A Natural History of Dragons (27 page)

Curling up on my side to regard him, I said, “Jacob—do you think this has anything to do with the attacks?”

He had, of course, been considering the same thing. He crossed his arms over his knees. “At first I thought it might—when we found the carcass. It might have been some change in the dragons’ behavior, them bringing their dead here, and showing aggression to people. But with those new bones, or rather the older ones … those must have been there for years, Isabella. Who knows how many. Long before the attacks began.”

“Unless it comes and goes. Dragons might have been attacking people when those older bones were placed there, too. If there
were
people in the region; as you say, who knows how old they are.”

“But what’s the logic, then? Why should dragons start bringing their dead here, then stop, then start again—and why should that have anything to do with this aggression? No, it makes more sense that it’s a disease.”

Not one brought about by eating their own kind, though. I picked up a twig and stabbed at the ground beyond the edge of my blanket. “Perhaps it’s something to do with this Zhagrit Mat.”

Jacob’s eyes glittered with the last flickers of the fire. He did not answer at first; then he shook his head, bowing it until it nearly rested on his folded arms. “I should say that’s superstitious nonsense. But I’m not certain of anything any longer.”

“Zhagrit Mat didn’t start haunting the village until after I went to the ruins,” I said. “The attacks started far earlier. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t some connection that I’m missing.”

The last log-end collapsed into a heap of embers with a muffled sigh. Jacob said, “You won’t figure it out by fretting. Get some rest, Isabella.”

And hope for answers in the morning. I drew the blanket closer around my shoulders and waited for sleep to come.

EIGHTEEN

Lord Hilford’s answer from the boyar — More trouble in the night — Consequences in the morning — Return to the ruins — What Dagmira and I saw there

The hike back to Drustanev was quicker (though more punishing to the knees) as we descended toward the village, and blessedly undisturbed by dragons. We had a splendid view of Gritelkin’s house as we came in, and I saw the telltale signs of activity that said
someone
had returned.

It proved to be both Lord Hilford and Mr. Wilker, each of who must have pressed quite hard on their journey for them to be back so soon. Unless— “Did you manage to see the boyar?” I burst out as we came into the workroom, suddenly worried that something might have turned Lord Hilford back.

“I did, and where the devil have you two been?” the earl said. He went on before I could answer him, making it clear the question had been rhetorical. “Really, Camherst—for a man who was so reluctant to let his wife come to Vystrana in the first place, you’re remarkably willing to drag her all over it now that she’s here.”

Jacob looked shamefaced at the accusation. For my own part, I was taken aback; it was unlike Lord Hilford to speak that way, when he had been so readily agreeable before. “Jacob dragged me nowhere,” I said with asperity. “We went for a lovely hike and discovered something completely unknown to the science of dragon naturalism—but you will not hear it until you say what has put this burr in your brain, that you should accuse my husband like that.”

Mr. Wilker had been seated on a stool by the window, his face in his hands; now he sat up and said, “The creature was stalking him.”

I blinked. “What?”

All my thoughts had been bent upon the wonderful news we had to tell them once they returned; I had quite forgotten what had sent Mr. Wilker after Lord Hilford in the first place. “We found more prints burned into the ground,” he said. “Along the path toward the boyar’s lodge.”

“Did you see it?” I asked Lord Hilford, with perhaps a touch more eagerness than was polite. I suppose I should have asked first if he was well, but I could see with my own eyes that he was; the other had to be asked.

“No,” the earl said, “and I wasn’t about to let that priest drown me in a stream, either. But that night…” He harrumphed into his mustache. “Well, I don’t know what I heard. Menkem declared I wasn’t coming back to Drustanev, though, unless I let him do his little ritual. It seemed more politic to agree.”

Jacob admitted, “We’ve had no trouble—not of that sort—since we let him, ah, ‘purify’ us.”

“Neither did we,” Mr. Wilker said.

“That’s settled, then,” I said briskly. “No more hauntings—and we can show you
this.
”

In the interests of not misleading the reader, I should admit that more than scientific rationality led me to dismiss the specter of Zhagrit Mat so quickly. I had managed to half forget the sounds I heard, and the footprint burned into the slope behind our house; I did not deny the evidence, but I did trivialize it, for it had not been repeated. Hearing that Lord Hilford had been stalked by the beast—or whatever it was—unnerved me badly, and I responded by ignoring it.

This is not, of course, a terribly profitable response, and I do not recommend it to the reader. Problems rarely go away because you ignore them, and this one would prove no different.

But the choice was made, and the samples from our cave expedition laid out. These distracted Lord Hilford on the spot. He snatched them up, exclaiming, and Mr. Wilker was not far behind. The earl’s assistant, however, withheld his acclaim, examining the fragments closely.

“It’s a damned shame you could not get anything intact,” he said. I bristled at his critical tone, which seemed to imply that the shortcoming was due to sheer laziness on our part, and not a lack of suitable equipment. “With pieces this incomplete, and so crusted with minerals, I can’t agree that they are certainly dragon bone. More likely some other large predator—a bear, perhaps.”

“It is
not
a bear,” I said sharply before Jacob or the earl could respond.

Mr. Wilker gave me a pitying look. “On what do you base your declaration, Mrs. Camherst?” He laid the faintest stress on my title of courtesy, which put my back up as if I had been laced into the most severe of corsets. “What are the skeletal characteristics which mark ursine anatomy? Unless you have been studying a great many books we have not brought with us, my knowledge of such matters is far more complete than yours; it is my judgment we shall be trusting in this matter.”

“And
my
knowledge of what we saw in the cave is far more complete than yours, Mr. Wilker,” I shot back. “I saw with my own eyes the carcass of our slain dragon, whose bones should have fallen to dust long since; and on that I base my judgment of these fragments.”

It was not kind of me, but I laid my own stress—not nearly as faint—on his own form of address. He heard my implication very clearly. Mr. Wilker was not a gentleman by birth, and in those days I did not understand what effort had been required for him to lift himself above his humble birth, obtain an education, and bring himself into the circle of a man as socially and scientifically exalted as Lord Hilford. I therefore did not understand why he should resent me, and my presence on this expedition. But the blame must be shared equally; neither of us behaved very well toward the other, as I was in the process of proving.

Mr. Wilker reddened. “
Your
judgment, Mrs. Camherst? I was not aware that you had any authority in this expedition, except that of which pencil to choose in your drawing. But as you seem to have adopted your husband’s trousers, perhaps I was wrong.”

“Now see here—” Jacob said, his voice rising.

“I should hardly—” I began.

“Enough!” Lord Hilford slammed one hand down on the table before we could answer the question of who was about to say the more unforgivable thing, me or my husband. “For God’s sake, Tom; you know these aren’t bear bones. Even with the mineralization, they aren’t nearly heavy enough. Mrs. Camherst, Tom Wilker’s birth may be below your own, but he has raised himself up by his own brilliance and effort, which is something I should expect
you
of all people to respect.”

He paused long enough for shame to secure its grip on me. Then, in a more moderate tone, he said, “Now, if someone will fetch me a magnifying glass—”

Mr. Wilker leapt to do so, caught halfway between scowling and red-faced embarrassment. My hands went by reflex to straighten my skirts, encountered the trousers, and sprang away as if burned; my own face heated. But I bit down on the impulse to excuse myself and go change.

Lord Hilford accepted the magnifying glass and spent a long moment peering at the various fragments, murmuring excitedly to himself. “How I wish we had brought a bone saw!” he said. “If we could cut a thin enough slice of this—” Then he recalled our presence, and looked up. “It’s difficult to be certain; the bone has become saturated with all manner of minerals. But I’ve long speculated that dragon bone, where not hollow, is spongy, far beyond what we find in other creatures’ skeletons; in fact, a crystallographer of my acquaintance thinks the material may be arranged quite regularly, to provide strength while minimizing weight. We may at last have a sample with which to answer that question! Where did you say you found this?”

I left it for Jacob to explain. Lord Hilford was, of course, correct; but his insight did not go far enough. I
envied
Mr. Wilker, for the simple fact that our society made it easier to transcend class than sex. Which was not only unfair of me, but in some respects inaccurate: there is sometimes a greater willingness to make an exception for a woman than a man, so long as her breeding is good enough. But at the tender age of nineteen, I had not yet seen enough of the world to understand that.

Fortunately, Mr. Wilker seemed as eager as I to sweep the matter under the rug, at least for the moment. I sent Dagmira to roust up our cook; our group of four talked animatedly all the time we waited for supper, and all the way through it. “I should set out tomorrow morning to see it for myself,” Lord Hilford said, “except these old feet demand a rest. The day after, perhaps.”

I had nearly forgotten about his own journey, and its purpose. “What did the boyar say?” Jacob asked.

“Ah, that’s right; Tom’s heard, but you haven’t.” The earl laid his napkin aside, looking sober. “It didn’t go as well as we might have hoped. Khirzoff didn’t come out and say this—it would have made him look rather foolish—but I don’t think Gritelkin’s arrangements with him were nearly so extensive as I’d been led to believe. Arrangements concerning our visit, that is. He seems to have expected us to be Scirling tourists.”

“Not natural historians on an expedition,” I said.

The earl nodded. “He knows
now,
of course; some gossip carried word to him, no doubt. He’s not unfriendly to science, mind you. That guest of his, Gaetano Rossi, is a scientist himself. But our welcome was chillier than I might have hoped for.”

Jacob had been picking at his remaining food; now he laid his knife down. “So he will not help us?”

“Oh, he will,” Lord Hilford said. “The man is a razesh of his, after all, and can’t be permitted to simply vanish. Khirzoff’s guess is that Gritelkin fell prey to a dragon; his people have had quite a bit of trouble with the attacks. But he has promised to mount a search, and someone will come around to inform us if they find anything. Or, for that matter, if they don’t.”

It should have reassured me, but it did not. Very few things since our arrival had made it quite so clear to me how isolated we were here: Gritelkin was more than an ordinary villager, and still, his absence had managed to go unremarked for all this time.

The natural thought, following on that, sprang from my mouth without waiting for permission. “Did none of the villagers report the disappearance to him?”

Lord Hilford frowned, shaking his head. “This was the first Khirzoff had heard of it.”

“A villager would not have got in to see the boyar himself. Perhaps they reported it, but no one wanted to trouble Khirzoff himself with the matter,” Mr. Wilker said. He did not sound as if he was even convincing himself.

“I can ask the mayor tomorrow,” Jacob said. Then he sobered. “If the man will help us. The villagers haven’t been fond of us at any point, and these strange troubles have soured opinion even worse.”

“Would you like me to ask Dagmira?” I offered. “I would not go so far as to say that she
likes
me, but I think she would answer.”

Mr. Wilker did not make the disparaging comment he might have indulged in before. Lord Hilford said, “You may as well try, Mrs. Camherst, and if that fails we can approach the mayor.” The gentlemen then agreed that they should spend the next day studying the bone fragments and asking about for delicate stone-cutting tools (though for the latter, they did not hold out much hope), and so we all went to bed.

But as so often happened during this expedition, nothing went as we had planned.

I did not hear any sounds in the night. But others did, and even had their neighbors doubted their word, the remainder of the evidence was plain for all to see.

There must have been a dozen prints burned into the ground, all around the village. Perhaps more; I did not count. I might have—as before, scientific modes of thought provided me with some refuge against fear—but we were not permitted to go in search.

We were not permitted past our front door.

I would not term them a
mob,
precisely. As Mr. Wilker said, rather sourly, there were not enough people in Drustanev to get up a proper mob. Nor, it being daylight, did they have burning torches. But there were various tools in their hands, from shepherd’s crooks to hoes to, yes, a couple of pitchforks, and there was a great deal of angry shouting.

Menkem did not lead the charge, but he was up among the leaders, just behind Urjash Mazhustin, the mayor. When Lord Hilford stepped out to speak with him, the man held up one hand, looking regretful, but also frightened and determined.

“You must leave,” Mazhustin said. “All of you. Gather your things and go, and take the demon with you.”