Trill-type15 (human)
Pitch-type3 (girl)
Trill-type15 (human)
Pitch-type4 (female)
UNKNOWN CALL
Trill-type15 (human)
UNKNOWN CALL
Pitch-type3 (girl)
UNKNOWN CALL
I’ve never seen echolocation used like this before. The dragon seems to be reciting a sequence of words that have no connection to one another. And it’s constantly repeating itself. The last call, the one I don’t recognise, is similar to Echo-576, which in the indexing system meansbreakorbetray.But it’s different, shorter and louder than Echo-576. And, I realise, it’s followed by a quiet whistle, so fast it’s barely audible. Sophie suggested what it could mean last week: a quiet whistle at the end of a call could denote a noun or a name for someone or something. I decide to go with the closest translation I have.
‘Someone who breaks or betrays,’ I mutter to myself. I go to the cupboard for a dictionary and rifle through the pages until I land on the word I want.
betrayalnoundeception, corruption, infraction, misdeed, break, delinquency, crime.
I underline the word that seems to sum up all the others:crime.I could be wrong, but I can always go back and pick another definition later.
Sound fills my ears again. The calls have changed now. There are two new ones, repeating one after the other in a constant alternation. The first is a friendly trill I recognise,and there are several different meanings for it in the index system. Trill-type93 has been translated several times as a verb:to slideorslither. But I’ve also heard it used by patrol dragons to meansnake. I search for a translation for the second call, a Sweep-type3. It’s been defined on an index card to signify something new, like a new human or a new patrol.
So I have two more potential words:snakeandnew.
This makes no sense, but thesnake newpattern continues, as persistent as it is confusing. I rub my eyes, staring unseeingly at the wordsnakein the dictionary. I should probably give up on this call and move on to testing my dialect theory. But what if this is a rebel communication? I can’t just pretend I haven’t heard it. Out of boredom more than anything else, I flick back through the dictionary until I find the definition of the wordnew. I know that, in Wyrmerian, the translation –fersc– is only used in relation to offspring. A young hatchling, or a human baby, can befersc, for example, but a new building, or a young plant, or a newcomer cannot.
I sigh. What ifnewisn’t the right word at all? What if the index card is wrong and the calls all mean something else? I read back through my logbook, looking for an account of the use of Sweep-type3, but there’s nothing there.
Gideon’s still outside smoking, talking to Dr Seymour. I can hear his low voice and Dr Seymour’s consoling one. Quickly, I reach for the other logbook, the one Gideon has been using. There it is, a mention of the Sweep-type3 from four months ago in handwriting I don’t recognise. But it’sbeen translated not asnew, like in earlier entries, but asfirst. So couldit be a mistranslation? I stare at the word:first.
It was used between three dragons discussing a first flight, in a recording dated 1 September.
I put the words together with the others I managed to translate, discardingfemale, which seems to be a synonym.
Human.
Girl.
Crime.
Snake.
First.
Human girl who committed a crime? A shiver runs down my spine. That could be said of most of the female recruits, but … Suddenly I’m remembering the words uttered by a voice that set my hair on end.
Do you have a blade, human girl? We both know we cannot count on your teeth.
I seize the dictionary and find the wordfirst.
first ordinal numberComing before all others in time
OR
