It takes me a moment to realise who Wyvernmire is talking to. The dim light from the oil lamp illuminates a small table and behind it, two people are waiting. The first is a tall man with olive skin and long, dark curls. When my eyes land on the second, horror settles in my bones.
His face seems to pale at the sight of me. I take him in – shiny Guardian uniform and smooth, white hands. They hover over something on the desk, trembling as if the object is too precious to touch. I feel a nervous swoop in my stomach. The contraption is small and made of steel, with a few more dials than I’m used to. But I know what it is. Just like the face of Atlas’s murderer, I could recognise one anywhere.
Ralph Wyvernmire has a loquisonus machine.
WHERE DID HE GET IT?
‘Prime Minister,’ the first man says. ‘It is an honour to see you again.’
‘You have the girl,’ Ralph says, his gaze flitting from me to his aunt. ‘How?’
Wyvernmire’s eyes narrow. ‘She was arrested in London. See that you don’t lose her this time, Ralph.’
Two red spots appear on Ralph’s cheeks at Wyvernmire’s reference to how I escaped him in the glasshouse last year. Marquis knocked him unconscious before Atlas insisted we drag him to safety when Chumana set the glasshouse alight. Being the Prime Minister’s nephew never got Ralph the special treatment he craved. Neither did shooting Atlas dead. A wave of grief knocks the breath from me.
The two men step aside as Wyvernmire takes a seat at the table. I glance around the tent, trying to ignore the staring eyes of the wyvern heads. One has long white fur – the lastremnants of an extinct species dismembered and passed down in the Wyvernmire family. The furnishings are worn; a lumpy armchair and a small cooking stove. A faded, flowery curtain, perhaps stolen from a nearby house, sections off a private living space. I see the edge of a camp bed poking out, the bedspread turned down.
Wyvernmire pulls the loquisonus machine towards her and glances up at me. ‘You know what this is, of course?’
I give her a curt nod.
‘A gift,’ she says, ‘from my dear friend Andronikos Svetoslav, the last descendant of Tsar Theodore Svetoslav of the fourteenth century.’
The man next to Ralph looks up and smiles, flashing yellow teeth. I suddenly picture him in a tuxedo and hear the vibrant singing of violins.
‘You were at the Bletchley Ball,’ I say to him. ‘The last Bulgarian prince. Why are you supporting a woman who has allied with the dragons that killed your own people?’
Andronikos takes a step towards me. ‘In massacring my country, the Bulgarian dragons originally sought to liberate themselves from Ottoman rule.’ His voice is woody and seductive. ‘Then the probing of linguistic experts into their secret, telepathic language added fuel to the fire. The misfortune was that they didn’t differentiate between their foreign human oppressors and their fellow native Bulgarians.’
‘So afterliberatingtheir occupied country, the Bulgarian dragons are now occupying mine?’ I say.
‘Since your Prime Minister extended her generous invitation to me, I have conversed with many Bulgariandragons. It is my belief that they would have spared the true Bulgarian people, had they been able to separate them from the Turkish oppressors.’
I roll my eyes and Andronikos smiles.
‘One day, Bulgaria will thrive with human life again. And when it does, the British and Bulgarian humans will be armed with a protection we didn’t have before.’ He nods towards the loquisonus machine. ‘It is one of the originals from Bulgaria, smuggled out with me when I fled. It has seen a few improvements since then and is fully functional—’
‘But what do you need it for?’ I interrupt, looking to Wyvernmire.
She inhales through her nose as she studies me. ‘You will be glad to know, Vivien, that I am not as impulsive as you think. When you destroyed the last loquisonus machine at Bletchley Park I immediately sought another. A mere precaution, of course, in the event our new Bulgarian friends stray out of line.’
I blink.
The Bulgarian humans created the first loquisonus machine almost a century ago and were massacred by their dragons for it. Dr Seymour, a rebel spy who taught me how to use the machine in Bletchley Park’s glasshouse, was able to make two, more advanced replicas, which Atlas and I destroyed. Anyone else with the knowledge of how to build another is dead.
‘Andronikos knows how to use this one, but he cannot translate the calls. I was pondering a solution to that problem when it walked straight up to me in an airfield in Croydon.’ The Prime Minister’s serene smile stretches so wide I see her teeth.
I shake my head. ‘Echolocation is impossible to translate. The Bulgarian humans failed and so did we, when we attempted it in the glasshouse.’
‘That’s not what you said back when you informed me you had cracked the dragon code,’ Wyvernmire tells me coldly.
Wyvernmire doesn’t know that the dragons’ telepathic language, the Koinamens, is dependent on a bond. That it’s impossible to accurately translate into a written or spoken language. I can only understand the simpler calls between dragons, and my human brain is still unable to comprehend the deeper meaning behind each one, transmitted between dragons through emotions and mental images.
‘I was wrong,’ I reply. ‘It’s too complex for the human mind and even if wecouldtranslate it, it would endanger dragons everywhere. Humans would use it to control them.’ I raise an eyebrow at her. ‘You already know that, of course. It’s the reason there were loquisonus machines at Bletchley Park in the first place.’
‘Indeed,’ Wyvernmire says. ‘And you told me yourself that I would need an understanding of echolocation to keep the Bulgarian dragons in check. You offered to be my translator, or don’t you remember?’
I remember how desperate I was to stop the Bulgarian invasion back at Bletchley Park. I remember Atlas’s face when I told him translating for Wyvernmire could be the only way of stopping the Bolgoriths from gaining full control. But that was before I knew what echolocation is to the dragons and before I smashed what I thought was the last loquisonus machine to exist.
