I put the loquisonus down and sit on the grass.
Serena holds out her hand for the headphones. ‘Can you still hear it?’
I nod as she sets them on her ears and her eyes light up.
‘If there’s an entrance around here, a wyvern is bound to come out at some point, right?’ Marquis says.
‘You do understand the concept ofunderground tunnels, don’t you, Featherswallow?’ Gideon snorts.
‘Wyverns still have to fly,’ I snap.
‘And so the Swallow waits. Again,’ Serena mutters, handing me back the headphones. ‘Our radio listeners might just die of boredom.’
‘You were the ones supposed to track and find the wyverns, Serena,’ I say. ‘I’m just here to master the language.’
‘Ah yes, we forgot we are merely your footmen,’ she replies. ‘The meagre enablers of your higher translation powers.’
Marquis grins and I turn my back on them both, closing my eyes in the sun. We wait, listening to the birds and the calls from the loquisonus machine. I pull a thick blade of grass from the ground and suck the sweet sap from the end as my stomach gurgles. Marquis leans back against a tree, his eyes on the cliff face.
‘How was Karim when you last saw him?’ I ask quietly.
‘Furious.’
‘I can’t imagine Karim furious.’
Marquis snorts. ‘He couldn’t believe we were being sent to Canna without Cormac or any of the adult rebels. He called it a suicide mission.’
I nod, thinking of Krasimir. ‘He’s not wrong.’
‘Hollingsworth is willing to risk our lives to find thesewyverns, so why hasn’t she told us how they’re supposed to help us?’ He raises an eyebrow. ‘Do you think, maybe, she doesn’t know?’
I shake my head. ‘You said it yourself: she’s risking our lives. She wouldn’t do that unless she had a bloody good reason to.’
‘Then why hasn’t she . . .’ Marquis trails off as he bolts upright. ‘I saw something. In the water.’
We all peer into the pool. Its surface ripples in the centre.
‘A shadow,’ Serena says lazily.
‘Or a fish,’ I offer.
‘No,’ Marquis insists. ‘It was bigger than that.’
I stare at the water, willing myself to see a shape. A dark shadow blooms beneath the surface as if summoned. I clutch Marquis’s arm. The shadow is huge, taking up the whole pool, but in the blink of an eye it’s gone.
We’ve found the wyvern tunnels.
‘The entrance is beneath the water,’ Serena says.
‘One of them must have seen us and gone back inside,’ Atlas replies.
‘So how do we get in?’ I ask.
‘I . . . are you sure we want to go in there?’ Gideon says. ‘Underground tunnels full of wyverns, and only an underwater exit?’
‘Stay here if you want,’ I say. ‘But this is what we came for.’
I hide the loquisonus and the journal with our packs behind the waterfall, then turn back towards the pool.
