CHAPTER EIGHT
I AWAKE TO THE LOW drone of a siren. It takes me a moment to realise that I’m not in my bed on Fitzroy Square but at Bletchley Park, surrounded by the soft snores of strangers. Or almost strangers. Sophie lights the lamp and nods me a begrudging greeting. We dress in silence, the weight of the task awaiting us suddenly heavier. Nerves flutter in my stomach as I plait my hair and straighten my brooch. What if we fail? Wyvernmire will have no choice but to implement the law. My family will be sentenced to death. I’ll be imprisoned. Ursa will grow up an orphan. Today is my sister’s third day waking up in Marylebone with Abel and Alice. Does she think I’ve left her behind?
That’s exactly what you did.
I follow the others out into the hall where Marquis is waiting, his face still soft with sleep.
‘All right?’ he says.
I nod, blinking back tears. I just need to focus. A helmeted Guardian is waiting for us in the entrance hall. He pushes a basket full of buttered rolls at Marquis.
‘Share these out, then report for duty.’
His voice sounds familiar, but I can’t picture where I’ve heard it before.
‘Those of you in the glasshouse, with me,’ he says. ‘The rest of you, with Guardians 629 and 311.’
I bite into my roll and watch as Atlas disappears through a door behind the staircase. He looks like so many of the boys I knew at school, all good grades and smiles. But last night he spoke in arrogant riddles and made it clear enough that he doesn’t care for rules. Obeying the rules is currently the only thing keeping us safe, so I decide to keep my distance from him from now on.
I follow the Guardian down the steps to the courtyard with Sophie and the two other recruits in our category – Katherine, the chess player, and Gideon, the polyglot. The sky is a bruised blue, bleeding lighter around the edges like a watercolour painting. We take a pathway round the side of the manor house into a garden with a perfectly mowed lawn. A flock of chickens peck at the weeds and cluck in alarm as we pass by.
We walk in silence, the December frost crunching beneath our feet, until Katherine trips and lets out a yelp. I look up. A huge, hulking figure emerges from the trees ahead. The dragon is a vibrant red, the colour of autumn. I stare at the black spikes on its face. Its chest glitters with ebony scales and the ridged peaks of its skull are like a crown atop its head. Beside me, Gideon has gone rigid, his hands balled into fists.
‘Good morning, Yndrir,’ the Guardian says.
The dragon nods his head as he walks by, so big that the leaves of the trees trail across his back. His long tail brushes against my boot and Gideon jumps backwards. Katherine clutches Sophie’s arm.
‘It’s a Ddraig Goch,’ I whisper to no one in particular.
A Welsh dragon. He’s magnificent.
‘Get a move on, all of you,’ the Guardian calls from up ahead.
Why didn’t I expect there to be dragons at Bletchley? The other recruits are still staring at Yndrir in awe. This is probably the closest they’ve ever been to a dragon in their lives. How many more dragons are working at the DDAD, and what do they do ? I glance back over my shoulder as the Ddraig Goch rounds the corner of the house, excitement fizzing in my chest. So I will be working with dragon tongues. Maybe I’ll be talking to actual dragons .
I catch up with Sophie, wait until no one’s looking, and pull her by the arm.
‘Ow, Viv!’
Sophie turns on me angrily, her long hair whipping her face. Now that she’s clean and fed, she looks more like the Sophie I know. I close my eyes and try to ignore the surfacing memories of that day. I’m sorry , I want to say. But I can’t. Because I know that sorry isn’t good enough.
‘Look,’ I say, ‘regardless of what happened last summer, both of us are here now, and both of us need to complete the jobs we’ve been given to go home. I think we should work together.’
Sophie’s eyes narrow. ‘Of course you’re past what happened in the summer because your life went on as normal. But mine …’ Her lip tremors and the guilt fills me so quickly I almost double over.
‘Tell me about it,’ I plead. ‘Tell me where you’ve been.’
‘I already did,’ Sophie replies. ‘Granger’s Prison.’
‘For how long?’
‘A few weeks,’ she says. ‘It was better than where I was living before.’
A hollow carves itself into my stomach. I had hoped – convinced myself even – that the Third Class wouldn’t be as bad as the rumours say. That, despite our parents’ warnings, being demoted wasn’t the end of the world.
‘You mean the halfway house?’
Sophie nods. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘All right,’ I say gently. ‘But suppose we work together? On whatever code we’re supposed to be breaking? I don’t know anything about it, and I’m sure neither do you. And I want us to get out of here, you, me and Marquis. Together. Two heads are better than one, right, Soph?’
Sophie looks up at the mention of her childhood nickname.
‘They promised me that if I did the job here, I’d be promoted,’ Sophie says, staring into the trees ahead. ‘They promised I’d be Second Class again.’
I nod. I deserve to be here, but Sophie doesn’t. She doesn’t deserve to have memories so terrible she can’t talk about them. She doesn’t deserve to have a traitor for a friend. We pick our way across the roots and mounds of earth in the forest, pausing only to look at the tennis court hidden in a clearing to the right of the trees.
‘The glasshouse is our most protected location,’ the Guardian is saying as we catch up with the group. ‘Several dragons and Guardians guard it, and the forest makes it almost undetectable from the sky.’
Almost undetectable from the sky. How many dragons fly over Bletchley each day? From above, the manor and its grounds must look like nothing more than a First Class house. The DDAD is hiding in plain sight and the rebels have no idea. As we walk deeper into the forest, a tall glass building emerges from the trees. Plants and leaves press up against the inside of the windows, making the house look as though it grew from the forest itself. Dotted in the grass around it are several sheets of black rubber, mounted on legs and ribbed like dragon scales. What are they? The Guardian holds the door open and our eyes meet. I jump. Where do I know him from?
‘Welcome to the glasshouse!’
Dr Dolores Seymour smiles at us from behind her oversized glasses, her green dress blending in with the tall potted plants that surround her. Behind her is a patterned rug and an upholstered sofa, as well as two large bookcases and a cupboard that stand in the shade of yet more leaves. The glass ceiling stops among the branches of a neighbouring elm tree, so the whole room is lit by a greenish hue. Blackout curtains are gathered in the corners of the walls and the ceiling, and I imagine them cloaking this whole place in darkness at the pull of a string. Wires snake across the floor like twisted black roots, reaching all the way back to a line of machines and two smaller contraptions that stand atop some tables at the very back of the room.
‘No time for niceties, Dr Seymour,’ the Guardian says. ‘Your recruits will need strict instruction in order to overcome the innate lack of respect for authority they all no doubt possess.’ He looks at me and sneers, amusement dancing in his eyes.
I step backwards in shock, the ghost of a slap stinging my face.
Guardian 707.
This is the man who hit me when my parents were arrested. Who joked about finding a key beneath Mama’s dress. I can tell by the way he’s staring at me that he recognises me, too.
‘Thank you, Ralph, but these recruits are my responsibility, not yours,’ says Dr Seymour. ‘If you could please take your assigned position outside the glasshouse, then we’ll all be able to get down to work.’
Ralph directs his sneer towards Dr Seymour and for a second I think he might refuse, but he suddenly turns on his heel and leaves, letting the door slam behind him. Dr Seymour smiles at us.
‘Please,’ she says, gesturing to the back of the room. ‘Take a seat.’
I pull out a chair at one of the tables. The glasshouse looks like someone has built a library amid a jungle. Bulbous lamps made of pretty blue china, plush cushions and magazines titled Dragons Daily sit beneath tumbling vines of ivy and the sharp leaves of some tropical plant the size of a small tree. The machines seem completely out of place.
I peer at the device in front of me. It’s a box made of glass shaped a bit like a radio with a tall, retractable aerial and a small gold speaker that looks like it belongs on a gramophone. There are several brass dials, play and pause buttons and a large switch.
‘My name is Dolores Seymour. I’m a dragon behaviourist, and Head of Codebreaking and Recruitment at Bletchley Park. You have each been chosen to join me in the glasshouse because you possess a particular skill set that is well adapted to the work I do here.’ Dr Seymour gestures around us. ‘For example, Katherine: you are a previously undiscovered chess champion.’
Katherine nods slowly, looking bewildered.
‘Your logic, memory and ability to solve puzzles is exactly the kind of talent we need here.’ Dr Seymour turns to Sophie. ‘And you, Sophie, have strong mathematical abilities and you are fluent in Morse code, thanks to your experience sending coded messages via the telegraph system.’
That’s why Sophie was recruited? Because she helped her mother in the telegraph offices during the war?
‘And, of course, we have our polyglots!’ Dr Seymour looks from me to Gideon with a smile. ‘Gideon speaks several human languages, while Vivien specialises in dragon tongues. Together, you bring a wealth of linguistic knowledge to the table.’
I raise my hand. ‘Excuse me, Dr Seymour?’
‘Yes, Vivien?’
‘I can see why chess or Morse might be useful for codebreaking, but languages?’ I glance at Gideon. ‘Are you sure we’ve been assigned the correct category?’
Dr Seymour takes a seat on a stool, her hands clasped in her lap. ‘Well, Vivien, you must already know that dragons are the world’s greatest linguists, capable of learning multiple languages at an impressive speed.’
I nod.
‘But dragons communicate in other ways, too. Do you know what I mean by that?’
I suddenly feel like I’m back at university, surprised by a lecturer’s trick question. I shake my head.
‘Of course you don’t,’ she says, smiling as if amused by her own joke. ‘Dragons also communicate via sonar. It’s a form of echolocation, the same used by whales and bats.’
Whales and bats? Why would dragons need to communicate like animals when they learn several languages in their first year of life alone?
‘Dragons communicate via echolocation when separated by long distances, or are underwater. Have any of you ever heard about echolocation and how it works?’
Gideon raises his hand and I feel a pang of jealousy. How does he know the answer?
‘I’ve heard of sonar being used in the war, to detect submarines?’ he says tentatively.
Dr Seymour nods. ‘The first sonar listening device was invented at the beginning of the century, and became the eyes and ears of underwater warships. But nature is the author of the original sonar system. Echolocation was first observed in bats and whales. During the Great War, we realised that dragons – who coordinated attacks during flight with minute precision – were using it, too.’
My skin prickles. It’s been five years since the war ended – why was I never taught about this in any of my modules on dragon communication?
‘Dragons send out sound waves through their mouths, and when the waves hit objects they produce echoes,’ Dr Seymour says. ‘There are two types of echolocation calls – ranging calls, which dragons use to detect objects in the space around them, and social calls. All on a frequency too high for us humans to hear.’
I glance at the contraption on my desk again. ‘Are the rebel dragons communicating via echolocation? Is that why we’re here, to read ultrasonic sound waves?’
‘You’re going to listen to them, not read them,’ Dr Seymour says. ‘And then you’ll translate them.’
A fly hovers across the room and lands on the speaker of the contraption. Could its buzzes be decoded, too, if we had the right machine?
‘We’re not sure when or why dragons began communicating via echolocation, but we know it is crucial to how they organise themselves in battle. Deciphering what they’re saying – and perhaps one day being able to reproduce the calls ourselves – would give us a huge advantage.’
‘Why doesn’t the Prime Minister just ask the Dragon Queen to tell her how it works?’ Katherine asks. ‘Wouldn’t she agree if it means helping us beat the rebels?’
‘The dragons do not want humans to know that they possess a natural sonar system. It seems they intend to keep this method of communication a secret.’
‘How does it work?’ Sophie asks. She has tied her hair back and her eyes are shining with determination.
‘Dragon echolocation is made up of hundreds of ultrasonic sounds – clicks and calls and pulses – which, when recorded and slowed down, may imitate the rhythm and structure of many dragon tongues,’ Dr Seymour says. ‘And that is where our polyglots come in.’
‘I translate languages, not code,’ I say slowly. ‘I’m not qualified for this.’
‘Me neither,’ says Katherine, shaking her head.
‘Surely dragon echolocation is more similar to whale or bat echolocation than it is to spoken language?’ Gideon says.
‘But dragon echolocation is a language,’ Dr Seymour says patiently. ‘And it seems to be more sophisticated than the echolocation we have observed in other creatures. While the clicks they send out to locate objects in the air could be likened to the tapping of Morse code, the dragon’s ultrasonic social calls sound almost verbal, and we believe they have complex meanings. Of course, the dragon code , as we refer to it, has nothing to do with man-made Morse, but those who are trained in Morse, those capable of solving complex puzzles and people with an ear for linguistics have the best chance at translating it successfully.’
‘So what’s my job?’ Gideon asks. ‘You want me to listen to recordings of dragon echolocation and tell you if they sound anything like the languages I know? I don’t speak any dragon tongues.’
I want to laugh at the ridiculousness of it all.
‘You know as well as I do that all dragon tongues originate from human languages,’ Dr Seymour says. ‘And no, we don’t want you to simply listen to recordings.’ She looks up through the glass roof at the sky. ‘Dragons fly over Bletchley day and night. And, since glass is one of the few materials sonar travels through, we want you to listen in live.’
So I am to be a spy.
‘Around-the-clock surveillance would be ideal, but for now the four of you will take the morning shift and myself the afternoon one,’ Dr Seymour says. ‘We believe you’ll work faster together and with a common purpose.’
‘To learn to speak dragon code,’ Katherine says with a defeated sigh.
I try to stay calm as the panic rises inside me. At least Sophie has some experience in coded meanings, but me? I speak languages that are made up of grammar and structure and the alphabet. Not clicks and calls. How am I going to translate ultrasonic batlike sounds into words on a page?
‘Is this what we’ll use?’ I ask Dr Seymour, pointing to the device in front of me and the one next to it.
Dr Seymour nods. ‘These two are loquisonus machines – the most recent echolocation detection devices.’ She points towards the tall black machines that line the wall behind us. ‘The reperisonus machines over there are used to store the recordings made by their smaller but much more impressive sisters.’
Her hand settles on one of the smaller devices. ‘We have the only loquisonus machines in Britannia here at Bletchley. They’re portable, meaning they can detect echolocation anywhere we take them.’ She reaches for the one in front of me and flicks the switch. ‘And their functions can be reversed, meaning they can emit sound as well as record it. In other words, they can be used, theoretically, to communicate via echolocation.’
I lean closer to the loquisonus machine and feel a jolt of anticipation. If what Dr Seymour is saying is true, then it could be used to talk to dragons miles away …
‘It’s all very new technology,’ Dr Seymour says, ‘and, as we haven’t been able to decipher many of the dragon echolocation calls yet, we haven’t been able to play them back as a means of communication.’
‘Wouldn’t the dragons hear, if you did?’ Sophie asks.
I imagine the rebels flying over Bletchley and picking up echolocation calls – it would give our location away immediately.
Dr Seymour smiles. ‘That’s why we have blockers. You may have seen them outside. They’re large rubber sheets that block outgoing sonar, so no echolocation calls can accidentally be emitted from the glasshouse and attract dragon attention. It’s a bit like a one-way mirror – we can see out, but they can’t see in.’ Dr Seymour leans forward on her stool. ‘It is crucial that none of the dragons guarding Bletchley Park learn of the codebreaking going on inside the glasshouse.’
I think of Yndrir and the sharp spikes on his face, the strength of his tail. What would he do if he knew what he was protecting?
‘Why don’t they want us to know about echolocation?’ Sophie asks. ‘If bats and whales use it, it’s not like the dragons own it.’
‘The government believes the dragons want to use it as a war weapon, in the event that humans ever turn against them, but …’
‘But you don’t think so,’ I say quietly.
Dr Seymour looks nervously at the door, but doesn’t reply.
I sit back, my mind spinning. The DDAD is deciphering dragon echolocation, something the dragons of Britannia – and therefore the Dragon Queen – don’t want to happen. So what would they do if they found out? And why is Wyvernmire risking Queen Ignacia’s support to get this dragon code? Is it really that important?
‘The recordings you make in here are likely to be of echolocation calls made by passing dragons,’ says Dr Seymour. ‘But, when we take the loquisonus machines with us on field trips throughout Bletchley Park, you’ll mostly be recording communication between our patrol dragons. In that case, it’s important to note down which patrol dragon you are listening to.’
‘Why?’ I ask. ‘Isn’t the whole point of this to spy on the rebel dragons?’
‘There’s more to it than that,’ Dr Seymour replies. ‘The point is to learn how to speak echolocation – it doesn’t matter which dragons we learn it from. As with any area of study, it’s always useful to have as much information as possible. It would be interesting to compare, for example, where the particular dragons we hear using echolocation come from.’
She holds up a book. ‘Here is a photogram book of the different dragons you may meet around Bletchley. You’ll have to memorise their names.’
Dr Seymour comes to stand between me and Gideon and adjusts something on both our machines. ‘Let’s start by listening to some recordings. The DDAD is mostly interested in the dragons’ social calls. We want to know what the rebel dragons are saying to each other, and how they coordinate themselves during an attack. But knowing their ranging sounds could be beneficial as well.’
Gideon leans over the other loquisonus machine eagerly.
‘What you’re about to listen to is a selection of ranging calls emitted by a dragon during a hunt for prey,’ Dr Seymour says. ‘The loquisonus converts them to an audible frequency and slows them down so as to allow us to hear. Listen carefully, please.’
She presses a button and a static sound erupts from the gramophone speaker. It’s interrupted by a loud chirping, like a bird. A whole sequence of identical sounds follows. I glance nervously at the door. What must these sounds, now on an audible human frequency, sound like to Yndrir? Could he recognise them as echolocation calls, or does it simply sound like a bird is trapped inside the glasshouse?
Dr Seymour catches me looking. ‘We usually use headphones.’
Then there’s a different noise, much longer, like a melody. The chirping sounds resume for a few seconds, and then the recording stops. Dr Seymour looks at me.
‘Did you hear the ranging calls, the identical ones that appear at three-second intervals? Those were helping the dragon locate its prey. But there was another sound right in the middle, a lower but harmonious trilling sound. Did you notice?’
I nod.
‘That was a social call,’ Dr Seymour continues, ‘which suggests this dragon was not hunting alone.’
A shiver shoots down my spine as I imagine the dragons soaring above us, unaware they’re being listened to as they hunt. It’s like we’re flying with them, invisible.
Dr Seymour fiddles with the machine again. ‘Now remember that when you’re listening in real time there will be a short delay between the emission of the calls and what you hear, because the machine needs a few seconds to convert them. Here’s another recording.’
This time, the chirping sounds come at faster intervals, and get faster and faster until they blend into a high buzz.
‘That bit at the end is called a feeding buzz,’ Dr Seymour explains. ‘As the dragon homes in on its prey, it emits several clicks in quick succession for greater accuracy. This allows it to stay updated on the prey’s slightest change of direction. You can hear one last buzz at the end just before it catches it.’
I place my hands on the loquisonus machine. This is clever, cleverer and more complex than any form of dragon communication I’ve ever studied. But if dragons don’t want humans knowing about echolocation, does that mean they don’t want us learning their spoken languages, either? That they’re against humans studying dragon tongues?
I think back to Chumana in the library.
The child speaks dragon tongue.
She didn’t seem to mind. In fact, I’d like to think she was impressed. But echolocation is different. To be able to understand and imitate it would mean Wyvernmire’s government could not only spy on the rebel dragons or apply echolocation techniques to their own means of communication, but potentially emit undercover calls that would lead the rebels astray. It would be ground-breaking. Now I understand why Wyvernmire needs this code. It truly could change the course of the war.
‘Who designed these machines?’ I ask.
‘I did,’ Dr Seymour replies quietly.
She brushes a strand of loose hair behind her ear and I feel a wave of admiration for her.
‘Of course, this is going to take a lot of training. You’ll have to listen to hundreds of recordings – and at different speeds – until you can even begin to make sense of them. Vivien and Gideon, you’ll then attempt to liken echolocation to any word-based languages you know. Sophie and Katherine, you’ll be looking for patterns in phonology and occurrence. I want you all to start by learning the terminology.’
She pulls a box out of the cupboard and removes the lid. It’s full of alphabetically ordered index cards. ‘For this to work, you must know the difference between a click and a tick, a rasp and a trill. For us humans to be consistent in our observations, we must use a common lexicon.’
‘What are these?’ Gideon mumbles, pointing to a pile of notebooks on the table.
‘Those are our logbooks,’ Dr Seymour says. ‘They must never be removed from the glasshouse. When you begin your shift, you write your name and the date, then record all of your findings and your workings-out beneath. This allows us to keep up with each other’s progress and pick up where colleagues have left off. If you believe you’ve correctly translated a call, you add it to the indexing system.’ Dr Seymour points to the box of index cards.
I peer at the last thing written in the logbook in front of me.
Trill-type2 may be used to alert other dragons to something of interest.
‘You have several hours left of your shift,’ Dr Seymour says, glancing at her watch. ‘Grab yourselves a cup of coffee and start getting to grips with the material.’
As Gideon reaches for the photogram book of patrol dragons and Sophie and Katherine share out some index cards, I read through the logbook. There are so many questions I want to ask, but first I need to read and learn everything there is to know. I feel a familiar thrill of excitement, the exact same one I used to get when my professors set a lengthy piece of translation homework, like a puzzle waiting to be solved. I stare at the different calls and notes marked beneath them:
Trill-type6
Trill-type10
Translation: Do not land.
Call recorded at 9 p.m., rebel dragon over glasshouse,
thought to be accompanied by two others.
It’s like reading the dragons’ thoughts. I look over at the loquisonus machines, glinting like gold in the morning sunlight. We’re not just translating a language, I realise. We’re recording it for the very first time.
I look through the remaining index cards to cross-check the translation. I want to know which of these trills means land . I pick up a pencil to make notes, but it’s blunt. I go to the cupboard and rummage among the boxes for a sharpener. I can’t find one, but there’s a tin of fresh pencils. I pick it up and notice an envelope beneath. There’s no name or address, but there are two three-pronged claw marks on the front, on the left and the right. I know what that is.
It’s dracovol mail.
I glance at Dr Seymour, but she’s busy explaining one of the cards to Katherine. My parents used to send our dracovol to pick up schoolbooks for me, as dracovol mail is quicker than the Royal Mail. It’s a private, uncontrolled form of sending and receiving, where letters and parcels are transported by a tiny, long-tailed dragon that’s as fast as a falcon and trained to deliver to a few specific locations. Most Second Class families I know have a dracovol. But there’s no dracovol cage inside the glasshouse, and I haven’t seen any miniature dragons flying around. Besides, Ravensloe said that sending letters isn’t allowed at Bletchley. So what’s Dr Seymour up to? I tug half the letter out of the envelope and read the sentence written in neat handwriting at the top.
Canna, Rùm and Eigg are all
I can’t see the rest without unfolding the letter. I glance over my shoulder. Gideon is watching me so I stuff the letter back in the envelope and close the cupboard door. I know that Rùm is an island off the coast of Scotland, officially made dragon territory at the signing of the Peace Agreement. They use it as their hatching grounds. But I’ve never heard of the others. I sit back down at my desk with my fresh pencil. Why is Dr Seymour receiving dracovol mail? She must have special permission from Ravensloe, maybe for secret echolocation research.
I glance at the box of index cards. There are hundreds of them, and yet Dr Seymour seems to think we haven’t even scratched the surface of this echolocation language. Despite her enthusiasm, I’m starting to feel like cracking this dragon code in three months will be impossible. No one can learn an entire language that fast.
With my previous translations, I’d spend hours poring over books to research context, reading round the subject until suddenly a new way of using a word jumped out at me, a translation I hadn’t considered that gave the text a whole new meaning. That’s how I’ll have to start this time, too. And for that I’ll need a library. Surely Bletchley has one of those?
I begin taking notes, keeping my eyes on the page even when I feel Dr Seymour watching me. The first thing I’ll research are the Scottish Isles. If Dr Seymour is receiving letters about them, then they must be important to learning echolocation. Perhaps I’ll discover something that will give me a head start. I glance at the others and feel a spark of competitiveness. I know it’s stupid because we’re all in this together. But if anyone is going to crack a code that will win the war and erase my mistakes, I want it to be me.