Marcus Fitzarthur, Lord Gleinleigh
caeliger line greatly concerned other passengers much disturbed by addition—Bralt
Reçu à #68 Rue Courbée par Place des Oiseaux, Ecraie Falchester Scirland 7 Ventis
William Bralt
buy out whole flight then just get him here—Gleinleigh
REPTILIAN INVASION
Half-Breed Assaults Innocent Woman
HUMANITY OF SCIRLAND, UNITE! The reptilian threat has arrived early on our fair shores. Not content to wait for the great gathering next winter to determine their fate, they have sent an advance EMISSARY, and in grotesque style—flying alone in a caeliger meant for the use of HUMAN BEINGS.
But those who would see us BURNED ALIVE in the temples of the scaly ones, restoring THEIR CRUEL DOMINION over humankind, CANNOT HIDE their plots from us! Our brothers and sisters caught word of the invader’s impending arrival and gathered in force to show that it is not welcome here, nor anywhere in this glorious world. We surrounded the reception building at Alterbury Field and WOULD NOT PERMIT it to leave. Let the monster go back to where it came from! And take its sycophantic slaves with it!
The forces of corruption are strong, though. The half-breed granddaughter of the GREAT TRAITOR was there. She assaulted an INNOCENT WOMAN and an HONEST CLERK in her attempt to free the beast, screaming FOUL CHANTS in the reptilian language all the while. But we held fast! Our line did not falter; our will did not break. Our brothers and sisters in arms brought her low, and would have taught her the TRUE STRENGTH OF HUMANITY.
Alas, weep for the fallen state of our land. Those LACKEYS of the serpentine agenda, the police of Falchester, came to the rescue of the half-breed and her demonic lover. In the ensuing BATTLE many were hurt and many more arrested, while the FOREIGN BEAST was permitted to go free.
Make no mistake: this is not the first skirmish in this WAR, nor will it be the last. The creature has gone into hiding, but we will FIND IT and DRIVE IT FROM OUR LAND. Those who have no wish to see their children SACRIFICED to the FIERY IDOL of these monsters must remain vigilant—for where one dares to tread, MANY MORE will follow!
For the bail of those unjustly imprisoned, a collection will be taken at the Assembly-House on Thackinny Street this upcoming Cromer evening.
From: Jacob Camherst
To: Audrey Camherst
10 Ventis
#3 Clarton Square, Falchester
Dear Audrey,
What the devil do you think you’re doing? A healthy sense of adventure is one thing; this is something else entirely.
Your loving but deeply alarmed father
From: Audrey Camherst
To: Jacob Camherst
10 Ventis
Stokesley, Greffen
Dear Papa,
All right, so things got a little out of hand. But I could hardly let them hold Kudshayn prisoner, now could I? Especially after I am the reason he came all this way.
I suppose you got the story from the newspapers. I had better give you the actual story, since I’m sure they made a hash of it. Riots! Hadamists! Lady Trent’s granddaughter! Very sensational stuff, good for the headlines, but short on details, which I’m sure will make you see why I had to take action.
I think I told you that Lord Gleinleigh arranged, not simply to fly Kudshayn around the world, but to bring him here by private caeliger. This was very handsome of him, I thought, but also practical: a Draconean on a commercial flight was sure to cause all kinds of problems. Most people have never seen one in the flesh, after all. Even if they were friendly to him instead of hostile, it would be a terrible disruption—not to mention very hard on poor Kudshayn, who would have to put up with being a fifteen-minute wonder every twenty minutes.
Hence the private caeliger. There were some problems with that, too—landing permits and so forth—because a strange airship roaming around as it pleases and landing at random fields for refueling tends to make people twitch, as if it’s the Aerial War all over again. But the arrangements got sorted out, and Kudshayn made it all the way to Thiessin before things went really wrong.
(No, I don’t know what. Apply to Great-Aunt Natalie for things that might qualify as “catastrophic engine failure” with a two-week repair schedule; that’s all I overheard.)
Of course Lord Gleinleigh didn’t want to leave Kudshayn stranded in Thiessin for two weeks. Since we only needed to get him across to Scirland, the earl made arrangements for a commercial flight after all. Only I gather there was some kind of trouble still, so Kudshayn wound up flying alone—apart from the crew, of course, since he no more knows how to pi lot a caeliger than I know how to bake a cake.
I’m not sure how the Hadamists got wind of it. Possibly that was an unforeseen side effect of something Lord Gleinleigh and I planned? I suggested he might want to invite some of the Draconean Friendship Society to dinner here at Stokesley, in celebration of Kudshayn’s arrival, but he declined. (He is not a very sociable man—I haven’t even called on the neighbours, nor have they called on us that I’m aware of—but I think it’s specifically because he’s worried we’ll let something slip that we shouldn’t. It’s all very hush-hush around here.) He suggested, though, that the Friendship Society might like to greet Kudshayn at the caeliger port, and so I wrote to them. I have no idea how the news might have gotten from them to the Hadamists, when those two groups are as far apart on the Draconean question as it’s possible to be . . . but it’s the only explanation I can think of. That, or a telegraph operator gossiped.
Regardless, the first Lord Gleinleigh and I knew of it was when we showed up at the airfield and found that, in addition to seven people from the Friendship Society, Kudshayn had a welcoming committee of several dozen more who think he’s a horrible monster.
If it weren’t for all the silly protocols we’d have had no trouble, because of course the Hadamists couldn’t cordon off the entire airfield, but Kudshayn had gone into the station building to fill out the paperwork they insist on when the arrival is from a foreign country. (It just occurred to me that their forms don’t have a blank for “species.” Do you think they’ll change that before the congress?) And if he’d landed at Winton there would have been far too much traffic in and out of the building; they would have been annoying ordinary people with their obstruction. But Lord Gleinleigh had arranged for him to fly to Alterbury because it’s more convenient for us, coming in from Greffen, and the field there is small enough that they were able to block the exits, so Kudshayn was trapped inside.
You can imagine how alarming I found the sight. Red masks all around the building, staring and blank, except where some of them were bold enough to show their faces openly. Their leader was one of the bare-faced ones. I’m sure you saw in the paper who it was: Zachary Hallman, and I have sat here for three minutes trying to think of an epithet I can attach to his name that won’t make you exclaim “Audrey!” when you read it. Nothing has come to mind, so I’ll just let you imagine something suitable. (Or unsuitable, as the case may be.)
He was parading around with a megaphone, shouting all sorts of horrid things—you know the kind of bilge they spew, human sacrifice and so forth. The Friendship Society were still there, but they’d retreated to a safe distance; they were outnumbered at least four to one, so I can’t blame them. They’d expected a nice little meeting with a visiting scholar, and instead they got a face-off with a pack of horrible bigots.
I suppose it was a balance of sorts, and our arrival upset it—because of course Hallman recognized me. That put a fresh wind in his sails, not to mention the crowd’s. Lord Gleinleigh told me to get back in the motorcar—as if I could sit idle! I strode forward before he could get any notions about manhandling me into it by force, and went over to where the trouble was.
Have you ever noticed what a dreadful-looking fellow Hallman is? No, wait—I don’t think you’ve ever seen him in person, as you were at sea when I met him. I don’t mean that he’s ugly. There are a great many people with ugly faces who
are perfectly pleasant to look at. No, Zachary Hallman could be quite handsome, in a rugged sort of way, if it weren’t for the mean-spiritedness that has settled into every line of his face. He stepped forward and . . . well, I won’t write down what he called me, because I don’t want you being arrested for going after him. I don’t care a toss for what he says about me, but you have a father’s obligation to be furious at anyone who insults your daughter.
“Yes, that’s me,” I said, in my very best tone of saucy unconcern. “If you’ll pardon me, I have a friend in there who is urgently needed elsewhere.”
Lord Gleinleigh tried to shoulder his way in front of me and say something, but I dodged neatly around him. Hallman, meanwhile, selected three epithets to describe Kudshayn, none of them flattering. Then he said, “We know what to do with creatures like your friend . Let’s see how they like it if we burn them as a sacrifice to their heathen sun god!”
“Don’t tell me you believe that nonsense about those pillars being used to burn humans alive,” I said, with all the scorn I could muster, hoping it would hide the sudden bump of fear that they meant to light the station on fire. “Even if the Anevrai did that—which is very much in doubt among reputable scholars—modern Draconeans think the idea is appalling. They much prefer a good yak stew.”
It was something like that, anyway. I can’t remember precisely what I said, because I was busy trying to think of a way through this impasse. The Hadamists had all linked hands or elbows to form a human chain, like a grown-up game of “Country, country, we want soldiers.” Even if I managed to rally the Friendship Society, I doubted we could break their line. And we had quite a lot of bystanders by then, but they all seemed content to stand around and whisper to each other. If I could just get through to Kudshayn, though . . .
Lord Gleinleigh had given up on trying to get Hallman’s attention for the moment, and was instead hissing at me to stop being foolish and go back to safety. But then an idea came to me, and I smiled at Hallman. “Poor man,” I said, my tone dripping with insincerity. “So obsessed with the superiority of humankind . . . yet you haven’t learned to think in three dimensions. What good is your blockade when my friend can simply go over your heads?” And I cast my gaze upward, to the clock tower on top of the building.
They all fell for it, even the earl. Of course Kudshayn hadn’t climbed onto the roof; you know what he’s like. He would never dream of anything that acrobatic. But Hallman didn’t know that, and neither did the rest of his followers, and so they all had a moment of panic, thinking Kudshayn was about to come swooping down on them like the wrath of the sun.
That’s when I charged their line.
I chose my targets very carefully: a middle-aged woman and a scrawny fellow who probably works as a clerk. You would have been proud of me, Papa; I remembered my jujutsu training. Of course I’m terribly out of practice, so I didn’t attempt to dive over them, but I rolled right under their hands while they were distracted, neat as you please, and I thought that everything had come off just as I planned.
Only I stepped on the hem of my skirt coming up, because I’d dressed in one of my more respectable frocks on account of not expecting to deal with Hadamist protesters. It tore and I stumbled, and then the clerk got hold of me in what he probably thought of as a bear hug. So I tossed him over my hip, but by then Hallman had noticed what I was doing, and yelled for everyone to stop me.
I can’t really tell you how I wound up on the ground—it’s all a bit of a blur. I did my best to turtle up like I was taught, but that only does you so much good when half a dozen people are coming at you. I would have been sunk if the Friendship Society hadn’t intervened.
My hand to the sun, I didn’t mean to start a riot. The plan was that I’d get into the building and tell Kudshayn my idea about getting out via the clock tower. It’s high enough to give him a good long glide, and I figured he could either carry me or, if he thought that would strain his wings, leave me in the building while he and Lord Gleinleigh got away. I wouldn’t have minded waiting. But instead I tripped on my skirt and got slowed down, and then some chivalrous soul in the Friendship Society decided he couldn’t stand by and watch a helpless young lady wind up at the bottom of a pig-pile, and, well . . . things got a little out of hand.
But at least it meant I was able to crawl my way out of that whole mess (leaving a shocking amount of my skirt behind) and stagger toward the door, whereupon it opened long enough for a pair of clawed hands to reach out and yank me inside.
Of course it was Kudshayn. As soon as I had my balance I threw my arms around him and said, “Thank the sun you’re safe!”
He extricated himself from me and said, “Your nose is broken.”
(It was only a little broken. But don’t worry: Lord Gleinleigh had his personal physician see to me anyway, so once the swelling and bruising have gone, I won’t have damaged my marriage prospects at all. Such as they are.)
I felt at it gingerly—but not gingerly enough, as it turned out. Broken noses hurt such a lot! My voice was as thick as if I had a terrible cold. “I came to get you out of here.”
Kudshayn cast a glance past me, at the chaos visible through the door’s small window. “I see . . . how do you propose to do that?”
Before I could explain about the roof, the station master began waving his arms and insisting we leave at once—continued waving and insisting, I should say, since I had the distinct impression that he’d been doing it ever since the problems began. He clearly had never laid eyes upon a real live Draconean in his life, and was more than a little unnerved to be faced with a two-meter-tall humanoid dragon creature whose wings, though politely folded, kept bumping against the benches in the close confines of the hall. Compared with that, a half-Erigan young woman streaming blood from her nose counted as an improvement.
Kudshayn handled this in his usual way, which is to say that he did his best impression of a courteous, immovable rock. Since I am not a two-meter-tall humanoid dragon creature who looks like he would be glad to eat a man in one bite, I had the freedom to yell at the station master, demanding to know what kind of person would drive an innocent traveller out into the hands of a hostile mob, and we were in the middle of our own shouting match when noise came from outside. Whistles and someone else with a megaphone—not Hallman this time. The police had arrived.
I gave up on the station master and went to look. Outside, the police were laying about with their batons without much of a care for who had started the whole mess. I was suddenly very glad to be inside the station, as I had taken quite enough of a beating for one day. (Though I prayed that no one in the Friendship Society would get hurt. And I may have craned my neck a bit to see if I could spot anybody thumping Hallman as he deserved.)
At that point there wasn’t much need for leaping off the roof, so we stayed put until things quieted down outside. Of course then the police had to question me, and Kudshayn, and Lord Gleinleigh, and the station master, as well as the Friendship Society and Hallman and quite a lot of Hadamists and various other people, and the result was that we didn’t get back to Stokesley until well after the dinner that was supposed to be waiting for us.
Anyway, you see it was all just an accident. If it hadn’t been for the caeliger engine breaking down, there would have been no trouble at all. But no permanent harm done, as they say, and I promise I shall have a quiet time of it from here on out.
Your bruised daughter,
Audrey
FROM THE DIARY OF AUDREY CAMHERST
10 Ventis
Ugh, my face is throbbing. No matter which way I lie, I can’t seem to get comfortable. Aspirin isn’t helping. I would be tempted to steal brandy from Lord Gleinleigh’s study, but he keeps it locked whenever he isn’t in there, and everyone but me is asleep.
Grandmama tells very frank stories about her adventures, but somehow she always manages to make things like broken ribs or tropical diseases sound not so bad. Did she ever lie awake aching and wondering how she cou
ld have been more clever?
Charging that line was stupid, I know it. In the end it did no good at all; one of the people from the Friendship Society had already sent for the police, on the grounds that the Hadamists were unlawfully blocking the station. So help would have been there in a few minutes regardless of anything I did. But all I could think was, Grandmama would have some brilliant solution for this. She’d sneak past or talk Hallman down or, oh, I don’t know, set a dragon on the Hadamists or something. I didn’t have any dragons handy; only Kudshayn, and he is far too scholarly to do anything like scare off bigots. I suppose I am, too, given how badly my distraction went.
And nothing after that went very well, either. At the best of times I am not Lotte, and having a broken nose put a serious dent in my social graces. When I got out of the station Lord Gleinleigh shouted at me, insisting he had the whole thing “well in hand” (my foot!) and I had “needlessly endangered” myself. I didn’t have a good answer to that, and then when I tried to introduce him to Kudshayn, all Gleinleigh said was “At least you’re here” before stomping off. And then there’s Cora, who takes disruptions to routine very badly. She was so upset that we didn’t arrive when we’d promised, she went off in a huff and wasn’t even there to greet Kudshayn. I can’t imagine how she’ll behave tomorrow; I can only hope she’ll have calmed down and we can just get to work on the tablets. Even when those are being intractable, at least they don’t make me feel foolish and guilty.
Bah. I’m being a wet blanket because my face hurts and I can’t sleep. I should tear out this page and burn it, but instead I’ll go downstairs and distract myself with work.
later
What on earth is Aaron Mornett doing here?
I know it was him. He has the most perfectly lovely voice, which is utterly unfair; someone as odious as him should have an odious voice to match. I heard him in the corridor outside the library—
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