‘But don’t dragons have other ways of talking to each other?’ I interrupt.
Muirgen cocks her head, her eyes unblinking.
It iscrucialthat none of the dragons guarding Bletchley Park learn of the codebreaking going on inside the glasshouse.
Dr Seymour would kill me if she knew I was here. But if we want to crack the code in three months then surely she must realise that we can’t keep playing this guessing game. I have to ask the question I came here to ask.
‘Can you communicate using a … sixth sense? One that humans don’t have?’
A field mouse scurries across my shoe and, before I can recoil, Muirgen skewers it on the end of a long black claw. She lifts it to her face and watches as it jerks several times, then dies. She swallows it whole.
‘What exactly are you referring to?’
‘Something a dragon told me about a long time ago,’ I lie. ‘He said that dragons can speak to each other in a … in a sort of code.’ I try to look innocent. ‘Is that right?’
A low growling sound comes from Rhydderch’s chest. Black smoke is rising from Muirgen’s nostrils and, as she takes a step closer to me, the moon illuminates the spikes along her back.
‘A code?’ she purrs. ‘Isthatwhat you think it is?’
‘Quiet, Muirgen,’ Rhydderch snaps. He bares his teeth at me. ‘What has your Prime Minister been telling you?’
‘Nothing,’ I say quickly. ‘I told you, it was a dragon. Was he telling the truth? Can dragons read each other’s minds?’
‘How dare you come here seeking knowledge that is not yours to possess,’ Muirgen snarls.
‘I’m a translator,’ I say calmly, even as my body grows hot with fear. ‘Of course I’m interested in knowing all the ways dragons can communicate—’
‘The Koinamens belongs to dragons and dragons alone!’ Muirgen roars.
She rears backwards and stamps her two front feet on the ground. The impact sends me flying and I wince as I land on my bad arm six feet away. I scramble to my feet, ignoring the burning pain in my wrist.
‘Please,’ I say, glancing back towards the manor house. ‘You’ll wake everyone up. I just want to know why you and Borislav didn’t speak the same … Koinamens.’
‘The dragon who told you of it betrayed his own kind,’ Rhydderch says. ‘It is a mystery that must remain among dragons.’
His tail flicks in Muirgen’s direction and she takes a step backwards. They’re communicating, I realise.
They’re talking in echolocation.
‘But why?’ I ask. ‘Why must it stay a mystery?’
‘It is sacred,’ Muirgen hisses. ‘It is the only thing we dragons have that you humans cannot take for your own.’
Sacred? As far as I know, dragons don’t have a religion. What could be sacred about a language?
‘Are there different types of Koinamens?’ I say. ‘Different … sequences?’
‘I’m about to skin this human alive, Rhydderch—’
Muirgen thrusts her huge head towards me, but Rhydderch snaps at her face. She roars in pain and I stumble backwards. Rhydderch brings his head close to mine, so close that I can see a line of downy fur on his snout.
‘You are making the surviving Peace Agreement very difficult to uphold,’ he snarls. ‘I suggest you leave, before I let my sister murder you.’
I nod. They have no intention of telling me anything. I take a few steps backwards, edging away slowly, then stop. Rhydderch turns towards Muirgen and brings his snout close to hers. Blood is dripping from a wound made by his teeth, just beneath her left eye. The two dragons remain motionless and then slowly the wound begins to shrink. I squint in the moonlight. Am I seeing what I think I’m seeing? The edges of the wound are pulling together like a thread sewing two corners of a cloth, and suddenly there’s only a spot of blood where the injury was.
‘How did you do that?’ I ask Muirgen.
I run through everything Marquis has ever told me about dragon anatomy, but I can’t remember anything about self-healing wounds.
