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  Then I thought through what he had said. “When you say ‘leaking’ . . .”

  “I mean that you will not be permitted to share information about it with anyone. Not until you are done. I’m afraid I must insist on security, Miss Camherst—I’m sure you understand.”

  Oh, I understand. He is a greedy old worm, that much is clear, and he doesn’t have the first idea how such things work. “But what if I run into difficulty? It’s common practice to consult with other scholars along the way.”

  He affected surprise. “I was given to understand, Miss Camherst, that you are one of the brightest minds in your field. Your grandfather was a pioneer in deciphering the language, and your grandmother—well, her reputation is known around the world. Dr. Cavall at the Tomphries told me that you began studying Draconean writing when you were six. But if you need to consult with others, perhaps I should approach one of them instead.”

  I went hot all over. “What I mean is—ancient texts are often very unclear. I might need to compare what you have against different tablets, things at the Tomphries or in private hands.” That’s only one of the reasons, but it was the only one I could think of that he wouldn’t hear as a confession of incompetence.

  He said, “Surely you can do that without needing to divulge what you yourself have learned.”

  I can; it will only be a tremendous annoyance. And yet . . . the alternative is to not work on these tablets at all. He knew very well how much they tempted me, and how much he had needled my pride.

  So I agreed. Of course I agreed. How could I do otherwise?

  “Excellent!” he said, with such heartiness that I think he may have been genuinely worried that I would refuse. “You can start work first thing tomorrow, then. I’ve even lined up an assistant for you.”

  The hypocrisy of that man! First I must keep everything secret; then he drops some stranger on me, saying nothing except that I will meet her tomorrow. And before I could tell him what I thought of that, he asked me how soon I thought I could be done.

  My first instinct was to laugh in his face. How can I predict such a thing without first studying the text? But I have better self-control than that, whatever Simeon says. And I have Simeon’s report on the size of the tablets, the density of the script, and its archaic cast, which is enough to make at least a rough estimate. “A great deal will depend on how obscure the text is, you understand. But I would guess perhaps two tablets per month.”

  “Splendid,” Lord Gleinleigh said, slapping his knee. “That will do very well, Miss Camherst.”

  He was so satisfied, in fact, that I gave him a suspicious look. “I should be clear. Two tablets a month if it goes well, which it may not. And that is only for a first draft—something that gives a clear sense of the text’s meaning. Polishing it, making sure my translation is as accurate as I can achieve, will take a good deal longer.”

  Lord Gleinleigh waved away my comment. “Of course—I’m sure it will need more study going forward—but the important thing is to know what it says, yes? The finer points can wait. You might be ready for publication by, say, next Gelis?”

  Ten months from now. If he were only doing the simple arithmetic of seven months for fourteen tablets, he would have said Fructis; if he were speaking generally, he would have said a year or so. Gelis is both random and specific.

  And I could guess why.

  Maybe it would have been better for me not to have said. But I was calculating in my head, and when I got to my conclusion, it just popped right out of my mouth. “You mean, before the Falchester Congress.”

  Really, I should have seen it coming. Why else would he be so eager to have someone translate these tablets, when up until now he’s hidden his collections away for the enjoyment of himself and his friends? Because the congress will be taking place next winter. Everyone will be thinking about the Draconeans then, with their delegation coming here and the future of the Sanctuary up for international debate; the translation will positively fly off the shelves.

  He coughed delicately. “It would be convenient, yes.”

  Not to mention profitable. With the way he spends money on antiquities, you’d assume he must be rolling in dough, but I hear that lots of peers these days are having difficulty keeping up their estates. Maybe he’s gotten himself into debt. Or maybe he just wants more money to buy even more antiquities with. Either way, he’ll be able to do it, if this translation comes out on time—not to mention that he’ll be famous.

  And so will I.

  That shouldn’t be the first thing on my mind. I should take my time with this text, and make certain it isn’t published until I’m absolutely convinced it’s the best I’m capable of delivering—even if that means it doesn’t come out until I’m forty. Fame means nothing if later people say, “Oh, Audrey Camherst? You mean the one who wrote that sad little attempt at translation a few years ago?”

  But it’s so hard when I can feel everyone looking at me, waiting to see what I’ll do. Not my family, of course; if I decided I wanted to retire to a country cottage and spend my life growing roses—not even award-winning roses; mediocre, aphid-chewed ones—they would hug me and wish me well. It’s the rest of the world that expects me to do something spectacular, because Papa did, and Mama, and Grandpapa, and above all Grandmama. When am I going to prove my right to stand with them?

  I don’t have to prove anything.

  Except to myself.

  And I know I can do this. If it means working long hours to get it done in time . . . well, that’s what coffee is for.

  FROM THE NOTEBOOK OF CORA FITZARTHUR

  A new woman has come to Stokesley. I knew someone was going to visit, but Uncle didn’t tell me ahead of time that she will be living here for months, which is very inconvenient of him. The good news is that she doesn’t have a little yappy dog that will shed all over everything like our last houseguest. (The dog was the one shedding, of course, not the houseguest.) I told Mrs. Hilleck to put her in the lilac room and to find out what she likes to eat.

  Her name is Audrey Isabella Mahira Adiaratou Camherst. She is twenty-three years old, and Uncle has hired her to translate the tablets. I saw her going into dinner, though she did not see me.

  Uncle says it is very important to know who someone’s people are, so last night I looked hers up in Webber’s Almanac of the Peerage and Other Illustrious Persons of Scirland. It says she is the granddaughter of Isabella Trent, née Hendemore, formerly Camherst, 1st Baroness Trent, who is a dragon naturalist, and both very famous and very scandalous. (The almanac does not say she is scandalous, but I know that much myself.) Audrey’s paternal grandfather was Jacob Camherst, second son of a baronet. Her step-grandfather, if that is a proper word, is Suhail, Lord Trent, who is Akhian, and an archaeologist and linguist. He is also famous, though less so, and not very scandalous. Her father is The Honourable Jacob Camherst, an oceanographer. Her mother is Kwenta Adiaratou Shamade, of the Talu Union, an astronomer. That explains why Audrey is a dark brown colour, except her hair, which is black and looks like a cloud when she lets it free. Her maternal grandparents are not in the almanac, probably because they are neither peers nor Scirling.

  I don’t know why it is important to look these things up. The almanac has no entry to tell me whether they are the Right Sort of People. I don’t think Uncle believes they are, though.

  My instructions are to help Audrey in any way she tells me to (even if all she tells me to do is fetch her tea) and to read all of her letters before they go to the post, and to tell Uncle if she tells anyone anything about the tablets, or if she says anything unkind or suspicious about him. The letter Audrey has written to the Tomphries Museum only says that she has arrived here and that Lord Gleinleigh is exactly as she expected, which might be rude depending on what she expected, but I don’t think that’s the kind of thing Uncle had in mind. Still, I suppose I should tell him, just to be sure.

  FROM THE DIARY OF AUDREY CAMHERST

  5 Pluvis

  Lord
Gleinleigh is not at breakfast. How inconvenient of him! The footman says he does not often take breakfast. I wonder if he is even awake yet? He spends a great deal of his time on the Continent; perhaps he has acquired the Continental habit of keeping late hours. I did my best to sleep in until what most people would consider a civilized time, but after so much of my life on ships with Papa and Mama, the habit of waking at daybreak is difficult to shed.

  Someone must be up, though, or else the servants pinched bits of the food on the assumption that no one would be eating it. Who else is here, I wonder?

  later

  Well, that’s several questions answered at once. But what I think of the answer, I am not yet sure.

  When I was done with breakfast I went straightaway to the library, where Lord Gleinleigh had promised the tablets would be laid out for me. I was half convinced he would have failed to do so—or possibly “failed”—because surely he could not let me see them without him present to gloat over his trophy. But there they were, set in an organized row on a sheet to protect the long table that dominates the center of the room. (Why does a man who cares so little for actual learning have such an enormous and well-stocked library? Prestige, I suppose.)

  I pinned my hair up and began to examine the array. That room needs better lighting; I have already pestered the footman to bring me a lamp with a long enough cord that I may drag it around as I require. To begin with, though, I had to carry one of the tablets to the window, so I could see it clearly.

  And then I found myself grinning like a monkey, because there I was, with a priceless treasure in my hands! Of course it is not the first time that I have handled a Draconean text. I will never forget the day Grandpapa first put a clay tablet into my hands, explaining to me that I was holding history itself. I was five, I think, which always horrifies people when they hear—what if I had dropped it? The tablet was only a tax record. Still a loss if I had shattered it, mind you, but not one that would haunt me until the end of my life.

  It would haunt me until the end of my life and beyond if I dropped one of these. Our modern Draconeans do not know everything about their ancestors, the Anevrai, any more than I know what ancient Scirlings or Utalu did or thought. We have only these fragments, the texts that happen to have survived the Downfall of their ancient civilization. I am sure the people who rebelled against Anevrai rule had very sound reasons for it—but if I could, I would go back in time and ask them not to destroy so much in the process. No matter how tyrannical their rulers were, what gain was there in burning down palaces and cities? Who benefited, when they smashed the texts that held all the learning of their world? They plunged themselves into a darkness so deep that we are only beginning to shine lights into the nearest corners of it.

  The lump of clay I held in my hands today might prove to be a very bright light indeed. I tilted it back and forth, letting the light bring out the faint impressions where the scribe’s fingers had once gripped the edges, before it was fired. I would be the first to read his words!

  . . . or so I believed at the time.

  I had just sat down at the center of the table to write some preliminary notes when someone behind me said, “That’s my chair.”

  If I tell this story later I shall describe myself as turning around with flawless poise and composure, but the truth is that I squeaked. The speaker was a girl—well, I call her a girl; I think she is only a few years younger than I am. But she was dressed very plainly, in a dove-grey frock I would have said was ill-fitting; only later did I realize the tailoring was not at fault. She held herself so awkwardly that it made the dress look like a sack. And since I am a terrible judge of fashion, I can only think that she will have an appalling time of it when she comes out—if indeed she ever does.

  “That’s my chair,” she repeated, clutching a notebook to her chest.

  She clearly was not a servant. I rose and said, “Are you . . . Lord Gleinleigh’s daughter?” He is not married, but she might have been his natural-born child. Only there is no polite way to ask whether someone is a bastard.

  “I’m his ward,” she said. “I sit there every day while I work on the translation.”

  “On the—” It turned into another squeak, only this one was decidedly angrier.

  I thought—Simeon was very clear—this job was supposed to be mine! It is one thing for Lord Gleinleigh to foist this girl on me as an assistant, without so much as a by-your-leave. But it is a slap in the face for him to have her start on the work before I even arrive! And why did he say nothing of this to me last night? Likely because he knew how I would react and, coward that he is, dodged the problem by letting me stumble across this interloper while he was still warm in his bed.

  She held a stack of books and notepaper clutched to her chest. Now I saw the room in a new light: the table, with its protective sheet and row of tablets. Lord Gleinleigh had not set them out. This girl had. And she sat in the very chair I had chosen and began unlocking the secrets of this cache, which was supposed to be my responsibility and privilege.

  I know it is dreadful of me to write it like that. If Grandmama heard me being such a greedy little drake, she would lock me in my room without books for a week. Except she also knows how infuriating it is to be denied the proper respect—and if it hadn’t been this awkward girl who upstaged me, I think I might have lost my temper completely. (If it had been Lord Gleinleigh. . . well, I might have laughed him out of the room, because I know he hasn’t a scrap of skill for the job. But some other man like him? I would have been apoplectic.)

  As it is, I can’t say I was very polite. “Let me see it, then,” I said, holding out one hand.

  “See what?” But from the way she clutched her stack more tightly, I knew she understood what I meant.

  “The translation,” I said. “I presume you are the assistant Lord Gleinleigh mentioned to me”—laying stress on the word “assistant.” Under no circumstances was I going to let myself be pushed into a subordinate position. “Since you have been so kind as to start on the work already, I shall look it over.”

  Her jaw set in a mulish line, but she put down her stack and retrieved some pages from a folder. I was relieved to see they were so few: I was half afraid she had gone through everything already, even though I know that isn’t possible. Sitting down very pointedly in the chair she had claimed as her own, I began to read.

  The pages were an utter mess, filled with crossed-out lines where she kept changing her mind, so it took me a few moments to even thread my way through the tangle and figure out what she had written—and then a few moments longer to digest the absurdity of what I had just read. It was such an incredible disaster that a part of me wanted to burst out laughing. But coming so close on the heels of my snit, it was hard for that impulse to win out, and the result is that I just sat and stared at the pages long after I had stopped reading, trying to think what to say.

  Of course I could not sit there forever. I finally looked up—still without the slightest notion what I would say—and found her waiting, body rigid in that plain grey dress.

  No one intelligent enough to produce even that muddle out of a Draconean text could possibly be stupid enough not to realize how bad it was. I saw in the set of her jaw a kind of challenge, as if she were waiting to see what I would say. Would I make polite noises, as if her work did not read like it had been written by a five-year-old? Or would I tear into her for having done such a dreadful job?

  I found I could do neither. The gentleness of my own voice surprised me when I said, “Have you ever translated ancient Draconean before? Or the modern tongue?”

  The answer came in a tight little shake of her head. Then, while I searched for more words, she spoke. “Uncle said you like reading, and you like puzzles. You should try this one.”

  As if liking puzzles qualifies one to deal with a dead language! But it sounded exactly like the kind of thing Lord Gleinleigh would say. “Have you done much translation of any kind?”

  “I speak Thiessois a
nd Eiversch,” she said.

  If she’s anything like other young ladies, she only speaks them well enough to sing a few songs. “But no translation? I mean long passages.” When she shook her head again, I said, “It is quite a challenge, and although it is a bit like a puzzle sometimes, it is also very different. You . . . have made a good start here.”

  Her jaw tightened again. Then she said bluntly, “It’s dreadful.”

  In the face of a statement like that, tact could no longer win out over my natural candour. “It’s dreadful,” I agreed. “But even making it that far is an achievement.”

  She stared at her shoes. A smile began tugging at the corner of my mouth—I could not suppress it. Then she started laughing, and that set me off, and the little knot inside me began to relax.

  When we finally stopped laughing I stood up to get a chair for her. Only by the time I turned around, she’d taken my chair—her chair, I mean, as I have a feeling I’m sailing into the wind where that’s concerned. It didn’t seem worth arguing about any more, so I sat down in the one I’d pulled close.

  “I’m Cora,” she said.

  “And I’m Audrey Camherst.”

  “I know,” she said. “I mean, figured it out. Uncle said you would be coming. But you don’t look Scirling.”

  Most people don’t say it to my face like that, though I know they’re thinking it. “I’m half,” I said. “My mother is Utalu. From Eriga.”

  I said that last bit because most Scirlings tend to think of Eriga as an undifferentiated mass, a whole continent lumped under one label, and couldn’t point out the Talu Union on a map if you threatened to keelhaul them for failure. But Cora nodded before I was even done clarifying. “You’re Lady Trent’s granddaughter. And your grandfather, your step-grandfather I mean, is the one who deciphered Draconean.”