The Tropic of Serpents: A Memoir by Lady Trent (A Natural History of Dragons) (3 page)

Lucy retreated to our side. “What is he doing?” I asked, not daring raise my voice above a murmur.

“Writing down as much as he can remember,” she said. “From the notebooks that were taken.”

After three years’ work, the process for preserving dragonbone must have been engraved on the inside of his eyelids;
I
had it memorized, and I was not even chemist enough to understand what most of it meant. As for the rest—“Mr. Wilker said the most recent notebook was not taken, yes? So long as we have that, the older notes do not matter half so much.” Most of them were obsolete by now, documenting failed experiments.

Lucy spread her hands. “He says even the old notes are important—that he likes to look over them from time to time.”

She went off to fetch more teacups, and then Mr. Wilker and I settled in at the far end of the parlour to hear Lucy’s account of the break-in and the investigation thus far. By the time she finished, Kemble was ready to pause in his work and acknowledge the rest of the world.

“If they’d come before the Sabbath…” he said, clearly grateful they had not. His daughter presented him with a cup of tea, which he took and drained absently. “I was looking back through the old notebooks during lunch on Eromer, and something there caught my attention. Last year, I—”

Mr. Wilker, who had long since learned to recognize the warning signs, cut him off before he could descend into a thicket of scientific language I would not understand in the slightest. The body of our collective knowledge has grown so rapidly in my lifetime that although I am accounted an extremely learned woman, there are whole fields I know very little of; chemistry is one such. It was not a part of young ladies’ curricula in my youth, and my self-education had gone in other directions. Mr. Wilker therefore diverted our chemist to the points he knew I would care about. “You said something about that this morning, yes. It gave you an idea?”

“I think so,” Kemble said. “It’s only a thought so far; it will take a great deal of testing. But I may have an idea for synthesis at last.”

Had that not been the fifth time I heard those words from his mouth, I would have been more excited. It was, after all, the purpose for which we had hired Kemble. We knew how to preserve dragonbone; that was no longer a challenge. But Mr. Wilker and I, discussing the matter three years ago, had seen the peril in that knowledge.

Quite apart from the desire of hunters to preserve their trophies, and the desire of natural historians to study their subject at leisure
post mortem,
the qualities of dragonbone made it attractive to other kinds of person. Its mechanical properties were far superior to those of iron and steel, being both lighter and stronger—and as the easily accessible iron deposits in Anthiope and other parts of the world began to run dry, the value of any alternative grew by the year.

I could enumerate at length the drawbacks to the industrial use of dragonbone. Indeed, I had an article already prepared on the subject, ready to send at a moment’s notice to all the reputable publications. Dragons were even rarer than iron, and while it was true that they reproduced (which ore was not known to do), any widespread demand for their bones would lead to mass slaughter, perhaps even to extinction. The irregular shape of many bones rendered them less than ideal for the construction of machines, which would result in a great deal of waste. The expense and hassle of harvesting them from dead dragons (many of whom lived in locales as foreign and distant as those still rich in iron) rendered the prospect less than entirely profitable. It went on for pages, but the entire thing was flawed in its basic assumption, which was that people would consider the matter rationally before making their decisions.

The truth was that the idea would bring speculators flocking like vultures to a dead horse, ready to pick the bones clean. And if I tried to persuade myself that I was exaggerating—that such a doom-filled scenario would never come to pass—I had only to consider the Erigan continent, where the lure of iron had led several Anthiopean states to involve themselves in the affairs of the nations there. If Thiessin was willing to conquer Djapa, and Chiavora to encourage revolution in Agwi, and Scirland to insert itself between the Talu Union and the military might of the Ikwunde, for the sake of being able to build new steam engines, we would not hesitate to sacrifice a few dumb beasts.

I sighed and drained the last of my tea. “With all due respect, Mr. Kemble, I would almost welcome another set of eyes on the matter. I have every confidence that you can solve this riddle, given sufficient time—but that, we may not have. Sooner or later
someone
will figure out Rossi’s method, even without your notes. If we are to avert chaos, we need a way to satisfy the demand for this substance that does not involve butchering dragons.”

“I doubt we’ll be that lucky,” Mr. Wilker said, sounding bleak. “With the eyes, that is. How many people will go to the amount of effort you and I have, just to spare animals? We already butcher elephants for their ivory and tigers for their skins, and those are only decorative.”

He was likely right. Sighing, I said, “Then we had best hope the police recover the notebook—small hope that it is. Do we have any notion who took it?”

By the grim silence that fell, the answer started with “yes” and got worse from there. Mr. Wilker replied obliquely. “You know about the symposium, I think.”

A gathering of scholars, hosted by the Philosophers’ Colloquium, the preeminent scientific body in Scirland. Mr. Wilker had not been invited to attend, because he was not a gentleman. I had not been invited to attend either, because although my birth was gentle, I was not a man.

But we knew someone who met both of those requirements. “If it was one of the visitors, Lord Hilford might be able to find out.”

“He won’t have much time,” Kemble said, coming out of the reverie into which he so frequently lapsed. “Doesn’t that end this week?”

It did, and the scholars would be returning to their homelands. “Indeed. Then I suppose I know what I am doing with my afternoon.”

*   *   *

I was at the door to Lord Hilford’s townhouse before I remembered that I had promised to pay a visit to my relatives by marriage. I knocked on the door anyway, thinking to ask the earl whether I might send them a note. As it transpired, he was not yet home from a lecture, and so I had more than enough time while I waited for him in the drawing room.

If you find yourself thinking that I had enough time to make good on that promise, you would be more or less correct. The Camhersts lived not far from Lord Hilford, in Mornetty Square, and it would not have taken me above twenty minutes to get there and back. But I did not know how long they would keep me, and it was of the utmost importance that I warn Lord Hilford about the intruders at Mr. Kemble’s as soon as possible. If any of the visitors to the symposium were behind this outrage, we had limited time in which to find out—even more limited time in which to do anything about it.

So I told myself, at least. The truth is that, although I had told my mother that Matthew, my brother-in-law, had agreed to take in little Jacob while I was gone, I had neglected to mention his lack of enthusiasm for the entire plan. His wife did not mind the addition of a temporary child, but Matthew minded very much the possibility of keeping him permanently. He might have even been the one who spilled the secret of the Erigan expedition where my mother could hear. Drained by my morning confrontation and by the dreadful news of the break-in, I was not minded to face anyone I did not consider a good friend.

I therefore wrote out an excuse and had Lord Hilford’s boot-boy run it to Mornetty Square. Then I linked my gloved hands together and paced, and worried, and made a hundred different (and useless) plans, until Lord Hilford came home.

When I heard his booming voice in the front hall, I did not trouble to wait in the drawing room. He saw me as I came to the door, and the white tufts of his eyebrows rose. “Not that it is anything but a pleasure to see you, Mrs. Camherst—but I judge by your expression that whatever has sent you here is not good.”

“It is not,” I confirmed, and explained while he divested himself of overcoat and hat. His cane he kept; over the years it had become less of an affectation, more of a necessity, as his rheumatism worsened. Lord Hilford followed me into the drawing room and lowered himself into a chair with a sigh.

“Mmmm,” he said when I was done. “Makes me wonder if someone has been to Vystrana. I’ve heard nothing from Iljish in Drustanev, but you know what the post is like. And someone might have slipped past them.”

The villagers were supposed to protect the nearby cavern from curiosity-seekers. It was the preserved dragonbone in that great cemetery which had given the first clues to the role of acid in that process. “We said nothing of it in the book,” I reminded Lord Hilford, referring to the monograph we had published after our expedition. “Only that the dragons tore apart their deceased kin and took the pieces to a certain cave. No one could assume preservation from that—nor could they find the cave.”

The flapping of the earl’s hand reminded me I was saying nothing he did not already know. “Still, it’s a possibility, and one we have to consider. Another possibility: Kemble talked.”

“If he had talked, would they have smashed up his laboratory?” I said indignantly. Then I saw the flaw in my own logic. “Ah. You are not accusing him of selling the secret—only of letting slip some hint that might have allowed another to guess what he’s doing.”

“Any of us might have done it,” Lord Hilford admitted. “Including me. I’d like to think I’m discreet, but—well. Scholars drink a great deal more than anyone thinks, and I don’t hold my liquor as well as I once did.”

I thought that I, at least, was unlikely to have betrayed our secret. Not out of any particular virtue; only from lack of opportunity. I hardly spoke to anyone who didn’t already know. But it would do no good to say that, and so I said only, “Is there anyone among the Colloquium’s visitors that you would suspect? Or among its members, I suppose.”

Lord Hilford grunted. “Several, unfortunately. There’s a ratty Marñeo fellow I don’t trust in the slightest; he’s been accused of passing other people’s research off as his own. Guhathalakar openly admits he’s working on the issue of preservation. No one in the Bulskoi delegation is, but they have more opportunity than most to go poking around in Vystrana. The Hingese … I’m sorry, Mrs. Camherst, but without more to go on, all I can do is guess.”

“Well, Mr. Wilker is still at Kemble’s, and they’ve spoken with the police; we can hope for some kind of lead.” I got up and paced again, fingers twisting about one another. “I
wish
I could do something to hurry the research along. Money is only helpful to a point; it cannot make Frederick Kemble’s brain work faster.”

“Attend to your own research,” Lord Hilford said, very reasonably. “You may find something of use there; or if you do not, then every bit we know about dragons is one more bit we can use to protect them. But, ah—if I may shift us from one nerve-wracking topic to another—”

It was enough to stop me pacing. I tried to remember the last time I had heard the earl so wary, and could not think of a single time. When I turned to look, he was chewing on the drooping end of his moustache. I waited, but he did not speak. “Oh, out with it,” I said at last, quite sharply. “My nerves are no less wracked for being forced to wait.”

“Natalie,” he said, reluctantly. “Or rather, her family.”

His granddaughter was not ordinarily a topic of any tension at all. Nor were her family, but—“Let me guess,” I said with a sigh. “They have decided I am not fit company for her. Well, everyone else in Scirland has come to the same opinion; I am not fit company for
anyone
.”

“That isn’t precisely it. They think you eccentric, yes, but for the most part harmlessly so. The trouble is that an eccentric is not good company for an unmarried young lady—not if she wishes to change that state.”

I frowned at him in surprise. “But Natalie is only—” My arithmetic caught up with my words, and stopped them. “Nearly twenty,” I finished heavily. “I see.”

“Quite.” Lord Hilford sighed, too, studying the head of his cane far more closely than it warranted. “And so her family is quite adamant that she should not accompany you on this expedition. You are likely to be gone for six months at least, likely more; it would be ruinous to her marital prospects. Old maids and all that. I’ve argued, truly I have.”

I believed him. Lord Hilford had progressive notions of what ladies might do, and he doted on Natalie besides; but in the end he was not his granddaughter’s guardian. “Have you spoken with her?”

“She knows how her family feels. I was hoping you might approach her—woman to woman, you know—and see if you can’t reconcile her to the situation. They aren’t intending to shackle her to some brute.”

If she did not look herself out a husband soon, though, she might have trouble finding anyone other than a brute. “I will see what I can do.”

Lord Hilford sounded relieved. “Thank you. You’ll have to be quick about it, though. I was intending to write this afternoon, but now I can tell you in person: the schedule has moved up. Can you and Wilker be ready to depart in two weeks?”

Had I been holding anything, I would have dropped it.
“Two weeks?”

“If you can’t, then say so. But it may be another delay otherwise. There’s going to be a changeover at the Foreign Office, and the incoming fellow is not very keen on travellers going to Nsebu, not with the unrest in the area.”

“Unrest?” I echoed, my mother’s comments rising to mind.

“Ah, yes—that hasn’t reached the papers yet,” Lord Hilford said. “I had it from our man in the Foreign Office. A group of Royal Engineers were ambushed while surveying the south bank of the Girama, which is territory that is supposed to be firmly in our control. It seems Eremmo has quieted sufficiently under the Ikwunde yoke for the inkosi to start looking outward once more. It has certain people rather worried.”