Within the Sanctuary of Wings

by Marie Brennan

  I said, “This Draconean and her sisters saved my life after the avalanche. It is on their behalf, and that of all the Draconeans in the Sanctuary of Wings, that I signaled for you to land here today. If you are willing, Colonel Dorson, I will take you, Sir Thomas, and a small number of your men to meet with representatives from their council of elders.”

  Enough time had passed without violence that I felt safe in tearing my eyes away from Ruzt and the soldiers and looking at Tom. Judging by his expression, it was entirely possible he had not taken a single breath since Ruzt stood up. I could not help smiling: despite the tension, it was a pure joy to share this discovery with the man who had been my friend and colleague for so many years. Once the last of the laudanum had left his body, we would have a tremendous amount to discuss.

  Dorson was staring too, but with a good deal more shock than revelatory understanding. In a limp and wandering voice, he said, “How is this possible?”

  At least my encounter with Suhail and Thu the previous day had given me some practice in explaining. I delivered the most concise version I could, blessing the fact that military discipline meant no one interrupted me with a single question. The biological origins of the Draconeans I glossed over with a brief reference to developmental lability; Tom would have guessed a fair bit of it on his own by now, and the phrase would mean nothing to Dorson, which meant I could elide anything that might require me to utter the ominous word “blood.” But I told him of the Downfall—a brief rendition of what I could piece together between the Draconean version of that tale and our own—and how, over the millennia, the survivors had taken refuge here. “And now, Colonel, you see why I call them a nation, for they are certainly not Tser-zhag.”

  “I should bloody well think not,” Dorson said faintly. Then he shook himself. “You’re able to speak to these … things?”

  “I am indebted to my husband’s work in reconstructing elements of the Draconean language,” I said. “Beyond that, a winter with no one else to talk to is a wonderful motivator for acquiring vocabulary. I shall serve as your interpreter, Colonel, if you are ready to meet the elders…?”

  This sparked quite a brangle, for Dorson wanted to bring a full complement of armed men, and I wanted nothing of the sort. “Colonel,” I said at last, “you should be aware that my husband and Thu Phim-lat reached the Sanctuary yesterday, not long before you made your first attempt at the col. They are currently the guests of the Draconeans—”

  “You mean hostages,” Dorson said, his entire posture hardening. “Say the word, Lady Trent, and we will retrieve them from these beasts.”

  “Dear God,” I said impatiently. “How clear must I make it that I wish no bloodshed here at all? All you have to do is speak civilly to the elders—who, may I remind you, are no more beasts than we are—without looking as if you are here to finish what the Downfall started, and all will be very well. That means no more than two men with you, plus Tom.” All would be very well … unless Esdarr or someone of her mind chose to start trouble. But I had to trust the elders to keep order on their end, for I had enough to occupy me on my own.

  It was all well and good to insist on only two other men, but who would accompany Dorson? I was astonished to see the changes the army had wrought in my brother; he argued less than I would have expected when Dorson ordered him to remain behind and guard the caeliger. But matters became more than a little tense when the colonel refused to allow any of the Khiam Siu to join him. “If this comes to blows, I don’t want to catch your lot up in it,” he said to their leader, a familiar-looking fellow I thought I must have met at one of those diplomatic suppers in Scirland, what felt like a lifetime ago. That man looked very unconvinced, but ultimately ceded the point.

  Tom, in the meanwhile, had approached Ruzt. They could not converse at all, and I could not spare any time to interpret or even to really watch them, but he told me later that he had, through much pointing and other elements of mime, made clear to her his gratitude for my preservation. When I was finally able to rejoin him, he shook his head in disbelief.

  “I had a whole winter in Vidwatha to think about this,” he said. His restless gaze roamed the mountainside, never settling on any one thing. “You and I had wondered, after all, whether there might not be living specimens out here. I thought, what if there are? And what if—” His jaw worked silently for a moment before he could voice the rest of it. “What if they somehow saved you?”

  I put one hand on his arm. He turned his head aside, so that I could not see his expression, and could barely hear his voice. “I wanted to believe anything that meant you weren’t dead. No matter how impossible.”

  He pressed the back of his hand to his mouth. When he finally lowered it again, straightening his shoulders, I said lightly, “That goes to show just how astute you are, Tom. Now come: I think you will be fascinated to see what the ruff of a male Draconean looks like.”

  * * *

  To my inexpressible relief, the meeting with the elders went off without violence.

  Tom contributed substantially to that, for after a winter in Vidwatha, he knew Dorson far better than I did. The colonel had enough of an ego to enjoy the thought of being remembered as the man who established the first treaty with the Draconeans—and of course he thought of it in those terms, that he would be the one who achieved that triumph. (I, after all, was just the interpreter.) I let Tom exploit that angle for the time being, knowing that it gave Dorson a greater feeling of control, which in turn made violence less likely.

  Suhail and Thu were both present, looking passably like guests instead of hostages. My husband’s nod reassured me that they had not been mistreated; Kahhe and Zam were watching over them, much to my relief. But after that I could spare very little attention for them, as my efforts were entirely taken up by the role of interpreter, which I was sadly ill suited to.

  I will not attempt to replicate all the points of conversation that day and the following ones. They would make for tedious reading, and would distract from the true turning points that sealed the fate of the Sanctuary and its Draconeans. The first of these involved Andrew, and the second involved Thu.

  * * *

  Dorson had every intention of sending the caeliger back across the mountains as soon as that first meeting concluded. He and the bulk of his men would remain in the Sanctuary, but there were others outside—as I suspected, they had established a temporary base nearby in Tser-nga—and he wished to notify them immediately of what he had discovered. When he returned to the landing meadow, however, Andrew informed him with a doleful expression that the caeliger’s engine was malfunctioning. “I think fighting the headwind yesterday strained it something awful, sir,” he said. “We’re working to repair it, but the ship isn’t going anywhere yet.”

  I prudently waited until Dorson was done castigating everyone for their failures, then snatched a brief moment of conversation with Andrew where no one else could hear. “A malfunctioning engine?”

  Andrew shrugged. “It was pretty clear you wanted to keep this under wraps for now. But if I get caught and court-martialled, you should know that I expect you to come riding in on a dragon to save me.”

  (He was not court-martialled. I did, however, later take the precaution of securing him a pardon.)

  My brother’s act of benevolent sabotage bought me vital breathing space. At the time I thought it would only give me more opportunity to work on Dorson, persuading him to see the Draconeans as people instead of beasts, and perhaps even convincing him that Scirland must work to protect the Sanctuary from being overrun. Unfortunately, I suspected I would need a good deal more time than Andrew could give me. Dorson seemed willing enough not to kill the Draconeans … but I had very little faith that the Sanctuary would not wind up a possession of the Scirling Crown, its inhabitants treated as little more than exotic animals—possibly even put into a menagerie. And I could not see how to prevent that from happening.

  “If I’d had a chance to prepare the ground outside,”
I said to Tom in frustration. I had explained to him the plan the elders and I had formulated—a plan that was now shredded beyond all recognition. “But without public sentiment prepared, what is there to stop the army and the Crown from doing exactly as they please?”

  Tom shook his head. “I don’t know. Dorson … he isn’t a bad sort in his own way, but he’ll put this whole place under military control, and be convinced he’s doing what’s best for everyone involved.”

  “Which will only persuade Urrte and Esdarr and their ilk that the humans must be fought,” I said. “God help us all.”

  “You need leverage,” Tom said. “But damned if I can see any.”

  My one comfort was that I was permitted to go freely between the caeliger camp and Imsali. The remainder of the council would not be there for days yet, and nothing could be decided until they arrived; in the meanwhile, I could see my husband and Thu.

  Though both men were still considered hostages, they were not being kept in close straits. Suhail spent every waking moment studying the Draconean language, pausing only for his five daily prayers—an activity he pursued with more diligence than usual, on account of his tremendous gratitude for my survival. Thu was at somewhat looser ends, and frustrated that he could not speak directly with his Khiam Siu brethren. Two days after the landing, I had a question for him.

  “Your countrymen seem very eager to meet the Draconeans,” I said. The three of us were in the house of Ruzt, Kahhe, and Zam, which no longer seemed half so stifling to me, now that Suhail was there. “It could be simple curiosity, of course—but it doesn’t seem to be. I don’t suppose you have any idea why?”

  He’d had no opportunity to speak with them yet, but it was clear he had been thinking about the matter. “If they are like me, they are thinking this is a very good…” He paused and looked at Suhail, who supplied him with the word he had forgotten. “Omen, yes. A good omen for the Khiam cause.”

  My knowledge of Dajin dragons was still woefully patchy, and I knew even less of how the Yelangese interacted with the creatures, owing to my premature deportation from that country a decade before. I did recall one point, though, which might be salient. “Because dragons are an imperial symbol?” Then I made several connections, quite rapidly. “Good Lord. Dragons are an imperial symbol … and the Taisên have been slaughtering theirs for their bones.”

  Thu nodded. “We say the first emperor of Yelang was able to unify the country because he had the blessing of the dragons. This is why they have always kept dragons, and given them so much respect. For the Taisên to kill them is very shocking.”

  “And for the Khiam Siu to encounter them en route to planning an invasion is fortuitous. Half dragons, anyway.”

  At my addendum, Thu’s eyes widened. “You have thought of something,” I said. “Is it useful?”

  He did not answer me directly. Instead, choosing each word very carefully, he said, “In some versions of the tale, it is said that the dragons could take human form.”

  We all fell silent. It was the type of silence that seems almost clairvoyant, where no one speaks because it is apparent that everyone else is already following the same path of thought, and a mere cock of the head or lift of the hand is enough to communicate the next point. Finally Thu said, “If Giat Jip-hau—”

  “We’d have to get him here, first,” I said morosely. “And that would take months.”

  Thu looked startled. “Is he not with the soldiers? I would not expect him to sit back and let others lead the way.”

  “He—” I stopped, blinking. I had met Giat Jip-hau in Scirland, during those interminable diplomatic events, though I had not spoken to him above twice. He looked very different in the rough garb of a Mrtyahaiman expedition, with his facial hair grown to a thin scruff.

  The would-be emperor of Yelang was in the caeliger camp that very moment.

  And now I had a very good idea of why Dorson was so reluctant to allow any of the Khiam Siu to speak with the Draconeans. Suhail said, “Do you think you could arrange a meeting?”

  “From the Draconean side, yes,” I said. “I’m sure Kuvrey and Sejeat and Habarz would be willing. But from the Scirling side? Dorson will see it as an attempt to usurp his role.” Which, in all fairness, it would be.

  “Then don’t tell him,” Suhail said.

  * * *

  Even after a winter among the Draconeans, I could not always read their expressions and body language reliably. The three sisters, yes; their mannerisms were deeply familiar to me. The elders, however, were another matter. I therefore did not realize, until I suggested the meeting with Giat Jip-hau, that Kuvrey, Sejeat, and Habarz had taken a strong dislike to Colonel Dorson.

  “We would like to speak to someone else,” Kuvrey said, when she heard my proposal. I did not think it was my imagination that I read her words as understatement. All of Dorson’s words went through me, and I did what I could to polish them, but by now the Draconeans had enough sense of human body language that they might well be able to detect his perpetual air of condescension. Even while negotiating a treaty, Dorson seemed as if he were speaking to a group of particularly clever animals, which could not possibly go over well.

  Back I went to the caeliger landing meadow, for a hushed conversation with Tom and Andrew. “I think I can resolve this situation in a way that will work out to everyone’s benefit—but it requires me to get at least Giat Jip-hau out of the camp without Dorson noticing. Better if it is him and some of his countrymen, but him at a minimum.”

  Andrew chewed on his lower lip. “I could make some kind of diversion—light something on fire, perhaps—”

  “No!” I reared back in alarm, then made myself relax. If anyone saw us, we must not look like we were plotting conspiracy. (Even if we were. Especially because we were.) “You’ve already put your neck out far enough, Andrew. I don’t want to see you in front of a firing squad.”

  “Dorson wouldn’t do that,” my brother scoffed, but all the confidence in the world would not have persuaded me to risk him in that fashion.

  Tom said, “What about the Draconeans? If some of them wanted to meet with Dorson—”

  “I would be needed as their interpreter. Which means I would not then be there to interpret for the Khiam Siu.” Given time we did not have, Suhail might have been able to share that duty with me—but there were limits even to my husband’s capacity for learning.

  Tom had seen the flaw as quickly as I had. He nodded. “Nighttime, then. When most of the camp is asleep.” He hesitated, then said, “We could make certain they sleep. All of them, except the Khiam Siu. I still have quite a lot of laudanum.”

  The prospect made me blanch. “That is nearly as bad as Andrew’s suggestion. They would know it was you, Tom—or they would blame the Khiam Siu for drugging them. No, we simply need the sentries to look the other way for a brief time.”

  “Then we’re back to a diversion,” Andrew said. “But one quiet enough that it won’t wake up the whole camp. I’m on watch tonight, if you can arrange the meeting for the right hour, but there will be another fellow with me. And I don’t think it will work for me to simply point behind him and say, ‘What in the world can that be?’”

  For the Khiam Siu to sneak out of camp, they would need a longer distraction than that. The three of us sat in silence for a time, broken only by the occasional aborted suggestion: “What if—no, never mind” and the like.

  Finally a thought came to me, and a grin spread across my face. “I think I have the answer. But I will need something from Imsali first.”

  * * *

  It was a mad rush, arranging everything in time. Tom spoke to Giat Jip-hau, as he could do so without attracting as much attention as I would; but I had to settle the place and time of meeting with the elders, and then I had to talk to Ruzt. She doubted my ability to carry out the plan on my own—rightly, I suspect—and so when night fell at last, I crept out of Imsali and toward the caeliger meadow with Zam at my side, and two squirming bundles und
er my coat.

  When we were still far enough from the meadow not to risk being overheard, she muttered, “One group of humans; another group of humans. How much difference will it really make?”

  All the difference in the world, I hoped. But what I said was, “How much difference would it have made had I been found by Esdarr and her sisters, instead of you three?”

  Zam spat something I expect was very uncomplimentary, and we left it at that.

  At the edge of camp, beyond the light of their lamps and fire, we crouched down behind the same cover that had previously sheltered Ruzt. Zam released her own bundles first, with a quiet whistle to command them. My coat began squirming even more energetically; I opened it and let two more mews slip free. They lifted their heads and sampled the air; then one scurried away. They would have easy pickings in the camp’s supplies: Dorson and his men had not learned from the Nying to set traps.

  Andrew had been listening for the whistle, but he waited several minutes to give the scouting mew time to call in the rest of its flight. Once they had settled in for a thorough raid, he cursed softly, as if he had just noticed the invaders, and dragged his fellow watchman over to drive the mews away.

  The trained kind are more difficult to scare off than their wild brethren, especially when Andrew was deliberately ineffective. The mews were still hissing and flapping about the watchman’s head when I slipped away from camp, circling around to meet up with the aspiring emperor of Yelang and lead him to the Draconeans.

  * * *

  Once again I played interpreter, but this time for a very different sort of conversation.

  Giat Jip-hau spoke very good Scirling, better than Thu’s, but I wished my companion could have been there. It was, after all, his discovery of the first Draconean body that had put us all on this path; and without him, I would not have known to engineer this meeting. Unfortunately, the elders insisted Thu remain with Suhail, under guard in Imsali, as insurance against any deception. I had complete faith that the Khiam Siu intended nothing untoward; my sole concern was that we get the prospective emperor back to camp as soon as possible. Neither of us had much hope that he could return as discreetly as he had left, of course. But if we could keep negotiations from dragging on for so long that his absence was discovered, I believed all would be well.