And that’s when Audrey hauled off and slapped her.
I nearly died of horror, Grandmama. I was sure Audrey would be arrested again, and it would be all my fault for making her come to the racecourse with me. The Earl of Granby saw it all happen and immediately intervened, and I could just see the headlines: BRAWL IN THE ROYAL ENCLOSURE.
In hindsight, I should have guessed this isn’t the first time someone has slapped another person at Chiston. They’re quite used to hushing up such things there, for the dignity of all involved. And since we were inside, not out where the press could see us, nobody has any photographic proof of the moment. So there are rumours, but Audrey’s reputation isn’t made any worse.
But Grandmama . . . she and I talked afterward, and what she said has me so worried. I asked what possessed her to follow Mrs. Kefford around like that—and she must have been planning it from the start, or she wouldn’t have dressed that way, covering herself up as much as she could. The conversation spiraled from that to all the other things she’s been doing lately, breaking into Mornett’s hotel room, charging the Hadamists at the airfield; we were up all night. And somewhere in those hours, Audrey admitted that every time she’s found herself faced with a problem, she’s asked herself: “What would Grandmama do?”
So you see why I must ask for your advice. I feel quite sure that you wouldn’t do what Audrey has done, but I don’t know how to explain the difference to her, and I’m desperately afraid that one of these days she’ll do something so foolish it will have permanent consequences. How do I tell her that she has to be more careful, without it sounding like I think she isn’t capable of handling these problems?
Please, if you have any recommendations, write back at once. By the time I get your letter Audrey will have returned to Stokesley, but I can go visit her, if only I know what to say once I get there.
Your loving granddaughter,
Lotte
P.S. I’ve met a lovely young man named Jeremy Poole, and although he hasn’t proposed, I think he will—we’ve made arrangements to see one another again in Rinmouth this summer. But I will put the details in a separate letter, because I want this one to go out with today’s post, and besides, that story deserves not to be crammed up against the unpleasantness here.
FROM THE DIARY OF AUDREY CAMHERST
28 Messis
Back at Stokesley. Part of me wishes I had never started on this work—but only part. Ancient Draconean I can understand, however impenetrable its grammar and orthography may sometimes be. It would be a relief to go back to what I know . . . if it weren’t for everything else.
Cora. What am I to make of Cora? She bought a refrigeration machine while I was gone. Her uncle is going to be furious; those things are absurdly expensive. Or at least they are when you insist on having some men come out and install one the size of an entire room in a shed (a shed that wasn’t even electrified, so now there are dirty great cables running across Gleinleigh’s garden). When I lost my jaw over that, she said—with an air I can only call smug—that her uncle had made it very clear how vital Kudshayn is to the work we’re doing here, and surely he would not want to find out his guest had dropped dead of heat exhaustion? If I didn’t know better, I would say this is her way of sinking a knife into his back. Maybe that’s exactly what it is. I can’t tell anymore.
Kudshayn had her working with him a little, even though I didn’t want her anywhere near the tablets anymore. No ambiguity there; that’s his quiet way of telling me he thinks I’m wrong about her. I haven’t decided yet whether I’ll let that continue
You’re being an ass, Audrey, and you know it. Gleinleigh may have told Cora to obey you, not Kudshayn—can’t have his niece following the orders of a lizard-man, now can he?—but that doesn’t give you the right to overrule Kudshayn. If he wants Cora and you don’t, then the two of you will just have to fight it out.
Except I don’t want to fight with him about anything. I’ve read over what he translated in my absence, and I see why he’s troubled. Worms—ugh. I mean, yes, I can see how, from a certain perspective (say, a scaled one), a human being might look like a worm, all pinkish-brown and fleshy. We still don’t have proof that’s what the āmu are, but it’s getting harder and harder to imagine they could be anything else.
And that means the three sisters and their people are headed toward conflict with my species.
I shouldn’t be surprised. (I’m not surprised.) Kudshayn said it himself this evening, while I sat and shivered in that icebox Cora bought for him: “The tale of the Anevrai and their empire was, in the end, a tale of human subjugation. These tablets have already told the story of how many things began, from the three species to agriculture to the existence of night and the moon; it seems it may also be the story of how that empire began.”
He said it very calmly. I have no doubt he’s spent days thinking about this while I was gallivanting around Falchester being an idiot, and figured out how to at least pretend it doesn’t bother him very deeply. “We don’t know that,” I began, but he held up one hand to stop me.
“It is my fault,” he said. For a moment I thought he meant the ancient empire was his fault, which made no sense, but no. “I allowed myself to imagine that this tale would be what I hoped.”
I have not forgotten the conversation he and I had back in Seminis. “Your people’s story.”
It still is—or it could be. As near as I can tell, the requirements for calling something a national epic are that it be 1) old, 2) long, and 3) accepted as important. This isn’t nearly so long as The Great Song, but I’d say it’s at least as long as Selethryth, and it’s unquestionably old. Whether it’s important . . . that’s for other people to decide, the Draconeans above all. Will they want to claim this tale as the emblem of their people, the text that captures the essence of the Draconean soul?
The whole idea is nonsense. No single story can capture the essence of a whole nation, let alone a species. But that doesn’t mean people won’t read it that way regardless—and if the epic causes them to look bad, Gleinleigh and Mrs. Kefford and all their ilk will make certain the Draconeans wear it.
I told Kudshayn everything that happened in Falchester. Even the bits that make me want to crawl out of my skin with shame, because they’re part and parcel of my evidence: Mornett and Kefford at the auction, Mornett and Hallman corresponding, Mrs. Kefford talking to Gleinleigh again at Chiston, looking like she wanted to flay him with her words. She was buttering up various members of the Synedrion, too, the ones who aren’t already in her husband’s camp where Draconeans are concerned, but could perhaps be persuaded over to that side. “Maybe they’re planning on using this against you,” I said. “They set things up to make Gleinleigh look innocent and friendly so that you and I would come to work for him, and then . . .”
My inspiration ran out, because how could they plan in advance for what we’re finding now? Even if Mornett is working from casts of the tablets, he can’t have gotten through them any faster than we have. Gleinleigh and his cronies might be so convinced of Draconean inferiority that they assumed any important story from their civilization must necessarily make Kudshayn’s people look stupid, evil, or both, but that seems like a lot to gamble on.
But Kudshayn has long experience of human nastiness. He said quietly, “They could arrange to make sure that what we publish is damning.”
“How?” I said. And then the bottom of my stomach dropped out, and I said: “Oh.”
We can write up whatever we like . . . but unless we go to the printer’s and watch them cast the type for the pages and then stand over the presses, we can’t ensure that what we write will be what gets published. Gleinleigh could put our names on any kind of libel.
“It would come out,” I said. “Can you imagine the headlines? ‘Lady Trent’s Granddaughter Disavows Translation, Says Earl Lied.’ I can’t think of anything more likely to drum up sympathy for your people then a high-profile scandal over a clumsy attempt to defame your ancesto
rs. They’d have to destroy the tablets so no one could ever check the source—and destroy our copies, too—and do us in for good measure, because otherwise we’d talk.”
The silence that fell then was nasty. “That would be a bit much,” Kudshayn said at last.
More than a bit, I should hope, but there are times when his tendency for understatement is soothing.
I don’t really think our lives are in danger. I may not believe what Mrs. Kefford said about Mornett having feelings for me, but I also don’t believe he would stand by and let me be killed. His outrage over the riot seemed genuine, and that only left me with a broken nose. And Gleinleigh seems an unlikely murderer. All the same, I am going to make sure we smuggle duplicates of our work out of here before we go, and insist on seeing page proofs of the book before it goes to press. Even if I’m guarding against shadows, I’ll feel better for having done it.
I’m worried about what the last two tablets have in store for us, though. Kudshayn reminded me that we don’t know for sure the mu are meant to be humans; we don’t know for sure that Samšin is going to make war on them. We didn’t know the sun was going to vanish from the sky in the sixth tablet, and it’s entirely possible something equally unexpected will happen between now and the end. The invocation wasn’t what you’d call clear.
But I don’t think the chill I felt was entirely due to sitting in an enormous icebox. I feel like I’m sailing into a fog bank, without even a chart to let me know what rocks lie in our path. I’m just sure the rocks are there.
From: Annabelle Himpton, Lady Plimmer
To: Simeon Cavall
6 Caloris
Priorfield, Greffen
Dear Dr. Cavall,
I hope you can assist me with a small matter, as I understand you are a good friend of Miss Audrey Camherst, whom I had the pleasure of hosting as a dinner guest this past Floris. She was kind enough to advise me about the purchasing of Draconean antiquities, and on her recommendation, I sent a man to acquire something for me from the auction at Emmerson’s on the nineteenth. He brought back a little clay winged disc with rather faded paint, which was not precisely what I had in mind, but then he cannot be blamed, as I had given him rather vague instructions, specifying only that the item should not cost more than five hundred guineas and should not have been obtained from any private collectors in Gillae.
Regardless, I was pleased to have the artifact and promptly hung it in my drawing room, then invited some guests for dinner so they could admire it. Imagine my surprise, then, when one of those guests, Mr. Eddleston, told me he had seen it before! He claimed it was previously the property of Mr. Lawrence Ryland in Falchester, who kept it in a glass display case in his billiards room. I told him that surely he must be mistaken, because the provenance I had from Emmerson’s mentions Mr. Ryland nowhere in it. But Mr. Eddleston insisted I take it down off the wall so he could look at the little inscription on the back, which he had taken a rubbing of when the disc was in Mr. Ryland’s keeping. He positively identified it as the same one, and has sent me a copy of his rubbing as proof, which I enclose, along with a rubbing taken from my new decoration.
Miss Camherst made a point of telling me I should examine the provenance of anything I purchased, and so I thought that would be enough to keep me safe from any underhanded dealings. But I greatly fear now that I have unwittingly involved myself in crime! Whether the disc was stolen from Mr. Ryland or provided with a false history to cover up his ownership I cannot say, but I fear I have unwittingly purchased something illegal, which is a phrase I never thought I would have to write. (I haven’t the faintest idea why Mr. Ryland would wish to hide his connection with it, as this is a perfectly respectable artifact, not at all like those vulgar ones I know some people like to collect for their private entertainment—and I imagine the ancients made them for that same reason, thus inclining me to think they are not so different from human beings as some would claim.)
Regardless, I feel certain the documentation Emmerson’s provided me with is fraudulent, though who committed the fraud I cannot guess. Please do write back and advise me in the best way to proceed, as I do not wish to trouble Miss Camherst, on account of what I have read in the newspaper about her recent difficulties in Falchester, though no doubt those have been magnified all out of proportion by the reporters, who do so dearly love a scandal. (I am sure you can understand that I very much wish to avoid a scandal myself.)
Cordially,
Annabelle Himpton
Lady Plimmer
From: Isabella, Lady Trent
To: Audrey Camherst
9 Caloris
Thokha, Tser-nga
Dear Audrey,
It has come to my attention that the phrase “What would Grandmama do?” has been heard to pass your lips. Based on what I have heard concerning you lately, it seems that you are labouring under a misapprehension, and I think I had better correct it before it leads to serious harm, for you or someone else.
I can hardly deny that at various points in my life I have involved myself in any number of dangerous situations, and often on grounds that an outside observer might deem to be foolhardy. But the accounts of your behaviour I have from your father, Simeon, Lotte, and other observers give the impression that your habit is to ask “What would Grandmama do?” . . . and then, having identified the most reckless action available to you, to embark upon that course without delay.
This is not, and never has been, what your grandmama has done. Nor is it a course she can advise to you, since she has a perverse desire to see her grandchild survive to an age even older and riper than her own.
Have I been reckless? Of course I have. But it was never for the sake of recklessness, never—or at least, as rarely as my self-awareness could arrange—simply for the sake of proving a point. My foolhardiness has generally come about because my eyes were fixed so firmly upon my goal that I failed to note the cliff’s edge beneath my feet . . . or because, having noted that cliff, I judged it to be of lesser significance than what I might gain.
Perhaps I misjudge you. Perhaps you have indeed made that calculation, and decided that charging a line of Hadamist protesters is the right and necessary thing to do, or breaking into Aaron Mornett’s hotel room in the middle of the night, or following Mrs. Kefford around Chiston and eavesdropping on her conversations before slapping her publicly. I was not there, and even had I been, I would not have been privy to your thoughts. Only you can judge for yourself whether this is indeed the case.
I would be the last person to tell any descendant of mine that she should not pursue her dreams with all the passion and fearlessness she can muster. But be sure it is your dreams you are pursuing, and not some lesser thing: notoriety, the esteem of the foolish, or a reputation to rival my own. I sincerely hope you achieve that last—but you will only do it by being yourself as wholeheartedly as I have been myself. Anything else is mere mimicry, and beneath you.
Have a care for yourself, Audrey. The rest of us certainly do.
Your loving grandmama,
Isabella
A Catalogue of Tablets from the Gleinleigh Cache
examined by Eugene and Imogene Carter
transcribed by Cora Fitzarthur
Tablets 1–14
12.1 cm by 10 cm by 3.1 cm
A continuous text relating a mythological narrative concerning four culture heroes of the ancient civilization. Physical characteristics date the tablets to the Classic Period, but the text is written in Early Draconean.
Tablet 15
8 cm by 5.5 cm by 3 cm
Fragmentary queen list from the southern Anthiopean state.
Classic Period.
Tablet 16
9.2 cm by 4.7 cm by 2.8 cm
Fragmentary queen list from the western Dajin state. Late Period.
Tablets 17–26
10.1 cm by 5 cm by 2.9 cm
Taxation records; region unknown. Late Period.
Tablet 27
5.4 cm by 4.8 cm by 2.
3 cm
A personal letter. Textual evidence suggests origin in Otholé.
Downfall Period.
Tablets 28–34
6 cm by 4.2 cm by 2.6 cm
Fragmentary taxation records from northern Anthiope. Early Period.
Tablet 35
4.1 cm by 3.9 cm by 2 cm
Fragmentary prayer. Formative Period.
Tablet 36
8.7 cm by 6.1 cm by 2.5 cm
Narrative text in the form of a dialogue. Textual evidence suggests origin in Eriga. Classic Period.
Tablet 37
5.3 cm by 4.1 cm by 3 cm
Formulaic demand for tribute by Queen Takšuti to her vassals in the Broken Sea. Late Period.
Transcriber’s note: I think Tablet 37 may have been included by mistake in the shipment sent to the Carters for analysis. When I was packing them up, I recognized that one; it has been in Uncle’s collection for years.
FROM THE DIARY OF AUDREY CAMHERST
9 Caloris
I take back everything I have said against Cora.
Kudshayn and I were hard at work this afternoon on the next-to-last tablet when she came in with a folder in her hands. I’ve still been tensing up whenever I see her, and she knows it, because she stood there as rigid as the day we met and waited until I acknowledged her before she said anything. Then she thrust out the folder and said, “The Carters wrote back with what they’ve gotten through so far. I made a catalogue.”
“Thank you,” I said, because I’ve been trying to be civil. “I will look at it later.” She just went on standing there until I got up and took the folder from her. Then she walked out of the library and banged the door behind her, and I couldn’t tell if that was her way of showing she was angry with me, or sad. Either way, I didn’t want to lose my train of thought, so I dropped the folder on the table and went back to wrestling with something I think may be a reference to the origins of the three ancient Draconean military orders.
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