Voyage of the Basilisk : A Memoir by Lady Trent (9781429956369) (11 page)

He stared at me, a puzzled line creasing his brows. “What do you mean? What costume?”

My son had grown up in Pasterway and Falchester, at a time when we could not spare the money for seaside holidays. “When ladies go sea-bathing, they wear special clothing. So as not to be … indecent when the fabric gets wet.”

You may doubt that I delivered this explanation with a straight face, given that I was kneeling on the shore in men’s trousers at the time. But I meant it quite sincerely: trousers were an eminently practical choice—even the local women wore them, with long tunics over—but getting sopping wet in them was another matter entirely. It had happened from time to time in Eriga, but only by accident or when I had no choice. And besides, when those around you are wearing only loincloths, immodesty becomes a relative thing.

“Who cares?” Jake said, with the careless shrug of the young. “There’s nobody here to see. Only Abby.”

“And Elizalde,” I pointed out. “And all the people of Dragon Turtle Bay.” I might never see them again, but that did not mean I wanted them telling stories for years to come about the scandalous foreign woman who went swimming in men’s attire.

Jake did not see my reasoning. “So? There’s dragon turtles! Isn’t this what you came here for? Isn’t this the whole point of us going around the world?”

It was. And as much as I hoped to encourage my son to follow in my footsteps as a naturalist, sending him to observe dragon turtles in my place was not the best way to conduct my research. Why, then, was I so reluctant to go into the water?

Again, readers may disbelieve me when I say this, but the reason was right in front of me: my son. Jake knew I was a naturalist, and knew this involved me doing a variety of things that were not considered socially acceptable at home. He had heard some percentage of the rumours about me, I was sure, because it is impossible to quash such matters entirely. But if I had been outrageous on previous expeditions, I found myself surprisingly reluctant to behave in such ways in front of my son. The nobler part of me said I did not want to set a bad example for him. The more selfish part said that I did not want him to think less of me.

But which sort of mother would I rather be? The sort who did not go swimming without a proper costume—which in those days consisted of voluminous pantaloons and a knee-length overdress, all in a stiff fabric which would not cling when wet—or the sort who did what she had sailed halfway around the world to do?

“Very well,” I said. “Let us go swimming with dragons.”

*   *   *

We paid two local women for the use of their goggles, which they employed in pearl-diving. With the glass lenses protecting my eyes, I was able to see clearly beneath the water—and found myself in a different world entirely.

The ocean floor spread out below me, plunging steeply downward in narrow gulches between the islands. Kelp forested the sides of these gulches, and fish swam through them in glittering schools. The sunlight here became a visible thing, bars of radiance slicing through the water. Floating above it all, I felt as if I were flying—and my readers, I trust, understand what joy that brought me.

Jake became my instructor, passing on what he had learned from Suhail: how to pike my body and dive, how to pinch my nose and blow to relieve the pressure in my ears. I was not as agile in the water as Jake, for he was young, had more (and more recent) experience, and was less burdened by fabric besides; he swam in his drawers, while I swam fully clothed. But I did not need to be a champion swimmer to see the dragon turtles, for they are both huge and relatively fearless of human company.

In shape they are more like enormous turtles than anything else. Their shell alone is often two meters or more in length, and when they extend their flippers, a swimmer feels positively tiny in comparison. The name “dragon turtle,” however, derives from the shape of the head, which is indeed like that of a Dajin dragon: a thrusting, squarish muzzle; flaps of skin depending from the jaw; long whiskers which dance in the current as the turtle swims.

They come on land to lay their eggs, and I am told they are pathetically clumsy then, hauling themselves along the ground with their flippers. In the water, though, they are serene and graceful, propelling themselves with easy strokes, changing direction with the casual turn of one limb. I floated above one, watching as he steered a course between two up-thrusting rocks, and scarcely remembered to lift my head for air. (There are hollow tubes one may use for breathing without having to lift the head. They were not employed in that region of Yelang, however, and I lacked the experience to know in advance that such a thing might be of assistance.)

When I had seen all I could for the moment, Jake swam over to me. “May I? Please?”

“By all means,” I said, and my son dove.

We had delayed this maneuver because of the risk that the
lêng kuh
would startle and swim off. As indeed it did—but not before Jake had laid hold of its shell.

D
RAGON
T
URTLE

Then its slow drift turned much more business-like, moving off at what I estimated to be two or three meters per second. Which is not so very fast when compared with a galloping horse, but in the water it is impressive—and all the more so when your son is not moving under his own power, but rather is being pulled along by an enormous dragon turtle.

I swam after them in some alarm, fearing to lose my son out among the islands, but did not have to go far before Jake released the creature and kicked for the surface. He broke into the air with a shout of joy. “Mama! Did you see?”

“I did,” I said, and then did not get another word in edgewise for several minutes, as Jake told me every detail several times over. I had never seen him so exhilarated. His only regret was that he had not been able to go farther, but it transpired that when the
lêng kuh
began swimming away, the sudden acceleration had startled Jake into releasing some of his air. He wanted to try again, but by then the creature was gone, and despite the tropical waters I was beginning to feel a chill. We returned to our fisherman’s boat, and thence to the shore, where Abby had bargained for blankets to wrap us in. I was grateful for both the warmth and the concealment of my bedraggled state.

Once I was something more like dry, we ventured among the tile-roofed huts of the village to one where some men were butchering a dragon turtle. Much of its substance was already gone, but I was able to study the flippers and the shell, and (through the good assistance of Elizalde) confirm with the men that neither the bones nor the carapace disintegrated after death. Indeed, the people of that region make use of almost every part of the
lêng kuh,
even carving the bones into needles—though not fish-hooks, for they believe it would be deeply offensive to the creatures of the sea if they put the bones to such use. The scutes of the shell, once separated, boiled, and polished, are used in the same manner as ordinary tortoiseshell, and are much prized for ladies’ hair ornaments throughout Yelang, for their distinctive blue-and-green mottling.

I would very much have liked to see a carcass that had been less thoroughly interfered with, but the people of the bay do not take a dragon turtle every day, and we could not afford to spend too long there. We therefore bid them farewell, with many thanks, and returned to Va Hing.

SEVEN

Tom’s new contact—The gold rush—Into Yelang—A mated pair—Soldiers in the mountains—Return to Va Hing

The city of Va Hing has long been a cosmopolitan port. It drew trade from all over Dajin well before Yelang seized it as one of their possessions, and although that seizure still draws resentment from the native Hingese (who dislike being forced to exchange their own ways for the pigtail and other Yelangese habits), no one can deny that the local economy has thrived under Yelangese control. From the deck of the
Basilisk
I could see the streets and buildings of the city spreading out through the shallow bowl of the valley in which it sat: a sea of orange roof tiles packed closely together around small courtyards and narrow lanes, more densely populated than any city in the world. Va Hing is not large in terms of geography, but it boasts wealthy merchants and great temples, industrial companies and busy markets, two separate universities and a strong navy.

It also, like all great cities, has an underclass of people who engage in work that skirts the line of legality, where it does not cross that line entirely. During my absence, one fellow of this sort approached Tom with a peculiar offer.

“He thought I was here to hunt dragons,” Tom said upon my return, quite late that night.

I was caught between exhaustion and elation for what I had seen that day, and did not quite follow him. “I would not object to studying a carcass—although I thought there were laws restricting the hunting of dragons?” (Their status as a symbol of imperial authority means that the emperors of Yelang do not much like having the common folk shoot them. It strikes a little too close to home.)

Tom nodded. “This wasn’t what you would call a
legal
offer. But it seems there’s a lot of money to be had in hunting dragons right now, laws or no laws.”

“What?” This penetrated the fog that had enveloped my brain, making me sit upright on the barrel where I had perched. “For sport?” I had not forgotten M. Velloin, the big-game hunter we had clashed with in Eriga.

“With the kind of money apparently on offer, I don’t think so. And it seems to be more of a local phenomenon—Yelangese doing the hunting, rather than foreign visitors. But it’s been going on for long enough that this fellow assumed I had heard about the business and wanted my share.”

If people were thinking to profit … I let out a soft but heartfelt curse. “Dragonbone.”

Even in the scant light of the moon and the distant docks, I could see the grim set of Tom’s mouth. “I think so. I didn’t pursue it, though—didn’t want to make any promises to this fellow before telling you.”

I forced myself to think it through, ignoring the cold knot that had formed in my stomach. “We already know who has the formula for preservation, but it would be of value to know for certain whether that is where the remains are going.” I snapped my fingers as a thought came to me. “If this
is
for preservation, they must be sending chemists with the hunters; the bones would be too badly decayed otherwise. Did the man who approached you sound like he was working
with
the Va Ren Shipping Association?”

“No, he sounded like an opportunist. But that’s entirely plausible: if there’s a gold rush on for dragonbone, there will be all sorts of fellows jumping on board, without really knowing what they’re doing.”

As much as I wished for Tom to be wrong, I knew he wasn’t. Which meant this could be the start of what I had feared when we first discovered what Gaetano Rossi had done: the wholesale slaughter of dragons for their bones, with potentially disastrous consequences.

I rubbed my hands over my tired eyes, willing my thoughts to stop racing ahead. We didn’t know for certain that there was a rush, only that one man in Va Hing thought he could turn a profit by taking Scirlings to hunt dragons. But it merited investigation.

Tom said in a low, cynical voice, “I wonder if they even bothered to
try
synthesis.”

“It has been years since they obtained the formula,” I pointed out, trying to be optimistic. “If they had been harvesting bone so energetically all that time, we would have heard about it before now. They may have spent some time trying, at first.”

Neither of us said what we both must have been thinking: if they
did
try, then it seemed they had failed. Just as Frederick Kemble had, thus far. If so much effort could not produce an answer—if synthesis was ultimately impossible …

I was not doing a very good job of improving the mood, and I was too tired to do better. “I think you should follow up with this man,” I told Tom. “If nothing else, we need someone who knows how to find dragons. The rest … we will deal with it later.”

*   *   *

Tom’s contact reminded me of nothing so much as a squirrel: small and full of seemingly inexhaustible energy. He was not entirely trustworthy; no man who offered to take another on an illegal hunt for dragons could be given such a recommendation. But his untrustworthiness was, as Tom said wryly, “within allowance”—a phrase we had both acquired from Natalie and her engineer friends. It meant that working with the fellow was unlikely to harm us, or at least unlikely enough that we could risk it.

The risk was minimized in part because we were not, in fact, going to hunt a dragon. Tom and I suspected that the spate of men doing so would bring on an equal (if not larger) spate of government officials or soldiers trying to put a stop to the practice; and our desire to avoid prison, which I have already mentioned, argued in favor of keeping our noses clean of anything worse than ink.

We therefore set out armed only with field glasses and notebooks. We did not carry a single gun between ourselves, nor any knife longer than a hand’s span. If accosted, we could say with perfect honesty that we had not the
means
to kill a dragon, much less the desire.