She stared at her shoes. A smile began tugging at the corner of my mouth—I could not suppress it. Then she started laughing, and that set me off, and the little knot inside me began to relax.
When we finally stopped laughing I stood up to get a chair for her. Only by the time I turned around, she’d taken my chair—her chair, I mean, as I have a feeling I’m sailing into the wind where that’s concerned. It didn’t seem worth arguing about any more, so I sat down in the one I’d pulled close.
“I’m Cora,” she said.
“And I’m Audrey Camherst.”
“I know,” she said. “I mean, figured it out. Uncle said you would be coming. But you don’t look Scirling.”
Most people don’t say it to my face like that, though I know they’re thinking it. “I’m half,” I said. “My mother is Utalu. From Eriga.”
I said that last bit because most Scirlings tend to think of Eriga as an undifferentiated mass, a whole continent lumped under one label, and couldn’t point out the Talu Union on a map if you threatened to keelhaul them for failure. But Cora nodded before I was even done clarifying. “You’re Lady Trent’s granddaughter. And your grandfather, your step-grandfather I mean, is the one who deciphered Draconean.”
“Well, him and a lot of other people. It isn’t like he just looked at it one day and said, ‘By gum! I have it!’ But yes, he’s the one who translated the Cataract Stone, and theorized that the language is related to Lashon and Akhian. And then Grandmama proved him right.”
“Have you met any Draconeans?”
“Oh, yes, lots. I’ve even been to the Sanctuary.” I shuddered at the memory. “The people are lovely, but what they call ‘summer’ there would barely pass muster as a brisk spring day here.”
Cora said, “I’ve never been outside of Scirland. I don’t think I would like it very much, but Uncle travels all the time. Mostly to Thiessin and Chiavora—he didn’t like Akhia.”
All manner of uncharitable responses rose to mind at that, but I bit down on them.
“If you don’t want me to help you,” Cora went on, “then tell me. Uncle said I should do whatever you say.”
Like she’s some kind of servant! Or worse, a slave. “I do want your help,” I said. “But only if you want to help.”
She shrugged. “I don’t know how I can. You saw what happened when I tried. And it made you angry, didn’t it? That I had tried to translate something.”
The polite thing to do would have been to lie. But Cora is so straightforward that I found myself responding in kind. “Well, yes, a little. But I shouldn’t have been angry. As for translating, it usually takes years of study before anyone is ready. There are other things you can do, though—and to be honest, I’d be grateful for them. Your uncle wants this done very fast, so having someone helping out with all the side tasks would make my life a lot easier.”
She nodded, unsurprised. “When the tablets arrived, he said they’d change everything.”
Diary, I tell you: Lord Gleinleigh has a very high opinion of the import of his find, and I’m beginning to wonder why. He’s discovered a long narrative text, and that’s very exciting if you care much about ancient Draconean civilization; we’ve found a few poems before now, a few brief mythical tales or bits of history, but nothing approaching this scale. I’m sure it will teach us all manner of things we didn’t know about their society. But to say it will change everything? That seems unwarranted, when we don’t even know yet what it says.
Which makes me wonder if he somehow does know. Only I can’t think how he possibly could! It’s easy enough to get the gist of a tax record at a glance, but narrative is much more difficult, and even a few minutes of study tells me this one’s a real corker. The language is so archaic, I can’t think of many people who would even know what to do with it, and the best of them couldn’t just skim it and tell you what it says, not in any detail. I told Lord Gleinleigh I could get through two tablets a month; I only hope I can keep my word. So how could he—a man who probably doesn’t even know what a determinative is—begin to predict what effect this is going to have?
Pfah. I am putting the tail ahead of the dragon. Lord Gleinleigh just has an inflated opinion of himself, so naturally anything he finds must be stupendously important.
I didn’t say any of this to Cora, of course. I’m not that birdwitted. I just said, “Well, we’ll see. It’s going to take long hours of work before we have any real sense of what this says.”
I said the same thing again at supper tonight, to see if Lord Gleinleigh reacted, but he didn’t. We dined alone, without Cora; when I asked why, he replied only that “she doesn’t care to dine in company.” Then, oozing disapproval out every pore, he said, “I heard you were in the garden all afternoon.”
He thought I was shirking! I said, “Yes, because I began copying today. I don’t know why, but I find that natural light is best for letting me see the inscription clearly—lamps just aren’t the same.”
“Copying?” he echoed.
He didn’t even attempt not to sound suspicious. I sighed and said, in my best diplomatic voice, “The tablets may be in good condition for the most part, but they won’t remain that way for long if I’m constantly handling them. Much better to work from a copy—an exact drawing of the signs as the scribe wrote them—and only consult the original when I think there may be an error. Once that’s done, I will transcribe the text—” I saw that I had lost him. “Write out the sounds in our alphabet,” I said. “These are necessary steps, my lord, I assure you. Ask any translator and they will tell you the same.”
Lord Gleinleigh dismissed this with a flick of his hand. “No, no, quite right. I am not questioning your methods, Miss Camherst.” (He was . . . but I did not point that out.)
The footman brought out the soup course. One thing I’ll say for Lord Gleinleigh; he lays on a good feast. Though with soup I’m always afraid I’ll slurp and embarrass myself. The earl addressed his own bowl very quietly, and then unbent enough to ask, “How are you getting on?”
“Well so far. I made it a good way into copying the first tablet today.” I laughed. “Though I would have gotten further if your gardeners and footmen hadn’t constantly been interrupting to offer me a parasol. I told them that I need the direct light for my work, but they kept trying!”
“They are only concerned for your health,” he said.
And my complexion, I’m sure—as if that weren’t already a lost cause, by Scirling standards. But for pity’s sake, this isn’t Eriga or the Akhian desert. I don’t think the sun here could burn me if it tried all summer—much less in the middle of winter.
Then Lord Gleinleigh cleared his throat and said, “And what of the text itself? I know you said these other steps come first, the copying and so forth, but . . .?”
If I let him, he will press me to do this all rumble-jumble, instead of following proper standards. Well, I shan’t let him—and I have good reason why not. “It’s difficult to say. You know” (I doubt he knows anything of the sort) “that there’s a mark in the Draconean script used to separate words, in the way we use a blank space? That’s a later innovation in their writing; earlier texts don’t have it, and this is definitely an earlier text. So while I can pick out a word here and there, a great many more all blur together, so that I’m not sure whether it says zašu kīberra or zašukī berra. I’m afraid it will be quite some time before I have anything clear enough to share with you.”