In the Labyrinth of Drakes

  On the assumption that the scent of another dragon might cause distress, we put her into one of the enclosures that had not been used for some time, rather than Prima’s recently vacated pen. Then we waited, and tried not to fret.

  She arrived in late Nebulis, amid a cavalcade of desert tribesmen. They had bound her to a large cart, drawn on a long tether by a team of camels. The journey had clearly not acclimated the camels to their burden, for their nostrils flared with alarm every time the wind brought the drake’s scent forward. Once they had dragged the cart into position near the enclosure, the beasts were unclipped and led away. I hoped they would be given some kind of suitable treat; the nomads are renowned for the care and affection they lavish upon their camels, and any creature which has been forced to serve as draught power for its own natural predator deserves a reward.

  A new arrivalTom and I watched their approach from atop the compound wall. “Dear God,” Tom said when he got a good look at the chains binding the dragon to the cart. “We have to find a better system than this.”

  “A better system would be relocating our whole enterprise to the desert proper,” I muttered. “Better for the drakes, better for the eggs, if we don’t transport them as far.” Of course, then we would have to transport everything else we needed, which would be costly. The desert can support bands of nomadic herders, but not a permanent base—not without a great deal of money and trouble.

  Tom went to examine the drake while I hung back, sketching. This was in part for others’ peace of mind: no matter that I had been around the world studying dragons, including rather publicly riding upon the back of one; nobody wanted to let Dame Isabella anywhere near a dangerous beast until it was properly confined. (There were some disadvantages to my social elevation.) But I also had an ulterior motive, which was that sketching gave me an excuse to observe the scene in detail. If I paused on occasion to watch the men moving back and forth, looking for a stride I recognized … well, my hand needed a respite.

  I had spotted two potential candidates among the nomads by the time our own men were ready to pull the dragon down from the cart, but any action regarding either of them would have to wait. It was probably just as well: I did not even know what I intended to do. Better that I should attend to the business at hand.

  Tom had injected the drake with a syringe of chloral hydrate, following guidelines laid down by Lord Tavenor. Despite the sedative, however, this was still a tricky process. We were only beginning to guess at the appropriate dosage for a dragon, and had to walk a fine line between leaving the beast too lively, and inducing possibly fatal convulsions. Tom watched our new charge very closely, and finally gave the signal to move forward. Our men had tied ropes around the dragon’s body; now they unfastened the chains that held her to the cart and began to drag her toward the enclosure.

  This might have gone well had we kept the surrounding earth in better repair. But the ground outside the compound was quite rocky, and a large stone had begun to protrude from the soil. The ropes caught against this, halting all forward progress, and two of the men went to drag them clear.

  Whether the drake was somehow roused by this movement, or had merely been biding her time until an opportunity arose, I cannot say. I know only that she strained with sudden violence against her bonds, long body writhing—and then one of her feet slipped free. She raked the soldier nearest, knocking him to the ground, and the other leapt back with a shout. This gave her more slack in the ropes; a moment later all four feet were loose.

  This did not mean she was free. The ropes binding her legs were only part of the set constraining her, with the bulk holding her wings against her body and connecting her to the men pulling her along. But with her feet under her, she now had leverage to pull back against that restraint … and so she did, with great force.

  Had Tom not gotten the sedative into her, there would likely have been a very angry wing-clipped desert drake charging about outside of Qurrat, and she almost certainly would have been shot. Instead a tug-of-war commenced, with many shouting men on one side and the drake on the other, swinging her bound muzzle back and forth in a manner that said she would have burnt them all to a crisp if she could.

  She managed to get one foot up and over a draught rope, and the sudden downward yank brought half a dozen men tumbling to the ground. I dropped my sketch pad and hurried forward—to do what, I cannot say, for my slight weight would have made little difference in the equation. But I was not the only one leaping to assist.

  One of the nomads hurled himself toward the rope now whipping loose. He caught it—skidded across the ground—then lost it a moment later when he stumbled on the hem of his robe, tearing the fabric with a noise that sounded almost like the drake’s snarls. The words that came out of him then I could not translate, but the tone was recognizable: furious expostulation, in a voice I knew very well.

  Suhail’s headscarf slid from his head as he staggered to his feet. His jaw set in a determined grin, he leapt once more for the rope. The drake’s foreleg came for him again; he kicked it away, then went swinging across the ground as she threw her head upward. But the men had regained their feet, and some of them came forward to help him. Suhail surrendered that cord to them and caught another one thrown by his fellow tribesman. This one had a loop in the end, and on his second try Suhail got that around the dragon’s foreleg.

  She went down heavily when he pulled her support out from under her. A frantic scurry commenced, and within a minute or two she was bound once again, sagging as if the exertion had taken all the fight out of her—or as if the chloral hydrate was finally doing its work. The hauling resumed, and soon she was confined to her pit, an exhausted lump underneath the inward-slanting edge.

  Suhail saw me as he turned away from the pit. He could not have missed me; I was standing barely ten meters away, the only woman anywhere in sight. His lack of reaction said he knew precisely where I was, and had known for some time; but he did not meet my gaze, nor acknowledge my presence in any way. He merely went to reclaim his headscarf, shaking his head over the damage to his robe.

  Surely there could be nothing wrong with approaching him and thanking him for his assistance. But I stayed where I was, silent and unmoving, until Tom returned to my side.

  He had been on one of the ropes himself, and was soaked with sweat. Breathing heavily, he said, “We have to find a better way.”

  “Yes,” I said, watching the nomads leave, Suhail in their midst. “We do.”

  SIX

  Amamis and Hicara—Mahira’s assistance—The garden enclosure—Proper conversation—A long-delayed gift

  The death of Prima and the acquisition of Saeva (whom I named for her ferocity) were only two of the changes we experienced around that time. Not three days after that incident, my honeyseekers arrived on a ship from Scirland.

  I had named them Amamis and Hicara, after the brother and sister who founded Spurena in myth. They were as hardy as their namesakes, surviving not one but two ocean voyages—albeit in far more luxurious conditions. I had been concerned that the rigors of travel would put them sufficiently off their feed that they would require special care upon arrival, but they fell with gusto upon the dishes of honey I laid out for them, dipping their brushy little tongues into the sweet liquid. When drab Hicara shouldered her brighter mate out of the way, he tried to spit at her—their defense mechanism, and arguably a form of extraordinary breath—but it did little good. The noxiousness of their spray comes from toxins in the eucalyptus itself, and my little dragons had been subsisting on clover honey during their journey.

  They would have better soon enough. Despite the tensions between us, the sheikh had given permission for me to use the trees in his garden for the sake of our research. I had yet to determine, though, how that would be done. He would hardly wish me on his doorstep every day; and I had been very clear about not asking for that, lest he ascribe impure motivations to my presence. But that meant someone in his household would need to care for the hon
eyseekers in my stead.

  Of course I hoped this might be Suhail. I had little expectation he would take it up, though, and was correct in that—but I could never have predicted who wound up shouldering the task.

  I arrived at the House of Dragons one morning and learned from Lieutenant Marton that a woman from the sheikh’s household was waiting in my office. “A woman?” I asked. “Are you sure?”

  “Very sure,” he said, as if my question were not entirely foolish. “Hajjah Mahira, her name is.”

  The woman sitting in my office was garbed like an Amaneen prayer-leader’s wife. She wore the long cloak, and had veiled her face even though I was hardly a man to whom she need demonstrate respect. When I entered, she rose to her feet and said in Akhian, “Peace be upon you, Umm Yaqub.”

  “And upon you, peace,” I said by reflex. “Umm Yaqub” was my appellation there: parents are commonly known as the mothers and fathers of their children, and “Yaqub” is the Akhian form of “Jacob.” “You—were sent here by the sheikh?” He was not a prayer-leader, so far as I knew; but if one of his wives was extremely pious, she might dress in such fashion. And she, too, had completed the pilgrimage.

  The woman gestured at the door and windows. “Will it bother you to close these?”

  It would make the room stuffy, but I could endure that. I shut the door behind me and then crossed the room to tend to the shutters. Our privacy thus assured, I turned to find she had lowered her veil.

  The line of her nose, the fine edge to her lips: these and other details were immediately familiar. The sheikh did not have such features, and I wondered whom Suhail and his sister took after, their mother or their father.

  “I am Mahira bint Ramiz,” she said, confirming my guess. “I live with my brother Husam, and when I heard of your research, I offered to assist. If this is agreeable for you, then you may show me what care these creatures require.”

  My time in Akhia had already done a great deal to improve my command of the language, but much of the improvement had been in the field of giving instructions to and receiving reports from our labourers, which left me less than wholly prepared for courteous conversation. I gestured for her to take a chair, wishing we had some kind of reception room in the compound, furnished in a more comfortable manner. It would be a useful thing overall, given the length of time this enterprise was likely to persist, and I made a mental note to inquire about the possibility. I did not even have coffee and dates on hand to offer her.

  All I had were questions. “Are you a natural historian?”

  It would have been a stroke of pure luck—and not entirely outside the realm of possibility, given Suhail’s own scholarly tendencies. She shook her head, though, disappointing me. “No, I am studying to be a prayer-leader. For women,” she added, when I showed my surprise.

  That explained her mode of dress. I bit down on the urge to say I did not expect any sister of Suhail’s to be so religious: like me, he followed his faith, but not with any particular zeal. Indeed, sitting with Hajjah Mahira made me feel like I was having tea with my cousin Joseph, who was a magister in Kenway. He never chided me for my lack of piety, but his mere presence always sufficed to make me feel vaguely guilty.

  “I hope this is not a burden for you, or in any way detracts from your studies,” I said.

  “Not at all,” she assured me. “I asked Husam to allow me to help. I often study in the garden, so it will be easy for me to do whatever is necessary out there.”

  The gears of my mind were clicking along, some of them weighing issues related to the honeyseekers, others performing calculations that had nothing to do with professional matters at all. If Mahira had responsibility for the honeyseekers, then I could deal with her instead of the sheikh. Indeed, I would have to deal with her, as it would be inappropriate for Tom to do so in my stead; and doubly so when she was so pious. The same rules of propriety that said I should not be conducting business with strange men might for once operate in my favour. And that, in turn, might open up certain possibilities.

  Such considerations, though, had to wait. “They don’t require a great deal,” I said. “Honeyseekers are a good deal more cooperative in that regard than desert drakes! If you can arrange netting around the eucalyptus trees, to prevent them from flying away, that should be all the confinement they need—and really, even that may not be necessary. But I would rather not have to send all the way to Lutjarro for replacements.”

  When she smiled, her resemblance to Suhail grew even stronger. “Indeed. Will the eucalyptus trees provide all they need?”

  “That and insects ought to be sufficient, but I will tell you what signs of ill health to look for. If they seem underfed, then you can notify me and I will investigate.” I rummaged in a drawer and came up with the notebook in which I had begun to sketch out my plans. “The most important thing is the eggs. You will need to look for them every day; there will not be one every day, but I would like them collected at precise intervals after their laying, which means we will need to know when that occurs.”

  She cocked her head to one side, curious. “What do you intend to do with them? I understand this is for your research, but I cannot see how it relates to desert drakes.”

  “If all goes as I hope, it will teach us something useful about which environmental variations can be tolerated, and which ones cannot; also when such variations can be introduced without causing undue difficulty.” I had an extensive outline of test cases in my notebook, the fruit of my association with other scientific members of the Flying University. Mine was not a field that often suited itself to laboratory-style experimentation, but in this instance a rigorous comparative approach was possible. Depending on how long I was permitted to continue the experiment, I might be able to test every significant variable in a wide range of degrees and combinations.

  She followed my explanation with the attentiveness of an intelligent woman who does not know the subject at all, but is willing to give it the necessary thought. When I was done, she said, “Presuming that some of them are healthy … what will you do with all these honeyseekers?”

  That was an excellent question. Their bones could be preserved, but they had limited use, on account of their minute size; even a full-grown honeyseeker is rarely more than fourteen centimeters long. “Distribute them as pets, I suppose,” I said with a laugh. “You may certainly have a pair for your own keeping, if you decide you like them. We might make diplomatic gifts of some others.”

  “Eucalyptus trees are not so common,” she said. “But we might grow more, and give those along with the animals themselves.”

  Mahira departed soon after, on the understanding that I would bring the honeyseekers by the next morning for them to be settled in their new home. I exited the office to find that our closeted state had excited a great deal of speculation around the compound, which I had to quell with actual answers. “The sheikh’s sister?” Tom said when I told him. I could hear his unspoken question behind those words.

  “Yes,” I said, and smiled. What need climbing the walls, when I had a reason to walk through the front door?

  * * *

  I arrived the next morning to find Mahira in the garden, veiled, issuing instructions to servants who were fixing the last nets in place. They had shifted a trellis arch to serve as a doorway into the eucalyptus grove, and the whole effect was far more elegant than I had envisioned.

  My honeyseekers were chattering in their cage, clinging to the bars and poking their delicate snouts out through the gaps. Once Mahira had dismissed the servants, she lowered her veil and bent to study them. “They are smaller than I expected.”

  “If they were not,” I said, “they would be a good deal harder to keep.” I opened the cage door and stepped back, beckoning for Mahira to do the same. Honeyseekers are inquisitive and relatively calm, but they would be more adventurous if we were not standing over them.

  They crept out of the cage after a minute or two, and quickly found their way to the nearest euc
alyptus blossoms. Hicara buried her face in one straight off, as if I had been starving them for a month. “Little glutton,” I said, smiling fondly.

  AMAMIS AND HICARA

  We discussed their care for a time, and were nearly finished when I caught a glimpse, through the nets and eucalyptus leaves, of someone approaching. “Are we expecting company?” I asked Mahira.

  She did not reach for her veil, nor did she look surprised. “I was beginning to think he would not come.”

  The newcomer ducked under the nets of the arch and straightened up: Suhail.

  My heart thumped in my chest. I had hoped this arrangement might give me an opportunity to speak with him, but I had not expected it to occur so promptly. “Oh dear,” I said involuntarily, looking about like a guilty thing. “Are we going to get in trouble for this?”

  He laughed, though I noted a strained edge to it. Mahira said, “Why should there be trouble, when you are so well chaperoned?”

  I supposed if she did not suffice—a woman, related to Suhail, and studying to be a prayer-leader—then no one would. “Thank you,” I said, and tried not to give away how heartfelt it was.

  She shrugged. “Husam is being excessively cautious. That will excite far more rumour than allowing you two to behave like rational adults. If anyone needs me, I will be studying over here.” She took a book from the pocket of her cloak and went to sit on a small bench in the corner of the grove, near to where Amamis and Hicara were exploring.

  Which left Suhail and myself standing near the entrance, awkwardly not looking at one another. He spoke first, in his lightly accented Scirling. “I am sorry I did not write.”

  “Oh, it’s quite all right,” I assured him. The words came out too loudly. Moderating my tone, I said, “I am glad to know you are well.”