Chapter 2 #2
‘To be disoriented, in a homesick sort of way,’ I reply. ‘But it’s more intense than that. I can’t think of an English word that quite captures it. Translated literally, it means out of country.’
‘Like alienated, or adrift?’ Hyacinth says.
‘Almost,’ I reply eagerly. ‘But not quite.’
‘The word’s untranslatable, then?’
I shake my head. ‘Nothing’s untranslatable. Just let me think . . .’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ says the boy providing Hyacinth’s cigarettes. I think his name is Stephen. ‘Not in light of the new Babel Decree article.’
What is he talking about?
‘It’s going to be announced in the morning.
My brother’s a Guardian, he told me all about it,’ Stephen says.
‘Making Slavidraneishá Britannia’s national dragon tongue?
The language of the Bulgarian dragons? What’s the PM playing at?
English and Wyrmerian are the languages of the Empire, not some Slavic babble. ’
I freeze.
Slavidraneishá is the new national dragon tongue? That can’t be true. I would know, Hollingsworth would have told me.
George lays a hand on my arm. ‘Are you all right? You’ve gone rather pale.’
I nod hurriedly.
‘This is news to you, too?’ he asks gently.
‘No,’ I almost snap. I meet his gaze and force a smile. ‘But the rest of you aren’t supposed to know.’ I nod towards Stephen. ‘If his brother knows what’s going on in the Chancellor’s office, then what’s to say the rebels don’t?’
‘That’s what comes from having a woman Prime Minister, I suppose,’ Stephen drawls.
I open my mouth, then close it again as Hyacinth slaps his arm. He grins and plants a kiss on her cheek before she can stop him.
George tops up my glass. ‘Stephen here thinks Wyvernmire should be impeached. Thinks she’s unfit to rule, that her Bulgarian alliance and Babel Decree are proof of it.’
‘The majority of the First Class support the Babel Decree,’ I say.
Don’t they?
Stephen gives me an icy glare. ‘We’re not all dragon haters.’
‘Of course not,’ I say quickly. ‘But the First Class are the ones who put Wyvernmire in power in the first place. They are –’ I pause and correct myself – ‘we are the reason Britannia is now ruled by language restrictions, even though its linguistic diversity is centuries old.’
‘My father says we’re all collaborators now,’ Stephen replies.
‘Nonsense,’ says George. ‘The Prime Minister is in control of the Bulgarians, not the other way round.’
I swallow my champagne. This conversation is getting dangerous and the drink has gone to my head. It has me dancing along the knife-edge of the truth. It has me wanting to tell that idiot Stephen exactly who I am.
‘Have you ever met a Bulgarian dragon?’ I ask George. ‘I mean up close, in the flesh?’
He smirks. ‘Yes, actually. My father deals with them every day.’
‘Ever spoken to one?’
‘Yes.’
I hold his gaze as he fills my glass again. ‘Flown with one?’
George’s eyes soften and I know I’ve got him.
‘Of course not.’ He grins. ‘Are you about to tell me you have?’
‘No,’ I lie.
‘I’ve heard Wyvernmire has!’ says a girl.
George shakes his head. ‘Of all the dragons, the Bulgarian Bolgoriths would be the last to allow a human to ride them. And Wyvernmire doesn’t need to. She has them to guard her, to keep her safe somewhere in the city while she devises the battle plans that will take the rebels down.’
‘Not for long,’ Stephen interjects.
I sense everyone in the room turn to him, see the pleasure of the attention flood his face.
‘What do you mean?’ Edward says coldly.
‘General Goranov will want her out of the way, won’t he? So that the Bolgoriths can take over the capital.’
George scoffs loudly. ‘Goranov takes his orders from Wyvernmire, you skrit. He might be in charge in Bulgaria, but in Britannia the humans rule. The PM is merely using the Bulgarians to her advantage. The alliance is a carefully calculated one, and once—’
‘But that’s where you’re wrong, Beecham,’ Stephen says. ‘Wyvernmire isn’t Goranov’s Prime Minister, she’s his puppet.’ He sneers. ‘How else do you think he convinced her to make him Dragon Chief of State?’
Dragon Chief of State.
‘They’re erecting a statue of him in Hyde Park.’
‘Pen, are you all right?’
I stare at the bubbles in my glass, my vision swimming. Wyvernmire has created a title – a sovereign position – for General Goranov? Why would she give a Bulgarian dragon control over how the country is run? I feel myself sway.
‘Is she going to faint?’ someone whispers.
Do the rebels know? Does Hollingsworth know?
‘Oh, give her some space for goodness’ sake!’
Hyacinth’s breath is sweet on my face. ‘Darling, are you all right?’ Her cheeks are flushed with heat or alcohol and her hair is curling at her ear.
She has no idea what this means.
‘I’ll take her outside for some air,’ George says.
But Hyacinth is shaking her head. ‘No,’ she says firmly. ‘Edward will.’
Edward appears in front of me and holds out his arm.
I take it and let him lead me out into the hallway.
As the door closes behind us and the maid hands me my coat, someone turns up the music.
Outside, streetlights have been extinguished for the post-curfew blackout, to make it harder for the rebels to attack.
My head spins with the fresh air. Edward lights a cigarette.
‘Want one?’
‘Yes,’ I mumble.
Edward hands me a cigarette and offers me a light. I place it between my lips the way I’ve seen Hollingsworth do, then inhale. The end of the cigarette glows orange and my lungs fill with smoke. I panic, choking and gasping for breath.
‘Pen, shut up,’ Edward hisses, glancing at the sky.
I muffle another cough with my sleeve, eyes streaming.
‘That’s disgusting,’ I croak.
He plucks the cigarette from my hand and puts it in his mouth so that he’s smoking two.
I wipe my eyes. ‘You’re disgusting.’
‘Thanks.’
I lean back against one of the pillars and close my eyes.
‘Your aunt didn’t tell you, then?’
My eyes snap open. ‘Do you think she knows?’
Edward stares up into the dark clouds and shrugs, the two cigarettes still smoking between his lips.
‘She and Wyvernmire are supposed to be as thick as thieves. It would surprise me if she didn’t know the Prime Minister has instated a Bulgarian dragon as Dragon Chief of State – whatever that’s supposed to mean. ’
You don’t know how wrong you are, I want to say.
He looks at me. ‘I thought you were about to teach Stephen a lesson back there.’
I roll my eyes. ‘He’s an ignorant skrit.’ I pause. ‘Do you have the . . . ?’
Edward pats his pocket with a nod, then pulls out a bundle of pamphlets and gives them to me.
They’re printed in black ink on creamy paper, unfolding in my hands like a book.
Edward and I discovered we had the same disdain for the Babel Decree during a heated debate about dragon family dialects a couple of months ago, but neither of us dared declare it outright until the truth became blatantly obvious.
In Defence of Wyrmerian, the cover of the pamphlet reads.
This is how I rebel. I write the pamphlets defending the importance of the banned dragon tongues, and Edward uses his father’s printing press to produce them.
So far we’ve also done Harpentesa, Drageoir and Drogarti – Britannia’s most common Indian dragon tongue – and the Guardians are no closer to figuring out who is responsible for the illegal publications that appear every fortnight.
Here Wyvernmire is banning languages left, right and centre, unaware that they are the very thing her most wanted rebel is using to undo her hard work. This deliciously ironic fact helps me get out of bed in the morning.
If Hollingsworth knew I was risking discovery in this way, she might think twice about making me the face of the rebellion.
‘And are you going to tell me how you’ll be distributing these ones?’ Edward says.
‘No.’ I slip the pamphlets into the waistband of my skirt and close my coat. ‘Will you let Hyacinth know I had to leave early?’
‘You’ve had a bit of a shock. Perhaps it’s best I walk you.’
‘I’ll be fine. Thanks, Ed.’
I hurry back across Pimlico, keeping to the shadows to avoid any Guardians enforcing curfew.
Across the street is a Third Class quarter.
It’s littered with signs protesting the Babel Decree, covering the exteriors of the houses in such quantities that the Guardians can’t keep on top of taking them down.
A few months ago this would have surprised me, as the Third Class have never been permitted to study languages at university level.
But now the idea that these people would be uninterested in linguistics or the right to free speech is ludicrous.
Second languages, dialects, slang . . . they come naturally to those who inhabit the poorest corners of society, where people take care of each other, where community is made by talking and cultural melting pots give birth to new words in the wink of an eye.
The Third Class – discarded by the Empire because they are not educated, wealthy or white – are linguists in their own right.
I turn to walk along the River Thames as a boat horn blares.
I look up, just in time to see a huge figure on the path ahead.
It’s a Bulgarian dragon, head bent down to talk to the pair of Guardians standing in its shadow.
I feel a swoop of dread. I slip into the obscurity of the nearby trees and walk as quietly as I can, studying the dragon in the moonlight.
It’s slightly bigger than Chumana, probably male, and a silver crown sits atop its head, peaking down into a triangular shape between its eyes.
I’m only half-surprised that the Bulgarian dragons agree to wear such an evident marker of their alliance with Wyvernmire.
Their magpie tendencies towards wealth and decoration have clearly won over their disdain for humans.
‘You dare abandon your post?’ the dragon snarls at the Guardians. ‘Only Bolgoriths patrol the streets between here and the South Bank. You should not be here.’
I stop, surprised at his tone. These are Wyvernmire’s Guardians of Peace.
‘We have orders to search this part of Pimlico for rebels,’ one of the Guardians says. ‘A dragon cannot fit inside the houses.’
There’s a whoosh like a breeze and flames lick in a straight line along the waterfront, engulfing the Guardian in a blazing cloud of orange.
He doesn’t even have time to scream before he’s dead.
I drop to the ground, trying to hold in my gasp.
I feel my muscles tense with terror – I want to run but I don’t dare.
The other Guardian stares at the Bolgorith for a second, then turns and flees.
A low growl emanates from the dragon’s chest as he turns to stare across the Thames.
He walks past me, his long, spiked tail dragging up dust, and I catch the acidic scent of burning meat.
I don’t move, my knees damp from the grass, as I wait for my heartbeat to slow.
Then I get shakily to my feet and run the rest of the way, trying not to think of who might be watching me from the sky.
Are the Bolgoriths above Wyvernmire’s own army now that Goranov is Dragon Chief of State?
Sweet Street is empty, but I still wince as I push open the heavy iron door to the sugar house, its screeching even louder in the silence.
I climb up the metal staircases of one of London’s oldest factories and into a huge derelict space.
Then I fumble in the dark for a match and light the lantern I keep hanging on a broken nail in the wall.
An orange glow fills the dark, illuminating splintered floorboards and beams that cross each other above me.
The smell of smoke and sugar syrup and something else mingle in the air and I’m suddenly aware of the champagne swishing in my stomach. I hear a crunching sound.
‘I’m home,’ I call out, shrugging off my coat.
The floor shakes and dust falls from the rafters as a huge shape emerges from behind a rusting, ten-foot sugar tank.
My roommate.
Chumana.
IN DEFENCE OF WYRMERIAN
It befalls to us now to approach the unlikeliest of vernaculars, one it never occurred to us to defend due to its status as Britannia’s national dragon tongue and its assured place as the Draconic twin to the language of Shakespeare . . . WYRMERIAN.
And yet, since the Prime Minister mandated that only English is permitted when speaking with dragons – and since the mass departure of dragons from the nation’s capital – Wyrmerian is barely more than a whisper on the wind.
It is a ghost language destined, if we cannot free ourselves from the ignorant rulership of Adrienne Wyvernmire, to be interred in the same graveyard as Sanskrit or Aramaic, or to become what scholars call a classical language; a museum trophy, admired and studied alongside Latin and Ancient Greek, but nonetheless returned to its display case at the end of the day, never to be spoken aloud.
Part of the North Sea Germanic branch of languages that includes Old English – languages which are therefore older than our modern English itself – Wyrmerian is not merely the dragon tongue of Britannia but its beating, Dragonese heart.
Wyrmerian is the language of negotiation and commerce at the Royal Victoria Docks.
It is the language of British aviation, the Wyrmerian word finn – used to designate the flight feathers of a dragon’s tail – having been borrowed by the English language to specify a part of an aircraft’s empennage.
It is the tongue spoken by Queen Beatrice’s Royal Dragon Advisor (who resigned upon the breaking of the Peace Agreement).
It is the lullaby once whispered to the Western Drake dragonlings that used to nest along the Thames, back when dragons were respected members of British society.
These dragonlings were referred to as fersc, the word for new in Wyrmerian.
It designates newness in a way that only babies can be new, and was borrowed from Old English, where it meant fresh and pure.
But there is no place for such purity, such innocence, in Wyvernmire’s Britannia. Not while it is home to species segregation, class inequalities and crimes against dragons.
Will you, the British people, stand by and watch the annihilation of our most refined dragon tongue, the forefather of Britannia’s Dragonese? Or will you, in the name of patriotism and language preservation, rebel?