Cindra steps aside, gesturing with her snout.
‘Your tunnel-detecting machine,’ she tells me in Cannair with a glint in her eye.
I pick the loquisonus up off the sand and it’s cold and hard in my arms.
‘Thank you, Cindra. Your tunnels. Are they—’
‘Still inhabitable, according to Abelio,’ she replies. ‘But we have no use for them now.’
She stares across the beach at the wyverns, who are curled up in a blue pile on the beach, sleeping. There are so few of them now. Their kill call would have only been able to reach one Bulgarian at a time, unless they were part of a bondedgroup. Such repeated concentration must have cost the wyverns all their energy and by the time they got to Krasimir, there simply wasn’t enough left.
As Cindra slinks away to join them, I look at Hollingsworth. ‘Did they find your father’s journal, too?’
Hollingsworth nods. ‘Cindra returned it to me, along with her own writings. And I found more of my father’s sketches in Canna House. I was born there, you know.’
I remember the watercolours of the wyverns.
‘It’s all going straight to the Academy to be preserved. The first known study of the language called Cannair. I believe you added some of your own, too, Vivien?’
‘They’re more like trans-estimations,’ I say. ‘I’ve never known a language to have so many layers of meaning. I don’t know if an accurate translation will ever be possible.’
Hollingsworth nods. ‘I was going to offer you a job, in the event that—’
‘In the event that you didn’t have to turn Viv into a blood sacrifice?’ Atlas says coldly.
I lay a hand on his arm as their eyes lock.
‘But,’ Hollingsworth continues, ‘I’m afraid we won’t be going back to our old lives just yet.’
I stand up straighter.
She lowers her voice. ‘We have made a mockery of the Bulgarian Council of Regals. The Bolgoriths that died here today were from Krasimir’s regality, but there are numerous others.’
‘What are you saying, Dr Hollingsworth?’ I ask as fear rises in my stomach.
‘The war isn’t over,’ she replies. ‘How could it be?’
‘But Krasimir’s army is defeated.’
Hollingsworth’s mouth trembles. ‘The Council of Regals didn’t take Krasimir’s invasion of Britannia seriously, Daria tells me. They knew that he was not of sound mind and so refused to send their own regalities to war. But now that he is dead, they will be forced to retaliate. And rumour has it that Krasimir was one of the most . . . accommodating of the regals.’
‘Then we need to tell everyone to stop celebrating!’ Atlas bursts. ‘We need to warn—’
Hollingsworth holds up a wrinkled hand. ‘Parliament is already calling an emergency session. We need not alarm the people yet. Let them rest a little first. And do not despair, both of you.’ She watches an Austrian Solar-tail soar through the sky. ‘This time, we have allies.’
I sigh and sit down against the cliff, setting the loquisonus in the sand. Atlas sinks down next to me and we watch Hollingsworth congratulate another group of rebels. They eye her warily. I’m not the only one who has lost my faith in her. The oyster-catchers begin their song and out on the sea a ship is sailing towards us.
‘That’s what we’re going home on,’ Atlas says, pointing to it. ‘Seeing as the Bolgoriths took out our planes.’
I cradle my bloody arm, wincing at the thought of stitches. ‘Do you think there’s anything left of London?’
‘If new Bolgoriths are coming, they won’t arrive for several days,’ Atlas says grimly. ‘That will give us time to assess, to set up some new defences.’ He throws an arm around me. ‘Thefirst thing we’ll do is find Ursa. We’ll send a dracovol, to tell Dr Seymour where we are.’
I give him a tiny smile, the anticipation of seeing my sister again rising above my renewed terror.
‘Viv?’
‘Atlas?’
