Why did Wyvernmire even bother to hire linguists when echolocation is more similar to Sophie’s Morse code than it is to any language I’ve ever known?
‘Give it here,’ Gideon says, nodding towards the loquisonus machine.
‘I’m fine—’ I begin, but he’s already pulling it towards him.
I feel my cheeks flush with irritation, but force a laugh. ‘What makes you think you’ll do any better than me?’
‘I’m just … better suited,’ he replies.
‘I had no idea boys were better suited to listening toultrasonic dragon calls than girls,’ Sophie says before I can spit back my own reply.
‘Not because I’m a boy, although the art of codebreakingistraditionally a man’s domain.’ Gideon smirks. ‘But I’ve been around a lot of dragons.’
I swallow down my next retort as my curiosity gets the better of me. ‘You have?’
‘How about a field trip?’ Dr Seymour interrupts.
We load the two loquisonus machines and other tools into a small pull-along buggy and traipse into the forest. I breathe in the fresh air and lift my face to the sun. Since meeting Muirgen and Rhydderch in the field when translating for Borislav, I’ve started seeing dragons everywhere. Flying past my window in the morning, patrolling the forest or landing in the courtyard to converse with Guardians. I can never keep my eyes off them. I haven’t seen this many dragons in the same place since the war and, even though they pay absolutely no attention to me, I can’t stop myself from hazarding guesses with Marquis about what species they are or which languages they might speak.
‘Right,’ Dr Seymour says as we stop in a small clearing.
I can see the green of the tennis court through the trees.
‘Headphones on and find the right frequency.’
I step towards Sophie, hoping to share a loquisonus machine with her, but she glares at me and pairs with Katherine instead. So I kneel over the other machine with Gideon, my stockings soaking up the damp from the forest floor, and twist the dials on our machine until the crackling subsides and I find the ultrasonic frequency that echolocation exists on.
‘Remember, there are no blockers here,’ Dr Seymour tells us quietly, glancing up above the trees. ‘So you must under no circumstances play back any of the echolocation calls you record. If you do, the dragons will be able to hear.’
I nod, and Gideon glances nervously at the gold, trumpet-like speakers on the machines as if they might suddenly come to life. A clicking sound fills my ears. I pause. Is it a Trill-type13 or a Skrill-type62? I reach for the index cards in the buggy, but suddenly a huge shadow passes over us. I stare upwards as sunlight floods us again and a dragon flies towards the tennis court. The clicks crackle in my ears and I press my headphones closer.
‘Can anyone identify that dragon?’ Dr Seymour says softly. She’s peering at it through a pair of binoculars.
Gideon flicks through the photogram book.
‘It might be Soresten,’ he says. ‘A hundred and ten years old, male, a British Sand Dragon.’
There is a long sequence of social calls, starting with a Trill-type2. I know what that means. The dragon has seen something of interest.
But who is he talking to?
I squint in the sunlight, staring past the edge of the forest and the tennis court to the fields that lead to the lake. There’s a hut there, apparently abandoned since the Great War. Perched on top of it, a hazy, glittering blue shape, is another dragon.
‘That one’s Muirgen,’ I say confidently. ‘She’s the only blue Western Drake here.’
Soresten hovers above her and a Trill-type10 soundsin my ears. Suddenly Muirgen swoops downwards, landing effortlessly in the fields out of my view. Soresten is still airborne, a glint of gold in the sky. Then comes another sequence of social calls, different from the first, but still similar. It begins with what sounds like a Trill-type10, but it’s longer, with an inflection at the end, like the intonation humans make at the end of a question. I flick through the index cards, looking for one that describes what I’ve just heard, but find nothing.
‘Let me listen,’ Gideon murmurs, holding out his hand for a turn of the headphones.
I ignore him as another dragon appears beyond the hut, circling once overhead before landing with Muirgen in the field.
Dr Seymour is crouching next to Katherine, sharing her headphones. ‘Did you see what happened there?’ she says.
I shake my head, wishing I had the correct answer.
‘The dragons both did the same thing, landing in the field. Soresten is a chief patrol dragon, so it’s likely they did so on his orders.’
‘But he said different things to them,’ I say. ‘The calls he used were different.’
