Page 132 of Dragons of the Great Wyves: Fire and Song
“I still hear her,” I said.
“Is she coming?” Mr. Darcy asked.
Lizzy turned to the south. A breath later, Emma and Georgiana turned the same way. Through the music, I heard triumph and pursuit…
“Yes,” Lizzy said.
“Blast,” Mr. Darcy said.
“What do we do?” Emma asked.
“Raise the third dragon,” Georgiana said. “Mary, we need the song of the flute.”
“I have not evenstartedthat!” I closed my eyes to shutter distractions and summoned the symbols etched on the flute’s joint. Now that I understood them, they were upside down. Drat. Twice in a row. I flipped it, which was harder than reversing the dagger in my hand. I had to read the symbols right-to-left, turning each one mentally and reassembling them…
The notation on the flute emerged from the charred wood then finished cleanly. “I memorized the end of the song. The beginning was burned away.”
“Sing the end,” Mr. Darcy said. I had never heard his voice so tense.
“I cannot! Each note depends on what came before. They must be derived in order, start to finish. The notation tellshowto choose what follows each note.”
“Music does not work like that,” Mr. Darcy exclaimed.
I opened my eyes to explain that, yes, music works exactly like that.
Mr. Darcy was not even watching me; his face was raised to the southern sky. The horizon had been swallowed by a rising wall of black, an inverted thunderstorm boiling up from the earth.
Georgiana took my hands. “Ignore him. I understand. Could we guess the beginning?”
I started a mental list. “Hundreds of beginnings would match… no, hundreds ofthousands.”
“Some variations will sound better,” Mr. Knightley said. “Counterpointcan sound pleasant or terrible. Or it may not matter. Try any melody that fits the notation.”
“I do nothavethe opening notation! It was lost when the flute burned…”
Except… the French did not think that. They had lore we did not, stolen history of draca and of the Bennet family, and all along, they had insisted that a Bennet had the flute. Even today, after I had handed the perfumer the burned remains, she accused me of having it. She had grabbed my hands.
Lizzy was pacing. “I no longer sense Yuánchi’s mind at all. Emma, it is time. Break my binding.”
Mr. Darcy tore himself away from the nearing storm. “Fènnù is coming. You will be defenseless.”
“That was always the plan. It is just happening sooner than we thought.”
Emma gathered Lizzy’s and Mr. Darcy’s hands, then bowed her head, eyes closed. Mr. Knightley took firm hold of her arm.
“Prepare yourself,” he said to Lizzy. “This will be unpleasant.”
Georgiana’s touch, feather-light, guided my attention back to her. She smiled. “What else can we try?”
I attempted to focus on the flute’s music, but my memory refused. It had fixed on a different, irresistible path. Scenes clicked backward through time. A puzzle was solving, but a different puzzle than I had thought…
An image: the museum door labeled1750–1766. Then the interior of that crowded storeroom: the curator placing the burned flute in my hand. That was not the key, but it was a clue, one of the discrepancies tugging my attention.
“The notation on the flute was marked on the joint,” I said. “That is an odd place to mark something. Assembling the flute would wear away the symbols.”
Georgiana’s supportive smile did not waver, but her “Good point” sounded forced.
My trail of memories was obliterated by a tremendous power in the draca world, a tension like a celestial bowstring being drawn. Emma’s body hunched. In my mind’s eye, the amulet blazed up like a sun.
