Marie Brennan: The Tropic of Serpents

I was at the door to Lord Hilford’s townhouse before I remembered that I had promised to pay a visit to my relatives by marriage. I knocked on the door anyway, thinking to ask the earl whether I might send them a note. As it transpired, he was not yet home from a lecture, and so I had more than enough time while I waited for him in the drawing room.

If you find yourself thinking that I had enough time to make good on that promise, you would be more or less correct. The Camhersts lived not far from Lord Hilford, in Mornetty Square, and it would not have taken me above twenty minutes to get there and back. But I did not know how long they would keep me, and it was of the utmost importance that I warn Lord Hilford about the intruders at Mr. Kemble’s as soon as possible. If any of the visitors to the symposium were behind this outrage, we had limited time in which to find out—even more limited time in which to do anything about it.

So I told myself, at least. The truth is that, although I had told my mother that Matthew, my brother-in-law, had agreed to take in little Jacob while I was gone, I had neglected to mention his lack of enthusiasm for the entire plan. His wife did not mind the addition of a temporary child, but Matthew minded very much the possibility of keeping him permanently. He might have even been the one who spilled the secret of the Erigan expedition where my mother could hear. Drained by my morning confrontation and by the dreadful news of the break-in, I was not minded to face anyone I did not consider a good friend.

I therefore wrote out an excuse and had Lord Hilford’s boot-boy run it to Mornetty Square. Then I linked my gloved hands together and paced, and worried, and made a hundred different (and useless) plans, until Lord Hilford came home.

When I heard his booming voice in the front hall, I did not trouble to wait in the drawing room. He saw me as I came to the door, and the white tufts of his eyebrows rose. “Not that it is anything but a pleasure to see you, Mrs. Camherst—but I judge by your expression that whatever has sent you here is not good.”

“It is not,” I confirmed, and explained while he divested himself of overcoat and hat. His cane he kept; over the years it had become less of an affectation, more of a necessity, as his rheumatism worsened. Lord Hilford followed me into the drawing room and lowered himself into a chair with a sigh.

“Mmmm,” he said when I was done. “Makes me wonder if someone has been to Vystrana. I’ve heard nothing from Iljish in Drustanev, but you know what the post is like. And someone might have slipped past them.”

The villagers were supposed to protect the nearby cavern from curiosity-seekers. It was the preserved dragonbone in that great cemetery which had given the first clues to the role of acid in that process. “We said nothing of it in the book,” I reminded Lord Hilford, referring to the monograph we had published after our expedition. “Only that the dragons tore apart their deceased kin and took the pieces to a certain cave. No one could assume preservation from that—nor could they find the cave.”

The flapping of the earl’s hand reminded me I was saying nothing he did not already know. “Still, it’s a possibility, and one we have to consider. Another possibility: Kemble talked.”

“If he had talked, would they have smashed up his laboratory?” I said indignantly. Then I saw the flaw in my own logic. “Ah. You are not accusing him of selling the secret—only of letting slip some hint that might have allowed another to guess what he’s doing.”

“Any of us might have done it,” Lord Hilford admitted. “Including me. I’d like to think I’m discreet, but—well. Scholars drink a great deal more than anyone thinks, and I don’t hold my liquor as well as I once did.”

I thought that I, at least, was unlikely to have betrayed our secret. Not out of any particular virtue; only from lack of opportunity. I hardly spoke to anyone who didn’t already know. But it would do no good to say that, and so I said only, “Is there anyone among the Colloquium’s visitors that you would suspect? Or among its members, I suppose.”

Lord Hilford grunted. “Several, unfortunately. There’s a ratty Marñeo fellow I don’t trust in the slightest; he’s been accused of passing other people’s research off as his own. Guhathalakar openly admits he’s working on the issue of preservation. No one in the Bulskoi delegation is, but they have more opportunity than most to go poking around in Vystrana. The Hingese… I’m sorry, Mrs. Camherst, but without more to go on, all I can do is guess.”

“Well, Mr. Wilker is still at Kemble’s, and they’ve spoken with the police; we can hope for some kind of lead.” I got up and paced again, fingers twisting about one another. “I wish I could do something to hurry the research along. Money is only helpful to a point; it cannot make Frederick Kemble’s brain work faster.”

“Attend to your own research,” Lord Hilford said, very reasonably. “You may find something of use there; or if you do not, then every bit we know about dragons is one more bit we can use to protect them. But, ah—if I may shift us from one nerve-wracking topic to another—”

It was enough to stop me pacing. I tried to remember the last time I had heard the earl so wary, and could not think of a single time. When I turned to look, he was chewing on the drooping end of his moustache. I waited, but he did not speak. “Oh, out with it,” I said at last, quite sharply. “My nerves are no less wracked for being forced to wait.”

“Natalie,” he said, reluctantly. “Or rather, her family.”

His granddaughter was not ordinarily a topic of any tension at all. Nor were her family, but—“Let me guess,” I said with a sigh. “They have decided I am not fit company for her. Well, everyone else in Scirland has come to the same opinion; I am not fit company for anyone .”

“That isn’t precisely it. They think you eccentric, yes, but for the most part harmlessly so. The trouble is that an eccentric is not good company for an unmarried young lady—not if she wishes to change that state.”

I frowned at him in surprise. “But Natalie is only—” My arithmetic caught up with my words, and stopped them. “Nearly twenty,” I finished heavily. “I see.”

“Quite.” Lord Hilford sighed, too, studying the head of his cane far more closely than it warranted. “And so her family is quite adamant that she should not accompany you on this expedition. You are likely to be gone for six months at least, likely more; it would be ruinous to her marital prospects. Old maids and all that. I’ve argued, truly I have.”

I believed him. Lord Hilford had progressive notions of what ladies might do, and he doted on Natalie besides; but in the end he was not his granddaughter’s guardian. “Have you spoken with her?”

“She knows how her family feels. I was hoping you might approach her—woman to woman, you know—and see if you can’t reconcile her to the situation. They aren’t intending to shackle her to some brute.”

If she did not look herself out a husband soon, though, she might have trouble finding anyone other than a brute. “I will see what I can do.”

Lord Hilford sounded relieved. “Thank you. You’ll have to be quick about it, though. I was intending to write this afternoon, but now I can tell you in person: the schedule has moved up. Can you and Wilker be ready to depart in two weeks?”

Had I been holding anything, I would have dropped it. “Two weeks?”

“If you can’t, then say so. But it may be another delay otherwise. There’s going to be a changeover at the Foreign Office, and the incoming fellow is not very keen on travellers going to Nsebu, not with the unrest in the area.”