Page 102 of Dragons of the Great Wyves: Fire and Song
The whine rose to a throb, and Rebecca took an uncertain step closer to me. An insectile shape blurred between us, and she clapped her fingers to her neck. She drew them away, puzzled, then showed me her bloody fingertips. “Mary?”
She could not see the twin stings on her neck. “It is nothing,” I said. Dr. Davenport also taught when to lie.
The whine crescendoed. The flock of song draca seemed to wilt, finding perches on the walls or settling on the ground. The loyal one on my shoulder tucked his wings and hunkered down.
Defend us, I thought, imagining Lizzy commanding draca. I stared at theperfumer, trying to push my thoughts into the flock of song draca.Swarm her. Immolate her.
Rebecca wobbled. Very carefully she knelt, hands fumbling unsteadily for the ground. Without a sound, she rolled onto her side.
Tears drowned my vision. My useless concentration broke. I was no wyfe of war, no avenging Lizzy. But as my anger hollowed to grief, my skidding, disjointed thoughts found a focus. The summoning song, that first composition over which I toiled for months, became a trifle from a vaster whole, like the ditty of a child that shares harmonies with a grand symphony. For the first time, for a moment, I glimpsed a path to the celestial music of Georgiana’s song.
A song draca fluttered. Another trilled. A few took to the air.
“Non,” the perfumer said and raised her hand.
Flying crawlers erupted, a storm that darkened the air. Amid the howl, I saw one clearly, its ten-inch segmented body sheathed in gleaming olive shell, the pairs of translucent oval wings buzzing, twin stingers flexing as it sprayed. The burned, sour citrus of crawler venom saturated the air, and the song draca tumbled from my shoulder.
Something grooved and hard clouted my temple, bending my spectacles and cutting my ear. A sunburst of pain whitened my vision. Another smacked my shoulder, knocking me off balance. Not stings—these were blows, hard as stones. I cried out, arms shielding my face as they rained in. I collapsed and huddled on the ground beside Rebecca.
The assault ended. The winged crawlers settled on the ground, seething over and under one another. Among them, song draca lay at stiff angles, unmoving.
The perfumer’s gown swayed as she threaded a path to me. Her shoes were as emerald as her gown. She removed her gloves and bent to examine me. “And so, the Great Wyfe dies.”
My belly spasmed—absurdly, I was laughing. I huffed until I could speak. “You think a great wyfe dies likethis? You have no concept of a great wyfe. I am an afterthought, a nobody. You will know when you meet a great wyfe, for you will be crushed.” I pried my bent spectacles straighter, wincing as the frame uncoupled from my bloody ear, but I wanted to see her one last time. “My sister will hunt you, and she willburnyou.”
The perfumer was still for a long time, one oily, anointed fingertip touching her lips as if preparing to share a secret. Then she walked away. The huge, low-pitched buzz we heard inside the museum returned, and a monstrous crawler,stout as a bumblebee and longer than a horse, entered the courtyard. It hovered on blurring wings, blasting a gale in every direction, then settled. The perfumer climbed onto it—it was saddled—and they rose into the air. The sea of flying crawlers around me flew after her like a swarm of locusts.
Beaten muscles shivering, I dragged myself across the rough paving stones. Rebecca was unresponsive but alive, lungs snatching air in shuddering gasps, heart racing and weakening. My fingers were too weak to break the wax on the final syringe, but my teeth stripped it. I dripped draca essence into her mouth, stroked her throat until she swallowed, then gave her another dose, and another. The final teaspoon I emptied into my palm and worked into the bloody stings on her neck.
Her eyelids fluttered. She groaned. Her fingers pushed my hand away from the swollen skin. Good. Excellent.
I lay back, sky spinning, and imagined I heard dragon wings.
30
MRS. GODDARD’S SCHOOL
EMMA
Mr. Knightley,Harriet, and I were hiding in the overgrown back of Highbury square, our shoes squelching in the spring-fed earth but the rest of us nicely concealed by waist-high bracken and dangling branches from the square’s white willow. We had a good view along Broadway, Highbury’s main street. It was a large street, wide enough for two coaches to pass but perilously crowded with French and Confederate troops.
“There were fewer soldiers before,” Mr. Knightley said grimly.
“Why so many?” I wondered. There were senior officers among the French, or at least officers with very elaborate uniforms. The Confederate coats and caps were, by comparison, dull gray and rather dirty. The two groups eyed each other with distrust.
Harriet blew a frustrated sigh. “The amulet is right inside! Mrs. Goddard sent me my clothes after I left, but I did not trust the post to carry gold. I wish I had known sooner. We could have called on her and collected it over tea.”
Mrs. Goddard lived in a three-story country home that had been in her family for generations. She was widowed young, and being an enterprising sort, she had the bedrooms partitioned and the drawing room and parlor merged into a teaching room. It was a successful school, boarding and educating girls aged twelve to seventeen from several parishes. A handful of unmarried youngladies, ex-students like Harriet, lived there as well to assist instruction and shepherd girls to and fro.
From Highbury square to the school’s front door was perhaps fifty yards, but twenty soldiers milled on that path.
Harriet straightened resolutely. “In London, you said their kind cannot impede proper ladies.”
“I was referring to some pro-slaver louts,” I said, “not soldiers.”
“But look.” She pointed to a pair of Mrs. Goddard’s students, girls of fifteen, being escorted through the confusion by a French soldier. He opened the door to the school, the girls entered, and he returned to his troop.
“They went in. They did not comeout,” Mr. Knightley noted.
