In the Labyrinth of Drakes (5 page)

Hajj Husam ibn Ramiz ibn Khalis al-Aritati was not quite what I expected. Hearing that he was the sheikh of a Jefi tribe made me expect an aged nomad, of the sort occasionally depicted in romantic tales of the Anthiopean south: a headscarf and dusty robes, skin tanned to leather by the punishing sun and wind. Instead I met a man of about forty who appeared in every way to be a city-dwelling Akhian, from his clothing (turban and embroidered caftan) to his personal condition (soft and perfumed skin). My expectation was based on a misapprehension regarding the Akhian people; but I did not learn better until later.

He greeted us in the forecourt of the estate, along with an entourage of both Scirling and Akhian soldiers. Tom's hand he shook; mine I did not offer, replacing the gesture instead with a respectful curtsey. (As I was not yet in anything that could be called “the field,” I was still in skirts, rather than the trousers which are my working habit. In truth I wore skirts a great deal in Akhia, or on some occasions robes after the local manner—though I did don trousers for certain strenuous undertakings.)

He spoke in Scirling, with a heavy enough accent that I suspected he had only begun to learn the language after our two nations formed their accord. My own Akhian being rather worse, I was grateful for the consideration. “Peace be upon you,” he said. “Welcome to Dar al-Tannaneen—the House of Dragons.”

“We are very glad to be here, Hajj,” I said. It was, as I understood it, not merely a courtesy title; he had completed the pilgrimage to the holy city of Dharrib, and earned that mark of respect. “We are also very eager to get to work.”

Speaking to him was peculiar, for I had drawn a corner of my own scarf across my face to form a veil. This was, I had been told, the way to show respect to a man of his eminence. But it muffled my words sufficiently that I was always concerned about whether I had spoken loudly enough, and in this case I was not reassured: the sheikh made no response to my words, instead turning and leading us through to a courtyard.

One of his underlings had prepared coffee and dates, the traditional materials of hospitality. None was offered to me, Akhia being one of the countries where men and women do not eat together in public. Since I have always been more partial to tea than coffee, especially as the latter is prepared in Akhia, I did not mind overmuch—not to mention that I would have difficulty managing the veil, and I did not know whether it would be an insult to lower it so soon.

Once enough time had passed to avoid a rude show of haste, the sheikh said, “If there is anything I or my tribe may offer to assist you, then you have but to ask. Everything we have is yours, for the good of both our peoples.”

This was not, of course, to be taken literally. Generosity is highly prized in Akhia, but just because a man speaks the words as custom demands does not mean he is eager to share all of his wealth and belongings with strangers—even if his caliph has commanded it. Tom and I had no intention of imposing more than we had to. I said, “We shall first take an inventory of what is here, and familiarize ourselves with the work our predecessor did. Until that is done, we cannot possibly guess what else we might need. Your kindness is greatly appreciated, though.”

He snapped his fingers, and one of the younger men with him leapt to his side. “Naseef ibn Ismail will take you to see the dragons,” he said.

Had he spoken Akhian instead of Scirling, I would have known which “you” he meant. But in my language, we no longer differentiate between the singular and plural of the second person, much less the gender of the one addressed. All I had to go on was his body language, the angle of his shoulders and his head—and these told me that not only his most recent statement, but the one before, were directed at Tom, not the two of us together.

Such behaviour was of a piece with the snubbing Colonel Pensyth had given me in Rumaish, and the countless other snubs I have received in my life. My patience for such things has grown shorter by the year. “Oh,
delightful,
” I said, and both Tom and Andrew knew me well enough not to take my bright tone for true. “I should be very glad to see the dragons—as they are, after all, the reason I have come all this way.”

Pensyth would not have been given his post if he were deaf to the nuances of social interaction. He said hastily, “Dame Isabella, perhaps you would like to get started on Lord Tavenor's papers. Lieutenant Marton can show you those—that will get you out of the sun.”

And out of the way. I wanted to object, for clearly, in Pensyth's mind, secretarial work was the best use for me. On the other hand, I did not wish to make a scene on my first day; and that hand was double, for our predecessor's notes were likely to be of more immediate use than the dragons themselves. The latter could only show us what was happening now. The former could show us what had happened up until now.

But for all that, it rankled to give in. I wanted to see the dragons, and I did not want to be excluded. Only a beseeching and sympathetic look from Tom persuaded me. Very well: I would play along, and prove my value in time.

The lieutenant delegated to be my handler led me through an arch to a smaller, dustier courtyard, and past that into a building that was fairly intact. “Lord Tavenor worked in the office here,” he said, gesturing through a doorway to a larger room beyond. I peeked in to find a desk and various shelves, all of them echoingly vacant. The tiled floor was cracked, and the piercework shutters missing bits here and there. “The files themselves are down the hall. Shall I fetch them for you, miss—er, ma'am—er, my lady?”

“Dame Isabella will do,” I said, lowering my veil. Lieutenant Marton did not deserve to be cowed, but for the time being I felt the need to stand on ceremony: if people would not accord me respect of their own free will, then I would enforce it where I could.

“Yes, Dame Isabella,” he said. By the way his posture straightened, I think he almost saluted. Had I been so very commanding? I did not think so; and yet. “What would you like to see first?”

Lacking much in the way of information, I did not even know how to answer that question. “What are my options?”

“There are three major groups of files,” Marton said. “Records of the dragon-breeding project, records of the egg-hatching project, and accounts.”

Certainly not accounts … but the other two categories were quite broad. Ostensibly the breeding programme was the main endeavour here, but all the authorities on dragon naturalism agreed that success, if it were to happen at all, was more likely to come by way of dragons raised from the egg, and thus acclimated to human contact. Whichever choice I made, depending on how thorough Lord Tavenor had been in his record-keeping, I might be looking at mountains of paper.

Well, it could not possibly take me longer to read through his notes than it had taken him to write them, and I might as well start at the beginning. “Is there any sort of diary for the egg-hatching?” I asked. Tom would no doubt be learning something of the other project during his tour. Marton nodded, and I said, “Then bring me that—however many volumes it may be.”

It was not so dauntingly many as it might have been. After all, in the progress of any given egg, there is a long stretch of time wherein nothing much happens. I could skim quickly past Lord Tavenor's meticulous daily notations of “no change” or weekly measurements, pausing only for the entries of greater substance.

Even so, I had not finished by the time Andrew came in, bearing an enormous tray of food. He looked sheepish and said, “The sheikh laid on a good picnic, but men and women don't generally eat together here—or so I'm told. Since I'm family, I volunteered to bring you your share.”

I had encountered this kind of practice before, when we were stranded on Keonga. There, however, I had Abby Carew for company, and my son, who by dint of his youth was not yet considered a part of the male sphere. Furthermore, my own unusual gender status there had left me usefully ambiguous, so that I could dine with either sex, as I chose. Here it would be different: as the only woman in the House of Dragons, I would be eating alone every day, unless Andrew was present.

“For today, this will do,” I said. “The sheikh will not be here every day, though, will he? I thought not. The Akhians may keep to their own customs, but I have no intention of separating myself from our Scirling companions going forward. It is too valuable an opportunity for us to discuss our work.”

At least no one had stinted me on food. I persuaded Lieutenant Marton to join us, but even by our efforts combined, we could not finish what had been provided. “You're not expected to, Dame Isabella,” the lieutenant told me. “It's a sign of generosity. What's left over goes to the servants. Most days we're less formal; we just send somebody to the market to bring back some nosh.”

When the meal was done, I spent a few minutes writing out a list of the supplies I would need—which was virtually everything, as Lord Tavenor had not left so much as a blotter behind. I had brought my desk set with me to Akhia, but would prefer to keep it at the house, so that I could work in the evening if necessary. That done, I immersed myself once more in the records; and there I remained until Tom came in at last.

He must have poked his head in the door some time before; his polite cough had the sound of a man who has been waiting for the room's occupant to notice him without prompting. “Oh!” I said, putting my pencil in the latest diary as a marker and closing it. “I'm so sorry. Good heavens, is it that late already?” The light in the office had dimmed quite a lot, though I had not noticed it except to tilt the pages toward the window.

“There were a lot of formalities,” Tom said feelingly. “Though it wasn't all a waste of time. I take it this room out front is meant for a secretary?”

“For Lieutenant Marton, unless we replace him. He asked if I wished to have a second office set up elsewhere in the building. For me, of course, though he did not say it.” I rubbed the bridge of my nose, wondering if my headache meant I should look into getting spectacles. “I, er, may have said I would ask you if
you
wanted one. People are used to coming here; I do not like the thought of being shuffled off to some dusty corner where I can be ignored.”

“Quite right.” Tom came and perched on the edge of the desk, there being nowhere else to sit save the chair I currently occupied. “This room is big enough for us both; we're neither of us likely to fill it up with elephant tusks and Erigan masks. We can start out sharing it, and if that doesn't work, I'll move elsewhere.”

I gave him a look of wordless gratitude. My eagerness to head off Marton's condescension had provoked me into taking advantage of my greater social status over Tom, which I ordinarily took care to avoid. Besides, it was he, not I, who was a Colloquium Fellow. If either of us was to have the main office here, it ought to be him.

Tom gestured at the piles of books on the shelves behind me. “What have you learned?”

“Quite a bit,” I said, “alternately discouraging and frustrating. Were it not for this scarf, I might have torn half my hair out by now.”

(Before I continue onward, I must issue an apology. There is no way I could conceal our predecessor's identity; it is a matter of public record who originally held the Akhian post, and many people remember his name. I fear that what I am about to say may border on the libellous, though, for I cannot tell this tale without being openly critical of Lord Tavenor's work. I may only hope to mitigate it by also saying that I have a great deal of respect for the man, and indeed his work—flaws and all—was the foundation upon which Tom and I built our own efforts. Without him, I do not know how we might have proceeded. Nonetheless, I
am
sorry.)

Tom waited while I opened my notebook and found the necessary pages. “The eggs,” I said, “are delivered to Qurrat by the Aritat—the sheikh's people. But it isn't systematic: when they find a clutch of eggs, they collect them, regardless of their developmental stage. This means Lord Tavenor received everything from new-laid eggs to ones about to hatch.” Indeed, one of them had hatched in transit, causing no little trouble for the tribesmen.

My description provoked a wince from Tom. “That explains one of the juveniles I saw, then. It was clearly not in sound health.”

“It likely explains several of them, though ill health may not have been as obvious in the others.” Our knowledge of dragon development was still scant in those days, but everyone with even a rudimentary awareness of the subject knew that dragon eggs were notoriously sensitive to handling. Transit from the desert to this compound had caused many to spontaneously abort, and those which did not often hatched bad specimens. The earlier in their incubation they were moved, the worse the prognosis.

If all we cared about was obtaining hatchlings, then we could have requested that the Aritat mark egg caches and return to collect them when they were nearly ready. But of course that would not solve our actual problem: presuming we could get our captive dragons to breed, we would need to be capable of incubating their eggs to a healthy finish, under artificial conditions.

The diary in front of me made a useful prop. I picked it up solely that I might drop it again on the desk with a dismissive hand. “He never went out into the field. Oh, he collected reports, and did his best to replicate the natural environment here—but it was all secondhand and guesswork. He didn't actually
know
what the usual incubation conditions were, not to the degree that is clearly necessary.”

It was the way of the gentleman-scholar, which had once been widespread. In some circles it still was, though the practice—or rather, the respect accorded to it—was on the decline. Our predecessors in all fields of science had once been content to work from the scattered observations of non-specialists and the unfounded declarations of ancient writers, rather than from empirical evidence. It was truly embarrassing to think how many centuries had passed during which even our great minds had believed, without a shred of proof, that a spider would not cross a line of salt—to choose but one particularly egregious example. The exact sciences had shed that mentality some time ago; the field sciences, such as natural history or anthropology, had taken longer, and were not yet done shedding.