He nodded; I saw it out of the corner of my eye. His hands were locked behind his back. “My family—my tribe as a whole—we have been having some difficulties of late. For a while now, I should say. Years. I’ve been rather occupied dealing with that.”
I searched for something to say that would not sound inane, and failed. “Your family seems to be doing well now.”
“Well enough.” He reached out and touched one of the eucalyptus leaves, tugged it free and inhaled its clean scent. “Husam has kept me busy seeing to business matters, mostly here in Qurrat, while he goes to the caliph’s court. Until he sent me to the desert, that is.”
I could not repress the urge to ask, “How many months ago was this?”
His smile was ironic. “Not long before your predecessor left.”
Meaning the sheikh had probably learned of Lord Tavenor’s impending departure, and the likelihood of me coming in his place—or if not me, then at least Tom, who was thoroughly tainted by association. But I could not say that, and so I turned to what I thought would be a lighter topic. “What have you been doing in the desert? Seeking out Draconean ruins?”
It was the wrong thing to ask. Suhail’s expression became shuttered. “No. Fighting the Banu Safr. One of the rebellious tribes.”
The phrase meant nothing to me at the time, and I did not pursue it; Akhian politics were not what interested me just then. “I am sorry. I hope there has not been much bloodshed.”
“Not until recently.”
I thought of the bad news that Suhail had brought with him on his first arrival, and felt sick at heart.
“What of you, though?” Suhail asked, with the air of a man making an effort to be less grim. “It seems you have done well.”
I gave him an abbreviated version of the events that had brought Tom and myself to Akhia, and spent a pleasant moment in tales of Jake’s exploits at Suntley. Suhail seemed more like himself as I went on, and even laughed at an incident involving the school fish-pond. He was the one, after all, who had taught my son to improve his swimming—though I doubted he had intended it to be put to such ends.
But I recognized the look in Suhail’s eyes. I had seen it in the mirror for two long years when I was growing up: the period I referred to as the “grey years” in the first volume of my memoirs. For the sake of my family, I had sworn off my interest in dragons, and the lack of it had leached all colour from my life. As it happened, my good behaviour was ultimately rewarded, and I did not regret the path I had taken to my present point. Suhail, on the other hand …
I could not say this to him. I knew too little of his situation; it would be the height of arrogance for me to barge in, thinking I knew what was best for him simply because I had once experienced a similar thing. Perhaps a marriage was being arranged for him, with a wife of good family who would not mind her husband gallivanting off to study ancient ruins. Or perhaps Suhail did not begrudge his brother the aid their tribe required. His circumstances might be of limited duration, a thing for him to endure for a little while before returning to the life he loved. All of these might be possible—and none of them were my business.
One thing was my business, though, and it had been tucked into my sleeve since that first encounter in the courtyard, waiting for the moment when I might deliver it. And if it brought a spot of colour into Suhail’s own grey years, that would ease my mind a great deal.
I pulled the paper loose from my sleeve and tried to smooth it out into a more respectable-looking packet. “Here. This is for you.” When Suhail eyed it warily, I said, “It is nothing inappropriate. You could post it in the town square and no one would think anything of it.” Indeed, most of them would have no idea what it was.
He took the paper and unfolded it the rest of the way. This took a fair bit of unfolding; it was thin tissue, and quite a large piece when stretched to its full extent. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mahira watching in curiosity, and not bothering to hide it.
Suhail saw what I had given him, and his hands trembled. “It is the stone.”
The Cataract Stone, as it is known these days, though it had not yet been given that name anywhere outside of my own head. I found the engraved slab during my exploration of the Great Cataract of Mouleen, but had not known its significance at the time. The stone, as most of my readers no doubt know, contains a bilingual inscription: the same text, rendered in both Draconean and Ngaru. The former was at the time unintelligible to us, but the latter could be translated; the Cataract Stone therefore served as a key to the code, a way to decipher the Draconean language and unlock its secrets at last.
“Someone went back to the waterfall,” I said, forgetting that I had not told Suhail where the stone lay. “He took a rubbing for me. I wanted you to have it.”
He looked at me, startled, and then studied the paper more closely. “This is an original. Isabella—” He caught himself. “Umm Yaqub. Even now, I would have heard if this had been published. How long have you been sitting on this?”
My cheeks heated. I almost dug my toe into the ground, as if I were a child caught out in a prank. “A little while.” Suhail waited. “All right, I’ve had it for more than a year.”
He made an inarticulate noise: half laugh, half horrified roar. “For the love of—you know better than that! To keep private something this important—”
“I haven’t been a complete fool,” I said tartly, well aware that I had been at least a partial fool. “There are several copies of that, and my will contains instructions that they should be released to the scholarly community if I die. I would never let such important data be lost! But…” My face was still hot. I looked away, and found myself meeting Mahira’s eyes, which did not help at all. She was staring at us both with open curiosity. “You are the one who made me see the importance of the inscription. Without that, I would never have known to ask someone to go back and take a rubbing. And I cannot translate it; I can barely learn languages spoken today. There are other scholars of my acquaintance who have worked on the problem of Draconean, but none with your dedication, and none with any connection to the discovery of this stone. I thought it only right that you should be the first to work on the text.”
He stood silent through my explanation. I finally dragged my gaze back to his, and lost my breath when I did. Yes, these had been grey years for him—and I had just poured a torrent of colour into them. He looked fully alive, as he had not since he strode into the courtyard that first day.
I might have cast my professionalism to the wind when I kept the rubbing secret, hoping someday to give it to him … but I did not regret the decision at all.
Suhail folded the paper carefully along the original lines, cautious lest he smear anything. It had been painted with a fixative, but care was still warranted. “I cannot bring myself to complain any further,” he admitted. “This is a gift beyond price—thank you. But promise me you will make the text public now.”
“I will.” (A promise, I should note, that I fully intended to keep. But having given Suhail the original, I could do nothing without one of the copies I had left in Scirland. My duties to the Royal Army meant I would not have much leisure to prepare it for publication, and my employers would not be pleased with me if I spent my time on something so irrelevant to the task at hand. All of which sounds like a justification, I know—but upon my honour, the delay in ultimately publishing the text was not intentional.)
At that point Suhail noticed Mahira staring at us, and spoke in Akhian rapid enough that I caught barely one word in four. I could at least make out that it was an explanation of the paper, and his reaction to it. Rather than try to follow the words, I watched Mahira. She looked pensive, giving little away; but I thought she might be pleased. If she was as fond of Suhail as I suspected, she must be glad to see him receive a gift of such personal value. And she did not seem to disapprove of me giving it.
Suhail tucked the paper into a pocket of his embroidered caftan and laid his right hand over his heart. “I wi
ll not forget your generosity,” he said. “But … I should go.”
“Of course,” I said—and then, without thinking, I extended my hand to him.
He retreated a step, smiling regretfully. “You are not ke’anaka’i here.”
It was a reference to our time stranded together in Keonga. There I had been considered neither male nor female, but something else entirely: dragon-spirited, the soul of an ancient creature reborn in a human body. Neither Suhail nor I believed in the metaphysical truth of the concept, but the social aspect had been real enough, and it had given us an excuse to bypass many of the constraints of propriety.
But only for a time, and that time was now ended. “Yes, of course—forgive me.” I folded my hands against my stomach and gave him an awkward little curtsey. “I do hope I will see you again. Tom and I will need to go out into the desert, I think, if we are to improve matters here; it would be very valuable to have your assistance with that.”
“All things may be possible, God willing,” Suhail said. It was a ritual phrase, and for all his sincerity, I did not think he was optimistic.
Then he was gone, leaving me with Mahira, who laid her book aside and rejoined me. With surprising candour, she said, “He wanted very much to speak with you.”
And I with him. “Thank you for arranging this,” I said, and was surprised to hear my own words come out melancholy. It was that as much as any sense of duty which made me say, “I should return to my work now. Please do let me know how the honeyseekers fare.”
PART TWO
In which we venture into the desert, where someone takes an unexpected interest in our work
SEVEN
Plans for the desert—Colonel Pensyth is concerned—Akhian politics—Riding camels—My introduction to the desert
“If we are to go into the desert,” Tom said, “we will need a flawless case for doing so. Not just what good it might do here, but an actual plan for how we are to conduct our research.
Such plans are more common nowadays, but at the time it was a startling change from our usual mode of operation, which involved wandering out into the field and seeing what we might discover. (That mode worked far better when the body of existing knowledge was small enough that all one had to do was hold out a hand for new data to fall into it.) Tom and I worked long hours for a full week constructing our plan, for we knew any failed request would only make the next one more difficult: if we wanted to succeed, our best chance would be on our first try.
We might also have stood a better chance if only one of us tried to go. The truth was, however, that the House of Dragons did not require much attention from us on a daily basis. Lord Tavenor had done a good job setting up the procedures there; Tom and I were needed only when crises arose (which they did not often do), or when we altered the standard arrangements. We were reluctant to do much with the latter until we had data to guide our alterations, and so I saw little reason why we both should not go to the desert—except that Colonel Pensyth would not approve. “We shall tell him the truth,” I said. “You know anatomy far better than I, but I am the one who can record it best, with my drawings.”
“And you’re the better student of behaviour,” he agreed. “What if we marked this up—made it clear who will be doing what tasks? Some of them could be either of us, but if we divide it all very carefully, we can make it so that the two halves can’t possibly be pulled apart.”
When I came home from Dar al-Tannaneen to Shimon and Aviva’s house, I sat up for hours more refining my plans for the honeyseeker eggs. The creatures lay these in nests made of leaves, and cement them into place with a mixture of saliva and nectar, which dries to a sticky consistency. I would be leaving some eggs in situ as a comparison—a “control,” as it is properly called—and placing the remainder in different situations. Each nest would have an attendant thermometer, and Lieutenant Marton would record the temperature at regular intervals. I even prepared tags for the legs of the resulting hatchlings, with instructions that any who perished or failed to hatch should be preserved for later examination.
“It would be best for all involved if I went away for a time,” I said wryly to Andrew after showing him my plan. “I am starting with the smallest variations, and working my way up to more significant ones; it will be months before I have enough data to draw conclusions. In the meanwhile, I imagine Lieutenant Marton would prefer to have me not looking over his shoulder every five minutes.”
My brother shook his head, browsing through my outline. It went on for pages. I had thought I was being thorough when I conducted the Great Sparkling Inquiry, fifteen years previously, but I had been a mere novice then in scientific methodology. Now that I had a better grasp of the subject, I could be very thorough indeed.
“I never would have thought,” Andrew said, “when you had me steal books out of Father’s library for you, that it would lead to this.”
That was peculiar, for it seemed to me that my life had drawn a fairly straight line from that beginning to my current position. All the same, I supposed Andrew had a point: it is one thing to think your younger sister may eventually study dragons, and another thing entirely to find her conducting a breeding programme in a foreign country, with the threat of impending war driving her work.
“I hope it will lead me a good deal further,” I said with a smile. “I am not nearly done yet.”
The day after Tom submitted our proposal to Colonel Pensyth, Andrew arrived in the morning with the news that I was to report to the building that housed the soldiers, rather than going directly to my office as usual. I went with him readily enough, assuming that Tom would be joining us there. In this, as it happened, I was wrong.
“Dame Isabella—please, have a seat,” Colonel Pensyth said, gesturing me to a wicker chair in front of his desk.
I did not miss the fact that his adjutant had closed the door behind me. “Are we not waiting for Tom?”
“He is not coming,” the colonel said. “Tea?”
“Yes, please,” I said automatically, my thoughts awhirl.
This much I will say for Pensyth: he did not waste much time on the niceties, which would have only given me anxiety. “I read the proposal Mr. Wilker sent me, and it seems quite sound. But there is one issue, which is the … social situation with the Aritat.”
I sipped my tea, buying myself time to think. By the time I had swallowed, I had not found any reason to be other than blunt; and so I was. “Are you speaking of the unfriendliness between myself and the sheikh?”
“I’m more concerned with his brother.” Pensyth settled back into his chair. I had never gone to school, but I had heard my brothers’ stories; I felt like a boy up in front of the headmaster for some transgression. But I was a woman grown, and reminded myself of that fact. I had nothing to be ashamed of in front of Pensyth, nor was I required to accept his judgment in all things.
He said, “Before you came here, Dame Isabella, I read your account of your voyage. Hajj Suhail ibn Ramiz is the man you traveled with, isn’t he?”
“Yes, he is.” I sighed and set my teacup on Pensyth’s desk, so I could lace my fingers together and grip them tight without being obvious. “Shall we get to the point? You are afraid that I will disgrace Scirland by carrying on with an unmarried man.”
“I would never suggest that.”
No, he would only imply it. I ground my teeth, then said, “Colonel, do you make a habit of querying your men about their involvement with every woman they meet? I assure you that many if not most of them have done far more to merit censure than I have. I know it may be difficult to believe, but dragons truly are my concern here. I have not undertaken their study in the hope of attracting a new husband; indeed, such a thing would be an inconvenience rather than a benefit, as there are few husbands who would accept my life as I have become accustomed to living it. As for scandal outside the bounds of marriage … that would be even more inconvenient, as people question my professional integrity quite enough without such justification to
encourage them. So you may lay your mind at ease, sir: I have no intention of disgracing our nation. Not when there are dragons to be studied.”
By the time I reached the end of this increasingly frosty diatribe, Colonel Pensyth was staring wide-eyed at me. He even looked embarrassed, which perversely softened my feelings toward him. (I expected him to be angry.) When I finished, he shut his slackened mouth and seemed determined not to open it until he was absolutely certain what was going to come out of it.
“Well,” he said at last, shifting in his chair with a creak of wicker. “That is good to know. Because I agree with you and Mr. Wilker: it would be very good for you to gather more data, and that means going to the desert. Since that is where the sheikh’s brother is … well.” He cleared his throat, and an uncomfortable silence followed.
Given what I had just said to Pensyth, I took great care not to show any excitement at the prospect of seeing Suhail again, out from under the eye of his brother. “I am very glad we are in agreement, Colonel. When should Tom and I be prepared to depart?”
“As soon as I can get you out there, I suppose. But that may be a while yet.” Pensyth rose, locked his hands behind his back in the military manner, and began to pace. “Dame Isabella … how much do you know of Akhian politics?”
I blinked, not following his change of subject. “Within the country? Very little, I fear.”
“Do you know what I’m referring to when I say ‘rebellious tribe’?”
That was the term Suhail had used, in the garden. I had forgotten, and not inquired about it after. “I have heard it, but nothing more.”
Pensyth said, “There are two kinds of Akhian—in a manner of speaking. They divide themselves into ‘the people of the towns’ and ‘the people of the desert.’ City-dwellers and nomads, essentially. But they’re all of the same stock: trace the city lineages back, and you find they all come from the desert. Call themselves by the same tribal names; those in the towns send their boys out to the sand for a few years so they won’t forget their roots. That sort of thing.