CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
SOMEONE IS SCREAMING, AND I don’t realise the voice is my own until Ursa barrels into my arms. No one moves to restrain us and for a blissful moment, as I press my lips to Ursa’s cold cheek and breathe in the smell of her hair, everything around us falls away. My sister’s tiny body shakes with silent sobs.
‘Shh, little bear,’ I whisper into her ear. ‘I’ve got you. You’re safe.’
I’m surprised at how easily the lie comes. Perhaps it’s because I know that I’ll do everything in my power to make it true. Ursa burrows into me, her hands clutching at my hair, her dirty shoes pressing on to my thighs as if the ground is on fire. I scoop her up like a baby and hold her close as I stand up. Over the top of her head, Wyvernmire’s face comes into focus. My chest fills with fire as I recall her words. Torture my sister?
Over my dead body.
The Guardians have pulled Atlas and Dr Seymour to their feet and Wyvernmire surveys them with barely a hint of interest.
‘What a disappointment you have all been,’ she says. She turns back to me. ‘You will provide me with the code, and all of its possible variations, immediately. Refuse, and Guardian 707 will continue his barbarous techniques on the child.’
Terror prickles my skin. Wyvernmire nods at a Guardian, who steps forward and pulls Ursa from my arms.
‘No!’ I scream as Ursa clings to my neck. ‘Please don’t take her again. Just—’
But the Guardian lifts Ursa away by the back of her coat, depositing her between Dr Seymour and Atlas as she sobs.
‘I’ll give you the code,’ I say breathlessly. ‘Just please don’t hurt her.’
‘See, gentlemen?’ Wyvernmire says with a cold smile. ‘There was no need to make things so messy. Love is the finest form of torture.’
I glance at Ursa, hot tears streaming down my face, the air quiet except for the sound of her hysterical hiccups. Slowly, Atlas reaches out and takes her hand.
‘Lock those three in the basement,’ Wyvernmire says. ‘And find the other recruits. I’ll nip this miniature rebellion in the bud right now.’
Any energy I have left in me disappears. My chest aches as the realisation sinks in. We’ve been caught, and now, with Ursa here, Wyvernmire can make me do whatever she wants. I have to give her the code. I think of Ralph’s face as he pressed the knife to my arm and swallow another wave of nausea. The thought of him anywhere near Ursa is unthinkable. The rebels haven’t attacked yet and, in a few hours, I’ll have signed the fate of the dragons and the Third Class over to Wyvernmire.
‘There are reports of unidentified dragons in the skies,’ Wyvernmire tells me. ‘You must find out their exact location.’
‘I’ll need to go to the glasshouse, then,’ I say. ‘To use the remaining loquisonus machine.’
Wyvernmire nods. ‘Guardian 707 will take you. Once you have identified the dragons, you will write out everything you know about the code on paper for him.’ She looks at her nephew. ‘See that it is delivered to me before daybreak.’
Ralph grabs me by the arm.
‘Let me take my sister with me,’ I say quickly. ‘I’ll work faster if I know she’s safe.’
Wyvernmire purses her lips. ‘You’ll work faster if you know she’s not.’
I swallow a sob. ‘I’ll come back for you,’ I tell Ursa, feeling my jaw tremble. ‘I won’t leave you again. Do you understand?’
She wipes her tears away with her free hand and nods bravely. Suddenly Atlas breaks free, lunging towards me and grabbing me by the shoulders. He kisses me, his lips like fire on mine.
‘Don’t give it to her,’ he whispers as he’s pulled away.
‘On second thoughts,’ Wyvernmire says, surveying the scene with amused interest, ‘take the boy up to the roof. He can have a last look at the dragons he failed to recreate before you push him off.’
‘No!’ I scream.
Ralph pushes me from the room, his hand on the back of my neck, and Ursa’s cries fill the air again.
‘Don’t do it, Viv!’ I hear Atlas shout.
But he doesn’t understand. There’s nothing else I can possibly do. Blood drips down my arm as we stumble through the dark into the forest. I twist my body round to search for any sign of Atlas on the roof, but I see nothing up there except the shape of a patrol dragon flying above. Is it Muirgen or Rhydderch? Or have they abandoned us?
‘I should have known you were a rebel,’ Ralph says as we reach the glasshouse. ‘I should have broken your other arm when I had the chance.’
I want to make a quick, cut-throat reply, or turn round and spit in his face, but I don’t dare. Not after the threat Wyvernmire made to Ursa. Not now I know the feeling of a knife on my skin, ten times worse than the sting of the switch. We push the door open and Ralph dismisses the Guardian guarding the loquisonus machine. I tread carefully through the broken remnants of its sister and place it on the table as Ralph shines a light. He pulls out a chair for me.
‘Get to work, then, dragon whisperer,’ he says with a sneer.
I put the headphones on and twist the dial, willing my hands to stop shaking. The crackling sound fills my ears as I search for the right frequency and strain to hear the familiar clicks and trills of the Koinamens. Ralph sits across the table from me, his stare fixed on my face. I ignore him and close my eyes to listen.
There they are. A string of social calls. Whatever dragons are in the area have something to say. I listen closer. Are they talking about … landing?
‘Explain this to me,’ Ralph says loudly. He’s looking at what’s left of the logbook, the pages we didn’t manage to soak. ‘How do you know what the different sequences mean?’
I hold up my palm to tell him to shut up and feel a tiny stab of satisfaction at the look of shock on his face. My mind is spinning faster and faster, panicking as I realise I barely recognise a single call. A chill runs through me. What if these are Bulgarian dragons? What if Wyvernmire has already confirmed the alliance? We need the rebels now .
‘I was able to understand echolocation by interacting with passing dragons, but without them knowing it was me,’ I lie. ‘I played snippets of echolocation recordings within the Bletchley perimeter, alerting them, for example, to an unidentified human, and listened to how they responded.’
Thank God Marquis and Sophie moved the blockers before we got caught. Without it, the crazy idea forming in my head wouldn’t work. Where is Atlas now? Have they taken him to the roof yet? My stomach fills with dread.
‘I’m going to need to use those,’ I tell Ralph, pointing to the reperisonus machines.
I unplug the headphones and pull a wire from one of the machines, then plug it into the loquisonus.
‘Why?’ Ralph demands. ‘What for?’
‘I’m transferring a previous echolocation recording of social calls back on to the loquisonus,’ I say.
That part is true. I press the tiny black buttons on the big machines, scanning the screen for the recording I labelled Snake Maiden . Then I send it to the loquisonus machine, followed by another I recorded a few weeks ago. Heart thumping, I sit back down in front of the loquisonus and glance at Ralph. He’s staring at me intently. A bead of sweat trickles down my back.
‘Now I’m going to play a part of one of the recordings,’ I say.
I flick the switch from input to output like I did the day I called to Chumana in the forest.
‘I’m going to pretend to be a dragon, to see if any of the ones spotted nearby will interact with me. I like to call it the art of interception.’ I give him a level gaze. ‘I bet you’d be good at that.’
A self-absorbed smile plays on his lips. I may just have bought myself some time.
I hit play . I can’t hear them, but I know Chumana’s calls are being converted back to their original frequency and hitting the air, which is no longer obstructed by sonar blockers.
Snake.
Maiden.
I count the seconds, enough for the first calls, then hit rewind and play them again.
Snake.
Maiden.
And again.
Snake.
Maiden.
‘I don’t hear anything,’ Ralph says, tapping on the speaker.
‘The speaker, or headphones, plays incoming calls converted at an audible frequency for humans,’ I say. ‘But the output calls are emitted through vibrations in the air, imperceptible to the human ear.’
Ralph leans forward eagerly as I press another button. I wonder how Dr Seymour would have further developed the loquisonus machines had she got the chance. I imagine a smaller device, with a button for each individual echolocation call, or several devices designed to speak different dialects.
I press the button again, flicking back to the other recording. It’s a call from weeks ago, when some of the patrol dragons were discussing protocol for an attack. Is the word recognised universally, or am I about to use a call that belongs to a dialect? I’m willing to bet it’s universal.
I hit play .
Attack.
Ralph stares, his face a picture of confusion. I flick back and forth between the two recordings, hitting play , pause and rewind as fast as my fingers can move.
Snake.
Maiden.
Attack.
Attack.
Attack.
‘All right, that’s enough,’ Ralph says, pulling the loquisonus machine towards him. ‘What did you say?’
‘I sent out some ranging calls,’ I lie. I might as well make use of the fact that Ralph knows nothing about echolocation. ‘If you let me put the headphones on, when the calls bounce back, I’ll be able to measure how far away the dragons are.’
I want to laugh at the insanity of what I’m saying and the fact that Ralph clearly believes it.
‘Forget about the dragons.’ He pushes the logbook towards me. ‘Give me the code.’
‘You don’t get it,’ I say, shaking my head. ‘This language is complicated. It’s not something that can be learned in a night—’
‘For your sister’s sake, it better be,’ Ralph snarls. He slams a fist down on to the logbook. ‘Look at this – why is nothing clear?’ He points at my entry for Croon-246 and the hurried notes beneath it. ‘It says here that this call has six variants! And they all mean to burn ! Are you deliberately trying to confuse us?’
It’s simple really , I want to say to him. The sound of the Croon-246 varies depending on the dragon emitting it. In Muirgen’s dialect, the call has a slight inflection that doesn’t appear in Soresten’s version. And when Yndrir emits the call to Muirgen the tone is different, much deeper than it is when he uses it to talk to—
‘Answer me!’ Ralph shouts.
I meet his eyes as he towers over me, his lips shining with spittle.
‘What are you hiding?’
Atlas’s voice rings in my head.
Don’t do it, Viv!
Ralph’s hand slips round my neck. ‘Answer me, or I’ll cut that sister of yours into tiny pieces.’
Did Chumana hear my calls? Did anyone hear?
‘I already told you,’ I say calmly. ‘If you give me the headphones, I can—’
Ralph pushes me and I fall backwards over the chair, hitting my head on the corner of the table. I stumble to my feet, wincing, as he comes towards me again.
‘You’ve been lying to me.’ There’s a dangerous edge to his voice, one I haven’t yet heard – not even when he broke my arm. ‘I told the Prime Minister you weren’t doing your job, but she wouldn’t listen. What did you send out through that machine? Who are you communicating with?’
Blood trickles down my forehead and I wipe it out of my eye.
‘No one,’ I say. ‘I just did what you asked—’
‘Liar!’ Ralph screams.
He pulls the knife from his belt. I back away until I’m behind the sofa, looking desperately among Dr Seymour’s empty coffee cups for something to defend myself with. All I can see is the dented speaker from the smashed loquisonus machine. I stumble towards it, but Ralph catches me by the back of my hair and I scream as he pulls a handful away. I dig my nails into his arm as he wrestles me on to the sofa.
‘Let go of me, you bastard,’ I spit, bringing my knee up between his legs.
He lets out a pained cry, but thrusts me backwards and straddles me, grabbing both my wrists in one hand and releasing the knife from its sheath with the other.
‘In Germany, we used to slice the scales off dragons one by one.’ Ralph says with a smirk, the badges on his uniform glinting in the light. ‘They don’t grow back, you see, so it was something we could take from them. And they’re worth a fortune on the black market.’
I struggle beneath him, but his grip is too strong. His eyes linger on my face, then slowly down the rest of my body.
‘Now, I wonder what I could take from you?’
I gather up all the saliva in my mouth and spit in his face.
He laughs. ‘Bitch,’ he says, wiping his eyes with his sleeve. He places the tip of the knife at the corner of my mouth. ‘This will teach you to smile when I tell you to.’
I scream as Ralph draws the knife across my skin.
‘Where are the dragons you’re communicating with?’ he grunts.
‘There aren’t any—’
He cuts again and my mouth fills with blood.
‘You brought this on yourself,’ Ralph says. ‘My aunt told me all about how you betrayed your friend. And now you’re betraying your government, your country. You should be thanking me for not giving you worse, for not—’
‘You’re just bitter,’ I gasp, staring into his eyes. ‘Bitter that Wyvernmire brought you back from Germany just to be a useless Guardian, bitter that she didn’t trust you to be a codebreaker or an aviator or a zoologist. Bitter that she chose me .’
Ralph’s nostrils flare as his face turns red, his mouth twisting into a terrifying, furious smile.
‘You’ll pay for what you did to me.’
The words are like an electric shock. The exact same words Sophie used. Ralph leans forward, the sharp smell of his aftershave filling my nose.
‘You think you can play the hero now, after everything you’ve ruined?’ he whispers in my ear. ‘You deserve to suffer, Vivien Featherswallow. But you already know that, don’t you?’
Terror rises up inside me. What if he’s right? What if this is how things end for me, a retribution for all the awful things I’ve done?
I think of what Chumana did in Bulgaria and how she’s dedicating her life to making up for it now. I think of how Mama told me that everyone must live with the consequences of their actions, and how I know, because I know my mama, that this isn’t what she meant. I think of how much I used to hate myself because I couldn’t see a way out of my own guilt.
‘It’s never too late to change, Ralph Wyvernmire,’ I whisper back. ‘Even I get a second chance.’
I open my mouth as if to kiss him, then sink my teeth into his neck. He roars in agony and springs off me, holding his hand to his neck as I spit blood from my mouth. I roll off the sofa and on to the floor, then grab a shard of jagged metal from the ground.
‘Don’t come near me again,’ I snarl. ‘Otherwise, when the rebels win this war, I’ll make sure the dragons know how you tortured their kin.’
Ralph laughs, blood seeping out from between his fingers. ‘I’m not going anywhere except inside to make sure little Ursa knows the feeling of a knife on her soft skin—’
‘Like hell you are,’ says a voice.
Someone moves in the shadows behind Ralph and then there’s a CRACK.
Ralph jerks forward, his knife dropping to the floor with a clatter. His eyes roll back as he lands beside it. Marquis sets the butt of his gun down.
‘Viv?’ he croaks. ‘Are you all right?’
I stifle a sob and nod, and he holds out his arms to me.
‘Where’s Sophie?’ I say as we break apart.
‘In the forest,’ Marquis says. ‘After they took you, we tried to follow, but some Guardians found us and it was too dark to see anything. I hit one, and got his gun, and then I heard you screaming.’ His voice breaks. ‘And then on my way here a dragon flew so low it knocked me over—’
‘A dragon?’ I say. ‘What did it look like?’
‘Well, I hardly stopped to admire it, Viv – what are you doing?’
I step over Ralph and rush to the window. Through the trees, Bletchley Manor is on fire. And there’s a dragon flying towards the glasshouse. I grab the loquisonus machine from the table and head for the door.
‘Come on!’ I say.
Out in the forest, I hide the machine beneath a pile of leaves.
‘We might need it later to communicate with the Coalition,’ I tell Marquis.
We turn our faces towards the smoking sky, and the tops of the trees tremble as Chumana lands beside us with a crash, black smoke billowing from her nostrils. She looks down at Marquis and me, her amber eyes burning.
‘Never use that artificial tongue to talk to me again, human girl,’ she says.
Then she swings her huge head down to the ground and a figure jumps off her neck, landing with a thump on the frozen ground.
‘Evening, misfits,’ Atlas says with a grin. ‘Ready for redemption?’