A Natural History of Dragons (32 page)

I received a glare of the sort that told me I was prying into village business, where I did not belong; but Dagmira answered me nonetheless. “Why should we?” she muttered, keeping her voice low, as if she, too, felt the oppressive weight of this place. “He made himself the boyar’s creature. Too much reading put ideas in his head; he said it would be better for Drustanev if he was razesh. But he was just as bad as the one before him.”

I worked through this with lamentable slowness, hearing what she did not say. “Was Gritelkin
born
in Drustanev?”

“Of course,” she said, once again filled with scorn for my ignorance.

Had Lord Hilford ever mentioned that? He’d called Drustanev Gritelkin’s village, but I had assumed the association a political one. A Vystrani man, somehow positioning himself as the boyar’s administrator, with grand dreams of benefiting his village. It made sense; a local man would be more sensitive to local issues, more willing to advocate on their behalf to the foreign overlord. But it had done no good—no wonder, with Khirzoff as he was—and worse, it had rebounded to ill; the people of Drustanev felt betrayed by his failure. It was truly unfortunate that Lord Hilford had chosen this of all places to conduct our research.

It raised an unpleasant specter in my mind. “Dagmira—would anyone
kill
Gritelkin? Anyone in Drustanev, I mean.”

For once, her fury came as a relief. “What do you think we are? Just because Astimir is an idiot, playing those tricks—but you’re outsiders; half the village would say you deserved it. If he hadn’t been scaring us, too.”

Again, I had to listen to what she did not say. “Gritelkin was
not
an outsider, then. Even though he worked for the boyar.” I paced around the small room, the spring of my mind wound too tightly for me to rest, even though my body was tired. “We’re fair certain he’s dead, Dagmira. He’s been missing for too long, and—there’s just too much going
on
here. What about the smugglers? They’re outsiders, Stauleren; have they been known to kill people?”

“No,” she said, but the word came out uneasily. Enough strange things had been happening that I could understand why.

Lord Hilford had told me that a scientist must never reason ahead of his data. He thought the dragons had done it, and maybe they had; I knew well that it was my own partisan inclinations that made me not want to believe it. But there was another prospect in my mind, growing stronger each time another possibility was eliminated or reduced. “Would the
boyar
have any reason to kill him?”

Dagmira’s response was incredulous. “Why would he?”

“Gritelkin claimed he’d made arrangements for us to visit, but it doesn’t seem to have been true. Khirzoff isn’t happy we’re here.” That was hardly motivation for murder, though. My thoughts progressed further. “And Gritelkin sent a message saying it was a bad time to come. What if he meant more than the dragon attacks?”

“If the boyar didn’t want you here,” she said, “he could just order you to leave.”

That was true. However, its being true did not rule out other factors that might make Khirzoff reluctant to send us away. I just could not imagine what those might be.

I must have paced for some time without speaking, because Dagmira gave me a pointed attempt at a curtsey. “Do you need anything else?”

“Oh, don’t be like that, Dagmira,” I said, distracted. “I wanted you here because something about this place sets me on edge, and I trust you. But no, I don’t need anything else; rest well, and I’ll see you in the morning.”

She kissed my hands and went out. I lay down in bed, but it was a long time before I managed to sleep.

TWENTY-TWO

A ride, with awkward conversation — Draconic provocation — The contents of Khirzoff’s cellar

The next morning, as I went in search of breakfast, I encountered Rossi on the ground floor, emerging from some kind of cellar. He gave me an unfriendly look, though I nodded a polite good morning to him. “Will you be joining us on our ride today?” I asked, for Khirzoff had made mention of an excursion the night before.

“No,” Rossi said curtly. “I have work to do.”

“Yes, so the boyar said. Taxidermy.” It no doubt accounted for the unpleasant smell that wafted along with Rossi. “Would you be so kind as to show me where breakfast is laid?”

I asked mostly to annoy him; breakfast, given the layout of this lodge, would be in the same room where we had taken our supper the night before, but I wished to make him behave like a gentleman. As the words left my mouth, though—the Chiavoran words—a thought came to mind that jolted me where I stood.

The bottles of acid had been labeled in Chiavoran.

Under most circumstances, I would call it meaningless coincidence. Drustanev lay on the southern side of the mountains, facing into Chiavora; much of their trade went across that border. Naturally any such exotic thing would be brought into Vystrana from the south. And Rossi’s nationality could hardly be considered proof of guilt.

Except that the man was also, by reports, a scholar of some kind. He might be doing taxidermy for the boyar—but that required a knowledge of chemicals.

Had Astimir’s sulfuric acid ridden with us in the carts from Sanverio, destined for the boyar’s lodge?

I ate very little breakfast, sorting rapidly through the details of this possibility. Khirzoff discovered the Scirling visitors to Drustanev were natural historians—from the villagers? Or from the smugglers? Chatzkel’s men were working with at least one minion of the boyar; they, wishing not to rouse curiosity by ordering us away, arranged the charade with Astimir, intending that it should cause us to be driven out. Or Rossi might have done that, but he was not a known figure in the village. When it failed—no, he sent Ledinsky before we discovered Astimir’s perfidy. When Lord Hilford came inquiring into Gritelkin’s disappearance, then. At that point, Iosif Abramovich Khirzoff resolved to deal with us more directly.

I had no proof, but I had more than enough suspicion to make me very worried indeed. The only thing preventing worry from becoming outright panic was the unlikelihood of Khirzoff wishing us dead. If
that
were the case, I reasoned, Ledinsky could have done away with us any time those three days from Drustanev, or upon our arrival here.

It was not much to comfort myself with as we rode out on the boyar’s horses, around mid-morning. Khirzoff’s own mount was a stallion that he controlled with a hard grip, but the rest of the horseflesh was uninspiring; my own gelding made heavy weather of some of the slopes, lurching up or down them such that a lesser rider might have lost her seat. As it was, I found myself glad my divided skirts permitted me to sit astride.

I feigned difficulty, though, so as to draw Jacob to my side. In brief snatches as he steadied me or chivvied my horse on, I related my fears. I had no sooner finished than Mr. Wilker reined in at our side. He nodded toward Lord Hilford and Khirzoff, who were then turning their horses to continue on through a stand of fir, and spoke to Jacob in quiet Scirling. “I don’t like it.”

“Like what?” Jacob asked. He and I had kept toward the back, followed at a discreet distance by one of the boyar’s men, but my shoulders tensed, fearing we made a suspicious group.

“He’s been asking endless questions about our research. But I don’t think he’s
interested
in it,” Mr. Wilker said. “The earl is being his usual self—you know, holding back most of it because he hasn’t yet presented to the Colloquium, but hinting all over the place that we’ve discovered incredible things. And yet, Khirzoff doesn’t show the slightest bit of intellectual curiosity.”

I knew what Mr. Wilker meant about holding back. Lord Hilford had told us a lengthy story once about von Grabsteil, the fellow who had developed the theory of geologic uniformitarianism; he unwisely shared it with a like-minded colleague before he was ready to make public his conclusions, and that colleague, someone-or-another Boevers, had published a book on the topic first. It was a terrible feud at the time, though considered old history by the time I was a young woman, and of course it’s all but forgotten now; its effect, however, lingered in the paranoia of many scientists, who feared others would steal a march on them.

Frowning, Jacob said, “I thought you said he’s been asking ‘endless questions.’”

“He
has,
” Mr. Wilker replied, frustrated. “But—oh, Khirzoff isn’t a scholar; surely you’ve gathered that. I don’t think he cares in the least about the science. He only wants to know what we’ve been doing.”

Jacob and I exchanged worried looks. “I thought it had to do with the smugglers,” I said, even more quietly than before. “But could it somehow be related to our
research
?”

Mr. Wilker’s gaze sharpened. “What do you mean?”

I did not want to draw attention. Nodding to Jacob, I prodded my horse forward, and let him give Mr. Wilker a précis of our suspicions—even more abbreviated than the one I had given Jacob, by the rapidity with which it concluded. Mr. Wilker’s horse, choosing its path, detoured to the side of me, and the gentleman and I met each other’s gazes.

That wordless moment ended the minor war between us that had waged since I was added to the expedition back in Scirland. If I was right—if the boyar had killed his own razesh for uncovering something he should not, and it had anything to do with our own work—then the points of friction between us were trivialities, not worth so much as another second of our time. Mr. Wilker was not certain I was right, and neither was I; but the possibility was too grave to dismiss for lack of certainty.

The three of us were in accord, then. It only remained to inform Lord Hilford, and to devise some response. I left the former to the gentlemen, while all three of us considered the latter. Soon, however, Khirzoff and the others began hunting, bringing down several pheasants for our feast that night, and the crack of the rifles only added to my tension. How easy would it be for someone to suffer an “accident” out here? I flinched when Lord Hilford fired without success at a fleeing bird, and found myself wishing the pheasant success in escaping.

Behind the pheasant’s line of flight, a little distance above us, a stony promontory stirred.

With menacing and predatory slowness, it expanded to either side; and because I had been thinking of the pheasant and its madly flapping wings, my first reaction was—hard though it may be to believe—to think anatomically, watching how the outer “fingers” of the wing spread first, before the upper structure stretched out to catch the air.

Then, belatedly, the rest of my mind pointed out that a dragon was about to stoop upon us.

I cried out a warning, all the more frantic for being delayed. Two of Khirzoff’s men brought their guns to bear on the looming figure, but held their shots until it came into closer range. My gelding shied: he might not have been born to the mountains, but he recognized the approach of this predator just the same. I swiftly weighed the likely outcome if I were on his back, and flung myself from the saddle, diving for cover in a thick stand of trees.

Because of that action, I failed to see what ensued; I could only hear and feel. Several shots rang out. By the cursing that followed, they had done no good. A shriek from above then heralded the dragon’s attack; branches snapped like kindling as it tried to seize its prey, but I heard no cries to suggest that it had met with any better luck. Khirzoff bellowed orders in Bulskoi, probably for his men to keep shooting—and then a gust of wind raked through my pitiful cover, bringing with it a shower of needle-sharp ice fragments.

If you must be the victim of a dragon’s extraordinary breath, I recommend the rock-wyrm. Its ice shards are capable of cutting the skin, but not deeply; the chief danger lies in the body’s instinct to curl up tight against the sudden, bone-aching cold. This renders one more vulnerable to the dragon’s subsequent dive.

Further gunshots told me that at least some of the men were still in a position to defend us. I forced my reluctant body to uncurl and peered out above a fallen branch. Jacob was alive—I sucked in a great gasp of relief—and there were Mr. Wilker and Lord Hilford; after them I spotted Khirzoff and his two men. All seemed intact, and one final volley of shots brought a cry from above that might have been either frustration or pain. Whichever it was, it seemed to persuade the dragon to seek easier prey, for after a few tense moments, we emerged from cover.

All our horses had scattered, with the exception of the boyar’s stallion; for a wonder, none had broken their legs or necks, though Jacob’s mount had gone lame. My idiot gelding surprised me by being perfectly fine, and I patted his neck soothingly. He might not have been pleasant to ride, but I was glad he had not been killed.

Khirzoff was spitting words in Bulskoi that I doubted were fit for a lady’s ears. Lord Hilford asked him a question in the same tongue, and got a curt answer. Translating for us, the earl said, “This isn’t the first attack they’ve seen, of course. He’s quite vexed they failed to bring the beast down, though for my own part, I feel it’s just as well. We haven’t any of our equipment with us; such observations as we could make would hardly be worth the effort.”

One of the Bulskoi men gave Jacob his horse, and led the lamed one on foot; it seemed we were going back to the lodge. Though I dreaded the place, I would be glad to have a roof over my head, concealing me from a dragon’s gaze.

The beast had done me the service, though, of breaking my thoughts away from fears of conspiracy, toward other matters of equal—or perhaps greater—importance.
Sotto voce
to my husband, and in Scirling so the foreigners would not understand, I said, “Could it be the gunshots roused the dragon to such fury? It did not stir until after Lord Hilford had fired.”

“As an immediate cause, perhaps,” Jacob mused, glancing back at the place where the rock-wyrm had been napping. “But if you mean an ultimate cause for the attacks, I doubt it. The locals shoot game all the time. If that upset the dragons, these incidents would be a constant thing, all over Vystrana.”