A Natural History of Dragons: A Memoir by Lady Trent

by Marie Brennan

  From behind me, Dagmira spoke in an unsteady voice. “He is the one who killed Jindrik?”

  Rossi. We’d spoken in Chiavoran; she would have understood nothing but the name. I turned enough to put the fallen man in my field of vision, but he showed no sign of rousing. “Yes.” Him, or someone else involved with this scheme. He was the one who had stabbed Jacob, though, and that was more than enough guilt for me.

  I had spoken of there being a dragon inside me. For the first time, I felt it not just in the yearning for freedom, but in the predator’s desire for the kill.

  Could I have done it? Could I have slipped my hand from beneath Jacob’s, picked up the knife or a shard of glass, and murdered Rossi where he lay?

  I do not know. I would like to think not; there is something dreadful about believing one’s nineteen-year-old self could cut the throat of a fallen man, whatever his crimes might be. But I never made the choice: Jacob spoke before I could, and the moment slipped past. I wonder, sometimes, whether he sensed my thoughts in the rigidity of my hand, and intervened before I could resolve myself one way or the other. “Dagmira. Go rouse the others; we must be out of here tonight, before Khirzoff can discover that we have learned his secrets. We’ll meet them at the stables. Isabella, is there anything with which to bind Rossi?”

  Dagmira went. Moving like a Hingese automaton, I found a length of rubber tubing, and used Rossi’s fallen knife to cut it into lengths suitable for binding his feet and hands. A few sheets of paper and a third bit of tubing sufficed for a gag. Jacob remained against the wall, not moving to help, and I tried not to think of what that meant. Would he be able to ride?

  He must. My task done, I moved to help him up the stairs, but stopped as we reached the bottom step. “Wait—”

  Jacob steadied himself as I turned back. Jumping over Rossi’s prone body, I snatched up the Chiavoran’s notebook, and then fetched the first portable bone that came to hand: a wishbone. Proof of what he had done. “Now we can go.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  Departure, Without Farewells — Searching for Shelter — A Detour to the Ruins — More Answers There, Many of Them Unpleasant — The Arrival of the Dragons

  I almost turned back at the beginning of our flight, when we had saddled some of Khirzoff’s horses and ruined the tack of the rest, and were set to put that place behind us forever—because a glimmer of light caught my eye.

  Steadying my husband in the saddle, I said, very quietly, “Jacob? There is a fire.”

  The others heard. Dagmira growled something that might have been “let them burn.” For my own part, I did not realize I’d begun to move until Jacob clutched desperately at my arm. “Isabella—you cannot—”

  “There are innocents in there!” I said, too loudly. Softer, but with no less intensity, I went on. “Khirzoff and Rossi may be monsters, but what of their servants?”

  Guilt prodded me as much as altruism. I saw my husband’s white, drained face in the night, and knew our hope of survival depended on fleeing straightaway; and yet I could not sacrifice all those men on the altar of our own preservation.

  Mr. Wilker growled and flung himself from the saddle, running for the stable, where he had left a watchman—a boy, really—tied up while we stole the horses. A moment later he was back out, setting his gelding into motion even as he spoke. “He’ll rouse the household. You realize this means they’ll be on our trail faster.”

  He realized it, too; and yet he had gone. None of us wanted that atrocity on our heads.

  It made the nightmare of our flight even worse, though. We could not ride at speed through the mountain night, even with the half-moon to light our way, and although we had done what we could to hamper pursuit, we knew Khirzoff’s men would be following us. No, not even following; they knew where we would go.

  Or so they would think. Dagmira and Iljish consulted in quiet whispers too rapid to follow, and then proposed that we go where Khirzoff would not expect: to the ruins. There was the huntsmen’s hut, where Astimir, Lord Hilford, and I had spent the night after our visit, or we could attempt shelter in the ruins themselves. Iljish volunteered to slip into the village on his own, to gather up what he could of our more valuable possessions. Then, I supposed, we would go south. Back to Chiavora, back to Scirland, leaving behind our notes and equipment and Lord Hilford’s beloved armchair—and the people of Drustanev.

  It would mean breaking my vow. Dagmira and her brother could spread word of my theory, explaining to their neighbors why the dragons were attacking humans—but what good would it do them? They had no capacity to stop Khirzoff and Rossi, no recourse to any higher authority. Nor did we, not from where we stood. We could perhaps write to the tsar, once we had returned home, but it was a poor excuse for aid. And as little as that would do for their village, it would do even less for Dagmira and Iljish, unless I could persuade them to go with us. Surely Rossi, if he survived, would remember the peasant who broke a jar over his head. They would not be safe anymore.

  All of that was a distant hypothetical, though, soon lost behind the immediate necessity of our flight. The world narrowed to the simplest, most primitive of tasks: find water. Find food, what little could be got while making forward progress. Cover our tracks. Keep watch for dragons. Stay in the saddle, or put one foot in front of the other when the terrain made riding all but impossible.

  Pray for Jacob.

  Mr. Wilker was the closest thing among us to a doctor, and he could do nothing except bind the wound. It would have been dreadful enough, were Jacob lying in a bed; three days of grueling, cross-country flight made his condition dire. All the blood leached from his lips, and his eyes acquired a staring, blank quality, as every ounce of effort he could spare went into clinging to his saddle, and to life. I writhed with helplessness, my mind racing in futile, exhausted circles, trying and failing to find some way to help him. If I had entertained the slightest shred of hope that Khirzoff would take pity on us, I would have sent the others onward and waited with my husband for our pursuers to come. But I did not, and so the only thing to do was to press on, praying that we would make it to the ruins, and that rest there would restore my husband’s strength.

  My prayer was doomed to failure, and I knew it.

  We struggled at last up the back slope of the ruins, with the shattered wall rising before us. There, with shelter in sight, Jacob slid bonelessly from his saddle and crashed into the ground.

  I cried out even before his sleeve had slipped from my grasp. Jerking my mount to a halt, I lurched down without grace and fell to my knees at my husband’s side. So sure was I that Jacob had died, I could not even speak his name.

  But the touch of my hand on his cheek roused him. For one instant, I felt hope; he was not dead, and we had reached the ruins, and surely all would be well. The delusion, however, could not survive for long. He would not move from this place: Jacob knew it, and so did I.

  I caught up one of his hands, clutched it in my own. He responded with the merest twitch of his cold fingers. The only words I could find were pitifully inadequate. “I’m so sorry.”

  His white lips shaped the word “no.” Jacob closed his eyes, then opened them again, and mustered enough strength to speak in a bloodless whisper that went no further than my ears. “No regrets. Be strong, Isabella. Stop them.”

  I had spared enough energy during our flight to tell the others what Khirzoff and Rossi were doing to the dragons, what I had found in that charnel house of a cellar. But how could I stop them? All I could do was flee.

  The others had dismounted, forming a silent ring around me. The sun baked the silent ruins, a gentle blessing of warmth. I bent and kissed my husband’s lips, pressing my mouth to his until I felt the faintest trace of pressure in return, tears slipping down my face to wet his. When I drew back at last, Jacob’s eyes had closed for the last time, and a moment later his breath stopped.

  You will think me inhuman for saying this. But even in the face of the worst grief I had ever experienced, gri
ef piled atop mortal exhaustion and shock, my mind would not grant me the mercy of ceasing to work. It persisted in ticking along, like a soulless collection of gears, and so when—after how long, I do not know—I lifted my head to regard the others, the words that came from my mouth were nothing to do with my dead husband, stretched before me on the ground. I said, “I’m going to search the cave.”

  It lay not twenty feet from where I knelt, covered once more by branches. I nodded toward it, and saw the others realize what I meant. In a tone half bewilderment, half groan, Mr. Wilker said, “The smugglers. Mrs. Camherst, with all due respect—do they truly matter?”

  “Yes,” I said sharply. “They are part of this, Mr. Wilker—part of the same damnable conspiracy that has just killed my husband. Rossi said as much. I do not think it is opium they are smuggling; it is something else, and I am determined to find out what. Jacob told me to stop them, and I intend to honor his last words.”

  The entire picture had almost come together in my head. Only a few pieces were missing. Khirzoff was an ambitious man, cultivating connections to the south, seeking to make a fortune for himself with Rossi’s work on the dragon bones. He feared our research on account of that. But Gritelkin did not die because of the dragons; he died because of the smugglers. And Khirzoff already had a fortune, at least a small one, with which to buy Rossi’s chemical laboratory, not to mention rich clothing and spices for himself. But he had come to it recently, or the rest of his surroundings would be better.

  The keystone that would hold it all together lay here. I was sure of it.

  Mr. Wilker accompanied me, because we had no rope, and he could lift himself from the cave where I could not. He could have gone alone, but I was determined to see with my own eyes. We struck a light on a fallen pine branch, which would do for a short-lived torch, and Mr. Wilker lowered me down, following a moment later.

  The crates I had seen before were gone. It was possible the smugglers had emptied the entire place out the day I’d come here with Dagmira, leaving no evidence behind; but the only way to be certain was to look. Torch raised against the darkness, I went farther into the cave.

  The way was cramped in places, but not enough to force us to crawl. And it did not go nearly as far back as I had feared: no more than two hundred feet, I judged. At that point, the cave ended in a wall of solid earth and stone.

  Mr. Wilker brushed his hair from his face with one filthy hand and sighed. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Camherst. Whatever they were storing here, it’s gone.”

  My gaze swept over the dirt, trying, in a most unscientific fashion, to deny its blank uselessness. There must be something. I would not allow there to be nothing. “Assuming what they did here was store,” I murmured, going forward another few steps.

  The signs were there, in the uneven shape of the earthen wall, the spots that might have been sharp gouges before the edges crumbled into softer slopes. Someone had been digging there, and not many days ago, either.

  I dropped to my knees, jamming the narrow end of the torch into the ground, and began to scrabble at the dirt. The rigors of rock climbing and cave exploration had already roughened my hands beyond what befitted a lady; now I sacrificed the last bit of delicacy, tearing my nails as I clawed lumps of earth and stone away. And, as Mr. Wilker reached out to stop me, my persistence was rewarded.

  It glimmered even before I wiped it clean on my sleeve and held it up to the light: a fragment of firestone, larger even than the one I had found in the grass above.

  “This isn’t a cache,” I whispered. “It’s a mine. Khirzoff has found a source of firestone.”

  Mr. Wilker took the stone from me, lips pursed in a soundless whistle. His Niddey accent came through strongly as he said, “If Bulskevo’s laws are anything like Scirland’s, by all rights this belongs to the tsar.”

  For such a glorious find, Khirzoff might well receive a reward from his master. But how much more wealth could be gained by smuggling the stones across the border and selling them in Chiavora? He would have to do it slowly; a sudden glut of firestones would be noticed, even if they were sold in secret. But it would not take many at all to fund Rossi’s efforts, and pay for some new luxuries in the bargain. Given enough time, the stones and the innovation of dragonbone—lightweight, all but indestructible; better even than steel—could make Khirzoff one of the wealthiest men in the world.

  “You know more of politics and law than I do,” I said, my voice tight. “What might the tsar do, if he discovered his vassal was stealing from him in this fashion?”

  It was a rhetorical question; we could both guess perfectly well. Mr. Wilker nodded. “It will be enough to bring him down, yes. Let’s go tell the others.”

  The discovery put new life into our limbs, hurrying us back toward the ragged spill of light that was the cave’s entrance. But Mr. Wilker, without warning, dragged me to a halt, one hand going over my lips to muffle my startled question.

  A rope dangled down from above. We had brought nothing of the sort with us from the boyar’s lodge.

  With his mouth by my ear, Mr. Wilker whispered, “You didn’t see another way out of here, did you?”

  I shook my head, hand tightening on the dying torch. The passage might continue beyond the dirt wall—my guess was that the ground above had collapsed at some point in the distant past, as this whole place lay very near the surface—but that was of no use to us. The only exit was that opening, into the arms of whoever waited above.

  It was a mark of our dire situation that I found myself hoping it was the Stauleren smugglers.

  Mr. Wilker drew in a deep breath and squared his shoulders. “Stay hidden,” he murmured near-soundlessly, “and snuff out that light. I will go. With any luck, they’ll think I came down alone.”

  It was the gentlemanly thing to do. It was also the one thing that might win us the slightest advantage, if only I could think how to use it. Iljish had left us already, diverging toward Drustanev in the hopes of snatching up our money; only Lord Hilford and Dagmira waited above. What use I could be, separate from them, I did not know, but it was worth a try. My jaw tight, I nodded to Mr. Wilker and doused the torch in the dirt.

  The drop was not a large one; with jumping, he could have caught hold of the edge and dragged himself out. With the rope’s aid, he was gone from my sight in mere seconds.

  From above, I heard muffled voices.

  Then a voice, speaking Bulskoi-accented Chiavoran, that I recognized all too well. “We know you are down there. Come out now.”

  I kicked myself inwardly as I remembered the horses. If Khirzoff had snared my companions—as I had to assume he had—then he would have seen an extra riderless mount; even the best liar would have been hard-pressed to make him believe I had lain down somewhere for a nap, or fallen over a cliff, or any such thing.

  Gritting my teeth, I went forward, and took hold of the rope.

  They dragged me up without ceremony and dumped me to the ground. When I climbed to my feet, I saw it was quite as bad as I had feared. Khirzoff had brought with him half a dozen men: the sort of odds that may be entirely manageable in a drunk man’s boast, but which are rather more difficult in real life, especially when the half dozen have guns, and the two gentlemen and two women those guns are pointed at do not. In addition, there was Khirzoff himself—and with him, Gaetano Rossi.

  When the man had lain helpless at my feet, I had felt compunctions about the desire to see him dead; now that he stood before me, and my husband was the one lifeless on the ground, I wished with foul, poisonous rage that I had cut his throat while I could. It was scant satisfaction to notice the bruising from Dagmira’s jar, and the discoloration where the chemicals had spilled over his skin.

  Our captors looked tired—they must have ridden hard to catch us—but nothing like so exhausted as we were. Khirzoff mostly looked angry. “When I invited you to my lodge, I was considering whether it might suffice to order you out of my lands,” he said. “Had you not been so determined to pry, it mi
ght have done. If you had been content to remain ignorant.”

  “We would have been suspicious,” I said, too foolish to keep my mouth shut. “That’s why you tried the ridiculous charade with Astimir.”

  The boyar shrugged. “Yes—but what could you do? Complain to the tsar? He would not care. Not if all you had were suspicions.”

  But now we had proof. Or rather, enough specifics to give the tsar reason to investigate. Theft, smuggling, murder—even if no one cared that the boyar’s scheme was causing the dragons to attack people, the rest would be enough to cause him trouble.

  I retained enough sense not to point that out, if only barely. The most likely case was that he had followed with the intention of killing us, but if not, there was no sense in encouraging him.

  Lord Hilford said, “You forget, sir, that I am a Scirling peer. And your man there has murdered a Scirling gentleman.” The way he pronounced the word “sir,” it might have been the vilest insult he knew.

  Khirzoff seemed entirely unconcerned. “With the feuds between Bulskevo and Scirland? That only gives the tsar more reason to ignore you.”

  “Perhaps,” Lord Hilford said, drawing himself up, “but it gives others more reason to pay attention. If anything should happen to me, or to my companions, it will go very hard for you.”

  Rossi laughed outright, a harsh, ugly sound. “What if you met with an accident? Chasing around the mountains, trying to pet the dragons—there have been so many attacks lately, after all. Who could be surprised if it ended badly?”

  As covers for murder went, that one was unfortunately plausible. And even if the villagers or our families back home could raise suspicion regarding our deaths, it would not do us much good.

  I had little hope that it would be any use, but I had to try. “Didn’t your tame chemist there tell you, Iosif Abramovich? All these attacks—you’re causing them yourself. The more you pursue this course, the worse it will get.”