CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
‘THIS IS YOUR DEPUTY PRIME Minister! Open the door!’
I wake up with Atlas’s arm round me and my face pressed up against the cover of a book.
‘Should we open it?’ Marquis says groggily from below.
‘Wait,’ I say, sitting up. ‘Karim, you need to hide.’
I climb down the ladder and Karim squeezes into an alcove that serves as a bookshelf.
‘Here,’ Atlas says, passing down the biggest of the framed maps from the upper level.
We hang it over the alcove and Marquis opens the library door. Ravensloe is waiting with a group of Guardians.
‘Those of you on shift this morning will be escorted to your places of work,’ Ravensloe says. ‘The rest of you –’ he glances at Marquis – ‘will return to your dormitories immediately. The fun is over.’
‘Oh yeah, because spending the night trying to avoid getting murdered was really fun,’ Marquis says.
‘Where were you?’ Atlas says to Ravensloe. ‘Where were your Guardians last night when two people were killed?’
I’m surprised at the uncomfortable look that flickers across Ravensloe’s face, but it’s soon replaced by a sneer.
‘We were unaware we were dealing with a group of uncivilised animals.’
‘Have you even found Gideon?’ I ask. ‘Or … any of the other recruits?’
‘We assumed they would be with you,’ Ravensloe says, peering into the room.
The four of us shake our heads.
‘Miss Featherswallow, Miss Rundell, you will be escorted to the glasshouse by these Guardians, for your own safety. And you,’ he says, looking at Marquis. ‘Prime Minister Wyvernmire wishes to congratulate you.’
*
When Sophie and I walk into the glasshouse, Dr Seymour is sipping a steaming cup of coffee at the loquisonus machine. She stands up when she sees us, her eyes red. Tinsel hangs from the ceiling, a half-hearted attempt at celebrating a Christmas Day no one will care to remember.
‘Girls, I heard what happened last night, and about Katherine. Are you all right?’
‘I …’
I’ve been forcing myself not to think about it. Katherine, who grew up Third Class yet never hesitated in becoming friends with Serena, who flirted shamelessly with Marquis, who beat us endlessly at chess.
I can’t believe she tried to kill me. I can’t believe she’s dead.
Dr Seymour begins to cry. ‘It was never meant to happen like this.’
‘Atlas told me everything,’ I say. ‘Do you know about the Bulgarian dragons?’
‘The Bulgarian dragons?’ she says. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Wyvernmire is set to confirm an alliance with them two days from now, if we haven’t cracked the dragon code.’
Dr Seymour sits down again, like a puppet with her strings cut.
‘I had no idea,’ she says. ‘Are you sure?’
I nod. ‘Wyvernmire told me herself. Dr Seymour … if I give Wyvernmire one of the dialects, the one used by Rhydderch and Muirgen, she’ll call off her alliance with the Bulgarians. But if I don’t—’
‘They’ll invade the country,’ Sophie says grimly.
Dr Seymour goes to the cupboard without a word and begins scribbling on a piece of paper. A warning to the rebels.
‘Your dracovol,’ I say, thinking of the miniature dragon nesting in the forest. ‘Will you be able to get to it without anyone seeing?’
She nods, her eyes still on the paper. Of course she will. She’s been doing this for months. She seals the envelope.
‘Vivien, I have to ask you. Do you intend on giving Wyvernmire this first dialect?’
‘I … I don’t know,’ I say, hearing the panic rise in my voice. ‘If I don’t give it to her, then she’ll ally with the Bulgarians and I’ll never see my family again. But—’
Dr Seymour nods once. ‘I’m going to find the dracovol.’
She disappears behind one of the tall reperisonus machines and I follow her. Behind the machine and the mess of wires, one of the panels of the glasshouse is open like a window. Dr Seymour steps out of it, the envelope clutched to her chest. Then she closes the panel and disappears into the forest. I meet Sophie’s gaze. She has one hand on the loquisonus, the other pulling nervously at her brooch. A dragon in a net. If I told Wyvernmire that Sophie helped me crack the code, would she even believe me?
‘I’m going out there, too,’ I say. ‘To find the library dragon and ask her to help us.’
She nods.
I run past the sonar blockers, deeper into the forest, past where Chumana found me last time. The ground gets steeper here and suddenly I’m climbing uphill, tripping over broken branches and piles of leaves. Dr Seymour’s question plays in my mind on repeat.
Do you intend on giving Wyvernmire this first dialect?
I stop, snatching a breath, before slipping through the barbed-wire fencing separating Bletchley Park territory from the farming fields beyond, so far deep in the forest that it’s not even patrolled. My feet trip on something heavy, sending it rolling loudly across the frozen dirt. A Guardian helmet. I stop. Just beyond the felled trunk of a tree is a pile of bodies, their uniforms glinting beneath the packed snow. The Guardians who heard Atlas break the Official Secrets Act after Dodie was killed. They didn’t go home for Christmas. I stifle a sob and clench my eyes shut, terrified that I might see a lock of long red hair.
I keep climbing, pushing through the forest until I come out the other side into a grassy field. There it is, the ditch Chumana brought me to. I peer over the edge. It’s empty, save for the dragon skin and several puddles of water from the melted snow. Chumana is gone.
Of course she is, idiot. You all but told her to get lost.
I slide down into the ditch anyway, plastering my boots and trousers with mud. The air smells of fresh earth and chimney smoke. I crouch next to the dragon skin and sob. I can’t bear to lose Ursa or the rest of my family. And the only way to save them is to give up Atlas and Sophie, the rebels and possibly the whole United Kingdom. So that’s what I’m going to do.
Atlas is wrong. I was born bad. No matter how hard I try, I can’t bring myself to make the right decision. Not if it comes at a personal cost. I’m not brave enough, not selfless enough. And I’ve made too many mistakes to go back now.
‘To what do I owe the pleasure, human girl?’
Chumana towers over the ditch, her tail extending halfway round it. She crawls down towards me.
I sniff. ‘You’re still here.’
‘I had a feeling you would be back.’
I brush the tears from my face. ‘I need your help getting some people out of Bletchley Park.’
‘You need my help?’ she purrs. ‘Again?’
‘It’s not too much to ask, is it?’ I say dryly. ‘You and Dr Seymour must be used to working together now.’
‘Indeed we are,’ Chumana says. ‘And you should be glad of it – I might possibly have killed you if it wasn’t for that boy.’
‘Boy?’
‘Atlas,’ she hisses gently.
‘You’ve met Atlas?’
‘Yes. He must have known you would aggravate me. His patience with you is astounding.’
My mind races. Atlas has been visiting Chumana? He never mentioned her, even after he admitted to being a rebel, even after I told him I freed a criminal dragon who broke the Peace Agreement. He must know Chumana is that dragon.
He doesn’t trust me. My heart sinks and the truth appears before my eyes with such clarity that I can’t believe I didn’t see it. Last night’s promises that Sophie would one day forgive me, that stuff about God calling him, the kissing … It was all an act to make sure I don’t give Wyvernmire the code. I blink away more burning tears. How could I have believed Atlas could actually have feelings for someone like me? How could I have dared hope to be forgiven for the unforgivable?
‘Have you given Wyvernmire the secrets to my ancestral language yet?’
I will myself not to cry. ‘Not yet.’
‘Even though the Bulgarian dragons are set to arrive?’
I look up. ‘How do you know?’
‘I’ve been listening.’
‘Dr Seymour just sent word to the rest of your … to the rebels.’
Chumana gives a slow nod.
‘Wyvernmire has no idea there are rebel spies at Bletchley,’ I say. ‘No idea that the Coalition knows of the Bulgarian arrival. If you want to stop her from strengthening her army, then the time to attack is now, before she sends the Bulgarians to posts across the country.’
‘You have this well thought out, human girl. You would make a fine rebel.’
‘But if I give her the code, the Koinamens,’ I say slowly, ‘she might call off the alliance. Then no one would have to deal with the Bulgarian dragons.’
‘Such an act would be catastrophic to dragons,’ Chumana says. ‘With sophisticated loquisonus machines and expert translators to reproduce Koinamens calls, Wyvernmire might extort and infiltrate dragon communities, indoctrinate dragonlings, subjugate or even destroy entire species.’
I let out a deep sigh. ‘I did want to do the right thing, all right? I thought I could change but I can’t. And why would I now that Atlas has turned out to be a liar?’ I feel my tongue lace with fury. ‘I can’t help you, or the rebels, or the Third Class because that’s not the type of person I am.’
‘What type of person are you?’ Chumana says calmly.
‘The bad type,’ I whisper. ‘Wyvernmire’s type. The type that makes the ruthless, necessary decisions, no matter the cost, no matter how many people they hurt.’
‘Hmmm.’ Chumana lets out a throaty growl.
It’s a boring response. Not the one I wanted. But what do I want exactly? I feel anger wash over me and suddenly I want to humiliate Atlas as much as he has humiliated me, to see Dr Seymour’s face as I turn her over to Wyvernmire, to watch Chumana fly away, defeated. Why do I hate them so much?
It’s not them you hate I tell myself. It’s you.
I press my knuckles to my eyeballs as I see Sophie sinking to the ground with her Examination results in her hand. I see her alone in the halfway house with nothing to eat. I see her lying on top of Nicolas’s dead body in a Third Class hospital.
I take a deep, shaky breath. A drop of rain falls on my face.
‘Why did you come here?’ Chumana says softly.
‘To beg for your help,’ I say, glaring at her. ‘Is that what you want to hear?’
‘I think you came for a different reason.’
‘Of course you do,’ I say.
‘I’ve met too many humans with tortured souls.’
I snort. ‘I’m not sure I have a soul.’
I’m a bright shiny apple, rotten at the core.
‘Oh?’ Chumana murmurs. ‘I feel the same about myself.’
‘You’ve been shut away alone in the library for years, and all because of a student you didn’t even eat. Why wouldn’t you have a soul?’
‘You misremember,’ Chumana says. ‘I wasn’t imprisoned for hurting a student. I was imprisoned for protesting against the Peace Agreement.’
I shrug, thinking of how I asked her to break that very Peace Agreement by burning down a human-owned political building. ‘Aren’t we both guilty of that?’
‘And, fifty-eight years ago, I fought in the Massacre of Bulgaria.’
I stare at Chumana. ‘No, you didn’t.’
‘I am a Bolgorith, am I not?’
‘But … I thought you were hatched in Britannia.’
‘Yes,’ Chumana replies. ‘My egg was laid in Bulgaria and then flown across the sea in my mother’s pouch. I was hatched on Rùm, like most dragons of Britannia.’
‘So then, how …’
‘The British government asked Queen Ignacia to send aid over to Bulgaria.’
‘To help the human population when they wired us a plea for support,’ I say, recalling my history lessons.
‘No,’ Chumana growls. ‘That was a lie. The aid was for the Bulgarian dragons, to ensure their operation was successful.’
For a moment, my heart seems to stop.
‘They sent British dragons over there to help kill the humans?’
‘Yes, human girl. To ensure that the most powerful dragons in Europe would forever owe Britannia. Do you really think Wyvernmire convinced the Bulgarians to ally with her on promises alone?’
I shake my head. That can’t be possible. Britannia wouldn’t betray its fellow humans, and its dragons wouldn’t agree to help kill them. Our national motto is Praise for peace and prosperity!
I remember what Wyvernmire told me.
And, in the end, we made sure those dragons were in our debt.
‘A few important people protested, of course,’ Chumana says. She curls her spiked tail round her body, and it circles the spot I’m sitting in. ‘Especially the few who knew it would mean the end of the Bulgarian humans’ effort to decipher the Koinamens. The British government didn’t understand what the so-called dragon code was then, nor how much they would come to covet it.’ She snorts a puff of dark, angry smoke.
Revulsion rises inside me. ‘Chumana … you killed the Bulgarian humans?’
‘Yes.’
‘My mother’s family died in that massacre,’ I spit. ‘She barely made it out alive. She still has nightmares.’
Chumana bows her head, revealing a small row of horns along its crown. ‘Yes. You told me she was Bulgarian in the library.’
I stand up. ‘Why? Why did you do it?’
‘I was following my Queen’s orders,’ Chumana says calmly.
‘But … but her orders were wrong! She’s evil to have ordered such a thing.’
Honourable Queen Ignacia is what the dragons call her. Her reign stretches back to before my grandparents were born.
‘Evil is not a strong enough word.’ Chumana meets my gaze and sparks fizz from her mouth. ‘My first return to my motherland was done in bloodshed. I killed, burned and destroyed. I chased humans from their homes and demolished the boats they tried to escape on. The flames I breathed did not discriminate between old and young.’
‘You’re lying,’ I say, my whole body trembling. ‘You wouldn’t.’
‘Oh, but I did. And, after it was over, Britannia’s government began talking about a Peace Agreement.’ She snorts again. ‘The irony. They saw how easily we slaughtered the Bulgarian people and were suddenly afraid for their own country. The Peace Agreement was written only to ensure that British humans would never suffer the same fate as the Bulgarians they helped murder, and to portray dragons as creatures to be feared. Fear breeds hatred, the kind that oppresses dragons and humans alike.’
I think of the detonator I cut from Chumana’s skin, of Nicolas’s untreated burns, of Dodie and Katherine and Owen.
‘Queen Ignacia agreed to it after she was offered … special privileges.’ Chumana stamps the ground, leaving a claw mark the size of my head in the dirt. ‘I hated myself for what I had done. The horrors committed in Bulgaria were too much to bear, even for a dragon. And I continued to witness the corruption that had always existed between a string of Prime Ministers and the Dragon Queen. So, on the eve of the signing of the Peace Agreement, I protested its creation. I attempted to kill Queen Ignacia.’
Chumana is a Bolgorith, one of the largest dragons in Europe. But the Dragon Queen is rumoured to be even stronger, the biggest Western Drake ever recorded, with jaws powerful enough to crush stone.
‘ Kill? ’
She nods. ‘I consider her a traitor to dragonkind.’
My stomach churns.
‘I failed, obviously,’ Chumana says, and her tail twitches irritably. ‘I wasn’t granted the privilege of a dragon’s execution – you have seen the prison they sent me to.’
I nod.
‘I lived there, haunted by the evil of my own memories, for years. I was considering flying out over the walls of the university to set that detonator off when a human girl appeared and offered to remove it for me.’
My heart quickens and Chumana’s eyes bore into mine.
‘She gave me an opportunity. The opportunity to fly straight to the Coalition and attempt to make up for my crimes. An opportunity to atone for my sins and seek forgiveness. Now tell me, human girl, why don’t you extend yourself the same courtesy?’
More rain droplets fall on to my face, one after another. They drip into my hair and down the neck of my shirt as I stare at the Bulgarian dragon in front of me, Chumana the murderer.
‘I don’t deserve forgiveness,’ I say. ‘And neither do you.’
‘Few of us deserve forgiveness, child,’ says Chumana. ‘But answer me this. Where would I be more useful: in that library, rotting into the mulch of my own guilt? Dead from a purposely exploded detonator? Or flying free, helping to bring victory to the rebels?’
I shiver and stare at the rapidly expanding puddles at my feet, wondering how many battles Chumana has helped the rebels win since she joined them. How many documents did she salvage from the Academy of Draconic Linguistics before Wyvernmire took power there? How many lives has she saved?
If she had refused to leave that library when I asked her to, or used that detonator to kill herself, fewer people would be alive right now. My parents certainly wouldn’t be. And the rebel movement would have one less dragon.
But who is she to claim forgiveness for herself? She’s not the one who lost her country, her family, her life.
‘What are you suggesting?’ I explode. ‘That Sophie just forgets what I did to her? That the Bulgarian survivors forget the role you played in history? It can’t be as easy as just saying sorry, Chumana!’
‘No, it can’t,’ Chumana replies. ‘But showing you’re sorry and spending a lifetime proving it? Now that’s another thing entirely.’
I shake my head. This is just Atlas’s spew of holy half-truths all over again. And I know what showing I’m sorry means. It means keeping the Koinamens a secret from Wyvernmire. Only that might give the rebels a chance at winning, free the Third Class from the suffering that pushed Katherine, Dodie and Gideon to desperate measures, and keep Wyvernmire from enslaving Britannia’s dragons.
But what if I help the rebels, and then they fail? I’ll never be the most famous dragon linguist in the world, that’s for sure. My parents will both be dead. And I will have lost all chance of finding Ursa.
To keep the code a secret would be a noble, selfless choice. But I am neither of those things. Why would I risk losing everything I love for the rebels?
Because you’re good , I imagine Atlas saying. Because if you feel guilty that’s a sure sign there’s more good than bad in you.
Can that be true? In the face of everything I’ve done – sending Sophie to the Third Class where she had her heart shattered over and over, leaving Ursa, almost handing over the code to Wyvernmire – can there still be goodness in me?
‘You have fought for your family admirably,’ Chumana says. ‘You refused to turn Dr Seymour in. You offered to heal me, a rebel dragon, with that unsightly machine. Those are not the choices of Wyvernmire’s type of person .’
I warm at the memory of Dr Seymour’s compassion, of Atlas’s lips on mine, of Sophie asleep in my bed, of that spark of pride I refused to let myself feel when Marquis told me that he wanted to be a rebel.
Chumana isn’t lying. These are not the choices and memories of a bad person, but of a good one who refuses to forgive herself for the bad things she has done.
Because it’s easier to betray your best friend for your career, to sacrifice the entire Third Class for your family, to give Wyvernmire the means to experiment on dragon eggs when you believe you were simply born bad.
But if you’re good? Then your goodness and those choices are not compatible.
I blink, staring at my reflection in the puddle at my feet.
But if you’re good , I tell myself slowly, then the people and the dragons you’re about to hurt will be harmed because you choose to hurt them. Not because hurting them is an unavoidable part of your nature, but because you’ve decided they don’t matter.
The thought takes my breath away. I chose to betray Sophie out of my own selfishness. Surely that makes me just as evil as Wyvernmire and Queen Ignacia?
I look up at Chumana, the grey clouds pale against her dark, wet scales.
‘I don’t think I could ever forgive myself for what I did,’ I whisper, feeling hot tears overflow again.
‘You don’t have to forgive yourself,’ Chumana growls. ‘Not yet. But you can offer yourself a second chance.’
A second chance.
‘If you don’t, then all your suffering, and all the suffering you caused others, will be for nothing.’
I let out a shaky breath and shiver, my clothes as wet as the muddy water now trickling down the sides of the ditch. I can’t forgive myself for how I hurt Sophie. And Sophie might never forgive me, which I’ll never, ever blame her for. But if I can offer myself a second chance then maybe I can do things differently. I can choose to live a life where what’s important isn’t what I can achieve – grades, social class, career – but the type of person I can be.
‘I do want to prove that I’m sorry,’ I say to Chumana, raising my voice above the sound of the rain. ‘Even though I don’t believe that any amount of sorry will make up for the pain I caused Sophie.’
The dragon’s eyes burn brightly.
‘But if you say it’s possible, if you say it was possible for you … then I want to try.’
Chumana bows her head down to mine until she’s so close that her breath warms my cold skin.
‘Do you remember, back in the library, when you asked me for my maxim?’ she says.
‘Yes?’ I reply as the rain begins to slow.
‘I refused to tell you because I was ashamed of what it was. But I have discarded it now, like I shed my old skin. I have a new maxim.’
I move closer to her, my shoulder brushing against her hot hide, and place a hand on the scales of her flank.
‘What is it?’ I ask.
‘ Remissio dolor redemptus est ,’ Chumana says. ‘Forgiveness is suffering redeemed.’