I raise my eyebrows in surprise. Me, the face of the rebellion? Has Hollingsworth forgotten that a mere few months ago, I was trying to translate a secret, ultrasonic dragon language called the Koinamens to win the war for Prime Minister Wyvernmire?
‘We won’t publish it until you’re safely out of London,’ she says, her voice as deep as treacle.
Safely out of London.
Does that mean she finally thinks I’m ready?
I stare at the words beneath the sketch again and let out a small sigh. Draconic Translator. The title is one I’ve waited for my entire life. It’s oddly satisfying to see who I am printed in black and white, to be given a distinct definition of myself, a neat box to fit in amid the chaos my life has become.
The door in the corner leads to my own workspace, an office within Hollingsworth’s that used to be a cupboard. I set my satchel down on my small, pokey desk. The four walls that box me in like a dracovol in a cage are plastered with research papers – maps of various islands, handwritten pronunciation guides and lists of dietary habits. And tacked on top of them is a rudimentary drawing that Hollingsworth sketched in front of me. Three Bulgarian Bolgoriths, two black and one red.
General Goranov and his siblings.
Britannia has been in a three-way civil war between the human government, the rebels and Queen Ignacia since last year. And now that the Prime Minister has allied with the Bulgarian Bolgoriths – betraying her promise of peace to Queen Ignacia – barely a day goes by without a rebel attack on London.
I know a Bolgorith, but she was born in Britannia. Chumana, the pink dragon who set fire to 10 Downing Street before following me to Bletchley Park.
‘If we eliminate Goranov and his siblings,’ Hollingsworth told me a few weeks ago, ‘the Bulgarian presence in Britannia will crumble.’
The servants and Hollingsworth’s secretary think I’m here after having jumped at the chance to spend the war working for Britannia’s beloved Chancellor instead of sewing shirts for the soldiers like other First Class girls. And it’s not exactly a lie. Iamworking for Hollingsworth. But my true reason for being here, my mission, isn’t to help Britannia fight the rebels. It’s to help the rebels fight Prime Minister Wyvernmire and her army of Bolgoriths.
It’s to learn the language of the Hebridean Wyverns.
I’ve met wyverns before, thanks to my parents’ work in dragon anthropology. But the Hebridean species is different. They’re small, two-legged dragons with a cultural heritage that rivals that of any human community. They can supposedly be found on the Isle of Canna in Scotland, although they haven’t been sighted in years. It’s my job to learn everything about them, from their traditions to their tongue, so that when the rebels find them – and Hollingsworth seems adamant that they will – then I will somehow be able to communicate with them.
And convince them to help the rebels win the war.
Of course, the minor detail ofhowthese wyverns can make the Human-Dragon Coalition the victor in a three-way civil war has not yet been disclosed to me.
I sit down as London’s traffic screeches outside and reach for a scrap of paper on my desk. It’s a note from Hyacinth, Hollingsworth’s secretary and another debutante working for the war effort to escape the dutiful drudgery of First Class girlhood.
Dearest Pen,
Party? Tuesday at 8 o’clock, 36 Churton Street in Pimlico.
Pretty please.
H
She’s invited me several times already, ignoring my protests (‘It’s after curfew’) and my excuses (‘I can’t leave my roommate, she gets lonely’). Her insistence is mildly annoyingand the invitation goes against every rule in the how-to-be-an-undercover-rebel book, but part of me is glad that Hyacinth wants me around. She’s been a good friend to me these past three months.
Of course I can’t attend the party. What if somebody recognises me?
The journal of Patrick Clawtail, Oxford Fellow of Celtic Languages and dragon enthusiast, lies open on the desk where I left it yesterday. Hollingsworth gave it to me when I started working for her, right after Marquis landed our plane on Eigg. I only spent a few days on the island that houses the Coalition Headquarters before Hollingsworth sent for me.
Leaving my cousin and my sister, Ursa, behind was almost as hard as losing Atlas.
The journal details Clawtail’s interactions with the Hebridean Wyverns over the course of four years, ending abruptly in June 1866 when he was executed by the government for ‘inciting unrest between humans and dragons’.
It’s made of black leather and written in faded ink. Random clippings – a feather, a tuft of fur and a leaf that is still green but has long since lost any odour – are dispersed between daily entries, descriptions of the island and recordings of the Hebridean Wyverns’ complex language, which Clawtail named Cànan-Channaigh – Scottish Gaelic for ‘language of Canna’. He coined an English word for their language, too:Cannair.
I have managed to grasp its basic grammatical rules, but Clawtail fills several pages with his attempts to convey the meaning of many complicated words, so many that I lose myself in them. It seems he eventually gave up on the task.The later pages of the journal are entirely dedicated to the wyverns’ culture and customs, with not a single reference to language.
It doesn’t give me much to work with.
Clawtail and his family were supposedly the last people to lay eyes on the wyverns before they retreated further inland when the government came for the Clawtails and while his journal begins with enthusiasm at being able to study the wyverns’ tongue, it ends with a hurried, unfinished entry.
A voice behind me says, ‘Tensions between humans and dragons in Britannia were on the verge of explosion when that was written.’
