In the Labyrinth of Drakes (21 page)

Pensyth sighed wearily, nodding. “Yes, of course. I should not keep you from it.”

Five minutes more or less would make no difference to our success—but I was glad to escape his office and return to the (in my eyes) more comfortable world of dragons and their needs. Lieutenant Marton had managed things effectively in our absence; Sniffer had died, but he had been in poor health when we departed, and I was not surprised to see him go. “I tried to get ice to keep him in, so you could examine the carcass,” Marton said apologetically, “but it didn't work out.”

Tom thanked him, and we began our rounds. Lumpy was still alive, I was pleased to see, as was Ascelin, the eldest of the juveniles, the fierce one for whom I had a liking. Saeva, the adult brought to us in Nebulis, had developed an infection in her tail, but the men had managed to restrain her enough to wash and bandage the wound on a regular basis, and it had healed well.

Once we had inspected the place and found all in order, Tom set about instituting the changes he and I had planned—changes based on our desert observations—while I turned my attention to the records of the honeyseeker eggs.

Not enough time had passed, of course, for me to have anything like definitive results. Even honeyseekers do not breed so quickly as to supply me with the hundreds of eggs I would need to test their tolerances in full; and of course I would ideally repeat the process later, or have someone else do so, to see if the second set of data matched the first. (As some of my more scientific friends are fond of proclaiming, twice is once, and once is nothing.) Marton had done as I asked, though, with diligent care, and so I had the beginnings of a pattern, which I was very keen to study.

I had decided to introduce new variables one at a time, beginning with the one I believed to be the most influential: temperature. What extreme of heat could the eggs tolerate without losing viability, and what extreme of cold? Nowadays we can control this to a very nice degree, quite literally speaking. Back then, though, the best we could do was to place the eggs in different locations, ranging from the cellars of Dar al-Tannaneen to its rooftop. At regular intervals Marton measured the temperature there, with one of the sergeants taking over the task at night. Some of the eggs were carried from the cellar to a warmer spot during the day, to simulate the fluctuation they would experience in nature; others were left in the coolness all the time, while a few lived quite cozily by a fireplace. Altogether, it made for a substantial set of data—and it was only the beginning.

An unused room in the House of Dragons became the repository of this information. I spent a day drafting a very precise graph that would show me what I knew at a glance: the horizontal axis measured days since laying, while the vertical measured temperature. On this I drew curves delineating the environment of each egg, in different colours of ink.

“It's very pretty,” Andrew said when I tacked it on the wall, “but what does it mean?”

I stood, tapping my tack-hammer against my thigh, studying the graph. “It means I can see what is going on.” Exchanging the hammer for a pencil, I went to the graph and began drawing hashes through some of the lines. “These are the eggs that produced unhealthy specimens. And these—” I drew more hashes, crossing them to make
X
s. “These are the ones that did not hatch at all. You can see, they are much less tolerant of cold than of heat. Which makes sense, of course, given their native environment. One wonders whether it would be the opposite with, say, rock-wyrms.”

“Yes, of course one wonders that.”

I ignored his flippant tone. “But it also appears that the rise and fall is important: the greater the heat, the more necessary it is that a cooling period be allowed. Without that, you are more likely to get runts and such. If the same is true for drake eggs, then it may be that our conveyance methods need revising. They bury their eggs a certain depth in the sand, you see, and the baskets used to transport them here are not nearly so large. That may mean they are subjected to too great a heat in the daytime, and too much coolness at night—or not enough, if the Aritat have been keeping the baskets by the fire. Or by their camels, even. We shall inquire. And that does not even
touch
upon humidity. Testing that will be my next step.”

Andrew laughed. “What are you going to do, put them in steam baths?”

“Of course not. I need to see how humidity interacts with temperature; steam baths would require far too much heat. But closed boxes, with an atomizer to mist the air, might suffice.”

He thought I was joking. He was disabused of this notion, though, when I sent him to the perfumers of Qurrat to see whether anyone sold atomizers. (They did not. That method of applying scent is more common in northern Anthiope; I ended up having to send to Chiavora for equipment. And you may be sure Pensyth gave me a
very
peculiar look when I submitted that request.)

I also had to examine the honeyseekers that had survived. These were all in one of the unused buildings at Dar al-Tannaneen, being fed on nectar extracted from the sheikh's garden, but it was already obvious that we would need a better solution. Even if I subjected the next rounds of eggs to far less hospitable conditions, we would rapidly be up to our kneecaps in juvenile honeyseekers, and the sheikh's eucalyptus trees could not sustain them all. I had inquiries out for other gardens that might suffice, and in the meantime we had even more draconic mouths to feed.

Something else happened during this time, too—but I will not tell it now, for it seemed minor at the time, and its true significance did not occur to me until much later. I note it here only so that those of my readers who care about the process of scientific discovery may accurately reconstruct the steps by which I arrived at my eventual conclusions. Laypeople often believe that understanding comes by epiphany: something important occurs, and on the instant the scientist declares,
I have it!
But the truth is that we may be blind to the import of events around us, not realizing the truth until well after the fact.

*   *   *

While I did all of this, Tom worked to improve the living conditions of our drakes. We began delivering charred meat to their enclosures; they will eat it in any state, from running away to very thoroughly carrion, but we hoped the scent might stimulate their appetites and encourage better health. He also began agitating for the construction of a second compound, well removed from the first. After all, if a female drake will not willingly nest within ten kilometers of a male, what effects came of having them a mere twenty meters apart?

“We aren't likely to find a suitable place here,” he said over lunch one day. We had developed the habit of eating alone together in the office, where we might not offend local custom too much. (Andrew had given up on joining us, saying our conversations were impenetrable to anyone who did not have dragon blood in his veins.) “I keep wondering about that territory we went around on the way to the Aritat. I know it belongs to another tribe—but it's a sight closer to the drakes, and not too far from river transport. If the caliph gave the order, we could relocate this entire enterprise there, and I think we'd do a good deal better.”

“Can he not order it?” I asked.

Tom grimaced, shredding a bit of flatbread between his fingers. “This isn't like medieval Scirland. The land doesn't all belong to the king, for him to hand out as he sees fit to barons and so forth. It's theirs, and he can't easily commandeer it. Or so I'm told.”

“Can
we
approach them?” I dismissed this with a shake of my head almost before the words were out of my mouth. “Foreigners, trying to stake a claim on property in his country. Or the local sheikh's country—whichever. I can imagine how
that
would be received.”

We faced a number of challenges, and our progress against them was hampered by the change of seasons. I have said before that I am a heat-loving creature, and it is true; but even the early days of an Akhian summer took their toll on me. I felt increasingly weak and light-headed, and soon found myself lying down for a little while after lunch each day, waiting out the worst of the heat, though I could not truly rest. I tried to compensate for this by working later into the night, but even then I felt exhausted, unable to focus. My digestion became poor, and even basic tasks began to feel like a burden.

Tom felt it too, but less acutely—or, I suspected, he simply shrugged it off with the stoicism expected of a man. He became concerned for my health, though, and when I attempted to shrug it off as he had, gave me a steady look. “I don't want to repeat Mouleen,” he said after I rose from my couch one afternoon.

In the Green Hell I had tried to forge ahead through what turned out to be yellow fever. “I am not that ill,” I promised him. “Only tired from the heat.”

“Then rest,” he said. “You will acclimate soon enough.”

I wanted to say that I had not required any acclimation in Eriga—not like this. Another of our drake hatchlings had died, and we were going to conduct a necropsy to see if we could determine the cause. I wanted to be present for that. But Tom was better than I with matters medical, and I would not impress anyone if I tipped head-first into a bucket of viscera. “I will go visit Mahira,” I suggested. “I have been meaning to do that for some time now, but I have been so busy. The gardens there are pleasant and cool, and I can inspect the honeyseekers.”

Tom grinned. “Of course you can't rest without finding a way to be useful at the same time. But it's a good idea regardless. Go—and if you need to stay home tomorrow, we can manage without you.”

I did not want them to manage without me. If they could do it for one day, they could do it for more than one; I did not want anyone thinking I was superfluous. But I knew what Tom would say if I expressed such thoughts to him—and he would be well justified—so I kept my self-pity behind my teeth and went.

 

FOURTEEN

I feel even more unwell—An unusual physician—Nour's theory—A basket for Tom—Testing the theory

You may guess that I had been avoiding the sheikh's house for more reasons than a mere crowded schedule. You would be correct in that guess.

Suhail had visited Dar al-Tannaneen twice since our return, but on both occasions he had come only briefly, and left before I knew he was there. Given my resolution in the desert, I should have been more energetic in seeking him out, if only so I could apologize for my coldness before. But it was one thing to form such a resolution; it was another thing entirely to carry it out.

I could not even be positive he was still at the house. By now the nomadic Aritat had moved to their summer quarters; Suhail might be with them, or with the men who would venture into the desert at regular intervals to collect eggs on our behalf. And even if he was present … what would I say? Everything I could think of seemed too forward, especially when we would certainly have an audience again. As much as I liked Mahira, I did not feel comfortable telling Suhail how much I valued his friendship with her sitting ten feet away. I could ask him how the translation was proceeding; surely that would be neutral enough? Being less than skilled at languages, I had very little sense of how long it would take him to decipher the Ngaru half of the text. Since I was fairly certain he did not know the language already, I imagined it would take a while.

That, I decided, was safe. It would show friendly warmth—an encouraging interest in a topic I knew he loved—without overstepping any boundaries. If Suhail happened upon us again in the garden, I would ask him about the Cataract Stone.

Mahira greeted me warmly when I arrived. She called for refreshments, and we spent some time chatting about my experiences in the desert. News of the kidnapping had reached her ears; she startled me with some rather fierce comments about the fate that should be visited upon those sons of dogs, the Banu Safr. “Is a prayer-leader allowed to say such things?” I asked, half scandalized.

She laughed. “In the older days, the tribes used to load an unmarried girl into a special howdah and carry her into battle as their standard. There is a long tradition in Akhia of women urging their menfolk to valour against the enemy.”

It reminded me of old tales from Niddey and Uaine—though in those, of course, there is no howdah. “I hope the battles are concluded,” I said. “Your brother's men did an excellent job keeping order, at least in our immediate vicinity, after that outrage.”

I meant to use that comment to prepare the ground, so that asking after her other brother would not seem out of place. The words stuck in my throat, though, because I could not find a way to make them sound innocuous—not when she had almost certainly heard the poem about Suhail's own valour. Instead I gave her the gossip about Umm Azali and the rest of the Aritat, as well as I could. Mahira might live in a city, but the urge to ask for the news from elsewhere in the desert is alive and well in every part of Akhian society.

When that was done we went out to the garden, so that I might examine the honeyseekers. Amamis and Hicara were drowsing in the heat when I entered their net-draped enclosure, which meant that capturing them was the work of mere moments.

I spread Hicara's wings wide, ignoring her indignant chirps, and examined her from every angle. Then I repeated the process with Amamis. They both appeared to be in excellent health: their scales were glossy, Amamis' crest a bright sapphire blue, and neither showed the slightest lethargy in scrambling away from me once I released them. “You have done very well by them—I thank you,” I said to Mahira.

“They have been an ornament to our garden,” she replied. “I hope you have learned a great deal from their eggs.”

The honeyseekers had fled into the trees. I peered after them, watching as they twined about the branches in search of something to nose at. “It will take time. To truly know the tolerances of their eggs, we must test all the way to the limits, and that will require more rounds than we have had so far. So long as you do not mind continuing this work, I would be delighted to leave them here—though I must find a way to repay you for your effort.”