Short of breaking into the printer’s and stealing the manuscript back, though, I don’t know how we can halt it. The publisher’s deal is with Gleinleigh, not us. And thinking of that made me realize something else, too.
“The tablets,” I said, gathering them up like a thief trying to hide evidence. Which, in a sense, I am. “If they find out they’ve dug them out of the rubble, they’ll come looking for them.”
Which was a masterpiece of unclear antecedents, but Kudshayn followed my meaning anyway, and after a moment Cora did, too. “Mr. Preston said Dr. Cavall sent them here because he knew you were trying to prove they’d been smuggled, but that he—Dr. Cavall, I mean—would tell Uncle—” She stopped, face screwing up into the fiercest expression I’ve ever seen on her. “Would tell Lord Gleinleigh that he sent them to you because you were the best able to assemble them back into order, being so familiar with them. Which Unc—Lord Gleinleigh won’t believe for a moment, but when I told Mr. Preston that he only laughed and said Dr. Cavall doesn’t mind telling bad lies.”
God bless Simeon and Alan. And God bless Cora, too, because when we had all the fragments packed up (it’s a Camherst household; of course we have material for packaging artifacts and specimens on hand at all times), she said, “I’ll take them somewhere. He already knows I ran away, but he doesn’t care enough to chase me.”
That brought me up short, as I finally noted that Cora was at my family’s townhouse, and as near as I could tell had been there all day. Kudshayn said, “They had a . . .” He searched for the right Scirling phrase. “Falling-out?”
“We screamed at each other,” Cora said, going tense again. “Mostly I screamed at him and he tried to explain things, but when I didn’t like his explanations he yelled at me, too. And then I left. I didn’t go home last night. I walked around Falchester until I remembered that I knew where your family lived because I read all your letters to them. So then I came here and Kudshayn made the housekeeper let me in.”
(And that is Mrs. Farwin for you. Doesn’t bat an eyelash at having a Draconean for a houseguest, even though there’s never been one on Scirling soil before, much less under her roof—but let a strange young woman show up on the doorstep and she becomes our guardian dragon.)
“You’re welcome to stay here as long as you like,” I said. “Or go somewhere else, if you prefer. But if you have the tablets, your uncle will chase you.” There was no point in pretending he cared more about her than about the tablets. “Is there somewhere you can hide, that he won’t think to look for you?”
Cora bit her lip, which was answer enough. I was on the verge of saying I would pay to put her up in some hotel chosen at random when a better idea came to me. “The Carters,” I said. “Do you remember their address?”
“Of course,” Cora said.
“Eugene Carter is an utter sweetheart,” I said, “and Imogene probably won’t even notice you’re there. I’ll write you a letter to take with you. There’s even a streetcar that runs out to Flinders—but don’t embark at the stop over on Galworthy Street, just in case Gleinleigh thinks to inquire there.” I patted at the pockets of my dressing gown as if my purse might be in them. “Give me a moment and I’ll fetch some money for a taxi-cab.”
So that’s Cora off to the Carters’, and Kudshayn and me trying to figure out a way to prove the connection between Gleinleigh, Mrs. Kefford, Aaron Mornett, Dorak, and Zachary Hallman. We have some of the pieces, but we’ll need more before we can bring this to the police.
From: Kudshayn
To: the Sanctuary of Wings
2 Acinis
To the elders of the Sanctuary of Wings, I give greetings under the light of the sun, on the footing of the earth.
I no longer consider myself bound by the oath of secrecy I gave upon beginning my work here in Scirland. We have uncovered information which makes it apparent that the one to whom I gave that oath was, from the start, acting in bad faith; much of what he said to me was lies, told with malicious intent against our people. He thought to use me and Audrey Camherst as his tools in his schemes—or their schemes, as he did not act alone. Knowing this, I consider it not only permissible but my duty to share with you what I have learned, and to give warning of those who have conspired against us.
Be warned: much of what I say in the enclosed report will be difficult to read. Do not enter into this expecting that all our beliefs regarding the ancient past will be vindicated. For the past seven months I have stood through an earthquake, my image of our foremothers changing beneath my feet. Some of what I have learned is good. Some is not. Most is neither good nor bad, but simply beyond the boundaries of what we have remembered: in some ways as alien to our lives now as the most advanced technology human societies have to offer.
I pray each day for the wisdom to understand these things as they deserve. I pray to the sun, to the earth—and to the powers we have forgotten, whose influence remains in the world nonetheless. And I give thanks that those who sought to serve destruction and to turn its power to their own ends have themselves been brought down by that selfsame principle. Change is inevitable; destruction can bring new life. Bear these thoughts in mind as you read.
And prepare for what is to come. Together with Audrey Camherst I am doing what I can to blunt the edge of our enemy’s weapon, but it would be foolishness to think we have only one enemy, with only one weapon. Your wisdom undoubtedly makes you aware of this already; I only hope that the account enclosed with this letter will help you to understand the depths to which our opponents will sink, the stratagems they will use against us.
May the earth shelter you and keep you safe. May the sun guide you on your journeys here.
Pray that they will protect myself and Audrey, for I fear we are not yet finished with our trials.
Kudshayn, son of Ahheke, daughter of Iztam
FROM THE DIARY OF AUDREY CAMHERST
3 Acinis
Phone call from Simeon this morning, when I was hardly even out of bed. “Get ready. Gleinleigh’s on his way to you.”
I blinked the sleep from my eyes. “I’m surprised he wasn’t here yesterday.”
From the other end of the line, a laugh I recognized all too well. “I gave him a masterful go-around, if I do say so myself. Told him at first that I didn’t think Alan was done with the retrieval, and then when he went by the annex to see and found Alan was gone, told him the fragments must have been sent for cleaning, but I would be sure to inform him as soon as they came back. He’s on the hunt now, though, so I’d expect him within the hour if I were you.”
“Then I should get dressed,” I said, and hung up.
It’s a good thing I’m not fussy about my appearance, because I had rather less than an hour before someone started alternately ringing the bell and hammering on the door. But I’d warned the butler, so he still took his dignified time walking to the door and opening it, and then was very politely in Lord Gleinleigh’s way, offering to take his coat and hat and cane. (Necessary? No. But it amused me.)
Once he got to the parlour, Gleinleigh cut right to the point. “Where are my tablets?” he demanded.
“Good morning to you, too, my lord,” I said, playing up the raspiness of my voice, and gesturing weakly with one bandaged hand. “Please, have a seat.”
He ignored my invitation, and didn’t offer an ounce of sympathy for my injuries, either. “Where are they, damn you? Those are my property; you have no business stealing them!”
I affected surprise. “Stealing? My lord, I’ve done nothing of the sort. Simeon got confused. He thought, since Kudshayn and I had been working on the tablets, surely you would want them sent back to us. He didn’t understand that our obligations to you are done. But I realized the mistake, so when Cora stopped by to see how I was doing, I asked her to take them back to Stokesley.”
“Stokesley?!”
I truly think the earl might have lunged for me then and there, except that a certain tall, winged figure appeared in the doorway. “Lord
Gleinleigh,” Kudshayn said. His courtesy was the thinnest of veneers; I don’t think Gleinleigh realized how thoroughly every line of Kudshayn’s body advertised his dislike. He doesn’t understand Draconeans enough to read that sort of thing.
But every squishy mammal knows to be afraid of something bigger and toothier—even when that something is a scholarly creature with breathing difficulties. Gleinleigh jerked tight, then backed up a step, eyes darting about as if calculating whether it would be better to abandon dignity and escape through the window.
“Oh, please,” I said with contempt. “Shall we all stop pretending? You’re a liar and a Calderite, and we know it. We have proof that you lied about your discovery in the Qajr, which means the tablets Kudshayn and I have been working on were brought into the country illegally; that alone will be scandal enough. But when the world hears that you forged the ending of the epic in an attempt to defame Kudshayn’s people, what effect do you think that will have on your reputation?”
Marcus Fitzarthur, seventeenth earl of Gleinleigh, comes from a long noble line. Back someone like him into a corner, and he will armor himself with centuries of aristocratic arrogance and privilege. He drew himself upright and said, “You think to drag me into the courts, Miss Camherst? A half-breed from an upstart family like yours? You will never make it stick.”
“Perhaps not,” I said with a great show of indifference. “But you make the mistake of thinking that you are my primary concern. I’m more interested in what happens with the Draconeans and their bid for political independence.”
Gleinleigh flushed an ugly shade. The look he cast at Kudshayn was one of naked loathing. “You think anyone will have sympathy for these beasts?” he said. “It doesn’t matter what I’ve done. No one will give them sympathetic hearing, bar a few eccentrics like your family.”
Kudshayn cocked his head to one side. I’m sure it’s utter coincidence that the movement echoed that of a predator, sizing up potential prey. “If you believe that, why go to so much trouble providing false support for your own side?”
“Because you deserve it!” Gleinleigh spat. “The story was a fairy tale, a pretense that your species were ever anything other than vicious animals! That they can be anything else! We can never live in peace with you. But people will eat up any foolishness and take it for truth, simply because it’s old.”
Silence fell. Gleinleigh’s rage took on a triumphant cast; he thought he had shocked us out of words with his hatred and his cynicism. As if his bile were anything we hadn’t both heard a hundred times before.
My thoughts, like Kudshayn’s, were on something else entirely.
Kudshayn took another step into the room. “Peace,” he said, his wings lifting slightly, not quite spreading. “Our two peoples, living in peace. That is nowhere in the tablets we read.”
A pale man like Gleinleigh advertises his feelings much too easily. His face, which had been red, suddenly whitened.
“There’s more,” I breathed.
More tablets. I’d assumed the real text ended with the Return Tablet; it’s a sensible enough place to conclude the story, with the sun once more in the sky—and the tablet was so damaged, we had no way of telling what its final lines were. (It had even crossed my mind that some callous soul might have damaged it on purpose, to prevent us from noticing that it didn’t lead at all into the Worms Tablet.)
But the forgeries could just as easily have replaced something else.
Gleinleigh’s mouth twisted. “Not anymore,” he said. Malice warped his voice and face into something ugly. “You will never know what it once said, because Aaron Mornett destroyed it.”
Maybe there’s a kind of truth to the Anevrai myth that human beings were created by the earth, because I felt as if I’d turned to stone. Some unknown number of tablets, giving a different end to the tale . . .
. . . and he wanted me to believe Aaron Mornett smashed them to pieces?
No. That is the one accusation I cannot credit. His sins may be too many to count, but that man ran after me into a burning building to help rescue precious relics of the past.
Lying, though—telling Gleinleigh and Mrs. Kefford that he’d destroyed the tablets; maybe even rendering up the dust of something less significant like a tax record, knowing they’d never be able to tell the difference—that, I can believe he would do.
Which means that the real ending is still out there somewhere. In Aaron Mornett’s possession.
I kept all of that from my expression. (It helps that the scalding from the steam makes all expressions a bit painful; I have fallen into the habit of keeping my face protectively stiff.) “You’re monsters,” I said, flat and cold. “And in the end, you will fail. There are thousands of tablets out there, just waiting for archaeologists to unearth them. There will be other copies, other versions of the story. Someday we will know the truth.”
Gleinleigh sneered and jerked a contemptuous chin in Kudshayn’s direction. “Too late for his species, though.”
“Kudshayn,” I said, before he could make any response to Gleinleigh. “I don’t feel right asking the butler to take out this sort of trash. Don’t you think it’s time we let him go?”
He stepped aside, because Kudshayn can read me as well as my family can, even through a scalded face, and he knew I’d thought of something. He mantled just as Gleinleigh went past, though, making the earl twitch and move more rapidly for the door. Gleinleigh didn’t even wait for the butler, just grabbed his things and left.
The instant the door closed behind him, I rushed out into the hall, where we keep our telephone. “Selwright Hotel,” I told the operator. While she connected me, I told Kudshayn what I’d surmised about Mornett. “But I’m not allowed to go to the hotel,” I reminded him.
“And while I could,” Kudshayn said, “I doubt that would do much good.”
A Draconean on the premises: he would cause more than a minor stir. I held up one finger as my call went through. But when I asked for Mornett, the hotel’s concierge told me he was not in. “Please ask him to call me as soon as possible,” I said.
“And your name, ma’am?”
My mind went blank. I couldn’t say Audrey Camherst; that name is far too notorious there. Not Lotte, either—nobody with the name Camherst, and the Trent name wouldn’t be much better. But I needed Mornett to call me back.
“Beliluštar,” I blurted.
“Er . . . how is that spelled, Miss Bel . . . ?”
I spelled it for him, with SH in place of the S with its caron. “Beliluštar?” Kudshayn said when I’d hung up. “The ancient queen?”
“It was Mornett’s name for me,” I said quietly, my hand still on the receiver. “Back when . . . we first met.”
He’ll recognize it; I’m sure of that much. I just wish I could have thought of anything that wouldn’t suggest I still harbour romantic feelings toward him.
But I’ve written all of this and he still hasn’t called back, and I can’t sit around all day waiting for him. So Kudshayn and I are off to the offices of Carrigdon and Rudge, because we need to persuade them there are terrible flaws in the translation and its publication must be delayed indefinitely. I’ve left instructions with the staff here, in the event of his return call; hopefully that will be enough.
OFFICE OF THE FALCHESTER CITY CORONER
88 Walsonworth Street
Report of Investigation by City Coroner
Name: unknown
Race: Northern Anthiopean
Sex: Male
Age: est. mid to late 20s
Home Address: unknown
Occupation: unknown
Type of Death:
Violent [X] Casualty [ ] Suicide [ ]
Sudden (in apparent health) [ ]
Found Dead [X] In Prison [ ]
Unnatural or suspicious [X] Cremation [ ]
Comment: body found in the river; likely killed upstream
Investigating Agency: Falchester City Police
Description of Body
<
br /> Clothed [X] Unclothed [ ] Partially Clothed [ ]
Eyes: Blue
Hair: Dark brown
Facial hair: none
Weight: 82 kg
Height: 178 cm
Body Temp: 15 degrees, 03/09/5662
Rigor: No
Lysed: No
Livor: No
Marks and Wounds: penetrating wound to the posterior
upper left thorax, exit wound on the anterior side
Probable Cause of Death: gunshot
Manner of Death:
Accidental [ ] Suicide [ ] Homicide [X]
Natural [ ] Unknown [ ]
Autopsy Required
FROM THE DIARY OF AUDREY CAMHERST
4 Acinis
I’m terribly afraid that I’ve made everything worse.
I should have kept my mouth shut to Gleinleigh. Just for a little while longer—just until we could get more proof. But despite everything, I still cannot resist saying what I really think. Even when a constable showed up at the door this morning and asked me to come down to the police station with him, I thought it was going to be something about the tablets, that they’d caught Cora, or Gleinleigh had leveled charges against me.
But Constable Corran wouldn’t say anything until he’d parked me at a table in one of their dingy little interview rooms. So it turned out I’d been preparing all the wrong answers when he asked, “Can you account for your whereabouts last night?”
“My what?” I said, baffled. “I was at home in Clarton Square. Why?”
Turning Darkness into Light Page 28