CHAPTER TWENTY
THE WORLD SLOWS, THEN SPRINGS into movement.
‘You killed her!’ Atlas screams.
He charges at the Guardian who was carrying Dodie and Marquis follows, but both of them are overpowered within seconds.
‘Let them go!’ I shout at the Guardians pinning them to the floor. ‘Haven’t you done enough?’
Behind us, Sophie is sobbing over Dodie’s body, shrugging off Serena’s attempt to soothe her. How can someone who was moving, scaling a fence just moments ago, suddenly be so still? I stare at Dodie’s body, half expecting her to stand up and smile. I resist the urge to kneel and unbutton her jacket, to see if the blood all over the floor is really coming from her. A Guardian pulls Atlas roughly to his feet, and when I catch a glimpse of his face it’s wet with tears. Gideon and Karim are frozen, stricken with panic, and when more Guardians burst into the hall and lift their guns they raise their hands.
‘You killed our friend,’ Atlas stutters, his face crumpling in disbelief.
I go to him, ignoring the Guardian holding his hands behind his back, and wrap my arms round him.
‘Friend?’ says a loud voice.
I turn round. Ravensloe is walking down one of the staircases. His eyes harden as he takes in the scene, flicking over Dodie’s still body. ‘This girl was not your friend. Just look at yourselves.’ He reaches the bottom step and gestures around. ‘Just look at where you are. This is not some sort of privileged boarding school. You are not here to make friends . You’re criminals. And you’re here to pay for your crimes.’
I see Marquis’s lip curl as he struggles against the Guardian holding him.
‘Tonight Dodie decided to abandon her duties,’ Ravensloe says quietly. ‘She was offered a second chance and she refused it. She has paid for her ungratefulness with her life.’
‘You didn’t give her a choice!’ Marquis shouts. ‘You gave her an impossible task and told her that even if she succeeded Atlas would fail.’
Atlas lets out a choked cry and I hold on to him, glaring at the Guardian behind him until he looks away.
‘This won’t stand,’ Serena tells Ravensloe in a quivering voice. ‘The First Class won’t – I won’t—’
‘You, Serena Serpentine, should consider yourself lucky you’re here at all,’ Ravensloe says with a sneer. He nods at a Guardian, who steps forward and pulls Sophie away from Dodie’s body.
‘Let go of me, you bastard!’ she screams.
Katherine moves to defend her, but a Guardian blocks her path, lifting his visor. It’s Ralph. A wave of hatred courses through me.
‘You are to forget any ideas of friendship,’ Ravensloe says. ‘You are all here for one sole purpose, a purpose you have so far failed to fulfil. Let Dodie be an example to those entertaining any ideas of shirking their responsibility or submitting to cowardice.’
‘The only coward here is you,’ I spit.
The words come out of my mouth before I can stop them and Ralph’s lips spread into a delighted grin. Ravensloe’s eyes narrow as they settle on me.
‘Now seems like a wise time to remind you that if you test me, you will be demoted and replaced,’ he snarls.
As if you have time to teach a new person echolocation , I want to say. Would Ravensloe really risk losing us all now? Or is this demotion talk just an empty threat to scare us into submission?
‘ Some of you,’ Ravensloe says as he stares at Atlas, ‘are closer to demotion than others.’
‘Demote me, then,’ Atlas snarls. ‘Or, better, kill me like you just killed Dodie. Except you can’t do that now, can you? If you murder both your Zoology recruits, who is going to grow you an army of dragons?’
Ravensloe’s face turns purple as he stares round at the ten Guardians who have just heard information supposed to be kept classified by the Official Secrets Act. My heart thumps in my chest and cold sweat runs down my back. I look up into Atlas’s face and he gives me a calm smile.
‘Put him in isolation,’ Ravensloe barks. ‘The rest of you, to your dormitories.’
‘Isolation, again?’ I say as the Guardians pull Atlas towards the front door and someone jerks me sharply away.
‘Atlas!’ I call. ‘Where are they taking you?’ But he’s already being dragged across the courtyard.
‘Lock your door, Featherswallow!’ I hear him shout.
The other recruits are already walking up the stairs, Sophie supported by Serena. Marquis waits for me, tears streaming down his face. We follow the others and I feel Ravensloe’s eyes on our backs.
Dodie is dead . The finality of the word sends my mind reeling. All I can think about is that I will be, too, if I don’t give Wyvernmire the code. And so will Marquis if he doesn’t figure out how to finish building Knott’s plane. I feel nauseous, and the feeling worsens when Katherine’s sobbing drifts out on to the landing. Marquis glances over my shoulder into the girls’ dormitory.
‘Listen, Viv,’ he says, ‘you can’t trust anyone any more.’
‘I know,’ I say hoarsely.
‘Seeing someone die can do crazy things to a person. What just happened … it’s a reality check for everyone. And Sophie and Katherine can’t afford for you to crack the code.’
I stare at him. Sophie wouldn’t try to kill me. Would she?
‘You be careful, too,’ I whisper. ‘Karim …’
‘Isn’t a threat,’ Marquis says firmly.
‘You barely know him!’ I retort. ‘And Wyvernmire has his parents. She said so.’
‘He won’t hurt me,’ Marquis repeats.
‘But what if he does?’ I say. ‘What if he feels he has no other choice?’
‘Then I’ll—’
He stops and we both look away. What was he about to say? That he’d kill his boyfriend if it came to it?
I let out a shaky breath. ‘Who even are we, Marquis?’
He shakes his head. ‘Two kids with a family to save, that’s who. Have you still got that knife Atlas gave you?’
I nod. ‘It’s under my pillow.’
‘Good,’ Marquis says. ‘Signal if you need me.’
‘Be careful,’ I whisper.
In the dormitory, we undress in silence. I glance at Sophie, but she shakes her head at me, her eyes swollen from crying. I climb into bed and prop my pillows up, to give me a better view of the room. When I slip the knife out from under my pillow, I find the handkerchief Dodie made me with it. I hold them both tightly in my hand. I always saw Dodie as shy. Gentle. Soft. When really she was brave. She refused to be here any more, refused to compete with Atlas, refused to work with those kidnapped dragonlings.
Yeah, and look where her bravery got her.
The room doesn’t fill with the sound of sleeping breaths like it usually does and I lie awake for hours, wondering how many of the girls around me believe I might try to sneak up on them in the night. There are Guardian voices outside, still full of urgency and adrenaline, their boots crunching across the gravel. What will they do with Dodie’s body? My eyes are heavy and I squeeze the handle of the knife in an attempt to stay awake, staring at the still shapes of the others in their beds.
No one’s coming to kill you, Viv.
But how do you know? I argue with myself. What if someone else here has a reason for cracking the code even bigger than mine? What if they, too, have a family and a sister to lose?
In the early hours of the morning, as my eyes give way to sleep, I hear two sounds. The whirring of a helicopter and the loud roars of several dragons. They’re not calling, or warning or announcing, I decide as my mind drifts. They’re commemorating. The roaring is for Dodie, the most dragon-hearted of us all.
*
We work the morning shift in silence, except for Dr Seymour’s sniffling and the wailing of the wind outside. I ask her where Dodie’s body is and where Atlas has been taken, but she shakes her head and presses a finger to her lips. Are we being listened to? All she’ll say is that Wyvernmire is back, that she arrived by helicopter last night.
I stare at the loquisonus machine for hours. Gideon is currently looking for similarities between echolocation and French while Katherine works on her theory that the calls within echolocation structures are strategically placed according to which species of dragon is being addressed. It’s so pointless I almost feel sorry for them. Now I know about the dialects, I know that each one will have to be studied and compared in order to determine which calls are unique to them, and which are used universally by all dragons. It’s no longer a case of cracking one code, of learning one language.
We have to learn hundreds.
It will be months, perhaps years, before Wyvernmire has a team of fluent translators. She might never even get the opportunity to use the dragons’ Koinamens against them. I feel a sense of relief – maybe what I’m doing isn’t as terrible as Chumana and Dr Seymour think.
I take a large gulp of coffee. The siren rang this morning just after I fell asleep, and my eyes feel like they’re full of sand. I think of Dodie and of how desperate she must have felt to scale that fence. The memory of her body falling from the top makes me shiver.
I write down the basics of what I know.
Echolocation is a universal language used by all dragons.
Different dragon groups speak different familial dialects of echolocation.
Possible familial dialects present for study at Bletchley Park:
Dialect A: Muirgen and Rhydderch
Dialect B: Soresten and Addax.
Echolocation can heal, grow and kill. Without it, eggs cannot hatch.
No.
I draw a line through the last two sentences. That’s a secret I won’t give Wyvernmire. I’m not going to let her experiment on innocent dragonlings, no matter how good it might be for the war effort.
But if you don’t tell Atlas those eggs will never hatch, he’ll fail his category.
Dread fills my stomach and I feel a sudden yearning for his touch. How must he be feeling, locked up in isolation with nothing to do but relive Dodie’s last moments? I think of the tenderness with which he fastened the wooden swallow round my neck, the tears on his face as I held him last night. For all his rebelliousness, Atlas is gentle and good. Will Bletchley Park break him, like it broke Dodie?
I stare back down at my writing and a hot feeling comes over me. The skin on the back of my neck begins to prickle. I’ve done it, I realise. This is the progress Wyvernmire asked for. Three months was never enough, but thanks to me we know that the key to deciphering echolocation is to learn its dialects.
And I’ve already started doing that.
When the shift is over, I walk through the empty hallways. Bletchley seems quieter than usual and I wonder where all the Guardians are.
‘Marquis?’
He’s sitting on one of the tables in the dimly lit seminar room we were brought to when we first arrived.
‘What are you doing in the dark all alone?’
He gives me a solemn look. ‘Ravensloe didn’t like you two standing up to him. And Knott keeps threatening Karim with demotion for lack of contribution . He’s too petrified to share any of his ideas, especially now he knows what will happen to me if he wins.’
‘You told him you’re facing the death penalty?’
‘I wish I never had,’ Marquis says miserably.
‘Something happened today—’
‘I’ve got to tell you something, Viv.’
We both speak at the same time.
Marquis swivels round to face me. I’m about to tell him that I’ve done it. The thing I was brought here to do. I’ve cracked the code, or at least uncovered the key to learning echolocation. He pauses, studying my face, and I realise he looks afraid.
‘What?’ I say quietly. ‘Oh God. What have you done?’
‘I can’t do this any more,’ he says, his voice barely a whisper.
‘Do what?’ I say. ‘Build planes?’
‘I can’t work for Wyvernmire. I can’t be on her side.’
‘Marquis, what do you mean? You’re not on a side. You’re here to save our parents.’
‘I am on a side, and so are you! We’ve got to stop acting like we have no responsibility in this. I’m here building planes for the woman who is threatening to execute our parents. The woman who would rather go to war than change the corrupt Peace Agreement. Who had Dodie killed!’
‘ Ravensloe had Dodie killed,’ I say.
But suddenly all I can think of is what Chumana said to me.
You are on the wrong side of history, human girl.
‘What if this whole thing is bigger than saving our family?’ Marquis says. ‘What if we can save them and help the rebels win?’
I shake my head. ‘If we don’t give Wyvernmire what she wants, we’ll never see them again. We have too much at stake to be helping anyone but ourselves.’
‘And then what?’ Marquis says. ‘We go back to the Class System, the Examination, to treating dragons like fourth-class citizens?’
‘We go back to peace—’
‘What peace, Viv?’ he shouts. ‘We’re at war!’
I glare at him. ‘Wyvernmire will end the war. But the rebels will prolong it for years, trying to get what they want. And if we help them we’ll lose everything we’re fighting for.’
‘The rebels are fighting for the people they love, too, Viv.’ The look he gives me makes me want to cry. ‘Why save Ursa just to send her back to a life where she could be demoted for failing her schoolwork, where we could lose her overnight—’ His voice breaks.
I remember the silver batons and what Sophie told me about how Nicolas died, about the lack of food and medicine.
‘I want to help the Third Class, Marquis. And I wish there were dragons on every street corner, just like when our parents were young. But I can’t offer Mama and Dad and Uncle Thomas up as a sacrifice to achieve that. I love them too much—’
‘And you think I don’t?’ Marquis says. Tears stream down his face. ‘But how can we choose a good life for ourselves and not for everyone else?’
I shake my head. It sounds so evil, what I’m suggesting we do, but I don’t have another answer. When I think of Ursa and of my parents, fire fills my bones. I am incapable of not choosing them. Slowly, Marquis rolls up his sleeves to reveal the scars on his arm.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Don’t you think it’s cruel that these scars were given to a child simply because he sometimes failed to follow a set of arbitrary rules?’ he says. ‘How many do you have, Viv? Seven? Eight?’
I clutch my own arm. ‘You’re being difficult—’
‘Our parents were so terrified of us ending up Third Class,’ he says. ‘I like to think they’re ashamed of it now.’
I lean back against a desk. Where is this conversation going?
‘What about Atlas?’ Marquis says, his voice harder now. ‘Did you think you’d both win your categories and run off into the sunset?’
‘Stop it,’ I say sharply. ‘Don’t try to use him against me.’
Marquis doesn’t roll down his sleeve. ‘Let’s pretend the rebels have won. There’s no Peace Agreement, Class System or Examination. People can live, work and buy where and what they want. Everyone’s equal, right?’
I stare at him. ‘I suppose, yes—’
‘Wrong. You still have your parents’ house in Fitzrovia, which you and Ursa will inherit when they die. But your boyfriend? He owns no property because his parents and grandparents were all Third Class until now.’ He runs a finger down his arm, caressing the white welts on the skin. ‘He’s not as educated as you because his Third Class schools had no allocated resources, so he’ll always be picked last for any job he applies for. He has no impressive professional experience because his parents couldn’t afford to buy him apprenticeships every summer.’
‘Stop,’ I say, heat rising in my cheeks. ‘I see what you’re getting at.’
‘He has no family to rely on because his mother couldn’t afford to feed him and the baby in her belly.’
I suddenly feel sick. When did Atlas tell him this?
‘And then there’s the fact that he isn’t white.’
‘Serena isn’t white—’
‘Serena is First Class, with a dragon-descended name that gets the colour of her skin overlooked. It’s different for Atlas.’
I stare out of the window.
‘You’re right that what the rebels are trying to achieve will take years, because inequality is so deeply entrenched in the foundations of our society that it’s going to need to be dug out, rock by prejudiced rock.’
He pulls the sleeve down over his scars. ‘You and Atlas won’t be treated as equal, even after the Class System is abolished. That’s why we need to act now , not when we’re cosied up back home. As for the dragons? Since the massacre in Bulgaria, everyone has been terrified of them. They’ve lost their positions in society, and are only tolerated because of their sheer power. Imagine a Fitzrovia where humans and dragons walk London together, where you and Sheba from the bank can actually have a conversation, where the library dragon isn’t a prisoner.’
I’m suddenly reminded of our childhood during the Great War, when humans and dragons fought together, when the dragon stationed outside our bunker would blow smoke rings to make us laugh.
‘Peace isn’t peace if it’s only given to some,’ Marquis says. ‘And I know you know it.’
His audacity stops me in my tracks and for a second I almost feel proud … but I shake the feeling away.
‘Did Karim get you into this?’ I say quietly. ‘Or have you been a rebel just as long as our parents have?’
Marquis rolls his eyes. ‘Do you hear yourself? Stop trying to blame someone else and for once just listen .’
But I don’t need to listen. I already know that what my cousin is saying is true. That what Chumana told me is true. How many times have I imagined, alone in my bed at night, what it might be like to know Atlas outside Bletchley? I want to laugh at myself now. Did I think I’d win the war and then be free to have a relationship with a Third Class boy? Everything about our society is designed to keep us separate. But, no matter the truth, it all comes back to one thing.
‘I refuse to live without Ursa,’ I say. ‘And if I don’t give up the code, that’s what will happen – if Wyvernmire doesn’t decide to have me executed first.’
‘You want Ursa back, but you don’t want to give her any sort of world to come back to,’ Marquis says. ‘Well, fine. Go home to your big house in Fitzrovia, where Ursa will get the switch whenever her school performance is anything but outstanding. Better that than be demoted, right?’ He glares at me. ‘But, after this is over, I’m going with Karim. I’m going to help the Third Class, the dragons, the—’
‘The rebels,’ I finish for him.
He nods.
‘You know both you and Karim can’t walk out of here together,’ I say softly. ‘Think logically. You can’t win against her – you can only help her.’
We stare at each other and I feel a sharp pain in my chest, one that takes my breath away.
‘Our parents are part of the Coalition,’ he says. ‘Do you really think this is what they’d want us to do? Help destroy the cause they were willing to give their lives for? If they were here now, what do you think they’d say?’
Get out of London , Mama told me. She knew all along how dangerous Wyvernmire is.
‘The rebels will never win, Marquis. Wyvernmire has an entire army at her command.’
‘And what if I told you that they can win? What if joining the Coalition is how we save our family?’
I smile sadly. ‘You always were a dreamer,’ I say. ‘But it’s time to be realistic, cousin.’
He seems to deflate, as if the last spark of hope in him has suddenly been extinguished by my words.
‘There won’t be an after for you.’ My voice quivers as Marquis stands up and walks towards the door. ‘Not for you and not for Karim. Not if you don’t help Wyvernmire win. She’ll crush the rebels eventually – it’s only a matter of time. And we need to make sure that we – and Ursa – survive.’
He gives me a look of deep disgust.
‘You know what your problem is, Viv? You’re too much of a coward to put your neck on the line. You’d rather continue in your destructive ways than change them. You’re just like her.’
My eyes fill with hot tears, but I wait as my cousin stares at me, trying to figure out what happened to us. It’s only when he’s gone, the door slamming behind him, that I let the tears fall. I drop into a chair and weep like a child. I want to call to him to come back, to beg him not to leave me.
Marquis is right. I am a coward. But the prospect of living without my parents, without Ursa, is something I can’t let myself imagine. Either I save our family by giving Wyvernmire the code, or I lose them forever. I stand up and wipe my eyes. Maybe I was born bad, or maybe badness takes root once it’s been planted and just keeps on growing. I’ve been making selfish decisions to get what I want since last summer. And now it’s just part of who I am. How do you change who you are?
And in the face of all those selfish decisions, what’s one more?
PARLIAMENT OF BEATRICE
HANSARD’S PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES
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THIRTY-SECOND PARLIAMENT OF GREAT brITANNIA 1922–1923
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HOUSE OF LORDS 21 December 1923
EARL of PEMbrOKE: My Lords, in Public Affairs the subject that naturally occupies first place today is the issue of dragon rights, which one is never permitted to forget due to the relentless campaigning of the Human-Dragon Coalition. Their radical position, which permeates London and society at large, is what brings me to the proposal I present to you this morning. Mr Speaker, while the Human-Dragon Coalition drags our United Kingdom through a series of violent protests, debates, dragonfires and now war, we, the Humanist Party, are ambitious for the revival of our nation.
Under Her Majesty’s Peace Agreement, it is illegal to kill a dragon. They hunt at will in the fields and forests of Britannia, and, when the year’s yield is poor, we provide them with our own livestock for consumption. They have a dedicated island for hatching purposes and their own paths through the sky. They fly freely over our cities, hold careers to which they are suited, such as manual labour and glass-making. We purchase from them fire and flint, and in return tax their wealth at only a slightly higher percentage than we tax Britannia’s men.
And yet they want more. They accuse us of driving them from their former places of work, and I quote the speakers of the Human-Dragon Coalition here, in the arts, the universities, medicine and law. They complain that we tax their hoards, which contain gold mined by men and not seen since the reign of King Richard the Lionheart! They claim we make no space for them in our cities, and blame us – us, gentlemen! – for the rising disappearance of their young. They even go so far as to suggest that they are being exploited on the black market, which we know is only used by immoral members of the Third Class.
Tell me, My Lords, do you see any dragons in the House today? No? Is this not because they have a nature different from that of us men, one that yearns for the outdoors, for the great expanse of the natural world, and not the confines of Parliament’s walls? Is it really we who have shunned the dragons, or did they not choose to leave?
The emergence of the Human-Dragon Coalition, mere decades after the Massacre of Bulgaria, has shown us just how dangerous, how gluttonous dragons are. Surely it is only the presence of our armies and planes that have kept their gigantesque power in check. Would you feel comfortable sending your sons to be educated by a dragon who has a taste for human blood? How many of you feel concern when letting your small daughters stroll through the park, with only their nursemaids for protection? Think of your wives, My Lords! We have all heard the distasteful yet true stories of dragon bulls seducing women. My proposal is this: the permanent segregation of humans and dragons.
What do dragons bring to society that men do not? Who should come first, My Lords? The honourable gentlemen and ladies of Britannia, set on this earth by the hand of God? Or wild beasts? As the scripture says: ‘Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.’