“Yes, of course one wonders that.”
I ignored his flippant tone. “But it also appears that the rise and fall is important: the greater the heat, the more necessary it is that a cooling period be allowed. Without that, you are more likely to get runts and such. If the same is true for drake eggs, then it may be that our conveyance methods need revising. They bury their eggs a certain depth in the sand, you see, and the baskets used to transport them here are not nearly so large. That may mean they are subjected to too great a heat in the daytime, and too much coolness at night—or not enough, if the Aritat have been keeping the baskets by the fire. Or by their camels, even. We shall inquire. And that does not even touch upon humidity. Testing that will be my next step.”
Andrew laughed. “What are you going to do, put them in steam baths?”
“Of course not. I need to see how humidity interacts with temperature; steam baths would require far too much heat. But closed boxes, with an atomizer to mist the air, might suffice.”
He thought I was joking. He was disabused of this notion, though, when I sent him to the perfumers of Qurrat to see whether anyone sold atomizers. (They did not. That method of applying scent is more common in northern Anthiope; I ended up having to send to Chiavora for equipment. And you may be sure Pensyth gave me a very peculiar look when I submitted that request.)
I also had to examine the honeyseekers that had survived. These were all in one of the unused buildings at Dar al-Tannaneen, being fed on nectar extracted from the sheikh’s garden, but it was already obvious that we would need a better solution. Even if I subjected the next rounds of eggs to far less hospitable conditions, we would rapidly be up to our kneecaps in juvenile honeyseekers, and the sheikh’s eucalyptus trees could not sustain them all. I had inquiries out for other gardens that might suffice, and in the meantime we had even more draconic mouths to feed.
Something else happened during this time, too—but I will not tell it now, for it seemed minor at the time, and its true significance did not occur to me until much later. I note it here only so that those of my readers who care about the process of scientific discovery may accurately reconstruct the steps by which I arrived at my eventual conclusions. Laypeople often believe that understanding comes by epiphany: something important occurs, and on the instant the scientist declares, I have it! But the truth is that we may be blind to the import of events around us, not realizing the truth until well after the fact.
While I did all of this, Tom worked to improve the living conditions of our drakes. We began delivering charred meat to their enclosures; they will eat it in any state, from running away to very thoroughly carrion, but we hoped the scent might stimulate their appetites and encourage better health. He also began agitating for the construction of a second compound, well removed from the first. After all, if a female drake will not willingly nest within ten kilometers of a male, what effects came of having them a mere twenty meters apart?
“We aren’t likely to find a suitable place here,” he said over lunch one day. We had developed the habit of eating alone together in the office, where we might not offend local custom too much. (Andrew had given up on joining us, saying our conversations were impenetrable to anyone who did not have dragon blood in his veins.) “I keep wondering about that territory we went around on the way to the Aritat. I know it belongs to another tribe—but it’s a sight closer to the drakes, and not too far from river transport. If the caliph gave the order, we could relocate this entire enterprise there, and I think we’d do a good deal better.”
“Can he not order it?” I asked.
Tom grimaced, shredding a bit of flatbread between his fingers. “This isn’t like medieval Scirland. The land doesn’t all belong to the king, for him to hand out as he sees fit to barons and so forth. It’s theirs, and he can’t easily commandeer it. Or so I’m told.”
“Can we approach them?” I dismissed this with a shake of my head almost before the words were out of my mouth. “Foreigners, trying to stake a claim on property in his country. Or the local sheikh’s country—whichever. I can imagine how that would be received.”
We faced a number of challenges, and our progress against them was hampered by the change of seasons. I have said before that I am a heat-loving creature, and it is true; but even the early days of an Akhian summer took their toll on me. I felt increasingly weak and light-headed, and soon found myself lying down for a little while after lunch each day, waiting out the worst of the heat, though I could not truly rest. I tried to compensate for this by working later into the night, but even then I felt exhausted, unable to focus. My digestion became poor, and even basic tasks began to feel like a burden.
Tom felt it too, but less acutely—or, I suspected, he simply shrugged it off with the stoicism expected of a man. He became concerned for my health, though, and when I attempted to shrug it off as he had, gave me a steady look. “I don’t want to repeat Mouleen,” he said after I rose from my couch one afternoon.
In the Green Hell I had tried to forge ahead through what turned out to be yellow fever. “I am not that ill,” I promised him. “Only tired from the heat.”
“Then rest,” he said. “You will acclimate soon enough.”
I wanted to say that I had not required any acclimation in Eriga—not like this. Another of our drake hatchlings had died, and we were going to conduct a necropsy to see if we could determine the cause. I wanted to be present for that. But Tom was better than I with matters medical, and I would not impress anyone if I tipped head-first into a bucket of viscera. “I will go visit Mahira,” I suggested. “I have been meaning to do that for some time now, but I have been so busy. The gardens there are pleasant and cool, and I can inspect the honeyseekers.”
Tom grinned. “Of course you can’t rest without finding a way to be useful at the same time. But it’s a good idea regardless. Go—and if you need to stay home tomorrow, we can manage without you.”
I did not want them to manage without me. If they could do it for one day, they could do it for more than one; I did not want anyone thinking I was superfluous. But I knew what Tom would say if I expressed such thoughts to him—and he would be well justified—so I kept my self-pity behind my teeth and went.
FOURTEEN
You may guess that I had been avoiding the sheikh’s house for more reasons than a mere crowded schedule. You would be correct in that guess.
Suhail had visited Dar al-Tannaneen twice since our return, but on both occasions he had come only briefly, and left before I knew he was there. Given my resolution in the desert, I should have been more energetic in seeking him out, if only so I could apologize for my coldness before. But it was one thing to form such a resolution; it was another thing entirely to carry it out.
I could not even be positive he was still at the house. By now the nomadic Aritat had moved to their summer quarters; Suhail might be with them, or with the men who would venture into the desert at regular intervals to collect eggs on our behalf. And even if he was present… what would I say? Everything I could think of seemed too forward, especially when we would certainly have an audience again. As much as I liked Mahira, I did not feel comfortable telling Suhail how much I valued his friendship with her sitting ten feet away. I could ask him how the translation was proceeding; surely that would be neutral enough? Being less than skilled at languages, I had very little sense of how long it would take him to decipher the Ngaru half of the text. Since I was fairly certain he did not know the language already, I imagined it would take a while.