Voyage of the Basilisk : A Memoir by Lady Trent (9781429956369) (39 page)

There I remained for three days, until Heali’i came to us once more.

“You are lucky,” she said. “Because you made sacrifices at the temple”—sacrifices of flowers, I should say; I do not want anyone thinking I cut a pig’s throat—“you are only to be sent away.”

“Sent away?” I repeated, as if I had not understood her. I had spent those three days planning another excursion to the peak of Homa’apia, so as to give the sea-serpents time to calm themselves. My research had scarcely begun. How could I leave?

Heali’i gave me a look which said I should be grateful for my good fortune. “Yes. You earned great
mana
with your deeds, but you also violated
tapu
. Even
ke’anaka’i
can only go so far, and this one does not have that protection.” She nodded at Suhail. “You must leave, and not return.”

I had been exiled from Bayembe, but by my own government; I had been deported from Yelang, but as a result of political machinations I deplored in any case. This was the first time I had been sent away by the people whose goodwill I had hoped to earn, and it stung me deeply. Telling myself that I
had
earned their goodwill—that was why I was not being threatened with execution—did little to assuage the hurt.

But I could not argue, for Admiral Longstead had no intention of leaving me on Keonga in any case. The diplomatic arrangements the princess had made were delicate things; he could not risk me trampling all over them. And trample I would, even if I did not mean to, simply by the nature of my involvement with preceding events. I had stolen a caeliger from the Yelangese navy; I had violated
tapu
in Keonga; I knew far more than was good for anybody about what had really transpired with Her Highness. He wanted me well away from this place before I made anything worse.

The
Basilisk,
unfortunately, was not yet seaworthy, though supplies from the little Scirling fleet meant she was close to it. So it was that we found ourselves bundled onto the
Boyne,
the smallest of the admiral’s three ships, and bound for the port of Phetayong: myself and Suhail, of course, for we had been exiled, but also Tom, Jake, and Abby, for they would not be separated from us.

It was a bitter leave-taking. I divorced Liluakame before I went, breaking the promise of marriage in order to fulfill my promise of freedom. She thanked me with a brilliant smile, no doubt already dreaming of her sweetheart. I would not have wanted to take her to Scirland regardless, nor would she have wanted to go; and yet it was peculiar to bid farewell to someone who, for however short a time and under whatever strange pretenses, had been my wife. But I was lucky even to have that farewell: I had no opportunity to speak with the other islanders we had come to know, such as the men who took us to ride the sea-serpent. Furthermore, I could not stop thinking of the work I was leaving undone. I had hoped to make a stealthy visit to Rahuahane when the
Basilisk
departed; that was now barred to me. I could not return to the peak of Homa’apia and continue observing the fire-lizards there. I could not question Heali’i about the stories her people told of the creatures that had dwelt on the cursed island, to see what nuggets of truth might have survived the intervening centuries of narrative embroidery. I had only my notes, my memories, and the petrified egg, which I had retrieved from the admiral’s flagship.

Heali’i’s final words to me before I departed were, “Do not be so sad. You are dragon-spirited. Your soul will return here when you die.” I suppose she meant it to be comforting.

*   *   *

In Phetayong we sorted out our affairs and waited for the
Basilisk
to rejoin us. The admiral had at least been kind enough to send us with a letter of credit, so we could afford a respectable hotel; if that was the princess’ idea (and I think it may have been), then I am grateful to her for it.

I struggled with the question of what to report to the
Winfield Courier
. I had been out of contact since before the
Basilisk
was wrecked; how could I resume the thread of my narrative now? I must account for more than two months of silence and explain what had transpired during my absence, but the full story could not possibly fit into a single missive. Furthermore, some parts of it must be omitted—Rahuahane, the caeliger, Her Royal Highness—but I could not pretend nothing had occurred, for stories would soon be reaching home by other routes, and what I said must not look like a falsehood.

You may see the result in
Around the World in Search of Dragons,
and entertain yourself by comparing that text with this one to find the points of divergence. It is a brief account, which sufficed for the moment, if not very well; by the time I returned to Scirland, word of the battle had reached audiences there, and I was pressed into telling a much more detailed story. But by then I was prepared to do so.

The
Basilisk
rejoined us a little over a week later, bearing in its hold the diving bell we had abandoned on the reef of Keonga. It was a gesture of friendship from Aekinitos to Suhail, and did much to make us feel as if the proper order of our expedition had been restored. We made energetic plans to sail to Ala’ase’ama, where (as many of you know) I resumed my study of fire-lizards.

Before we could depart, however, our arrangements underwent a sudden and unexpected change.

A packet of mail found us in Phetayong, having in some cases chased us from port to port for months. It was like receiving letters from another lifetime, so far had the world of my correspondents faded from my thoughts. I learned that the
Journal of Maritime Studies
would be publishing my article with its incorrect theory of sea-serpent evolution, and dashed off a note begging them to withhold it until I could write a new version; this, alas, did not arrive in time. I read and answered a great many other letters … and, in so doing, discovered at last what rumours had grown from my supposedly innocuous reports.

My first instinct was to burn the letters and pretend I had never read them. After all, the rumours merited no better treatment. But it was not fair to hide something that involved another person, and so, after much pacing (and more cursing than I should admit to), I went in search of Suhail.

I found him on the shore near the docks, slumped against the algae-covered stump of a post, a letter fluttering in his hands. It was covered in flowing lines of Akhian script; that much I saw before he noticed me and put it away, though he knew I could not have read it regardless. “Is everything all right?” I asked him. Surely, I thought, rumours from Scirland had not reached his own people—not so quickly, at least.

My question was a foolish one. I knew by his expression that everything was not all right. Before he saw me and put the letter away, he was as grim as I had ever seen him, though now he looked resigned. “A message from home,” he said. “My father has died.”

“Oh,” I said. Words seemed to have escaped me entirely. Here I had been fretting over scurrilous gossip, as if the tattered state of my reputation were the most important thing in the world. I felt ashamed of myself. “My condolences.”

Suhail shook his head. He seemed to be dismissing my unspoken imputation of grief. I still knew nothing of his family, save that he was estranged from them to a sufficient degree that he did not even use their names. Whatever had lain between him and his father, it meant he did not weep now.

“Thank you,” he said, as if realizing that a shake of the head was not a proper response to condolences. “But I’m afraid it means I must return to Akhia.”

I blinked. “What—now?”

“Yes.”

The grimness was there again, a stony layer beneath the resignation. “Yes, of course; how foolish of me. Your family will want you with them at a time like this.”

“It is not that—not precisely. Rather—” Suhail caught himself, stopped, and shook his head again. “It does not matter. But I will not be able to go with you to Ala’ase’ama.”

My heart sank. I had, without realizing it, begun thinking of him as a member of our expedition, fully as much a part of my work as Tom was. But chance had brought him to me, and now chance would take him away again.

I have written before about the regret I feel upon parting from the individuals I come to know in my travels. This parting, I confess, struck deeper than any other. Suhail had weathered more trials at my side than anyone save Tom; with him I shared secrets I could not even permit Tom to know. My association with him was not respectable—and I would bear the consequences of that for some time—but I had come to treasure it. Only a determination not to end our partnership by embarrassing myself kept me from showing the depths of that loss.

To conceal it, I reached into my pocket and took out my little notebook, then tore a page from it and scribbled a few brief lines. “Here,” I said, giving it to Suhail. “That is my direction in Falchester. I hope you will at least write to me, as occasion permits.”

He accepted it with a smile that was a mere ghost of its usual brightness. I noticed that he took care not to brush my fingers as he did so: we had returned once more to propriety. “Thank you,” he said. “And I wish you the best of luck in the rest of your journey. Peace be upon you,
sadiqati
”—which means “my friend” in the Akhian tongue.

By the next evening he was gone, having taken passage on a ship bound for Elerqa. That quickly, he was lost to me, and the melancholy of it stayed with me for a long time after.

*   *   *

There is little I can say about the remainder of the expedition that would hold a tenth so much interest as what has come before. I will instead speak of what happened after I returned to Scirland, which was not documented in my reports to the
Winfield Courier,
nor collected in my travelogue afterward.

Part of it is widespread knowledge regardless. As I had predicted, Tom became a Fellow of the Colloquium, because of the work he had done during our expedition. It both pleased and saddened him: acceptance from that body was a goal we both pursued, but his Fellowship did not magically transform the world around him into one where his birth did not matter. He had not expected it, but the disappointment was there nonetheless.

T
HOMAS
W
ILKER

The Colloquium did not unbend so far as to admit me to their ranks, but the following Acinis, in a grand ceremony of the Synedrion, the king inducted me into the Order of the White Horn, making me Dame Isabella Camherst. Officially, this honour was given in gratitude for my courage and quick action in saving the fort at Point Miriam from attack by the Ikwunde army. The Crown had reviewed those events and concluded that, accusations of treason notwithstanding, I had indeed acted in the best interests of Scirland, and so they wished to reward me. (This did not, however, prevent the aforementioned unnamed member of the Synedrion from drawing me aside and reminding me that I was still under no circumstances permitted to return to Bayembe.)

That story, of course, was cover for the truth, which is that I was knighted for my part in the rescue of Her Highness: the woman who now rules as our queen. This, again, was Her Highness’ doing, but naturally none of us could speak of it directly. Admiral Longstead had told me before I left Keonga that any whisper of that matter would see me put on trial and likely imprisoned, and so I held my tongue.

It is often said that the poor are insane, while the rich are merely eccentric. So it is with knighthood, I discovered: as Mrs. Camherst I was disreputable, but as Dame Isabella Camherst, I was just scandalous enough to be worth inviting places. The more frivolously social invitations I declined, but the Nyland Brothers approached me about publishing my travelogue as
Around the World in Search of Dragons,
which sold through its first edition in less than two months, and I soon embarked upon a lecture tour throughout the kingdom. If my audiences at times asked more questions about my personal life than my professional work, and if I suffered the occasional heckler who chose to mock my retraction of my sea-serpent theory, I took care not to complain where any but my closest friends could hear.

As pleasing as these developments were (not to mention a welcome improvement to my financial situation), I found myself wishing for the peace and quiet of my Hart Square townhouse, where I might work on the material I had gathered during my expedition.

Much of this work concerned my taxonomical questions. I had learned my lesson from the premature publication of that article in the
Journal of Maritime Studies
; I would not publish this theory until I was certain of its strength, and moreover could prove it with an abundance of supporting evidence. As it transpired, that evidence would not come into my hands for some years yet, but in the interim I accomplished a great deal that laid the groundwork for the discoveries that would follow.

I also took up a hobby that puzzled many around me. I told everyone I was interested in the fossils then being uncovered in several parts of the world, and in pursuit of that, I studied with both a sculptor and a lapidary, learning to cut and carve stone.