Within the Sanctuary of Wings

by Marie Brennan

  “Not when I found it,” he said, returning to his seat and opening the notebook to another page. It was not, I later learned, the same book in which he had originally recorded his observations, for that held too much in the way of other information he did not wish to share. Once the notes on the specimen were safely copied over, drawings and all, he gave the original to his Khiam Siu allies. But the copy included a terrain sketch of some truly forbidding mountains and the valleys beneath.

  He indicated a specific location with the tip of his finger. “Here. But I believe it fell from higher up.”

  “Six thousand meters,” Suhail said, translating the unfamiliar numerals written above. “More or less. Assuming I’m converting the units properly.”

  That elevation marked a high col or saddle between two peaks. If Mr. Thu was correct, the specimen had fallen several hundred meters down a nearly sheer face to the spot where he found it. “What makes you think it was up there originally?” Tom asked.

  “It would not have remained frozen otherwise,” Mr. Thu said with certainty. “Down in the valley, it is very sheltered from wind, and can become quite hot. And besides…”

  His hesitation could not have been more effective at piquing my interest had he deliberately calculated it for that purpose. “Besides?” I prompted him.

  “I think,” he said, uncertainty dragging at his words, “there may have been another up above.”

  FOUR

  Routes to Tser-nga—Why I must go—Jake’s suggestion—Major-General Humboldt—Planning—Another for the mountains—Farewell to Jake

  From the moment Mr. Thu said “another,” I believe my fate was set.

  That Tser-nga was closed to outsiders was not enough to deter me; I had to go and see. “That site is barely within their territory at all,” I said every time someone protested. “I can skirt their borders almost entirely, if I travel up the Lerg-pa River—”

  But everyone who knew the first thing about the region assured me I could not possibly do that. The river, though it may look appealing on paper, is apparently the next best thing to impassable in person. “Very well,” I said, “then I will come at it from the west—” But of course that meant Khavtlai, which meant Yelang. And no one was prepared to let me sneak into a country I had been formally deported from, with whom we were currently at war. Nor could I go through Tser-nga itself.

  We were at an impasse.

  “Just wait,” people said to me, over and over again. “In a few years, when the Aerial War is over and Tser-nga has opened its borders—”

  They presumed, of course, that the Aerial War would conclude in favour of Scirland, instead of with the Yelangese occupying Tser-nga and barring my entry even more thoroughly than the locals had. They also presumed that the specimen Mr. Thu had seen (if indeed there was more than one) would still be there in a few years, unharmed by the intervening time, rather than tumbling to the valley below and rotting away as the first one had.

  “However old that first one may have been,” Tom said, trying to reassure me, “it survived all this time. There’s no reason to assume the others will perish in a few short years.”

  He was endeavouring to be optimistic, and so he did not say the rest of what we were both thinking: it has already been more than a year since Mr. Thu found the first one. It would be longer still before I got there, even if I went immediately. My chance might already be gone.

  But I could not allow myself to believe that. I had to hold tight to possibility and move as rapidly as I could. At least then, if my hopes were dashed, I could tell myself I had done everything in my power.

  How, though, to reach my destination?

  My difficulties could have been worse. Had Mr. Thu found the specimen on the western side of the mountains, I would have needed to dodge Yelangese forces at every turn. But his expedition was unable to scout the Khavtlai edge of the Mrtyahaima satisfactorily; sickness in the district had turned them away, forcing them to seek an approach from the far side. And the area he indicated was so far removed from the Tser-zhag heartland that which nation controlled it depended on which map you consulted: some said Tser-nga, some Khavtlai and Yelang. Either way it was a mere fiction, for the mountains in between were uninhabited.

  But never had such tempting bait been dangled in front of me, with so many obstacles between.

  Suhail watched me chew on this problem for days. Then, one evening as we sat in my study, he said, “Please do not take this the wrong way. But … why are you so determined to go?”

  Another man might have failed to understand the magnitude of my obsession with dragons, but not Suhail. He had come with me into the depths of the Jefi in summer; he knew that risking life and limb for knowledge was nothing new to me. His question carried a different implication. “You mean, why am I pursuing this so passionately, when there are other, easier goals I might more plausibly attain. Goals which would have a much better chance of furthering our knowledge of dragonkind.”

  “Even Mr. Thu is not certain there was another specimen in the col. He saw it through field glasses, not in person.”

  Meaning that I might go all that way, moving heaven and earth to do so, only to have nothing to show for it at the end. I rose and paced my study, as I so often did—to the point that my carpet had a distinctly worn track in it. “My scholarly contributions of late…” I sighed. “I feel like I haven’t done anything.”

  This took Suhail aback. “But the Fraternity’s work in Qurrat—your correspondence with the dragon-breeders in Bayembe—”

  “Is all letters, letters, letters. Sitting on my posterior in this room, applying my brain to things, but not applying my spirit. And how much of my time is eaten up by other affairs? Patronage, public speaking, advice to others. It’s all very useful, I’m sure.” I meant the words to be sincere, but they came out scathing. My shoulders sagged. “I haven’t been out in the field since we discovered the Watchers’ Heart. I could go somewhere—Otholé, perhaps—but what would I do there? What question would I be answering, beyond some basic study of dragons not yet examined?”

  Suhail rose and stopped me mid-stride, his hands on my arms. “Isabella. Why this doubt? It has never disappointed you to do basic study before.” He smiled, trying to coax a similar lightness from me. “Sometimes I think there is nothing in the world you love better than to describe some characteristic or behaviour never before set down in print.”

  I had no answer for that. I could not explain the restlessness within me, the feeling that I must do something tremendous or my time would be wasted. Was it simply that I had grown so accustomed to making spectacular discoveries that the thought of doing the work of an ordinary scientist was tiresome to me? Dear heaven: if so, then I would have to go ice my head until the swelling went down. I had already been more fortunate than most scientists are in their entire lives.

  Then the truth became clear to me. Without even thinking, I pulled free of Suhail’s hands, turning away to resume my pacing.

  “Isabella.” His voice was very quiet, but no less fervent for that. “Tell me.”

  I could not face him while I said this—but it must be said. I fixed my gaze upon the wall map, pocked with symbols and notes marking dragon breeds and Draconean ruins. Addressing the map, I said, “I think I am jealous.”

  Silence fell. Then he said, “Of me?”

  His tone was disbelieving, as well it might be. “I do not begrudge you your work,” I said hastily, my hands twisting themselves into knots. “Never think I am jealous of that—indeed, it is one of the things I love best about you. But…”

  I could not go on. Suhail finished the sentence for me. “But I have been making great advances in my field, while you sit here and answer letters.”

  “You have been honoured for your advances,” I said. The sudden bitterness that coloured my words was not for him; it was for myself, and the realization that I had at last found the true core of what troubled me so. “Your lecture at Caffrey Hall was conducted outside t
he chambers of the Society of Linguists not because they would not have you, but because you chose to share your work with a broader audience. But the Philosophers’ Colloquium will not have me. And they never will.”

  Unless I went on making discoveries so great, even that pack of hide-bound, close-minded sticks in the mud had to acknowledge them. At the time I would never have phrased it that way in public, but that was how I had come to think of them. And yet, despite my scorn … yes, I still wished to join their number.

  This time I did not pull away. Suhail wrapped his arms around me and laid his cheek upon my hair. He asked no further questions; he only murmured, “Then God willing, we will find a way.”

  * * *

  After that night, not a day went by that we did not pursue our goal of reaching the Mrtyahaima. I obtained a better map, tacked it to my wall, and began studying the topography of the region as obsessively as any mountaineer. Could we make our way along the range itself, from some starting point farther north? Not if I wished to arrive at my destination any time in the next ten years, Mr. Thu assured me. Perhaps I might approach from the west after all; I could dodge those Yelangese troops and come at the col from the far side. Nevermind that Mr. Thu had not the slightest notion what the terrain on the Khavtlek side looked like, and undertaking such an expedition would likely be suicidal. I was not so desperate as to gamble myself upon so slender a chance; but I was determined that I should not dismiss any possibility out of hand, however unlikely it might seem at first glance.

  Which is, I suppose, why the answer came at the dinner table one night, when my son Jake was home from Merritford for a visit.

  I had of course explained the entire situation to him, and introduced him to Mr. Thu. Jake’s first impulse, naturally, was to insist that I must take him along. “There is no sea for thousands of kilometers,” I reminded him as we sat down to dinner. Though he had scarcely begun at university, Jake had already made clear his intention to study the oceans as his life’s work: our voyage aboard the Basilisk had left a stronger mark on him than I ever could have predicted.

  “I’ll find a way to rub along,” he said, with a melodramatic sigh. “But the Mrtyahaima! How many people ever have an opportunity to go there?”

  “One fewer than you are hoping.”

  Jake grinned. “You know that only encourages me to find a way.”

  “You are too large to fit into her baggage,” Suhail pointed out. “I don’t think you can sneak aboard without her noticing.”

  “Besides,” I said, “we still haven’t the slightest idea how we will get there.” My own sigh was more full of discouragement than melodrama. “At the rate this is going, by the time I have a plan, you will have attained your majority. And then I will not be able to stop you.”

  Although Jake might not go so far as to sneak after us, he was quite serious about finding a way—for us, if not for himself. He said, “Have you asked Uncle Andrew?”

  Much to the surprise of my family, the youngest of my brothers was still in the army. It was not his passion in life, but it gave him purpose and direction—and, dare I say, discipline—which was more than he had ever found on his own. “I have written to him, but he is only a captain. He cannot order the army into Tser-nga to clear a path for us.”

  Jake brooded over this as the footman brought out the soup course. Suhail and I began eating, but Jake only fiddled with his spoon. Since he ordinarily devoured his food almost before his dish touched the table, I found this worrisome. Before I could ask, though, he burst out with a sudden, uproarious laugh. “A path through Tser-nga, no. So you should go over!”

  My spoon slid gently from my fingers and vanished up to the tip of its handle in my soup bowl. I did not attempt to retrieve it, staring blindly into the liquid.

  Go over.

  “Pardon me,” I said. Abandoning my soup, with my son and my husband grinning after me, I went to write a letter.

  * * *

  My relationship with the military authorities of Scirland has always been a contentious one. I unwittingly undermined them in Bayembe, but aided them in Keonga; with Tom’s assistance I strong-armed my way into a job posting they did not want to give me, but then redeemed myself with the discoveries in the Labyrinth of Drakes and the principle of developmental lability. I was instrumental in Scirland gaining knowledge of dragonbone preservation; lost that secret to foreign powers; funded the early research into synthesis; then inspired a man to spill the results as widely as he could. To say they detested me would be an overstatment … but to say they liked me would be false.

  I would have gained no traction at all were it not for my brother Andrew. As I had told Jake, a mere captain had relatively little influence within the army—but he had once saved the life of another man in Coyahuac. Samuel Humboldt was a colonel at the time; now he was a major-general, and closely involved in the nascent enterprise that a few years later would detach itself from the army, becoming the Royal Scirling Aerial Corps. Thanks to his fondness for my brother, I was able to gain an audience and explain myself.

  “Show me where you mean,” Humboldt said when I was done.

  I was quite incapable of reading the man’s expression and voice for any hint of his thoughts. He had not laughed at me, though, and I chose to take that as an encouraging sign. I spread the map I had brought onto a large table already occupied by many other papers. The drawing was far from as detailed as any of us would like (maps of Tser-nga in those days being more imaginative than accurate), but it was the best we had, and supplemented by Mr. Thu’s own observations. “There is a village up here,” I said, indicating a spot at the foot of the massif which demarcated the edge of the inhabited zone. “We were hoping that it might be possible for a caeliger to fly us there—or if it cannot go that high, then as close as possible—so that we could explore around the col between these two peaks.”

  I expected the major-general to ask me what benefit this could possibly bring. The monetary costs, I was prepared to defray; the days when I had to scrape for patronage to fund my expeditions had ended for good the day we announced the discovery of the Watchers’ Heart. Money alone, however, could not buy me the army’s goodwill.

  But Humboldt ignored that issue. He studied the map, one blunt finger tracing the edge of the massif, then venturing across the blank space between that and the eastern edge of Khavtlai.

  How high, I wondered, could a caeliger fly?

  The answer to that was a classified military secret. I had not gone terribly high on either of my flights—but those, of course, were carried out in some of the earliest dragonbone caeligers, before the art developed to its present state. Furthermore, none of us on board had more than the vaguest sense of what we were doing in flying the thing. A modern caeliger, with a skilled pilot on board … I had not the faintest clue what it might achieve.

  But I might find out.

  “It would be exceedingly dangerous,” Humboldt mused, still looking at the map. “The winds are fierce at high altitudes, and while a caeliger is safe enough high in the air, any landing or takeoff risks the craft being flung into a mountainside.”

  He did not speak in the subjunctive or the conditional, as if speculating about what would happen if a caeliger were to test the heights. Someone, somewhere, had already flown one of those craft through similarly hazardous terrain—perhaps even in the Mrtyahaima itself. But not, apparently, at the western border of Tser-nga, where uninhabited mountains offered the chance to sneak a caeliger and its occupants across where they were not expected.

  I curled my fingers around one another, uncertain of what to say. Back when Tom and I were hired to breed dragons, I had harboured reservations about the wisdom of allowing my research to be turned to a military purpose. Now I had planted a tactical notion in Humboldt’s head, without at all meaning to.

  It helped only a little to tell myself that someone would have thought of it eventually: if not the major-general, then someone else in the military or the government. If we h
ad scouts in the Mrtyahaima, as the Yelangese did, then sooner or later someone might have looked at that blank stretch of map and contemplated its potential. After all, was that not the exact reason Mr. Thu himself had been sent there? And if feet would not avail us in that terrain, caeligers might.

  I knew all that was true … but it did not erase my apprehension over being the one who first called the possibility to mind.

  On the other hand, I had a strong suspicion that even if I abandoned my ambition on the spot, a caeliger might well be sent up into the peaks regardless. Much like the formula for bone preservation, that notion was a dragon that could not easily be stuffed back into its shell.

  I drew a deep breath and thought of Suhail’s common assertion, that I was both the most practical woman he had ever met, and the most deranged.

  “If the army is willing to consider such a venture,” I said, “then I should look into what an expedition would entail. Such things do not plan themselves overnight.”

  * * *

  Not overnight; nor even in a month. It took far longer than I would have liked to make the arrangements, and I fretted at every day that passed.

  For more than a month we hung in limbo, without even a tentative assurance that a caeliger would attempt to bear us up into the mountains. Despite that lack, we spent most of our time on preparations, knowing that if this scheme gained approval, we did not want to delay our departure by so much as an hour. (It would only give those in charge time to reconsider the wisdom of their decision.)

  Tom had turned green when he heard the plan, and was slow to recover his colour. He had ridden in a caeliger precisely once, when Natalie and her engineering friends debuted an experimental model (not composed of dragonbone) at an exhibition. Mountaintops and cliff edges did not trouble him—but as soon as the “floor” beneath his feet became an ephemeral thing of fabric and rods, his equanimity vanished. Jake elbowed him, grinning with all the irrepressible perversity of an eighteen-year-old boy. “Think you’ll be able to do it, old chap?”