Marie Brennan - A Natural History of Dragons

All of that was a distant hypothetical, though, soon lost behind the immediate necessity of our flight. The world narrowed to the simplest, most primitive of tasks: find water. Find food, what little could be got while making forward progress. Cover our tracks. Keep watch for dragons. Stay in the saddle, or put one foot in front of the other when the terrain made riding all but impossible.

Pray for Jacob.

Mr. Wilker was the closest thing among us to a doctor, and he could do nothing except bind the wound. It would have been dreadful enough, were Jacob lying in a bed; three days of grueling, cross-country flight made his condition dire. All the blood leached from his lips, and his eyes acquired a staring, blank quality, as every ounce of effort he could spare went into clinging to his saddle, and to life. I writhed with helplessness, my mind racing in futile, exhausted circles, trying and failing to find some way to help him. If I had entertained the slightest shred of hope that Khirzoff would take pity on us, I would have sent the others onward and waited with my husband for our pursuers to come. But I did not, and so the only thing to do was to press on, praying that we would make it to the ruins, and that rest there would restore my husband’s strength.

My prayer was doomed to failure, and I knew it.

We struggled at last up the back slope of the ruins, with the shattered wall rising before us. There, with shelter in sight, Jacob slid bonelessly from his saddle and crashed into the ground.

I cried out even before his sleeve had slipped from my grasp. Jerking my mount to a halt, I lurched down without grace and fell to my knees at my husband’s side. So sure was I that Jacob had died, I could not even speak his name.

But the touch of my hand on his cheek roused him. For one instant, I felt hope; he was not dead, and we had reached the ruins, and surely all would be well. The delusion, however, could not survive for long. He would not move from this place: Jacob knew it, and so did I.

I caught up one of his hands, clutched it in my own. He responded with the merest twitch of his cold fingers. The only words I could find were pitifully inadequate. “I’m so sorry.”

His white lips shaped the word “no.” Jacob closed his eyes, then opened them again, and mustered enough strength to speak in a bloodless whisper that went no further than my ears. “No regrets. Be strong, Isabella. Stop them.”

I had spared enough energy during our flight to tell the others what Khirzoff and Rossi were doing to the dragons, what I had found in that charnel house of a cellar. But how could I stop them? All I could do was flee.

The others had dismounted, forming a silent ring around me. The sun baked the silent ruins, a gentle blessing of warmth. I bent and kissed my husband’s lips, pressing my mouth to his until I felt the faintest trace of pressure in return, tears slipping down my face to wet his. When I drew back at last, Jacob’s eyes had closed for the last time, and a moment later his breath stopped.

You will think me inhuman for saying this. But even in the face of the worst grief I had ever experienced, grief piled atop mortal exhaustion and shock, my mind would not grant me the mercy of ceasing to work. It persisted in ticking along, like a soulless collection of gears, and so when—after how long, I do not know—I lifted my head to regard the others, the words that came from my mouth were nothing to do with my dead husband, stretched before me on the ground. I said, “I’m going to search the cave.”

It lay not twenty feet from where I knelt, covered once more by branches. I nodded toward it, and saw the others realize what I meant. In a tone half bewilderment, half groan, Mr. Wilker said, “The smugglers. Mrs. Camherst, with all due respect—do they truly matter?”

“Yes,” I said sharply. “They are part of this, Mr. Wilker—part of the same damnable conspiracy that has just killed my husband. Rossi said as much. I do not think it is opium they are smuggling; it is something else, and I am determined to find out what. Jacob told me to stop them, and I intend to honor his last words.”

The entire picture had almost come together in my head. Only a few pieces were missing. Khirzoff was an ambitious man, cultivating connections to the south, seeking to make a fortune for himself with Rossi’s work on the dragon bones. He feared our research on account of that. But Gritelkin did not die because of the dragons; he died because of the smugglers. And Khirzoff already had a fortune, at least a small one, with which to buy Rossi’s chemical laboratory, not to mention rich clothing and spices for himself. But he had come to it recently, or the rest of his surroundings would be better.

The keystone that would hold it all together lay here. I was sure of it.

Mr. Wilker accompanied me, because we had no rope, and he could lift himself from the cave where I could not. He could have gone alone, but I was determined to see with my own eyes. We struck a light on a fallen pine branch, which would do for a short-lived torch, and Mr. Wilker lowered me down, following a moment later.

The crates I had seen before were gone. It was possible the smugglers had emptied the entire place out the day I’d come here with Dagmira, leaving no evidence behind; but the only way to be certain was to look. Torch raised against the darkness, I went farther into the cave.

The way was cramped in places, but not enough to force us to crawl. And it did not go nearly as far back as I had feared: no more than two hundred feet, I judged. At that point, the cave ended in a wall of solid earth and stone.

Mr. Wilker brushed his hair from his face with one filthy hand and sighed. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Camherst. Whatever they were storing here, it’s gone.”

My gaze swept over the dirt, trying, in a most unscientific fashion, to deny its blank uselessness. There must be something. I would not allow there to be nothing. “Assuming what they did here was store, ” I murmured, going forward another few steps.

The signs were there, in the uneven shape of the earthen wall, the spots that might have been sharp gouges before the edges crumbled into softer slopes. Someone had been digging there, and not many days ago, either.

I dropped to my knees, jamming the narrow end of the torch into the ground, and began to scrabble at the dirt. The rigors of rock climbing and cave exploration had already roughened my hands beyond what befitted a lady; now I sacrificed the last bit of delicacy, tearing my nails as I clawed lumps of earth and stone away. And, as Mr. Wilker reached out to stop me, my persistence was rewarded.

It glimmered even before I wiped it clean on my sleeve and held it up to the light: a fragment of firestone, larger even than the one I had found in the grass above.

“This isn’t a cache,” I whispered. “It’s a mine. Khirzoff has found a source of firestone.”

Mr. Wilker took the stone from me, lips pursed in a soundless whistle. His Niddey accent came through strongly as he said, “If Bulskevo’s laws are anything like Scirland’s, by all rights this belongs to the tsar.”

For such a glorious find, Khirzoff might well receive a reward from his master. But how much more wealth could be gained by smuggling the stones across the border and selling them in Chiavora? He would have to do it slowly; a sudden glut of firestones would be noticed, even if they were sold in secret. But it would not take many at all to fund Rossi’s efforts, and pay for some new luxuries in the bargain. Given enough time, the stones and the innovation of dragonbone—lightweight, all but indestructible; better even than steel—could make Khirzoff one of the wealthiest men in the world.

“You know more of politics and law than I do,” I said, my voice tight. “What might the tsar do, if he discovered his vassal was stealing from him in this fashion?”