CHAPTER TEN
I PULL MY HEADPHONES OFF and swear. I’ve spent an entire week listening to the same sequence of echolocation calls on repeat and every time I feel like I’m beginning to understand what they mean, I hear them used in a different context that has me back at square one.
‘Trill-type4 seems to mean “let’s hunt”, right?’ I say to Gideon.
Gideon glances up from the index cards and nods.
‘Then why is it being used here as a command to follow?’
I hand my headphones to Gideon, hit rewind then play . He listens for a moment, then gives me a bewildered look.
‘See!’ I say, throwing my hands up in the air. ‘It makes no sense.’
I glance over my shoulder. Dr Seymour is working on a reperisonus machine, trying to fix one of the wires, and I wonder how it could possibly have been damaged when it’s tucked away against the rear wall. Sophie is at the other loquisonus, attempting to write down the rhythm of a sound pattern with Katherine’s help.
The scribbles in my logbook swim in front of my eyes. I’ve been trying to liken the echolocation calls to the dragon tongues I know, searching for similarities in the lexicon or pace. But the calls I hear through the loquisonus machine are sounds more similar to the song of a bird or the blare of a horn than they are to spoken words.
Languages – even dragon ones – can be transcribed on to paper using letters or symbols that deconstruct each sound or meaning, but echolocation isn’t like that. The terminology we’re using, like Trill-type13, doesn’t audibly sound like the noises I hear through the headphones in the way that the letter s conveys the hissing of the word hahriss , which means together in Slavidraneishá. Bulgarian is easier to grasp once one knows that the capital Cyrillic letter Ve looks like a capital Romanised B . Echolocation, on the other hand, has none of these rules, none of these signposts that could eventually lead to a full translation of the sounds.
Why did Wyvernmire even bother to hire linguists when echolocation is more similar to Sophie’s Morse code than it is to any language I’ve ever known?
‘Give it here,’ Gideon says, nodding towards the loquisonus machine.
‘I’m fine—’ I begin, but he’s already pulling it towards him.
I feel my cheeks flush with irritation, but force a laugh. ‘What makes you think you’ll do any better than me?’
‘I’m just … better suited,’ he replies.
‘I had no idea boys were better suited to listening to ultrasonic dragon calls than girls,’ Sophie says before I can spit back my own reply.
‘Not because I’m a boy, although the art of codebreaking is traditionally a man’s domain.’ Gideon smirks. ‘But I’ve been around a lot of dragons.’
I swallow down my next retort as my curiosity gets the better of me. ‘You have?’
‘How about a field trip?’ Dr Seymour interrupts.
We load the two loquisonus machines and other tools into a small pull-along buggy and traipse into the forest. I breathe in the fresh air and lift my face to the sun. Since meeting Muirgen and Rhydderch in the field when translating for Borislav, I’ve started seeing dragons everywhere. Flying past my window in the morning, patrolling the forest or landing in the courtyard to converse with Guardians. I can never keep my eyes off them. I haven’t seen this many dragons in the same place since the war and, even though they pay absolutely no attention to me, I can’t stop myself from hazarding guesses with Marquis about what species they are or which languages they might speak.
‘Right,’ Dr Seymour says as we stop in a small clearing.
I can see the green of the tennis court through the trees.
‘Headphones on and find the right frequency.’
I step towards Sophie, hoping to share a loquisonus machine with her, but she glares at me and pairs with Katherine instead. So I kneel over the other machine with Gideon, my stockings soaking up the damp from the forest floor, and twist the dials on our machine until the crackling subsides and I find the ultrasonic frequency that echolocation exists on.
‘Remember, there are no blockers here,’ Dr Seymour tells us quietly, glancing up above the trees. ‘So you must under no circumstances play back any of the echolocation calls you record. If you do, the dragons will be able to hear.’
I nod, and Gideon glances nervously at the gold, trumpet-like speakers on the machines as if they might suddenly come to life. A clicking sound fills my ears. I pause. Is it a Trill-type13 or a Skrill-type62? I reach for the index cards in the buggy, but suddenly a huge shadow passes over us. I stare upwards as sunlight floods us again and a dragon flies towards the tennis court. The clicks crackle in my ears and I press my headphones closer.
‘Can anyone identify that dragon?’ Dr Seymour says softly. She’s peering at it through a pair of binoculars.
Gideon flicks through the photogram book.
‘It might be Soresten,’ he says. ‘A hundred and ten years old, male, a British Sand Dragon.’
There is a long sequence of social calls, starting with a Trill-type2. I know what that means. The dragon has seen something of interest.
But who is he talking to?
I squint in the sunlight, staring past the edge of the forest and the tennis court to the fields that lead to the lake. There’s a hut there, apparently abandoned since the Great War. Perched on top of it, a hazy, glittering blue shape, is another dragon.
‘That one’s Muirgen,’ I say confidently. ‘She’s the only blue Western Drake here.’
Soresten hovers above her and a Trill-type10 sounds in my ears. Suddenly Muirgen swoops downwards, landing effortlessly in the fields out of my view. Soresten is still airborne, a glint of gold in the sky. Then comes another sequence of social calls, different from the first, but still similar. It begins with what sounds like a Trill-type10, but it’s longer, with an inflection at the end, like the intonation humans make at the end of a question. I flick through the index cards, looking for one that describes what I’ve just heard, but find nothing.
‘Let me listen,’ Gideon murmurs, holding out his hand for a turn of the headphones.
I ignore him as another dragon appears beyond the hut, circling once overhead before landing with Muirgen in the field.
Dr Seymour is crouching next to Katherine, sharing her headphones. ‘Did you see what happened there?’ she says.
I shake my head, wishing I had the correct answer.
‘The dragons both did the same thing, landing in the field. Soresten is a chief patrol dragon, so it’s likely they did so on his orders.’
‘But he said different things to them,’ I say. ‘The calls he used were different.’
‘Maybe Soresten wasn’t the only one talking,’ Katherine offers. ‘Maybe the first sequence was Soresten’s orders, and the second was another dragon’s response.’
‘Nice theory, Katherine,’ says Dr Seymour. ‘That’s entirely possible, but the slight similarity between the first Trill-type10 and the second longer one suggests that the same thing is being said, just differently.’
‘So there are different ways of saying things in echolocation?’ I ask. ‘Like synonyms?’
No wonder this morning’s recordings had me confused.
Dr Seymour smiles. ‘Perhaps. But remember this is all theoretical. I’m learning just as you are.’
‘But why bother?’ I say. ‘Why would Soresten waste time saying the same thing two different ways?’
Dr Seymour gives me an empty shrug.
‘Dr Seymour,’ I say suddenly. ‘You know the Bulgarian dragon I translated for last week? Why did they need me? Even though he didn’t speak the same tongue as Muirgen and Rhydderch, couldn’t they have spoken in echolocation?’
She stands up. ‘I wondered this, too,’ she replies. ‘Perhaps they did communicate via echolocation before landing, but hid this from you so as not to bring it to your – and therefore Prime Minister Wyvernmire’s – attention. They all want it to remain a secret, remember?’
I nod, but I’m not convinced. If the dragons were truly able to communicate via echolocation, they wouldn’t have gone through the trouble of asking for a human translator just to hide the fact that they were doing so. So is it possible there are different types of echolocation, like the synonyms I referred to earlier? And, if so, why doesn’t Dr Seymour – who invented the loquisonus machine – seem interested?
*
I stay in the glasshouse all day, poring over the index cards in the corner while Dr Seymour works her own shift. Sophie has offered to take notes for her and, while I initially feel irked at this shameless attempt to get ahead, I remind myself that we’re a team – whether Sophie likes it or not.
The idea that echolocation has several ways of saying the same thing fascinates me like the dragon tongue Harpentesa did the first time I heard Mama speak it on an expedition in Norfolk when I was four. I take a fresh index card and describe the second call Soresten made.
Similar to Trill-type10, but with an inflection at the end. Both calls seem to indicate an order to land.
Then I give the new call a name.
Trill-type14.
At the end of the day, Sophie hangs back and I see her slip a logbook beneath her jacket.
‘Dr Seymour said we’re not supposed to take them out of the glasshouse,’ I say. ‘For security—’
‘I know that,’ Sophie snaps. ‘But a seven-hour shift isn’t enough to figure all this out.’
She lifts a hand to her mouth and bites her nails. She’s worried. Of course she is. Her entire future depends on whether or not we crack this so-called code.
‘Come on,’ I say, holding the door open for her. ‘I’m sure Dr Seymour won’t notice it’s gone.’
She steps through without a thank you.
‘It all feels like a waste of time,’ she says as we walk back through the forest. ‘I’ve been comparing echolocation to Morse code, and they’re nothing alike.’
I kick at a pile of soft, damp leaves and nod. ‘It’s nothing like dragon tongues, either.’
‘We’ve got to figure it out, though,’ Sophie says. ‘Otherwise, we’ll never go home.’
‘We will,’ I say fiercely.
I pull my collar up against the cold and plunge my hands into my pockets. We walk in silence, craning our necks to the sky each time a dragon passes over. Sometimes, when I’m lying in bed, I imagine what it would be like if rebel dragons discovered our location and descended on Bletchley. Would they burn us like the dragon burned those Guardians back at the station? Surely it’s only a matter of time until they discover us. Sophie’s right. We’re not progressing fast enough. If only I could ask some of the patrol dragons about echolocation—
Footsteps sound behind us and I shake the image of furious dragons away. Atlas appears at Sophie’s side. His hands are full of small pieces of wood and, when Sophie and I glance at each other, he lifts them up to show us, grinning.
‘Was just looking for materials,’ Atlas says. ‘I do a bit of carpentry in my spare time. You know, for fun.’
A horse-breeder turned priest-in-training who whittles wood for fun.
‘I didn’t know you two worked afternoons.’
‘We don’t,’ Sophie says. ‘I was helping Dr Seymour and Viv was just doing some … extra research.’
I smile sweetly at him. ‘I like to do more work than is required, remember?’
He chuckles and looks down at his feet, then back up again.
‘Speaking of research … that reading you were doing in the library? You should take a look at the books again, just in case there’s something you missed.’
I stare at him, thinking back to the book on the Scottish Isles. Atlas didn’t even know what I was looking for in that book because I didn’t tell him. ‘What are you talking about?’
He gives me an innocent look. ‘I was just doing a bit of organising of the shelves after Ralph came to say hello—’
‘Organising?’ I say.
Sophie raises an eyebrow.
‘Yes,’ Atlas says, a smile playing on his lips. ‘Do you have a problem with that?’
‘None at all,’ I reply. ‘It seems you’re a man of many talents, Atlas King.’
‘You have no idea, Featherswallow.’
Sophie clears her throat loudly and Atlas almost drops his sticks. ‘See you at dinner,’ he says brightly. ‘Bye, Sophie.’
We both watch in silence as Atlas strides through the gardens towards the house. I feel a strange swooping sensation in my stomach as I watch him go.
Sophie turns to me. ‘What. Was. That?’
‘I have no idea,’ I reply. ‘What did he mean about the research—’
‘You were flirting with him!’ Sophie accuses me.
‘I absolutely was not,’ I say. ‘I can’t believe you’d suggest such a thing.’
‘Why?’ she says. ‘You’ve courted Third Class boys before.’
‘It has nothing to do with his class and everything to do with the fact that I’m here to help us win this war and go home. Nothing more.’
‘Oh,’ Sophie says. ‘Right.’
She falls quiet until we reach the garden, then stops walking.
‘I can’t go back there,’ she says softly.
‘Back where?’
‘To the Third Class. To the halfway house.’
I swallow. ‘Was it really that bad?’
‘I met some good people,’ Sophie says slowly. ‘My friend, Nicolas. He lived in the halfway house with me.’
‘Did he … fail the Examination?’
I can’t believe I’m pronouncing those words to her, dancing along the knife edge of truth about what I did. Sophie nods. I stare at a spider crawling up the trunk of a tree.
‘What was so bad about it?’ I say carefully. ‘I thought it was supposed to be a place that helps you adapt to your new class …’ I trail off as Sophie shakes her head.
‘There was a welfare worker, someone from the government, but she barely ever came. And, when she did, she didn’t care about what we had to say.’ Sophie starts walking again and I follow. ‘She knew that the Camden halfway house was being used as a black-market location, but she never reported it.’
‘Black market?’
‘There was a group of adults living on the top floor, selling class passes out of the bedrooms. There was a lot of drinking and fighting and …’ Sophie takes a deep breath. ‘It was run by a man, Finley, but he brought other people in, too. Men and women, all from different classes.’
We stop in the courtyard and Sophie leans back against the wall of the manor.
‘Nicolas and I worked the same shift at The Raven Inn and we … well, you know …’ She gives me a wide-eyed look and I nod, trying not to look surprised at the idea that Sophie had a boyfriend. She always used to insist that boys were a distraction she couldn’t indulge in until after the Examination.
‘He moved his things into my room and we set up a sort of camp in there, staying away from the third floor and only using the kitchen when everyone else was asleep. One night I woke up to see smoke coming under the door. The whole downstairs was on fire, and so was the staircase. We threw our blankets out the window so we could jump, but Finley and his men came into our room with boxes of stuff, class passes and dragonbone, to get it all out of the window safely. It must have been worth a lot because they wouldn’t let us near the window, wouldn’t let us out until they’d saved their merchandise. By that time, the flames had spread to our door so Nicolas pushed Finley out of the way and then—’ Sophie lets out a yelp and my blood runs cold. ‘Then they were fighting and Nicolas screamed at me to jump.’
Sophie’s breath comes in ragged sobs and I take her hand. ‘I thought he was right behind me. But, just after I hit the ground, there was this explosion.’ Her eyes stare past me into the trees. ‘When they pulled Nicolas out, his whole body was covered in burns. I took him to the hospital, but they didn’t have the right equipment or medication. None of the Third Class hospitals do. His injuries were so bad and …’
I close my eyes.
‘He died.’
‘Soph,’ I whisper. ‘I’m so, so sorry.’
‘I tried to go home after that.’ Sophie wipes her nose on her sleeve. ‘But the government wanted to relocate the survivors to another halfway house. They kept finding me. My mum tried to hide me, but that just got her in trouble. So I decided I didn’t want to be part of it any more.’
The words tumble out of her mouth as if she can’t stop them, and all I can do is listen in horror.
‘It’s not fair,’ she says hoarsely, ‘that Nicolas died when other hospitals – Second Class hospitals – had everything that could have saved him.’
I imagine Sophie in a Camden hospital, crying over the body of the boyfriend who died protecting her.
Protecting her from the place I sent her to.
‘I went into Marylebone, to the greengrocer, the library, the park. Just like I used to,’ Sophie says. ‘I waited three hours for a Guardian to ask for my class pass and then arrest me. I told him I wouldn’t go to any halfway house and ripped my class pass up in front of him. It felt good, you know?’ She looks at me as if I might be able to understand what it felt like. ‘It felt good to show him, to show anyone, what I think of Wyvernmire’s stupid Class System.’ She spits out the last words. ‘In the end, they sent me to Granger’s Prison. Viv, are you all right?’
My eyes are full of tears. I nod silently as I let them fall. I can’t bring myself to look at her. I can’t even breathe. Sophie was demoted because of me. She was caught in that fire because of me. She could have died, and if she hadn’t been there in the first place then maybe Nicolas wouldn’t be––
‘Viv?’
The shame makes me want to curl into a ball and stop existing.
I’ve done so many terrible, unforgivable things. Sophie’s face softens. She raises a hand and wipes away my tears.
Stop! I want to scream. Stop being kind to me.
‘Come on,’ she says gently, taking my hand.
I let her lead me into the common room where the rest of the recruits are crowded round the radio, arguing about which way to turn the dial. Atlas is sitting on the window seat, whittling a piece of wood with a small knife. I avoid his gaze and slump into an armchair.
‘What’s wrong, Featherswallow?’ Katherine says. ‘You look like someone died.’
Someone did , I want to say as Sophie winces. So shut up and leave me alone.
The common room is furnished with old, worn furniture and ugly green curtains with pink flowers. A bookcase that holds some long-forgotten, pre-war children’s stories stands in a corner and the walls are bare expect for some of Marquis’s dragon sketches, which Katherine and Dodie insisted he give them to spruce things up . That explains why there’s a diagram titled Dragon Abdominal Anatomy stuck above the fireplace.
The recruits are the only ones ever in here. We work, eat and sleep together, barely seeing another human except for our category leaders and the Guardians on shift.
‘Have you seen Marquis?’ I ask Katherine.
She folds up the sheet of paper she’s holding, but not before I see the list of echolocation calls scribbled across it. ‘He’s with Karim.’ She smirks. ‘Again.’
It comes as no surprise to me that my cousin has found himself a boyfriend in the middle of a civil war. He is, after all, the biggest flirt I have ever known.
‘Everyone shut up!’ Serena shouts as she finds the right station and the radio crackles to life.
She turns the volume up and music fills the room. I close my eyes, playing the horror of Sophie’s story over and over in my mind. If we don’t crack this code and win the war, Sophie will live at Granger’s Prison forever. A lifetime as a class evader. There’s no way I can let that happen, no way I can let what I did to Sophie hurt her any more than it already has—
‘Dance with me?’
Marquis slips through the door, grinning, and holds out his hand. I shake my head, but he insists, pulling me out of my seat and spinning me into the centre of the room as Dodie claps. The music is a jazz song, one we used to play at home, and Serena twirls Katherine towards us. Gideon and Karim laugh and, when Atlas and Sophie prance across the rug with the setting sunlight in their hair, I forget about who we are, forget about the dark secrets that shroud each of our lives.
And for a moment, just a moment, we are golden.
‘ This is London. You will now hear a statement from the Prime Minister. ’
I look up as Wyvernmire’s voice replaces the music.
‘ I am speaking to you from the Cabinet Room of Ten Downing Street. After a week of war, and courageous battle on the part of our army and volunteering countrymen, the Human-Dragon Coalition launched, this afternoon, a brutal attack on the innocent people of Central London. ’
I drop back into the armchair as everyone breaks apart. Atlas pulls the blackout curtains closed.
‘ We, as a nation, have a clear conscience. We have done all that any country could do to establish peace between humans and dragons. And yet the rebels insist on betraying the Peace Agreement, on betraying Parliament, on betraying democracy. Reports have so far confirmed that this attack has taken the lives of over two thousand First, Second and Third Class citizens since midday in the quarters of Soho, Camden, Mayfair, Fitzrovia, Bloomsbury and Marylebone. ’
I jump to my feet.
‘ We are a country whose soul has known the iron of adversity and defeat. But we shall know it no more! The assurance of support we have received from Queen Ignacia, as well as from the independent wyvern community of the Mendip Hills, has been reiterated … ’
A deep, sickening horror rises in my stomach. I stare back at the shocked faces around me and my eyes land on Sophie.
‘ You, the British people, must report for duty in accordance with the instructions you receive … ’
Marylebone.
Wyvernmire said Marylebone, the one place I thought Ursa might be safe. I grasp the arm of the chair as my legs go weak.
‘ … together we will put an end to the unjust persecution of our countrymen and countrydragons … ’
I stumble from the room and grip the bannister tightly as I half walk, half trip down the stairs. Two thousand people dead. I moan. Why did I leave her? How could I? The front doors are locked. I try the doors of the passages that lead out of the entrance hall. One of them opens into a corridor and through to the kitchen. I stumble through the dark, beneath the rows of pots and pans hanging from the ceiling, as Ursa’s crying face flashes before my eyes. I turn the key to the back door of the kitchen and stumble out into the dark walled garden, taking deep gasps of cold air.
If Ursa is dead, then I have nothing left to live for.
I sink to my knees.
Please not her. Anyone but her.
My chest tightens and I double over.
‘Recruit? Do you need a doctor?’
Guardian boots crunch across the gravel and someone pulls me to my feet. Ralph takes one look at my tear-stained face.
‘Featherswallow. You’ve heard the news, then.’
I stare at him.
‘Fitzrovia, that’s where you lived, wasn’t it?’ He lets go of me and lights a cigarette. ‘Lose someone, did you?’
‘I shouldn’t be here,’ I say. ‘I’ll go back inside.’
‘No, you won’t.’ He taps the end of his cigarette and looks at me. ‘But I should report you for being out after hours.’ He nods towards the kitchen door. ‘You could have let some light out.’
I don’t answer. I imagine Abel and Alice trying to shield Ursa as the ceiling comes down around them.
‘Ravensloe would be interested to know how you willingly compromised our location, don’t you think?’
I nod and turn towards the door. Ralph grabs me by the arm.
‘I said you weren’t going inside,’ he growls. He flings the half-smoked cigarette to the ground. ‘Do you by any chance know where Dr Seymour keeps the key to the glasshouse?’
‘What?’ What is he talking about? ‘No.’
‘Are you sure?’
His hand is still squeezing my arm. The wool of my jacket is thick, but I can feel the skin bruising beneath.
‘I’m sure,’ I say. ‘I’ve never seen a key.’
Ralph licks his lips. ‘I don’t believe you.’
I stare at him, the salt from my tears drying on my face. He laughs quietly and shakes his head.
‘You think you’ve got it bad?’
Why is he even talking to me? I try to pull my arm away, but he grips it tighter.
‘I’m only here because my aunt kept me from returning to Germany when this war started.’
Aunt.
‘I was training in dragon combat with the Freikorps, and rising to the top. I came home on leave, working as a temporary Guardian, but when the Peace Agreement was compromised I wasn’t allowed to go back. It wouldn’t do for the Prime Minister’s nephew to fail to defend his own country.’ Ralph sneers and takes a step closer to me. ‘I lost friends, connections, opportunities. All to be stationed here to babysit a bunch of would-be criminals. I lost my fucking chance!’
I stare straight ahead into the dark garden. ‘Guardian 707, you’re hurting me.’
‘And it’s because of you .’
My head snaps back towards him.
‘Your new friends might not know why you’re here,’ Ralph says, ‘but I do.’
An invisible vice grips my heart. Ralph just smiles.
‘Vivien Featherswallow, the girl who collaborated with a criminal dragon,’ he says loudly. ‘The girl who started the war. The girl who left her sister behind to save a group of rebels.’
‘Stop it!’ I whisper hoarsely, covering my ears. ‘Please, stop.’
‘Why is it,’ Ralph says, ‘that young women, of perfectly docile appearance, think they can come here and do men’s work? Do you think you know more about dragons than I do?’
He twists my arm and I shriek, a sob rising in my throat until the pain cuts my breath short.
‘I should break your arm,’ he says. ‘You deserve it, don’t you?’ His mouth is against my cheek. ‘Tell me you don’t deserve it and I’ll stop.’
I try to reach my free arm out to push him away, but my body is locked against his.
I don’t say a word. Ursa is dead. Two thousand people are dead. And Sophie lost everything because of me. All because of my selfish choices. Pain clouds my vision.
Of course I deserve it.
I gasp as Ralph’s hand slips beneath the collar of my shirt, his fingers grazing the top of my breastbone.
Searching for a key.
‘Nothing there?’ he says in mock surprise, his hands still on my skin. ‘Perhaps you’re not as cunning as your mama—’
I ram my elbow into his gut.
He sucks in a sharp breath. ‘You little bitch.’
Ralph lunges forward, pinning me between his body and the wall. I scream as white-hot pain shoots through my wrist.
There’s a crunch.
A popping sound.
The snap of bone as Ralph breaks my arm.