonade. “I knew I would not have to do so. Even in those clothes, Suhail, I knew you. I recognized your stride.”

He looked at me, startled. Then he looked away. I swallowed, trying to wet my throat, then said, “I was foolish, yes. But so were you. What if that man had friends with him?” He was lucky Maazir had chosen to run, rather than staying to fight.

In a low voice I almost could not hear through the noise of the market, Suhail said, “I was not thinking very clearly.”

The weight of everything we were not saying hung between us, as if from a rope that might snap at any moment. Suhail had seen me in peril before. He had been with me in the diving bell when the sea-serpent attacked, and had resuscitated me after I drowned. We had ridden other serpents together, stolen a caeliger, taken part in the Battle of Keonga. But at no point during that time had he been asked to sit idly by; and none of that had involved such carefully directed malice as this. He had not taken it well.

Nor had I. My hands still shook every time I envisioned what must have happened in that cramped room while I was stopping Maazir. One strike with that knife, and Suhail might not be at my side now.

I licked my lips and tried to focus on practical matters. “That man. The Yelangese. Maazir was going to meet him?”

“So it appears,” Suhail answered, straightening his shoulders. “To report in, or get more poison—I’m not sure. We’ll know more once they’ve been questioned.”

That would not stop me from speculating now. “I imagine the Yelangese want to put a halt to our work, or at least to slow it down. Anything that might hamper Scirland—and Akhia, too—in getting more caeligers. We should count ourselves lucky they haven’t been out in the desert—”

I stopped dead in the street, and so did Suhail. His eyes had gone wide. “The Banu Safr,” he said.

“Would they ally themselves with the Yelangese?” I asked.

“Ally? No. Not as you are thinking of it. But take payment from, yes—especially if it gave them the chance to strike at my tribe.” A muscle jumped in Suhail’s jaw. “The feud goes back for generations. They do not lack the will to work against us, only the resources.”

The difficulties the Aritat had faced out in the desert took on a new cast in my mind. As did every problem we had faced at the House of Dragons: how many of those had been accident, and how many the result of sabotage? I blessed the discipline of the Scirling army, and the tribal loyalty that meant the most highly placed Akhians at Dar al-Tannaneen were members of the Aritat. Without those forces to bind us together, we might have had a dozen Maazirs working against us.

“Isabella,” Suhail said. “I know you do not think it necessary, but—you must not go anywhere without an escort now. You or Tom.”

It was no longer a matter of propriety. Our capture of the Yelangese agent might put a stop to their efforts… or it might provoke them into trying something more extreme. “Yes,” I said, feeling cold down to the bone. “I think that is wise.”

I was not present for the questioning of the prisoners. Such things were considered inappropriate for ladies; Tom, who could have gone, chose not to. “If it’s anything like back home, it won’t be pretty,” he said, grimacing.

My feelings on the matter swung wildly back and forth. One moment, I did not like to imagine the magistrate beating a confession out of either man; the next, I remembered what they had done, and I felt they had brought it upon themselves. The bag of powder the Yelangese man had tried to spill was confirmed to be arsenic, which would have been lethal in larger or more prolonged doses. Maazir’s home, when searched, turned up a cache of money that could not be explained by reputable means; there were people in the market who remembered him going to that building before, several times. We had evidence even before we had the confessions.

Security became a good deal more stringent. I no longer ambled off to the House of Dragons with Andrew in the morning. Instead he came with three other soldiers, all of them armed, and met up with Tom at the Men’s House before coming to collect me. It felt excessive, and I said as much—but our escort remained. There were guards at the gate of Dar al-Tannaneen, patrols of the enclosures, and daily checks of the feed for humans and beasts alike.

This state of affairs did not persist for long, however. We had scarcely settled into our new routine when the announcement came that Colonel Pensyth wanted to see us first thing that morning.

“That doesn’t sound good,” Tom murmured as we made our way through the streets of Qurrat, bracketed by our guards.

“Andrew,” I asked, “what is this about? Have the Yelangese made some kind of threat?”

My brother shook his head. “If they have, nobody’s told me. I just know Pensyth wants to talk to you.”

At least he had the consideration to meet with us right away, so I did not have to fret long. Tom and I were not even asked to sit down in the waiting room before his adjutant escorted us in to see the colonel.

I wasted no time in posing him the same question I had asked Andrew. Pensyth likewise shook his head. “No, not at all. In fact, given the recent… unpleasantness, you may be glad to know that you will not have to worry any longer. I’ve just received word: we are to close down.”

“Glad” was not the word I would have used to describe my reaction. I sat open-mouthed, staring at Pensyth; Tom was doing the same. “Close down?” I said, a faint and disbelieving echo.

“Yes, Dame Isabella. The dragon-breeding programme is over.”

“But—” All my words seemed to have gone astray. I floundered after them with clumsy hands. “You haven’t even given us a year! We’ve scarcely gathered data on their breeding habits in the wild, the incubation of the eggs—let alone tried to apply what we’ve learned—”

Pensyth made a gesture I think was supposed to be mollifying. “I’m sorry, Dame Isabella. This wasn’t my decision: it came to me from Lord Ferdigan in Sarmizi.”

“Give us a chance, at least.” Tom sounded as if someone were strangling him. “Six months, even. If we cannot show substantial progress by then…”

He trailed off. Pensyth sat behind his desk, impassive. Unyielding. We would not have six months; we would not have six days. Even in my most cynical moments, I had not imagined they would pull the rug out from under us like this. The grand opportunity, the posting that might have been the pinnacle of my career: done. Ashes. Had Pensyth been within reach, I might have slapped him.

Tom recovered before I did. His voice heavy, he said, “What are we expected to do?”

“Naturally we’ll have to wrap things up here,” Pensyth said, with a jovial aspect that said he was relieved we hadn’t protested more. “Might as well collect the bones from the adult specimens. You can return the eggs to the wild if you like, or dissect them—it doesn’t much matter. The juveniles might pose a bit of a problem, I suppose. But don’t worry about tidying up the site itself; the sheikh’s men will take care of that.”

Bile rose in my throat at his cavalier suggestions. All our dragons, dead: not to learn anything, not because it was necessary, but simply because we no longer had a use for them. As if they were rubbish, to be disposed of by the least troublesome means, what little value possible extracted from them in the process.

I didn’t hear the next few things Tom said, or Pensyth’s responses. All I could think about was Lumpy. Ascelin. Saeva and Quartus and Quinta. Every dragon under our care, every living creature toward whom I had a responsibility. Soon they would be dead, and I would be on a ship back home.

The conversation ended. Tom led me from the office, one hand on my arm, and to the devil with what people might say. He took me up onto the wall that surrounded the compound; I think he wanted to make certain I was far away from anyone else when I finally exploded.

But I could not explode. I was too devastated for that. I sagged against the hot stone of the wall and said dully, “I was right. They had already decided this was a failure, but they didn’t want to blame Lord Tavenor. So they brought us in to be scapegoats.” Tears threatened, burning my eyes. I tensed my jaw and forced them back. “I thought they would at least give us a year.”

Gazing out over the buildings and enclosures of Dar al-Tannaneen, Tom shook his head. The wind lifted his hair, laid it down again in disarray. “This doesn’t make sense.”

“Oh, it makes every bit of sense,” I said bitterly.

“No, I mean—” Tom stopped, hands gripping the edge of the wall. Then he turned to me, suddenly animated. “Pretend for a moment that the Akhians have gotten tired of us being here, and want us out. What do we do? Not you and I, but the Scirlings as a whole. The army.”

“Apparently we go.”

He chopped one hand through the air. “No. If it’s the Akhians who want us out, we argue. Try to prove our worth. Even if it’s just a stalling tactic—look, this enterprise, this alliance, has given Scirland a military foothold in Akhia. We’re stronger than they are right now, but we need their dragons. If they decide they’d rather bow out of the whole mess, we don’t just accept that; we fight it. Pensyth would be demanding we come up with something to prove our worth. But he isn’t.”

“So it’s Scirland instead,” I said. “As I thought.”

“But that doesn’t make any more sense. Think, Isabella. Perhaps this is a waste of time, and the Crown no longer believes we’ll succeed. Even so—why pull out? It gains them nothing, and loses our excuse to be here in Akhia, with a Scirling military garrison. What benefit could they possibly get from this?”

None. There was no reason to close us down, except that we were no longer worth the resources spent to maintain our presence here. And however small our chance of success…

A small chance was better than none. They would only recall us to Scirland if they didn’t need us anymore. If they had found a different solution to the problem.

On a breath that did not carry beyond the two of us, Tom said, “Synthesis.”

The artificial production of dragonbone. Not just the substance itself—we’d been able to do that for years—but its structure, the microscopic lattice that gave it its tremendous strength. We were trying to breed dragons for their bones, so we could build caeligers and other devices that would allow our nation to maintain its power in the world, to meet the Yelangese and defeat them. But if our people could make the necessary material in a laboratory, it would be a damned sight easier than what we’d been attempting at Dar al-Tannaneen.

Someone at home had figured it out. We had synthetic dragonbone, and Tom and I were no longer relevant.

Conflicting emotions warred within my heart. Synthesis would obviate the need to slaughter dragons for their bones—perhaps. Scirland would not need to kill them, at least. But we would guard the secret of the process jealously, far better than Tom and I had guarded the notes taken from Gaetano Rossi’s laboratory. Every other nation would still be reliant on natural sources to supply them. If my country launched an aerial armada, others would be forced to reply, by whatever means they could.

And even though I had hoped for that success ever since we discovered preserved dragonbone in Vystrana, I could not help resenting its effect now. Whatever the reason, it was still robbing me of my place here. I doubted the Crown would be announcing its achievement, not any time in the near future—which meant Tom and I would be going home in disgrace, the naturalists who had failed to breed dragons. I would leave behind this place, my work… Suhail.

Unless…

“What are you thinking?” Tom asked warily.

“I am thinking,” I said, choosing my words with care, “that sending us home like this is very foolish.”

Tom cocked his head to one side, frowning. I elaborated. “Not simply the loss of what scholarly advances we might make here—though yes, that as well. But it did not take you long at all to guess why our work was no longer needed. Who is to say another will not make the same leap?”

“The Yelangese.”

“We certainly know they’ve been keeping watch on us. Other nations may guess as well. Sending us home is as good as sending up a banner that proclaims, Scirland has found a solution.”

Tom leaned back against the edge of the wall, crossing his arms over his chest. His energy had subsided, leaving him quiet and grim. “They won’t be able to stop it—not short of serious action, at least, that would amount to a declaration of war. But it would give them time to prepare.”

Our military minds would want to keep this a secret as long as they could, so as to get the advantage over our enemies. I had no particular interest in supporting that aim; wars, to me, were a thing that made my work more difficult (although honesty prompts me to admit that they have on occasion also facilitated it: viz. our presence in Akhia). In this instance, however, our goals might align. “If we were permitted to stay here and carry on our work, it might mislead them for a while longer.”

He stared at me. Then he said, enunciating each word with distinct clarity, “That would make us bait.”

I had not thought of it from that angle. Weighed the benefit of a smokescreen against the cost of maintaining it, yes; considered the associated risk, no. “We’re already bait, Tom. Had we not met with Pensyth this morning, everything would be as it was yesterday: the two of us working to breed dragons, and the Yelangese trying to stop us.”

“There’s a bit of difference between swimming in shark-infested water because you’re trying to retrieve something from the bottom, and staying in just because you’re already there and haven’t been eaten yet.”

“We are still trying to retrieve something from the bottom. All that has changed is whether anybody on shore cares whether we—Oh, hang the metaphor.” I pressed my fingertips to my temples. The removal of poison from my diet had improved my health, but the sun was bright, and I had left my hat behind in Pensyth’s office. A headscarf alone did nothing to shade my eyes. “Look, the Yelangese have been rather less dangerous to us than some of the other things we’ve faced. Poison, at least, may be watched for. Diseases and storms come regardless of caution. Do you want to stay here or not?”

He pressed his lips together, still staring at me. Then he turned and went back to his previous pose, hands braced against the edge of the wall, looking out over the compound. This time I joined him.

It was a steep mountain we had set ourselves to climb, trying to breed some of the largest and most dangerous predators in the world. I had entertained any number of doubts as to whether we would succeed—and still did. But to think only of that obscured the fact that there were splendid views to be had from partway up the slope, and satisfaction to be found in attaining the tops of various ridges, even if they were not the peak itself.

It was, apparently, my turn to wander off down the twisty byways of metaphor. In simple terms, we had done a certain amount of good work at Dar al-Tannaneen, and could still do more. Even if we failed to reach our main goal, that should not be permitted to overshadow everything else we might achieve.

And there were creatures down there in the compound whose lives depended on us. One could certainly argue that the lives of the dragons had not been improved by our interference; but having interfered, I could not simply wash my hands of them.

“Yes,” Tom said quietly. “I want to stay.”

I put one hand over his, pressed until he turned his hand palm-up and gripped mine in return. “Good,” I said. “Now let’s go talk to Pensyth.”

SIXTEEN

We had to choose our words carefully. It seemed quite likely that the colonel had no awareness of the laboratory side of matters; Lord Ferdigan might, but he would not thank us for opening our mouths any wider than necessary. In the end, we persuaded our military overseer to give us time, to continue the project while our suggestion was referred up the chain of command.

But we also knew better than to trust that referral to a third party. “Your title will impress him more,” Tom said.

I shook my head at once. “Were I a man, yes. But he is a military fellow; women are not part of his world, except as distant kin back home that he writes letters to from time to time.” (The exceptions would not be the sort of women he would listen to with any respect.) “You are also a Colloquium Fellow, as I am not. Trust in that, Tom.”

“And in my sex,” he said wryly. “I would accuse you of wanting to dodge politics—I suppose saying that does amount to an accusation—but your points are fair regardless.” He sighed heavily. “Then I suppose I pack my bags for Sarmizi.”

I would have gone with him, but neither of us wanted to leave the House of Dragons unattended. Even though Pensyth had promised to give us time to appeal the decision to the general, it would be all too easy for him to begin arranging the closure, on the assumption that Lord Ferdigan would tell us to follow the orders we had been given. I would stay and keep our work going.

This meant taking in deliveries of eggs, which the Aritat were bringing according to the schedule Tom and I had developed. With the aid of an interpreter, I spent some time discussing improvements to our haulage methods, based on my records of the honeyseeker eggs. I knew making alterations now would bias our data: the more mature eggs would fare better regardless, simply by dint of longer residence in their natural habitat. Unfortunately, I lacked the control data to compare this against (previous eggs having been collected so haphazardly), nor could I afford to sacrifice some of this round simply for comparison. But neither could I wait an entire year to try again with new methods. Healthy eggs, or at least the hope thereof, had to trump proper experiment design.

At least I could use the information they provided to care better for the new arrivals. Qurrat was not nearly so warm as the Jefi would be by now, so we used braziers to warm the egg sands, trying to approximate the temperatures that would prevail farther south. While I waited for those to hatch, I tried to devise an exercise regimen for our adult drakes, on the theory that aggravating them into movement would improve their health and therefore their behaviour. I also kept watch on the ongoing honeyseeker project, as well as observing the juvenile drakes in their growth (and trying a few ill-fated experiments involving proximity between them and the adults)—in short, I tried to do the work of two people, and got very little sleep as a result.

A bare week into this, I said peevishly to Andrew, “Give me one good reason I should not simply sleep here.”

My brother gaped at me. “Here? You mean—in your office?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. There’s no room for a pallet; I’d have to roll it up every morning or be stepping on it all day. But there are empty rooms. Surely I could use one.”

“Why would you do that, when you have a perfectly good room in the city?”

I rose from my chair and paced restlessly. Even though I was tired, the whirl of thoughts in my head made it difficult to sit still. “Because it is in the city. I waste too much time coming and going from there. Not to mention the concerns about sabotage. What if the Yelangese take it into their heads to attack me there? Should I endanger Shimon and Aviva, just because they were willing to have me in their house?”

That sobered Andrew. “Even so—Isabella, this is a military post. Well, sort of. My point is, you’d be sleeping down the hall from military men.”

“The same military men to whom I am already entrusting my safety. I fail to see why closer residence should be a problem.” My tone dared him to argue.

Andrew dragged at the front of his uniform, making an exaggerated face. “You realize what will happen if you do this, don’t you? I’ll have to start sleeping here.”

I stopped in my tracks, startled. “You mean—you haven’t been?”

“No. At least, not all nights.” He reddened. “I, ah—made alternate arrangements.”

One part of me very much wanted to ask what those were; the other part very much did not. There are things I feel it is best not to know about the private life of one’s brother. “I am sure I can manage very well on my own.”

“Oh, I’m sure you can. The question is whether anybody else can cope with you managing.” Andrew sighed dramatically. “I’ll talk to Pensyth.”

Unlike my brother, Pensyth was in favour of the arrangement, as it saved him the trouble of sending an armed guard to collect me from the Segulist Quarter every morning. A bedroom was made up for me, with a local girl visiting daily to help out; I took this as a positive sign, since anything that made my circumstances here seem more permanent argued in favour of the programme continuing. In order to encourage this thinking, I slept there the very next night—and that is how I came to be present when the House of Dragons was lit on fire.

We had men keeping watch, of course, but we had not fortified the place as well as we might. In the small hours of the night someone lofted an incendiary device through one of the broken shutters, and another was set at the shed where we kept feed for the livestock. A third I think was meant for the egg sands, but it caught in one of the spindly trees that remained from the estate’s long-dead gardens, leaving the branches burning like a torch.

By the time I stumbled out of bed, the soldiers were rallying to fight the various blazes. I stared at the dancing flames, a sheet clutched around me as a nod to modesty. Indecision paralyzed me: what should I rush to save? The eggs? Our records? The adult drakes could survive well enough; they were out in the open, away from anything that could easily burn, and were resilient against fire besides, on account of their extraordinary breath. But the juveniles… their enclosures were much closer to the flames, and smoke inhalation could be a very real danger, especially for those whose health was not good.

I hurried toward that building, hiking up the sheet so I would not trip over its edge. The air was hazed enough to sting my lungs, though I had not begun coughing yet. I reached the building where we kept the juveniles and wrenched the door open, heart full of fear at what I might find.

The air inside was surprisingly clear, on account of being closed off. It would have been better to keep it that way, but I had no lantern, and did not want to fumble around looking for one. Instead I opened one of the windows, admitting enough moonlight for me to see my charges.

Most of them were awake, roused by the noise outside. They came to the bars of their cages as I approached, poking their muzzles through the gaps, snapping at me as if to ask why I had not brought any food. I knew better than to reach out, the way I might have with dogs or horses; they did not want their heads scratched for reassurance. Trying would only lose me a finger. But I peered closely at them, looking for signs of impending asphyxia, and found none. Even the ones that had not gotten up were only sleeping, occasionally cracking an eye to glare at those who disturbed their rest.

So far, then, they were safe enough. But if the fire spread, that might change very rapidly.

What would I do if it did? Set the juveniles loose? Some of them were relatively harmless—like Lumpy, who could not move fast enough to catch anybody who saw him coming. But the eldest, feisty Ascelin, was a different matter. It was even possible he could fly away, though his wings had not seen much exercise in his life.

Would I risk that in order to avoid suffocating him with smoke? I barely even had to ask myself that question before I had my answer:

Yes, I would.

All of that, however, was putting the cart before the horse. Such measures might not even be necessary. If I opened another set of shutters, I would be able to see the fire and make a more educated decision. Before I could move, though, someone else came through the door.

The angle of the moonlight left his face in shadow. All I had to go on was his silhouette, which showed me the hunched posture of a man who does not want to be seen. He froze when he spotted me, and in one hand he clutched something I could not make out. Then he lifted it, and the blade caught the light.

It was a sword.

And not an Akhian scimitar, either. The blade was straight, its style unfamiliar to me. I did not need to know its type, though, to make the appropriate calculations. The cages were large enough that he would not be able to kill the juveniles if they hung well back… but some of them would not, especially if they smelled blood. Oh yes: I had no doubt that this man had come here to kill our immature drakes. He seemed too surprised to find me there for me to think I was his target.

I stood motionless, my back to the cages. I had no weapon with me; I had even dropped my bedsheet during the inspection. Armed with nothing more than my nightgown, I had no chance against that long blade.

He snapped something in a language I did not understand. The sound of it, though, told me what the shadows had hidden.

This man was Yelangese.

I retreated one step, praying Ascelin would not try to get a mouthful of my arm. Of all the juveniles for me to put at my back, he was both the best and the worst, depending on how he chose to act. “Please,” I said. “I just came to make certain they were well—” This in Scirling; I could not have answered him in Yelangese if I wanted to. But the point was not to communicate so much as to delay.

He was not fooled. He came forward, far enough for me to make out his features and see him frowning at me. Another question, no more comprehensible than the first—but I suspect, based on his tone, that he demanded to know what I was doing.

A moment later, he had his answer.

I had, behind the cover of my body, worked free the hook that held the cage shut. Upon his words, I yanked the door open and stood well clear.

For Ascelin inside that cage, the man’s sudden forward leap looked precisely like an attack. And so it was: one aimed at me, but my feisty charge showed no inclination to differentiate.

He got a mouthful of the man’s upraised sword arm, preventing the downward stroke. The man howled and thrashed at him, ineffectually at first, then jamming his thumb into Ascelin’s eye. This indeed persuaded the drake to pull back; but he took a portion of flesh with him, and the sword fell with a clatter. After that it became even more gruesome, and I retained barely enough wit to flee out the door and close it behind me. The window, I prayed, would be too small for Ascelin to climb through.

Our soldiers and labourers soon had the fires under control; the flames had not taken too firm hold before they were noticed. Only the tree was still burning brightly by then, and that only because it was judged a lesser priority. I found Andrew outside the barracks, and brushed away his exclamations over my half-clad state. “I need help with the juveniles,” I said. “One of them, at least. I may have set him loose, and I cannot get him back into his cage on his own.”

“Set him loose?” Andrew repeated, staring. “Why on earth—and in your nightgown—Isabella, what the hell is going on?”

“I will show you,” I said. Which was, more than anything, an expression of shock: the heat of the moment having faded, I was now shaking, and trying very hard not to think about what I had done to that man. No one can witness as many dragons hunting as I have without acquiring a strong stomach; but there is a great deal of difference between watching a gazelle be crunched in a dragon’s jaws and watching a man suffer the same fate. I had seen men killed in such ways before, but I hope I will never become accustomed.

What my brother said when the door to the room of cages was opened, I will not print here. Suffice it to say that it was very foul and very appalling. I waited outside while the men got the young drake under control; this was not terribly difficult, as food made him logy and slow. Once he was back in his cage, I went with Andrew to report the matter to Pensyth.

“Good God, woman,” the colonel said when I was done explaining. “I heard the story of what you did in Keonga, but—damn me, I didn’t think it was true.”

I flinched. He sounded horrified, not impressed; and well he might be. What I had done here was not admirable, however effective it might have been. The man’s screams were echoing in my memory, and I had grown very cold.

Fortunately Andrew noticed this latter. “God, Isabella—here, let me fetch you a blanket.” Pensyth and I sat in silence, him staring at me, me trying not to meet his gaze, until Andrew came back with one of the scratchy blankets from the soldiers’ quarters. I clutched this around me gratefully, more for warmth than modesty. Desert nights could be chill, even in summer, and all the heat had long since gone out of me.

“Sir,” Andrew said once I was covered, “Wardinge says we got one of them. Problem is, he doesn’t speak Scirling or Akhian.”

His words roused me from my half-trance. “Colonel, if you do not have anyone who speaks Yelangese…” Pensyth made a gesture which I interpreted as admission that he did not. “The sheikh’s brother does. Suhail ibn Ramiz. And I imagine the Aritat will want to be involved in this investigation.”

I also imagined Pensyth would like to keep them out of it—but he didn’t stand much chance of that. His jaw tightened, and he looked over my shoulder to Andrew. My brother must have nodded or shrugged, because the colonel said, “Thank you. For that and for your… quick thinking in defense of this place. I’ll have Captain Hendemore escort you back to your room.”

Ordinarily I would have objected at being shuffled out of the way, but not this time. I took the blanket with me, and curled up tight beneath my covers until sleep finally came.

Despite my disturbed night, I woke early, out of habit. And it was a good thing I did, because no matter what had happened in the night, the business of the House of Dragons must go on.

The labourers were feeding the drakes. We tried to approximate their schedule in the wild, supplying them with meat every three days; it just so happened that this was one of their days. I tried not to look at the bloody flesh as the men dropped it in the scales, focusing all my attention on the needle and the notes I made. It was important to know how much each beast ate—even if I would have been happier not recording that Ascelin had no appetite today.

I saw when Suhail arrived, accompanied by a number of other Akhian men, but made no effort to join them. I had no wish to observe the prisoner’s interrogation, and trusted that I would learn the results in due course. When the bare minimum of my duties was done, I went and sat on one of the walls, letting the hot summer breeze ruffle my scarf and the sun sink into my bones.

Andrew found me there. “Are you trying to roast yourself?”

“It is the one place in Dar al-Tannaneen I will not be interrupted,” I said. “Or when I am—as now—I can see it coming, and prepare.”

He settled next to me, back against the stone of the parapet. “What’s on your mind?”

It was a peculiar relief not to have him ask whether I was all right. We both knew I was not, and needn’t pretend. “What Pensyth said last night. About what I did in Keonga.”

“The battle, you mean.”

I was sitting with my knees drawn up to my chest: not a very ladylike pose. I wrapped the fingers of one hand tight around the other and looked away. “After you cut that man’s throat outside the Banu Safr camp, it bothered me a great deal. Seeing you kill someone. The more I think about it, though… no one died when I used the sea-serpent to bring down the caeliger. But in Vystrana I provoked the rock-wyrms into attacking the boyar and his men. In Mouleen we put fangfish into the water to slow the Labane, and last night I let Ascelin out of his cage to savage that man.”

Andrew—ordinarily the most voluble of my brothers—held his peace while I marshaled the words and got them out. “I have not killed anyone directly. But time and time again, I use dragons to do the work for me.”

“They aren’t weapons,” Andrew said. “They’re animals. Doing what they do. You just… make use of that.”

“Is it any different? It might even be worse. A sword or a gun is made for killing, and does not care if its owner uses it thus. These are living creatures. They have other purposes besides murder—and they are not mine to use.”

Andrew picked at his fingernails. “You keep putting yourself in dangerous situations, Isabella. You have to defend yourself somehow.” He hesitated, chewing on his lower lip. “Do you… want me to teach you how to shoot a gun?”

I had not expected the offer. I had not expected anything at all; I was simply wallowing in the realization of my own deeds, without much thought for what I would do going forward. Andrew spoke with the air of a man who knew he would be banished from family holidays forevermore if word got out of what he’d done… but he was willing.

Was I?

I tried to envision it. Myself, with a rifle over my shoulder or a pistol at my hip. I did frequently end up in dangerous situations—and when I did, I was dependent upon those around me for defense. If not dragons, then other people: Andrew, cutting that man’s throat. Dagmira, smashing a jar over Gaetano Rossi’s head. The Moulish, threatening Velloin and the Yembe hunting party. Even the “pure” of Mouleen did not shy from the need for hunting or defending their land with force; they simply refrained from the act themselves, for reasons of religion. Was it any more moral to have others fight on your behalf?

I did not think it was—and yet. Had I been carrying a weapon during my various misadventures, who knew what might have gone differently? My enemies might well have treated me more harshly, because of the threat I posed. I might have treated them more harshly. There is a proverb that says, To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. If I had a gun, it would shape my thinking; the violent response would always be there. A possibility—sometimes a tempting one. It might result in more death; and one of those deaths might be my own.

Armed or not, I might die in the field. But I would rather die failing to think my way out of a situation than failing to fight my way out.

“I should like to be able to defend myself,” I said, choosing my verb carefully. “Not to shoot or to kill—because I do not want to become the sort of person for whom that is a standard option when trouble arises. But I know there are ways to make myself a little safer, and learning them might be valuable.”

(Not long after my return from Akhia, I made an offhand mention of this conversation during a public event in Falchester—omitting that it was my brother who made the offer. Owing to the degree of celebrity I enjoyed by then, my words were taken up by a great many people: some of them treating it as a rallying cry, others as a sign of how far our society has fallen. Of the latter I will say nothing, but of the former I will note that there are individuals who have undertaken to teach the simple basics of defense to ladies. I deplore the need for such things… but so long as the need exists, I cannot fault anyone for protecting herself. Especially not when I chose to do the same.)

The fruits of that conversation did not come immediately. I had the House of Dragons to take care of, and there was no privacy in which Andrew could teach me anything, unless we turned my bedroom into a training ground. But even having addressed the issue lifted a good deal of the weight from my heart; and so I was able to resume my work with a much clearer mind.

SEVENTEEN

Tom’s news upon his return was mixed.

“We can stay,” he said, putting that first because he knew nothing else he said would leave a mark on my brain until that part had been laid to rest. “Lord Ferdigan was very keen to send you home, on the grounds that it’s all well and good for me to risk my neck, but not so acceptable for you.”

“As if I have not risked my neck without his permission on many occasions,” I said with a sniff. “That is excellent news—but you have the look of a man who has not said everything yet.”

“Indeed.” Tom dropped wearily into his office chair; his had been a strenuous journey, with no time wasted. The chair creaked in protest at this treatment. “The bad news is that we won’t have any additional funding, and may even lose some.”

Lose some? I dreaded to think where cuts might be made. Feed? Labour? We had our premises from the caliph; I had no idea whether we were paying rent to him or the local emir for the privilege, but surely relocating us would be even more expensive. “So much for moving the females and males a sufficient distance apart, I suppose. Why is he tightening our belts?”

Tom rubbed his eyes. “I feel like the sand has scoured my corneas right off. From Lord Ferdigan’s perspective, this isn’t a research programme anymore; it’s a diversionary tactic. And we don’t need a lot of money to be a diversion. In some ways, we’re more effective if we’re strapped for cash; then the Yelangese will think we don’t have a prayer of making real progress.”

We wouldn’t have a prayer of it, at this rate. I went to my own chair and settled into it, much more gently than Tom had done. “Has anyone told you what the Yelangese did while you were away?”

Judging by the way Tom’s hand froze in midair, they had not. It fell to me to tell him of the arson, and the man captured and questioned afterward. “It went further than we realized,” I said. “The sabotage, that is. Do you recall Prima dying? He said someone crept in and gave her poisoned meat in the night, for quite a while. We thought her appetite was failing solely due to ill health; but the ill health was not accidental, and she was getting additional meals besides.”

The tension in Tom’s shoulders said that it was a very good thing none of the saboteurs were in front of him right now. “Then they moved on to poisoning us.”

“They would have started sooner, but we went into the desert. Their leader judged that it would be better to let blame fall on the Banu Safr, rather than continue to risk revealing themselves at Dar al-Tannaneen.” I sighed and sat back. The wicker bottom of my chair sagged beneath me. “What will come of this, I do not know, except that it will not be good.”

Tom’s voice was quiet and grim. “We thought the first act of war would be a fleet of caeligers moving into position. Instead it might be a firebomb thrown through a window.”

The first act of war had been the Battle of Keonga… or the caeliger Suhail and I stole from Rahuahane… or the Marquess of Canlan sending men to break into Frederick Kemble’s laboratory… or myself taking Gaetano Rossi’s notebook from the cellar beneath Khirzoff’s lodge. How far back did the chain stretch? At what point could one circle an incident and say, This is where it began?

For nations, it was the point at which they issued formal declarations of war. And it was indeed possible that the spark which lit that fuse would be the one that set the House of Dragons on fire.

We had come here to further the war effort, but our importance in that regard had been superceded by breakthroughs elsewhere. Our attempt to delay conflict by continuing our work had possibly done the opposite. It was enough to make me question everything we were doing here. “Tom… do you think we can succeed? At breeding dragons, I mean.”

He left off rubbing his eyes and regarded me silently. His skin was as tanned as I think it could be, but still more red than tan; the whites of his eyes were slightly bloodshot. He looked tired. I did not imagine I looked a good deal better. Our lives here were not so hard as all that—they had been harder at many points in Mouleen—but there was also no end in sight. For everything we had learned, we still had no answer to the basic question we had come here to address.

“Eventually, yes,” Tom said slowly. “One way or another, we’ll figure it out. Or someone will. But it will take a long time.”

Years, in all likelihood. Science of this sort is a matter of testing theories and methods, seeing the results, refining them and testing again. Some of that process could happen within a single breeding season, but not all. “I’ve been thinking about the mating flights, and the role of temperature in egg incubation. What if it plays a role in conception as well? We know the flights must heat the dragons tremendously—all that exertion in the middle of the day. There are species of pine whose cones do not open and deposit their seeds until a forest fire comes. What if drakes are the same? How are we to breed them without mating flights? Are we to build giant ovens for them to lounge in?” I stopped, shaking my head to keep myself from rambling on more. “We have too many questions. I could be here the rest of my life and never answer them all.”

“That’s scholarship. There’s always more to learn.” Tom sighed and leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees and linking his hands together. “But yes, I see your point. Are you saying you want to quit, after all?”

“No.” My vehemence startled even me. A moment ago I had been considering that, without thinking about it directly; but the moment he asked, my indecision vanished. “I just wonder—when we will say we have done enough.”

For that question, I had no answer. Tom did not have one, either, and we sat in silence for a long time before picking up our work once more.

The mood at Dar al-Tannaneen had changed. Whatever pretense we maintained, the forward momentum of the programme had faltered, and everyone felt it.

It is difficult to describe the effect this had on me. I was still working with dragons on a daily basis, in a context where I was—albeit slowly, with grudging will—being accepted as a respectable intellectual; these things did not lose their savour. And yet, I think on some subconscious level I had begun to question the worthiness of what I was accomplishing there. Despite what I had told myself about mountains and the climbing thereof, the value of views from partway up the slope even if one did not reach the summit… I had come here to climb the entire mountain. It was disheartening to consider that I might have to surrender that goal.

We simply had not realized how tall the peak was, and how steep its slopes. Andrew had said it, when I first arrived in Akhia: we expected that our superior scientific knowledge should vanquish this problem, even though it was sufficiently intractable as to have stumped the world for millennia. Breeding large predators in captivity is not easy, even when they are not dragons. How many years was I prepared to spend on this challenge?

I found myself staring at a piece of paper one night, contemplating what I might write to Jake. His summer holidays would begin soon; he wanted to join me in Akhia for the duration. If he came, would it be his one chance to see this country before I departed? Or would it be an acknowledgment that I lived here now, and would for the foreseeable future?

The decision might not be mine to make. Eventually the news of synthesis would become public, and at that point, the Crown would have no reason to maintain us here at all.

I had not yet dressed for bed. Although it was late, and as usual I would need to rise early the next morning, I left my chair and went for a walk around the compound.

Guards still patrolled the site, although the Yelangese leader had apparently been the man Ascelin killed. I nodded a greeting to one, who surprised me by saying, “Is everything all right, Dame Isabella? You and Mr. Wilker are both out late.”

“Tom is up?” I said. “Do you know where I might find him?”

The soldier directed me to the pits that held the adult drakes. Arriving there, I saw Tom leaning against a railing, one knee bent, his foot propped on the lowest bar. He turned as I approached, and did not appear surprised to see me.

“I’ve been thinking,” he said.

I joined him at the rail. “As have I. But let’s hear yours first.”

“The Basilisk,” Tom said. “We managed that voyage without any support from the Crown.”

He and I had known one another too long for me not to guess where his thoughts might be aimed. “A voyage of limited duration and an ongoing research programme are rather different things.”

“True. But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible.” He kept his voice low; Quinta was not far away, a dimly seen shape sleeping in her little cave. We did not want to rouse her. “Between the two of us, we correspond with just about every dragon naturalist in Anthiope. We’re even friends with a few. The army wouldn’t look kindly on other people getting involved just yet, of course—this is still their enterprise. But when they lose interest…”

My mind was already racing down the path he had revealed. We would have to lay the foundations ahead of time—that was certain. If we waited until the army closed Dar al-Tannaneen down, it would be too late; our adults would be slaughtered, our juveniles and eggs disposed of by one means or another, and everything here would have to start from scratch. If we already had interested parties lined up, though…

Then Dar al-Tannaneen might persist beyond this moment, and beyond our involvement.

It was not the peak we had set out to scale. But it was a worthy challenge, and one I could take pride in. If I walked away from Akhia knowing I had helped create something of lasting importance, I could rest a good deal better at night.

“What thoughts were keeping you awake?” Tom asked, when the silence had grown too long.

I shook my head, smiling. “They do not matter now. You have given me a solution already.”

Many people know that the International Fraternity of Draconic Research has its roots in the House of Dragons in Qurrat. I have long made a point of noting that it was Tom, not I, who first had the idea of transforming our military commission there into a collaborative research programme that would bring together naturalists from many countries. But very few people are aware that it began on a quiet night at the edge of Quinta’s enclosure, when neither Tom nor I could sleep for uncertainty of what our future, and that of Dar al-Tannaneen, would hold.

I got very little sleep at all that night, my mind awhirl with notions of who to contact, already composing the letters in my head. It would not be easy, of course—but for the first time in months, I felt that my path ahead was clear.

I have never been very good at following a path.

Our second desert trip became the focus of my efforts, to the point where it bordered on obsession. I knew this might be the last bit of work Tom and I were able to conduct in Akhia, and I was determined that it would be as productive as I could possibly arrange.

The Jefi in summer, however, is not a place within human control. “You want to go back out there?” Andrew said, incredulous. “Isabella—you do realize it gets above forty degrees, don’t you? Even as high as fifty, I’ve been told. And there’s no water to be found anywhere.”

“Now that is preposterous,” I said. “There are oases in the Labyrinth.”

My brother made a strangled noise. “Wait. You don’t just want to go into the Jefi… you want to go into the Labyrinth of Drakes?”

“Of course. Why do you think it has that name? There are drakes there, Andrew, and that is what I am here to study. They nest there, they lay their eggs there—”

“—they eat people alive there—”

“It is summer. They will be dozing in the heat. And when else am I to go to the Labyrinth? In the winter it was too dangerous because of the rains, and the risk of flood. This is much safer.”

“Safer” was, of course, a relative term. The Labyrinth is a treacherous place in any season. It is easy to become lost in its winding canyons; there are predators that view travellers as attractive meals, drakes not least among them. Oases exist, but finding them is more easily said than done. On paper that territory belongs to the Aritat, but at that time of year they are elsewhere, in lands that can support their herds of camels. The depths of the Jefi are abandoned to merchants and wild animals, the former tracing carefully defined routes from one water source to another, the latter often haunting the same spots.

We could not take a large group. There is often safety in numbers, but not under these conditions; more people would mean more demand for water, and we could all too easily drain a spring dry, leaving ourselves to die of dehydration. We could not stay long in any one place, no matter what intellectual temptations we found. As soon as our supplies fell to a certain threshold, we must retreat, or face the consequences.

“At least it will be dry,” I said to Tom at one point, trying to make light of the dangers. “Perhaps I will finally get rid of the mold that coated me in Mouleen.”

Tom and I would go; that was certain. Andrew would go as well, despite my protests. “How am I to show my face at home if I don’t?” he demanded. “Mother may not approve of your work, but she would approve even less of me abandoning you to die in it. No, much better that I should die with you than show myself anywhere near her afterward.”

We were not so stupid as to go alone, of course. Our guide would be al-Jelidah, the Ghalbi fellow who had assisted us during the winter. He knew the Labyrinth better than any man living: every sliver of shade, every crack where water might be found. With us would also come Haidar, who had assisted our efforts before. That made our party five, and on Haidar’s advice, we should take no more than six.

I said to Tom, “I want our sixth to be Suhail.”

His expression showed wariness. “Is that wise?”

“I do not care if it is wise. I do not want to see the Labyrinth of Drakes—the site of so many legendary Draconean ruins—without him at my side.”

Tom was sitting on his haunches alongside Quartus’ enclosure when I said this to him. He ran one hand through his hair, then wiped it on his trousers. Even this close to the river, we laboured under a constant film of dust and sand. It mixed with sweat to form a gritty paste that no amount of bathing could dispose of, for no sooner was one clean than the paste built up again. In the Jefi and the Labyrinth it would be worse, for there we would lack the water to bathe in. “You know what they will say about you.”

“They are already saying it. I do not care.” A tight sensation burned behind my sternum as I said this. My entire life I had gone back and forth between two extremes, the one disclaiming all concern for what people might think, the other carefully weighing the cost. I had spent eight months here in Akhia listening to the second voice. My patience for it was wearing thin.

Tom said, “He might care.”

“For his own reputation? Or for mine?” I put up a hand before Tom could answer that. “He has been in the desert before—in the Labyrinth itself. I trust him to bring us out of there alive. Al-Jelidah I do not know, not truly; Suhail I do. He has saved my life before.”

I gave Tom some time to consider this. It was, after all, not only my reputation I would be endangering, or even Suhail’s. Tom had fought to have me included at Dar al-Tannaneen, when he could have taken the opportunity for himself with far less struggle. What I did here reflected on him, too.

“Ask him,” Tom said at last. “It isn’t our decision to make—not alone.”

“Thank you,” I said in response to his unspoken agreement. “I am sure we can find a way to make this work.”

EIGHTEEN

I thought about approaching Mahira for aid. She had assisted us before, arranging that meeting in the garden; she might do so again. But such an approach smacked of the clandestine, which would not serve my purposes at all. There was nothing to be ashamed of in recruiting the aid of an experienced desert traveller. If it was permissible for me to work with al-Jelidah and Haidar, why not Suhail?

Our enterprise had a small stock of official letterhead, which I appropriated for this task. That very afternoon, before I could begin to doubt myself, I wrote a message and sent it to the sheikh’s household, requesting Suhail’s presence at Dar al-Tannaneen at his earliest convenience.

A reply came back before sunset, saying he would come the following morning. I notified Tom of this, so that he might be in attendance for the meeting—I did not use the word “chaperon”—and failed almost entirely to sleep that night.

The next morning I rose and dressed with more care than usual, as compensation for my poor rest. I made my rounds of the site while Tom made his and, having finished before him, went to the office to await the day’s next task.

It was not long at all before Lieutenant Marton tapped on the door and opened it, saying, “Dame Isabella, Hajj Suhail ibn Ramiz is here to see you.”

The distracted thought went through my mind that I ought to tell the poor lieutenant he need not be so formal with me anymore. I did not follow through on this, however, because the rest of me was occupied with a more pressing matter. “Where is Tom? He was supposed to be here.”

“I’m sorry, Dame Isabella.” Marton shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other. “I think he’s been caught by some business outside.”

(“Caught by some business,” indeed. Had I known at the time what was transpiring… in truth, I do not know what I would have done. Perhaps it is better that I did not.)

I wavered. Should I ask Suhail to wait? It would be the proper thing to do, and yet—“Show him in,” I said. As I had told myself before: there was nothing to be ashamed of here. We were conducting official business. If any prying eyes or ears spied on our interactions, they would see nothing worthy of gossip.

The formality of the entire thing had Suhail’s eyebrows up as he came in. He gave me a very correct greeting, though, not even touching his heart, which might have signaled inappropriate warmth. When that was done, he said, “I understand from Haidar that you are going back out into the desert.”

“Yes, in late Messis—earlier if we can manage it. And that is why I’ve asked you here today.” I tucked my hands beneath the edge of the desk, where no one could see if I fidgeted. “You have traveled extensively in that area, have you not? The Jefi in general, and the Labyrinth of Drakes specifically. In the summertime, no less, so as to avoid the risk of flood.”

Suhail nodded. “I would be glad to offer any advice I can.”

“I intend that you should have every opportunity to give us that advice. I would like—” I caught myself, cursing inwardly. “That is, Tom and I have discussed it, and we would like you to accompany us.”

He had guessed it before he even came there. He must have, because his head began to shake even before I finished my statement. “Umm Yaqub… that will not be possible.”

“Why not?” I pressed my lips together, not continuing until I was certain I could do so without my tone growing too sharp. “We shall have Andrew with us. Is that not enough to make everything proper?”

“Propriety is not the problem.” Suhail bent his head, looking as if he wanted to press his fingertips to his temples, banishing a headache. “Rumour is.”

I gritted my teeth. “We have done nothing to encourage that.”

“Nothing?” He laughed, and it carried a rueful edge. “Had I gone home immediately after you arrived in camp, that might have been true. But I did not want to flee the moment you appeared, so I stayed a few days. Then the Banu Safr stole our camels. So I went to get the camels back. While I was gone, the Banu Safr stole you. So I went to get you back. And now every last member of the Aritat in the desert and the city alike is reciting that damned poem, about how I crept into the enemy camp in the dead of night to rescue a lady in distress. You have been admirably disciplined, but I…” He stopped, shaking his head.

Although he no doubt intended “admirably disciplined” as a compliment, I found myself regretting what I had done to deserve it. I could not keep from sounding plaintive as I said, “Must that get in the way? As near as I can tell, your actions against the Banu Safr have won you acclaim, not censure. I understand that your brother is concerned for your family’s image—but surely it does you more good to assist in this work, upon which he has staked the Aritat reputation, than to sit idle just to avoid me.”

He did not answer immediately. The silence weighed upon me, until I voiced a bitter addendum. “Or is that the precise issue? Not propriety, nor even the general weight of rumour. Me, myself. I am a scandal at home; I carry that scandal with me here. Were I another woman—one whose reputation was not in doubt—then perhaps other factors could prevail. But I am not, and so a decent man may not associate with me.”

The fury and shame of it burned within me. I was so very tired of being judged in such fashion; and yet, being tired of it achieved nothing. Whatever my feelings on the matter, I must endure. The only way to escape would be to surrender, to retreat into obscurity and never show my face again… and that, I would not do. The path I followed had brought me to Jacob, Tom, Lord Hilford, Suhail himself. I would not surrender the hope of this man’s companionship, not if there were any possible way to keep it.

“It is not you,” Suhail said. He spoke with conviction—as if his conviction could convince the world. “Isa—Umm Yaqub. I have nothing but the greatest respect and admiration for you, and will defend that against any man who says otherwise. But it is on behalf of your good reputation that I must not go with you. To travel like that, with a woman who is neither my kin nor my wife…”

“Then what if we were married?”

I sometimes imagine there is a clerk behind a desk situated between the brain and the mouth. It is his job to examine utterances on their way out, and stamp them with approval or send them back for reconsideration. If such a clerk exists, mine must be very harried and overworked; and on occasion he puts his head down on the desk in despair, letting things pass without so much as a second glance.

Suhail stared at me. Then he looked at the floor. Then out the window. Then, in an uneven voice, he said, “A limited-term marriage? As you did with Liluakame, in Keonga. It… could work. The Sheqari school of jurisprudence holds that such things are permitted; the Taribbi says they are not. My brother is an adherent of the Uwani school, which has not rendered an opinion either way. But it might be possible.”

Until he mentioned them, I had not known that limited-term marriages existed in Amaneen legal thought. It was an elegant solution: as he said, I had done something of the kind in Keonga, when I married and then divorced Liluakame so as to satisfy the demands of my status as ke’anaka’i. I might do the same here, silencing the gossips by making an honest woman of myself, so to speak. Of course it would cause even greater scandal back home when the marriage ended—we certainly did not have such arrangements in Scirling law—but for now it might suffice.

The clerk was still derelict in his duty. I said, “It was not a limited-term arrangement that I had in mind.”

Suhail went utterly still. Then, very carefully, he spoke. “Did you just ask for my hand in marriage?”

My face could not have been hotter had a drake breathed on it. But I had advanced too far to retreat; the only way out was through. “I suppose I did. Dear heaven.”

We sat in silence. I could not look away from Suhail, nor him, apparently, from me. I could have drawn his portrait with my eyes closed; I had sketched him once during our voyage, and had looked at the image more times than I should admit in the years since. I thought of trying to find him long before I knew I was coming to Akhia. I never had the courage to follow through.

As a young woman, I had naively thought that I wanted Jacob Camherst to be my friend, because I could not conceive of a man being both friend and husband. But so he had been: husband first, then friend, as we inched our way toward something like a working partnership. Ill chance, however, had taken him from me before we could progress very far. Suhail had begun as a friend, and so I had thought of him, with great and focused determination… but that was not the entirety of what I wanted.

He said, a little breathlessly, “Everyone says you have no intention of marrying again.”

I would have asked who everyone was and why they thought this was any of their business—but the matter at hand took precedence. “I had none. Until this very moment. Intentions change.”

“Why?”

It was the same question I had asked Jacob, the day he came to propose marriage to me. I felt belated empathy for him, being put on the spot in such a fashion. “Because… because I do not want to go into the Labyrinth of Drakes without you. Never mind the practicalities of it; that is what we have al-Jelidah and Haidar for. I do not want to see that place without you at my side. I want you to show me the ruins that inspired you, and I want you present for any discoveries I might make. Now, and always.”

I paused to swallow. My mouth had gone very dry. “I—I said a thousand times that I had no interest in marrying again because marriage would almost certainly place restrictions on my life. A widow has freedoms a wife does not. But when I look at you, I do not see obstacles for my career, I see—” My face burned even more. “I see wings. A way to fly higher and farther than I can on my own.”

Far, far too late, it occurred to me that Lieutenant Marton could almost certainly hear us, as could anyone passing by the window.

Suhail eased forward in his chair. His eyes flickered as he searched my face: for what, I could not tell you. Evidence of insincerity? Of love? Of incipient lunacy? He would not find the first; the second, most definitely; the third, quite possibly.

The clerk had woken up at his desk and was frantically sorting through his records of what had transpired during his delinquency. Stammering, I said, “But you were considering only a limited arrangement. I presume too much, suggesting—”

“You presume nothing that is not true.”

I fell silent, save for the beating of my heart, which felt as loud as a drum.

“I would marry you,” Suhail said, “even if it meant my brother disavowing me on the spot. Which, I should warn you, he may do.”

What would my mother say? I lost one husband in Vystrana, and found another in Akhia. Suhail’s was not the only family that might have pronounced opinions on this matter. “We shall simply have to support ourselves with archaeology and dragons.”

Suhail laughed, and it was the light, joyous sound I had first heard during the voyage of the Basilisk. “I honestly cannot tell whether you are the most practical woman I have ever met, or the most deranged.”

“Why can it not be both?” I said. Inside I was soaring, as I had in the caeliger, on the glider I had called Furcula—only this time, I would not crash. “Now, before I commit an act that truly will start a scandal, tell me: how does one get married in Akhia?”

When I went in search of Andrew, I found him talking to Tom, with a demeanour I instantly recognized as suspicious.

Putting my hands on my hips, I glared in mock outrage at my brother and said, “Have you been delaying Tom on purpose?”

“Oh, good God,” Tom said, taking out his pocket watch. “Have I been keeping Suhail waiting?”

“Not in the slightest.” I advanced on Andrew, who retreated with a sheepish and hunted look. “I do not know what you intended, dearest brother, but you shall pay the price for your interference. Have you no care for your sister’s reputation?”

“I—”

“This shall be your penance. You must come with us to the judge and stand as witness to our marriage.”

There are certain moments in my life that I treasure. Most of them in one way or another have to do with dragons… but not all. The look on my brother’s face in that instant is one of the latter.

It was not quite so simple as that, of course. We needed a marriage contract, though it was considered sufficient under Amaneen law for the two of us to sort it out verbally in front of the astonished judge. Suhail had to give me a bridal gift; he offered the best camels and horses and all the supplies I might need for my second excursion to the desert, and I agreed that he need not present those things to me before the marriage itself was formalized. We rushed through these matters, for after so long spent pretending we were nothing more than respectful colleagues, we were eager to have the thing done.

I feel obligated to say I do not actually recommend such behaviour to young people (or even those not so young). There were a hundred questions Suhail and I did not answer before we wed. Our heady excitement carried us over them at the time… but sooner or later we must come down to the ground, and crashing, to return to my previous metaphor, was a distinct risk. I was from Scirland, he from Akhia: where would we live? His people do not have family names in the same manner as Scirlings: would I become Dame Isabella ibn Ramiz, or he Mr. Camherst, or some third alternative entirely? Amaneen custom says that the children of an Amaneen man must be raised in his faith, while Segulist custom says that the children of a Segulist woman belong to her faith: how would we resolve this dilemma? These are but three of the issues that would have been settled in any properly thought-out marriage contract, as opposed to the hasty verbal arrangement we made that day. There are any number of men and women who have rushed into such matters, expecting their love to overcome all complications, only to find later that it is not so simple.

And yet, any warning I issue must come with the inevitable footnote: it turned out splendidly for me. I regret nothing of what I did that day (though I tease Suhail that I should have held out for more camels). Take my cautions, then, for what you will.

Tom made no objection whatsoever; I suspect he was not very surprised. Andrew seemed astonished that his interference had borne such fruit—I believe he expected something to blossom, but not this quickly—and kept laughing immoderately throughout the entire affair. The judge was a friend of Suhail’s, educated with him in boyhood, and while he took Suhail aside for a quiet conversation when we first appeared, whatever objections he raised then were settled without fuss.

Thus was I married, scarcely two hours after I impulsively offered for my husband… and then Suhail and I went to share the news.

My new brother-in-law, I think, knew what had happened the moment we walked through his door. Perhaps it was only that neither of us was maintaining a pretense of aloofness any longer: we engaged in no improper displays of affection, of course, such as young people are prone to nowadays, but I could smile at my husband without fear of overstepping some bound. The sheikh’s wives were there, both of them women I had met only in passing: quiet, thin-faced Yusra, and stocky Iman one step behind her. Three of their children were present as well, including the youth Jafar, who would be fostered in the desert beginning next winter. Mahira finished out the set.

I watched their reactions closely as Suhail told them of our marriage. Yusra made little effort to hide her surprise; Iman, I think, was equally startled, but did a better job of concealing it. Jafar seemed more confused than anything else, while his two younger siblings showed no sign of caring about such tedious matters. Mahira appeared troubled, which did not surprise me, but did dishearten me a little. She had encouraged our friendship; of all of Suhail’s family, I had the best hope of approval and support from her. But of course she was also the most pious of them all, and I suspected—rightly, as it turned out—that her mind had immediately gone to matters religious. It is permitted for an Amaneen man to wed a Segulist woman, but that does not mean the road is an easy one.

You may imagine for yourself how Husam reacted. He did not rage; in a way it might have been better if he had. Instead he maintained a stony composure, suitable for the presence of an outsider—which is to say, myself. This composure, however, did not prevent him from making his disapproval plain.

I did what I could to mollify him. “I have greatly esteemed your brother since I first met him,” I said, omitting a reminder of where and how that had occurred so as to spare Husam’s sensibilities. He certainly would not want to know that my very first sight of Suhail had been when he was shirtless and diving off a cliff. “He is one of the cleverest men I know, and both brave and kind. Your tribe has given tremendous support to our work at Dar al-Tannaneen; it is fitting, I think, that the friendship of our nations be sealed in this fashion.”

That last may have been laying it on with a trowel. Husam’s brows drew together so swiftly I almost felt the breeze. I was happy to let Suhail take over then, telling the tale of how we reached this point and answering their concerns—for after all, he knew his kin far better than I.

The tension was made worse by my still-imperfect command of Akhian, which meant that much of the swift-moving conversation passed me by. I sat quietly, hands knotted together, trying to read expressions without being obvious about it. When Suhail suggested I should return to handle matters at Dar al-Tannaneen, I accepted with relief, even though I had a suspicion my departure was intended to give them a chance to shout at one another in privacy.

But I reassured myself as I left. What could Husam do? He had no power to mandate his brother’s divorce—and even if he did, doing so would have created even more scandal than we already had.

Oh yes, there was scandal. The initial stages of it are difficult to recall now; they have been thoroughly overwritten by the romantic version that followed. Any time a man and a woman wed in haste, people’s minds inevitably leap to the assumption that he has assaulted (or she surrendered) her virtue, and that the natural result of this will be arriving within the year. Such was not the case with me, of course: I assure you that while I do sometimes elide details of my activities in this tale, I have not left out that. But it would be months before anyone would believe I was not so burdened—months in which rumour, already quite energetic, could get the bit between its teeth and race off for the hills. One particularly nasty bit of gossip said it was not Suhail who had dishonoured me, but someone among the Banu Safr; and he was showing pity on me by taking me under his wing. Had I known who began that tale, I would have chased them down and given them a very sharp piece of my mind.

But rumour is a creature with many heads and no body, and I had no way to hunt it, any more than I could smooth over matters with my new relations. All I could do was march into Colonel Pensyth’s office that afternoon and announce, “I will of course be continuing my work as before; have no fear of that. But I will have no further need of my room here, for I have wed Suhail ibn Ramiz ibn Khalis al-Aritati.”

His considered, restrained reply was, “You what?”

“Have wed Suhail ibn Ramiz. This morning: that is why Tom, Andrew, and I left. I do apologize for the disruption. There is nothing untoward about it, I assure you—only that he is a scholar and a gentleman, one I have respected for many years. And now he is my husband.”

Pensyth had grown very red about the neck. “You sat in that very chair and swore to me you didn’t want a husband.”

“At the time, it was true. There may not be even two men living in the world whom I would have agreed to marry, certainly not on such short notice. But I do not need two; I only need one.”

My words were more than a little giddy, which I imagine did not help my case at all. Pensyth said, “Is this your idea of avoiding a scandal?”

My giddiness did not take me so far as to speculate out loud regarding the alternatives. (And thank goodness for that.) I merely said, “Given that I have done nothing improper, I care not a fig for what people may say. Now that I am married, I desire precisely the same thing I did before I was married: to carry on with my research. Only now I will have Suhail’s assistance in full.”

Brash confidence can carry one past some obstacles—but not all. Before the night was out, I had to once again eat my words to Pensyth, this time regarding my lodgings.

Suhail arrived at the House of Dragons shortly after nightfall, looking grim and resigned. “I hoped that would go better,” he admitted quietly to me.

My heart beat faster. “What happened?”

“I have not been disavowed—not yet, anyway. We’ll see what Husam thinks when he wakes up tomorrow morning. But neither am I welcome in the house.”

I thought of my own estrangement from my family, brought about when I pursued my dreams against their wishes. The familiar ache rose up within me. In no way could I bring myself to regret what Suhail and I had done… but I could, and did, regret what consequences it might carry for him. “I am sorry,” I said, knowing it was thoroughly inadequate.

Suhail shook his head. “Do not be. I knew this was a risk, and I accepted it gladly. But in the meanwhile—I don’t suppose this place can house us both?”

“Of course,” I said instantly. “I may not be able to get a larger bed until tomorrow, but for tonight—”

He stopped me with one hand on my arm. So small a contact should not have meant so much—and yet it did. “For tonight,” he said, “we will find a place to stay in the city. I look forward to sharing your work with you, my love… but there are some parts of you I will not share with your work. And tonight is one of them.”