A Natural History of Dragons: A Memoir by Lady Trent
Page 24
Our host then introduced us to his friend. Gaetano Rossi bowed over my hand with perfunctory courtesy, for which I was grateful; my mind had chosen the most inopportune moment to remind me of my facetious comments to Jacob back home, about Chiavoran dancing girls.
“But come, it is late,” Khirzoff said, when the introductions were done. “I have servants waiting for you inside; you may send your peasants on their way.”
It was, I think, the dismissive manner in which he delivered those words that raised my hackles. Dagmira might have been a terrible excuse for a lady’s maid, but I was suddenly determined not to be parted from her. Had anyone demanded a rationale from me, I would have said I saw no sign there were any other women at this hunting lodge. Khirzoff was a widower, according to Ledinsky, with two sons both grown and trying to curry favor in the tsar’s court, and of course he could not possibly have fetched anyone in time for our arrival. If I was going to have a ham-handed Vystrani woman doing up my buttons, at least it would be the ham-handed woman I knew, rather than a stranger.
But my response was not rational. I simply did not like the fact that he was attempting to separate us from Dagmira and Iljish. I only barely managed to avoid saying so outright, which would have been unpardonably rude. I resorted instead to a silly caricature of some women I had known at home. “Oh, I could not possibly be without Dagmara,” I said, deliberately erring on her name. “She’s been my only companion all this time; we’ve come to know each other quite well. I would feel quite lost without her. And of course her brother must stay, too…” I let that trail off, gesturing vaguely in Iljish’s direction in a manner calculated to suggest that I had forgotten his name entirely.
(Oddly, although I have grown more liberal-minded with time, as my travels brought me into contact with many strangenesses to which I had no choice but to adapt, on this one point I have instead grown more inflexible. As a young woman I was willing to be thought quite brainless when it suited my purposes, for that was, all too often, the assumption of those around me. The more I encountered such assumptions, though, the less patience I had for them, and the more assertive—some would say “unpleasantly opinionated”—I became. At that tender age, however, I had no compunctions about behaving in a manner my current self would smack silly.)
Jacob gave me a peculiar look, which I hoped the boyar did not see. What reports the man had of me I did not know, but any quick summary of my activities in Vystrana could well make me look fluff-brained. (The harmless sort of fluff-brained, I mean; not the sort I actually was.) I thought I saw Khirzoff’s lip curl in disdain as he looked over our two companions, but the concealing mass of his beard and mustache made it hard to be sure. “Very well,” he said at last, not quite as graciously. “Rusha will find a place for them.”
Lord Hilford had tried to coach us on the journey regarding the subtleties of Bulskoi names, but it still took me a moment to realize that “Rusha” must be our guide, Ledinsky—a diminutive of “Ruvin.” He gestured for Dagmira and Iljish to follow him. In the meanwhile, two of Khirzoff’s men hurried to open the doors of the lodge, and those of our party who were not servants went inside.
We were shown to our rooms—one apiece for the earl and Mr. Wilker, and a shared room for myself and Jacob. The chief extravagance of this place seemed to be the abundance of chambers, and the willingness to squander wood in heating them; our bed was certainly an improvement over our accomodation in Gritelkin’s house, but nothing on the comforts of a Scirling mattress, and the decorations were scanty. The serving boy who brought up a basin of water spoke no Chiavoran, and either lacked equally in Vystrani or was afraid of me; he just shrugged at my question about Dagmira and hurried out of the room.
“Why do you want her?” Jacob asked, once we were alone. “I thought you detested the girl.”
“Less than I used to, and besides, it’s a friendly sort of detestation,” I said. “It’s just—” I lowered my voice. Inside, the lodge was less charmingly rustic, more grim and dark. I had, at Manda Lewis’s insistence, once read The Terrible Thirst of Var Kolak. The terribleness of that novel lies more in the overwrought prose than the monster Var Kolak, but standing in this place, I understood at last what had inspired Mr. Wallace’s pen. “We have few enough friends in this place, and I don’t think Khirzoff is one of them.”
I expected Jacob to chide me out of that view; it was easy to imagine my uneasiness a simple fancy, brought on by the isolation. But Jacob nodded, and answered in the same low tone. “We may be his guests, but I don’t think we’re welcome. The question is, why did he invite us here?”
I had no answer. We washed our faces in the cold water and went down for supper with the boyar. Gaetano Rossi was not present, and after the first course had been laid—a style of service which, I reflected, we had acquired from the Bulskoi in the first place—Lord Hilford asked after the man.
“He is occupied with his work,” Khirzoff said, attacking his soup as if he, not we, had been riding for three days.
“Work?” Lord Hilford repeated, with an inquiring tone. “He is not here for leisure, then?”
Was it my imagination, or did Khirzoff hesitate? It might only have been that the slice of beet in his spoon was too large and overbalanced back into the bowl. He cut it with the edge of the spoon and said, “Leisure, yes, but we have been hunting. The preservation of our trophies is his task.”
The conversation went on to bear, wolf, and other game, while I listened in silence. A young lady, of course, could not be expected to take much interest in such talk, but in truth I was glad for the chance to observe. Khirzoff’s friendliness and good cheer was distinctly forced, I thought. It might be explained away by saying his razesh had not warned him sufficiently about us; now the boyar felt obligated to play host, against his own wishes. But my uneasiness grew.
Khirzoff did pause long enough to assure us that this was not the promised feast; that would come the following night. I wondered if it would be an improvement over what we faced now. Our dishes were odd, as if the cook were trying too hard, or unsure of his work. He did not stint on expensive spices—I could not even recognize some of them—but the application was peculiar and sometimes less than successful, as with the venison dyed a most off-putting shade by aggressive use of turmeric. I left most of it on my plate, politeness be damned.
Lord Hilford did tell the boyar of our “supernatural” difficulties in Drustanev, and their source. “You say the lad ran?” Khirzoff said, and frowned through his beard. “My men will hunt him down. Or he will go back to his village; either way, we will find him.”
I was hardly well-disposed toward Astimir after everything he had done to disrupt our work, but I found myself hoping the young man was not taken up by Khirzoff’s followers. It sounded as if his punishment might be harsher than I would wish.
From his seat across the table from me, Jacob said, “I suppose there hasn’t been time yet to find traces of Jindrik Gritelkin.”
He could count the days as well as I could; the boyar’s men could scarcely have returned yet, even if they found the man almost immediately. Ledinsky must have been sent to Drustanev practically on Lord Hilford’s heels. No, I thought—my husband had spoken simply to watch Khirzoff’s reaction.
The man’s lips thinned inside his beard. “No, there has not.”
Gritelkin was supposed to be this man’s agent. Even if his primary duty was to collect the village taxes twice a year—which was the description Lord Hilford had given of a razesh—surely his title meant something. “I’m astonished the villagers did not send to you when Gritelkin went missing.”
The boyar snorted, picking up his glass of wine. “Likely they got drunk in celebration. They hate Gritelkin there, you know. The razeshi are rarely liked, but every time he came to me with the taxes, more complaints.”
By the expressions around the table, my companions’ thoughts were the same as mine. We had heard nothing of such conflict, and yet, it explained a great deal—including th
e general miasma of hostility that had surrounded us since our first moments in Drustanev. Living in the house of the hated razesh, expecting him to be our local guide, must have tarred us with his brush.
I wondered how much of that had been due to Gritelkin himself. As I had told the men, village gossip had made it clear that Khirzoff himself was not much liked, either. Few of the Vystrani boyars were; they were Bulskoi interlopers, reminders of Vystrana’s subject status. But Khirzoff made no attempt to hide his own disdain for the villagers of Drustanev. Everything about his establishment, even here at this summer hunting lodge, was Bulskoi, with no concessions to local habits.
Gritelkin, though … his was a Vystrani name. How did that figure into this web of tension?
“We will speak more of it tomorrow,” Khirzoff said, rising from the table. “And also of what you have been doing here, this research of yours. The servants will show you to your rooms.”
He did not even offer brandy as an after-meal courtesy. Lord Hilford murmured to Jacob and Mr. Wilker, “I have some in my pack,” and the men went off to cleanse their palates.
I found Dagmira in my room, turning down the covers, scowling fit to light the bed on fire. I had meant to ask her for sooner, but everything from the mob onward had distracted me. I wondered how badly I would regret that delay. “Tell me about Gritelkin. Your people don’t like him, I’m told.”
I received a glare of the sort that told me I was prying into village business, where I did not belong; but Dagmira answered me nonetheless. “Why should we?” she muttered, keeping her voice low, as if she, too, felt the oppressive weight of this place. “He made himself the boyar’s creature. Too much reading put ideas in his head; he said it would be better for Drustanev if he was razesh. But he was just as bad as the one before him.”
I worked through this with lamentable slowness, hearing what she did not say. “Was Gritelkin born in Drustanev?”
“Of course,” she said, once again filled with scorn for my ignorance.
Had Lord Hilford ever mentioned that? He’d called Drustanev Gritelkin’s village, but I had assumed the association a political one. A Vystrani man, somehow positioning himself as the boyar’s administrator, with grand dreams of benefiting his village. It made sense; a local man would be more sensitive to local issues, more willing to advocate on their behalf to the foreign overlord. But it had done no good—no wonder, with Khirzoff as he was—and worse, it had rebounded to ill; the people of Drustanev felt betrayed by his failure. It was truly unfortunate that Lord Hilford had chosen this of all places to conduct our research.
It raised an unpleasant specter in my mind. “Dagmira—would anyone kill Gritelkin? Anyone in Drustanev, I mean.”
For once, her fury came as a relief. “What do you think we are? Just because Astimir is an idiot, playing those tricks—but you’re outsiders; half the village would say you deserved it. If he hadn’t been scaring us, too.”
Again, I had to listen to what she did not say. “Gritelkin was not an outsider, then. Even though he worked for the boyar.” I paced around the small room, the spring of my mind wound too tightly for me to rest, even though my body was tired. “We’re fair certain he’s dead, Dagmira. He’s been missing for too long, and—there’s just too much going on here. What about the smugglers? They’re outsiders, Stauleren; have they been known to kill people?”
“No,” she said, but the word came out uneasily. Enough strange things had been happening that I could understand why.
Lord Hilford had told me that a scientist must never reason ahead of his data. He thought the dragons had done it, and maybe they had; I knew well that it was my own partisan inclinations that made me not want to believe it. But there was another prospect in my mind, growing stronger each time another possibility was eliminated or reduced. “Would the boyar have any reason to kill him?”
Dagmira’s response was incredulous. “Why would he?”
“Gritelkin claimed he’d made arrangements for us to visit, but it doesn’t seem to have been true. Khirzoff isn’t happy we’re here.” That was hardly motivation for murder, though. My thoughts progressed further. “And Gritelkin sent a message saying it was a bad time to come. What if he meant more than the dragon attacks?”
“If the boyar didn’t want you here,” she said, “he could just order you to leave.”
That was true. However, its being true did not rule out other factors that might make Khirzoff reluctant to send us away. I just could not imagine what those might be.
I must have paced for some time without speaking, because Dagmira gave me a pointed attempt at a curtsey. “Do you need anything else?”
“Oh, don’t be like that, Dagmira,” I said, distracted. “I wanted you here because something about this place sets me on edge, and I trust you. But no, I don’t need anything else; rest well, and I’ll see you in the morning.”
She kissed my hands and went out. I lay down in bed, but it was a long time before I managed to sleep.
TWENTY-TWO
A ride, with awkward conversation — Draconic provocation — The contents of Khirzoff’s cellar
The next morning, as I went in search of breakfast, I encountered Rossi on the ground floor, emerging from some kind of cellar. He gave me an unfriendly look, though I nodded a polite good morning to him. “Will you be joining us on our ride today?” I asked, for Khirzoff had made mention of an excursion the night before.
“No,” Rossi said curtly. “I have work to do.”
“Yes, so the boyar said. Taxidermy.” It no doubt accounted for the unpleasant smell that wafted along with Rossi. “Would you be so kind as to show me where breakfast is laid?”
I asked mostly to annoy him; breakfast, given the layout of this lodge, would be in the same room where we had taken our supper the night before, but I wished to make him behave like a gentleman. As the words left my mouth, though—the Chiavoran words—a thought came to mind that jolted me where I stood.
The bottles of acid had been labeled in Chiavoran.
Under most circumstances, I would call it meaningless coincidence. Drustanev lay on the southern side of the mountains, facing into Chiavora; much of their trade went across that border. Naturally any such exotic thing would be brought into Vystrana from the south. And Rossi’s nationality could hardly be considered proof of guilt.
Except that the man was also, by reports, a scholar of some kind. He might be doing taxidermy for the boyar—but that required a knowledge of chemicals.
Had Astimir’s sulfuric acid ridden with us in the carts from Sanverio, destined for the boyar’s lodge?
I ate very little breakfast, sorting rapidly through the details of this possibility. Khirzoff discovered the Scirling visitors to Drustanev were natural historians—from the villagers? Or from the smugglers? Chatzkel’s men were working with at least one minion of the boyar; they, wishing not to rouse curiosity by ordering us away, arranged the charade with Astimir, intending that it should cause us to be driven out. Or Rossi might have done that, but he was not a known figure in the village. When it failed—no, he sent Ledinsky before we discovered Astimir’s perfidy. When Lord Hilford came inquiring into Gritelkin’s disappearance, then. At that point, Iosif Abramovich Khirzoff resolved to deal with us more directly.
I had no proof, but I had more than enough suspicion to make me very worried indeed. The only thing preventing worry from becoming outright panic was the unlikelihood of Khirzoff wishing us dead. If that were the case, I reasoned, Ledinsky could have done away with us any time those three days from Drustanev, or upon our arrival here.
It was not much to comfort myself with as we rode out on the boyar’s horses, around mid-morning. Khirzoff’s own mount was a stallion that he controlled with a hard grip, but the rest of the horseflesh was uninspiring; my own gelding made heavy weather of some of the slopes, lurching up or down them such that a lesser rider might have lost her seat. As it was, I found myself glad my divided skirts permitted me to sit astride.
“Like what?” Jacob asked. He and I had kept toward the back, followed at a discreet distance by one of the boyar’s men, but my shoulders tensed, fearing we made a suspicious group.
“He’s been asking endless questions about our research. But I don’t think he’s interested in it,” Mr. Wilker said. “The earl is being his usual self—you know, holding back most of it because he hasn’t yet presented to the Colloquium, but hinting all over the place that we’ve discovered incredible things. And yet, Khirzoff doesn’t show the slightest bit of intellectual curiosity.”
I knew what Mr. Wilker meant about holding back. Lord Hilford had told us a lengthy story once about von Grabsteil, the fellow who had developed the theory of geologic uniformitarianism; he unwisely shared it with a like-minded colleague before he was ready to make public his conclusions, and that colleague, someone-or-another Boevers, had published a book on the topic first. It was a terrible feud at the time, though considered old history by the time I was a young woman, and of course it’s all but forgotten now; its effect, however, lingered in the paranoia of many scientists, who feared others would steal a march on them.
Frowning, Jacob said, “I thought you said he’s been asking ‘endless questions.’”
“He has,” Mr. Wilker replied, frustrated. “But—oh, Khirzoff isn’t a scholar; surely you’ve gathered that. I don’t think he cares in the least about the science. He only wants to know what we’ve been doing.”