Marie Brennan: The Tropic of Serpents

“Unrest?” I echoed, my mother’s comments rising to mind.

“Ah, yes—that hasn’t reached the papers yet,” Lord Hilford said. “I had it from our man in the Foreign Office. A group of Royal Engineers were ambushed while surveying the south bank of the Girama, which is territory that is supposed to be firmly in our control. It seems Eremmo has quieted sufficiently under the Ikwunde yoke for the inkosi to start looking outward once more. It has certain people rather worried.”

As well it should, given the military success the Ikwunde had enjoyed in the last fifty years, under one warlike inkosi after another. Still, I had faith in our soldiers there; and besides which, the river region between Bayembe and Eremmo was clear on the other side of the country from Nsebu. “One scare after another,” I sighed. “I am beginning to think this expedition will never happen.”

“It will, Mrs. Camherst, if we move quickly enough. Otherwise we’ll have to argue the new fellow around.”

We had already spent months arguing the previous fellow around. I reviewed the state of my affairs, and suppressed the unladylike desire to curse. I had counted on Natalie to be my companion on this journey. Would it be worse to travel alone—with an unmarried man, no less—or to find some other woman on short notice? Or rather, would suffering the latter be worse than suffering the consequences of the former?

Either way, I could not let it change my answer to Lord Hilford. “I can be ready, yes. You will have to ask Mr. Wilker yourself.”

“I know what Tom will say.” The earl levered himself up out of his chair. “Two weeks it is, then. I’m sure you need to prepare. And in the meanwhile, I will look into the matter of this break-in.”

“Miss Oscott is here,” the footman informed me when I returned home. “I believe she is in your study, ma’am.”

Natalie. I would have preferred to delay my promise to Lord Hilford, but if I was to leave in two weeks, I simply could not spare the time. “Thank you,” I said, distracted, and went upstairs.

My study had been my husband’s study, once. The servants had called it the study for a good two years after his death; it was not the sort of room women normally laid claim to. But eventually their speech had shifted. No doubt that owed a great deal to the amount of time I spent there, often in the company of Natalie Oscott.

She was indeed there, tacking a sheet of paper onto the piece of corkboard we had hung for the purpose. “Oh, good heavens, Natalie,” I said when I saw the figure drawn on it. “ That again?”

“I’ve improved it,” she said, flashing a grin at me over one shoulder. “On advice from an enthusiast in Lopperton. He thinks I’m a lad named Nathaniel—I do a very good boy’s hand, when I put my mind to it. On account of falsifying my brothers’ workbooks, when they had not written the exercises our tutor had set. What do you think?”

The sheet of paper bore a large diagram, whose predecessors I had seen several times before. A wing spread across the page, with measurements carefully marked out, and annotations I could not read from where I stood. Even at range, though, one difference was apparent. “Are the wings curved?” I asked, curious despite myself.

“Yes, he thinks that would work better than a straight line. And he suggested an alteration to the harness, too, which he is going to try for himself as soon as he can get it built.”

To be perfectly honest, I thought they were both mad. True, as I said in the previous volume of my memoirs, I had been obsessed with dragon wings since I was a small child, and the idea of being able to join them in the sky was attractive. But a human being cannot possibly achieve the pectoral strength necessary to fly by flapping artificial wings—that having been Natalie’s first notion. The best he (or she) can hope for is to glide, and even then, I had my doubts.

But Natalie found the notion an intriguing challenge. For her, the puzzle was intellectual: was it possible to engineer such a thing? In pursuit of that question, she had taught herself a great deal of mathematics, most of which I understood not at all. She had also entered into correspondence with others, for she was not the only one with an interest in the matter.

Natalie had not yet attempted to construct or test any of her designs, for which I was grateful. Although my husband had called me the queen of deranged practicality, putting into practice ideas others would never think to attempt, even I have my limits. Those limits may, as this narrative will show, lie further out than I claim (and honestly believe)—but I never know that until I pass them. And that, I invariably do under circumstances in which going further seems to be the only feasible course of action. It is only afterward that the “deranged” part of “deranged practicality” becomes apparent to me.

Besides, I was less sanguine about others’ foolishness, and I should not like to lose my closest companion to a broken neck. Natalie had been a great source of comfort to me since Jacob died. It made my heart all the lower, thinking that I could not bring her with me to Nsebu.

She saw my fallen countenance, but mistook the cause. “I promise you, Isabella—I have no intention of committing my own bones to the tender mercies of physics. At least not until after Mr. Garsell has conducted enough tests of his own to assure me the design is sound.”

“That isn’t it.” I sighed and went to my desk—Jacob’s desk, once—in front of the broad windows overlooking the back garden. The surface was cluttered with books and stray pages, my preserved sparkling Greenie standing guard over them all; I had forbidden the maid to touch anything there, even to dust. Maps of Eriga, travellers’ reports, a draft of an article I was considering asking Lord Hilford to submit for me, under his own name. The Colloquium would not accept a paper from a woman.

Perhaps it was the reminder of the Colloquium’s requirements that made my voice more bitter than I intended. “I spoke with your grandfather today. About your family.”

“Oh.” That one word might have been a valve, letting out all the air and vitality that had made her so animated.

I lowered myself into the familiar leather of my chair. “You know, then. That they don’t want you to go to Eriga.”

“They want me to stay here and find a husband. Yes.” Natalie turned and paced a few steps away.

Her deficit of enthusiasm was plain enough that I could read it without seeing her face. “It needn’t be bad, Natalie. You have your grandfather on your side, and from what you tell me, your family has at least some understanding of your interests. My father consulted a matchmaker to obtain a list of unmarried men who might share their libraries with me. I am sure you can go further, and find yourself a husband who will support you in your work.”

“Perhaps.”

She did not sound convinced. Before I could muster the words to develop my argument, however, Natalie spoke again. “It is an untenable situation, and I know it. One way or another, I must be dependent upon someone. If not a husband, then one of my brothers, or—” She caught herself. “I cannot ask that of them. But how much less can I ask it of some stranger?”

I had not missed that or. She had been about to list a third option, and had stopped herself. I could guess why. Rather than approach it directly, though, I said, “Do you not want a husband? Presuming you could get a good one.”