Marie Brennan - A Natural History of Dragons

It raised an unpleasant specter in my mind. “Dagmira—would anyone kill Gritelkin? Anyone in Drustanev, I mean.”

For once, her fury came as a relief. “What do you think we are? Just because Astimir is an idiot, playing those tricks—but you’re outsiders; half the village would say you deserved it. If he hadn’t been scaring us, too.”

Again, I had to listen to what she did not say. “Gritelkin was not an outsider, then. Even though he worked for the boyar.” I paced around the small room, the spring of my mind wound too tightly for me to rest, even though my body was tired. “We’re fair certain he’s dead, Dagmira. He’s been missing for too long, and—there’s just too much going on here. What about the smugglers? They’re outsiders, Stauleren; have they been known to kill people?”

“No,” she said, but the word came out uneasily. Enough strange things had been happening that I could understand why.

Lord Hilford had told me that a scientist must never reason ahead of his data. He thought the dragons had done it, and maybe they had; I knew well that it was my own partisan inclinations that made me not want to believe it. But there was another prospect in my mind, growing stronger each time another possibility was eliminated or reduced. “Would the boyar have any reason to kill him?”

Dagmira’s response was incredulous. “Why would he?”

“Gritelkin claimed he’d made arrangements for us to visit, but it doesn’t seem to have been true. Khirzoff isn’t happy we’re here.” That was hardly motivation for murder, though. My thoughts progressed further. “And Gritelkin sent a message saying it was a bad time to come. What if he meant more than the dragon attacks?”

“If the boyar didn’t want you here,” she said, “he could just order you to leave.”

That was true. However, its being true did not rule out other factors that might make Khirzoff reluctant to send us away. I just could not imagine what those might be.

I must have paced for some time without speaking, because Dagmira gave me a pointed attempt at a curtsey. “Do you need anything else?”

“Oh, don’t be like that, Dagmira,” I said, distracted. “I wanted you here because something about this place sets me on edge, and I trust you. But no, I don’t need anything else; rest well, and I’ll see you in the morning.”

She kissed my hands and went out. I lay down in bed, but it was a long time before I managed to sleep.

The next morning, as I went in search of breakfast, I encountered Rossi on the ground floor, emerging from some kind of cellar. He gave me an unfriendly look, though I nodded a polite good morning to him. “Will you be joining us on our ride today?” I asked, for Khirzoff had made mention of an excursion the night before.

“No,” Rossi said curtly. “I have work to do.”

“Yes, so the boyar said. Taxidermy.” It no doubt accounted for the unpleasant smell that wafted along with Rossi. “Would you be so kind as to show me where breakfast is laid?”

I asked mostly to annoy him; breakfast, given the layout of this lodge, would be in the same room where we had taken our supper the night before, but I wished to make him behave like a gentleman. As the words left my mouth, though—the Chiavoran words—a thought came to mind that jolted me where I stood.

The bottles of acid had been labeled in Chiavoran.

Under most circumstances, I would call it meaningless coincidence. Drustanev lay on the southern side of the mountains, facing into Chiavora; much of their trade went across that border. Naturally any such exotic thing would be brought into Vystrana from the south. And Rossi’s nationality could hardly be considered proof of guilt.

Except that the man was also, by reports, a scholar of some kind. He might be doing taxidermy for the boyar—but that required a knowledge of chemicals.

Had Astimir’s sulfuric acid ridden with us in the carts from Sanverio, destined for the boyar’s lodge?

I ate very little breakfast, sorting rapidly through the details of this possibility. Khirzoff discovered the Scirling visitors to Drustanev were natural historians—from the villagers? Or from the smugglers? Chatzkel’s men were working with at least one minion of the boyar; they, wishing not to rouse curiosity by ordering us away, arranged the charade with Astimir, intending that it should cause us to be driven out. Or Rossi might have done that, but he was not a known figure in the village. When it failed—no, he sent Ledinsky before we discovered Astimir’s perfidy. When Lord Hilford came inquiring into Gritelkin’s disappearance, then. At that point, Iosif Abramovich Khirzoff resolved to deal with us more directly.

I had no proof, but I had more than enough suspicion to make me very worried indeed. The only thing preventing worry from becoming outright panic was the unlikelihood of Khirzoff wishing us dead. If that were the case, I reasoned, Ledinsky could have done away with us any time those three days from Drustanev, or upon our arrival here.

It was not much to comfort myself with as we rode out on the boyar’s horses, around mid-morning. Khirzoff’s own mount was a stallion that he controlled with a hard grip, but the rest of the horseflesh was uninspiring; my own gelding made heavy weather of some of the slopes, lurching up or down them such that a lesser rider might have lost her seat. As it was, I found myself glad my divided skirts permitted me to sit astride.

I feigned difficulty, though, so as to draw Jacob to my side. In brief snatches as he steadied me or chivvied my horse on, I related my fears. I had no sooner finished than Mr. Wilker reined in at our side. He nodded toward Lord Hilford and Khirzoff, who were then turning their horses to continue on through a stand of fir, and spoke to Jacob in quiet Scirling. “I don’t like it.”

“Like what?” Jacob asked. He and I had kept toward the back, followed at a discreet distance by one of the boyar’s men, but my shoulders tensed, fearing we made a suspicious group.

“He’s been asking endless questions about our research. But I don’t think he’s interested in it,” Mr. Wilker said. “The earl is being his usual self—you know, holding back most of it because he hasn’t yet presented to the Colloquium, but hinting all over the place that we’ve discovered incredible things. And yet, Khirzoff doesn’t show the slightest bit of intellectual curiosity.”

I knew what Mr. Wilker meant about holding back. Lord Hilford had told us a lengthy story once about von Grabsteil, the fellow who had developed the theory of geologic uniformitarianism; he unwisely shared it with a like-minded colleague before he was ready to make public his conclusions, and that colleague, someone-or-another Boevers, had published a book on the topic first. It was a terrible feud at the time, though considered old history by the time I was a young woman, and of course it’s all but forgotten now; its effect, however, lingered in the paranoia of many scientists, who feared others would steal a march on them.

Frowning, Jacob said, “I thought you said he’s been asking ‘endless questions.’”

“He has, ” Mr. Wilker replied, frustrated. “But—oh, Khirzoff isn’t a scholar; surely you’ve gathered that. I don’t think he cares in the least about the science. He only wants to know what we’ve been doing.”

Jacob and I exchanged worried looks. “I thought it had to do with the smugglers,” I said, even more quietly than before. “But could it somehow be related to our research ?”