Page 37 of Dragons of the Great Wyves: Fire and Song
Gruffly, he cleared his throat. “Miss Bennet. The Britons speak of you.” He nodded and stepped aside.
Mr. Gastrell rolled up next, his portly belly wrapped in expensive tweed sealed by straining silver buttons. We exchanged wordless dips and polite smiles.
Mr. Spragg, the only one closer to my age than my parents’, was last. He snapped a stylish bow and held my fingers too long, reminding me unpleasantly of Wickham. This man was less dainty though, his face rough from sun and wind. A long-healed scar pinched his upper lip, perhaps a childhood accident.
“The Britons departed our property in my grandfather’s time,” he said. His attention lingered on me with the more practical interest of a young man. “Whatdothe Britons say about you?”
“I do not know,” I said. “I have not asked them.”
He nodded as if that were an answer. “I was surprised to review my appointments for the day and discover a meeting of the Derbyshire landholders’ assembly. As I have neverheardof the Derbyshire landholder’s assembly.” He flicked a smile. “Will Mr. Darcy attend, or does the assembly simply use a muddy trail on his land for meetings?”
“My brother is abroad,” Georgiana said, with a barely audible emphasis on “brother.” I was happy to let attention shift to her, but she deftly nodded it back to me.
“Mr. Darcy requested that we meet,” I said, in a rather choppy beginning. “There is a grave threat. A threat to agriculture, but also to life. Foul crawlers have adopted a new pattern of spread, based on infestation of fruits and seeds. The mechanism is unclear—”
“Crawlers?” portly Mr. Gastrell interrupted. “We rode all this way for a fewpests?”
“More than pests,” I said. “A deadly risk.” He guffawed, so I explained. “The breadth of infestation is unprecedented. That density elevates the risk.”
“Slow down, Miss Bennet,” Mr. Berrycloth said, not unkindly. “You are afraid of crawlers, is that it?”
“Afraid? No. Not in a personal sense.” Now everyone looked puzzled. “The risk is of scale. We must coordinate our efforts in this region.”
“Perhaps if we showed them…” Georgiana prompted me.Remindedme.
“Yes,” I muttered, feeling idiotic. We had agreed to start with a demonstration. How could this be harder than proclaiming women’s rights amid shouted insults in a London square?
Mr. Digweed was already busy at the field’s edge. He picked one of the bloated, diseased pods, and the gentlemen gathered, serious at last. Even the most pampered gentleman landholder was, at some level, a farmer.
A pair of song draca swooped through the midst of our party. They perched in the cedar. More gleams shifted in the branches. Eight. Ten. I had never seen so many song draca together. They were singing softly, a discordant drone near the bottom of their range that set my teeth on edge.
“Are you calling them?” Georgiana whispered to me. The men were occupied asking questions of Mr. Digweed.
“Of course not.” The last thing we needed was draca. Single ladies with draca were, at best, suspected of unchastity. A display like this would prompt accusations of witchcraft.
Mr. Digweed said loudly, “Miss Bennet could answer that better.” That was my cue, so Georgiana and I joined the circle of men. Mr. Digweed laid the bean pod on the ground and offered me a stick. “Would you do the honors?”
I took it, feeling rather like a schoolteacher. “As grubs, they seem unable to sting, but keep a safe distance.” Muddy boots stepped back. I prodded the pod, trying to open it without injuring the crawler. A live specimen would be more convincing.
The pod slipped in the damp until I pinned it against a stone, then it split. A finger-length crawler squirmed free, the segmented shell gleaming before becoming coated in mud. There was a mix ofhmmsandahsfrom the audience.
Shell. Not a grub’s translucent skin.
Two pairs of delicate, insect-like wings opened, and it churred into the air. Heads ducked as it sailed in a clumsy arc and plunked heavily among the overgrown bean plants. Muffled, angry buzzes sounded, like a wasp trapped against a window.
Surprise turned to excitement. “A grasshopper!” “Too many legs.” “Not acrawler, not with wings!” “Chunky bastard, whatever it is… your pardon, ladies.”
My eyes were on the tangled greenery. A tenth of an acre, five hundredsquare yards, infested with crawlers. But not like the grub from the plums. Mature crawlers, ready to emerge.
I caught Mr. Digweed’s eye. “The field must be burned. Quickly.”
“Yes, surely.” He pursed his lips, looking toward Pemberley’s barns, out of view and a mile away. “Shall I ride to bring men?”
The angry buzz became overlapped buzzes. The plants shivered, and wet pops snapped as pods split. A winged form lobbed head-high and dropped deeper in the field, then a dozen followed. The buzzing swelled explosively, suddenly louder than swarming bees.
A thumb-sized shape flew from the tangled bean plants and plopped at my feet. It was unquestionably a crawler, a pair of pinchers on the head, and a pair of insectile legs on each shiny body segment. Only the wings, webbed and transparent like a mayfly’s, were unusual.
The twin stingers at the rear vibrated like greedy needles. Then a lustrous blur skimmed by my ankles, leaving a puff of transparent blue flame inches from my toes—draca flame. Even that tiny breath radiated heat. The crawler’s wings crisped to ash. Its body writhed and crackled.
