Page 100 of Dragons of the Great Wyves: Fire and Song
He offered the mouthpiece; I took it numbly. The wood was deeply charred in spots, smooth in others, and unusually dense. It had not been broken off a longer instrument; the bottom ended in a narrower joint intended to slip into another piece. Around the joint, a ring of symbols was inscribed. Mechanically, I rotated it in my fingers. Half the joint—half of the symbols—was burned away.
The top of the mouthpiece, where one would blow, was split. I could fit my little finger into the gap. Splinters pricked my skin.
Rebecca and the colonel had watched in silence. The colonel asked, “Could it be played? If one added a bottom tube.”
No.
The curatorhmmed. “I am not a musician, but it seems unlikely.”
The mouthpiece was trembling violently, tied to my heart which pounded as if to flee my chest, every beat driving a pulse of pain in my temple. I had been so certain I had remembered something crucial.
I forced my hand still, turned the mouthpiece again, and touched the ring of symbols. “What are these? They are not Chinese characters.”
“They are no known language. Decorations. The flute’s design, however, is undoubtedly Chinese, a mouthpiece and body joined by an annulet. The acquirer noted the body was destroyed.” The curator frowned at me. “Are you well, Miss Bennet? Shall I take your arm?”
“No, thank you,” I replied, an automatic reflex. Men were obsessed with taking ladies’ arms.
The symbols did not look decorative; they did not repeat in a pattern. They were systematic, distinct marks placed to follow rules. I concentrated, committing them to memory. The shapes were unfamiliar, but the rules teased at something…
I closed my fingers around the mouthpiece and held it up as if to play. The splintered gap pinched my lip.
I whispered, “I did not know it was damaged.”
The feathery song draca whipped in through the open door. He circled the ceiling, then landed on my shoulder with a stridentcheep.
The curator’s mouth fell open. He bent until his nose almost touched the song draca’s scaled muzzle. “You have a hitherto undocumented breed of draca on your shoulder.”
More song draca swarmed in. They settled on boxes and drawer handles, filling the room with flutters and alarmed churrs. The curator turned a full circle of amazement. He finished staring at me.
“May I take this?” I asked, holding up the mouthpiece.
“To save England?” he whispered. His eyes were wide.
I licked my dry lips, wishing to sayYes, wishing to believe that this ruined remnant mattered, but logic forbade the word.Yesrationalized an error, rationalized my choice to pursue this wasteful quest that endangered myself and others.Yesrationalized abandoning Georgiana. The pounding in my temple grew to a painful buzz.
Do not invent another self-aggrandizing delusion. Once was enough. Do what you are best at. Be literal. Be accurate. The flute is worthless.
The colonel was shaking my shoulder. Startled, I looked at him, and he shouted, “We must run! Do you nothear?”
The painful buzz in my temple was a deep, chopping whir. Low pitched enough to penetrate the walls of the museum. I felt it in my toes. Drawers were clattering in sympathetic resonance.
The colonel yanked Rebecca and me out the door. The curator refused, shaking his head and beginning some explanation. We abandoned him. The song draca—frightened, I realized at last—churned before and behind.
We reached the main exhibit hall, and the terrible whir ceased. In the hush, the colonel cried, “Which way was it?” Rebecca and I shook our heads. It had seemed to come from every side. He ran to the main doors and checked outside, then summoned us.
We hurried down the steps, the song draca skimming so close they made my hair float. They soared high over the courtyard, a large, paved square bounded on three sides by the museum’s main and side halls. So large, I did not at first notice the slim figure on the far side.
I saw her and stopped. Rebecca and the colonel looked back at me, then saw her as well.
La Demoiselle des Parfumshad abandoned her token disguise of English clothes. She wore an emerald gown of satin brocade, the collar raised, the bodice cut in the French silhouette that had driven English waistlines high. Her neckline was French too, lacy and lower than an English lady would choose. Thirty yards away, she stood alone, elegant and incongruous. She smiled at me beneath her sweeping bonnet, the broad smile one uses to be visible at a distance, and started toward us.
“A friend?” Colonel Fremantle asked. He did not know her. A soldier might imagine a lethal woman, a temptress betrayed by pincer hands. It was another matter for a gentleman to meet a lady whose every tailored seam and refined pose announced her aristocracy.
“Mademoiselle Bennet,” she called from twenty yards as I said, “The perfumer.”
The colonel yanked his pistol from his holster, cocking the hammer with a sweep of his left palm while he raised it to arm’s length, sighting down the barrel.
Behind us, a high-pitched tone like the biting insects of the Thames marsh sharpened to a braying whip. It stopped with a sodden thud, and the colonel’s head snapped forward. He toppled, sprawling across the hard paving stones, the pistol clattering away. The back of his head was collapsed in bloody ruin. Shell-like fragments protruded, and four ripped, translucent wings quivered at crooked angles, ten or twelve inches long. He had been struck by a flying crawler, kin to the swarm that attacked Georgiana and me at Pemberley but bigger and bullet-swift.
