Page 107 of Dragons of the Great Wyves: Fire and Song
“Yuánchi flew us,” she said. “Lizzy is off with him, scouring the area. Miss Spoon told us ofla Demoiselle des Parfums. Lizzy is… very angry.” Her last words were raw with apprehension.
“Call her back,” Mr. Darcy said to me. I peered at him through my crooked spectacles, and he added, “You can speak to Yuánchi. Call Elizabeth back. She needs to know you are well. I fear she will fall into darkness.”
I had heard Yuánchi’s voice before, but that had been his strength reaching to me, not something I initiated. Still, I surveyed the sky and the museum courtyard around us.
There were draca everywhere. Tough broccworms and lindworms guarded the entrances to the courtyard. A bronze-toned firedrake I had never seen before perched watchfully on the peak of the museum’s roof. At least a dozen draca of smaller breeds were running about or stationed in a rough ring around us. More guards. I recognized this surfeit of creatures from an earlier London adventure. Lizzy had sent a mass summons.
Another firedrake, one of the cream ones that guided Yuánchi, was aloft and circling. I raised my arm and waved until she dipped her wings in recognition. “Lizzy has seen me.” There was no further sign until, with the explosive suddenness of a hunting hawk, Yuánchi’s scarlet wings burst over the museum. He pounded down in the courtyard with a ground-shaking thump. Lizzy ran over and swept me into an embrace before I could utter “Be gentle,” so I gritted my teeth and ignored protesting bruises for a sisterly reunion.
“I cannot find the perfumer,” Lizzy said immediately when she let go, her tone reminiscent of Lord Wellington’s curt, military manner. “I have searched two miles in all directions. French troops are falling back southward, a vanguard that had advanced to here, but there is no woman with them. She may have hidden in a building—”
“You will not find her,” I said. “She flew away on a giant, winged crawler.” I squinted at Yuánchi’s hulking mass. “Relatively giant. Large enough to saddle and ride.”
“Where are they finding these massive crawlers?” Mr. Darcy asked.
I thought that was rhetorical, so I moved to more urgent topics. “The flute is destroyed. The museum had a remnant, the mouthpiece, all that survived. Even that was split and half burned.”
“I know,” Lizzy said, subdued.
Mr. Darcy, though, straightened. “Yousawthe flute?”
“What is left. I held the mouthpiece. The perfumer took it, but it was useless.”
“Half burned, how?” he pressed.
This was the curator’s field of expertise, and he enthusiastically claimed it. “The flute was recovered while excavating a funeral pyre in the Highlands. Black bamboo is dense and slow to burn, but I believe the mouthpiece was partially shielded from the heat, perhaps even by the fingers of the poor soul—”
“The great artifacts were fashioned from fang, scale, and claw,” Mr. Darcy said. “The flute is claw, not bamboo. Dragon claw does not burn in mundane fire.”
That was an excellent point, and it made me puzzle over another question. “The flute could never have been a claw. Dragon claw is harder than steel. It is one thing to mount a hilt on a tooth to create a dagger, but how could one fashion a tube? How could one drill the fingering holes?”
“As early as the sixth century,” the curator noted eagerly, “Indian texts referto the use of diamond dust to polish gems. Like can cut like. Another dragon claw, or perhaps a tooth, could shape it.”
I was finding his pedantic tone annoying. “Fashioning a flute is not polishing a gem. The main body is over twenty inches, and draca claws curve. Imagine a drill—”
“If it was worthless, why did the perfumer take it?” Lizzy interrupted.
I closed my eyes and watched again as the perfumer pocketed it with a shrug. “A whim. She did not attribute value to it. She sought a gift to impress Napoleon, one that would ensure his victory in the war. When she saw the flute was destroyed, she chose a different gift—my death. Napoleon ordered that the great wyves must never unite. The death of a great wyfe ensures that.”
“Bonaparte fears the united wyves,” Mr. Darcy said softly.
Georgiana, stricken, took my hand. “I should not have let you leave Pemberley.”
“I recall insisting,” I reminded her. “It was bad luck that the perfumer had heard Londoners call me ‘Great Wyfe.’ She interpreted it literally.”
That made me remember the sublime music which, briefly, I had seemed to comprehend. With my fingers laced with Georgiana’s, I concentrated, seeking that perfection. Fragments of that tower of song returned, but it was again vast beyond perception, a celestial chorus cloaked from mortal eyes.
My thoughts had an effect, though. I had not whistled, but the loyal song draca winged into the courtyard and alighted on my shoulder. That softened an ache in my soul; I had been too afraid to check the fallen draca for his markings. I stroked him, reveling in the pebbled heat of his scaly head.
“Why are you alive?” Lizzy asked me suddenly.
Georgiana gave her a positively wrathful look, but it was a sensible question. “I told the perfumer I was not a great wyfe. I laughed at her.”
Lizzy appeared skeptical. “She believed you because you laughed?”
I thought through our conversation. “I said a great wyfe would seek revenge. That my sister would burn her. Then, she believed.”
Mr. Darcy crooked a smile. “The perfumer will seek out Elizabeth. How convenient. I will enjoy seeing justice done.”
