In short, I did not truly know who Suhail was. But I did know this much: whatever obstacles propriety might pose, I did not want him to become a stranger to me again.
In addition to pursuing mating flights and marking every cache of eggs we could find, Tom and I spent some time observing juveniles. “After all,” Tom said, “once they hatch, we still have to keep them alive. And it may be possible to train them out of some of their most inconvenient habits, if we know how they’re trained into them in the first place.”
We had of course missed the first window for this. The eggs hatch at the height of summer—a most unusual timing, biologically speaking, for that is when food is at its most scarce. Furthermore, we knew that desert drakes estivated, which is of course the summer equivalent of hibernation. It is not so deep a slumber as hibernation, and includes periods of wakefulness; but it rather suggested that the adults were not closely engaged with nurturing their offspring. (Indeed, a female desert drake makes me look like a doting mother by comparison.)
We could, however, learn something from last year’s crop, who were then approximately six months old. They did not hunt in the dramatic fashion of their elders, for they lacked extraordinary breath; instead they subsisted on lizards, rabbits, and the largely terrestrial bustards that form such a significant part of the nomad diet. We soon discovered that the majority of conflicts between humans and drakes occur with juveniles: the nomads will hunt an adult drake if they must, but avoid that whenever possible, owing to a justified fear of being burnt alive. The immature beasts, however, are merely competition, and are fought as such.
It was comical to watch the youngest drakes attempt to hunt. Their flight is not exceptionally well developed at that age; they will launch themselves into the air and sink down again quite rapidly, hoping to land on prey, but often failing. “If their parents are asleep when they hatch,” I asked Tom, “how do any of them survive?”
He shook his head, not taking his gaze from our current subject. “They may cannibalize one another after the hatching. If not that, then something else kills them; otherwise the desert would be overrun with ten thousand starving drakes.”
Cannibalism seemed plausible, given what we knew of swamp-wyrms and their immature form. “Even a nest full of siblings, though, would only feed them for a short time.”
“True.” The juvenile staggered on landing, then steadied itself with outstretched wings before sauntering onward, for all the world like a cat attempting to persuade onlookers that no lapse of grace had occurred. Tom turned to me, a grin creasing his sunburnt features. “The only way to answer that will be to come back out here again later.”
We both knew we would have to go back to Qurrat soon. The Aritat themselves would be retreating; the winter rains that made the desert briefly verdant had ended, and pasturage would rapidly become scarce. Most nomads would move to the fringes of more settled areas, to oases and the periphery of rivers, where they could wait out the dry months. The heart of the desert would be left to the drakes.
But our work was no respecter of personal comfort. To understand the drakes properly, we had to see them in all seasons—even if it meant walking into the furnace.
Tom and I planned it out in the shelter of our tent. “We’ll go back to Qurrat for a time,” he said. “Pensyth will want us back; and besides, there won’t be much we can do here until later. We’ll come out again in… early Caloris, do you think?”
“Late Messis would be better. It will depend on how matters are at the House by then. Well before the eggs are expected to hatch, so that we can take notes on estivation and such.” I did not say that I desperately wanted to sneak into the cavern of a sleeping dragon, but judging by Tom’s wry smile, he knew my thoughts regardless.
In the meanwhile, the Aritat would bring us eggs at regular intervals, rather than the system that had prevailed under Lord Tavenor, wherein they shipped their finds as their hunters encountered them. That way we could make reasonable estimates of the eggs’ maturity, which would allow us to experiment more precisely with their incubation conditions, as I had arranged with the honeyseeker eggs.
Our thermometers we left with Haidar, who promised to take measurements of every cache before it was dug up. Our tent we left as a gift to Umm Azali and Abu Azali, who promised it would be Shahar’s when she wed. The Aritat were moving in the same direction as our group, but far too slowly for our purposes; we therefore rode ahead, with a well-armed escort the sheikh had provided.
The morning we departed, I cast one glance over my shoulder toward the Labyrinth of Drakes. I knew I would return; but I had no idea what would happen when I did.
PART THREE
THIRTEEN
The journey back to Qurrat was blessedly uneventful. Shimon and Aviva welcomed me back without much fanfare—or perhaps it would be more accurate to say they accepted me back. I was not living with a family; the contrast with our circumstances in the desert made that clear. I was essentially staying in a very small hotel, where both my virtue and my religious integrity could be suitably chaperoned. As this oversight placed no real constraints on me, and my hosts had no objections I could discern, it worked out well for all.
A message was waiting for me at their house, encouraging me to take a day or two of rest before returning to Dar al-Tannaneen. Tom, arriving at the Men’s House in the Segulist Quarter, received a message saying Pensyth wanted to see him the following morning. “Concern for my delicate constitution, which has no doubt been wearied by my trials,” I said. “Very touching, but I think I can find it in me to rub along.”
“I wish I could take your holiday,” Andrew said with a melodramatic sigh. “But that is army life for you.”
He and Tom collected me first thing the next morning, and together we all went to the House of Dragons. Pensyth made no comment upon seeing me there, but was very solicitous of my comfort, to the point of holding my chair for me—a thing he had never done before. I soon gathered that he thought me still in need of recovery from the ordeal of my kidnapping. I sat on the urge to ask whether he had forgotten that Tom, too, had been subjected to that indignity, or whether he merely did not care about Tom’s condition. (Neither, of course, would have been the case; but I wanted to needle him by asking. I was not twenty-four hours back in Qurrat, and already my prickliness was reasserting itself.)
“Did you receive our report about the Banu Safr?” Tom asked. “The guns, and the other signs of wealth? Not to mention where they got the drug that knocked us out. I don’t think that was any herbal tincture.”
“Our surgeon thinks it was ether,” Pensyth said. “Based on the symptoms you described. And no, they wouldn’t be making that in the desert—not unless they have a lot of chemical apparatus you didn’t see. Damned if I—my apologies, Dame Isabella. I have no idea where they got it from. There isn’t much hope of finding out, either.”
Tom frowned. “No one even has a guess?”
“Oh, they have guesses. Too many of them. It could be any tribe that doesn’t like the Aritat, or the caliph. More than enough of those to go around.” The colonel shrugged, leaning back in his chair with an air of resignation. “I know the Akhians are looking into it, and I know they aren’t bl—aren’t likely to tell us what they find out.”